Team X-Force & the DriftKid headed off for the long drive to Mallala Motorsport park in South Australia at 7am Thursday Morning. This was the start of our 4500klm trip across Australia.
After unpacking & setting up it was time for some photo's with the Pro-Mo Girls of Team X-Force, Achilles, ADGP & Just Car Insurance.
It was a real experience having Chris Forsberg from Formula Drift USA over to Judge the battles that were about to go down.
Now for the Technical stuff.
After the intense Driver briefing it was time to get the Achilles Tyres Blazing.
The day started with the win against Michael Bonney in the top 32 & then he took on Adelaide's Kelly Wong for the top 16 battles. Kelly put up a good fight but Nick was awarded the win. It was in this battle Nick messaged the Team to tell them of a knocking sound coming from under the car. After examination in the pits it's was determined it was the Diff & with no time to swap it out he just had to hope it was going to last.
Top 8 came down to Fellow Achilles Driver Rob Whyte & Nick's long time Battle buddy. These 2 guys hold the world record (according to Andrew Hawkins of Australian Drifting Grand Prix) for re-runs. It seems every event these two great drivers do, they always seem to meet each other at the pointy end of the field.
The battle started with Rob leading & Nick chasing him down. Both guys not wanting to give an inch entered the first corner flat out & Nick took his position matching Rob's line & emulating his angle for a very even run.
Now with Nick leading he threw the Achilles Radial/Xforce Performance Exhaust VE Ute hard into the first corner with the perfect line & massive amount of Angle. He then made a snappy transition to the outer clipping point baking the Achilles 123s all the way to the finish line. A close run by anyone's standard & the judges unable to fault Nick's runs would have to find a fault to decide a winner & unfortunately for Rob he had a small error on his transition whilst following & Nick took the Win.
By this time the diff was sounding like a thousand hammers banging under the car & the top 4 was going to be a stretch for the poor old diff.
Now with Nick leading he threw the Achilles Radial/Xforce Performance Exhaust VE Ute hard into the first corner with the perfect line & massive amount of Angle. He then made a snappy transition to the outer clipping point baking the Achilles 123s all the way to the finish line. A close run by anyone's standard & the judges unable to fault Nick's runs would have to find a fault to decide a winner & unfortunately for Rob he had a small error on his transition whilst following & Nick took the Win.
By this time the diff was sounding like a thousand hammers banging under the car & the top 4 was going to be a stretch for the poor old diff.
Nick lined up against Andreas Paraskevas "Agges" to determine who battles for 1st & 2nd. The flag was dropped & both guys took off, but unfortunately as soon as Nick hit 2nd gear the Diff let go & let go in a big way by splitting the diff casing spilling all its contents on the track.
Nick had to forfeit the rest of the runs & took out 4th place for the day.
Nick had to forfeit the rest of the runs & took out 4th place for the day.
As a great show of sportsmanship Josh Boettcher took Nick out as a passenger on his by run for 3rd place.
Congratulations to Agges for 1st, Michael Prosenik for 2nd & Josh Boettcher for 3rd.
Now to prepare the Ute for the World Time Attack's Tectaloy International Drift Challenge on October 18th & 19th at Sydney Motor Sport Park in Sydney.
