Rain rain go away come back another day, that was the sentiment on most people’s minds when Friday dawned for the practice and qualifying of the second round for Demon Energy D1NZ. Tauranga’s ASB Baypark arena was playing host to New Zealand’s top tier drift stars along with some international flavor in the mix.
Sadly Friday proved to be challenging with rain causing mayhem for most trying to set up their cars. Ryan Tuerck featured in the line up this year piloting a recently completed GT86 2JZ powered drift machine, The rain however limited their set up progress which meant he headed into Saturday with a partially set up car and a lot more work to come up to speed with the characteristics of it. Jodie Verhulst was another stagnant worker with trying to set up her just completed engine swapped 2JZ powered Supra with a GT86 front. With rain causing trouble qualifying for the Pro sport series drifters and the D1NZ drifters was pushed to Saturday which also meant a jam packed day for everyone.
Saturday rolled on through with blazing hot sunlight. Dried and up to temperature, the course looked fantastic and with the crowd drawing in, in droves, the day was already shaping up to be brilliant.
Pro sport series drifters had their first runs in the sun and wasted no time in laying down thick smoke and the occasional bumper scrape followed by the big guns of D1NZ coming in to set up their cars along with please the crowd. A stand out feature for me personally from the Pro sport series drifters was a good friend Kieran Stewart and his amazing Miata! Featuring a brilliantly nasty set of ITB’s, Kieran’s MX5 showed that the little car could hang with the big boys albeit slightly underpowered. Final battles for Pro sport only further amped up the crowed ahead of the main event with results from Pro sport placing Vincent Hopkins in first place followed by Chad Mckenzie and Calvin Clark rounding up second and third. It was great to witness such tight battles from the upcoming Pro sport drivers and I am sure we will be seeing vastly closer competitions from everyone in this class in the year ahead.
Finally the main event slid on through with the Pro drifters coming out to lay down some rubber and get some points for qualifying. Battles were close with some like Tuerck chasing Omnet in the top 32 in which Omnet came out on top due to Tuerck straight lining on his lead run. Adam Hedges and Australian Michael Prosenik put on a stellar show in which they both executed two perfect runs against each other which forced a sudden death. Prosenik emerged victorious and wound up placing fourth through the battles which is a great achievement in itself. Star of the show was Nico Reid who took out the night by placing first in his Evergreen Nissan S15 after a very tight battle with second place Daynom Templeman and the 2JZ powered NAC BMW 3 series. Both drivers put on near perfect performances with Nico showing balanced character under the pressure from Daynom whereas Daynom made a very small error in his lead run under the pressure from Nico.
A well deserved win to Nico Reid followed by Daynom Templeman in second and Tom Marshall in third finished up a brilliant night in Tauranga. Round 3 moves to Taupo next at the newly named Bruce McLaren Motorsports Park which promises more smoke and action along with the usual upsets and antics.
Stay tuned.