Australian Drift Club: South Circuit Drift Festival 25th October 2020

With COVID-19 sweeping through 2020, drift days have been very far from few. The last one I had attended was the Revolution Motorsports day practice back in June, which I had never posted about due to not producing images that were to my liking. Fast forward four months and Australian Drift Club was hosting a South Circuit Drift Festival held at SMSP. It was expected to be a downpour of rain for the whole day and I had originally planned not to attend. Although one thing lead to another and the weather held out for the amount of time I had stayed.Track activities were to start at 9AM through to 7PM, a solid 10 hours of drifting! More than enough time for me to redeem myself from the past event and shoot at SMSP again. Mind you, it has been 7 years since I've last taken photos of drifting at this track.I had arrived just shy of 9AM, signing media accreditation before doing a lap of the pit area.

Track activities have already started by this point. Although due to someone having a head-on crash with the concrete barrier, there was about an hours worth of downtime.

Revo boys out in force for the day.

Image taken from the Australian Drift Club facebook page

I believe this is the first time that this layout been has been run, with past events only allowing from 

turns 2 through to turn 6, this meant more vantage points to shoot from (which I didn't quite take advantage of).

R.I.P. front bar in the background.

Panning/action photos above are from vantage point 1.

NTS: wear boots next time.

These two were quite enjoyable to watch throughout the day. Although the sound of the headlight shattering breaks my heart.

At this stage of vantage point 2, I started to experiment with a much more slower shutter & a shorter focal length.

At about 2PM I decided to call it quits as rain droplets started to fall from the sky, storm clouds were forming and I didn't want a build up of mud to added onto the what I already had on my shoes. Overall I had a good time shooting/spectating. The conditions were almost perfect for what I wanted to achieve with the photographs, redeeming myself from the last panning set I took (I think). Thanks Australian Drift Club.

Did someone say there's a North Circuit day coming up next month?

Revolution Motorsports: Demo Day 28th September 2019

A great deal of time had passed since I have last shot anything motor sports related, but here we are again. The guys at Revolution Motorsports had locked down a drift demo day at Pheasant Wood Circuit (previous known as Marulan Driving Training Centre - Marulan for short). The last time a drift day was held here, was in 2015 hosted by Driving Sports. I'm glad to be back to spectate & some-what shoot photos for another one.

The event was scheduled to run from 9:00AM to 4:00PM, a solid 7 hours of drifting, be that nothing was to go wrong. It was an open pit-lane layout, so the drivers were able to jump on & off the track as they pleased, which meant maximum track time if your car were able to handle it.

On the way to the track, I made a quick stop by Maccas for breakfast & was greeted by some of the Cursed Sundays boys.

Arriving just shy of 8:00AM, I made my way to the administration office/cafeteria to sign a media accreditation form.

Rev boys all lined up in the pit area

After having a quick walk around the pits, drivers/media briefing wasn't too long after. Here's a map depicting what the drivers were to look forward to. Later on in the day, a reversal of the map pictured above was driven.

Cars lined up on the track anxiously waiting to shred some tyres.

It had been over a year & a half since I've taken any motor sport photos. I definitely need some practice with panning again, as I'm not 100% happy with the photos I had taken that day.

These drift events usually attract some tastefully modified cars. Some of which may be too stanceypants for others.

At around 3PM, many people had already thrown in the towel & started packing up their belonging, the day was coming to an end. Besides getting sun-burnt, shooting in harsh sunlight & taking horrible photos, awesome day meeting old/new faces otherwise. Big ups to Joey for the passenger rides & the Revo team for again, holding another great drift day. Next stop, Tour de Rev & hopefully I suck less at this panning business.

Until next time.