Walton Motorsport at the British Drift Championship

British Drift Championship Round 1

This weekend was the first round of the British Drift Championship at Lydden Hill in Kent, England. Lydden Hill is always a popular track with the BDC even returning here for Round 4 in August. This time we had 3 drivers running Walton Motorsport exhuast systems, Lee Barker of Midnight Motorsport, and Martin Wannacott in the Pro Am Class on the Friday and Matt Carter in the Pro class on the Saturday. For the 2016 Series of BDC, The event has been taken over by David Egan, the man in charge of the highly regarded IDC (Irish Drift Championship) and the changes were immediately obvious, David Egan has put a big focus into making the sport more spectator friendly with the addition of Live Scoring and a much improved Live Internet Feed. These factors combined with a large trackside screen added an extra element for the spectators including the ability for the trackside fans to see replays just like the Judges. A new qualifying format for the Pro category also came into play where the top 8 qualifiers go straight into the top 16, and the remaining 16 qualifiers battling each other for a spot in the top 16.

Lee Barker – Midnight Motorsport

Lee’s first BDC event and also his first outing in the newly formed Midnight Motorsport having gained the ability to enter from finishing 3rd in the final round of Drift Cup at Lydden Hill at the end of 2015, Lee successfully qualified 21st which gained him the much coveted BDC license allowing him access to all events future BDC events. Unfortunately when it came to his first battle against Neil Bamford a quick burnout to warm the tyres resulted in a snapped driveshaft putting Lee out of the competition.

Martin Wannacott

Martin with a new turbo setup including nitrous, along with a new tyre choice in the shape of a the Westlake Sport RS Semi Slick just made it to the event after a mad rush to get the car ready for battle. Martin’s Toyota came to us just after the final round of 2015 to have a JZ manifold and bespoke exhaust system fabricated and from what we heard it sounds awesome. Martin put some great qualifying runs down in the relatively unfamiliar car and managed to end up 9th in qualifying. next on to the battles and Martin went up against Tom Marshall, in the Martins lead run, some contact resulted in a damaged door and wheel, but Martin kept the power on and emerged victorious. Top 16 battle and he was up against Matt Stephenson of Slide Motorsport, it was a very close battle with alot of deliberation from the judges but in the end Matt Stephenson just had the edge to put Martin out of the competition. We can see Martin as one to watch once he tames his new beast!

Matt Carter – Japspeed

New year and new team, Team Falken UK is no more and fan favourite Matt Carter is still driving the R32 but in the familiar black, white and orange of Team Japspeed. Just before the event we modified a Nissan GTR twin backbox to fit Matt’s car to help reduce the noise levels and make sure the car passes Lydden Hills strict limits. Matt was looking forward to this event for his new team with the refined R32 including a sequential gearbox and a new better performing tyre. Matt succeeded in qualifying in the top 8, bypassing the first group of battles. Matt went up against new team mate Shane Lynch in the Supercharged Nissan 370z and unfortunaly made some costly mistake putting him out of the competition, But we know he will be back hungry for victory at round up in Scotland.