It was a hot day to begin with at the Achilles Formula Drift Series for the first half of the day. The sun showed no mercy as we huddled under an umbrella, away from the sun. The clouds came by and gave us a much deserved relief from the merciless sun, but then, it grew dark and storm clouds began to invade our air space. Mixed conditions proved to be a challenge for most – but again we huddled under the umbrella, away from the rain.
<!--more-->This year saw the comeback of Tengku Djan Ley for the Formula Drift Series, but unfortunately, it wasn’t to be a Malaysian battling for the top seat. Djan drove all to make it into the top 4 drivers, but the ‘Prince of Drift’ was left to play catch up as Daigo ‘The Ninja’ Saito pulled well away in his Lexus, building up a considerable lead before entering the hairpin. Djan managed a well deserved 3<sup>rd</sup> spot on the podium.
The battle for top ‘dawg’ became an-all Japanese affair, with Manabu ‘Max’ Orido looking for some retribution for his last year’s spin out against Daigo. Even though the rain threw buckets onto the track, both Japanese drivers lavished at the lack of traction.
Daigo was in lead for the first round, and again managed to pull well away from Orido building a nice gap before the hairpin, but Orido managed to catch well up and pushed his Team RSR Supra to try and stay close. But alas, the damage was done, giving round one to Daigo.
The second run had Orido’s Supra in lead and with all that rain on the tarmac, it was hard to get the power down to squirt off the line as quickly as possible, while Daigo’s Lexus made plenty sure he was just a kiss away from his the Supra’s rear-end, right though till the end. It was an obvious defeat for Orido,
When we asked Djan what had happened on the first round, because it looked like he had been left behind, perhaps due to a mistake, to which he quipped: “No, it didn’t look like I was left behind. I WAS left behind. Daigo was really fast - faster than I thought when I watched him on TV in last year’s event. We now have to go back to the drawing board to see how we can improve to make up the difference.”
Said Daigo: “I’m really excited about today’s victory and returning back to Malaysia as champion. I was competing with a brand new car and had concerns on how it will perform. I knew that my biggest challenge was against the local favourite in the semi-finals and I had to be aggressive, so I gave 120% going against Djan.”
This year’s precipitation saw local ace Ser Ming Hui, aka ‘Ah Fai’, from Achilles Drift Team Malaysia crashing out in the round of 16 against Indonesia’s Dika CH, despite entering the competition as the second seed. Djan, who led the Malaysian contingent by qualifying to the round of 32 with the highest score of 94 out of 100 in the first round, showed a clear indication of the quality of Malaysian drifters.
Seven Malaysians made it to the round of 16, with the likes of Ivan Lau of Achilles Drift Team and Ee Yoong Chern of GT Radial joining Tengku Djan in the quarterfinals.
Over 8,000-strong crowd attended this year’s drift event, even though the weather brought quite an amount of precipitation, it did little to chase much of the crowd away.
The next leg will be at Singapore on 30th June – 1st July 2012.
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