Drift Outlaws 2015 Round 1

Lee Barker, Driver of the Walton Motorsport Skyline R34 talks about his first time in Drift Outlaws

Drift Outlaws was a total blast from start to finish.

Our 4 and a half hour journey turned more into 6 but it didn’t matter, the laughs and the banter had already begun between us and our friendly rival teams.

So come Saturday morning and practice begins, the track consisted of 6 rear clipping points.

It must have taken me most of the practice session to hone in on the correct line, and as qualifying approached I was secretly nervous.

I managed to put in two almost identical laps and qualified in the top 32 in 15th place amongst some of the best drivers the UK had to offer.

Not bad I thought, so into the battles, and I was first up against Ian Rutherford, a British Drift Championship driver and a talented one at that.

1st run I managed to create a pretty far lead which gave me the win. In the second run, I managed to keep close proximity whilst maintaining a good qualifying line.

Then in the second battle I was drawn up against Martin Battye of MB Automotive… now this guy can really drive, and more so he has one of the highest spec drift cars in the game.

So in we went, my lead run first, I just managed to create enough gap between myself and him to feel confident about taking that run. Second run my chase I managed to keep close proximity the whole time but dived in a little shallow on the transition which the judges did say was a no go.and as a result I was marked down for that.

As we sat waiting for a decision we waited longer and longer and after nearly 5 minutes the judges, unable to decide asked us to run again.

For me this was a mega deal, Against a driver with much more experience as well as a much higher spec car, so we battled again, this time we drove harder as we both convinced the judges who was the better driver, although again I made the fatal error of diving in on the transition leaving the qualifying line in favour of gaining closer proximity to Martin and for that reason I lost this battle by just half a point.

I was later told by one of the judges that our battles were easily the hardest decision and perhaps the most controversial he’s made to date. but I was commended on my driving by the judges and many others and therefore I left on a high, looking forward to round two next month in Pembrey Wales.

I can tell you Drift Outlaws is definitely a drivers championship allowing for plenty of seat time and a professional but laid back attitude, I didn’t find one driver that wasn’t smiling ear to ear.