It has taken a while to write this as i have been cooked from the beautiful weather down in Devon at the weekend! Walton drove the Garage-D (ex-Street Candy) ER34 at the Motorsport Family fun day in aid of Help For Heroes, while Julian was judging the second round of the BDC Pro Competition in Silverstone. With Julian casting his knowledgeable eye over the talent in British drifting it was up to Walton to fly the flag for Garage-D at RAF Chivenor.

The trip began with myself, Roisin ( my other half) and young Smith leaving Garage-D in Watford to pick up the Aussie Drift Legend Mr Luke Fink and his soon to be “Number One Single” selling girlfriend Jacqueline Rajić down at Severnside Imports in Lydney. With the R34 loaded, the BMW full of fuel and Walton full of energy drinks we were on our way. We picked up the Aussies after 1am and continued down to JDM Garage in Devon. The journey was filled with stories of Lukes’ exploits in Australia as he made his way to becoming the champion of the Australian Drift Series, i felt like i was stuck in an episode of  Neighbours after a while with Walton’s New Zealand accent starting to show through as well as Lukes’ Australian!! Luckily we made it to Devon without running into any “Roos” or “Dingos” on the way!

After some kip in a local B&B we were up and heading to RAF Chivenor for the day. All i can say is Factor 30 Sun Cream FTW!!

The event was much larger than we had expected and in its first year is already looking to be one of the main events for motor sport in Devon in future. The runway was still open during the whole event which made for some very interesting moments with planes taking off as we were making our way around to the pits for the Drift Demo. Having this in your rear view mirror doesn’t help though……

Also having to catch a glimpse of the legend that is Paul Howard from JDM Garage can be slightly un-nerving  ( especially when he caused us to get only 3 hours sleep the night before – THANKS PAUL )

The demo was to run three times and would include Walton in the ER34, Luke Fink in the JDM Garage AE86, Brad in the Dragon Performance RX7 and Martin in the AE86 Corolla. With the sun baking the strip it made for some serious smokey drifts and sun burned Irish!

Brad in the RX7 was pulling off some very smooth driving and really got smoke pouring from the back of the Pink machine……

We all know Paul from JDM can handle himself but he really got the crowd going in the ER32……

Martin in his AE86 was half of the non-turbo team showing off their skills at the demo……

Of course having two people with roots from Down Under you’d expect a slight bit of competition and young Walton and Mr Fink delivered on the day…

An interesting moment came when Luke decided to do a 360 in front of Walton going back down the straight, according to Walton it looked amazing, luckily we had some spare underwear in the BMW……

I think the heat started to become too much for Luke who started to drift with his door open…..

Then the two boys decided to try to round up some lost ladies that were roaming the track, look out for next years craze of Model herding with Drift cars….

As always I’ve got a favourite photo from the event and this has to go to Paul for some nice cone skimming…..

There were other events running throughout the day including a Gymkhana track, Rally-cross, WRC and Super-cars, the RAF Falcons Parachute Display Team, the Royal Signals Motorcycle Display Team, Renault Formula 1 car, the Bloodhound Project World Land Speed record attempt, Jamie Squibb – Motorcycle Stunt Rider, the UK’s number 1 FMX rider.

With the day over and my head well and truly red the cars were loaded for the trip home. As always the trip home goes faster and the banter in the car was flying so we had Luke and Jackie back in Lydney in no time. Although it took an awful lot of convincing to get them out of the car, everyone falls for the Irish charm! The rest of us got back to Garage-D at a reasonable hour, no thanks to the roadworks on the M25!!

So what have we learned from this weekend:

1. Put sun cream on your head too!
2. Aussies swear a lot ( but don’t mean any harm, we swear Danny!)
3. Don’t let Paul go to a wedding before an event
4. Never drive up a lane that has a sign “not suitable for heavy goods vehicles” unless your driving a HORSE
5. ALWAYS ring your boss to keep him up to date when you have his debit card, two of his cars and his trailer

Thanks to JDM Garage for the invite to the event, to all the crew from PETROC for setting up the event especially Christian for getting us safely across the runway and Mark from JDM Garage for taking the photos, more of which are available here Photobucket

Eoin

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