EDC Round 1 - Phil

EDC Round 1

The month leading up to this event was pretty intense for myself and Bonbon. We’d both spent way to much time in the workshop, and I don’t think Bon had slept more than 3 hours a night in that time prepping his Chaser.

The week leading up to it, as you’d imagine was even more fun. Bonbon still didn’t have a cage in his car, so was actually at Garage D having one fabricated until around 4am Saturday morning, then had a mad dash up the motorway to get to sign on in time.

I had enlisted the help of Clarkey to change the oil pump on our R32 Skyline as it was about to go pop. Of course this was much more of a complex job than originally anticipated. We also had to bring the rest of the car up to spec as it had never been used in pro competiton before.

We arrived at Drift Central on the Friday morning for the licensing day, and  were given the opportunity to test the car out. It was absolutely terrible! One of the main things I’d changed on the car, was to give it more traction. This is something that’s essential in competition. I replicated what I had previously done to our S14 to achieve the same results. Unfortunately this didn’t work as well as I had hoped, and the new found traction at the rear was causing the front end of the car to pitch horrendously, and lift a rear wheel.
The handbrake was another problem. It simply wasn’t locking as required, and to top it all off, the clutch seemed to be struggling for the first time ever.. I spent a good few hours underneath the car that day changing settings with moderate results, and we parked it up in the pit garages at Donington ready for the next day.

Saturday was qualifying for the top 16, and we had 2 practice sessions in the morning. Again, I was struggling massively with the car in the first section. The main problem being that I couldn’t initiate the drift, as my normal method is a small flick, then a sharp jab on the handbrake to get the angle, and that just wasn’t working. I would hammer it down the straight, unbalance the rear of the car, flick, pull the handbrake, and plow straight on towards the gravel.

The second section of the course was great fun though, with the sweeping right to left at the top of 3^rd gear onto the main straight, with pretty much the most tyre smoke from any car there.

We tried everything we could to get the car to do what I wanted, including adding pre-load to the front springs, adjusting the handbrake for the umpteenth time, changing the alignment, and over inflating the rear tyres. All of this helped, but I had my three qualification runs, and knew immediately that I wouldn’t make the cut. I was super pleased to see our good friend and sponsored drive Chris Parry in the red AE86 corolla achieve*** position in qualification, and despite Bonbon struggling with the new car misfiring and melting boost hoses, getting into the top 16..

Sunday was the main event. The top 16 would battle it out for first place. I had the unique opportunity to watch the whole thing from the sidelines, which to be honest I really enjoyed. First up was Bonbon verses first place qualifier James Hudson. Bon’s car was performing a little better today, and he’d switched onto his super grippy Kumho Ecsta V70a tyres, which coincidently Hudson was using too. It was undecided after the first 2 runs, so it went one more time. The first run Bon followed and messed up behind Hudson straightening up momentarily, giving Hudson a clear 7-3 advantage going into the final run, but Bon charged hard into the first corner with loads of speed and had so much angle he was right on the edge of spinning. Hudson followed close behind, but couldn’t achieve the same angle as Bon and span out.

Chris Parry (Paz) in his 150bhp corolla beat Declan Hicks in the 400bhp Soarer, showing massive angle and really good entry speed for such a low powered car.

Other names that stood out, were Johnny Power, who only achieved his provisional license on Friday, Mark Johnston in the Weston Silvia on some new Dunlop tyres that had incredible traction, and Brett Castle in his recently re-mapped sequential 2.2 HKS S14.

By the time the top eight hit us, I’d nearly lost my voice from yelling so loud, and I think the drivers had noticed a little more crowd participation than the usual dull English track event. They really stepped it up a notch, and showed the public and media that EDC really does provide some of the best drifting in the world.

Bon and Power went up against each other. Bon messed up the first run, then pulled back the advantage in the 2^nd run to make it evens. On the 3^rd run I noticed Bon’s car seemed to be around 1/3^rd of it’s normal 485bhp at the wheels, and it was clear he’d popped the hose off that we’d had to bodge together after setting fire to the previous one. He went under the 5 minute rule to fix his car and got back on track with 10 seconds to spare with an almighty cheer from the crowd. Unfortunately the quick repair wasn’t enough, and as soon as the car’s went past us, I heard the hose pop off again, and Bon was out.

Paz, was now up against Niall Gunn in the S13, he again showed amazing prowess in the low powered car. He pulled a good 4 car lengths on Niall despite the drag race to the first corner.

Paz, then drew Johnny Power, and simply couldn’t keep up with the pace of that car. There was a good 8 car lengths between them before the first corner, which is just not possible to claw back. He’s definitely proven that you don’t have to re-shell an S14 into an 86 for it to be competitive, and will be back at the next round with Nitrous I believe..

The final between Power and Johnston was absolutely spectacular. It went through 4 runs, where Johnston overtook twice with the incredible traction from the new Dunlop tyres.

Congrats to Mark Johnston for the win, Power for getting his license and coming second in the same weekend, Parry for getting his license and coming 4^th in an underpowered car, Bon for actually making it there with the help of Julian from Garage D.