Poland
I was asked to come along and make a little video for the guys over at Lowbrain Drifters/ Achilles in a place called Plock in Poland. I had no idea what to expect and right before we caught the boat it was a late night in Ffrenchies layer adding the finishing touches to the LBD S13.
Travelling is always interesting because you can never really tell what might lay ahead. The alternator shat itself in the UK so it was quite an ordeal swapping batteries from Alan Sinnotts charged Hiace into our dying Renault master. By the time we made it to Holland enough was enough and we found ourselves on the outskirts of a Place called Venlo in a crazy little refurbish shop.
Back on the road it was interesting to see just how many cars in Germany are debadged and tearing down the Autobahn. The drift convoy kept steady in the truck lane late into the night, where we would witness one of the craziest thunder storms, so bad in fact we had to just pull in and wait for it to pass.
Europe really loves an oul Bratwurst sausage, being one of the only items you can find in a deli on the open road, the lightning was insane, literally flash after flash of insane fork lightening with no thunder…. Nothing worse then a foot of visibility on the Autobahn at 2 in the morning with this kind of carry on in the skies, but an absolutely amazing sight nonetheless.
The next morning we were greeted to incredible roads leading into Poland and 30+ degrees of heat. The lightening storm lasted about 8 hours and brought some incredible weather once the thunder cleared the air. Northern Europe is unbelievably flat, I really had no idea how flat until we did this journey.
Once we turned off of the main roads and into the country side we started to see some quality scenery… Hot dogs and fighter jets anyone?
The little city we would call home for the next few days was called Plock. With its Communist skyline as a backdrop to a brand new football stadium which the track would go around. Streets were closed off , barriers in place the Polish guys really did take this whole event pretty serious.
I really didn’t know what to expect from Poland, being honest I have never looked into their car scene, only going on what had come to Ireland over the years with polish plates I was very surprised to see the level of cars that were in attendance…
I was expecting to see quite a lot of this as the standard for Eastern European drift cars but it was the total opposite….
Poland has some of the most insane cars I have ever seen… Walking around the paddock cars may not have the nicest stance or the best aesthetics on the outside but holy shit were they build underneath. Rx8’s with 1JZ’s pushing out insane power.
2jz fully space frameded e21 BMW’s… this was just the tip of the Iceberg of what was actually going on in Poland… I could have walked around the pits for hours snapping the swaps and setups.
From the outside this thing was just inasne, fully carbon fibre… roof chop and well just look at it! One of the more insane cars of the event.
Yep, the was a team called team RB and under the bonnet everything looked this good….
LS turbos, 2jz’s, RB25’s or 26’s anything you could think of pushing over 800-1000 hp it was here and under the bonnet of the most unexpected car.
Some of the wraps were intense too, this was Polands version of Danny Murphy with her very own LS powered S14.. check out the minter transit haha
Alan fitted right in with his 2JZ setup.
There was a few unexpected but interesting builds too like this Celica.
Or this s12… mad max Poland style.
Nice safety car… Pretty normal stuff going on here.
Some of the drift cars were ridiculous new, there is certainly more currency in Polish drifting these days than back in Ireland with most of their cars being a relatively new chassis or having the best of parts.
I wish I got a few better pictures of this but im sure this wont be the last you will see of it, a brand new 2JZ powered widened rocket bunny GT86, with apparently over 1000bhp this was a pretty insane car.
This was parked in the pits all weekend, I had to grab a snap of this Fiat 125p Akropolis.
This looked real for a quick second, the RC car setup was pretty cool too, there was quite a lot to take in over the weekend the Polish really went all out.
The track itself was very impressive with main streets closed off as the starting grid the track would cross off of this road into a car park and around the stadium.
The surface was abit funky as it was brick so during the practise runs the brick was like ice. Either side of the track was concrete barriers so there really was no room for error.
This didn’t really stop the Polish from pushing it to the limit, the really do drive the shit out of their cars regardless of the outcome, this LS powered E30 had a spectacular crash which I missed due to the fact I was halfway up the city looking for a packet of crisps or something to eat. Typical…
Another pretty much brand new drift car… The BMW is king over here which is expected, but the Japanese cars are steadily creeping in.
This X90 was doing a pretty serious job all weekend along with the 15 behind from team RB Budmat, these were the dudes who organised the entire event.
Another shot of this thing, which was actually written off at the end of the weekend.. its insane how hard these guys go, it was impossible to capture the aggression on camera.
This was just one of many other funky builds that were battling throughout the weekend.
The guys were treated like superstars the weekend, the entire event was televised on Polish TV live with proper camera crews interviewing and action replays on huge screens around the track. I’m sure Formula D might have a similar setup but I had never been to a drift event that was taken so seriously.
The LBD car was a serious attention seeker all weekend, the noise from the Throttle bodies and driving from FFrenchie had the cameras on the car quite alot throughout the weekend.
The Irish actually did extrememly well in the event. At first the Polish had an intimidating vibe with LS turbo setups and horsepower to double some of the Irish cars. Jack Shanahan, a young teenager who is going to have a pretty good life in drifting came 7th overall. It was nuts watching a 13 year old go up against serious competition and place 7th.
Nigel Colfer worked very well under pressure placing third.
The master of working under pressure would have to be Alan Sinnott. Its such an impressive story to travel in a bad Hiace van and trailer all the way to Poland from Ireland, in a car which was pretty much a brand new setup and get better throughout the weekend placing 2nd against some of Europe’s top drivers.
Bartosz Stolarski took his LS3 turbo powered s14 to 1st place for his home country after some top notch battles between Sinnott.
The Podium setup was nuts, hot females music, champagne.. big crowds of media and randomers..
It even rained Golden confetti for about five minutes.
It was nice to see some of Irelands best drivers up against the rest. You could tell Alan was more than pleased with the results as well as the rest of the guys, with Alan coming in second, Colfer 3rd, Ffrenchie 5th and Shanahan 7th.
Poland has some damn good drivers and certainly know how to put on a drift show, there was too much to try and document like the illegal street drifting and other craic.. Hopefully you enjoyed these few snaps… Peep the video below for some more coverage of what went down..
Achilles radial & Low Brain Drifters do Poland 2013 from juice box on Vimeo.