I’ve had her for over 11 years now n she had gone through many incarnations to what we here. I have taken a 2 year hiatus in competitive drifting n she has been under the covers ever since.
A drive (drift) around the block was all it took to convince me that I won’t be changing a thing about her…then again the Nitrous system will have to go to accommodate the new rulings in drifting!
A good example of what happens when you hand a camera to your students to video your practice tandem runs. Commentary courtesy by “Seattle” Bob and Francis ” The cockroach ” B
Photos by David Soo
Known to be one of Malaysia’s best track to drift on , Federation D had chosen Dato’ Sagor circuit to be the venue for round 1 of their RacePod Drift Challenge Series. With it’s fast entries, followed by an equally fast sweeping corner, this track has proven to be on of the most challenging track around. Due to its higher speed, this track is also known to eat up tires. I was as first reluctant to enter the competition as I had only 2 pairs of new Kumho tyres left and knew the other used pairs won’t last very long in these conditions . However upon hearing Federation D’s offer to subsidize the trailer fees for all the competitors , I had decided to bring J4M8U for practice ,as I had a fair amount of 17″ tyres, and will use SLOW for the qualifying and competition!
We were also excited for this competition as our student and friend, Francis will also joining us with his “Cockroach” A31. This will be the first time for Francis to be competiting in a drift competition .
Things were perfect at the beginning of the day where Jane and I managed to do a few good run until disaster struck;
While avoiding a spun car in front, the car behind me ,which was quiet a distant away, ran straight into me! A broken intercooler, damaged radiator and a broken fan and shroud ended J4m8u’s day thus ending my practice. I was totally devastated as this ruined my chances of practice and was even considering packing up and leave. However I had decided against it and nursed whatever used tires I had for SLOW and did a fair abit of runs on bald tires!! Going fast nowhere would best describe my runs
Day2
The next day I managed to squeeze a few more practice runs on the used tires before turning to the new ones for qualifying and competition. The new tires really had massive grip!!! So much so that I totally screwed my pre-qualifying and 1st qualifying run!! I had one more run to go and gave it everything and managed to place 3rd in qualifying.
Jane did excellently throughout the weekend but had gearbox issues where the gear kept popping during her first run but managed to do a good run for her second attempt. However it was deemed not good enough for best 16 .
Francis improved tremendously as the weekend progressed and managed to drift the whole course . However he too missed the cut but I am sure it will just be a matter of time before he does!
The tandem runs were fairly straight forward but I was knocked out at the 2nd stage, when I fumbled at the last corner , by Mr Rocker Loh who drifter superbly tat day!!
We would like to thank everyone for supporting us,especially H for the tent, Mike and Cheryl for the videos and taking care of Johanna, Jeevan for fixing my drive shaft boot and the GanuDrift guys for towing J4M8U to the trailer 🙂
