After a long break due to the Covid 19, the British Drift Championship managed to pull everything together and run a shortened championship for 2020. This started with the first round at the legendary purpose built drift track at Driftland in Scotland
After winning the 2019 Pro Am Championship (Now called Pro 2) in the UK and also finishing 6th in the 2019 Drift Games Nationals, Lwi was promoted to Pro level for both UK and Ireland for 2020
The trusty BMW E36 M3 has had a major upgrade while the new Pro drift car is being built from scratch. Out with the M3 Evo engine and transplanted by Allitalia Ltd with a modified LS2 engine with full Haltech custom ecu pushing approx 500 bhp to keep competitive.
The long trek to sunny Scotland started on a Thursday ready to spend a Friday practice day in the new upgraded BMW, and things didnt go to plan at the start, the weather was very warm and still, which caused the temps to rise in the engine bay, then a brand new cooling fan decided to fail, luckily Lwi always keeps a close eye on data, so the practice was aborted until the problem could be fixed. A search around the paddock found a new fan, although slightly smaller than original it kept the temps down.
Practice day was spent dialing in the grip level, running a mix of tyre brands to test before committing to one brand. Extreme tyres that Lwi was awarded as part of championship win and a newcomer on the block, Accelera. At the start of the day Lwi felt he had too much grip but by the end he was using more of the huge V8 grunt to push the grip level to the max on 17 inch rims, this was something that was going to become apparent on race day.
Sunday and Pro race day, Lwi had 2 hours practice honing his qualifying line, which was faultless as always, but it became apparent that he was struggling to hold proximity with the top driver due to loss of grip. With the help of the drift fam as quick change up to 18 inch rear wheels and some new Accelera tyres transformed the BMW allowing Lwi to push harder on chase runs.
Qualifying: Lwi has gained the reputation of being a line driver in both UK and Ireland and he hadn’t lost his skill in the down time since last season. First run and score of 91.5 was not enough for Lwi so he pushed the envelope for the second run and improved the score to 95 points holding top qualifying until Luke Barker and Mckeever knocked him off the top spot, can’t grumble too much. The grip level was improved with the 18 inch rims and new Accelera.
Top 16 Battle :
This was Lwi’s first battle in the Pro class this year and Oliver Silcock was a worthy opponent. Lwi laying down the perfect lead line once again allowing a good chase that the judges ask for but the chase run for Lwi was a little harder, still learning the grip he was judged as shallowing the track to gain proximity. Maybe should have been OMT to fight it out but it wasn’t to be. So Lwi lost the battle.
A successful weekend with a lot of positives, the LS conversion is reliable and the handling of the chassis remains unchanged with the extra power. We will now be running 18 inch rims with the bigger 265 Accelera tyres. Some extra cooling needs to be addressed although autumn will soon be here for remainder of rounds and sure the weather will be cooler.
Thank you to everyone who supports the Team from family and friends to sponsors and companies. If you would like to be part of this amazing journey please get in touch with us at support@lwiedwards.com
