Tuesday 14 April 2015

Team tour!!


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Packing light for our team trip to the Gold Coast in the state of Queensland which is about one and half hours flight north of Sydney, we had been planning this trip for a while and we were excited and ready for a full 3 days of rc drift action. Our flight was a 7:05am departure from Sydney domestic airport, it was the cheapest flight available at the time of booking so we took it. 8:30am we touched down at Coolangatta airport and from there we would start our tour to a few of the states local rc drift tracks.




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After a confusing discussion with the car rental company and few extra unknown charges later we were finally able to pack the luggage into our decent sized people mover. Wandi and Toni were the allocated drivers while i was the GPS navigator and erick(dagul rc)!!, well erick just got to chill. from there we headed of to our hotel which was the Hotel Grand Chancellor located right near the beach in surfers paradise, check-in wasn't until 2:30pm, so we dropped in to say we were here and left our number so they could give us call once the room was ready.



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First was a feed since there wasn't a meal on the flight, and because we were on a rc dori trip we decided that this was the perfect place to get some grub.

Anyways thats enough rambling lets get to the tracks and drifting.



DAY 1:
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GCRC RACEWAY is about 20-30 minutes drive from our hotel and it was our first stop on the visit since we had a few hours to kill till we could check-in to our hotel, it gave us time to tune for the new surface. Erick had visited here the year before and had always told us about his experience here, it was good to finally be here so we could get a chance to experience it our selves, the guys here were very welcoming and are some awesome blokes and we couldn't wait to drift with em. 




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Now this track layout is HUGE and the surface is polished concrete or ICEY!!, now the guys here use super grippy tires to help get some traction on this icey surface, but for us we welcomed the super slippery surface with open arms and we chose to use a slippery compound tire compared to what they use, MST red dot CSR or WUN X3 are what they use and for us they were just too grippy for our liking, but i can see why they use them though, on this track there alot of CS or HIGH CS guys, now if you don't follow RE-XTREME you would know that HIGH CS is the norm here, so for the very few RWD guys here they need the extra grip to tandem with the CS guys or to keep up. We decided to use MST CSR GREEN DOT in the rear and MST FRF GOLD DOT in the front and that combination gave us the perfect amount of slip and traction and off-throttle slide to get us around the track consistently, it also complimented our suspension setup which meant we did have to change much of our chassis settings at all which was a good thing, it just meant we had to get use to the layout and bigger space as it tested our senses of having to look much further away.




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This track is full of scale features, trees, grass, flags, sidewalls following all the way around the track, you see an huge scale container, scale view stands, and they've also got little figurines holding flags which act as interesting clipping points placed at certain points of the track, some easy and some are harder, these are great because they really test your skills and concentration, for example if look right up the top of the picture you can see an orange figurine, which is actually hulk hogan holding a flag, now where the pics was taken is exactly where i would be sitting if i was drifting, so the test is can you get close enough and hit the flag with out hitting the wall and spinning out ... it took me fair while but eventually got it .. haha.

this track was totally fun theres so many things to do lap after lap, its such a good training ground.




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A call from the hotel to say our room was ready and we were off again to check-in the luggage. Next up was a visit to MILLENIUM RACEWAY, the track was located in Brisbane and hour and a half drive north of surfers. Now this place is HUGE too, but they actually have 3 tracks in the one .. AWESOME!!. Again we were welcomed by some great guys, i was also able to meet and greet a few guys that i had been talking to from facebook, so it was great to finally meet them face to face.
There wasn't much re-tuning to be done at this spot so we all just stuck to out existing tires compounds and drifted.




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Furthest from the entrance of the venue was this slightly more tighter layout track, it was one of 2 carpets track that they have here and it was the main track of choice, the carpet on this track was slippery and our rwd pace was slow, tokyo city was the main feature on the back wall for scenery which gave a cool feel. Again there are alot more CS guys here than there are RWD, it was alot slower here for some rwd action since the pace of the CSing was faster so it was my least favourite track at this venue, maybe if there was less people i could of gotten some more track time, but there were 2 more other tracks to get feel of, but still a nice layout to drift.




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The second track which was situated in the middle was also a carpet track, now compared to the first one this was alot more grippier and wider and had a faster pace and less people here so there was alot of full throttling and hard trigger squeezing going on at this track for our RWD's, there was enough grip and the perfect amount of slip that it was really hard to spin, i consistently had my left index finger sqeezed up against my MT4s as it flew down the straight and flung into the bend then into the S and then out into the big sweeper up the other end missing the 2 short corners and then back into the straight for some high speed munji ... i was soooo awesome. The only thing that was a set back for me was that this track caused me to blast though both my short lipo's alot quicker, but not before i was able to check out the the 3rd track. I absolutely loved this track!!!




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The last track was the cement track, and this track was meant for some SUPER HIGH SPEED drifting, it had the biggest loooong sweeper as you came into the bend a good amount of space in the middle to switch then switch again and back out again into the SUPER HIGH SPEED BIG ASS long sweeper, i loved this track too, it was simple and super fun like the last carpet track, i remember russ (RE-XTREME) talking about this track and now i know why, russ was there that night, and he absolutely loves this track he spent most of the night here, now for RWD it was alot harder to do what russ was doing on this CS machine, but i was still full loads of fun trying.



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As you can see here the aim of the game was to drift SUPER HIGH SPEED and stay as close to the outer edge as possible for as many laps a possible. I was watching russ and dave go at it for hours, it look like so much fun. I could full punch my throttle on this long sweeper too.




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Back at the hotel room late night after millenium raceway, needing to recharge our batteries and make any small adjustments for the next day which will be back at GCRC, we made this table our work station.


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All 4 chassis ready for the next 2 days of hard out RWDing.



DAY 2:
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The next day and we are back at GCRC arriving at about 11:30-12noon russ was already there and good old Wes was there too, there weren't to many drivers this day so it meant we could get a decent amount of track time, like 6-7 hours to get out chassis really dialled in especially because we were all competing in the twin drifting at the 4door fest the next day. 6-7 hours of continuous drifting can be exhausting to the brain and tiring on the eyes so a few breaks here and there were needed and in that time i was able to have a good chat to russ, wes, arun and the other usual guys of GCRC. 




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During my drift break i was able to take a quick shot of this collection, now Wes is a top bloke and he absolutely loves this hobby and according to him its the best hobby he's been into and i can definitely agree with him there, Wes loves it so much that he has multiple shells and chassis that he brings all of them with  him to the track each and every single time and this guys makes the drive past 2 other tracks in brissy including Millenium just to get to GCRC, thats dedication.




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This shot needs no introduction into who owns these ... 




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And neither does shot ... one of the few beast that we all know that russ has but the one thing that i was very keen to see was his newly acquired custom layout DRB now i didn't take any shots of this but if you don't follow RE-XTREME then heres the link.




DAY3:
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So our last day was back at GCRC for the 4door festa and ONE10.RCDT love 4doors, so were so excited to hold our own little body comp with prizes at this 4door meet, now i know RE-XTREME covered most of this event but heres a few shots through my eyes.




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We were super impressed by the turn out.

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A team the drifts together, HARD PARKS together.

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So many colours.

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Now thats a meet.

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line em up proper.

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Reping our custom ONE10.RCDT plates from WUN.

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IROHA style feel to our shells.

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A meet is nothings with the cops lurking around to make sure things are in order.

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One of my personal favs. Jade who owns this is a very good high cs drifter, smooth and consistent as i watch him smash the track with easy, kinda makes it easy to get alot of practice in when you work at the track, but his shell is amazing.

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Mixture or jdm, muscle and euro 4doors.

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All the parking spots were taken so cars took on the fashionably late parking spots.

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Winging it.

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This yokomo MKII came abit late after i was taking pictures, but i definitely made the effort to find George-san a 70yr old Jap dude and kindly asked him if i could take a pic, this is another one of my favs and he actually came 3rd in our ONE10.RCDT body comp, congrats george-san.

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This tetsujin CROWN won our ONE10.RCDT No.1 shell for the 4door festa, love the colour.

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4DOOR FESTA was a total success, thanks to russ and GCRC, we met alot of very very cool blokes and some great drifters too, oh! and me and wandi took out 3rd place in the twin battles but i can't forget to also congratulate the rest of the other winners which included avoca drift shed who took out  second in our body comp, we made a few ore friends in this hobby and it was good to put a few more names to faces from facebook. If you ever get a chance to make it to Queensland and your into rc drift be sure to visit GCRC RACEWAY or MILLENIUM RACEWAY, there are some top blokes at these tracks. Our 3 days of rc drifting was at an end and our flight was at 8:25pm the day of the 4DOOR FESTA .... i actually felt super exhausted, with the amount of cars on the track it was impossible sometimes to get a decent lap in, i'm actually glad i chilled out before the twin battles otherwise i wouldn't been able to concentrate .. haha ... but i think a combination of all 3days of hard out drift could of contributed ... need more endurance .. lol.

Me, erick, wandi and tony had a awesome time, wish we had more ... but i think we may make another trip next year but this time go for a week.
But all in all its just another example of KDF and how this rc drift hobby can bring good friends together.


1 comment:

  1. Suburb read as usual! GCRC is definitely on my bucket list of places to visit, If only meets like these excited in my local area.

    ReplyDelete