Driftsgiving Drift Event- November 29, 2008

Words and Pics by Jader Lopez

After the Thanksgiving Holiday and the shopping spree of Black Friday, came the first RC Drift Central.com event. Driftsgiving, sponsored by HPI Racing, Hot Bodies and Warrick Custom Hobbies in Plantation, FL. The time came for South Florida drifters to kick back and have some fun. The day was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky. We had a total of 16 entries. Eight Advanced class drivers and eight Pro Class drivers. Sean McQueen (Team Entropy), Felix Law (Oversliders) and Jader Lopez (Drift Unit) were the only ones guaranteed a Pro class slot because they have each won a Pro class event. The qualifying runs went by very smooth. We had a total of 4 clipping points. Two nose clipping points and two rear clipping points. For qualifying the way we did it is that if you were completely inside the clipping point, you get 5 points, if half of the car was in, 3 points, and if you just came close but didn’t quite make it in then one point. The top qualifier of the day was Patrick Salazar from Team Entropy. He scored a perfect run on both qualifying laps. The Advanced class brackets went very smooth. Actually the best battle of the day was in the advance class between Leo Caraballo (Drift Unit) and Alain Bencomo. These two drivers went at it on the first bracket round for 7 laps. Having some laps way too close to call. It wasn’t until the 7th lap that Alain came in too fast off the entry turn and bumped Leo, and on top of that Alain failed to hit the final clipping point, thus giving the win to Leo. Leo would eventually go on to win first place in the advanced class. Second place would come to newcomer Nick Osorono which showed great skills for being only his first competition. Third place would go to Chris Martinez (Drift Unit).

Now the Pro class had some surprises. To begin we had two new faces on the pro class brackets, Justin Ward and Glenn Bryant who both have showed major improvements since the last event. The first surprise in Pro class was in one of the first bracket rounds when Clement Travert (Oversliders) knocked off his teammate and one of the top drivers here in South Florida, Felix Law (Oversliders). The second surprise to the Pro class came when Mini (Drift Unit) knocked off Sean McQueen (Team Entropy) from the rest of the days battles. Patrick Salazar (Team Entropy) and Jader Lopez (Drift Unit) would also advance to the semi finals. First up was Clement Travert against Patrick Salazar. The first lap was a pretty close battle ending in a 5-5 score. The next lap Clement hit a barrier causing Patrick to advance. The battle between teammates Jader and Mini was nearly the same as of Patrick and Clement. The first lap Mini led and Jader was able to follow his line ending in a 5 5 score. These two teammates practice together weekly so it looked like it was gonna be a long battle. The second lap Jader led but Mini lost control and spun out on the first clipping point giving Jader the win. Now for the finals between Jader Lopez (Drift Unit) and Patrick Salazar (Team Entropy). This battle actually lasted 4 laps. The first 2 laps were even all the way. Both drivers being able to follow the lead car’s line while maintaining a nice angle.

The third lap is what made the decision on this battle. With Patrick leading and Jader chasing, Patrick lost control of his car after the entry turn into the first clipping point and got stuck on a barrier. This gave Jader a 9-1 advantage over Patrick. All Jader had to do was pretty much finish his next lap and the competition was over. Jader did so as he had done before, hitting all the clipping points while Patrick maintained a nice chase, but the advantage from the lap before was too much for Patrick to come back from giving Jader the second Pro class win in a row. Final results for the Pro class was as follows: 1st place to Jader Lopez (Drift Unit), 2nd place to Patrick Salazar (Team Entropy), and 3rd place went to Clement Travert (Oversliders). The event went by very smooth. Rc Drift Central.com would like to thank HPI Racing, Warrick Custom Hobbies, Hot Bodies and all the drivers that made this first event one for the books. Thanks again and we’ll see you at the next one!

For pics:

http://www.rcdriftcentral.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1228111597

http://www.rcdriftcentral.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1228077447

Note: Pics are high quality so they will take a bit to load.

For highlights video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-9D2XgBNNQ

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