06/09/03- D1NZ Round 4
Da Fordsharks Day
The latest round was completed at Manfeild-Feilding NZ. There was a brilliant turnout of both spectators and competitors considering this was the first drift meet held at this track.
Around 30 competitors lined up for some of the best corners New Zealand that NZ has to offer with great sets of corners with alot of run off for spinners.
The day started off pretty sketchy weatherwise with rain falling the whole of the previous day and continuing through pactice. This made the infeild(and outfeild lol) very boggy.
After getting my car of the trailer I realised that the car needed to have its brakes bleed after discovering I had very little brake pedal pressure. Then the worst happened, the car would only run on three cylinders at best.with no time to really do anything about it i decided to work with what i had and hope that the engine would survive. After the panic to get registered and getting everything sorted the time for a decent practice was running short. With a big spin coming onto the front straight early in my first session left me stranded in the mud for a while i only managed 4 laps.
Being this was the first time out with my driftspec8-weldingrodLSD i found a whole other world to hanging out the rear and being able to control it through the use of throttle.
During Qualifying the rain started to ease and i was grateful in not rushing to enter as the order for qualifyng was determined by entry number.
As i was 28th by the time it got to my runs the rain had eased and the surfaced had dryed considerably making things much more controlable.
Run 1
After listening to all the advice about taking it easy and not spinning(this results in a big fat 0 for the run) i could not help myself and...
you guessed it a big fat 0. Swaped ends during the second corner after a bit of clutch kick to correct some understeer during the transition from the right hander to the left in the esses.
Oh well, just kept my foot in it and rode her through to the hair pin where a bit of e-brake had me in a leary drift through the tight right hander which i stetched to the finsh cones with a fine bit of choakudori that ended with me going through at a 90 degrees to the cones.
Run 2
Took it much more mildly to just finish the run and get points on the board. No spins but i was practically beatng my haed against a brick wall as the qualifying is an average of your 2 runs so the big fat 0 really sucked. case in point; don't spin next time... mutter mutter..
After the battle (which was taken out by Jarius Wharerau from the Drift Corp) there was about an hours worth of free practice which rocked. By the end of pracice I got far more used to the car but alas I ended with no power at all with fuel surge hitting me out of the corners cutting my drifts short
