Monthly Archives: March 2010

Goodyear Formula Drift Malaysia Part 1: Setup 18th Dec 2009

A month after Thailand, it was now Malaysia’s turn to host the Formula Drift series.  Held at Malaysian Agro Exposition Park Serdang,this two day event had a record number of  54 drifters competing with  Thailand being the  biggest foreign contingent of 12 drifters, followed by three from Hong Kong , two from Indonesia and with New Zealand ,Singapore, Philippines and Japan with one each. As Goodyear is  the title sponsor, it is not surprising that this international field were  mainly made up of Goodyear drifters, each representing their respective region around  SEA  .One could only  imagine the amount of work it took logistically to cater to  these drivers, crews and their machinery .All these  is  credited to the dynamic management of  Goodyear Malaysia most notebly  Brenda, Puay Ling and  Sham whom all worked around the clock to ensure everything was picture perfect ,which in turn  played the major role in making  the  Goodyear Formula Drift Malaysia the best Formula Drift Asia event to date!

All drivers and teams were required to report in at the eve of the event as this is when  the final tech inspections are held and  a drivers briefing was also shedueled   A media conference and a photo session scheduled  for all the Goodyear drivers earlier that day too…

img_8505 We were asked to have our face powered for the photoshoot but Thailand’s Nakaorn wanted the whole works to be done on himself….the cherry flavoured lipstick being applied was his own btw.

dsc003351 After that he wanted his eyebrows trimmed..holding up the line , some of us were not amused!

dsc00343 Michael Gan revealed that makeup experience was akin to being on the dentist chair . Watch how his toes curl as he cringe .

For the record; I didnt have any makeup  done partly due to not having enough time which I  got Nakorn to thank for:P

dsc003491 Everyone’s amazed at what a little eye makeup could make the colors of Johan’s eyes come out img_8529

Mad Mike shows us  how they  handle sheep over there….dsc00401

….as Jane finds our sniggering a bit distracting img_8515

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L-R En Nasution Abdul Rahman (MD of  Goodyear Malaysia) Richard Fleming( MD of Goodyear ASEAN & Thailand) , Harvey Davis (VP EPSN Star Sports Management) and Marcus Lim (MD Formula Drift Asia)

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Me, Cheaka,Yoong, Johan , Michael, Mike and Miki

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Miki’s translator ( green t shirt) is a ‘Penang kia’ dude called Ken

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Later that day ,the first driver’s briefing was held . This is where we got to meet the judges and find out what they are expecting from us for qualifying the next day.

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Daijaro says ” Hi, I’m Daijaro.I’m the speed judge.So that means I will be judging your speed”

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 Myth #1; Laughing at the judge’s jokes will earn you extra points during qualifying

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 Ryan Sage, the co founder of Formula Drift was roped in as the Angle judge for this round

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Andy Yen, was the Line judge

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Part of the requirements of the Tech inspection is to have the competing cars stickered up with  door sticker numbers  and windscreen banners

img_8694 Ivan lim shows off his new impact bar…pretty little petite thing , don’t you think?

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Tina helping out with Jane’s banner..

It was actually a  mad rush for us to get our cars prepared for this event as our cars were held up  during its shipment from Thailand. Cheaka and I had suffered some body damage and those had to be tendeded to and I had a few up grades that I wanted done to the car. So, it was a hectic rush we had to go through getting the cars from the body and paint shop and off to  the workshop . They  had only got done installing and tuning the car on Wednesday and I only had the chance to test the car on the following day. It was only then we had realised that the car had a few gremlins that needed to be iron out, most notably  a sticky throttle which isn’t such a good thing to have especially when you will be drifting surrounded by concrete barrier. dsc00711

I only got a couple of rounds of testing before deciding to get the problem fixed as it was too dangerous to continue

dsc00720 Ivan Lim managed a number of solid runs with his s13

dsc00848 My tempt crew for the event, Lok and Cheng trying to fix the culprit… dsc00920 A lot of cutting a grinding was involved. After thinking it was fixed , it was back to the drift practice area for testing then back to the pit area when the problem arises again. This carried on for numerous of times…dsc00924 and the  problem had gotten worse as the throttle would get stuck at the wide open position..Tonnka’s Larry , far right ( who is one of my sponsor) was there to lend a helping hand. dsc00910 We stayed up till 3am testing and trying to fix the problem that night. Until finally we decided to call it quits and see if  we could find a replacement the next day…

Goodyear Formula Drift Malaysia Roadshow @ 1Utama Mall: 5th-6th Dec 2009

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The  two day roadshow for the Goodyear Formula Drift Malaysia was held at 1 Utama shopping Mall. With  Goodyear Tires ,Tyrepac, CIMB and ESPN represented, this roadshow served the purpose of not only promoting the event but also  educating the general public about the sport of drifting which suprisingly very few knows about. Tickets were also being sold  hence we got to meet quiet a number of drifters and fans !

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Johan was all decked out that day….

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cause he was the man………

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The Prince of drift with the King of style

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Dragstar’s Ann came by too…

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Its obvious I can’t carry the look like Johan with his glasses…here with Goodyear’s Puay Ling

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Michael Gan and I had a little competition of our own…which I lost.

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In desperate need of a win I pulled in another opponent….the sequence of shot kinda reflects my performance through out the year….dscn4452

unpredictable…..

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I got whooped!!!

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Cheaka’s Hypertune Photoshoot 29th Nov 2009

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In conjuction to the Goodyear’s Formula Drift Malaysia, Hypertune wanted to have Jane on the cover of their December issue. So Mark, CK and assistant came along to shoot her along with the AE86 .CK is definately one of the best photographer out there and it was a pleasure watching how a professional photo shoots is done.

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CK and assistant shoots Cheaka while Mark tries to find an angle for the article…

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My attempt of shooting Cheaka…a bit to butchy don’t you think?

Digi Yellow Army Graduation Party@ Shah Alam 22nd November 2009

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Cheaka and I were invited to  give  drift taxi rides during the Digi Yellow Army Graduation Party at its Shah Alam Headquarters. Honestly , this was the first time I’ve heard of such an event and images of overweight people in yellow spandex suits sprung into mind. However, we were relieved that the people we had to taxi were normal size and thankfully so as we only had our underpowered AE86s to use as our main drift cars were still stuck in customs coming back from  Thailand :p

Anyway, the drifting was done its ‘other’ car park away from the main building where the other activities were held. Cheaka left me for a while to do a motivational speech to the graduates.

We got done almost at seven and was just in time to watch Hannah Tan give out autographs and Man Bai’s performance…

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Cheng insisting they all wear their helmets during the ride..

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Yes ..ladies n gentlemen, the person in the brown hat is none other than Malaysian superstar drifter Ivan Lau who was part of my support crew that day..Ivan insisted I used the chain ring fence as my rear clipping point during the taxi ride to make it more ‘exciting’…yeah right

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err..I think she was one of the speakersdsc04125

This is either someone’s father or another speaker…

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Jane’s motivational speech..I suspect this is the part where she digs into the audience’s guilt or something cause they all look as if…

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This is as close as i got to Hannah

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Nevertheless , everyone had a good time that day

Mitsubishi Extreme Drive @ CEC Singapore 13th 14th, 15th November 2009

Organised by Mitsubishi’s distributor Cycle and Carriage, the Mitsubishi Extreme Drive gave its 200 participants a hands on experience on performing stunts such as ramp to ramp jumps, 360 spins ,j-turns and slip and slide on their showcased  Ralliart Lancer Ex , Evo X and Colt R!

For three solid days , instructors Ivan Lim, Kevin Flynn, Danny, CK , Cheaka and I, brought togather by Pit Crew,  had a whale of a time pushing these cars to the limit while teaching the participants how the stunts are performed(. Ivan and I took the J-turn, Cheaka the 360 spin , CK the slip and slide while Danny and Kevin did the ramp jump).  I got a bad bout of motion sickness on the first  day but got over it the following days. Ivan and I calculated that we sat through over 800 J turns combined ( 1 demo + 3 tries x over 200 participants). Cheaka went through almost the same numbers too but one thing that we all looked forward to was the Hot Laps that happens at the end of each session. We were each given a car to taxi the participants through a given course. I had a hand on the Evo X (manual and TC-SSC) and the Ralliart Lancer Ex( TC-SSC) and  was pleasantly surprised that I preferred the TC-SSC over the manual. The shifts were seamless upwards and downwards, so much so  that ,when I had the Ralliart Lancer Ex during the Hot Laps , I  left it on full auto  and  was so much faster than Ivan who was in a manual EVO X!!

Here are some of the photos taken throughout the three days we were there…

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The extremely fun  and friendly Shell girls ..thanks for taking care of my camera girls

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Eileen and Marcus

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Ivan’s Vicks snorting habit didn’t gel to well with the girls

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TV celebrity Jit and his producer was there too…Jit is extremely hilarious behind the camera and has a vast vocabulary of swear words in  many languages

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The sweet registration girls

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Fred swears he isn’t making a face………..

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Jason , Hassan and Eileen…guys if you have to know , Hassan’s mother cooks a mean Bryani dish !!!

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Picture taken from www.sgcarmart.com

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Picture taken from sgcarmart.com: Cheaka’s tai chi moves failed to impressed the participants

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Picture taken from www. sgcarmart.com ;Car sickness didn’t get Kevin Flynn but a sore back did ..heeheheeheeheeheh

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Jason, Elaine and Michelle

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The video crew


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Pit Crew’s Wii character  lookalike


Nothing like a nice meal with friends, Heng( Drift Ninja)and family along with Nash (Drifttonowhere)

Here are some of the videos made of the event. The embedded feature has been disabled , so just click on it twice and a new window will pop up…