About once a month in the "lovely" town of Shawano ClubFR and its various members invade the town. This weekend is Drift Day 23, and round 3 of the Midwest Cup Series. This event would be a special event as it was a feeder for the Pro-Am Championship. ClubFR would be gathering drivers for the East Division Championship at Virginia International Raceway during GT Live on October 3rd-5th (visit www.proamdrift.com for more details).
This event was overfilled with many drivers coming from all over the Midwest, MN, IL, WI, and IN. Lots of new faces and cars came out for the days events. To even up the playing field a new course was used consisting of a high speed slightly banked entry into a downhill right, followed by a hard left towards the finish.
For today's competition the judges were Formula D driver Brian Peter, Pro-AM invitee Clinton Florczyk, and ClubFR President Simba Nyemba. Morning practice was kept short to bring out the best drivers under pressure. Despite the short practice the competition was tough. Qualifications had various drivers putting thier best runs out there. A few drivers slated to be on the top missed the tandem rounds, but various others stepped it up.
After a long hiatus in drifting Bill Cook from Indy took the top score in qualifications with an almost perfect score from the judges. Mike "Black Magic" Pollard took second in qualifications with his RB powered S13, and Ryan "I came to get down" Clemens took the 3rd spot for qualifications.
During Tandem rounds there were quite a few close runs. tMF Opposition member Mike Pollard closed in on Juan Marquez to advance to the next round against Bill Cook. Mike was looking promising to make it to the finals until his power steering gave up in the middle of his run advancing Bill Cook to the finals.
On the other half of the bracket Ryan Clemens and his S13 went up against Leigh Roto and his MK3 Supra. First round went tied and they went one more time. In the sudden death match Ryan kept the gap to a minimum and advanced to the next round against Doug Artus.
Doug Artus in his borrowed pirate car who has been putting together amazing runs in his KA powered S13 went up against Ryan Clemens in the semi finals. Doug had been consistent all day, until Ryan put some pressure on him and was able to take the win and head to the finals.
In the final round tMF Opposition member Ryan Clemens and Bill Cook both had amazing runs, almost perfect mirror runs. In the second run Ryan and his SR20 edged over Bill and his CA18 to take the win.
The podium saw Ryan Clemens on top, Bill Cook in second, and Doug Artus in third place.
As this was a Pro-Am feeder event, the top drivers from the day were awarded an invite to the Championship event. The judges were highly impressed with all of the top 8 drivers that an invite was awarded to all Top 8 drivers.
The Pro-AM invitees include:
1. Ryan Clemens
2. Bill Cook
3. Doug Artus
4. Mike Pollard
5. Mike Feiock
6. Leigh Roto
7. Juan Marquez
8. Jacob Cook
Special Thanks to ClubFR, Drift Association, USA International Raceway, Kaizo Photo, all the drivers and fans and last but not least the MWC Series Sponsors: Central Motorwerks, Drift Line, Equilibrium, and T2 Films.
Some more photos from the event.
Photos by Kaizo Photo
1 comment:
Team Midwest is sick!
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