Summer Bank Holidays in the UK always mean one thing: plenty of drift days up and down the country to choose from. While I had originally been planning to attend the Meihan course day at Rockingham, more issues with my car prevented me from being able to do so. Instead, Josh off of Graphix-D offered me a lift up to Teesside in his S13 on Monday for their annual Easter holiday drift practice day.
After leaving my last drift practice day at Teesside rather underwhelmed due to big queues and a lack of seat time, I was keen to see if anything had been done to rectify the long downtimes between each lap.
We met up with Adam off of StyleCase and RETROshine in his FC3S and set about the 100 mile journey North from Manchester. Having woken up pre-5am I was keen to try and nap in Josh’s car but I was quickly reminded just how loud the whine on my old 4.3 diff (now fitted to Josh’s car) was and all hopes of catching some sleep were shattered.
With it being Josh’s birthday weekend, quite a few friends in similarly styled cars had also signed on for the event. Arriving way earlier than we needed to and requiring caffeine immediately, we got set up in the pits and hunted down some coffee.
While there were a few, erm, questionable looking cars arriving throughout the morning, it was great to see a large number of cool cars turning up too.
While it isn’t a drift car by any means, Joey’s immaculate PS13 (complete with full interior and factory stereo, no less) all had us seething with jealousy.
Continuing the black PS13 theme, Dan of Destroy Stuff fame’s car was looking great after its recent respray. Believe it or not, this car was originally the Bollyswag PS13 and, many years before that, was Vincent Noott’s JDM All Stars car. It’s certainly got some history.
Jaime’s very yellow S13 was parked up alongside…
Dan’s similarly yellow Low Origin S15 and Freddie’s not-so-yellow S15.
Speaking of matching cars and Josh’s All-Good team mate Keeve was also in attendance, having made the long drive down from the most Northern part of Scotland imaginable in his Pig Nose S13.
The Pig Nose party didn’t end there either, with Nathan’s S13 also sporting the correct look for the day.
He also had the shiniest pair of WORK VSs that I’ve ever seen.
Charlie’s SR20DE powered S13 had been painted (at long last!) just before the event and looked wonderfully 90s.
“What’ve you broken now?”
If ever there was a photo that sums up Nissan life, this is it. I’m not sure what Dan and Joey were up to but I know Josh was in the midst of investigating a gearbox oil leak.
Not long after, he was investigating the damage after a particularly lairy entry attempt which resulted in him skimming the trackside tyres and going further into the first corner gravel trap than I’ve ever seen anyone manage before. Somehow though, he managed to drive himself out, despite the car’s low ride height.
Chris’s impossibly low S14a was sporting some new chopped knuckles, having previously been driving with stock items.
It’s amazing how hard Chris drives this thing, regardless of the ride height. If anything, that’s what OEM plastic bumpers and side skirts are good for.
Two generations of STL t-shirts there lads, good work.
Despite starting out pretty grim, the weather stayed glorious for the rest of the day and, miraculously, I even managed to attain something that could be described as a tan.
So, going back to my earlier statement regarding seat time, had anything improved for this event? All I can say is, it absolutely has. The introduction of a new “fast track lane” (which allows you to complete two laps in quick succession before returning to the regular queue) meant that drivers could find their rhythm and adapt to the track conditions much quicker than normal, before giving their car a few minutes to cool down.
By the last few hours of the day, the queues on both track layouts were almost non existent and some drivers were simply completing a lap of one course before heading over to the other layout to put in another. It was great fun and, as always with events with good seat time and consistent weather, the standard of driving improved considerably throughout the day.
With the tracks closing at 6pm we packed up and began our procession southwards in convoy. Of course, no trip to Teesside would be complete without Dan/Jan stopping for a photo in front of his namesake’s cafe.
Another drift day standard: the last top up of V-Power before settling into the long drive home. It’s always a great feeling driving in a drift car convoy as the sun sets, with all of the cars sporting new scratches and bruises yet still very much in one piece.
The moment of relief when you make it home, park your car up and lie down to think about how much work you need to do before the next drift day: some things will never change.