Its easy to forget how great Raleigh Raceway is when you only seem to ever drive it
in the rain! But this year the sun was out and it was awesome.
I have run 7psi for many years and this weekend upped it to about 20psi and loved every second of it. I’m glad I put it off for so many years as I feel in the past the cars ability was above mine and I wanted to catch up and learn the chassis without power to hide my driving mistakes.
The extra power made the track super fun without having to take second stabs at the back section and sliding it in one hit.
Here is a few runs, sorry about the white balance I didn’t take the time to set my camera right and it was just on auto.
Thanks to everyone who made it a great weekend, especially Zak Denman who goes the extra mile and puts the work in the make it all possible.
I handed out an award for Master Blaster 2017 to Jay Manley as he was blasting all day and was showing pretty nice car control.
Roadblasters has organised a solo run drift competition for Queensland Raceways
Drift Matsuri (OCT 2016).
The aim of this competition is to give drivers a fun competition without the complications or pressures of tandem competition and to demonstrate their skills.
There will be a lot of filming and general tom foolery/skylarking going on that will all be compiled into a Roadblasters special long run time edit for Matsuri.
There are a bunch of prizes up for grabs for the winner. No seconds, no thirds, no participation awards. There can only be one Master!
The growing list of prizes includes A GOD DAMN FREE MORNING SESSION ENTRY FROM QUEENSLAND RACEWAYS, some sweet stickers including the long coveted ROADBLASTERS MASTER BLASTER 2016 sticker that you can show your significant others, a sweet Kiwi drift magazine and just general eternal kudos.
The stuff you need to know
It starts at 6pm on Saturday.
It is an individual run competition, no tandems.
There will be three judges in the infield that will be judging for DISPLAYS OF DRIVING MASTERY
There will be one run per driver, winner takes all.
The competition will take place on turns 3 to 6.
Drivers are to form a single file line and await permission to start.
“No manjis before the first corner. Lots of aggressiveness and speed. Getting the lines right haha”
Ryan Beall – ROADBLASTERS – Sunshine Coast, Queensland
“I want to see evidence that people are in control of the car, driving close to or above their vehicles abilities and hitting the cross over with a late and fast tight apex”
Mr Sam Meredith from WreckEm will be down on the start line shoving a camera in your face, looking for some 5/7 shakas and some fairly long yeah bois.
Any further questions or queries just bury them into your subconscious and wing it on the day.
Last drifting event of the year was at Queensland Raceways XMAS bash,
This event is always my absolute favourite as there is just NOONE on track and no line ups, big run ups.
The sun was out in force and everyone was doing everything they could to not show up to work the next day bright red after calling in sick.
The car went well, I sustained some damage to a rear panel from a tire stack but it is pretty minor and wont be a hard fix.
Here’s some pics and some video.
I managed to get the speedo off the clock on a few entries which I think opens the door to the 200+ zone which I have been trying to do for a long time so that was a buzz.
The car will be out next at the StreetKarnage Half way Hangs event, which hopefully wont rain for 5 days straight again.
Matsuri this year was a classic tale of highs and lows. The weekend started with me trying to fault find some motor issues.
I fell into the trap of my car being reliable for so long that I don’t even really check it anymore.
After numerous red herrings it was discovered late on Saturday that my exhaust cam had skipped a tooth, hence why my car was making great boost and my exhaust glowing red hot.
Luckily the 3sgte is a non interference motor. My lovely gf Nicole brought me a belt on Sunday morning, an hour later with some good friends helping me out, and the willy wag tail was once again chirping out on track.
Thanks to all the people who hang out and make it a great weekend, Neil Lewis for making it all possible.
Heres a video of what was going down late Sunday afternoon.
Secretdrift hosted the event Rad Times this weekend, and it was a pretty good day of drifting followed by shenanigans at Irish Murphys. Thanks to all who make it possible especially Tyson, Mez and Seaton. I put a video together of the days drifting
For now the horizon looks pretty good with entry into the QR Drift Matsuri in October. Ill see you then! (at the track)
Firstly the 9 hour trek to Halfway Hangs, down at Raleigh Raceway.
I could talk about this even a lot, the hangs, the good times. But lets just say it rained the entire trip. (great fun with no windows)
I couldn’t get up past 80 kmph for most of the way down in the cruiser due to the torrential rain, even losing a windscreen
wiper 3/4 of the way there. Luckily the Corollas windscreen wiper bolted straight on and we were off again.
Was a great opportunity to catch up with mates from down south that I don’t get to see as often as I would like.
Even with the rain it was still an awesome weekend.
Some pics
The next event I was unable to enter, but I headed down to do some filming and put together a little video.
The event was Japnats, hosted by Queensland Raceway and has been known as “driftings best kept secret” with rumors of awesome track time, traffic free drifting. Access to both big track and short track (skidpan too if you are into that) and a cheapish entry fee.
The last few months have been hectic to say the least, all sorts of things have been going on and my wallet has been on life support for a while now.
To start with, a drifting trip to Japan!
This was a lifetime dream and something I enjoyed immensely, made even better by the friends I met up with over there and the friendships made during the trip.
To start off with, a 2 week general tour of Japan, from Narita, to Tokyo, to Mt Fuji, to Nagoya, then Kyoto, then Osaka, then to Tokyo again for the Shinkansen trip to Nihonmatsu and the drifting at the Ebisu Autum Matsuri.
Japan is crazy, everything is a short walk and a short train ride away.
Plenty of people prepped me for the trip but nothing could prepare me for the awesomeness.
The food, the people, the night life, the scenery etc. I could go on but I will let a few pictures do the talking.
Onto the drifting!
We managed to get to Ebisu pretty easily, its a bit tricky in that the GPS navigation system in the rental car isnt in english, and you we could only put in an area code or phone number, neither of which was easy to get without internet access. But Nicole and I figured it out and met up with some friends at the track to see our cars for the first time. We all bar one bought our cars through power vehicles and it all generally went quite smoothly.
The car drove really nice save for a completely trashed rear right lower bushing which gave the wheel almost 30mm of play which you could of course feel over the jump and Minami!
I managed to keep the car semi straight. I had a wee incident at Minami in the rain, it was like sheet ice in the cold rain on some lines and once it let go there wasn’t a great deal you could do to pull it back!
The second crash happened after a 10 year old boy in a skyline pulled some dirt right onto the apex of the wall corner at School Course, which led to me understeering and catching the car again about 1m offline, I was only just missing the wall so 1m offline put me into the wall!
Not the end of the world but lost a bit of track time with some repairs.
Otherwise all I can say is the tracks are great, they dont give a lot of room for error but when you are on line they feel amazing to drive and definitely, along side the new style of car for me to drive, encouraged me to use techniques and lines and speeds etc that I was not in the habit of using.
All seven tracks have their ups and downs but my personal favourite was North Course, Its a big long sweeping entry where you can get some decent speed up, and have a pretty hairy initiation, especially in patchy conditions!
My friends and I spent a good deal of time here trying to get close and get some good runs. Ignoring the big entry there is a really satisfying little tight section straight after with a lot of weight transfer that feels amazing when you get a good run through with some decent momentum.
G1GP was held at Higashi, another amazing circuit and suited my flat footed driving and the JZX90 fairly well, I didn’t place in the top 16 but had a good time otherwise and beat my friend so thats all that matters. I got to meet some pretty big heros of mine from Team Orange which was another bonus.
The car was pretty well setup, had good power and torque and fairly decent arms and shocks, but I definitely missed my little corolla the whole time I was over there.
Anyhoo, I threw a video together, and got a few pictures so I will let them do the talking.
After Japan it was straight back into things in Australia, At Queensland Raceway there was the Xmas Bash, only way to describe it is, lots of track time, and the heath of a 1000 suns. It took me about an hour to get my act together after I arrived just due to the traffic on the way there and the shear heat that was bouncing off the tarmac.
For sure the highlight of my day and maybe even all my time at Queensland raceway was being able to get a serious run up to turn 3. I had some decent speeds that were somewhere between 160 and 170kph depending on how accurate my speedo is. Literally stood the hairs up on the back of my neck.
Heres a quick bit of footage from a run of the 3-6 layout.
Everything else that went down was usually QR cruisy and awesome.
Here are some pics to show the day and some of the characters present.
Even the Tercel got a new heart, trading out the 3a that turned out to have a cracked piston skirt, which I ended up finding in the sump, for a minty fresh 4a that came out of a ae86 that had a genuine 25 thousand k’s on the clock. It started first throw and drove almost 400kms two days later so suffice to say my little wagon is going strong for years to come.
Whats going on in the future?
We will be heading to Raleighs raceway for the Half Way Hangs event held by Street Karnage,
Looking to be some good drivers and cars attending.
Here is a video from their last event, which was off the scale, 11/10, would drift again.
Leading up to matsuri the corolla was finally painted, at 10am on Friday morning.
All done!
The front lip and flares have been modified further so that I dont have to run the front lip anymore except for special circumstances. Its just too low and even taps with ripple strips damages the flares etc. Especially at an event like matsuri I weighed it up and decided more time on track was more important!
Ready to hit the road, the cruiser towed well, few sections were a bit sluggish but I love it too much to care.
The car ran well all weekend, I had some issues trying to get heat into my front tires when the ques were a bit long and people were getting towed on track, but when the night came (my favourite time to drive at matsuri) it was running well and I was settled in to the car again after a fair while out the seat. I was stoked to end up tandeming with a fellow secretdrift.com.au user on my first lap out!
No repairs to be made, and the car was loaded back on the trailer ready for its next event.
All pics thanks to their respective watermarks
The new tires I was running on the rear blew me away, I have never worn a tire so evenly or had such good performance, no heat fading, no chunking, no delam. The most crucial thing to note is the absolutely INSANE tire life I was getting, instead of the 3-6 laps I managed an entire day on two pairs. Was excited to load plenty of new tires back onto the cruiser for my next event!
I didn’t take too much footage, but I managed to capture what has become my favourite time of matsuri. The last few laps of the saturday night, its nice and cool, noones on track, no passengers and since I updated my headlights and fitted HID 75W bulbs I can actually see where I am going. Here is my last lap out on the track and the trip back to the pits just to let some more of the song play out. Chuck in on HD.
The next move is to Japan where I will be driving a jzx90 at the Ebisu Drift Matsuri. Plenty of pics and details to come!
Being my first decent holiday in 7 years, and a dream come true I am super excited! Plenty of good times with good people to come!
For now the horizon looks pretty good with entry into the QR Drift Matsuri in October. Ill see you then! (at the track)
R O A D B L A S T E R 