My 1st ever Touge Experience!

Sorry for the delay, was real busy from the last few weeks, anyhow, I’ve posted a preview on the day that I got back from KL, and here’s my full post on my experience to the Genting Touge.

One of my initial plans on the Star Drift trip was hoping to sit in Yoong’s HKS Hiper DCM S13 and experience it’s raw power on the AFamosa track, but unfortunately the owner (Yoong) did not brought his car down to Melaka, so I’ve missed my chance… BUT, on that night while we’re on our way back to KL after having our dinner at Pizza Hut, Yoong offered me a ride in his Silvia up genting in midnight… well you guessed it, how can I say NO!? LOL!

At around 12:20pm, I was already waiting at the outside of my brother’s apartment gates, Yoong’s monster Silvia can be heard before I could even see it’s headlights.  Few seconds later, the car was parked right in front of me, I climbed into it and it took me 5 minutes just to get myself properly buckled up, with the help from Yoong in the process, I’m such a noob, LOL!

The drive from my apartment to the Genting mountain pass feels like a Wangan ride for me, due to the fact that there’s much less traffic during midnight, and how ‘fast’ Yoong was actually going, and speaking of the ‘wangan’ trip, man…. the Silvia’s acceleration was simply… atstounding!  When Yoong presses the gas, the car simply rocketed into hyperspace… well okay that was way too exaggerating, but you get my idea, the feel of the acceleration was awesome, everything else on the highway just seemed so slow at the time.  Now the last time I sat in this car was many years ago when it was in the yellow phoenix livery, the car was badly damaged during the 1st ever D1GPMY round in Bukit Jalil… the car was then sent to Singapore and been rebuilt into the current monster, when the car was rebuilding, I was already back to Sibu, and living my very own life.  It was pretty obvious that the car that I’m sitting in now has absolutely no similarities to the old ‘phoenix’, and man was that difference mind boggling!

With only 30 minutes or so, we’ve already on our climb up to the Genting highlands.  Now the highspeed drive was awesome, but on the twisty roads of Genting touge, it was way better!  Yoong told me the car was currently in a more grippy setting, so he won’t be drifting much on our way up to Genting.. hey I’m cool with that!  But for 1 thing, I certainly wasn’t prepared for the sheer speed and G force that this Silvia could achieve at the corners!  I mean, seriously, Yoong was basically charging into corners at speeds that no normal man would ever imagined to attempt, everytime he tackles the corner, my mind kept telling me that we’re gonna lose it and die!  But no, how wrong was I, the Silvia kept on the roads and accerelates out of the corner like it was on rails!  There was no oversteer, no understeer, the car simply turns in and exits the corner without breaking a sweat! The brakes were also incredible, when it almost feels as if we’re gonna miss the corner, a tap of the brakes and the car slows down immediately, a big thanks to the CF brake pads.  All of these happened so fast I couldn’t spare a milisecond to blink my eyes as I just didn’t want to miss everything, haha!

While I was holding tight on the ‘Oh Shit’ handle and enjoying the touge ride, suddenly Yoong decided that he wanted to drift and connect some of the corners, when he told me to brace myself, I actually grinned…. “It’s about damn time!” LOL!  A right hand turn comes up real fast, Yoong charges into the corner, yanks the Ebrake, and completes the viscous drift, having to experience a super fast Touge attack plus a few drifts mixed in the process, this was definitely the ride of my life!  It’s amazing how this car handles on these roads, and this really shows how much work had been put in this car to make it handle this well, the handling IMO, was so out of this world!

After a while, we’ve finally reached the top, the car was parked in front of  StarBucks for a short breather, which it attracted a lot fo the Genting officials:

Genting StarBucks

Yoong and his Silvia were definitely not strangers to them, while they were busy admiring the monster machine, they kept requesting Yoong to drift on the spot!  Yoong declined of course, the officials were kinda disappointed, but Yoong did let them hear a few engine revs before we took off, it was loud! LOL!

I’m not gonna write much, but the downhill was as fun and exciting as the uphill, if not more.  The fun only lasted a short while since the downhill traffic was kinda busy, so we have to take it slow and easy.  When we finally reached the bottom, we had another stop rest at the gas station, by then I was already feeling a little bit uncomfortable, Yoong asked if I needed a drink, I told him no, cause I know if I consume anything at that time, I’d probably puke’em in the car later, ROFL!!

Petrol Station

I reached home at 2am++, the entire Genting touge experience only took us 2 hours!  Pretty amazing.

Aside from my Star Drift experience, this Touge experience that I’ve just experienced, was definitely heaps better than the entire Star Drift!  It’s something that I will never forget for the rest of my life, and thanks to Yoong for making my trip so much worthwhile!

My Star Drift Experience – Part 3: The Competition

Sunday morning was still practise, but before that, I went with Joe Han, Ah Heng and a friend of his to the local market for some breakfast.

While we were there, Ah Heng and his friend asked me about the  Sarawak car scene, not much to talk about as we only have a drag event in Miri.  While we were chatting along, he also mentioned how much he preferred Star Drift for it’s grassroot nature, less politics bullshit to be exact, he agrees that the bigger the event, the more f*cking politics that would come into play, and that throws some of the drifters off.  One thing Ah Heng said was that, as a drifter himself, he would try to support an event as much as possible, just like the DCM fellas who have supported and organized drifting events throughout the years, without people like Yoong, Mr. Ngan, and the rest of the drifters, there wouldn’t be an event to start with, it’s a close community, and everyone should really support and help each other out, so that we can enjoy better drifting in future.  Mad respect to Ah Heng for that.

After breakfast, it was time to head back to A’Famosa car park for more drifting, here you can see Yoong and Joe Han at the judges stand looking upon the drifter’s practise runs.

Joe Han and Yoong

Then after a while, Sean finally arrived, he didn’t practised much, but he did spent some time talking cock with his good’ol buddies, haha!

Sean chatting with Joe Han

Joe Han acted as a temporary Emcee for the morning practise session, looked like he made Mr. K very happy too:

Joe Han as Emcee

Drifters were really going at it in the morning session, despite the fact that it was way hotter than Saturday.

Vincent Lim the Crazy Drifter

Old school gang bang!

Silvia Battoru!

Some cars only arrived in the morning, like Johan’s Laurel for example:

GoodYear Laurel

The engine bay

The cockpit view

Here is Rudy’s S15 resting in it’s pits with the RTM guys filming the interior, and here you can see it’s ‘flashy’ Engine bay as well.

FXOPEN S15 in the pits

FXOPEN Silvia Flashy Engine bay

The 'black horse' Along's red A31

Also spotted this clean Chaser with 1JZ:

Nice Chaser

Then out of no where, this Fast’n’Furious styled 350Z showed up, very eye catchy that’s for sure.

KL DK?

The first briefing starts at 11:30am, and here is Yoong and Mr. Ngan going through the drivers list in the Elgrand.

Yoong and Ngan reviewing the drivers list

The Bridgestone drivers and Michael from Good Year finally showed up late in the morning, just before the briefing started.

Djan, Ivan and Michael

Here’s a picture of the briefing session in progress, there were much less drifters this time, I think it was below 40, pretty big difference as compared to the previous events.

Yoong briefing the drivers before qualifying

Judging and Scoring explained

Djan been interviewed by RTM reporters

After the briefing session was over, it was back to drifting again, Siew Kin, Yoong’s wife, took out her SLR and walked towards the center of the track and started snapping pictures of the drifts, be sure to check out the DCM coverage, which should be up within these few days.

Siew Kin snapping pics like a pro

There were quite a few photographers on site, Joe Han was also shooting some of his own in the track as well.

Joe Han taking pictures too

After the practise session was over, it was time for qualifying, Yoong assigned me a pretty simple task, which is to make sure the traffic at the starting line stays in proper order, in other hand, I’ll be assisting Joe Han in the process since he’s the main coordinator at the Starting point.

Yoong:"Stan, here, time to work!"

I was given this list and to make sure that all Ace drivers get to perform their runs before the Novice drivers do.

Driver's list

My view at the starting line

I enjoyed working with Joe Han, he seemed like a joker most of the time, but he’s serious when he’s at work, being at the starting line also allows me to get real close with the cars, and lemme tell you, those old school cars with 4AGE, are the  loudest bunch!

Aside from having to run around looking for missing drivers under the hot blazing sun, the qualifying session went smoothly, the 2nd briefing started soon afterwards.

Drifters looking pretty relax during briefing

Drifters trying to clear out some doubts with Judge Yoong

Once the briefing was over, it’s rock’n’roll, the moment everyone has been waiting for, the Best 16 Tsuiso battles!

Since I was again assigned as the result messenger at the place where the judging ends, I didn’t get to snap any pics, but that doesn’t really matter since there would be plenty of great pictures to be posted on DCM later.

I have to admit, being able to stand right at the middle of the track, with 2 menacing drift cars stopping in front of you while the drivers staring at you at the same time, was quite an experience, haha!  But hey, I loved it, especially when I get to tell the drivers its a ONE MORE TIME!  Awesome~

The finalists, Along and Ivan

One of the bigger surprises of the Best 16 battles was that Djan did not advanced to the finals, he was beaten by Ariff after a one more time, both of them put up a great battle but Djan made a slight mistake which caused him the defeat.

As seen in the picture above, Ivan Lau and Along were the finalist, Ivan has been driving great the whole day, and he’s absolutely unstoppable at Tsuiso battles.  In the end, it was Ivan who has claimed victory in round 3.

Along been congratulated by his friends

Mr. Ngan giving Ivan a big hug

Ivan catching a breather after the tough battles

The prize giving ceremony was a lot of fun, usually only the biggest winner gets the ‘water treatment’, but this time, basically all drivers that get awarded were being splashed, check out some of the funnier moments that I managed to snap:

Prize Giving Ceremony

Prize Giving Ceremony

Prize Giving Ceremony

Prize Giving Ceremony

No umbrella can save you, Ivan.

Prize Giving Ceremony

Prize Giving Ceremony

Ivan trying to ambush Yoong!

Looks like a bukakke session, LOL!

Drifter's tradition - gay hug

Me and Ivan

This was how the place looked like when the event is finished, what a mess.

Messy

Drivers packing up their stuffs and cars been loaded back up to their respective trailers, ready to go home.

Going home~

I followed Yoong, Siew Kin, Sean and 2 of his friends to Pizza Hut for dinner, according to Siew Kin, Pizza is always what they had for dinner after every Star Drift event.

Me, Siew Kin and Yoong

At the end of the day, I got pretty much exhausted, it’s been a long time since I’ve been exposed under the hot sun for such a long period of time, if it weren’t for my overused sunblock lotion, I could’ve been sun burnt, which fortunately I did not, but then, having to watch our local drifters performing their best at this large track was very much worth it.

Despite the fact that the number of participants has dropped, I still had a great time!  I get to witness how much our local drift scene has grown and improved.

I can still remember many years back, everyone were still drifting at Shah Alam with nothing more than 2nd gear stuffs, but now, most of the drivers can initiate at much faster and much further, it was a great joy to watch them pushing their limits.

Again, my awesome Star Drift experience wouldn’t be complete without the help of Yoong, a.k.a MrNismo from DCM and his lovely wife, Siew Kin, my deepest gratitude to the both of them for the great hospitality (hey I get to sleep with both Mr. Ngan and Joe Han, LOL!), my 3 days trip were simply fantastic!

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