Team XFORCE International Drift Challenge Wrap Up
Team XFORCE finished 7th overall at World Time Attack Challenge's Tectaloy International Drift Challenge. What a wild weekend of Drift for Nick & Team XFORCE.
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Our weekend didn't start too well with our 6.8lt Engine loosing oil pressure on the 3rd practice lap. We didn’t want to risk damaging it so we decided on swapping in a donor engine on the Friday morning. A big thanks to Matty Mingay for the loan of his spare engine & Kent from Hi-Torque Performance for putting it in & also Powertune Australia for lending us their workshop. Seriously without these 3 guys we would probably be on our way home early. Now with an engine 100kw down on our stroker Nick had to make every bit of this donor engine work & still chasing an intermittent power steering issue he defiantly had his work cut out for him.
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Qualifying went well & he put in some good laps but somehow the scores were tallied up wrong & they used Nick's lowest score (222) for his battle position & not the (240) from his second run. We didn't find this out until after the top 32 which Nick won a close battle against Jason Ferron putting Nick through to the main game on Saturday Night.
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The Next battle was against Number 1 Qualifier Tsutomu "The Terminator" Fujio & D1 GRAND PRIX SERIES Driver. This was always going to be a hard battle let alone with the hurdles the last few days had given him, but Nick being the true battler he went out & gave it his all. Nick was all over Tsutomu right from the first entry & didn't let go all the way to the finish line. This is where a bit of controversy happened, as Tsutomu Crossed the finish line he back off quite aggressively & with 1600kg of VE Commodore on his Door Nick only just managed to pull it up giving Tsutomu a slight kiss after the finish line. This was apparently enough of a hit to send him into the kitty litter & had to wait to be pulled out by a recovery vehicle. This was not in a judged area & didn't affect the battle scores.
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Tsutomu then called 5 minutes mechanical while his team check over the vehicle & soon came out for the rest of the battle. Nick took the lead & threw the VE hard into the first corner with Tsutomu close on entry but as they transitioned into the second corner Tsutomu had a correction & lost some ground & couldn't get back on Nick's door awarding the win to Nick. This was a huge victory for Nick to beat a Driver of his calibre with the issues he had.
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Through to the Top 8 now against fellow Aussie Michael Prosenik in his V8 S13. Nick gave chase & was on Michael's door on entry but lost ground as the lighter and more powerful S13 transition into the 2nd corner leaving a gap that Nick couldn't close. On the switch around Michael took position on Nick's door & pushed him all the way to the finish line awarding Michael the win. Finishing in 7th overall with the issues we had was an amazing effort from Nick & we were all ecstatic with the result.
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A big congratulations to Nick, who dove great all weekend & handled yourself with an amazing amount of professionalism from a weekend of controversy on & off the track. Well done!
Links:
www.xforce.com.au
