Luke's review from Drift Australia round 2

After a long 22 hour drive and a coming together with a kangaroo, we finally made the trip from Adelaide to Queensland. Myself (Luke), Glenn (pit crew, mobile mechanic), Jack (photographer) and Chris (also competing in super drift) all had a big weekend ahead of us. We arrived at the track on Friday morning to find our spot, take the Cefiro off the trailer, and start preparing her for one of the hardest driven weekends ever.

I was lucky enough to get out on track for an hour for a testing / practice session. This turned out to be a very valuable hour, as the next hour was spent sorting out suspension issues that arose while on track. There was no time to rest on Friday night, as changing a manifold gasket on Chris’ new S13, which arrived 5 hours late, took longer than expected.

Saturday morning was a huge rush, as times at the track got mixed up, which meant Glenn and I had to get the car ready for scruitineering even quicker than we thought.

1st lap of the day, I came in too tight into turn 2, causing the front bar and headlight to be no longer. Cooler pipe issues also held us back early in the day, yet everybody at Express Parts made sure that I had what I needed to get me back out on track.

Qualifying 15th showed that I may have been able to take out a podium spot, yet there were many names I had to knock out before we could think about any sort of Trophy.

After taking out Gilbert in my 1st battle 13 to 7, I was also confident with my next battle against Cummings, yet one mistake from him found me taking the inside line, which then resulted in me getting hit in the back right quarter panel.  I managed to hold the drift but got hit once again by Cummings on turn 2, sending me into the dirt, and leaving me with the nickname “Smash n Bash Broadbent”. Fortunately the judges were watching closely, and I won the battle 20 to 0. The next battle was against Pass, driving a R31 which I had a soft spot for. But I came to QLD promising myself that I wouldn’t back down, also knocking out Pass 17 to 3, and losing to Coote for top 2 15 – 5.  I had a big battle ahead of me against Mounfield in the Mercury Motorsport R32. After a very messy battle on cold tyres due to having no warm up laps, Mounfield took the win in a close battle 13.5 – 6.5. This left me with a deserved 4th position finish, and now on the Super Drift point score in 9th position.

I will be back for round 3 at Mallala Motorsport Park on the 24th and 25th of May.

Thank you to Will from Express parts for his help on the day, and all of my other sponsors for their help making the trip to QLD worthwhile.

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