Boss Motorsport began Round 3 of the British Drift Championship with team driver Ollie Elmore newly promoted from the Semi Pro class to the Pro class for the remainder of the season and the opportunity to qualify for the Super class for this round.
All three drivers were confident they could perform well at Teesside with the track layout lending itself to close proximity twinning battles and door rubbing action. After setting up in the pits with the risk of rain all weekend, the team prepped the cars ready for mixed conditions and began first practice with a slippery track and challenging qualifying line to dial in. This caused Steve Moore to lose his Nissan SR20 S14 into to the gravel but soon found some grip and nailed multiple runs in the first session. Both Ollie Elmore and Martin Wonnacott also started to find their form in very difficult conditions and by the second practice session the runs were getting consistent.
Nearing the end of the session with Ollie pushing the Nissan Skyline to its limits another driver spin in front of the car causing him to go into the tyre barrier breaking the offside front hub, quickly back into the pits and with the use of a welder from our friends at Team WKD the car was repaired and the team were ready for qualifying.
Once again weather played its part in Qualifying with all the drivers getting very little dry track time to put in their 3 runs, but with some hard charging performances Martin finished 2nd in Semi Pro, Ollie claimed 1st in Pro Class and Steve qualified 10th in Super Pro. A great result for the team adding valuable points to the team championship, and confidence was high but Martin’s Toyota Chaser had clutch issue’s in his final qualifying run and the team set out to find out the problem, determined to get him out for his battle with Mike Collins BMW Tourer in the Top 32 battles.
The team found a replacement clutch for the R154 gearbox in the paddock, with Team Japspeed coming to the rescue with an Exedy twin plate, showing once again the awesome community spirit within the British Drift Championship. So work began and with some awesome teamwork the Chaser was ready for the morning runs, be it untested.
Race Day and first up was Martin Wonnacott in Semi Pro, the first battle run began well but after entering the first corner it became clear that the problem had reappeared, and the Chaser limped back to the start line. The second run saw the failure of the clutch completely and Martin limped back to the pits.
Next up Ollie Elmore in Pro class drawing Ben Manuel in his Slide Motorsport BMW E36, this saw two close run battle’s with both driver’s showing great proximity making the judges work hard to split the pair apart. Ollie narrowly took the win but had put together two great runs to progress to the Top 16 and meet Anthony Mortley in his Nissan Skyline R32.
The top 16 battles saw both drivers pushing each other hard throughout both runs with neither driver making any mistakes, so the judge’s decision was to run the battle one more time, Ollie came into the pits to change tyres then headed to the start line knowing there was going to be some door to door action, the next set of battles where again a crowd pleaser but with a few small errors from Ollie, Anthony progressed to the great 8 contests.
Super Pro and time for the main event the crowd had been waiting for……….
Steve had drawn Alex law in his impressive S14 Nissan 200SX and Ollie had qualified 29th earlier in the day drawing Team Lassa’s Simon Perry with his Nissan Skyline R34.
Ollie went out for his chase run determined to put a good show on in his first ever Super Pro battle, and did not disappoint with a legal overtake coming into the second corner after Simon made an uncharacteristic mistake running wide. Knowing he had a huge advantage Ollie’s lead run was solid and he took the win to meet Team MnM Engineering’s Jay White.
At this point Ollie was running very low on tyres with the Skyline shredding rubber in the dry conditions, so had to go out on a used set for these runs. This caused a loss of grip through the battles and Ollie could not run the line the judges were looking for and with some great runs from Jay he progressed to the next stage.
Last up for the team was Steve and with some consistent runs against Alex Law seeing him progress to the top 16 he drew David Waterworth in his viper powered Nissan S15. Both drivers knew what to expect as they had meet on many occasions previously, always throwing up some of the closest battles in the BDC. The next two runs were high adrenalin action, with some of the closest racing of the day. Steve’s SR20DET S14 had suffered in the first battle with a bent steering arm and had to call the 5 minute rule to get back to the pits and repair it. Luckily with other incidents on track causing a delay the team had longer to get the repair done and Steve lined for the second battle not knowing it the car would perform as well. The drivers once again put in an impressive run and with battle scars to prove it both drivers awaited the judge’s decision, David took the win and moved on but Steve came back to the pits pumped up from another great contest.
Another round of the British Drift championship came to a close with some truly epic battles to finish the day with Japspeed’s Shane O Sullivan taking the win with Acorn Motorsport’s Steve ‘Baggsy’ Biagioni finishing a close second. A great weekend for Boss Motorsport gaining valuable team championship points and Ollie ending the day 4th in Pro Class overall , now back to the shop for repairs to all three cars before Round 4 at Lydden Hill on August the 9th.
A huge thank you goes out to Paul McCallum and Wesley Keating in helping keep the team going throughout the weekend, also to everybody in the BDC paddock who supported the team and made it the success it was. Once again none off this would be possible without the assistance from all our sponsors and the hard work of our media team at Everythingdrift.com and RB Photography.