A couple of weeks ago, the members of one of the UK's biggest regular RC drift clubs, the Midlands Drift Society, or MDS, were invited to attend a round of Fueltopia's Formula G Championship, which takes highly modified street cars and enthusiastic racers and pits them in exciting head-to-head races in locations across Great Britain.
Matt Ellis from MDS takes over with his take on the day!
Sunday the 15th of July MDS (Midlands Drift Society) teamed up with HPI Racing for round 3 of the Formula G championship at Rockingham Motor Speedway. HPI, who sponsor the Formula G series, invited us to go along and put on some drift demos and show off the hobby to the crowd of spectators, and we jumped at the opportunity.
After a late night on the 14th at our regular monthly event, we packed light with a small 'travel demo track' and set out for Rockingham at 6 AM on the Sunday. Upon arriving and seeing where we were setting up, it was a slight return our roots: laying down a track on tarmac! Our usual club setup uses specialised racing carpet now, but most people start drifting on paved surfaces.
We were situated next to the main track which meant we had a great view of all the action for the whole day.
Our setup consisted of a small drift demo track and then a scale replica of the full-size track for spectators to try their hand on.
HPI had kindly armed us with a fleet of demo cars consisting of HPI E10’s and Maverick Strada DC cars, which proved popular with people at the event.
It was a scorching day and we were open to the elements from the off! We battled overheating cars, wrecked tires and even a few scraps with a concrete wall but managed to put on a fun show.
We spent time chatting with the drivers from the full-size event the other side of the wall and even had a few of them on track with us at one point!
The demo cars got plenty of use and most impressively survived a tonne of bumps and scrapes, they didn’t skip a beat all day. By mid-afternoon, as the event was coming to an end, we witnessed not 1 but 2 mini-tornados attempt to rip through Rockingham! It was at that point, sunburnt and tired, we decided to pack up for the day and enjoy some of the excellent driving on display before heading home.
Formula G is a great series and we can really see it taking off and drawing in bigger crowds - and hopefully we will get back there again!