I ended up at Teesside at the weekend for a bit of fun at the BDC Licensing Day there. It was a good chance to get some more seat time and Sweeps and Paul were kind enough to invite me along for the event. I headed up the M60, M6, M62 and M1 at the crack of dawn and met up with Luke at the local BP before we set up at the track.
Louis’ S14 was looking cool and he drove really well all day, earning a Semi-Pro license on the way.
I was a big fan of this R32 four door and the driver certainly drove it in style. In his three licensing runs he managed to smash off his front bumper, an indicator lens, the front numberplate and give the rear bumper a smack on one of the tyre stacks. He might not have earned a license but he certainly entertained the crowd and gained some major style points.
William Rose was seriously on point in his E36 – all that practice at Driftland must have paid off and he deservedly earned a Pro license.
Personally speaking I really struggled to get to grips with the track – a tight and twisty layout with bumps, gradients and a lot of wind was not really the easiest track with which to blow off the drift day cobwebs. The staggered practice groups and fairly large gaps between track time (considering the length of each lap) didn’t really suit me either, but once the licensing had finished and we were given the place to ourselves for the final two hours I really began to get used to it and started to push myself.
Pic via Drifted.com
I was determined to work on my kick & flick entries and to only resort to the handbrake for minor corrections or slowing down during a transition – I set myself a promise that I wouldn’t perform any handbrake entries and, while that might have been the safer option for clean runs, it wasn’t the exciting way to do things! I also feel that I learnt a lot more spending 90% of the day messing up and getting things wrong as opposed to choosing the boring, reliable method as it was so much more rewarding when I managed to nail a run the way I wanted to.
Pic via Peter Bartle
I finally got round to making use of my GoPro as well and filmed a few of my runs right at the end of day. Hopefully I can start to do this more often at other events throughout the year.