22 juli 2012, 00:34
The smell of tiresmoke from the Final 16 at Tierp Drift Challenge is still fresh on our clothes, and we’re getting you up to date with a summary right here right now!
This was probably Swedens most prestigeous Drift competition yet, set at the newly built TIERP ARENA– you just couldn’t ask for better ingredients to showcase the sport.
Pictures are screenshots filmed by Daniel ”O’SNAP” Hovdahl for us, and we hope top present a few finished videos in the near future with the best from this event. Enjoy!
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Qualification:
In three qualifying attempts you had your two best results place you into a classic ”top vs bottom” format. Only the Top 16 qualified, and suddenly people knew you had to be sharp from the first practice to get somewhere.
Kudos to the Swedish Motorsport Federation who decided on this format, as the competetive part of drifting up to this point in Sweden has been a little ”undemanding” on the drivers.
Therfor some were unfortunate, like our buddy Andreas Jansson in his Bad Ass Parts sponsored S13; who discovered his turbo had crapped out in the first run… and then an all-nighter later stood on the line without practice and eventually missed out.
Better luck next time mate!
Our own Superior Drift debut was of mixed results. Daniel Asp in the Rocket Bunny LS2 powered S14 drive ran solidly.
When he had already posted two runs that would take him on, he decided to ”crazy up” a bit and actually put on quite a show picking out each clipping point like a champ (although unintentially and just on the wrong side of margin):
Another big incident during qualifiers was ”Tokan” of Raidopower and a harsh backwards crash into the concrete wall.
In the corner of my eye, and it didn’t seem bad at first; but after some pit heroics straightening it out- he was lucky not more was busted in the drivetrain etc. Look at the carnage!
Damn impressed by this VW Golf with a V8 driven by a Mr. Björck, whose brother is a driver in the TTA Elite league of racing:
Apparantly driving skills run in this family, and the car itself had many people more then impressed…
At this moment the best we could get in order to follow the qualifying was this pic of the Top 16 tree.
So just click the picture and make out the best you can from it!
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Top 16:
For the finals I actually drew the short straw of the whole spectators experience, just seeing plenty of the big corner action and not the final more technical part.
The idea for the layout was for it to be totally dedicated for the huge rafters of audience, and I definately think they got their moneys worth.
Drivers were also extremely positive, Johan ”Hollywood” Halvarsson said he really had the ”time of his life” driving here.
Big positive words coming from the by far most established and respected ”semi-pro” drifter we have in Sweden…
Too bad our own Thompa Pettersson had to run into him as the opener, but he refused to be a sacrifical lamb and put up a decent fight in especially the first run- but ”Hollywood” passed on deservedly.
Upsets along the way were few, some established drivers like Mikael ”wunderbaum” Svensson spun out, while birthday boy ”Mad Mange” Magnusson gave us the hardest crash of the weekend:
We really hope he will with the aid of sponsors get his custom built Opel Calibra together very soon. Always big fans of something different…
Daniel Asp also spun out misjudging his speed trying to catch up northerner Jim Olofsson in his E30 BMW. They did in our humble opionion bring us the tightest follow-up run though:
Rounding things of here, the final four consisted of the following:
Daniel Björk (VW Golf V8) vs ”Tokan” of Raidopower
Johan Halvarsson S15 2JZ vs Dennis Martinsson Mercedes E190
Controversy in the judging of the first semi, but series leader ”Tokan” eventually advanced after a ”one more time”- while Halvarsson made short work of Dennis ”Dempa” Martinssons very nice sounding Merc Turbo to get to the final battle.
In there we saw ”Hollywood” yet again live up to his ”the best drifter in Sweden” epithomy, and all we can do is to ask ourselves how long ”Tokan” can cling on to his POWERDRIFT SERIES lead before the ”blacksmith” catches up…
(From the right: Daniel Bjørck, Johan ”Hollywood” Halvarsson and ”Tokan” of Raidopower Motorsport).
Conclusion:
Was this indeed the future of Swedish Drifting, at a ”bite size”? The crowd of almost 1500 people would be fools to disagree, and it truly goes both ways that TIERP ARENA with their big league facilities matched well with a up and coming Motorsport such as drifting.
We would like to thank the entire event staff, from the manager Emelie Carlswärd to every member of the staff who worked at the event. We were professionally treated at every little inch of the event.
From getting coffee to the press room to getting humble free time at the track to shoot some promo for both the arena and ourselves:
Also a thumbs up to the Swedish Motorsport Federation officialls, who are proving everyone wrong in being ”stuck in the past”. They did the formal running of the event at the track with time to spare at every block of the schedule. A l l weekend!
More of this please, keep up the good work everyone involved these two days!
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