At 8-9 of May, me and my team traveled to Ireland for the 1st round of Drift Masters European Championship. It was a very long trip with lot of tiredness and pressure. We arrived at the venue after a tough 3 days trip and we were ready for some action on the track. On the Friday we had some practice runs on wet-dry conditions. Then I had a big opportunity to chase the best drift driver in the world, James Deane. We took some data of the track and the car. Saturday was the qualification day. In practice, the car was feeling a bit strange and after some practice runs and some thinking, I understood that something was happening with the toe of the front suspension of the car. And that was the real issue. The car had some toe in instead of having toe out. After we fixed it, I made only one practice run and after it was the qualification. In my 1st run of qualification, I did a safe run and I took 79 points. In the second one I pushed too hard and I got on the gravel scoring a zero. I passed to the TOP 32 and I was against Kalle Rovanpera, current point leader in WRC. In the 1st run I was chasing. On the first meters of the start line he was slower than I expected, so I was a bit off throttle and some milliseconds later he was on full power and me in the Turbo lag, so he gapped me a bit in the straight line. However, on the 1st transition I managed to catch him and push him to the finish line. In the second run, I had to go 100% and I had a very good lead run but just some meters before the finish line I ran out of tires and my car just span. That was also the end f the race for us and our experience of Drift Masters. It was a great experience we learned something more from that mistake, we will make some small changes on the car and we will be ready for the next round in Austria!
Stay tuned!
