April Club Loose Event - April 30, 2008

I went to my first drifting event on Wednesday at Raceway Park. Cars were placed into groups of four or five, and then those four or five cars got three runs each on the course. Then, the next four or five cars had three runs, and so on.

I was one of the first people there, so I got to run right at the beginning of the event. But then more and more cars kept coming. I didn't get to run again for another two hours. In total, I did six runs.

The course was pretty easy. It had a long straightaway where you could get up to third gear, then a big right sweeper followed by a quick left and a quick right. I drew out the basic layout on a satellite image of the lot.

On the first three runs, I entered the first turn in second gear and drifted the entire way through the course without any problems. For the last three runs, I tried accelerating more on the straightaway and entering the first corner in third gear. The first time worked out well, but I spun out the last two times from pulling the e-brake too hard. Here's a video of my 5th run where I spun out a couple of times. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any videos of the good runs.

I didn't have any problems with the car, but the tread started ripping off the right rear tire on the last three runs. I could hear chunks of rubber smacking the right rear wheel well as they were flying off. This probably contributed to me spinning out in the last two runs. I had a lot less grip when the right rear tire started coming apart.

Overall, it was a good experience, and I'll be back there again next month. The only thing I didn't like about the event is that the group A and B drivers seemed to get a lot more runs than the C drivers. But hopefully I will drive well in the next couple of events and get into group B.

Here are some pictures I took during the event.