Two days, more than a thousand kilometers, one Nissan Juke Nismo RS, couple of good friends, various roads, big and small cities, many tuned cars and even more drifted tyres. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and check out our short photo story of team JDM.LT weekend on a road..
Saturday 15th of August, 2015
Early morning (6AM) alarm, snoozing it for several times cause you never go to sleep early on Fridays and waking up realizing that your friends are already on a way to you.. After a quick preparation, packing of some stuff to a one really fast, but quite compact SUV we are on a way to pick morning coffee with “healthy” breakfast.
And so, hit the road Jack or how does that sound..
First stop near Panevėžys due to fact that navigation prepared us a guided tour via center of a city, but oh well, we have a fast Juke here, so with a little bit of boost and something like 160 kilowatts we are crossing the border of Latvia (or at least the sign)!
The road goes on and it is pretty nice, despite being only two lanes and some strange speed limitations due to invisible road works, it’s all new and kilometers flied by with an ease.
Hello Riga, missing the fact that we are going to an event called “LOW as bass” and we are sitting in our Nismo RS higher than 80 percent of other normal cars, we still have 225/40/R18 tyres and this is not a good choice for the Riga town.. Yes, it is very beautiful city, but you need an off-road balloons to travel here comfortably. Quick wash of bugs and navigation tells that our destination is just around the corner.. Or two..
Here we are, picked up a place near our friends from Commune DIY (link below the whole review) and packed our stuff in this huge old airport. There are things so see: lots of space, beautiful main building, some cool forgotten rusty stuff, drift skids, cool old show-off cars, many many people, burning sun and some local activities.. However we (and other guests) were missing information on how/where/what, everything is just happening, but you really miss coordination.
Hey, Nii-San!
Many thanks for this memorable weekend goes to Nissan Nordic Europe!
The localss..
And our Lithuanian import :) With proper gear and Chill’n’Grill representation of course!
Of course some japanese represent from Lithuania with the mighty Forester and Mazda 323!
Some quick snaps and chats, tasty lunch at MC, fueled up our Nismo RS and we are back on road to Lithuania. Our friends from Team Beat with some guests from Australia are doing skids and burning lots of tyres in Kėdainiai drift camp, and so there is no way can miss it. To tell the truth we drove just an hour before chill time.
One of many mega meets we saw on a trip.. Hey, it’s a Saturday evening!
Saturdays‘drift camp rolled out after Luke and Stewy tested team cars – Julius S14, Mindish S13 and Macys S13. All LHD, all having hand brake on a wrong side. Doing a proper entry was a big mindf**k for Stewy, who drove LHD for the first time. Luke was a bit more comfortable with LHD and did a perfect entry on his second run, some 360ies and other crazy stuff! Mind – blown. Really insane entries. After Julius comments about aggressive knuckles setup on his S14, Stewy said „OK, I‘ll try the backwards entry this time“. And so, 1st gear floored, 2nd, massive manji + cluchkick and wooot, no lifting, max max angle, that this S14 has never seen before! And this was done on a very short track with limited entry speed, wow!
Luke Fink, yo!
Haha, Norbe in a Nissan, respect points!
Future drifter from Australia testing the quality of Kouki wing
Some japanese flavour on our friend’s Sierrari
And late good night before Sunday trip back to Kėdainiai
Hello Sunday and here we are, all prepared and flagged up!
Sunday morning was a bit sad, due to the fact that on the last runs on Saturday, Mindish’s SR20DET decided to kill disco potato, bye bye turbo and now we were missing one car for our Australian guests to enter the Sunday competition. After a short talk with organiser, we got his RHD S14 with stock SR20DET and „wisefab“. All went well, Stewy was back in the mood with the RHD car and they both nailed in qualification (9/10th places).
But ok, now we have some problems here, Stewy got 9th place, Luke got 10th, but according to previous qualification runs their places should have been switched, cause now Luke should run against Macys and they are using the same car. No worries, new winter(!) tyres go on drift academy S14 and Luke has a car to run. Second mindf**k that there was a very short briefing for our foreign friends and nothing mentioned about “windows closed, hands inside, etc..” this led to some zero points, but after friendly chat with judges everything worked out well, roll on!
In Top32 Stewy just „killed“ his opponent, even though the judges said it was equal run. Luke won against Macys who straightened when he was following. This means that Luke needs only a safe run and he goes on, that didn’t happened, Luke hit so aggressive and so close to Macys doors like nobody has seen before. Our question was why you pushed so much if you could have just had a safe run? “I don’t know what safe means”. Yes, this is how you do it!
Top16 wasn’t so good due to some cheating facts from the opponent and Stewy was out.. Luke was on the match with Vindzigelskis. First run with Luke was following and was very aggressive, but points were equal. In the lead position entry was f**king insane, but winter tyres had so little grip in those conditions and due to max lock the speed was lost – critical mistake and Luke is out.
Lack of cars, sharing between runs, technical failures, changing from RHD to LHD and vice versa, different setups, scrappy tyres (according to our foreign friends) and other things led to these results. However it was really really amazing to see from up close how real things are made. It was an enormous experience and know-how for the future.
Everybody was amazed by entry speeds and driver’s aggressive drifting. Top4 was truly entertaining to watch. Despite there was some negative points about slowness, tactical games, brake checks.. Place, organization, judging points, car park, culture in the pits were usual for us Lithuanians, but all very different for our guests from Australia.
The MAJESTIC
We‘re really honored to meet Luke, Tiarnah, Scarlett, Stewy and Aaron – y’all great! Had a blast and it was a priceless experience!
Of course our big thanks goes to – Agnė, Arnas, Mindaugas, Julius, Gabi, Macys, Juokas, Bombis, Volosas, Dugnas, Selmas, Žukas, Jonaitis, Aistė and Mir!
Some text borrowed from Arnas D
Video by NORBEFILMS > LUKE FINK goes Lithuania!
Great weekend thanks to Team Beat X Stewy Bryant X LUKE FINK x Commune DIY x Nissan Nordic Europe x JDM.LT