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!