Ah good old Japfest… where to begin, this is the third year we have covered this event on Juicebox. It’s sort of the be all end the entire car scene as a whole at the end of every year. Everything and anything can come out of the woodwork and be on display, many a time I’ve been shocked, left scratching my head wondering where the fuck that did car come from. That feeling is one that I’ve always loved about the Irish car scene, we as a tiny little country was saturated with awesome cars from Japan that you never actually know what’s hiding down a dodgy little back lane, or hiding in some farm somewhere in Kerry…. With the “road car” scene falling down around us… it’s ironic that the drift scene is flourishing, we are spitting out some of the best drivers ever… going up against some of the world’s best.
Ah, where to begin…. if you didn’t know this by know, Ireland has a very very impressive AE86 following, when the flood gates from Japan opened back around 00, we pretty much imported any type of AE86 we could get our hands on and this continued for about eight years, right up until the country’s economy shat itself. Any proper day like the one that is somewhat annually held at Mondello brings some of the most awesome pieces of Japanese steel from around the country and this was as good as it gets.
The dates have been announced and its shaping up to be another enjoyable year for Irish drifting with the usual favourite places and a date announced in the north! Roll on the good times!
Sunday the 15th of January saw another drift practise day at Mondello park. The best thing about these drift days is pretty much any type of contraption can be seen on the track along with skill level.Pretty much anyone with a rear wheel drive car can enjoy an open pit all day and a tyre changing service. With the rising cost of tax, petrol and pretty much everything else in Ireland, we are seeing more and more cars hitting the track never to return to the road again.
Its hard to think that another year of Prodrift has passed us so quickly. To be fair we were off to a fantastic start with Ennis weather wise. The typical Irish early good weather which results in a summer of rain as punishment, this didnt stop competition and even though Juicebox didnt make it to two of the events the finale in Mondello more than made up for it.
It has to be said that Japfest 2011 was such a good day, not because team need for speed came to town… which don’t get me wrong was a good part of it too, the amount of people and cars that showed up was really something. It just goes to show that the scene is still holding it down regardless of this economic bullshit. Everyone should give themselves a pat on the back for effort. The car park usually has just as much interesting machines as the show your attending, that’s why here at Juicebox we love lurking the car park to see what the people are driving.
Some footage from the drift day which was held in Mondello the last weekend of July.
So since there is a nice gap in between the next Prodrift event, Mondello had another track day for drift practice, owners could pay 140 euros to drive on the track all day in pretty much whatever they choose. These days are just as if not more interesting then some of the professional events down to the fact that the track is a mix of Decent and learner driver’s so things can be very unpredictable. Most cars come home with at least one love tap or maybe two…
I was glad to finally get a chance to cover the Mondello practice, which is held once a month at Mondello Circuit. Each time it had been on so far I couldn’t make it due to some nonsense in hospital but seems how everything was getting better, it was good to get out and start covering again! The day definitely lived up to my expectations. Everybody from all different levels of skill had the chance to hit the track and hone their skills.
Having organised a last-minute fund raiser in aid of the Irish Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal, Wexican Motorsport are proud to announce that the effort was more than worth it, having raised more than double the original target they had set out.
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I’ve Just been informed that in aid of the Japan disaster, passenger rides with Martin Ffrench in the Wexican Motorsport Toyota Altezza
will go down at Mondello Park Saturday March 19th 2011.
I was going crazy I missed this last year, so this year I made sure my weekend was free to trek up to the AE86 track day. It had been raining all week and was looking bad, which is typical in Ireland. Somehow the rain decided to take a break only for that Saturday and mother nature even showed us a bit of sunlight which is always a treat.
The weather had managed to hold off, all it needed to do now was stay dry for just another couple of hours and everything would work for the better. The clouds were getting darker and it looked like mother nature was going against everyone but then Aaron came out blasting the Foo fighters and everything seemed to be just fine!
Lets continue where we stopped with part 1, looking at some super nice examples of some of the countries nicest ae86’s.