My Star Drift Experience – Part 2: Practise Session

Saturday, the day that was all about practise for the Star Drift drivers, me and the rest of the guys (yes, there’s a total of 7 of us, all slept in 1 room) woke up early, Ronald and his students had to left early to the car park to stand by at the registration booth, that’s their working spot.  Mr. Ngan, also left real early to make sure the track is ready for the day.  Yoong and I arrived at the track much later, while Yoong was walking around the track making sure the track meets his requirements, I was basically hanging out with Ronald and his students, we chatted for a while and had this for breakfast:

Roti Canai

Soon after I finished my breakfast, the first car arrives, and it wasn’t a drift car either, it’s the ‘mechanic-mobile’ from Team Bridgestone!

Bridgestone Van

The next to arrive was Team Sync Optima, Ariff and his wife, Jane.  Here you can see that Ariff and Jane were driving on the track to familiarize with the slightly different layout from the previous rounds.

Sync Optima reviewing the track

This is Mr. Ngan’s personal transporter, loaded with all the Star Drift ‘stuffs’.

Mr. Ngan and his transporter

And here was him just finished briefing with the marshalls, they’re the same people that arranged the tires on the previous day.

The Marshalls

The car park now looks more like a drift track now, thanks to those banners, and flags, haha!

Advert Banners

Star Drift Challenge

The DCM Flags

The Starting Line

The Judges Booth

Just when everyone was complaining about how late the trailer was, the 1st trailer arrived at around 8:30am.

The 1st trailer to arrive

The 1st Trailer

And then came the 2nd and 3rd trailer, the unloading of the drift cars began…

The 2nd trailer

The 2nd Trailer

Bridgestone van came over to unload Djan's 180sx

The 3rd Trailer

All 3 trailers parked side by side

Jane's car was the 1st to be unloaded

Even the Elephants decided to come out and check Jane out!

Cars unloaded from the trailer

Drift for Peace!

The morning weather looked pretty cloudy and there’s actually some raindrops but thank god for the wind, the cloud was gone in no time and the sun was bright again.

Dark clouds

There were some very close calls while unloading the cars, here you can see an AE86’s front wheel has gotten off the ramp, and wood blocks have to be used to prevent damage.

Close calls

Once all the cars have been unloaded, it was time for some drifting , yes!  Here you can see Yoong moving his spare wheels from his Dunlop R32.

Yoong rolling his wheels to the pits

Mr. K's AE86, super cool fella and very fast drifting!

I tried to help Yoong as much as I could, during the process, more drift cars arrived, this time it’s the old schoolers from MS Auto Garage, or Project S, led by Lok Sifu, the great AE70 drifter in Red.

Rat-look KE70?

White AE70

White AE70's interior

White AE70's engine bay

Green Goblin?

Green Goblin rocking 4AGE

Here are a few more car pictures that I snapped:

Djan's 180sx driven to the pit area

Nice rear view of the car

Cockpit, all business!

The big UMPH! Engine

Ivan Lau's NOS'ed Levin Coupe

Ivan's powerful 4AGE

Bridgestone Booth

Sync Optima's Booth

Black Trueno with very nice TE37s

A closer look on the best wheels in the world

Black KE70 with deep dished wheels

Another green car, an AE86 Levin.

Nice Vinyls! Is that a game character?

While most of the cars have gone down to practise, I asked Yoong when will he drive his R32 too, and he answered “ok, let’s go.” straightaway, goodie!

Me in the passenger seat of the Dunlop R32

I didn’t snap any pictures or videos during the ride, but all I can say is, Yoong’s Dunlop R32 was suffering an unknown power/fuel cut problem, which forced him to return to the pit for further inspection:

Yoong trying to diagnose the problem

Yoong couldn’t fix the problem without any spares available, so he actually drove all the way back to KL just to get more spare parts to fix his R32 fuel problem!  Just when I thought I’m gonna have the time of my life in his R32, his car decided to gave us this annoying problem which basically shattered my excitement and expectations!  That also means that I ain’t going to drive his R32 for the rest of the day~ Damn! T_T

Aside from the disappointing mishap of the R32, I continued on with my day snapping pictures of the people and cars that were there, since I wasn’t able to provide any help to Yoong (I suck at 4AGE, and that means RB20det would be pretty ALIEN to me, LOL!)

Hardworking drifter

The old school gang from MS Auto Garage were very persistent and hardworking, they arrived at the place morning and they immediately started drifting, non stop, from morning till evening, check out their stack of tires (this was like only half of them, they’re still unloading) and the Air Compressor for tire changing needs:

Stack of tires

So many Long Champs, sluuurrrp!!

2 Air Compressors for faster and easier tire changing!

More car pictures for your viewing pleasure (no SLR here, so hope you don’t mind the crappier photos):

Micheal Gan's Good Year Skyfiro

Rear view of the Skyfiro

Skyfiro's cockpit

Purple Levin AE86

Side view of the Purple Levin

It's neat Engine

Orange Corona

Lowyai's A31 Cefiro

And probably one of the flashiest looking car in the event, the FXOPEN Silvia S15 driven by Rudy Norman, he and his brother Johan, whom was driving the Laurel (which won 2nd place in FD Singapore 2009) were both strongly supported by their parents, and I do mean that their parents actually attended most of their son’s events, now that’s some cool parent you have there!

Rudy's FXOPEN S15

Yummilicious wheels!

This particular 350z right here was also from FXOPEN, though not a competition car, it is still looking real sexy with the GTR wheels.

FXOPEN 350Z

The cooler part about this Fairlady was that it’s riding on air suspensions, so that means that the car can be drop so bloody LOW, check it out:

Low rider Fairlady

Here’s the 2 cool looking FXOPEN cars parked next to each other, both of them have lambo-doors:

FXOPEN rides

This is Ah Lung (if I’m not mistaken), one of Mr. Ngan’s faithful crew, here you can see him adjusting the tires after being hit several times by the practising drifters.

Ah Lung, former drifter as well.

Early afternoon, the Prince of Drift, Tengku Djan finally arrived, he looked really relaxed too.

Tengku Djan arrived in the afternoon

And this was what he rolled in, the ever sexy Aristo with 2JZ twin turbo under the hood, hawt dayummn!!

Aristo 2JZ

BBS Rims

Rear view of Djan's street Aristo

Ivan Lau also arrived a while later in his street spec panda AE86 trueno.

Ivan carrying spare tires out from his car

Ivan's street spec Trueno Panda AE86

More hot rides arrived in the afternoon.

Nissan powered KE70

Blue 180sx

A super clean R34 Skyline

More Silvia 180sx

Some nice cars in the parking lot too

Turbocharged widebody KE70 and 180sx

Advan AE86 driven by Ah Heng

And now let’s look at some random drifting pictures, again, these are pretty crappy:

Lok Sifu ripping the track with his trusty AE70

Ivan Lau in action!

The air suspension 350z been drifted by Rudy himself

Drifters laughed about their damages, it's all good fun.

Some got too carried away they forgot to fill up their tanks

It's back in action after filling up the tank

Tsuiso practises

Djan nailing the outer clipping point with plenty of smoke

Here you can see Yoong still busy repairing his R32, changing specific parts one by one, and test driving it everytime he changed a part, all failed in the end though, he got frustrated in the end that he decided its best to just leave the car there, and just focus on tomorrow’s judging, hey, I was pretty frustrated too… sigh…

Yoong still trying to figure out what's wrong with his R32

Drifters are always willing to help each other out when they are in trouble, here is a mechanic from Team Bridgestone lending a Timing Gun to Yoong to diagnose his RB20det.

Drifter's helping out

Oh look! Mr. K even brought out a miniature version of his blue AE86, it’s a RC car, just look at how much the kids loved it, haha~

R/C cars

Goodyear R/C car

While Yoong was busy on his car, Jane and Djan both dropped by for a little chat.

Auntie's talk?

Djan came for a bit of chit chat

When I said Hi to Djan, he remembered me as the StanleyCarter in the DCM forums, the following conversation took place…

Djan:”Hey~ You’re the StanleyCarter that does the LFS Star Drift right~?”

Me:”Haha yeah~!”

Djan:”Yea, my brother joined your competition before!”

Haha~ pretty awesome, when I’m done with this coverage, I’m going to do another Star Drift for LFS next weekend, hopefully Ezan (Djan’s brother) would join again this time.

Here's me and Djan taking a photo

A condom!? Guess somebody were having a good F*ck in this car park on the previous night, haha!

Condom in a drift event?

The coolest thing about being in a drift event is that, you can see the commitment that the drifters have, when their cars have any issues, they’d try to fix it on the spot, the most impressive feat I’ve seen with my own eyes was Ariff swapping a new gear box for his Onevia since his current one was blown during practise in the morning!  Even his wife, Jane, was also sick, and her car was also having some wiring issues.  But all of those were fixed overnight, now that’s commitment, mad respect to the Star Drift drifters!

Ariff and his team swapping gearbox overnight

As night falls, all drifters started to pack up and take rest at the A’Famosa bungalows, a very good sight is that this actually caused the place to look like a dream neighborhood to live in, just look at the following pictures, it looks like a dream place to be for drift enthusiasts, where all your neighbors are drifters with the drift machines parked outside, haha!

Dorifuto Neighborhood

Dorifuto Neighborhood

Joe Han also arrived during the evening as he was the one that brought the spare gearbox for Ariff, Yoong, his wife, Joe Han and me went to a shop in Melaka to have the Satay Celup:

Satay Chulu

It was hot, spicy and real good!  Definitely a first time for me, that’s for sure!

After the dinner, we headed to the famous Jonkers Walk:

Melaka Jonker's Walk

Big stage with senior uncle aunties singing and dancing

We had some Dragon Fruit + Lychee juice in a small cafe that was situated in a small lane.

Limau Limau Cafe

Dragon Fruit + Lychee

At around 11:30pm, we headed back to our bungalow and take rest, I was real sleepy by then so went into dreams real quick, despite the fact that I’m actually sleeping with Joe Han, sharing a bed…. LOL!

… Coming up next, the Championship battles!

And probably one of the flashiest looking car in the event, the FXOPEN Silvia S15 driven by Rudy Norman, he and his brother Johan, whom was driving the Laurel (which won 2nd place in FD Singapore 2009) were both strongly supported by their parents, and I do mean that their parents actually attended most of their son’s events, now that’s some cool parent you have there!

Rudy's FXOPEN S15

Yummilicious wheels!

This particular 350z right here was also from FXOPEN, though not a competition car, it is still looking real sexy with the GTR wheels.

FXOPEN 350Z

The cooler part about this Fairlady was that it’s riding on air suspensions, so that means that the car can be drop so bloody LOW, check it out:

Low rider Fairlady