October 12 marked Driftwest’s 2nd Annual Pumpkin Drift Bash held at Kings Park Speedway near Regina. This also coincided with Canada’s Thanksgiving weekend, which meant that I would be home in Regina. Hooray for things working out in my favour! Another plus was the event started at noon, which meant I got to sleep in and then watch drifting. I couldn’t have asked for a better day.
To sum up this event with one word: SMOKE. I can say just about every single driver laid out a smoke show like it was going out of style.
Here is Chris Gonzalez all the way from Winnipeg laying down some rubber. I’m pretty sure almost every picture I have of Chris has a trail of smoke following him.
Kolton Ryan following suit.
Tanner Frain was also a top contender for the most smoke made that day.
Another thing that doesn’t happen all the time is tandem. But this time around, I was seeing double tandem as well as triples. I’ve watched most of these drivers from the first time they went around this track, and I can honestly say they’ve all improved 110%. I remember when Kolton couldn’t sweep the corner and now he’s linking the banks with and manji-ing the straights. Robby Kubica took me for a ridealong and his driving has definitely evolved for the better. When his massive boat of a 300z slides off course, he doesn’t even flinch; he just keeps pushing ‘er. During my ridealong he even managed to tap the wall, but it was so light that it only left minor scratches on the corner of the rear bumper and neither of us knew we actually made contact. All of these guys are pushing their cars to the limits and then some.
Tanner and Blair McIntosh running some tandem.
Kurt Porter was killing it on track, pushing himself harder and harder, until….
An encounter with the wall happened.
The drift community never fails, a few of the guys worked to pop the dent out and Kurt was able to go back out and burn more rubber off.
You’re not actually having fun until you break something…right?
Robby Kubica giving the crowd a show.
Jon Fiorante came out and did some awesome single runs as well as tandems, especially with Carter Jackson.
When I first got into the drifting scene, I noticed it was mostly s-chassis and skylines. Now I see a wide variety of chassis on the track, all throwing down just as hard.
Case in point.
I think I’ll leave you with this picture, which sums up the afternoon pretty well.
Drifting for us Saskatchewanians is done for the year, and my own car is now tucked away for the winter. But I’m looking forward to the possibilities of photographing on top of snow banks when drift season starts up again in April.