QLD Matsuri – The good times!

If you do the maths on driving time on Friday 5 hours, Saturday 15 hours and Sunday 10 hours that = 30 hours of open track time on 4 different layouts, QLD raceway had this event dialed and running smoothly.

Friday night was short track night, a small area of Queensland Raceway set out for drift comps held by the crew at JDM Garage and Wreck’em, for a long time ive followed the action on these short track events and wanted to be a part of them, i have to give a big shout out to Mez for inviting me and Neil Lewis for accommodating me over the weekend.

The atmosphere is truely electric, the crowd was massive, everyone was having fun and the driving was next level stuff, what more could you want.

The decision to leave my rear bar at home was a good one, the rear crash bar made for a good grinding surface on the short track wall.

I got knocked out in the battles but continued to drive in the “Train” sessions, it was pretty crazy, small layout sorrounded by concrete gave no room for run off.

The last runs of the night and i was pretty happy about my car, with 25 hours of drifting to go over the weekend it was in good health.

All loaded and heading back to the pits.

Saturday morning rolled around and i set up my pit bay, my check list usually goes like

-Gear bag (suit, helmet, gloves, CAMS licence, Camera, boots, rags)
-Spares bag (oil, water, knuckles, tie rods, silicon hose, driveshafts, bolts, tape, zipties, metal zipties)
-Tool Bag
-Spare wheels and Tyres
-Jack

I borrowed these rims of my good friend and he runs 215/45/17 Federal RS-R, i usually run 215/40/17 Federal RS-R so my guards copped it a little wearing themselves out.

Out on track i had some of the most fun in a car ive ever had, good friends to tandem with and a lot of passenger runs for the people who came with me, i started to get the reverse entry dialed into the dipper and had some great runs going on. i used 24 tyres over the weekend.

I went back to Short track to drive in the night as my headlights arnt good enough for the big track after dark, i ended up doing about 5 perfect reverse entries until backing it into the wall damaging the rear and blowing the wing off.

I hammered out the steel that was sitting on the tyre and continued to drive all saturday night and sunday, the car was flawless and perfect to drive.

A few passengers later and it was almost time to call it a weekend.

Sunday night rolled around, i packed the ute and headed back to Brisbane, we enjoyed some pizza and beers and shared stories of an Epic weekend. You can check out Scott Mitchells Video wrap below.

I learnt a lot this week, what i am doing, where i want to go, what drifting is to me and where i want to take it. The people who i talked to and drove with over the weekend made me happy to be a part of the drift scene in QLD, so refreshing you could say.