This week it’s the first time that I’m writing a Photo Friday for you at my new home in Stuttgart, Germany, where I’m currently doing an internship. While this means that I’m closer to the Nurburgring and some other racetracks, they of course had to do one of the biggest race events ever in Switzerland right after I moved away from there. And then, word came to me that our drift team was going to do a drift demo there! So of course I had to go there (not that I wouldn’t want to otherwise 😉 ) and therefore I can now present to you my captures from what was an absolutely awesome event, the inaugural Red Bull Race Day at Mollis Airfield.
It’s simply mindblowing what success this little can has enjoyed and what this has enabled!
As you can see from the first picture, there was a huge number of spectators in attendance. I took the shot above standing almost exactly in the middle of the runway’s lenght and it looked exactly the same in the other direction. At one point the speaker reported 25’000 spectators. This also meant that our Speed Industries/Touge Automotive Shop had as many customers as never seen before:
Speed Industries bringing the drift lifestyle to the swiss mountain people.. 😛
One other tent though had a few more people standing around it, especially when this guy was there:
Thanks to Sébastien Buemi Switzerland finally has a Formula 1 driver again!
Being a bit of a tech nerd and generally not too interested in famous people I actually cared more about the car standing in there.. unfortunately I was allowed to get closer but even from farther away, those machines more look like works of art than just mechanical devices.
I wonder if I can have them make a header like that for my car…
From about 1:30pm till 5pm though there was nonstop and very diversified track (or actually runway) action, so you definitely never got bored. Thanks to Tobi I go VIP All Access bracelets which made me feel all Very Important and allowed me to have the best spectators spot. But I didn’t just watch, I clicked away like mad as there were a lot of challenging things to get good pictures of. So what follows is a more or less chronological sequence of the machinery that showed up.
It started up with the more famous drivers being presented to the crowd.
For some reason I was feeling watched when I was editing this picture..
First of the big guns was the Skoda Fabia S2000 rally car. Now this is quite an impressive build with the engine as well as the driver moved quite far back and very impressive carbon intake artwork and everything, so certainly a top notch competition car. Also Hermann Gassner Jr. is certainly one of the most promissing young rally drivers of today. But I couldn’t help noticing that the poor guy simply lacked the torque to pull the real hardcore 4wd drifts that the old 2 litre turbo cars were able to pull off. He always threw it in nicely but then the power wasn’t enough to really keep it smoking..
The Skoda Fabia S2000 nonetheless put on a great show!
Up next were a pair of supermotard bikes, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not really an expert in things on two wheels but those guys seemed to be quite good at what they did. I really liked how they are able to slide their bikes.
Smoky drift on a bike.. I like!
They also did a lot of going round turns really tightly and slowly, sometimes even with a passenger on the back seat.
Not even a stock JDM car from the 80’s has this much lean!
This was interesting to see but I prefered the high speed stuff to be honest.
This guy was at least as fast as he appears to be in this picture.
When the supermotard guys‘ time was over they finished their performance off in a way that really reminded me of drifters..
Burnouts are probably harder if you have to be worried about falling over and not just if the brakes will catch fire..
Up next was our very own team Speed Industries. For this event, our drift show consisted of Tobi in his S13 and Swen in his AE86 who were assisted by the rest of the guys in Albi’s Alpina.
Tobi put on one of the smokiest shows I’ve seen from him in a while. But this is NOT, as I heard some spectators guess, a Supra! 🙂
Swen filled the whole valley with the typical screaming, annoying hachiroku sound. 😉
Support cars in our teams include my camera Scooby, Alain’s f*cked up Lexus and now Albi’s gangster Alpina.
Except maybe (and for quite a few spactators not even) the two big guns comming up later, the drift show was an incredible hit with the attending public, many of whom probably had never seen a drift car before. This certainly was a great opportunity for our team to propagate the sport with many people coming to ask where one might see more of or even learn how to do that.
I don’t think neither of our drivers has ever drifted in front of such a large crowd.
Up next was a performance by Swiss WTCC driver Fredy Barth in his Seat Leon and while the car’s front wheel drive doesn’t enable the most spectacular show driving he nevertheless was able to show the car’s huge grip and agility to a great extent. My personal highlight of his show was when he flew past me at a distance of only about 1 meter at probably more than 200kph.. that felt quite cool. 🙂
Refreshing breeze coming up!
Going even faster was the next act. In fact he also used an additional dimension as it was an aerobatic plane putting on a great show.
Guess who’s sponsoring this guy?
This was the first time I’ve shot an airplane demo, turns out it’s quite a challenge to follow that little thing.
Having a scenery like that of course helps with getting good shots!
Well then there was an incredible noise. Really high pitched. And accelerating like crazy. By the time it reached me it was really fast.
Too fast in fact.. on the first try.
I must admit that I’ve never seen an F1 car in action before.. and if you haven’t and from TV experience feel like „what’s the big fuss, they don’t even look or sound like cars and they drive around corners like they’re on rails..“.
Next try.. better. But it really was hard to keep up with it, also because I was standing really close to the track.
Let me tell you.. if you get any chance to see one in action, go and see it. If you really are interested in cars (technically, not in getting the shiniest, ugliest lights for your ride..) you will be blown away by it’s otherwordly performance. The first time you see it, you’re just amazed at the speed and the noise of this thing. And thanks to one of the first really good really changes in Formula One in a long time the cars no longer have any kind of stability or traction control, which first of all means that drivers really gotta have great skills to drive them and second of all, they can reeeeally smoke those big slick tires!
Must certainly be fun to have what must feel like infinite power…
After that.. again noise. Sorry about using the same transition twice, but if you’re gonna write about a NASCAR how else would you start but with its incredible sound! And while the F1 car makes an incredible but in truth also quite a nasty noise, the NASCAR’s sound is just simply awesome. If power has a definite sound, this is it. And this was one car.. I can’t imagine how a whole field of those must sound!!
Looks like a normal car, doesn’t it? It really isn’t..
Oh and in case you’re wondering, no he didn’t have any trouble smoking his rear tires. He went through a set of huge rear slicks in about 3 minutes. In fact, he actually drifted the damn thing!
Must be tricky drifting a huge car with 850bhp and almost no lock!
As opposed to the Formula One car it was also no problem for us to take a look at the engine. Well why would it, it’s by far not as sophisticated as the technical masterpieces in formula 1. But it actually makes the same amount of horsepower.. from 2.5 time the displacement, but still.. 😉
NASCAR’s more JDM than you might think!
Up next was a different kind of show. Chris Pfeiffer on his BMW bike wasn’t loud and not as outrageous as his predecessors, but he was certainly good. Well.. unbelievably great actually.. I didn’t know things like that were possible on a motorcycle!
He wasn’t riding it, he was dancing with the damn thing!
In fact, Christina Surer who co-hosted the event was so impressed that she spontaneously decided to go home with him.
Who said bikes aren’t practical?
The final event was one of the most spectacular in again an entirely different manner. I’ve actually seen them before but was still impressed by the precission with which those guys jump far into the air and pull off the craziest tricks! It’s the first time I’ve shot freestyle motocross and I really like what possibilities you have with the variety of tricks they do, so here are a few shots:
The start ramp was actually on that mountain in the background!
Don’t remember how this is called (I used to play some FMX game on the PC a while back), it’s a basic jump, but I’ve always liked it.
Of course, nowadays you’ve got to do backflips as a FMX driver or you’re not really taken seriously 😉
And here’s a picture of a guy climbing off his motocross machine while being upside down. All completely normal actually.
Well after that there was the great finale with all the cars comming up once again, the pictures of which I’ve already included above. The final show of the F1 and the NASCAR cars included one funny moment when they kind of had an impromptu drag race.. it didn’t take long though, as the formula one car was already in a different time zone when the NASCAR shifted into second (which by the sound of it happens at about 150kph…).
I have to say, this was one of the greatest events I’ve ever been to and I hope it hasn’t just been a one time thing!! I hope next year even more people will go to that little airfield in the swiss mountains to see who’s the best at producing lots of TIRE SMOKE!
I’m running out of cool things to say about smoke…
I’m not sure when my next photo friday will be, as my photo processing computer is in Zurich and I’m not, but I’m certainly gonna attend the Drift EM coming up in a week (you should all come too btw!) and I’m sure I’ll post some stuff from there at some time.
Until then.. have fun.. but not too much 😉This week it’s the first time that I’m writing a Photo Friday for you at my new home in Stuttgart, Germany, where I’m currently doing an internship. While this means that I’m closer to the Nurburgring and some other racetracks, they of course had to do one of the biggest race events ever in Switzerland right after I moved away from there. And then, word came to me that our drift team was going to do a drift demo there! So of course I had to go there (not that I wouldn’t want to otherwise 😉 ) and therefore I can now present to you my captures from what was an absolutely awesome event, the inaugural Red Bull Race Day at Mollis Airfield.
It’s simply mindblowing what success this little can has enjoyed and what this has enabled!
As you can see from the first picture, there was a huge number of spectators in attendance. I took the shot above standing almost exactly in the middle of the runway’s lenght and it looked exactly the same in the other direction. At one point the speaker reported 25’000 spectators. This also meant that our Speed Industries/Touge Automotive Shop had as many customers as never seen before:
Speed Industries bringing the drift lifestyle to the swiss mountain people.. 😛
One other tent though had a few more people standing around it, especially when this guy was there:
Thanks to Sébastien Buemi Switzerland finally has a Formula 1 driver again!
Being a bit of a tech nerd and generally not too interested in famous people I actually cared more about the car standing in there.. unfortunately I was allowed to get closer but even from farther away, those machines more look like works of art than just mechanical devices.
I wonder if I can have them make a header like that for my car…
From about 1:30pm till 5pm though there was nonstop and very diversified track (or actually runway) action, so you definitely never got bored. Thanks to Tobi I go VIP All Access bracelets which made me feel all Very Important and allowed me to have the best spectators spot. But I didn’t just watch, I clicked away like mad as there were a lot of challenging things to get good pictures of. So what follows is a more or less chronological sequence of the machinery that showed up.
It started up with the more famous drivers being presented to the crowd.
For some reason I was feeling watched when I was editing this picture..
First of the big guns was the Skoda Fabia S2000 rally car. Now this is quite an impressive build with the engine as well as the driver moved quite far back and very impressive carbon intake artwork and everything, so certainly a top notch competition car. Also Hermann Gassner Jr. is certainly one of the most promissing young rally drivers of today. But I couldn’t help noticing that the poor guy simply lacked the torque to pull the real hardcore 4wd drifts that the old 2 litre turbo cars were able to pull off. He always threw it in nicely but then the power wasn’t enough to really keep it smoking..
The Skoda Fabia S2000 nonetheless put on a great show!
Up next were a pair of supermotard bikes, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not really an expert in things on two wheels but those guys seemed to be quite good at what they did. I really liked how they are able to slide their bikes.
Smoky drift on a bike.. I like!
They also did a lot of going round turns really tightly and slowly, sometimes even with a passenger on the back seat.
Not even a stock JDM car from the 80’s has this much lean!
This was interesting to see but I prefered the high speed stuff to be honest.
This guy was at least as fast as he appears to be in this picture.
When the supermotard guys‘ time was over they finished their performance off in a way that really reminded me of drifters..
Burnouts are probably harder if you have to be worried about falling over and not just if the brakes will catch fire..
Up next was our very own team Speed Industries. For this event, our drift show consisted of Tobi in his S13 and Swen in his AE86 who were assisted by the rest of the guys in Albi’s Alpina.
Tobi put on one of the smokiest shows I’ve seen from him in a while. But this is NOT, as I heard some spectators guess, a Supra! 🙂
Swen filled the whole valley with the typical screaming, annoying hachiroku sound. 😉
Support cars in our teams include my camera Scooby, Alain’s f*cked up Lexus and now Albi’s gangster Alpina.
Except maybe (and for quite a few spactators not even) the two big guns comming up later, the drift show was an incredible hit with the attending public, many of whom probably had never seen a drift car before. This certainly was a great opportunity for our team to propagate the sport with many people coming to ask where one might see more of or even learn how to do that.
I don’t think neither of our drivers has ever drifted in front of such a large crowd.
Up next was a performance by Swiss WTCC driver Fredy Barth in his Seat Leon and while the car’s front wheel drive doesn’t enable the most spectacular show driving he nevertheless was able to show the car’s huge grip and agility to a great extent. My personal highlight of his show was when he flew past me at a distance of only about 1 meter at probably more than 200kph.. that felt quite cool. 🙂
Refreshing breeze coming up!
Going even faster was the next act. In fact he also used an additional dimension as it was an aerobatic plane putting on a great show.
Guess who’s sponsoring this guy?
This was the first time I’ve shot an airplane demo, turns out it’s quite a challenge to follow that little thing.
Having a scenery like that of course helps with getting good shots!
Well then there was an incredible noise. Really high pitched. And accelerating like crazy. By the time it reached me it was really fast.
Too fast in fact.. on the first try.
I must admit that I’ve never seen an F1 car in action before.. and if you haven’t and from TV experience feel like „what’s the big fuss, they don’t even look or sound like cars and they drive around corners like they’re on rails..“.
Next try.. better. But it really was hard to keep up with it, also because I was standing really close to the track.
Let me tell you.. if you get any chance to see one in action, go and see it. If you really are interested in cars (technically, not in getting the shiniest, ugliest lights for your ride..) you will be blown away by it’s otherwordly performance. The first time you see it, you’re just amazed at the speed and the noise of this thing. And thanks to one of the first really good really changes in Formula One in a long time the cars no longer have any kind of stability or traction control, which first of all means that drivers really gotta have great skills to drive them and second of all, they can reeeeally smoke those big slick tires!
Must certainly be fun to have what must feel like infinite power…
After that.. again noise. Sorry about using the same transition twice, but if you’re gonna write about a NASCAR how else would you start but with its incredible sound! And while the F1 car makes an incredible but in truth also quite a nasty noise, the NASCAR’s sound is just simply awesome. If power has a definite sound, this is it. And this was one car.. I can’t imagine how a whole field of those must sound!!
Looks like a normal car, doesn’t it? It really isn’t..
Oh and in case you’re wondering, no he didn’t have any trouble smoking his rear tires. He went through a set of huge rear slicks in about 3 minutes. In fact, he actually drifted the damn thing!
Must be tricky drifting a huge car with 850bhp and almost no lock!
As opposed to the Formula One car it was also no problem for us to take a look at the engine. Well why would it, it’s by far not as sophisticated as the technical masterpieces in formula 1. But it actually makes the same amount of horsepower.. from 2.5 time the displacement, but still.. 😉
NASCAR’s more JDM than you might think!
Up next was a different kind of show. Chris Pfeiffer on his BMW bike wasn’t loud and not as outrageous as his predecessors, but he was certainly good. Well.. unbelievably great actually.. I didn’t know things like that were possible on a motorcycle!
NASCAR’s more JDM than you might think!
In fact, Christina Surer who co-hosted the event was so impressed that she spontaneously decided to go home with him.
NASCAR’s more JDM than you might think!
The final event was one of the most spectacular in again an entirely different manner. I’ve actually seen them before but was still impressed by the precission with which those guys jump far into the air and pull off the craziest tricks! It’s the first time I’ve shot freestyle motocross and I really like what possibilities you have with the variety of tricks they do, so here are a few shots:
The start ramp was actually on that mountain in the background!
Don’t remember how this is called (I used to play some FMX game on the PC a while back), it’s a basic jump, but I’ve always liked it.
Of course, nowadays you’ve got to do backflips as a FMX driver or you’re not really taken seriously 😉
And here’s a picture of a guy climbing off his motocross machine while being upside down. All completely normal actually.
Well after that there was the great finale with all the cars comming up once again, the pictures of which I’ve already included above. The final show of the F1 and the NASCAR cars included one funny moment when they kind of had an impromptu drag race.. it didn’t take long though, as the formula one car was already in a different time zone when the NASCAR shifted into second (which by the sound of it happens at about 150kph…).
I have to say, this was one of the greatest events I’ve ever been to and I hope it hasn’t just been a one time thing!! I hope next year even more people will go to that little airfield in the swiss mountains to see who’s the best at producing lots of TIRE SMOKE!
I’m running out of cool things to say about smoke…
I’m not sure when my next photo friday will be, as my photo processing computer is in Zurich and I’m not, but I’m certainly gonna attend the Drift EM coming up in a week (you should all come too btw!) and I’m sure I’ll post some stuff from there at some time.
Until then.. have fun.. but not too much 😉