What a wild weekend of Drift for Nick & Team XForce.
Thursday was a day of Practice & 3 laps into the day we had a oil pressure drop in our 416ci built engine & after partially pulling it down at the track we found the oil pump had let go.
Not the start to the weekend we would have hoped for but you have to do the best with what you have.
Luckily for us we were able to borrow a Engine from Matt Mingay from Stuntz inc. The engine is a Std 6.0lt Ls2 with a cam. Not quite the 6.8lt Monster Nick is used to but it did get us back on track.
A massive thanks to Kent from Hi-Torque Performance for doing all the hard work pulling the damaged motor out & putting the new one back in.
A big shout out to PowerTune Australia for letting us use their workshop for a few hours on Friday Morning to do the engine swap.
Now back to the track to get some much needed practice laps in.
Still chasing a intermittent Power Steering Problem didn't help to the teams frustration & through out the weekend we changed 2 Power Steering Pumps & replaced the Power Steering rack 3 times to try & find the source of our Power Steering Gremlin.
Friday Night all set ready to do some good Qualifying laps & get the first battle done & dusted ready for the main Show on Saturday Night.
Nick went out & did a safe Qualifying Lap just to get a tidy one under his belt & with a score of 220 from all 3 judges this put him in 6th position with still a few guys yet to do a qualify lap.
The next lap Nick went out hard & put in a nice clean one with a score of 240. This put him inside the top 10 Qualifiers.
Some how on the night they didn't take his highest score from qualifying & used his lower score putting him in 16th Position. We didn't realise this until after the top 32 had been run which was just a short time after the Qualifying had finished.
Top 32 battle was Against Jason Ferron in his V8 Powered Skyline. It was a close battle but Nick took the win to move onto the main game on Saturday Night.
Saturday night & the top 16 battles were about to begin.
Nick's next battle was against Top Japanese Driver & D1 Grand Prix Champion & Number 1 Qualifier for the event Tsutomu Fujio.
This was always going to be a hard battle but with an engine 100kw less than what Nick is used to & the Power Steering still giving him grief it would take all of his skills to get the win on this guy.
Nick being the lower Qualifier was to chase first.
Nick put on a stellar Run getting on Tsutomu's door from the very first corner & matched him on his speed & angle all the way through the run all the way to the top of the hill.
This is where the night got very interesting to say the least.
This photo is on top of the hill just as they have crossed the finish line. Nick was on his door all the way up the hill & as soon as Tsutomu crossed the finish line he backed off aggressively not even taking into consideration Nick in his 1600kg Ute was right there.
Slight contact was made milliseconds after this shot & apparently this contact was enough for Tsutomu to spin off into the gravel trap 15 metres away.
As you can see in this picture Nick was on the Brakes (Brake Light on the Roof) & locking the front wheel up to avoid contact.
All this was after the judged part of the track & didn't have any bearing on the run. Tsutomu called for 5 minuets while his team checked over the car & soon returned for the other half of the battle.
Nick lead with a good speed & great angle into turn one with Tsutomu on his door & as they transitioned into turn two Tsutomu had a slight correction & Nick was able to pull a gap to take the win & move into the great 8
Nick was to now face off with fellow Aussie Micheal Prozenick in his V8 Powered S13.
Michael lead & Nick was able to get up on the s13's door & match his speed & angle But as soon as they transitioned into turn two Michael was able to pull a gap going up the hill. On Nicks lead Michael was able to stick with Nick through out the course & take the win Finishing Nick's night in 7th position.
On returning to the pits after the event had finished we were informed that Tsutomu had made a formal compliant saying that Nick had intentionally hit him on the completion of the run sending him into the kitty litter.
This was the damage to the VE Left front guard.
After race officials heard Nick's side of events they concluded it was a racing incident & no further investigation was needed.
Apparently Tsutomu was upset because Japanese custom was to approach a driver & say sorry right after a incident has happened. With the way the event was run we had no opportunity to do so straight away & after Nick was knocked out in the top 8 we all wanted to go up to the spectator area & watch our Sole Aussie remaining Michael Proznick take it to the 3 internationals left in the competition.
After packing up our pits we went to apologize to Tsutomu & as we approached him he rushed up to Nick & grabbed him by the shirt with both hands yelling abuse in his language. Myself & the race officials quickly removed his hands from Nick & a heated throw of words ensued & we left his pit area in total disgust. We were totally dumbfounded by this & have never encountered anything like this in the 4 years of professional drifting we have done. All I can say is that this guy has to be one of the worst sportsman we have come across & would hope that he gives a public apology to Nick as no matter what happens on a race track it should never get to a physical altercation.
7th place amongst the Quality of Drivers that attended & the issues we were faced with is a great result for Nick "DriftKid" Coulson & Team XForce. We look forward to our Next competition at Barbagallo Raceway in Perth for Round 2 of the Australian Drifting Grand Prix on December 7th & 8th.
