S.O. Trippin: Prodrift RD2 Punchestown

I few weeks ago I was invited to join Bonbon and Laura on their trip to Prodrift rd2 in Punchestown, Ireland. Obviously I jumped at the chance and offered my help in getting ready before the event, helping with the driving to get there and spannering at the event. I was mega excited about going as it would be my first trip to a Prodrift round on it's home soil. As the event drew closer there was some extra space in the car so my girlfriend, Stace and super Doug could also come along. The more the merrier!

So the plan was to arrive at Bon and Laura's house on Friday night ready to leave early hours Saturday morning so we could catch the 10:30am ferry and enjoy the Saturday comp in the afternoon. As with all good plans it went out of the window early.

I woke up on Friday morning to find a text from Laura saying that Bon had fitted a new engine on the Thursday night after killing it at JDM allstars the week before but, as he was driving it to get the map checked at 6:00am on the Friday it died! Fuck.

So I winged my way over to Driftworks HQ to find Bon, Phil, James and crazy Ant already working on the car.

We got to work right away and with the old engine out we found that it had melted the steel head gasket from det and had also killed the piston rings and deposited all the metal at the top of the bore.

Old engine out and stripped ready to retro fit the manifolds, cams, cam pullys and ancils onto the new engine. When the clutch was swapped over the spigot bearing wouldn't budge so it was packed with grease and tapped but it split into two! Double fuck as its was 1:30am!!! A quick call to Kenny and he was on his way over with a spare, which saved us a drive to Santa pod with crazy Ant to grab one from his workshop.

All back together ready to be fired up at 5:10am on Saturday morning!

So with it running a quick call was made to mapper extraordinaire Greg, of Western Performance fame, so he could come over and check the map to make sure nothing bad would happen with this engine. He arrived at 6:30am! With his det cans and laptop fitted, him and Bon set off to road map the car.

With the car running and mapped we put it on the trailer and went to collect Laura, Stace and Doug from Bon's house and set off to catch the ferry. By now the time was 9:00am on the Saturday morning and had no chance of catching the 10:30am ferry but thought we'd make the next one.

We called the ferry terminal to double check the ferry times and realised we were going to miss the 2:30pm ferry. Triple fuck. The next ferry was 9:30pm! So to kill time we went to the beach in Holyhead and had a nice pub dinner. I tried and failed to catch some crabs in the rock pools.

Relaxing waiting for the ferry.

Dirty like your mum!

Driving off the ferry at 1:30am on Sunday, looking pretty perky after being up since 9:00am on Friday.

Arrived at the hotel at 2:30am on Sunday after 42 hours with no sleep and went straight for a shower and bed, his and her's Driftdorks bed haha!

Bon was due out on track as soon as we got there so it was all hands on deck to get the car ready.

Then Bon went out and made smoke.

One of the Corollas competing hit the wall HARD and broke the front suspension but, with some awesome friendly spirit and Corolla that had blown it's engine the day before lent it's front suspension to the damaged car so it could fight on in the top 16 battles.

Team Japspeed and and Scotty from skylineparts.com in his rocket bunny Sil80 also made the trip across and had the best pitlane set up by far.

Behind the scenes waiting for the top 16 battles to start. We had brand new tyres on the car and two more sets waiting just in case.

Frenchy scrapped the wall in the battle with his spoiler! The crowd were treated to a load of sparks from the metal side plate, awesome driving!!!!

Bon got through to the top 8 battles but on the warm-up lap he was told that it shouldn't have been a warm-up so the judges scored it 5-5 and said only one more run would take place. Bon did and awesome run and ran away from the following car but in the confusion, and being sleep deprived from the last few days, he made a mistake and ran the wrong track layout so the judges award the win to the other driver. I think Bon came fifth overall so bagged some points for the championship.

After that we sat in the sun and watched the final few battles.

After the final I got the chance to wander around and take some pics of the paddock displays and club cars on show. This evo one was on the best, wide body and a selection of choice engine mods.

This awesome FC belonged to flat Eric's girlfriend. Not much info on it but the Rota Grids look amazing on it.

This Kazama S15 was a serious car.

Nice looking S13 with nice fitment, could be lower but if you've ever driven in Ireland you'll know that's about as low as you can go without killing everything on the terrible roads.

Time to pack up the car and load it onto the trailer ready for the journey home.

The journey home, not surprisingly, was full of drama too. After stopping for food we had a minor collision when the trailer tapped another car. With that sorted out we headed for the ferry. Only to realise we were going to miss check in! Quad fuck. I called the ferry company and told them our situation but they said the terminal would be closed. After some rapid driving and some que jumping we made it onto the ferry and were back home for 6:30am.

Despite being team hardship and having no sleep it was the best drift even ever! Prodrift is just head and shoulders above the rest of Europe's drift comps, the driving and the atmosphere is amazing. To top the trip off it was Stace's first drift event and she had a great time and can't wait for round three.

Massive thanks to Bon and Laura for having us along on the trip, roll on the rest of the season!