Dan Fegent Photography

The day started out with a nice and early alarm going off, pretty sure 4AM was involved somewhere, but photographs needed to be taken and I was in desperate need to get involved with some drifting now that 2011 has truly started!

My journey started by meeting up with drift couple Cole and Emma, previously featured on Fitted Life. As I drove down in my little Aygo full to the brim with all my gear for the day, the rain was pouring down heavily even for England. It made me doubt whether the Drift What Ya Brung day at Santa Pod Raceway would even take place…but I carried on in hope that we’d see a break in the weather and that the iPhone’s weather forecast of overcast for Santa Pod wouldn’t let me down. So at 6AM on Saturday, I arrived at the home of two pure awesome R33 Skylines and their extremely friendly drivers/owners who were preparing themselves for a day of drifting.

Before I lose you all I should probably explain a bit more first, Drift What You Brung days (DWYB for short) allow people to practice and learn how to drift properly. It allows drivers to find the limits of their cars and learn to hold them at it. It’s often a good opportunity for people that want to compete in the BDC (British Drift Championship) or ODC (Open Drift Championship) to come and get noticed. It’s also a nice start towards earning their drift license and competing properly. But usually, it’s just a fantastic day to have some fun in your car. Whether it’s a fully bred drift track machine or a daily driver that likes to slide, anything and everything turns up.

So back to the story. I arrived blurry eyed at Cole and Emma’s early on that dark and extremely wet Saturday morning, though the two were sure that the weather would clear up. The two loaded up their spare tyres filling up the Skylines. Actually it’s amazing how many tyres you can get in a Skyline when you think about it. Cole alone managed to fit two extra rear alloy wheels and six drift tyres in his R33, and there was still room for me! hehe. Incredible! Fully loaded, we set off on the 2 hour journey to Santa Pod.

Along the way it was cool to see other drifters heading in the same direction, some even with roof racks holding all their spares for the day. One stop we’re at a motorway service station, the next we’d formed a convoy of five cars all taking part in the day’s fun. Everyone has known each other for years, and if they hadn’t..well then I couldn’t have told the difference. It was a brilliant sense of camaraderie filling the air between the different drifters. An atmosphere with which the whole day was filled.

As we approached Santa Pod, the rain thankfully stopped and it started to look like a good day for everyone! Things were looking up! We arrived at Santa Pod just before 9AM and the drivers set about preparing the cars for the day. Their pit areas were filled of spares and repairs. Straight after the drivers’ briefing the Hi-Vis vest came out and I headed over to sign myself on as a photographer. A great start to putting myself in harm’s way. hehe.

After being introduced to many of the drivers and explaining who I was, I went out to find some good spots around the track as some of the drivers started to trickle onto the various track layouts. The neat thing about DWYB days is that it accommodates all levels of skill. You’ve got several doughnut areas, a transition teaching figure of eight, the kidney which is an off pattern triangle layout, and the full size practice track with roughly eight bends and plenty of 3rd gear drifting opportunities.

As for the cars taking part, for what looked like an awful day turned pretty decent! The UK drift scene is very jap car orientated, however BMWs have really started to show their abilities in capable hands and are now appearing more and more in the scene. This DWYB day was no exception and it was great to see some variety on show.

Nissans were in full force as per usual with numerous Silvias and Skylines. The drivers took to the track showing some fantastic skill on what was still quite a wet track. Among the sea of Nissans there were a few other stand out cars and drivers to me. One being a stunning Yellow S2k and the other an Mr2 Turbo. Both of which are not the easiest cars to drift in the world. I’m pretty sure my old Mr2 Turbo tried to kill me several times on the road so I was really impressed to see one being driven with such talent.

As the day went on the weather improved for the better and the track eventually started to dry up. This led to lots of tyre smoke and even better driving from all the guys and ladies that were practicing.

I made sure to take the time to also get shots of the cars in the pit area, with the idea of capturing the moment in full and of course to get a cheeky closer look at the cars that were taking part. Including an HKS sponsored Silvia S15, simply stunning!

Another stand out car for me was Ross’ red 200sx S14 with an S13 front end or S14.3 as he refers to it. Apart from this amazing front end conversion (I’m a huge fan of pop up lights!) he had also made it so that the exhaust comes out just behind the passenger seat in the rear quarter panel! Pure awesome! I’m hoping to get something sorted along the lines of a full feature for this car in the future. At the very least I’ll be pointing my lens at his car a lot more throughout this year’s drift season.

Overall it was an awesome day among a great group of people, I felt very welcome among the drivers and other photographers. And after exploring all the angles I could see of the track and getting as close as I could push myself to do so, I came away with several hundred shots of everyone that took part.

I also had my goproHD with me and had planned on making this day my first go at putting together some footage and editing it all into a proper little film. The film I have put together mainly focuses on Cole’s R33 Skyline, which can be seen below.