ADGP – Sunday Drivers Blog

Sunday was here, after a great nights sleep it was time to do battle with the best in the country. Heres how it played out for me.

The morning started with the unloading of the hilux, once that was done it was time to warm the 180SX up, go through drivers briefing and get prepared for battle.

The car was warmed up, fluids checked and brand new Federal 235/40/18s fitted to the rear by the guys at Wheeltech

I headed out for the practice session and was comfortable straight away, the track was a lot warmer than saturday and the car was performing faultlessly.

One problem i had to overcome before this event was the dump pipe bolts in the TD06l2 turbo, as soon as BRAE fabrication made my manifold and fixed the stainless cracking issues the dump pipe bolts seemed to be the next weakest link. I fixed this with drilled allen key bolts and stainless TIG filler wire.

The judges were telling me to get higher on the bank, so i made this my sunday mission to get right up there, i would initiate into and along the wall then basically dump the clutch and hold it pinned in 3rd gear steering the car up the bank, i had to crank a heap of angle into the car to do this though which led me to my next problem.

Because of my aggressive knuckle design and running stock fenders i didnt have any wheel spacers in the front, what that did was reduce my amount of lock and make the lock stop the caster rod. If you have ever heard blunt aluminium fusing to more aluminium then you will know the noise it makes, the screech can be heard in the car even on 100% throttle. I came into the pits and did some wheelspacer swaps.

I had 15mm spacers on the rear and had some 20mm spacers as spares, so i removed the 15s from the rear, swapped them for 20mm and added the 15mm spacers to the front. This gave me another 15mm of wheel swing and gave me enough lock to be able to get massive angle.

The top 32 battle was against the 180SX of Supreme Caravans, he did a great job and we ended up having a rerun after some startline confusion by the officials.

It was a tight battle and i was awarded the win.

I rolled back down pit lane and changed the tyres ready for top 16 introductions. I think the fun starts at top 16, the pressure to qualify well, then get your first battle out of the way is lifted and you are now in the main show.

The problem is my top 16 battle was reigning European and Australian champion Luke Fink. Luke and I have been drifting and riding BMX for a long time, we were drifting here at Calder together 6 years ago so it would be a fun battle.

The Holfords car that Dom and Frank prepare for Luke is a great car, strong power and a setup that favours big grip, but what happens when the ADGP 200 treadwear rating rule comes in? It makes the action for the spectator and the driver so much better, the cars are closer, the angle is greater and the atmosphere is stepped up a notch. Luke was running 265/35/18 Sunnys and i was on 235/40/18 595-SS, the grip advantage of the 265 was barely noticible and our battle was a close one.

We pushed each other to a One More Time and went at it again.

After my lead run i was really confident, we switched around and went again, i threw the car in under Luke and had to slow the car a little too much to avoid the touch, this gave him a few meters on me and it was enough to give Luke the win.

We thanked each other for the awesome battles and then i relised my day was all but over, oh wait theres still the expression session!

I used every single bit of track time i could and was just thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere and the track, congrats to Luke for taking the win, every single spectator who supported the event, all my sponsors and fellow drivers. Round 2 will be heating up in just over 2 weeks at QLD, see you all there.

 

Thanks to Gripshiftslide for the photos

4 Comments
  1. You really need some line breaks after your photos. I keep missing the starting word of each sentence.

    Reply
    • Should be all fixed 🙂

      Reply
  2. Its only the I’s. I
    still get it…

    Reply
  3. I really like being able to follow this. Good luck in QLD

    Reply

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