The event would be a 3-day competition with a crapload of practice time on Friday and Saturday on the epic Eurospeedway, a gigantic oval track quite close to Poland.
The first thing that struck me was the sheer amount of drunken weirdos stumbling around aimlessly in our paddocks even before the event started.
The reason for this was simple – the VW Blasen, Germany’s biggest VW car meet was taking place this weekend as well.
VW drivers are much like alcoholic lemmings with downs syndrome; feeding off junk food, beer and the approval of other VW lemmings driving the same riced-out FWD shitboxes as they do.
They did not seem to like our battle-hardened drift cars either, a point which was proven after the first night when someone vomited hard right in front of Tobias Weltis PS13.
But that was OK, because we didn’t like those guys either! Luckily, we had our own track within the infield of the Lausitz Eurospeedway and would only have to tolerate the smell of beer and the look of horribly riced-out VW’s.
Friday morning, briefing time. Judges would be a Czech judge who’se name I forgot and also Faruk again. Good judges who really put emphasis on getting the drivers all the information they need so they understand what they are looking for. Excellent!
It had started raining hard already the day before, so our paddock was flooded with water making for a very annoying day of wet feet and mushy socks. We were honestly having a pretty horrible time as long as we weren’t driving.
Nonetheless, it was time to get some drifting done! We started up our craptastic drift beasts and went off.
The track consisted of a mental 3rd gear entry into a very long left hander. Then switch to the right along a slippery patch of grass with a dangerous first wall.
Now accelerate fully in 3rd gear to reach the next wall on a super-long straightway. Switch away from the wall, but stay on the throttle, swing back against the same wall then start braking haaard to slow down enough for a few more infield twisty corners.
The track was very hard to connect entirely because of the sheer distance we had to cover over this looong straight. Even 3rd gear almost wasn’t enough to gain enough speed to reach the far end.
It was exciting, but dangerous as well. Every single corner except the entry had the potential for huuuge accidents; a fact that we found very amusing as we started sliding closer and closer towards those walls!
Toby started having issues with his car, steering vibrations when going faster than 80km/h and his clutch started smelling like a VW enthusiast and was slipping.
My own clutch was also slipping, but I knew that before since it took a hard beating at Round 3 in Sosnova where I drove with a major clutch fluid leak in the battles.
We started increasing tire pressure and removing some grip from the cars to reduce the stress on our battered clutches, hoping for the best really.
Lots of fun was had, the IDS offered in my opinion a very cool track to play with and legendary amounts of practice time for our money! No lunch break, no drama, no long waiting times. Just superb drifting fun in the rain until 8 PM at night! Wooooo!!!
Day two was much of the same as day one. Shitloads of rain, boatloads of drunken stinking VW enthusiasts and a crapload of practice time. Had an excellent time with Michael Scherr and Philippe Guillod doing absolutely mental practice runs chasing each other down. We almost died of laughter during those runs with funny overtaking maneuvers and some close calls near the walls.
This time everything was the opposite of a normal IDS event. Tobias was working on his car quite a lot to find out why he had vibrations in the steering while I – the man whose car normally explodes every 5 minutes -was driving for TWO DAYS so far without a technical fault except for the clutch!! This has never happened before! I should get a medal.
However, at 5 PM on saturday it was time for qualifyings and that’s when things went to shit for the first time. (it was about time wasn’t it!)
I lined up for my qualification runs. 1 warmup, then 3 laps to impress the judges. Feeling brilliant, had some very strong runs during the day. Raining hard. Lots of water inside and outside all windscreens, can’t see shit. Trying to improve visibility by cleaning windows with a dirty stinking towel. Not helping much. No matter, let’s get this qualifying over with.
I launch off for the warmup lap. Now I felt just like in Sosnova at IDS Round 3, because during the warmup lap my car dies *again*. It started having weird misfires just at the end of my warmup run. I lined up again, didn’t think much of the misfires and launched off for qualifing run 1. The car almost stalled with lots of misfires. I aborted the drift, and started cursing my car like I’m used to by now.
I went all the way around to tell the organizers my car is dying and I need a timeout. They said I will lose 2 of my 3 qualifying runs. That meant *if* I can fix it, I will only be allowed to do 1 single qualifying run. Fuck!! Rushed out of the track, but the engine wasn’t revving anymore. It then died completely on the way back. Nooohooooo! I returned to the paddock just as usual: Pushing my car instead of driving. Nice.
Luckily, I then learned that a drift car requires a very special flammable liquid called PETROL to be able to drift without misfiring and shutting off while driving. That was very interesting to know. Turns out my fuel warning lamp had stopped working since the last event, so I didn’t realize I was completely out of fuel. I felt as stupid as a VW enthusiast and obviously everybody else thought this was extremely funny. Bastards…
I went out again and had just one chance to at least qualify somehow with a safe run! Luckily I remained calm and did a slow, but solid qualifying run putting me in 10th place with 84 points.
Tobias Welti on the other hand had absolutely killed it in his 3 qualifying runs!! He finished 1st place with 93 points WOOHOOOO GO MAN GO!! I was very happy for him as it was finally time he could show what he’s made of. We were on a high and ended the day and the night with great spirits for the Top32 battles on Sunday.
Battle day. Still raining like I’ve never seen before at a drift event. Entire paddock flooded, very windy, very cold. One of our tents was ripped apart over night, fuck. Not cool, there was not one minute this weekend where it wasn’t raining hard.
To fight the rain, we had bought horrible plastic boots for the entire team and also shitty looking raincoats. Also we were by now very very tired and smelly from the constant drifting in the rain with not many spare clothes to wear.
So basically, we had now turned into VW enthusiasts ourselves. Nooooo
Toby and myself had qualified within Top10, so we were automatically trough to the Top16 battles and were allowed to wait out the Top32 matchups happening before our battles.
Organization decided to shorten the time plan because of the incredibly shitty weather, so all battles would take place in the morning.
I was still feeling sleepy when it was time for my Top16 battle. I was up against Joe Houtondij from the Driftbrothers.
It was an incredible moment, because the very special Driftbrothers S13 pickup with Galant frontend and V8 engine was completely destroyed just 2 months ago in Hockenheim by some idiot who had rammed Joe during practice. The entire german drift community was shocked by this, since Joe and his brother were known as very strong drivers who were always held back by their car. (they used to have a near-stock BMW 3-series)
Now with this monster of a car they had the chance to finally get up there, and have a chance for proper sponsorship but their dream had ended with that huge crash early in the season. The drift community pulled together, started pooling money and workers to help them getting this basically written-off car on the track once again.
And now it was here, standing right next to me for its first Top16 battle since its revival. Nice.
His setup was still dodgy since the car was just finished a few days before so he mentioned he didn’t have a lot of grip and speed yet. But that was OK because it was the same for me – I was running low grip tires with high tire pressure because the clutch was dead so I was pretty sure we’d be equally slow.
We actually had a funny argument the night before about who’s gonna be slower. We kept shouting things like „I’m so slow I’m gonna go back in time bro!“ at each other. Only in drifting….
We launched off. Our grip levels were about equal, I kept some distance to check his speed and chased him with about 2-3 car lenghts distance. I had to do corrections twice because I was gaining more speed than him coming onto the long straight.
Battle ended with a 6 – 4 for Joe. Probably because of my corrections when closing in. On top of that, Joe handled his car pretty well I thought. For my lead run, I just wanted to run a solid run without many corrections and without using the clutch at all. I stayed in 3rd gear for the entire track until the end of the long straight.
Then it happened – I straightened out when trying to switch against the wall again. No idea what the fuck I was thinking but that’s what happened. If you straighten out, even just for a split-second it’s usually game over. I then hastily tried to re-initiate the drift, but ripped the e-brake far too hard for the slippery conditions and spun out. Noooooo!
So yeah, that sucked. Then it was Toby’s turn! Since he had qualified 1st place, he was up against Carola Mecan who had qualified on last place.
Toby layed down an epic lead run and went into hyperspace mode coming in onto the long straight. The distance between him and Carola was huuge and earned him a 8:2 lead score.
But in the chase run, things went from great to shit when Toby managed to spin out as well after Carola straightened out on the long straight and Toby overcorrected. Fuuck
With a 0:10 score after the spin, Carola was trough to the Top8 while Tobias was trough to a bottomless pit of despair feeling just as crappy as I did after dropping out in the Top16.
Generally many battles ended with a spin from one side, since the conditions were just really hardcore to drive. Grip was changing constantly, and you had to be on your toes to make the steering and throttle corrections spot on every single time or you would spin.
Nonetheless it was an interesting experience trying to find grip on this huge rainy track.
We stayed until the end and watched the winner celebrations. Christian Kögler took the win, beating Michael Scherr in the finals after Scherr spun out as well.
Third place in the CDT ranking went to Wertheim, last years Czech drift champion. 3rd place in the IDS ranking went to Matthias Burdinski. (not pictured above) Congratz guys!
I was especially happy to see Joe Hountondji on 4th place with his newly rebuilt car. Well done!
For MPS-Racing, who had their tents right next to ours and competed in their two splendid Skyline driftcars, the weekend was also one to forget. Philipp Stegemann wrecked his R32 frontend, and could not compete anymore. Rene Portz in his green R33 skyline lost his Top32 battle and was out early as well… We’ll try to go harder next time, promised!
Sorry for the rather un-inspired report but the event was really tough on the mood with constant rain and wet feet. We still had a great time within the team, but the drifting itself would’ve been just much cooler with better weather.
Let’s pray for drift jesus to bring us the sun at Round 5, which will take place just one week after Round 4! What the hell is that all about? Give us some time to repair our cars and rest our souls after a competition round! 😉
Stay tuned for the Round 5 report at the Nürburgring. I’m convinced Team Speed Industries will manage to pull a much better result next time!!
The event would be a 3-day competition with a crapload of practice time on Friday and Saturday on the epic Eurospeedway, a gigantic oval track quite close to Poland.
The first thing that struck me was the sheer amount of drunken weirdos stumbling around aimlessly in our paddocks even before the event started.
The reason for this was simple – the VW Blasen, Germany’s biggest VW car meet was taking place this weekend as well.
VW drivers are much like alcoholic lemmings with downs syndrome; feeding off junk food, beer and the approval of other VW lemmings driving the same riced-out FWD shitboxes as they do.
They did not seem to like our battle-hardened drift cars either, a point which was proven after the first night when someone vomited hard right in front of Tobias Weltis PS13.
But that was OK, because we didn’t like those guys either! Luckily, we had our own track within the infield of the Lausitz Eurospeedway and would only have to tolerate the smell of beer and the look of horribly riced-out VW’s.
Friday morning, briefing time. Judges would be a Czech judge who’se name I forgot and also Faruk again. Good judges who really put emphasis on getting the drivers all the information they need so they understand what they are looking for. Excellent!
It had started raining hard already the day before, so our paddock was flooded with water making for a very annoying day of wet feet and mushy socks. We were honestly having a pretty horrible time as long as we weren’t driving.
Nonetheless, it was time to get some drifting done! We started up our craptastic drift beasts and went off.
The track consisted of a mental 3rd gear entry into a very long left hander. Then switch to the right along a slippery patch of grass with a dangerous first wall.
Now accelerate fully in 3rd gear to reach the next wall on a super-long straightway. Switch away from the wall, but stay on the throttle, swing back against the same wall then start braking haaard to slow down enough for a few more infield twisty corners.
The track was very hard to connect entirely because of the sheer distance we had to cover over this looong straight. Even 3rd gear almost wasn’t enough to gain enough speed to reach the far end.
It was exciting, but dangerous as well. Every single corner except the entry had the potential for huuuge accidents; a fact that we found very amusing as we started sliding closer and closer towards those walls!
Toby started having issues with his car, steering vibrations when going faster than 80km/h and his clutch started smelling like a VW enthusiast and was slipping.
My own clutch was also slipping, but I knew that before since it took a hard beating at Round 3 in Sosnova where I drove with a major clutch fluid leak in the battles.
We started increasing tire pressure and removing some grip from the cars to reduce the stress on our battered clutches, hoping for the best really.
Lots of fun was had, the IDS offered in my opinion a very cool track to play with and legendary amounts of practice time for our money! No lunch break, no drama, no long waiting times. Just superb drifting fun in the rain until 8 PM at night! Wooooo!!!
Day two was much of the same as day one. Shitloads of rain, boatloads of drunken stinking VW enthusiasts and a crapload of practice time. Had an excellent time with Michael Scherr and Philippe Guillod doing absolutely mental practice runs chasing each other down. We almost died of laughter during those runs with funny overtaking maneuvers and some close calls near the walls.
This time everything was the opposite of a normal IDS event. Tobias was working on his car quite a lot to find out why he had vibrations in the steering while I – the man whose car normally explodes every 5 minutes -was driving for TWO DAYS so far without a technical fault except for the clutch!! This has never happened before! I should get a medal.
However, at 5 PM on saturday it was time for qualifyings and that’s when things went to shit for the first time. (it was about time wasn’t it!)
I lined up for my qualification runs. 1 warmup, then 3 laps to impress the judges. Feeling brilliant, had some very strong runs during the day. Raining hard. Lots of water inside and outside all windscreens, can’t see shit. Trying to improve visibility by cleaning windows with a dirty stinking towel. Not helping much. No matter, let’s get this qualifying over with.
I launch off for the warmup lap. Now I felt just like in Sosnova at IDS Round 3, because during the warmup lap my car dies *again*. It started having weird misfires just at the end of my warmup run. I lined up again, didn’t think much of the misfires and launched off for qualifing run 1. The car almost stalled with lots of misfires. I aborted the drift, and started cursing my car like I’m used to by now.
I went all the way around to tell the organizers my car is dying and I need a timeout. They said I will lose 2 of my 3 qualifying runs. That meant *if* I can fix it, I will only be allowed to do 1 single qualifying run. Fuck!! Rushed out of the track, but the engine wasn’t revving anymore. It then died completely on the way back. Nooohooooo! I returned to the paddock just as usual: Pushing my car instead of driving. Nice.
Luckily, I then learned that a drift car requires a very special flammable liquid called PETROL to be able to drift without misfiring and shutting off while driving. That was very interesting to know. Turns out my fuel warning lamp had stopped working since the last event, so I didn’t realize I was completely out of fuel. I felt as stupid as a VW enthusiast and obviously everybody else thought this was extremely funny. Bastards…
I went out again and had just one chance to at least qualify somehow with a safe run! Luckily I remained calm and did a slow, but solid qualifying run putting me in 10th place with 84 points.
Tobias Welti on the other hand had absolutely killed it in his 3 qualifying runs!! He finished 1st place with 93 points WOOHOOOO GO MAN GO!! I was very happy for him as it was finally time he could show what he’s made of. We were on a high and ended the day and the night with great spirits for the Top32 battles on Sunday.
Battle day. Still raining like I’ve never seen before at a drift event. Entire paddock flooded, very windy, very cold. One of our tents was ripped apart over night, fuck. Not cool, there was not one minute this weekend where it wasn’t raining hard.
To fight the rain, we had bought horrible plastic boots for the entire team and also shitty looking raincoats. Also we were by now very very tired and smelly from the constant drifting in the rain with not many spare clothes to wear.
So basically, we had now turned into VW enthusiasts ourselves. Nooooo
Toby and myself had qualified within Top10, so we were automatically trough to the Top16 battles and were allowed to wait out the Top32 matchups happening before our battles.
Organization decided to shorten the time plan because of the incredibly shitty weather, so all battles would take place in the morning.
I was still feeling sleepy when it was time for my Top16 battle. I was up against Joe Houtondij from the Driftbrothers.
It was an incredible moment, because the very special Driftbrothers S13 pickup with Galant frontend and V8 engine was completely destroyed just 2 months ago in Hockenheim by some idiot who had rammed Joe during practice. The entire german drift community was shocked by this, since Joe and his brother were known as very strong drivers who were always held back by their car. (they used to have a near-stock BMW 3-series)
Now with this monster of a car they had the chance to finally get up there, and have a chance for proper sponsorship but their dream had ended with that huge crash early in the season. The drift community pulled together, started pooling money and workers to help them getting this basically written-off car on the track once again.
And now it was here, standing right next to me for its first Top16 battle since its revival. Nice.
His setup was still dodgy since the car was just finished a few days before so he mentioned he didn’t have a lot of grip and speed yet. But that was OK because it was the same for me – I was running low grip tires with high tire pressure because the clutch was dead so I was pretty sure we’d be equally slow.
We actually had a funny argument the night before about who’s gonna be slower. We kept shouting things like „I’m so slow I’m gonna go back in time bro!“ at each other. Only in drifting….
We launched off. Our grip levels were about equal, I kept some distance to check his speed and chased him with about 2-3 car lenghts distance. I had to do corrections twice because I was gaining more speed than him coming onto the long straight.
Battle ended with a 6 – 4 for Joe. Probably because of my corrections when closing in. On top of that, Joe handled his car pretty well I thought. For my lead run, I just wanted to run a solid run without many corrections and without using the clutch at all. I stayed in 3rd gear for the entire track until the end of the long straight.
Then it happened – I straightened out when trying to switch against the wall again. No idea what the fuck I was thinking but that’s what happened. If you straighten out, even just for a split-second it’s usually game over. I then hastily tried to re-initiate the drift, but ripped the e-brake far too hard for the slippery conditions and spun out. Noooooo!
So yeah, that sucked. Then it was Toby’s turn! Since he had qualified 1st place, he was up against Carola Mecan who had qualified on last place.
Toby layed down an epic lead run and went into hyperspace mode coming in onto the long straight. The distance between him and Carola was huuge and earned him a 7:3 lead score.
But in the chase run, things went from great to shit when Toby managed to spin out as well after Carola straightened out on the long straight and Toby overcorrected. Fuuck
With a 0:10 score after the spin, Carola was trough to the Top8 while Tobias was trough to a bottomless pit of despair feeling just as crappy as I did after dropping out in the Top16.
Generally many battles ended with a spin from one side, since the conditions were just really hardcore to drive. Grip was changing constantly, and you had to be on your toes to make the steering and throttle corrections spot on every single time or you would spin.
Nonetheless it was an interesting experience trying to find grip on this huge rainy track.
We stayed until the end and watched the winner celebrations. Christian Kögler took the win, beating Michael Scherr in the finals after Scherr spun out as well.
Third place in the CDT ranking went to Wertheim, last years Czech drift champion. 3rd place in the IDS ranking went to Matthias Burdinski. (not pictured above) Congratz guys!
I was especially happy to see Joe Hountondji on 4th place with his newly rebuilt car. Well done!
For MPS-Racing, who had their tents right next to ours and competed in their two splendid Skyline driftcars, the weekend was also one to forget. Philipp Stegemann wrecked his R32 frontend, and could not compete anymore. Rene Portz in his green R33 skyline lost his Top32 battle and was out early as well… We’ll try to go harder next time, promised!
Sorry for the rather un-inspired report but the event was really tough on the mood with constant rain and wet feet. We still had a great time within the team, but the drifting itself would’ve been just much cooler with better weather.
Let’s pray for drift jesus to bring us the sun at Round 5, which will take place just one week after Round 4! What the hell is that all about? Give us some time to repair our cars and rest our souls after a competition round! 😉
Stay tuned for the Round 5 report at the Nürburgring. I’m convinced Team Speed Industries will manage to pull a much better result next time!!