Intermission is over and I’m back to start pumping out day 2 of the D1NZ event to your computer monitor display screens.

You may recall that Kerri was having issues with her car popping off intercooler hoses sporadically throughout the previous day. Bam and I made a phonecall and a trip to E&H motors after hours had us procure some better fitting T-Bolt clamps. With them clamped on tight we were confident of having found a solution.

A short road test in the chilled morning air verified us and proved the car was good to go again.

Whilst we were sorting out the car, the D1NZ cars were getting ready for their first session. Pictured here is Nigel Petrie of ‘Engineered to Slide‘. You may have seen photos of his ute project floating around, if not then I highly recommend you check it out on his site. Nigel, like myself, actually lives in Australia. He was able to sort out use of a car prepped by the Sellers family for the weekend. It’s pretty sweet to see people from across the ditch coming over to take part in our own series! During the halftime lunchbreak I had a chat with Nigel and I think I’ll have to try make my way down to Victoria to check out some of the drifting he does here in Australia.

Time Attack cars were getting ready on the pitlane dummy grid in preperation for their first session, seen here is Leon Scott and Scott Kreyls Lancer Evolutions

I got some more photos from a good vantage point

On my way back to pitlane I stopped by the skid pan where drivers could lazily slide around. Free opportunity to do drifting doughnuts really.

Of course, you don’t attend these events to watch people playing around cones on a skidpan. It’s a bit uninteresting. Late morning had all drift cars (d1 and pro-am) out there skidding it up and looking great.

The next part gets a bit crazy, so you might want to take a breather before reading on.
Theres this little takeaway shop in Hamilton, run by a guy by the name of Anthony Wong. The shop is called ‘Wongs Kitchen’ and just about everyone that grabs a meal here raves about one thing: The Chicken Wings from Wongs. I was pretty skeptical. During my Christmas trip to Taupo, Bam was keen to drive the 2.5 hours north to get some Wongs. Could these wings really be that good?
Knowing that I missed out on Wongs Wings in December, Kerri ordered a bit of a treat for us as thanks for helping out and playing pit crew.
A 100-piece box of wings from wongs.
A ONE HUNDRED PIECE BOX OF WINGS. We wasted no time digging in. I grabbed a wing and paused for a moment, reaffirming myself that food often gets hyped up and over rated. With a clear mind, I took a bite.
Goddamn. These things pack some serious flavor like I’ve never tasted before. Without realising, I chain-ate 15 wings. And we didn’t even put a dent in the pile. These little tasty morsels of deep-fried pleasure certainly earn their reputation. Speaking with Anthony, he informed us that he brought 2500 wings on special order out to the racetrack that day.

During the lunchtime break, the pitlane is opened up to spectators for the ‘Pitwalk Session’. Drivers set up little stalls and sign posters and have photos taken with their fans, and put the cars on display. It’s a great opportunity for promoters to strut promogirls around, also. Usually a little bit of rascally shenanigans goes on too, such as these motorized shopping trolleys.
The ever popular Mike was signing autographs, with a line that extended all the way to the pitwall for the duration of the lunchbreak.

In our own pit garage, the SBP boys were getting ready to interview Kat Benson. I’ve featured these guys on my site previously, they put together some pretty tits videos.

One part of the schedule that I was particularly looking forward to was the ‘Heli Nats’ on the skidpan. Effectively a burnout competition for AWD cars such as Evos and GSRs
Hugo Maclean had his err, AWD there also

Here’s a quick idea of how many people tend to come and spectate, and the size of the displays and things on offer. Pretty sweet for such a small country!

The afternoon was designated as battle time for the D1 class cars. The results would decide a drift champion for the season, and mark the end of another fantastic Drift Championship.
The battles were fantastic, very close and hard to judge. On more than one occasion the judges called multiple one-more-times. The final battle saw Curt Whittaker take out the win and earn top points in the championship to be crowned the new Drift King of D1NZ. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the final showdown for placings

To finish the day off, here’s some quick photos from around the paddock and another shot of that super sweet octocopter helidrone. If anyone knows where I can see the footage from this thing then I’d love to hear from you! Just drop a comment at the bottom of the page using your facebook account.

Thanks for checking out part 3! Tomorrow I’ll post the much shorter part 4 and completion of this series of posts.