Drifting has dominated our lives for the last couple of years…… or so we thought.
At the start of the summer we got offered the chance to be part of organising a drift and it totally took over life at SleepyCat HQ. Here is the story of Monster Energy Hi Octane Drift
The first step was to check out the location.
The track is an old WWII airstrip, now in the hands of Cruise Centre and North Westfest, who use it for organised Diffs (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, a diff normally involves lots of RWD cars, lots of tyres and lots of black circles!)
Looking at the space we KNEW it would work perfectly as a drift track, we just needed a bit of help, and who better to lend some expertise than our old friend Chubby McCord!
Bringing Chubby on board would end up not only giving us an amazing track layout, it also gave us the name of the event – Hi Octane Drift was born.
We went along to the next event that Cruise Centre and North Westfest were holding and it was a strange feeling knowing that a few months later, on September 4th we’d be walking the same space at our own event! The track is beside a fully operational airport and as we watched the cars doing circles in front of us we also watched the planes take off and land and could just imagine the sight of a beautiful trail of smoke from a drift car and a plane in the background!
The track had been laid out in a series of rings of tyres for the differs to do circles in – all these had to be moved away for Chubby to be able to plan the track layout. The Cruise Centre and North West fest teams did an amazing job, and in no time we had an expanse of concrete ready for Chubby to work his magic and create an awesome track design. This had to be tested to make some tweaks and see what kind of flow and speeds could be got from it and we owe a huge thank you to Matt Crozier for allowing Chubby to abuse his S14 for several hours!
Already confident of the design he’d planned on paper, it just took a couple of laps in Matts car for Chubby to be positive the layout would be a break from the norm. This design had it all, power sections and a nice twisty technical finish, it would certainly be one to sort the men from the boys!
On track it was all starting to take shape nicely and in the background we were doing our bit too.
The track design wasn’t the only thing getting tweaked – by now we’d got word of backing from the energy drink giant Monster Energy and so the event name changed to Monster Energy Hi Octane Drift. To get such a big name on board with us was a great boost, we got confirmation that a Monster Energy sponsored drift car from the Pro Drift Academy would be with us on September 4th, along with the Monster Energy promo team.
Our website was up and running and with a growing band of fans on Facebook, Monster Energy Hi Octane Drift was THE event on everyones lips!
By now we were just a few weeks away from the big day and Chubby wanted a final track test. This time it was Gavin Murphy who volunteered his car for the abuse but Chubby just couldn’t resist bringing his own car for a few laps, the poor thing will never be the same!
Gavins Skyline R32 was a great choice for this test session, it showed us how a bigger horsepower car would behave on the track.
Gavin took advantage of a few practice laps made sure he used every last scrap of rubber before darkness fell and we called it a night. The track layout was now completely finished.
Because of the technical design we decided to offer the 2 Saturdays before the drift as practice days. Take up for them was good and we got a steady stream of cars.
Ian Robinsons 1JZ powered Manta is a beautiful machine and he attacked the track with his usual aggression putting out lots of angle and smoke.
Coming out of the power section and getting the angle and speed right to hit the second to last clipping point was pretty tricky and there was plenty of dirt kicked up as the drivers got seriously pissed off until they cracked it!
Martin Coyle drove his 180sx to the practice session in his drift car, gave it the guts for the best part of the morning then drove it home again – this is a car that doesn’t lie down!
The highlight of the first practice day had to be when Rob Barnett arrived and chose to do his first laps of the track twinning with Duane McKeever. With those two on track visibility went down to next to nothing there was so much smoke in the air, and a few lads joked it would cause problems for the airport next door!
In the week between practice sessions, word had spread throughout the drivers about the tricky track and the day before the drift we had a big turnout of drivers ready to get a few final laps before race day.
Two fighter jets were based at the airport for the weekend and all the action on track stopped when we heard the engines of the F16s roar into life and they played in the air above us. What an added bonus!
The MG Crash Repairs team had come up to us in force and Brendan Stone driving the Martin Ffrench built Altezza was an awesome sight. The size and set up of the car seemed to be perfect for the track.
BDC driver Danni Murphy had joined the driver list, and with the more aggressive style she has adopted this year she threw ‘The Green Monster’ round the track, hitting the clips in style!
Paul Murphy was having a ball on the track in his mad pink S14.5
Chubbys choice of James Hudson for third judge was a stroke of genius. James has been a judge for the JDM Allstars series and currently judges 2 series based in Poland, he also owns the Allstars Academy, and after watching a few practice laps he gathered the drivers together and gave them an epic briefing session. The tips and pointers he shared really allowed the drivers to raise their game to a whole new level!
Soon it was time to finish up and put away the toys for the day. We have to give Campsie Karting a massive thank you for storing the cars overnight for us, it was a great spot for them and we couldn’t resist taking a few shots as the drivers were the other side of the partition doing a Karting GrandPrix!
So that is the story of the lead up to the Monster Energy Hi Octane Drift, and at this stage we’re going to have to pass over to none other than fellow Driftblogger Andrew McCann who very kindly came over to act as official photographer for the weekend.
It just doesn’t seem right not to have taken any photos at a drift we helped to create although thats exactly what happened, but Andrew has well and truly come up with the goods!
Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen, it was a truly amazing experience, and watch this space, you never know what might happen next!
[...] out Colin Clarke’s post for a behind the scenes insight at the preparation for this event. [...]