The Speed Industries drifting divsion decided just 2 weeks after the epic KD Race 2010 that it was time to visit France once more.

This time the 2nd Round of the French Drifting Championship (FDC) took place in a remote little french town called Pousy.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Hi all,

It’s time to give you a heads-up on the happenings at the 2nd round of the French Drifting Championship known as the FDC.

It won’t be as lenghty as the last blog entry, i’ll try to hold back and not flood you with text this time around!

Crew

For this event, the following suspects were coming along:

- Don Icon our prime rookie, for mental support and trashtalking
- Roman Kanabé our trusty racing mechanic, to repair myself or the car if I end up in a huge fiery explosion
- Kevin Kläusli our random supporter and touge drifter, to make sure enough beer is consumed troughout the day
- Myself as the driver of the ZÜRIDRIFT S14

Preparation

It wouldn’t be Speed Industries if there was no party going on before the event. The professional Team Speed Industries preparation for FDC Round 3 looked like this:

- Excessive partying the night before the event
- Driving off to France directly after leaving the club at 4 AM
- Trying to get at least a few minutes of sleep during the long drive to France

Big thanks at this point to Don Icon who drove my car all the way to France so I could at least get minimal sleep.

You can image we arrived quite wasted in Pousy, France at 7:00 AM. All the other drivers were smart enough to sleep in tents or a hotel nearby and were already there.

Our crew on the other hand cracked open the first beer while the other drivers were still brushing their teeth. Nice.

Our race mechanic Roman Kanabé hanging out wasted in our tent. Notice the Silvia tattoo! Now that’s commitment.

Kevin just chilling in the perfect weather.

 

Technical check of my S14. Doors – check. Door handles made from an old piece of rubber - check.

Briefing

Before we were ready with unloading the car and finishing building the small tent, I was called to the briefing.

As usual for drifting events in France, I just stood there while not understanding anything and watched the others wildly discussing the track, lines and rules.

Briefing from far away. I stood up front and had no idea what they were talking about.

I kinda just walked off after a while thinking “OK no idea what they are talking about, but i’ll just fly in with maximum speed and angle and see what happens.”

When I returned, the guys had already built the tent and prepared the racecar. Sweet!

The gigantic Speed Industries tent. We were really happy about the tent, because the heat was immense even in the morning!

The yellow glowsticks are leftovers from the KD Race 2010 night battles a few weeks ago

Icon walked around and took some random pictures of the competitors. These guys brought some SWEET cars!

Both these guys were competitors at the recent KD Race 2010 as well! Nice to see them run here again!

My favorite car of the day. I just love how the agressive wheel color matches the stickers! And yellow headlights rock.

Me and the crew looking for beer in the trunk. Just Don Icon is missing from this picture.

There were some interesting rally cars who ran during the show runs and taxi rides!

Training

Right after briefing I had a look at the track. It was a small Go-Kart circuit which would be the drifters turf for today. The track was VERY narrow, you could see it was not really intended for racing big vehicles.

Mmmmh, Red Bull for breakfast. Please, Red Bull – sponsor me!! I buy like 10 cans a day, dammit!

Don Icon wanted to ride as a passenger during the trainings. We fired up the green old bird and went off!

Don Icon preparing for the ride-along

Right off the start, I noticed my car has too much grip for this track. It was so narrow and tight and i was running the fat 235 federal tires on the rear. Combined with the obvious turbo-lag problems on such a small track and the fact that I had like 30 minutes of sleep that night, this was quite a challenge.

Taking a tight line close to the clipping point

Despite that, after 45 or so minutes of training I was starting to feel quite good on the little track, threw the car in nicely with good angle and speed! Wooooo!

GO ZÜRIDRIFT GOOO!

Qualifying

Only a small part of the pretty long narrow track would be judged. The judges basically wanted to see a nice entry into a tight right-hand corner, followed by a tight left-hand corner, again followed by a tight right-hand corner and then to keep the drift going as long as possible.

There was 1 warmup, then 3 qualifying stints. Since my car has so much grip, I knew I needed to go in hard to make it happen. Anything less than full force and the drift would stop on such a small track.

Warmup and qualifying went quite well for me

The warmup run went well, followed by a pretty sweet 1st and 2nd qualifying runs as I managed to pull trough with good speed and angle. On the 3rd qualifying run I tried to max it but ended up overspeeding, so that final lap sucked ass.

In the end I qualified for the Top16 battles with a solid 8th place, so I was happy with that.

The sick Team Gruiii S14a during qualifying

There was quite a crowd trough the day. The picture doesn’t do it justice as it was taken in the morning.

Taxi Rides

After qualifying, they offered taxi rides for the spectators. Everybody could come and ride shotgun in all the drift machines. Great fun was had by all – I really think drift taxi rides are one of the highlights of these events for the visitors!

Taking another passenger for a taxi ride. It was so hot that I had removed my race suit and drifted with just a towel.

I took a 10-year old boy with me who didn’t talk at all during our interaction. But the giant smile on his face when he climbed out of the car was a clear indication that his parents will find “Drift car” on his wishlist for next christmas.

Wohoo one hand drift!!

After that a girl was in my passenger seat. I think she got quite excited when the rear tire exploded during the third lap on the small track. We then limped out of the track to change tires.

Battle Time!

Just when I wanted to drive outside to change tires, it turned out they wanted to start the Twin Battles already!

That kinda sucked, as I now had to change tires as quickly as possible and I didn’t want to be disqualified for not appearing at the starting grid!!

We stressed so much during tire change that the car fell off the car jack, and the exhaust burned my arm quite badly! Nooooo!

Roman repairing my arm like you would normally repair a broken water hose. Pretty sure I’ve got Syphillis now.

Normally, I destroy the car at the end of the day. This time the car had destroyed me instead. Rat bastard!!

After I let Roman Kanabé “repair” my wounded arm with the love and care of an angry drunken dinosaur, I could finally line up the car for battle.

I should mention at this point that it was SO HOT that I was starting to feel like my brain is melting on the spot. Imagine sitting in a racecar which emits enough heat by itself, in the hottest summers day, while wearing a fire-proof racing suit.

I now know what it feels like to be a fat bear in the desert.

Top16 Battle

I was up against Gabriel Cerdan in his S13. The car wasn’t highly modified, or at least it didn’t look like it.

The warmup run went quite well, I managed to build quite a gap till the end with higher exit speeds. We lined up again for the real battle.

I was leading for the first run, and launched off. The guy came up pretty close behind me, so I decided to go in as quickly as possible. In the trainings I sometimes did manji drift entries, but this time I just went in straight ahead with full force.

It was a not so fresh idea, as I overspeeded and almost spun out. I had to get into 1st gear to get back up to speed. Of course, my opponent had a massive advantage now.

Gabriel Cerdan closing in hard when chasing me.

Run awaaaaay!

For the second run, I wanted to make sure to stay on his ass from beginning to end. So just as we launched off, I stuck to his back. This was a bad idea as well, because his entry speed was a bit slower than mine, so I was often on the brakes to avoid running into him. I had to switch to 1st gear twice to keep the drift going.

Should’ve left more distance between us!! aaargh!

Closing in on the final corners

After that I was pretty sure I had lost, since my first run had sucked, and I was having trouble following the S13 without colliding.

And it turns out I really had lost – I was already out of the competition again. Too bad! I shook hands with Gabriel, congratulated him for his victory and wanted to go watch the rest of the battles.

Man down

But it got worse than that. I started feeling terrible shortly after getting out of the car – My arm hurt badly, but even worse my head started spinning. Too much sun is not a good idea in this heat.

I started feeling sick.. By this point I left my racecar on the track and just started walking to the restrooms. I just needed to get cold water, and get out of this deadly sun.

It was HOT. Slightly too hot for me as it turned out

I then proceeded to successfully
a.) Lie down at the Speed Industries tent and basically drop unconcious
b.) Let my racecar on the track with open bonnet, and lots of people looking for me
c.) Miss the show drift runs, more drift taxi rides, burnout sessions and basically the rest of the fun

But it couldn’t be helped, I was finished and unable to go on. My head was spinning and my stomach was still feeling funky. 

For the first time in my life… I could not drift any longer. Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Here are some pictures of other battles that took place while I passed out:

Heavy smokers.

Results

I just notice that I’m not really a good reporter – Since I had passed out, I did not see any other battles or the crowning of the victors. So i’m just going to post in the Results of qualifications, the battles and the final standings.

Laurent Goupil grabbed 1st place, Frédéric Ferreira got 2nd place and Clément Ponsot got 3rd! Congratulations to all of you!!

Congratulations guys! Nice driving!

Big props to all the other drivers, you are an awesome bunch. There was a great mood and vibe all around, it was truly enjoyable to be there, on and off the track.

Too bad I was busy dying in the Speed Industries tent for the last few hours of the event! Would’ve loved to take some more peeps for taxi rides and do a few smokin’ show runs.

Qualification results

Battle results

Final results

Ah well, there’s always next time. And a next time there will be, for sure, at FDC!

Special Thanks

Since we didn’t have any sober photographers on site this time, I had to steal most of these pictures from Timothée Cousin. You can tell by the pictures that he knows what he’s doing when it comes to photography.

Many thanks for letting me use those pictures!! If you are interested in high quality versions of these pics, you can visit his homepage over at: www.ftdistrict.com

Not to forgot big thanks to Kevin Kläusli, Roman Kanabé and Don Icon, for driving my trailer all the way to France, helping me out with the tasks at hand while my arm was falling off and just coming along to have a blast! You guys rock!

Coming up

I’ll update you guys soon with the results of the german IDS drift championship round 2 at the legendary Nürburgring, where Team Speed Industries competed with a whopping 4 cars last weekend!

Until then, take care..

Alain

Oh and here’s some more pictures just for you guys.