It wasn’t until Chris Gonzalez started advertising an upcoming drift day that I heard about Gimli and the motorsports park located in the small town roughly 45 minutes north of Winnipeg. After seeing the “Gonzo Drift Day” flyer posted all over my Facebook wall by local drifters, I knew it was something I’d like to check out. And after doing a little creeping on the event page, I saw our good friend Kyle Zimmer had clicked the “attending” button and this was something I was happy to see. A couple weeks later, Kyle and his Skyline were ready to rock and roll. So we made the trip to Winnipeg the day before the event, where we were put up by longtime friend of the blog Chris Gonzalez – a.k.a. Gonzo.
A few drinks and a few hours of sleep later, we were up at 6am to make the trip out to Gimli with just a couple errands to run before hand. These errands consisted of grabbing walkie talkies and some breakfast from Walmart and the McDonald’s within. Roughly an hour later, we were at Gimli Motorsports Park unlocking the gate. We unloaded the trailers and once everyone showed up, hit the skid pad to get back in the groove of drifting for the first time of the season.
It had been so long since I wrote an article that I completely forgot my login info for the site. I am a creature of habit and once I stop doing things I normally do, I have a hard time remembering the way to do such things. Thankfully for me the use of my camera hadn’t eluded me, but I have to say it took me a while to get back in the groove. The skid pad at Gimli Motorsports Park was the perfect scenario to do so – somewhere there’s no pressure or chance of missing the perfect shot like there is during competition runs.
Before Gonzo opened the road course up, all the drivers had their chance to feel their cars out for the first time this year. The first part of my coverage of the Gonzo Drift day will consist of pictures of the guys sliding around the skid pad and the second part will be those of drifting on the road course, so keep your eyes open for that. Onto the pictures…
Taylor Staffy in his very clean Kouki S14. If it wasn’t for a broken sideskirt on the other side of the car, I would say this thing is pretty flawless.
Mike Trueman in his N/A FC3S.
Ryan Konowalchuk and his Zenki S14. With very apparent driving skills, he was my favorite to watch and he made it look easy. It’s so easy to get good pictures of a driver when they aren’t spinning out on every corner. Although I don’t know Ryan very well, I would say he’s been driving for quite some time. I mean he could be a rookie, but there’s no way I would be able to tell!
The man himself: Kyle Zimmer and his R32 race car.
Here’s Max getting his bone stock, but very clean – and I mean very clean – AE86 side ways. It was awesome to see a car with maybe 100hp to the wheels get thrown around the track!