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The weekend was all about allowing drivers the chance to gain a D1GB national license to compete in the 2006 Drift championship starting on the 28th May. Having already gained an international license at the D1GP exhibition match last year I was pretty lucky in that the weekend for me was more about car setup and doing a few demos for the crowd on the Melborne loop, then the rest of the time was spent watching the other drivers improve throughout the weekend.
Along with Julian Smith and Glen Horncastle it was myself that designed the course that drivers would be tested on over the weekend, and it certainly wasn’t going to take any prisoners. It was a very high speed straight entry into quite a slip road which was a tight left hander that turned into a very tight 90 degree left hander, then back onto the main track which was a sweeping right to high speed left onto the pit straight (the last corner wasn’t judged).. It’s an extremely technical set of corners, and the only way to score high was to get the entry to the first corner right.
The idea was to go very deep and wide into the first corner, completely ignoring what would normally be apexed, this would set you up to graze the clipping cone on the 2nd corner and accelerate through to take the remaining corners nicely. Oh did I forget to mention who was judging?? It was none other than 2006 D1GP champion Kazama!
A lot of the drivers appeared to be really struggling with this first thing on the Saturday morning, but after each session Kazama spoke to each and every one of the drivers to tell them exactly how to improve their driving to the standards that would gain them a license. According to the drivers this was a great help and even those that didn’t come away with a license at the end of the weekend I’m sure felt honoured to have had a certain element of personal tuition from the current best drifter in the world!
By Sunday afternoon the standard of driving was really good, and the drivers appeared to be starting to relax a little more, this was particularly noticeable at the end of the day when it became an open session and we all went out to have a play and kill the remains of our tyres two or three up in battle drift mode.. After the session ended, all drivers returned to the briefing room where they would be informed who would receive a D1GB license. After some words from Mr Kazama regarding the improvement he had seen throughout the weekend the names were called:
The drivers granted a full D1GB national license for the year were:
And those that were granted a provisional D1GB license (meaning they can compete in two rounds, but if they place in the top 16 at either they are upgraded to a ‘full’ license) were:
Congratulations to all of the above, and commiserations to those that came very close to getting a license.. Phil Morrison |
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