D1RC Drift Series Round 2 – Eastbourne ECC, 12/13 May Report by John Turner Having suffered a month long continuous and torrential drought since round 1, the sun came out again for the round 2 Eastbourne ECC weekend. If you've never tried Eastbourne's facilities, I can strongly recommend them and a nicer club crew you'll not find anywhere. New for this round was a proliferation of on-board tiny HD camcorders which, after many hours of editing, should produce some fine RC drifting U-Tube viewing.
The very low grip tarmac of the Eastbourne club presents new problems for all the drivers, old and new alike. Although we need to slide to drift, we need to control the slide - that's the tricky bit – so we set up our cars for maximum grip, very soft everything! The special drift tyres used, the HPI #4406 T-Drift control tyre, provides very little traction but what grip it has is delivered in a very consistent and stable way and this allows you to tune your car accordingly. Practice and Qualifying was completed on the Saturday giving us the evening to relax, enjoy the club's food bar and do our favourite weekend thing – night drifting! Almost all the drivers arrived with shells wired for lighting and the circuit looked more like Piccadilly than a race track, LEDs of all colours, beams, strobes, you name it and all this was being captured on still and video cameras. At around 1am we succumbed to the cold and the realisation that in just a few hours we'd be battling in the finals! With Sunday came another warm, sunny morning and after a BBQ breakfast the competition was under way again. The Club drivers were first out, with Andy Brunton, Bradley Giles and Colin Pobgee and Ben Wallace making it through to the semi finals. Andy took his battle 7/3, 5/5 to meet Ben who scored a 10/0, 8/2. Brad then took 3rd place in Club with a pair of 10/0 over Colin leaving Andy and Ben in the final. A ‘one more time' was required to split them, the scores 10/0, 0/10, 10/0, 5/5 illustrating the tension on the rostrum but it was Ben Wallace who took the Club Class honours. Enter the Pro drivers...qualifying had been cruel to HPI placing their two team drivers against each other in the first round of battles. Simon Landgrebe was the unlucky one, suffering a 0/10 spin on our first run followed by a 5/5 in the second. After some further serious drift battles it was Stu 'Iceman' Sissons, Curtis Pobgee and Steve Gravett, John Turner who survived to the semi finals. Iceman and JT came through as both their opponents scored a zero in one of their runs which shows absolute commitment but is very difficult to recover from at this level. In the battle for 3rd Steve suffered a belt failure which gave Curtis the place on the podium. So it was Iceman and JT in the final again. In the first run they were neck and neck until the very last straight where JT's drift angle was down on Stu's, a 6/4. It was still anyones, until that is when JT overclipped an apex which dragged his HB TC-Drift based car (another chassis scuff!) into a slow spin while Iceman cruised by for the win – again! Congrats then to Stu and Ben on their wins, collecting beautiful engraved glass trophies and various prizes, as did all the top three in each class. We all left with a big smile, a great weekend of drifting, both competition and fun stuff, and very good company with time to enjoy it. We'd like to thank all our D1RC Drift Series sponsors, HPI Europe, Radio Race Car International, Clear Cut Trophies, Touge Speed Shop and H&L Graphics and, of course, Eastbourne ECC and the D1RC drivers for making it another very successful D1RC event. Drift Series points table after 2 rounds: Pro Class 'Great 8' 1 - Stu Sissons 600 2 - John Turner 410 3 - Steve Gravett 330 4 - Curtis Pobgee 260 5 - Rick Lincoln-Smith 240 6 - Matt Clarke 220 7 - Ben Smith 140 8 - Simon Landgrebe 130 Club Class 'Great 8' 1= Bradley Giles 380 1= Andy Brunton 380 3 - Mark Rix 355 4 - Rhys Maskell 275 5 - Ben Wallace 260 6 - Darcy Meadows 240 7 - Billy Hards 230 8 - Colin Pobgee 130 Our next round will be at Colcheter MCC's super island circuit on Saturday 9 June. Chat on D1RC.co.uk!
