DODOlogic has always featured content from one continent, but not anymore. Some people might confuse South Africa with the continent of Africa, instead of realizing it’s a country in Africa. Others might think of it as the home of that accent you can’t quite place and others just might think of the factually flawed Matt Damon film, Invictus. Rarely do people think of drifting when they think of South Africa, but let’s see if we can change that. I present to you the 4th round of the SupaDrift season.
The event started on Friday and as soon as I could get away from work, I was at the track. The track is only 8 km from my house, so I quickly popped in to see how the practice session was going. As I arrived, I could hear revving engines, tortured tyres and smoke filling the air. Those familiar sounds are enough to get any enthusiast excited.
My first order of business was to head to the track to catch a glimpse of who was driving.
After spending some time near the track, I headed towards the pit area to take stock of all the cars in attendance. Luckily, a few of my personal favourites were there in full force.
While I was walking through the pits, something exciting, yet extremely depressing caught my eye. The pits were filled with cars that had seen better days. The one that hit me the hardest was probably the Black FD Rx7 seen above. For a moment, I considered pleading with the track owner, Tim Stephens, to let me save this Mazda from its dusty existence. I quickly realized the improbability of that happening and continued to wade through the resting place of former race car glory.
A sea of dust covered R33 Skylines, S-chassis’, spare/busted engines and even a fiberglass body Skyline, which I thought was quite cool. Those were just a few things I encountered in that charming race car graveyard.
As I was about to leave Friday evening, I spotted this rather clean and neat-looking black 350z. I seemed to stumble across this Z at the right time, as it looked amazing in the South African sunset.
The second day of the event was the drift day, and I was up nice and early to go and enjoy a cold winter’s day. As the guys had a bit more practice time before the main event, I quickly ran through the pits again just to see all the crews rushing like mad to get wheels and tyres ready. There were also a few teams struggling to recover from some unfortunate breakdowns.
The cars lined up as they do at most drift events, but this time everyone gave a moment of silence to pay their respects to a fellow car guy, Gugu Zulu. He had tragically passed away while climbing Kilimanjaro. After everyone had a moment of silence, the engines were turned on and the competition was underway.
As you can see, the track is quite small, but entry speeds can reach 150 km/h. The field basically consisted of Nissans, mostly of the S-chassis or Skyline variety. The engine choice was divided up between various v8s, some 2jz and even a few 4 potters.
One of my favourites to watch on track was JP Van Der Spuy and his Dragon Energy 300zx, powered by a Lexus v8. In qualifying, he battled hard to get into the top 16, but just came short in 19th place.
Sean February’s Rocket Bunny 200sx was probably all around one of my favourite cars on the grid. After a full day’s battle, Sean managed a brilliant final battle to finish 2nd on the day.
The rest of the guys had fun and there were a few spills, as you can expect from any drift event. Some guys came out pushing really hard – maybe even a little too hard. The wall was an ever-present reminder of how of how fast things can get real, as the blue S15 found out twice on the day.
Overall it was a good day of drifting, but realistically they’re aren’t too many bad days to be had at a drift event. The South African drift scene is just starting to pick up traction (pardon the pun), thanks to the community of teams and individuals who pour their time and effort into these events. It seems as if no matter where drifting happens in the world, the events are held together by the common theme of community and I’m glad to see that taking shape in the South African drift community.