GT Radial Drift Putrajaya.

So, I woke up early at 6am coz too excited and also nervous for my very first drift competition. Packed up my usual stuffs for drift event, such as my helmet, few drinking bottle, water spray, my trusty blue towel, then all my tires and rims. Went to petrol station, fill Rolla with RM50 petrol and increasing the tire pressure. Front is 35bar, and 40 for all the rear set. Straight to track then.

Arrived around 7.45am and I thought Im gonna be the only person there, but there's already few of them waiting earlier than me. Even the management arrived around 8.30am.

 

Official training started at 10am. So, I choose 45 as my participant number since 33 had been taken. I still believe my lucky number 3345 as usual. So off me go for the training. And for the training, I used my 13' steelies. I was really short on tires, and even borrowed 4rims and tires from Ipin as backup.

Training tyme.

Rolla with awesumz Steelies.

I was having a trouble with Rolla during the practice session. This is my first time driving the Blacktop and the LSD feeling during drifting. So was struggling to adapt to its different nature of the engine and to get use to LSD 'lock'. Some photos during the training.

Anyway, the practice video was posted yesterday. So go watch it there ya. So the feedback from all of my friends were same. "Amar, u need to go faster" "Amar, please press the throttle more!" "Amar you are not driving a turbo engine anymore, please floor it!".. That was it. So I know I still cant remove the turbo ' stain' out of me. Mind you this is my first time drifting with N/A engine.

 

Monza tire sucks. I think its a celup one.

Okay, so its time for official practice and I was in group B. So time to get serious and time to change to change the rear tire. With steelies, I got a lot of positive offset; which mean the rear didn't grip as good as negative offset rims. So when I swapped the steelies to a -10 offset rims, the rear characteristic had change and again, I need to get use to it.

 

It was heavy!

Tire/rim loaned from Ipin.

Anyway, here's my stock for the day.. All of it.

Oh, anyway before I continue, allow me to share some friends that came by yesterday. First, its the D18x crews. They were the one that helped me with the engine conversion and also the preparation for the event. One big supporter for a few of us that competing. There's four of us that joined the competition.

The Freedom's Crew also were there.

Some of their cars.

Even some drift show from Freedom's Crew during the break.

So here's my first Qualifying run.

Some of my friends did snap a few photos.

I only manage to score 30+ for both run. This is because I was too far from the first clipping point. I was playing safe so that I didn't spun or hit the barrier. Mike scored 60+ during the qualifying. Okay, so we both managed to qualified after that. I was ranked 13 over the 18 participant.

Qualifying run.

For best 16, I was facing the best and consistent AE86 for the day.

Here's the video:


And since both of us did well, we both need to have a rematch of the round. So here's the 'One More Time'..


After beating the 86 (Lucky me I guess), here's my Best 8 run. Again, I faced my own team member, which is the D18X crews. I was battling Bobby. Anyway, all of us (4 dudes) managed to get into the Best 8 run.


Without no doubt, Bobby did better than me and I did a mistake. So the scores went to Bobby, and there goes my run for the day.. And Bobby managed to get a 4th place while Auri with his Cefiro manage to get number 3. So D18X members scored the 3rd, 4th and 7th place for the competition.

The tires? Didn't show up any excessive wear at all.

Din was helping me out with the tire change after I was out of the competition. Yummy 14' x 8j was back in.

My photo during the prize giving ceremony. I was a participant and also the photographer that day. Talking bout multi-tasking. It was tiring.

Here's all of us with our trophy.

And with the D18X crews.

Even though I didn't win and of course there is no intention on winning at all since this was my first competition environment ever, I think its a good start to get such placing for my first time on the engine, axle, and also on competition. Definitely will join more competition next time as my confidence level is getting better from now on. Also thanks to my Rolla for behaving very well during the competition and everyday for not causing any troubles at all. Overall, I am satisfied with the car and also the competition feeling.