6th round of the RDS, or closing of the 2010 season !WARNING! Big report on our trip — Toyota Altezza, 4.0 liter, 1998

The sixth and final stage of the Russian Drift Series took place in the wonderful town of Ust-Labinsk (named after the Laba River that forms the mouth of the Kuban River in this geographical location), 50 km from Krasnodar. The city is small but pleasant. The competitions were held on the Pilot karting track, which is quite wide by the standards of karting, I know much more compact and narrow tracks like leaders or driveland. The entire track is sharpened for second gear, although during acceleration I constantly wanted to tuck in third, but the car would not have pulled it out. Conclusion - it is necessary to put the main pair in the gearbox longer (now I have 4.1), since the motor allows. Let's do it in the offseason.

Thursday 10/14/2001
We were traveling with a train of TF and our friends trampers, they went on the Ridgeline, loading all sorts of rubbish like rubber, tables and jacks, but we decided that 3000 km per weekend was not a topic and bought air tickets for 5000 rubles. Klim and I flew out on Thursday, the RCG flew to us on Friday evening.

Upon arrival, we cooperated with the best, in my opinion, videographer on RDS, Sasha Awerest, and our whole crowd (of three people) was met by my good friend from the Altezza club Anton 93 Rus, who kindly agreed to give us a lift to Ust-Labinsk. Of course, on the way we caught a local beer :)

Arriving at the track, we made sure that our combat cramps had already been unloaded from the car transporter and decided to take a break from the road, since there is a Pit Stop alcohol cafe right on the track where drifters were already reeling with might and main)) True, beforehand I tried to drag our Mark2 onto the track , on which the tramper Vova arrived. Tortured by the final assembly of the car, Vova, having loaded the wheelbarrow onto the transporter, forgot to give the documents and keys to it, so the car stood lonely on the street. They tried to push - without mazy. They hooked it with a cable to my car - I almost pulled out my towing ring, bending it. Spat and went to the cafe. We called the hotel and said that we would check in as soon as we were free. Well, you understand from what =) By the way, all sorts of celebrities and other rock stars stay in our hotel Chulpan, quite good, I must admit. At 2 am home and sleep.

Friday 10/15/2010
In the morning, after breakfast, we went to the track.
The first surprise is that when I went to the car wash, the hood opens at a speed of 60 km / h, breaking almost in half, it bent the hinges, tore off the fasteners and bent the roof, a little.
Luckily the hood is carbon fiber. It's good that the hood is carbon fiber and light. And "lucky" that it was already broken earlier =)

It is interesting to note that for the whole weekend I rode on 4 types of coverage:
- Dry track
- Wet
- Wet
- Downpour 

Start of training. The track is quite technical, the entrance is 100 km/h, then the handbrake and gas to the floor, right after that, a shift to the left, a little track, a shift and an arc of medium length, one more shift and the finish. When we rode dry, there was a lot of smoke from under the wheels, which started right from the furidashi (initiation)

Later, the weather turned bad and it began to rain, we were already riding on a wet track. Then the track became completely wet and the speed at the entrance had to be reduced to 80 km / h, but in the late afternoon a real downpour charged and we drove through large puddles. On that day, I trained a lot on wet and wet tracks, on dry I did only a few laps, then the cooling pipe frayed and we spent an hour and a half to fix the breakdown. There was no panic, a simple gum)

In the evening, as you might guess, we hung out at the Pit Stop cafe with drift friends =)

Saturday 10/16/2010
Morning, breakfast, on the track!
Administrative checks, then technical checks where the annoying tech committee tried to get to the bottom of us all day.
There are clouds in the sky, but no rain. The track is wet, but after about an hour of training, we already rolled it out, really.

Everyone passed the qualification badly - it started to rain right in front of it and everyone rode on their own surface. It was unusual and dumb when you pull the handbrake at the entrance of 80-90 km and think “what will happen next”, I don’t know what kind of grip the wheels have now. Qualifying many tried to drive very carefully.
According to the results, I am in the TOP 16 - hurray!

The workouts were up to 12 and 10 minutes before the end, my steering rack came off the subframe along with a piece of the subframe (!)
Urgently looking for welding, lifting the car and fixing the problem for about an hour, skipping the parade of participants, and to hell with it.

In pair races, I run into a very experienced pilot Shikov Nikita and, having decided to drive the track with all the money, I make a mistake with the choice of the angle when furidashi, I set the car sideways too much, as a result I don’t get into the trajectory and aligns me. The final was beautiful, although not very spectacular in terms of speed and smoke - rain, after all.

I was not very upset, in a good way I completed the task assigned to me - to show everyone what I want and I can fuck off. That's exactly what I did :)

Thanks to everyone involved for organizing such a great event.

Later I will write about my general impressions about the season and plans for 2011. Thanks to everyone who followed))

PS. The total budget for the trip, according to my calculations, was more than 50k rubles. This includes tires, transfers, accommodation and all that. Not a little...