Lugano, Switzerland, 7th of May
After a highly successful drift season in 2013, where Francesco Conti has won both the Individual Title and the Team Title, the italian driver has decided to start all over again, and aim for the same result, while having to go up against even more pro drifters from all across Europe. With 2014 being the 10th season anniversary for King of Europe, round 1 of the ProSeries was scheduled to take place in the city of Greinbach, in Austria.
Francesco Conti has brought out the same championship winning machine, his faithful supercharged BMW M3 E92 GT4, now developing about 650 horsepower. For 2014, Francesco Conti will be joining forces with two very well known companies in the automotive industry: Liberty Walk from Japan and Forgiato Wheels from the USA. The infamous Liberty Walk wide bodykit will be installed on the car starting with round 3, and at the same time the car will be sitting on some breath-taking Forgiato Wheels, a special edition made for Francescos car. The temporary design displayed at round 1 will be changed to something much more eye-catching, a design which will be the work of a famous car graphic designer, who has also designed other extremely well know professional drift cars around the world.
In 2013, things were almost perfect for Francesco Conti in Austria, as he managed to make his way up to the final battle, where a fuel pump issue was basically the only thing standing between him and the number one spot on the podium. With the track already dialled in from last year, and with never-ending ambition and commitment, Francesco Conti went all out during his qualifying runs, unleashing a real symphony of V8 madness over the Greinbach race track. Out of two quite similar qualifying runs, the first one was the best, and with a total of 89,91 points, Francesco just narrowly missed out on 1st place in qualifying, getting 2nd overall out of a total of about 40 drivers. With the telemetry system used by King of Europe, quite a number of interesting facts could be deducted from the qualifying sheet. Francesco Conti had managed to get the Best Attack Speed out of all the drivers, with a top speed of 110kph going into corner 1 of the PS Racing Center. He also got the award for the Best Average Angle, with a total of 35 degrees. With an average speed of 94kph, Francesco came in second in the Best Average Speed Section.
Going into the Top32 battles, most fans had high hopes and some even the certainty that Francesco Conti would be on Top of the podium by the end of the event. After all, he’s been on 7 podiums in 8 events in 2013. In the first battle of the Top32, Francesco Conti had to compete against Matt Campling, a newcomer to King of Europe, but by no means an easy opponent. The three King of Europe judges voted in favor of Francesco in both runs, and so he was on to the Top16. Going up against Manuel Vacca from Italy, people were already expecting to see Francesco Conti advancing to the Top8. And this belief was further strenghtened by the 7-3 Francesco Conti pulled in the first run of the battle. But racing is racing, and especially in drifting, anything can happen at any time. Going off the start line and heading for the first corner, things did not go very natural for Francesco Conti. Seen from the outside, his car just went straight through the first corner, without drifting, which meant he had just lost the battle, making this the worst result ever obtained by Francesco Conti in his history of competing in the King of Europe Series. Later confronted on this subject, Francesco had to say: ” First of all I would like to thank my sponsors for this year, Liberty Walk and Forgiato Wheels for deciding to join my program in King of Europe. The weekend started well for me, and I was of course feeling comfortable with the track, and the car was working perfect, as it usually does. Going into the tandem battles I had to go up against a very good driver from the UK, Matt Campling, and I hope I will be able to meet him again sometime in the near future. About my battle in Top16, this was a really unfortunate happening, as I was unable to initiate into the first corner, because the cable from my intercom got caught up in my harness, and I was unable to turn my head to see where I was going, so that totally left me without any solution but going straight. I am extremely unhappy with this, and I feel like I could’ve won very important points at this event, but I will just come with more determination for future events to make up for this first round. Congratulations to all the extremely skilled drivers that competed at this event, it will be my pleasure to do battle against you this year”.
Round 2 of the Monster Energy King of Europe Drift ProSeries will be held in Italy, this weekend, on the Castelletto di Branduzzo race track, not far from Milano.
For more details about Francesco Conti and his sponsors please follow these pages:
Francesco Conti Official FanPage: HYPERLINK “http://www.facebook.com/FrancescoContiDrift”www.facebook.com/FrancescoContiDrift
Liberty Walk : HYPERLINK “http://www.facebook.com/LibertywalkLBperformance”www.facebook.com/LibertywalkLBperformance
Forgiato Wheels: HYPERLINK “http://www.facebook.com/pages/Forgiato-Wheels/269071476661”www.facebook.com/pages/Forgiato-Wheels/269071476661
Francesco Contis Media Partners for 2014:
EverythingDrift.com : HYPERLINK “http://www.facebook.com/EverythingDrift”www.facebook.com/EverythingDrift
Carswatcher.com : HYPERLINK “http://www.facebook.com/Cars.Watcher”www.facebook.com/Cars.Watcher