Welcome to the coverage of the happenings at the 2nd round of IDS 2010. This was quite an eventful trip for all of us, so prepare to skip past alot of text to see the pictures!
Crew
I will just detail the drivers who were on site, since so many of our peeps came to watch and support this time around.
– Tobias Welti would be attacking in his JDM PS13 ziptie fighter. (PRO class)
– Swen Burkhard would be using his exquisite supercharged AE86. (PRO class)
– Don Icon would be attending in the angry red r32 skyline. (Street class)
– I would try to avoid crashing and burning in the ZÜRIDRIFT S14. (PRO class)
Preparation
The event would take place on Sunday, but to build up the tent, BBQ grill and unload the cars we all went to the ‚Ring on Saturday to prepare.
Some funny scenes took place there already, as Don Icon decided he needed to reveal his inner Buddha and walked around in just a mysterious brown towel and buddhist necklaces.
Don Icon dressing up as a homeless guy during preparation
Maybe he was praying to drift buddha to ensure good placement in his class.
Since I arrived quite late, we couldn’t finish the preparation until we were called in for briefing.
Annoying sticker removal on the ZÜRIDRIFT S14
Briefing
IDS head Jörg Söhner explaining the planning for the day
Interestingly, briefing started with the crowning of the three victors! There was a podium ready and everything.
Wait, we hadn’t even battled yet! Were we too late?
It turned out they had organized a go-kart race as an evening activity for all the drifters, except those who could not be bothered to take part like for example the entire Team Speed Industries. I guess we just like drifting so much more than karting.
But congratulations to whoever got on the podium! Not that we’re bothered about some karting results.
Then there was another surprise when Jörg Söhner and Vanessa Combes (the brains behind the IDS) presented the judges.
There was a guest appearance by Luke Fink, who just appeared magically in front of us like a messiah of drift!
Luke Fink is a legendary drifter and champion of the Drift Australia Series in 2009! Nowadays he’s running quite successfully in the english JDM Allstars drift series and the EDC as far as I’m informed.
He would be judging the Street class drifters so not the class most of our team were running in. However, PRO class judgement would be managed by pro drifter Declan Hicks, who is a well-known name in the scene too!
Declan Hicks is the head PRO judge of IDS. He’s a pro drifter at the EDC as well.
Another new Street class judge was Axel Mack (on the left in the picture), who normally drifts himself with his monstrous 2JZ powered BMW E36 racecar. Everybody thought it’s awesome to have him on board as a judge as well, so all these guys were greeted with a nice bit of applause.
There would be two tracks, one for PRO class and one for Street. On the PRO track there would be drift taxi rides to be offered to random spectators, alot of training time and in the afternoon qualification and battles.
On the Street class track, there would be trainings and then the judged laps for qualification.
The PRO track consisted of a pretty fast entry into a long left-hander, followed by a quite long right-hander, then a long uphill straight that we needed to connect while drifting, and finishing off with another fast right-hander.
Funny side note: Axel Mack let Luke Fink try out his 2JZ powered racecar the next day. Guess what Luke did to his tires.
Night falls..
Gloomy mood before sunset.
When we returned, the crew and helpers had prepared everything already. Awesome! We could just chill out, mend the cars a little bit and then go have dinner.
The secret ingredient for a successful Speed Industries BBQ is plenty of high octane racing fuel
After dinner, most of us went to a club that the Nürburgring company opened right next to the Nürburgring GP circuit. They have steakhouses, bars, hotels and mentioned club in there in this small tourist „village“ they call the ‚Eifeldorf‘ (Eifel village).
Tobias Welti seems to be looking for salvation
Or maybe he just sniffed too much racing fuel
Seeing a mixure of nicely dressed german girls dancing in a club next to grease dripping Volkswagen race mechanics who didn’t even bother to get changed before getting drunk was… interesting.
No wait – it was lame, not interesting! But the club itself was bursting with people, the music was nice and there were copious amounts of alcolic beverages served, so all in all we had a great time!
At like 2:30 AM I remembered that I hadn’t just come here to drink, dance and stare at the hot pole dancers. So it was time to call it a night.
Too bad. Next time I’ll sabotage our own cars with a shotgun so we can party longer.
Raceday
The Mercedes Arena
We arrived back at the track quite early in the morning. The sun was rising and the mood was… tired. Part of our support crew was so wasted from the night before that they didn’t even bother showing up at all.
But no matter, we warmed up the racecars and got ready for practice.
Martin Aeppli from Silverpics.ch is the ziptie specialist.
He can merge any two objects using only zipties.
While I drove down the pit lane to enter the track, I started to realize how the IDS is growing. There were cars from all over the continent, starting with mostly the known german and swiss drivers but going on to guys who came all the way from the UK, Netherlands, Italy, the Netherlands and more! Even some guys from Driftworks were there, which I thought was awesome!
The driftworks PS13 during a super-long dirt drop!
The cars all lined up
The ZÜRIDRIFT S14 getting ready for practice
Since the visitors seemed to drive on quite a high level, they were allowed to run in the PRO class even though they didn’t attend the „IDS ProSearch“ early this year to get the required IDS PRO drifting license.
Our prime rookie Don Icon preparing his R32 for practice. Let’s hope the buddhist necklace brings good fortune
This was fine with me, as I just like to see the scene growing and with people like this making the effort to drive here the central european scene can only profit! They brought monstrous cars and these guest drivers were obviously drift specialists anyway.
A stunning 350z from the Netherlends during practice
Practice
I lined up the ZÜRIDRIFT S14 to launch off. Already I was delighted to see the uncomplicated vibe going on like any IDS event. We could just drive, drive and drive. No waiting lines, no chaos, just good smokin‘ drifting fun.
The uphill section of the track required quite a bit of power and speed to connect entirely
This was underlined by the very clever way they handled the qualifications. Instead of closing down the track, and then letting one after another out there for his 3 qualifying laps (and making all other drivers wait for a year), they decided to do it freestyle.
Patrick „Patze“ Ritzmann practicing in his all-new 2JZ powered monster E46. He was laying down some serious smoke
You just drove the practice as you normally would. Whenever you felt ready and prepared to do your qualification laps, you just told Jörg Söhner who was standing at the starting grid. He’d inform the judges, who were on their big judging tower and off you went.
Another dutch participant who liked placing a huge smoke screen over the entire track
Smokey banana!
All the others merrily kept on with their training, while one person after another did his qualification laps at the same time. Absolutey awesome, please never change this again!!
After a few hours of training, Team Speed Industries was starting to look quite confident. When I watched Tobias Welti from outside, all I could see were atomic smoke bombs being dropped by his PS13 in third gear. It looked heavenly!
Toby was dropping some first class smoke bombs on the uphill section!
Our other PRO driver, Swen Burkhard also went in hard with his little AE86. He had rebuilt his engine in record time, and slapped on a supercharger for good measure. The little thing ran like hell now! Since the connection between the last two corners was very steep, it was still hard to fly up there with less than 200 hp, but damn he managed it well!
Swen Burkhard, our third PRO class driver
His gold AE86 is just splendid. The fact that it’s sporting an old-school HKS supercharger increases awesomeness by 200%
Don Icon was meanwhile ripping around on the Street class track, which was quite close to our track, but we couldn’t see them drive from our spot.
Michael Sahli, vice-champion of last years IDS season was practicing hard as well
Benno Frieden is another swiss PRO class driver who was quite successful during the last IDS season
He returned after 2 hours of practice and was very happy about his performance. Looks like he managed to connect the long track entirely, which is a real achievement when you know that this is only the 3rd time he went out for drifting.
My practice laps went quite well too.. I then started practicing backwards entries with Roman Kanabé on the passenger seat.
Speed Industries represent!
It was quite an intense moment when I overdid it, spun out and came to a halt behind a blind corner. I looked up to see five drift cars flying in our direction smokin‘ sideways on full throttle!
Luckily, this was PRO practice so they all dodged my car nicely by just a few meters and we lived to see another day!
Drift Taxi rides
Just like at the FDC last weekend, the IDS dudes had the brilliant idea to offer drift taxi rides to all the spectators. I am always happy to take random people to feel the terror that is ZÜRIDRIFT from the passenger’s seat.
Not quite sure my taxi guest was enjoying the ride to the fullest. I should put a barf bag in front of the passengers
The cool thing was the for each taxi ride you offered, you got 10 euros. I could collect 50 euros at the end of the day, which should cover.. oh at least like 1% of the costs.
But seriously, it’s awesome that they give something back to the drivers! We love you!
Mirek Douda randomly turned up as well to rip trough a few corners in his daily ride
Yves Faber, a well known driver in the scene was attending as well. His beautiful 450hp mustang is always a sight to behold
Another taxi guest I took with me probably didn’t have a hugely enjoyable experience, as the ZÜRIDRIFT S14 decided to spontaniously explode on the second lap. And by explode I mean the intercooler piping ripped off. And by ripped off I mean fell off.
Yes, I know my car needs some work. Shut up.
Toby and myself battling it out during practice! Oh how much fun that was
After throwing the passenger out, and going back to fix the car I was ready for some more taxi rides and practice.
At this point things were heating up quite a bit! Imagine roughly 30 drifters doing random taxi drift laps, training laps and qualifying laps all at the same time on a track that consisted of only 4 corners.
Full-on drift battles started taking place during taxi rides and practice. Sweet!
Run forrest run!
The track got quite packed and the mad drifters began to lose that little bit of self-control they have, so hardcore drift battles already started taking place during practice. Nice.
Me trying to catch up to Swen Burkhard’s golden nugget on the uphill section of the track
Jazz Williams, the only american driver in the IDS PRO ripping it up in his battle scarred R33. It looks like an axe murderer’s daily ride
Some more 2jz-powered goodness by Patrick Ritzmann
Arrrrr, I’m an angry drift pirate with an eyepatch!
Qualifying
Goes Like Schnell!
Time flies when you’re having fun. It was already 1 PM now, and I still hadn’t done my qualification laps. After having a signature Speed Industries BBQ I thought it’s time to see what’s what.
Alok Paleri from LokkyDesigns trying to steal Vanessa Combes bike
I did two more practice laps, then lined up for qualification.
One of the judging towers. No, the vehicle beneath doesn’t go sideways
And off I went. Full throttle in first gear, shift to second, BAM, full throttle in second gear, shift to third, BAM, full throttle in third gear and get ready for the entry.
First qualifying run
I would tell you the entry speed on this track, but my speedo is broken. It was probably around 130 km/h in my case.
The judges said they didn’t want to see boring handbrake entries, so I tried entering using very agressive weightshifting instead, with a little handbrake just to correct the line.
The first run went quite well, but I was too slow on the entry. On the second run I tried to really swing it in. This turned out to be my best of the three runs, since I slighly touched the curb on the third run and the judges don’t like seeing that!
And another quali run
After my three qualifying stints, I went back to the Speed Industries tent. I felt my qualifications weren’t all bad, even though my entry speed could’ve been higher.
Don Icon trying to relax after his qualifying stints while pumped with adrenaline
As usual, the mood was good at the Speed Industries chilling area
Murphy’s Law
Things weren’t looking so bright in Tobias Welti’s world.
The turbocharger on his PS13 had blown just minutes before my return and the car could not be used any longer. Tobias was obviously pissed off about that, since he had not done his qualifying yet.
„Mr. Welti. We tried everything we could.. but I’m afraid your HKS GT-SS turbocharger.. has died. We’re very sorry.“
I offered that he could use the ZÜRIDRIFT S14 for qualifying, but he didn’t want that either. He was probably scared that a wheel falls off or something.
The face of a man whose turbocharger exploded
Of course, if something goes wrong it won’t stay at that. Shortly after, the turbo gaskets on my S14 blew. I could still drive it, but it now had less power than a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
I didn’t care and just pushed it harder and faster. At least it was still driveable.
Discussing if my turbo gaskets can be fixed easily or not. It turned out they can’t. Nooooooo!
On Swen’s AE86, a electric cable burned trough as well – Loads of smoke coming from under his hood. We stood there with our fire extinguishers ready, expecting a huge lump of melting metal where his engine used to be.
Luckily for Swen, nothing mayor happened and the engine survived. He even drove it again a bit later!
Life is good for photographers. Their cameras don’t break constantly like our drift cars
At least Don Icon mentioned that one of his Street class qualifying runs went really well, and he had some hopes for a good placement on the rankings!
But before that, father Murphy hit his car as well when some gasket in his skyline’s transmission ripped open, spraying his interior and face with hot smelly transmission fluid. Nice.
Qualifying Results
Then shit hit the fan. The results from PRO qualifying were released on a printed list at the IDS tent. We went there to have a look.
Of course the goal was to qualify in the Top16 of this list, so that you’d be allowed to run in the twin battles later on.
Dimi Patsatzis, yet another swiss PRO driver pushing his clean orange S13
First thing I encounter is last years IDS vice champion Michael Sahli coming up to tell me „You fucked it up man! 22nd place!“
I was absolutely shattered by this. 22nd place with 18 points, what the hell? I’m not a sore loser or anything, but coming 22nd out of 24 drivers with qualifying runs that felt quite solid was hard to accept.
I went to Declan Hicks, one of the judges to ask how much I messed up to get such a low score. Unfortunately he couldn’t really remember what car I was in, so I was just told that I had missed the clipping points or something.
Alok doing his usual shenanigans
It wasn’t looking much better for Swen Burkhard, he was 20th place on the list. Tobias Welti wasn’t even on the list since he could not do his qualifying runs.
Thomas Jucker from donthomaso.ch photography hanging out with Alok
Was Team Speed Industries really going down like this? Noooooo!!!
Patze’s monster E46 ate a set of tires every two laps. Lucky he has a tire sponsor!
Twin Battles
Since we knew now that we will not be driving any longer today, we grabbed a few beers and walked to the viewing area to watch the Top16 drift battles.
The mood was great when waiting for the twin battles as well!
I think I had just cracked open my third „drink to forget“ can of beer when suddenly my name was called on the speakers. „Alain Thomet, bitte zum Vorstart!“
This meant I still had to battle in the Top16! But why???
Suddenly, things went really quickly. I started walking back to the tent. Another dude runs up to me screaming „Go go go man they’re waiting for you up there!“
I started running hard.. Arrived at the tent! Where’s my racing suit? Where’s my helmet?? Where’s 7 red bulls so I can wake up and stop feeling tipsy from the beers?? Where are my sunglasses?? Aaaahhhh!
While I was getting dressed with the speed of a guy escaping from a horrid one night stand, I was told why I could suddenly drive in the Top16.
I had actually qualified on 11th place, not 22nd. I didn’t have 18 points, but 78 points. And that makes a difference. It turns out they mistook a 7 for a 1 when calculating the scores.
Well thanks for that, guys. I can’t undrink the 3 beers I’ve had, can I?
Michael Sahli charging in close to Yves Faber’s mustang
I raced off to line up for battle. I was pouring in red bulls at an alarming rate while thinking „Wake up, dammit!“. I’d never felt so unprepared when going into a battle.
Battle time
Just when I arrived, I was directly called to the starting grid. I was up against Markus Millizer, who’s using a red 3-series BMW with an M3 engine in it.
Markus Millizer in his E36 running an M3 engine
He is quite a well known IDS PRO drifter, with plenty of experience and a nicely set up car.
But my opponent was the least of my worries, as I was still feeling tipsy. Then I had a moment of clarity:
„You are 600 km away from home, sitting in a 380 hp racing car about to battle it out on a high-speed track in front of hundreds of people, and your preparation for all that was 3 big cans of lager. Well done.“
We then launched off for battle. Markus Milizer was leading for the first run.
There was no warm-up lap, which was unfortunate because that would’ve helped me get in the groove. When I was ripping trough the first 2 gears while following him on full acceleration, my main thought was „Don’t crash, don’t crash, for the love of drift jesus don’t crash!!!“
I initiated the drift with weightshift and a clutch kick, just like in qualifying. But right after the entry, I spun out and came to a smoking halt in the middle of the track.
Yes, lame. I don’t even remember how I messed up, I think I was just too slow on reacting to the steering. At least this spin woke me up. Any nervousness, weird feeling in the stomach and fears of crashing were gone.
I was pretty sure already that I could now only win this if my opponent spins out too. But that didn’t matter, I just wanted to show at least for one lap that I’m not some drunken hobo in a stolen drift car.
We lined up for the second battle. I was leading this time. Concentration and confidence was on the max, as was the pressure because I knew if I spin out again now, I would be picked on forever by Kanabé, Welti and the rest of the crew.
Rohans cornering attempt here probably ended in a spin. Too much angle while flying in!
I started haaaard ripping trough first gear. BAM second gear in. Full throttle. The blown turbo gaskets screaming like a wounded squirrel, right hand on the shifter to get to third gear. BAM third gear in, full throttle. Milizer following me very closely.
Yank the steering wheel to the left, then to the right while giving it the full beans. At the same time, kick the clutch hard. This will destabilize the car and initiate the drift. Here we gooooo!
Patze vs. Niezen
Millizer didn’t break a sweat and initiated the drift right behind me. I managed to pull away slighly after the first transition.
Next clipping point, go close but don’t hit the curbs! Second transition, let off the gas for a split second, let the steering do it’s work, then get on the power again!
Last transition, let the car fly outside to the outer clipping point for the final corner. Full throttle, don’t lift or you’ll straighten out and fly off towards the wall! Lift the throttle slighly now, pull back in onto the racing line and burn hard out of the last corner!
I managed to pull trough without any more incidents. I had created a small gap between millizer and me and had a sligthly wider, smokier line than him.
But I knew that didn’t matter, because I had spun out in the first run and that’s an automatic zero points.
I didn’t even care at this point, I was just happy I got the second run right. I congratulated Markus for his win, and found out he’s an awesome guy! He even invited me to have one of his signature „Doc Weingart“ energy drinks next time I’m over at their tent. Sweet!
Escalation
During the course of the next few battles, things really started to heat up.
The ending was quite dramatic, as certain battles were so close and hard to decide for the judges that not everyone was happy. But this is still motorsport, so that is to be expected. Eat it or beat it, really.
Florian Zimmermann uses a beautiful supercharged Audi limousine as a drift car. It’s gigantic, which makes it cool!
Personally I was just happy to be able to run in the battles, and that my qualification ranking was not that bad after all.
Podium celebration
The crowning of the victors on the podium was great – the winners sprayed most of their victory champagne bottles directly into Vanessa Combes face, hair and clothes.
I almost fell over of laughter, as did most bystanders. Only Vanessa wasn’t laughing for some reason. Maybe because she was wearing a tight white shirt.
These guys look more serious than during the final twin battles just minutes ago!
Combes was not amused
Now, the winners: Congratulations to Remmo Niezen for 1st place, Patrick Ritzmann for 2nd place and Yves Faber for 3rd place! Incredible driving guys. It was cool to watch you go all out!
Remmo Niezen took 1st place! Nice going!
Michael Sahli from DriftTeam Switzerland grabbed 4th place, but from what I’d seen the battles were so close that he might as well have been 2nd or 1st! Absolutely incredible performance man.
Too bad you missed the podium, but that’s how it goes in motorsport I guess. I can easily say this since I was nowhere near the podium, haaa.
Still, it was once more an awesome experience to take part in the Top16.. albeit it was a very short visit during the battles, but it was great fun.
No wait – it was quite lame because I spun out in the first battle. But apart from that – good times!
Results
You can see the results of the PRO and Street classes below.
The performance of Team Speed Industries was acceptable at best, with Don Icon getting 9th place in the street class, Swen 23rd, Tobias dropping out due to turbo fail and me getting 11th place in the PRO class. So there’s alot of room for improvement.
The positive thing was that two drivers that scored higher than myself were guest drivers, so their scores didn’t count. This means I got a few extra points by moving up in the ranking and end up 9th place i the season rankings so far. Nice!
Don Icon also did quite well in the Street class, coming in on 9th place. Well done! However Patrick Ritzmann’s younger sister Denise is on his neck with just 2 points difference. The Huntondji-brothers took 1st and 2nd place, and with DriftTeam Switzerland’s Miriam Dutto taking 6th place, the Street class battle for points is definately heating up!
IDS PRO Rd. 2 qualification results
Apart from the scores, we made some noise and there were lots of unforgettable moments, so I think it was absolutely worth attending here.
You can view all the results and the official coverage over at Driftsports.de.
Special Thanks
So many thanks to Vanessa and Jörg from the IDS organization commitee, and all their helpers. You are now truly starting to move alot in this quite young drifting scene!
It was an awesome event, especially considering it all took place on the same day! But the IDS dudes managed to organize an action-packed raceday with lots and lots of driving time, taxi rides and a great spectacle all in all.
Like every time, this article would be useless without the pictures. Many thanks to Thomas Jucker from donthomaso.ch to let me use his pictures again!
Many thanks as well to Alok Paleri from LokkyDesigns and Martin Aeppli from Silver Photography! I did not use alot of pics from you guys but that’s just because I can’t put up 10 million pics each time. Many thanks guys, you rock!
Not to forget Jennifer Ruzicska (www.driftteam.ch) , from whom I blatantly stole a few pictures without asking. Sorry, and thank you!
Coming up
In a few weeks time, Round 3 of the german IDS championship would have taken place at Augsburg. Unfortunately this was cancelled. Next date for the IDS is the Schwarzwald City-Drift. It will take place September 25. / 26., that should be quite something.
Maybe we’llrun at the french FDC drift cup again instead, we’ll see.
Until then, take care.
Alain
Oh, here’s a 10-minute youtube movie from some of the twin battles. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHMBuWhKsSY
Also, here’s some more random pics..
More pics from this event can be found over at donthomaso.ch.Welcome to the coverage of the happenings at the 2nd round of IDS 2010. This was quite an eventful trip for all of us, so prepare to skip past alot of text to see the pictures!
Crew
I will just detail the drivers who were on site, since so many of our peeps came to watch and support this time around.
– Tobias Welti would be attacking in his JDM PS13 ziptie fighter. (PRO class)
– Swen Burkhard would be using his exquisite supercharged AE86. (PRO class)
– Don Icon would be attending in the angry red r32 skyline. (Street class)
– I would try to avoid crashing and burning in the ZÜRIDRIFT S14. (PRO class)
Preparation
The event would take place on Sunday, but to build up the tent, BBQ grill and unload the cars we all went to the ‚Ring on Saturday to prepare.
Some funny scenes took place there already, as Don Icon decided he needed to reveal his inner Buddha and walked around in just a mysterious brown towel and buddhist necklaces.
Don Icon dressing up as a homeless guy during preparation
Maybe he was praying to drift buddha to ensure good placement in his class.
Since I arrived quite late, we couldn’t finish the preparation until we were called in for briefing.
Annoying sticker removal on the ZÜRIDRIFT S14
Briefing
IDS head Jörg Söhner explaining the planning for the day
Interestingly, briefing started with the crowning of the three victors! There was a podium ready and everything.
Wait, we hadn’t even battled yet! Were we too late?
It turned out they had organized a go-kart race as an evening activity for all the drifters, except those who could not be bothered to take part like for example the entire Team Speed Industries. I guess we just like drifting so much more than karting.
But congratulations to whoever got on the podium! Not that we’re bothered about some karting results.
Then there was another surprise when Jörg Söhner and Vanessa Combes (the brains behind the IDS) presented the judges.
There was a guest appearance by Luke Fink, who just appeared magically in front of us like a messiah of drift!
Luke Fink is a legendary drifter and champion of the Drift Australia Series in 2009! Nowadays he’s running quite successfully in the english JDM Allstars drift series and the EDC as far as I’m informed.
He would be judging the Street class drifters so not the class most of our team were running in. However, PRO class judgement would be managed by pro drifter Declan Hicks, who is a well-known name in the scene too!
Declan Hicks is the head PRO judge of IDS. He’s a pro drifter at the EDC as well.
Another new Street class judge was Axel Mack (on the left in the picture), who normally drifts himself with his monstrous 2JZ powered BMW E36 racecar. Everybody thought it’s awesome to have him on board as a judge as well, so all these guys were greeted with a nice bit of applause.
There would be two tracks, one for PRO class and one for Street. On the PRO track there would be drift taxi rides to be offered to random spectators, alot of training time and in the afternoon qualification and battles.
On the Street class track, there would be trainings and then the judged laps for qualification.
The PRO track consisted of a pretty fast entry into a long left-hander, followed by a quite long right-hander, then a long uphill straight that we needed to connect while drifting, and finishing off with another fast right-hander.
Funny side note: Axel Mack let Luke Fink try out his 2JZ powered racecar the next day. Guess what Luke did to his tires.
Night falls..
Gloomy mood before sunset.
When we returned, the crew and helpers had prepared everything already. Awesome! We could just chill out, mend the cars a little bit and then go have dinner.
The secret ingredient for a successful Speed Industries BBQ is plenty of high octane racing fuel
After dinner, most of us went to a club that the Nürburgring company opened right next to the Nürburgring GP circuit. They have steakhouses, bars, hotels and mentioned club in there in this small tourist „village“ they call the ‚Eifeldorf‘ (Eifel village).
Tobias Welti seems to be looking for salvation
Or maybe he just sniffed too much racing fuel
Seeing a mixure of nicely dressed german girls dancing in a club next to grease dripping Volkswagen race mechanics who didn’t even bother to get changed before getting drunk was… interesting.
No wait – it was lame, not interesting! But the club itself was bursting with people, the music was nice and there were copious amounts of alcolic beverages served, so all in all we had a great time!
At like 2:30 AM I remembered that I hadn’t just come here to drink, dance and stare at the hot pole dancers. So it was time to call it a night.
Too bad. Next time I’ll sabotage our own cars with a shotgun so we can party longer.
Raceday
The Mercedes Arena
We arrived back at the track quite early in the morning. The sun was rising and the mood was… tired. Part of our support crew was so wasted from the night before that they didn’t even bother showing up at all.
But no matter, we warmed up the racecars and got ready for practice.
Martin Aeppli from Silverpics.ch is the ziptie specialist.
He can merge any two objects using only zipties.
While I drove down the pit lane to enter the track, I started to realize how the IDS is growing. There were cars from all over the continent, starting with mostly the known german and swiss drivers but going on to guys who came all the way from the UK, Netherlands, Italy, the Netherlands and more! Even some guys from Driftworks were there, which I thought was awesome!
The driftworks PS13 during a super-long dirt drop!
The cars all lined up
The ZÜRIDRIFT S14 getting ready for practice
Since the visitors seemed to drive on quite a high level, they were allowed to run in the PRO class even though they didn’t attend the „IDS ProSearch“ early this year to get the required IDS PRO drifting license.
Our prime rookie Don Icon preparing his R32 for practice. Let’s hope the buddhist necklace brings good fortune
This was fine with me, as I just like to see the scene growing and with people like this making the effort to drive here the central european scene can only profit! They brought monstrous cars and these guest drivers were obviously drift specialists anyway.
A stunning 350z from the Netherlends during practice
Practice
I lined up the ZÜRIDRIFT S14 to launch off. Already I was delighted to see the uncomplicated vibe going on like any IDS event. We could just drive, drive and drive. No waiting lines, no chaos, just good smokin‘ drifting fun.
The uphill section of the track required quite a bit of power and speed to connect entirely
This was underlined by the very clever way they handled the qualifications. Instead of closing down the track, and then letting one after another out there for his 3 qualifying laps (and making all other drivers wait for a year), they decided to do it freestyle.
Patrick „Patze“ Ritzmann practicing in his all-new 2JZ powered monster E46. He was laying down some serious smoke
You just drove the practice as you normally would. Whenever you felt ready and prepared to do your qualification laps, you just told Jörg Söhner who was standing at the starting grid. He’d inform the judges, who were on their big judging tower and off you went.
Another dutch participant who liked placing a huge smoke screen over the entire track
Smokey banana!
All the others merrily kept on with their training, while one person after another did his qualification laps at the same time. Absolutey awesome, please never change this again!!
After a few hours of training, Team Speed Industries was starting to look quite confident. When I watched Tobias Welti from outside, all I could see were atomic smoke bombs being dropped by his PS13 in third gear. It looked heavenly!
Toby was dropping some first class smoke bombs on the uphill section!
Our other PRO driver, Swen Burkhard also went in hard with his little AE86. He had rebuilt his engine in record time, and slapped on a supercharger for good measure. The little thing ran like hell now! Since the connection between the last two corners was very steep, it was still hard to fly up there with less than 200 hp, but damn he managed it well!
Swen Burkhard, our third PRO class driver
His gold AE86 is just splendid. The fact that it’s sporting an old-school HKS supercharger increases awesomeness by 200%
Don Icon was meanwhile ripping around on the Street class track, which was quite close to our track, but we couldn’t see them drive from our spot.
Michael Sahli, vice-champion of last years IDS season was practicing hard as well
Benno Frieden is another swiss PRO class driver who was quite successful during the last IDS season
He returned after 2 hours of practice and was very happy about his performance. Looks like he managed to connect the long track entirely, which is a real achievement when you know that this is only the 3rd time he went out for drifting.
My practice laps went quite well too.. I then started practicing backwards entries with Roman Kanabé on the passenger seat.
Speed Industries represent!
It was quite an intense moment when I overdid it, spun out and came to a halt behind a blind corner. I looked up to see five drift cars flying in our direction smokin‘ sideways on full throttle!
Luckily, this was PRO practice so they all dodged my car nicely by just a few meters and we lived to see another day!
Drift Taxi rides
Just like at the FDC last weekend, the IDS dudes had the brilliant idea to offer drift taxi rides to all the spectators. I am always happy to take random people to feel the terror that is ZÜRIDRIFT from the passenger’s seat.
Not quite sure my taxi guest was enjoying the ride to the fullest. I should put a barf bag in front of the passengers
The cool thing was the for each taxi ride you offered, you got 10 euros. I could collect 50 euros at the end of the day, which should cover.. oh at least like 1% of the costs.
But seriously, it’s awesome that they give something back to the drivers! We love you!
Mirek Douda randomly turned up as well to rip trough a few corners in his daily ride
Yves Faber, a well known driver in the scene was attending as well. His beautiful 450hp mustang is always a sight to behold
Another taxi guest I took with me probably didn’t have a hugely enjoyable experience, as the ZÜRIDRIFT S14 decided to spontaniously explode on the second lap. And by explode I mean the intercooler piping ripped off. And by ripped off I mean fell off.
Yes, I know my car needs some work. Shut up.
Toby and myself battling it out during practice! Oh how much fun that was
After throwing the passenger out, and going back to fix the car I was ready for some more taxi rides and practice.
At this point things were heating up quite a bit! Imagine roughly 30 drifters doing random taxi drift laps, training laps and qualifying laps all at the same time on a track that consisted of only 4 corners.
Full-on drift battles started taking place during taxi rides and practice. Sweet!
Run forrest run!
The track got quite packed and the mad drifters began to lose that little bit of self-control they have, so hardcore drift battles already started taking place during practice. Nice.
Me trying to catch up to Swen Burkhard’s golden nugget on the uphill section of the track
Jazz Williams, the only american driver in the IDS PRO ripping it up in his battle scarred R33. It looks like an axe murderer’s daily ride
Some more 2jz-powered goodness by Patrick Ritzmann
Arrrrr, I’m an angry drift pirate with an eyepatch!
Qualifying
Goes Like Schnell!
Time flies when you’re having fun. It was already 1 PM now, and I still hadn’t done my qualification laps. After having a signature Speed Industries BBQ I thought it’s time to see what’s what.
Alok Paleri from LokkyDesigns trying to steal Vanessa Combes bike
I did two more practice laps, then lined up for qualification.
One of the judging towers. No, the vehicle beneath doesn’t go sideways
And off I went. Full throttle in first gear, shift to second, BAM, full throttle in second gear, shift to third, BAM, full throttle in third gear and get ready for the entry.
First qualifying run
I would tell you the entry speed on this track, but my speedo is broken. It was probably around 130 km/h in my case.
The judges said they didn’t want to see boring handbrake entries, so I tried entering using very agressive weightshifting instead, with a little handbrake just to correct the line.
The first run went quite well, but I was too slow on the entry. On the second run I tried to really swing it in. This turned out to be my best of the three runs, since I slighly touched the curb on the third run and the judges don’t like seeing that!
And another quali run
After my three qualifying stints, I went back to the Speed Industries tent. I felt my qualifications weren’t all bad, even though my entry speed could’ve been higher.
Don Icon trying to relax after his qualifying stints while pumped with adrenaline
As usual, the mood was good at the Speed Industries chilling area
Murphy’s Law
Things weren’t looking so bright in Tobias Welti’s world.
The turbocharger on his PS13 had blown just minutes before my return and the car could not be used any longer. Tobias was obviously pissed off about that, since he had not done his qualifying yet.
„Mr. Welti. We tried everything we could.. but I’m afraid your HKS GT-SS turbocharger.. has died. We’re very sorry.“
I offered that he could use the ZÜRIDRIFT S14 for qualifying, but he didn’t want that either. He was probably scared that a wheel falls off or something.
The face of a man whose turbocharger exploded
Of course, if something goes wrong it won’t stay at that. Shortly after, the turbo gaskets on my S14 blew. I could still drive it, but it now had less power than a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
I didn’t care and just pushed it harder and faster. At least it was still driveable.
Discussing if my turbo gaskets can be fixed easily or not. It turned out they can’t. Nooooooo!
On Swen’s AE86, a electric cable burned trough as well – Loads of smoke coming from under his hood. We stood there with our fire extinguishers ready, expecting a huge lump of melting metal where his engine used to be.
Luckily for Swen, nothing mayor happened and the engine survived. He even drove it again a bit later!
Life is good for photographers. Their cameras don’t break constantly like our drift cars
At least Don Icon mentioned that one of his Street class qualifying runs went really well, and he had some hopes for a good placement on the rankings!
But before that, father Murphy hit his car as well when some gasket in his skyline’s transmission ripped open, spraying his interior and face with hot smelly transmission fluid. Nice.
Qualifying Results
Then shit hit the fan. The results from PRO qualifying were released on a printed list at the IDS tent. We went there to have a look.
Of course the goal was to qualify in the Top16 of this list, so that you’d be allowed to run in the twin battles later on.
Dimi Patsatzis, yet another swiss PRO driver pushing his clean orange S13
First thing I encounter is last years IDS vice champion Michael Sahli coming up to tell me „You fucked it up man! 22nd place!“
I was absolutely shattered by this. 22nd place with 18 points, what the hell? I’m not a sore loser or anything, but coming 22nd out of 24 drivers with qualifying runs that felt quite solid was hard to accept.
I went to Declan Hicks, one of the judges to ask how much I messed up to get such a low score. Unfortunately he couldn’t really remember what car I was in, so I was just told that I had missed the clipping points or something.
Alok doing his usual shenanigans
It wasn’t looking much better for Swen Burkhard, he was 20th place on the list. Tobias Welti wasn’t even on the list since he could not do his qualifying runs.
Thomas Jucker from donthomaso.ch photography hanging out with Alok
Was Team Speed Industries really going down like this? Noooooo!!!
Patze’s monster E46 ate a set of tires every two laps. Lucky he has a tire sponsor!
Twin Battles
Since we knew now that we will not be driving any longer today, we grabbed a few beers and walked to the viewing area to watch the Top16 drift battles.
The mood was great when waiting for the twin battles as well!
I think I had just cracked open my third „drink to forget“ can of beer when suddenly my name was called on the speakers. „Alain Thomet, bitte zum Vorstart!“
This meant I still had to battle in the Top16! But why???
Suddenly, things went really quickly. I started walking back to the tent. Another dude runs up to me screaming „Go go go man they’re waiting for you up there!“
I started running hard.. Arrived at the tent! Where’s my racing suit? Where’s my helmet?? Where’s 7 red bulls so I can wake up and stop feeling tipsy from the beers?? Where are my sunglasses?? Aaaahhhh!
While I was getting dressed with the speed of a guy escaping from a horrid one night stand, I was told why I could suddenly drive in the Top16.
I had actually qualified on 11th place, not 22nd. I didn’t have 18 points, but 78 points. And that makes a difference. It turns out they mistook a 7 for a 1 when calculating the scores.
Well thanks for that, guys. I can’t undrink the 3 beers I’ve had, can I?
Michael Sahli charging in close to Yves Faber’s mustang
I raced off to line up for battle. I was pouring in red bulls at an alarming rate while thinking „Wake up, dammit!“. I’d never felt so unprepared when going into a battle.
Battle time
Just when I arrived, I was directly called to the starting grid. I was up against Markus Millizer, who’s using a red 3-series BMW with an M3 engine in it.
Markus Millizer in his E36 running an M3 engine
He is quite a well known IDS PRO drifter, with plenty of experience and a nicely set up car.
But my opponent was the least of my worries, as I was still feeling tipsy. Then I had a moment of clarity:
„You are 600 km away from home, sitting in a 380 hp racing car about to battle it out on a high-speed track in front of hundreds of people, and your preparation for all that was 3 big cans of lager. Well done.“
We then launched off for battle. Markus Milizer was leading for the first run.
There was no warm-up lap, which was unfortunate because that would’ve helped me get in the groove. When I was ripping trough the first 2 gears while following him on full acceleration, my main thought was „Don’t crash, don’t crash, for the love of drift jesus don’t crash!!!“
I initiated the drift with weightshift and a clutch kick, just like in qualifying. But right after the entry, I spun out and came to a smoking halt in the middle of the track.
Yes, lame. I don’t even remember how I messed up, I think I was just too slow on reacting to the steering. At least this spin woke me up. Any nervousness, weird feeling in the stomach and fears of crashing were gone.
I was pretty sure already that I could now only win this if my opponent spins out too. But that didn’t matter, I just wanted to show at least for one lap that I’m not some drunken hobo in a stolen drift car.
We lined up for the second battle. I was leading this time. Concentration and confidence was on the max, as was the pressure because I knew if I spin out again now, I would be picked on forever by Kanabé, Welti and the rest of the crew.
Rohans cornering attempt here probably ended in a spin. Too much angle while flying in!
I started haaaard ripping trough first gear. BAM second gear in. Full throttle. The blown turbo gaskets screaming like a wounded squirrel, right hand on the shifter to get to third gear. BAM third gear in, full throttle. Milizer following me very closely.
Yank the steering wheel to the left, then to the right while giving it the full beans. At the same time, kick the clutch hard. This will destabilize the car and initiate the drift. Here we gooooo!
Patze vs. Niezen
Millizer didn’t break a sweat and initiated the drift right behind me. I managed to pull away slighly after the first transition.
Next clipping point, go close but don’t hit the curbs! Second transition, let off the gas for a split second, let the steering do it’s work, then get on the power again!
Last transition, let the car fly outside to the outer clipping point for the final corner. Full throttle, don’t lift or you’ll straighten out and fly off towards the wall! Lift the throttle slighly now, pull back in onto the racing line and burn hard out of the last corner!
I managed to pull trough without any more incidents. I had created a small gap between millizer and me and had a sligthly wider, smokier line than him.
But I knew that didn’t matter, because I had spun out in the first run and that’s an automatic zero points.
I didn’t even care at this point, I was just happy I got the second run right. I congratulated Markus for his win, and found out he’s an awesome guy! He even invited me to have one of his signature „Doc Weingart“ energy drinks next time I’m over at their tent. Sweet!
Escalation
During the course of the next few battles, things really started to heat up.
The ending was quite dramatic, as certain battles were so close and hard to decide for the judges that not everyone was happy. But this is still motorsport, so that is to be expected. Eat it or beat it, really.
Florian Zimmermann uses a beautiful supercharged Audi limousine as a drift car. It’s gigantic, which makes it cool!
Personally I was just happy to be able to run in the battles, and that my qualification ranking was not that bad after all.
Podium celebration
The crowning of the victors on the podium was great – the winners sprayed most of their victory champagne bottles directly into Vanessa Combes face, hair and clothes.
I almost fell over of laughter, as did most bystanders. Only Vanessa wasn’t laughing for some reason. Maybe because she was wearing a tight white shirt.
These guys look more serious than during the final twin battles just minutes ago!
Combes was not amused
Now, the winners: Congratulations to Remmo Niezen for 1st place, Patrick Ritzmann for 2nd place and Yves Faber for 3rd place! Incredible driving guys. It was cool to watch you go all out!
Remmo Niezen took 1st place! Nice going!
Michael Sahli from DriftTeam Switzerland grabbed 4th place, but from what I’d seen the battles were so close that he might as well have been 2nd or 1st! Absolutely incredible performance man.
Too bad you missed the podium, but that’s how it goes in motorsport I guess. I can easily say this since I was nowhere near the podium, haaa.
Still, it was once more an awesome experience to take part in the Top16.. albeit it was a very short visit during the battles, but it was great fun.
No wait – it was quite lame because I spun out in the first battle. But apart from that – good times!
Results
You can see the results of the PRO and Street classes below.
The performance of Team Speed Industries was acceptable at best, with Don Icon getting 9th place in the street class, Swen 23rd, Tobias dropping out due to turbo fail and me getting 11th place in the PRO class. So there’s alot of room for improvement.
The positive thing was that two drivers that scored higher than myself were guest drivers, so their scores didn’t count. This means I got a few extra points by moving up in the ranking and end up 9th place i the season rankings so far. Nice!
Don Icon also did quite well in the Street class, coming in on 9th place. Well done! However Patrick Ritzmann’s younger sister Denise is on his neck with just 2 points difference. The Huntondji-brothers took 1st and 2nd place, and with DriftTeam Switzerland’s Miriam Dutto taking 6th place, the Street class battle for points is definately heating up!
IDS PRO Rd. 2 qualification results
Apart from the scores, we made some noise and there were lots of unforgettable moments, so I think it was absolutely worth attending here.
You can view all the results and the official coverage over at Driftsports.de.
Special Thanks
So many thanks to Vanessa and Jörg from the IDS organization commitee, and all their helpers. You are now truly starting to move alot in this quite young drifting scene!
It was an awesome event, especially considering it all took place on the same day! But the IDS dudes managed to organize an action-packed raceday with lots and lots of driving time, taxi rides and a great spectacle all in all.
Like every time, this article would be useless without the pictures. Many thanks to Thomas Jucker from donthomaso.ch to let me use his pictures again!
Many thanks as well to Alok Paleri from LokkyDesigns and Martin Aeppli from Silver Photography! I did not use alot of pics from you guys but that’s just because I can’t put up 10 million pics each time. Many thanks guys, you rock!
Not to forget Jennifer Ruzicska (www.driftteam.ch) , from whom I blatantly stole a few pictures without asking. Sorry, and thank you!
Coming up
In a few weeks time, Round 3 of the german IDS championship would have taken place at Augsburg. Unfortunately this was cancelled. Next date for the IDS is the Schwarzwald City-Drift. It will take place September 25. / 26., that should be quite something.
Maybe we’llrun at the french FDC drift cup again instead, we’ll see.
Until then, take care.
Alain
Oh, here’s a 10-minute youtube movie from some of the twin battles. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHMBuWhKsSY
Also, here’s some more random pics..
More pics from this event can be found over at donthomaso.ch.