King of Europe Drift Series 2011
Round 1 : Kragujevac - Serbia
So here we are in the 7th King of Europe season. 6 years have passed already since Paul Vlasblom won the first season of KOE, a single event-championship back then, that took place in Belgium, at Warneton. 2006 was Nicholas Heyer’s year, a driver that might repeat the performance this year as well. For 2007, DriftKing Paul Vlasblom won another King of Europe Championship title, thus being the only driver in the competition’s history with more than on championship victory. In 2008, dutchman Kees Kok was the top dog, leaving behind in second and third Zoltan Lakatos and Jasper Spaan. One year later, the King of Europe Trophy went to Hungary, to Adam Kerenyi, and for 2010, the winner of King of Europe was Todor Dunev. Looking back to champions of the past, we could conclude the fact that for 2011, 3 of the drivers could reach Vlasblom’s performance of winning more than 1 King of Europe Championship, and these drivers are Adam Kerenyi, Todor Dunev and the above mentioned Nicolas Heyer. Another analysis reveals the fact that , in the last two years, the driver who was proclaimed winner at the first round in Serbia, Kragujevac, was the driver to win the championship. Pure coincidence or is it more than that?
On friday, a total of 44 drivers from 13 countries finished the registration, we were sure that all of them are highly skilled drivers, because we are talking about King of Europe, but some of them got our attention at first sight, just by looking at the cars they said they will bring. We are talking about Vlad Barbash, who said that he is going to come with a Nissan Silvia S14 powered by a RB26 engine, which can only be a very interesting setup, this not being a very common engine swap in Europe, but a quite regular sight in Japan. Another car that grabbed attention was a Toyota Corolla AE86, or better said SR86, thanks to the engine swap it’s owner – Josip Zax Zagar, gave it – the engine belonging initially to a Nissan Silvia S14. This was special because, after all, we are talking about a legendary chassy that is unanimously recognised for it’s compatibility with the motorsport we all love, and an engine with sufficient power, prolonged endurance for being abused and an overall weight set a level that does not interfere with the fine weight balance of the little Hachiroku. Finally, but not last, everybody was anxious to see the new car of the highest ranked romanian driver from King of Europe: Calin Ciortan. Sadly, the BMW E30 powered by a Turbo M3 E46 engine wasn’t ready in time for this stage, but, most probably, Calin’s and our expectancies will be upheld when the car is going to get on the track. And the reason I say that is because the E30 might be declared at some point one of the most powerfull cars in King of Europe Drift Series.
King of Europe Kragujevac round has something that makes it very special. Something that no other round has: a car parade that travels the streets of Kragujevac, making a rare sight: performance oriented, racing spec cars crossing the public streets, with all of it’s inhabitants closely and enthusiastically watching.
Friday, at around noon, arrived in Kragujevac the two cars from GTT Racing Team: Nissan Silvia S15 (Gabriel Onofrei) and BMW M3 E36 (Razvan Fratianu). In the service area, we could already see the two cars from Grav Drift Team : BMW E30 V8 (Dobre Niculae) and BMW M3 E46 (Calin Ciortan) and the SR20 powered 200SX from Kamikaze Racing Team (
Chelaru). We could also notice the presence of the new Skyline Convertible version driven by Antony Ply – Le Crazy Francezule , and Iva Rusinova’s 2011 competition car, a 2.2 Turbo powered Audi 90 converted from Quattro to RWD. As the hours passed, more and more cars and drivers kept rolling in and started prepparing for the two days of racing that followed. A very interesting entrance was that of a rather large truck and an assistance minivan, branded with BrillSteel. Once the truck was open, we could see inside Enrico Sartori’s M3 E36, a sight that made us understand the level of professionalism and obviously budget that the italian driver was running at. With almost 380 horsepower, and 500+ when using the nitrous oxide, and with a steering angle of 77 degrees ( YES, 77!) , Sartori seemed to enter the circle of drivers with most chances to win the round. We also spent a good 10 minutes admiring and I could say almost drooling over Josip Zax Zagars SR86, a car that looked even better than we could imagine, and we couldn’t be more anxious to see it running sideways.
Next up was the technical check-up done by the well prepared staff of King of Europe,and it was also time for applying sponsor representative stickers like KW Suspensions, OMV, Motul and Redbull. To guarantee a good level of competition throughout the 2 days, all the new drivers in King of Europe had to prequalify in order to be allowed to go on. All of them were granted approval to enter the competition, some of them making a very good impression from the very beginning.
Saturday was the first day of King of Europe open to the public , with official training sessions and drift taxi! The drivers were split up into two groups, so that each and every one of them will get equal practice time. Keeping in mind the fact that the track has grown considerably since last year, entry speeds into the first corner reached values of 110km/h (Adam Kerenyi). Trying to find the ideal line and corner entry speed, most drivers would spin out in this first corner, making the spectators understand the level of difficulty that the layout of the track generated. If in 2010 the drivers from Slovakia gave us great 3 Way Tandems : Kovacik-Kolesar-Javorcik, this year Kolesar was left to get the show going by himself, having the same agressive entries from both angle and speed point of view. Iva Rusinova also showed some great skills, with very few spinouts and with constant speed along the track. Most people would say that the most interesting car from this first round was Gabi Onofrei’s Nissan Silvia S15, both of it’s design and sound (Screamer Pipe) catching the crowd’s attention, both on the track and in the service area.
Even if the BMW E36 model has become a rather common sight in drifting events, Enrico Sartori’s E36 seemed to be something more….unique . The clouds of smoke his tyres generated while doing his runs where enough to make him invisible for anyone trying to watch from behind – and we are talking about spectators and chasing drivers at the same time. The same thing seemed to happen whenever Geza Toth was driving, with him choosing a V8 layout for his E36 . Other nice E36’s were those of Benno Frieden from Switzerland and Gregor Sedlar from Slovenia, and finally, but not last, the turbo E36 driven by Marko Brkljacic.
From the local drivers, the crowd favourites seemed to be Goran Simic and Zoran Savic, each of them having their own approach on their cars : E30 Turbo / E30 V8 station wagon. Zoran Savic is a really big guy, and his car looked exactly like him : very powerfull and respect demanding. The small details you could observe were trully memorable: the Undertaker registration plate and the “ I Will Take You” phrases written on the car. Talking about E30’s, Ferencs Szekeres displayed some high entry speeds all day round, and so did Szylvester Gyorgy with his new M3 E46 weapon.
As you would expect, the two Links Team drivers put in very good runs, Miro Zrncevic showing that he has grown quite a lot since the last time we have seen him in action, almost a year ago , and Josip Zax Zagar showing us the SR86 is indeed a very agile car, and that his comeback in King of Europe can be considered a serious threat to the drivers claiming the King of Europe Drift Series Trophy. The almost 600 horsepower developed by the RB26 used by Vlad Barbash seemed to be a bit to much for the surface of the track – it proving to be a bit slippery, at least from what we understood in our small chat with him. Leaving aside the not so fortunate results obtained by Vlad, his car could be easily eligible for the title of “Best looking car” at the event and maybe it could have fooled a lot of people thinking that the car comes straight from JDM Allstars or maybe D1. Remaining in the ukrainean area, Dmitryi’s got a new dogbox on his car and a new Police Look, which is absolutely great!
Todor Dunev put out the same constant and sure of himself runs, Nicolas Heyer brought his old Sierra but in a slightly different setup (more power) , and with a look that earned his car the title ”Robocop’s Car” . At the beginning of Saturday, the 6th romanian driver showed up, Alexandru Ciulean, using Octav Chelaru’s car, and putting down some runs that made us want to see him as fast as possible driving his Skyline R33, which is going to turn up with a new setup quite soon. Also in the romanian side, Calin Ciortan and Dobre Niculae drove in the same style that gave their team’s name: Grav ( somewhere along the line of : Aggressive, Seriously, Hardcore) . Also, Razvan Fratianu showed that he never stops gaining speed, which is obvious from round to round, thanks to his skill improvement and engine capabilities.
All in all, Saturday was a good day for drifting, beginning with the great display of driving skills and fabulous cars, going on with the great weather , things that attracted quite a large crowd, wich I would say was at a level of roughly 5000 people, or maybe even more (This is not an official final number)
The enthusiasm and the feelings shared by everybody during Saturday turned into, at least for many of them, into sorrow on Sunday morning. The sky was completely covered with dark clouds, it was raining, and it all looked like we were not going to have any more tyre smoke and insane corner entry speeds. So, advantage for lightweight cars, with less power and generally speaking for drivers experienced in drifting on wet surfaces. At 09.00 , some of the drivers (the ones that chose to rest and not to party on Saturday) were already at the track to try out the new surface. Obviously, first corner, first spin for almost all of them, with some exceptions. After everybody got some practice sessions, the qualifications begun, and we had somewhat of a decent running surface – the rain stopped, the track was semi-dry and we all hoped for the best. Roman Javorcik qualified first, after he ran in Kolesar’s car Todor Dunev followed him in second place. The next 5 drivers all had BMW E36s , by qualifying position: Blasutta, Sartori, Toth, Quaranta and Frieden. From the romanian team, Calin Ciortan qualified highest, on 12th place , with 87 points, 0.5 points behind Zrncevic. From the unexpected results of the day, not enough points for getting into Best32 were obtained by Gabi Onofrei, because of the poor traction displayed by the powerfull S15 on wet surface. Same dissapointment and same score for Zoran Savic, who couldn’t use the power of his mighty V8, nonetheless being cheered by all the people in the audience.
The moment the battles started wasn’t exactly a happy one, because any hope that the track will finally be dry was thrown away because of the rain. It was becoming clear to us that we were going to see a lot of spinouts, carefull planned attack strategies and unbelievable outcomes. It was also obvious that the V8 powered E30 driven by Niculae Dobre was feeling like a fish out of water in the given surface conditions, and after a spin in the first run, he lost to Josip Zagar’s SR86 after the croatian won the second run (7-3). Ukraine versus Hungary, the battle between Dmitriy and Szilard left the hungarian driven Mercedes E500 out of the competition. Talking about possible unbelievable outcomes, Razvan Fratianu kept his hopes high for a few minutes, wishing to defeat the 2009 Champion, Adam Kerenyi, but the huge difference in experience gave the final outcome, leaving the romanian behind. Enrico Sartori went on to battle the french Nicolas Heyer, and it was 8-2 in the first run. Heyer spun out in the second battle, Sartori decided not to spin and kept going around the Sierra, but he slightly touched the orange machine, doing somewhat of damage to it, spilling some boiling fluids on the track. Alexandru Ciulean was stopped by Ferencs Szekeres, thus proving that driving somebody else’s car could be a disadvantage at times. At a point where nobody expected it, Geza Toth’s E36 decided to stop running, because of a clutch problem, allowing Sebastien Cornec to go on to Best16. Calin Ciortan took out the beginner Uros Berdajs, who put on a good show considering the fact it was his first KoE race. For a few moments, the romanian spectators hoped that Octav Chelaru would have some chance against the much more experienced and skilled Marco Blasutta, but italian driver went on further. A big surprise from the slovenian Gregor Sedlar, who took out Roman Kolesar, who didn’t seem to enjoy himself too much on the wet. Next up we had the opportunity to watch the italian duel between Luca Lodi and Diego Quaranta. 5-5 in the first round and 6-4 in the second, and the BMW E30 was given the win. Next up, the rather heavy R34 Skyline driven by Miro Zrncevic was eliminated by the turbo E36 driven by Brkljacic.Without too much of a headache, top32 was over with Benno Frieden taking out KoE novice Rok Kersic, Szylvester Gyorgy taking out Carola Mecan(she is surely getting better each round), Todor Dunev taking out Mirko Fabri and Antony Ply not having to race because of the problems sustained by Goran Simic’s car.
In the best 16 battles, Josip Zax Zagar took out fellow croatian Dario Foler after 7-3 and 5-5. An extremely interesting battle was that between Dmitryi Illyuk and Adam Kerenyi. Dmitryi turned on his police lights on his S13, creating an overall amazing view of the battle, leaving the impression that Adam was actually being chased by the Drift Police. Dmitryi spun first, and then it was Adam’s turn. Dmitryi spun out again, and made a 6-4 in the second run, not enough to take him further up. One of the drivers that we thought has high chances of winning the round, Enrico Sartori, seemed to get past Szekeres , after 6-4 in the first round. Sadly for him, he spun out in the second run, so he did a big “Good Bye” Burnout for the people that cheered him up in the crowd. Stopping point for Sebastien Cornec as well, as Calin Ciortan gave hope to the romanian crowd that he would get up on the podium for this round. Next up, a most impressive battle between Marco Blasutta and Gregor Sedlar. After 8-2 in the first round for Marco, it seemed like all was over for the slovenian driver, but the italian champion spun out, and Gregor went on further. The last italian in the race, Luca Lodi got eliminated after he spun out twice against Brkljacic. The battle between Frieden and Ply required 4 rounds so that a winner could be established, and the victory went to Switzerland, leaving Ply with hopes for the future rounds. After Dunev took out Gyorgy in his E46 M3, he met Benno Frieden in Best8. It seemed like all was over for the Swiss driver, having to battle the 2010 King of Europe Champion, but after two runs that ended with 6-4 for the driver of the pink “Pussy Wagon”, he suddenly became number 1 favourite for winning the Kragujevac round.
Adam Kerenyi had to fight yet another highly skilled driver, in the person of Josip Zagar. Both of them are very experienced, both their cars are extremely well prepared for their purpose. A slightly less drifting angle for Josip in the first run and 5-5 in the second one, wich meant that Links Team were out of the competition. Surely we will see some great runs and results from theese guys in the near future. The situation was very similar in the battle between Calin Ciortan and Ferencs Szekeres, but the romanian driver seemed to be just a bit slower than his opponent, leaving him out of the race. Brkljacic’s nervous turbo E36 did not handle the rain so well,so Sedlar went on to the semifinals.
First battle of the semifinals,Slovenia versus Switzerland, E36 versus E36. A bit of bad luck for Sedlar, as he spun out in his first run, leaving the second run with a 6-4 score for Frieden who goes on to the final battle. In the other semifinal, we saw a reediting of a probabily familiar hungarian battle between Kerenyi and Szekeres. With quite equal speeds, Adam displayed a bit bigger drifting angle in the first run, assuring a 7-3 score, wich brought him victory after the second run was over.
The battle for 3rd place went on between Sedlar and Szekeres, and the poor traction surface took it’s toll. Spin for Szekeres in the first run, and 6-4 for Sedlar in the second one. So, the hungarian gets the 4th place, leaving Sedlar on 3rd.
The final battle, the most important moment of the day. Adam Kerenyi versus Benno Frieden. Two E36s modified in different approaches. One using a 3.8 liter M5 straight 6 engine and one using a classic M3 engine. The battle between a driver that has proven himself many times until now in the King of Europe Drift Series, and a driver that could be considered still a new figure in the series. The first run, the judged decided the score to be 5-5 ,and we started believing that this battle will definitely need a One More Time. This belief was proven to be wrong, because the score was decided in favour of the 2009 Champion, Adam winning the Kragujevac round, leaving the swiss driver in second, opening his future for a possible interesting outcome at the end of the season.
This being said, Adam secured 120 points in the Championship Rankings, Benno Frieden with 110 points, Sedlar with 100 and Szekeres with 90. Even so, the title is still up for grabs, and there are a few drivers outside the top 4 from Kragujevac who could win the championship like Dunev, Ciortan, Zagar, Sartori, Blasutta or maybe even Toth.
We are very happy to say that this year has introduced the new Team Points System, wich is a very interesting feature, having a total of 10 registered teams till this moment. After stage one, Drift Dotz Team is in first place, with 170 points (Kerenyi and Cornec), and then, tied up for 110 points: Grav Drift Team(Ciortan and Dobre) and Links Team ( Zrncevic and Zagar). Who will win the Team Championship? Stay tuned next week for Serres results! Thanks to Drift.Ro for this review.
Round 2 : Serres - Greece
2009 represents the year when King of Europe first stepped into Greece. The location that was chosen was Serres Racing Circuit. The drifters outside Greece were encountered by a rather large Greek Drifter Squad, alongside which you could also meet some drifters from Cyprus. Still, the Greek Championship was only in it’s baby steps, so it seemed like there wasn’t going to be much of a fight for winning the round. Altough the first 3 places in qualifying were taken by Kerenyi, Dunev and Kovacik, the following 11 spots belonged to greek and Cyprus drifters! And that says a lot about their will to win and shows that they might not have so much experience, but they surely have skills! For 2011, KW King of Europe Drift Series has returned to Serres once again, just one week after the first season round in Kragujevac, Serbia.
Considering the fact that in 2009, by the end of the Serres Round, Kovacik was the only non-greek or non-Cyprus driver left in the final four, that should give you some idea about how interesting things would turn out in this 2011 round. Altough the registration list for Serres was a bit smaller than the one for Kragujevac, it still showed a lot of promise, as we all knew that the drifting level in Greece has improved a lot and most of the top drivers from King of Europe announced their presence. And we are talking about drivers like the 2010 Champion Todor Dunev from Bulgaria, the 2009 Champion Adam Kerenyi from Hungary , 2010’s Third Place winner Calin Ciortan , number 5 driver Antony Ply , Italian champion Marco Blasutta and many other formidable drifters! Looking over the greek side of the list, it was noticeable that some of the drifters that came to King of Europe Serres in 2009 were coming to the 2011 round as well. Drifters like Kavvadias Xaralampos, with the C20LET Kadett, Nikos Kouroupis with the SR20DET Corolla AE86 and even Tasos Kourpouanidis with his M3 E36. Still, Margaritis Katsanidis was missing from this year’s list, and most people were doubtful about the fact that the Alfa 75 Kompressor would miss such an important event. Noticeable absences from the list were guys like Enrico Sartori, who made a great show in Serbia, but who encountered some small engine problems. Also, the guys from Links Team could not make the trip to Serres, leaving them a bit behind in Team Ranking. The flat black Nissan Silvia S15 from Romania was too missing from the list, as Gabi Onofrei had to stay at home to make sure all will go well with the national drift demo event held by the Romanian Drift Federation. Also missing were the drivers that finished 2nd, 3rd and 4th in Kragujevac. As a matter of fact, Adam Kerenyi was the only Hungarian drifter that came to race in Serres, all of his fellow countrymen staying at home for a national scale event. Still, there was no doubt whatsoever that Round 2 is going to be an amazing event, because everybody knew the fact that in 2009, there was a lot of 4th gear drifting on the track, and this year could not have been different.
It was Saturday morning, and all was quiet on the Serres Racing Circuit. Some of the cars that already arrived since Friday were silently waiting to be woken to life by their owners. Cars starting rolling in and everybody was anxious to get things started. As expected, Margaritis showed up early morning and his Alfa was looking better than always. And it seemed that the old compressor setup was replaced with a new twin turbo system, with screamer pipes coming through the hood , and with a rumoured 500+ horsepower! That just made things a bit more interesting for the second round! Another interesting car that showed up was sitting in the Romanian area, next to Dobre’s E30 V8 and Fratianu’s E36 M3. It was Calin Ciortan’s R33 Skyline, a car that is nicknamed “The Black Devil”, and it was said to push more than 350 horsepower to the rear wheels!
And the track was quiet no more, as the engines started revving all around the paddock area, and drifters were bringing in their cars to the Motul Tent at the starting line so they could go through registration. Car after car, receiving sponsor representative stickers and being thouroughly checked by King of Europe staff, you could notice that the level sure has gone up in Greece. Turbo Corolla’s – and we all know how fast those cars go , a 2JZ Toyota Celica Supra, SR20DET powered Opel’s and let’s not forget about the nicely modified BMW’s, generally using V8 or straight six engine setups.
At the same time, the paddock area was seeing some new features besides the regular drifting zone. We are talking about a few demo cars that showed up, which includes some Mazda RX8-s , a Nissan Silvia S14 and others. But most important, the KW Suspensions area was set up, with two of the local company demo machines on display, giving the people interested in high quality Suspensions the opportunity to find out more about KW and their well known products.
After the registration was over with, it was time for briefing. The drivers were told to take things easy at the beginning, so they could get to know the track first, before stepping on the gas, ensuring that they will not get themselves into a possibly dangerous situation. The first judged corner was set at K5, leaving K10 to be the final corner before the finish line. This layout would prove to be a good one for both speed and technical standpoints. As usual, the drivers were split up in two groups, to ensure the fact that they get an equal amount of practice time. So, the drivers were ready, the cars were all set up, the spectators were eagerly waiting for the show to begin, and the weather was by our side. What could you want more than that?
Group A started training, and 2 BMW M3 E36’s were really drifting like crazy, high speeds, good angle and smooth lines . One was Marco Blasutta from Italy, and the other one was Tasos Kourpouanidis, who seemed to have improven significantly from the Serres race in 2009, when he did not succeed in advancing to Top16 battles. Two of the other impressive greek drivers were Charkas Anastasios, with a very nice blue E30 V8 and Basilis Kanteris with a turbocharged Toyota Corolla AE86. Both of them, and especially the Corolla driver were raising huge clouds of smoke, destroying one set of tyres after another. Razvan Fratianu from Romania was still trying to find a good line while racing, and he kept gaining speed from run to run, and so were the other greek drivers.
Group B started out great, with Katsanidis Margaritis putting down some absolutely amazing rounds, that made everybody understand that he is dead serious about winning the King of Europe Round in Serres. Also, the 2JZ powered Toyota entered the track, but it didn’t quite stand up to the crowd’s expectations. Maybe it needs more tweaking? We sure hope to see it at a future King of Europe Round with the right setup, because 2JZs really do have great potential! The Romanians from Grav Drift Team were also inside Group B, and they rolled on the track one after another. At the steering wheel of his E30 V8, Dobre had the same aggressive high speed entries as always, but really seemed to be lacking some power , especially in the final section of the track. Calin’s black R33 was really screaming like mad, but Calin was not really well adapted to it, because of the fact that this year he mostly drove his M3 E46 in drifting events. We are eagerly waiting to see that 6xx horsepower E30 of his in action! Altough Todor Dunev could not show up for the Serres event, another Bulgarian came with his SX, this time a 240 version, with a turbocharger on. Emil Ivanov was also in Group B, and he put on quite a good show, prooving, together with Iva Rusinova ( she was really flying out there, not to speak of the smoke she caused!) that Bulgaria is on it’s way to growing even more in regards to drifting skills and machines.
Adam Kerenyi, as usual, had his own pace, going a bit faster than everyone else, in a car that seems to be well suited for any track it goes on. Antony Ply was enjoying his Skyline Convertible more than he got to in Kragujevac, and was making the people that looked down on him for mounting a BMW V8 into a Japanese car reconsider their approach. His team mate, Nicolas Heyer was also out on the track in the Robo-Sierra, drifting and sometimes using his General Lee Horn to the crowd’s enjoyment! Dmitryi Illyuk was also on the track with the Police Drift Car, and seemed to drive a bit chaotic, but everybody thought that was because of the fact he was still adapting to the course. Also performing well in training was Motul Sponsored driver Sebastien Cornec, with the AS Factory/Dotz Drift Team Nissan Skyline R32. Rumours have it that his Serres setup for the car had the extra horsepower needed to maintain a good speed throughout the track and raise some consistent smoke behind him. From the greek camp, Makis Papadopoulos was really going for the clipping points, and this can be easily seen in a certain movie from the Serres Round.
In a very strange way of things, unpleasant incidents started occurring to certain drivers. Don’t worry, we ‘re not talking about crashes or accidents, but about the second worst thing that could happen to a driver while racing: engine failure. And Saturday had no less than 3 of theese…It first started with Diego Quaranta’s turbo BMW..than the problem occurred to the other Italian driver, Marco Blasutta, and finally, Dmitryi’s car gave up, thus giving us an explanation about his rather weird runs.
Saturday was over, and it was time for the drivers and for everybody to get some rest before the most important day of the weekend. And while Diego Quaranta had no hopes of racing the next day, both Marco and Dmitryi had found some alternative solutions. Dmitryi spoke to Calin , his R33 having a somewhat similar behaviour to the ukrainean’s S13, and Marco spoke to Razvan Fratianu, with him driving a slightly less prepared M3 E36.
The weather was still great the next morning and it was time for one more practice round for each group. While Blasutta seemed to get along fine with the Romanian borrowed M3, Dmitryi was having a hard time at controlling the heavier, more powerfull Skyline. Just before qualifying the drivers were summoned for the briefing session. The atmosphere inside the Serres Racing Track press room was now a bit more serious than the day before, everybody being a bit stressed and thinking about how important this next session will be.
The stakes were high, and everybody was trying to do their best. The qualifying session was over with Antony Ply in first place , having received 95.5 points from the judges, after three very impressive runs. Second place belonged to Kamzelis Xaralampos, driver of the SR20DET powered Opel Ascona, with only 0.5 points less than Antony. Another greek driver in 3rd place, Charkas Anastasios, at the wheel of the blue V8 powered BMW E30. Altough not driving his own car, Marco Blasutta managed to score 93.5 points, gaining 4th place in qualyfing! That really is impressive! Right after Marco, two of the most feared greek drifter, Kourpouanidis and Margaritis, with only one point between them, in favour of the first. Iva Rusinova kept driving well in her runs, and she qualified 10th, gaining more points than Calin Ciortan and even Adam Kerenyi! Less encouraging results for Dmitryi Illyuk, who could not get along very well with “The Black Devil” owned by Calin Ciortan, with 58 points that put him in 22nd place. Also a strange outcome for Basilis Kanteris, who didn’t seem to run as well as he did before, gaining only 52.5 points and 26th position.
After the results were out, the top 16 drivers were already happy they made their way to the battles, leaving the rest hoping that the day will have a Top32 Battle system.. And their hopes were turned into reality some minutes later, during the pre-battle briefing. Everybody was in, and the fight was going to be a tough one! Following the Top32 battle system, five of the drivers had the luck of having no opponent, and so Antony Ply, Dimitris Kalividis, Charkas Anastasios, Calin Ciortan and Kamzelis Xaralampos moved on directly to Top16.
Giorgio Tsilimponis and his M5 powered E30 had to battle the JZ powered Toyota driven by Tatsis Theodoros, both of them having some close scores in the qualifying sessions. Theodoros made a big mistake and 10 points were granted to Tsilimponis in the first run. After that, the only way he could still have a chance was if Tsilimponis would have spun out, but that did not happen, so the white Toyota was out of the race. Next up it was a battle between Opel and BMW, with Kavvadias Xaralampos and Agrafiotis Theodoros as drivers. The C20LET engine used by Kavvadias ran a bit more smoothly, bringing him the win after 8-2 and 7-3. 9th place qualifier Xatzilazaridis Panagiotis , driving the white E30 325 took out John Stolias , who only qualified in 24th, after 7-3 and 5-5 in the second run. A good start for Razvan Fratianu in his first run against Sebastien Cornec, with 7-3 for the Romanian. But it was not faith’s will that the M3 should go on, so Razvan did a spin in the second Run, pushing the Dotz Drift Team driver into top16. With not much hesitation, Tasos Kourpouanidis took out fellow greek driver Casouras Christos, after 7-3 in the first run and 10-0 in the second one. Tasos was really running good, and people started thinking that he may have a chance at winning this second run in Serres.
Without too much of a headache, Adam Kerenyi eliminated less experienced Emil Ivanov from Bulgaria, leaving the 240SX driver hoping for a better result in the future rounds. At this moment, it really seemed Adam will make one step further to becoming the 2011 KW King of Europe Drift Series Champion… Up next, we had a very close battle between French driver Nicolas Heyer in the orange Ford Sierra and Makis Papadopoulous in the red BMW powered Opel. So, it was 5-5 in the first run, but Heyer got the upper hand in run number 2 and he moved on to top16. Easy battle for Katsanidis Margaritis , who seemed to be in top form on Sunday, quickly taking out opponent Poulos Costas after 10-0 and 7-3. We then had a very interesting battle between very nice Corollas. The 1.6 litre turbo red Hachiroku driven by Basilis Kanteris and the SR20DET powered white AE86 driven by Nikos Kouroupis. Since Basilis did not have a very good run in qualifying, everybody was expecting him to lose the battle. And the first run did point in that direction, with the score being 7-3 for Kouroupis. The second run brought the final outcome: Big mistake for Kouroupis, and the situation is turned upside down, leading Basilis Kanteris in the red AE86 to Top16! We don’t really know what happened with Iva in the battle against Pasis Socratis. Spin in the first run for her and only 3 points in the second one. Maybe she hasn’t really adapted to tandeming yet?
The final top32 was that between a last minute enlisted driver, Marinis Theodoros, in a seemingly very powerfull Turbo AE86 and Niculae Dobre with his slightly underpowered E30 V8. Altough Marinis seem to have somewhat of an advantage in power compared to the Romanian, his spin in second run sealed the final decision: Dobre moves on to the top16!. Now things were starting to get a bit more hectic. The crowd was extremely anxious to see who was going to win the number two round. The remaining drivers had their tension high, hoping that they will climb the podium at the end of the race. Drivers that were eliminated were left to watch from aside. Note that Marco Blasutta helped the judges decide on the last corner situation, giving them a detailed description of what happened in that specific point.
Antony Ply really had things going, putting down some very good runs, even better than the ones in Serbia, fact which lead to Tsilimponis being eliminated from the race. The C20LET powered Opel driven by Kavvadias proved to be better than the BMW driven by Panagiotis, leaving the E30 owner out of the race. Kalividis had a slight advantage over Sebastien Cornec in the next race, but he was disqualified in the second run, allowing the French driver to go on with the race. The nicely modified V8 E30 Sedan driven by Charkas Anastasios almost won against the Turbotechnique Sierra, with 7-3 in the first run for the greek driver. But he spun out in the second run, so French Drift Team had both drivers into Top8. Margaritis was explosive, and Calin Ciortan had not yet fully gotten hold of the way the R33 moves, so the Grav Drift Team driver was out of the race, leaving Margaritis with one fewer powerfull adversaries in Top8.
With a bit of luck and of course skill, Basilis Kanteris got passed Pasis Socratis, leading the Corolla legendary name into Top8. Romanians did not hope for much in the battle between Kamzelis Xaralampos and Dobre Niculae. Dobre did not have the power he would have wanted, and this weekend was the first time he has ever been to Serres. So, 6-4 for Kamzelis in the first run. But something went wrong and, in the second run, Dobre just barely got enough points to move on further to Top8 (7-3). We’ve left the most important battle in Top16 for last. The battle between two of the best E36 drivers left in the race: Adam Kerenyi and Tasos Kourpouanidis. Everybody had the feeling that this is going to be close, but most of the people were thinking that Kerenyi will win in the end. In the first run, Kourpouanidis displayed a slightly higher drifting angle and corner entry speed, so he was awarded 6-4. The situation was reversed in the second run, so the judged decided that the two drivers should proceed to a one more time. In the third run, Kerenyi seemed to be left a bit behind by the greek driver, so the advantage was given to Tasos. Finally, their runs were equal 5-5 , and Adam Kerenyi was out of the race.
Moving on to Top8 drivers, Antony Ply really seemed to have a lucky strike, with Kavvadias receiving 0 points in the first run because of spinning. Altough the second run was decided in favour of the greek driver, the difference in points was still to Antony’s advantage. Cornec, who was a bit lucky throughout the entire day, could not do anything do stop Kourpouanidis, so his journey would end here (7-3 and 6-4 for Tasos). Margaritis avenged his fellow greek driver, taking out Antony’s team mate Nicolas Heyer after 7-3 and 10-0 (Heyer goes out of the track with all 4 wheels). The last battle in top8 was that of Dobre Niculae and Basilis Kanteris. The Turbo Corolla spins in the first run, and 10 points were awarded to Dobre. Basilis had some hopes the battle will be dragged into a one more time, after a very big mistake by Dobre, but the final score was 9-1 in favour of the greek driver, so the Romanian E30 moves on to the semifinals!
And the excitement has reached maximum level in the semifinals! The spectators are all standing up, the media guys are ready to record and photograph every single moment from every single angle. The judges are sweating somewhere over 5 metres in the air, as focused as they could possible be so as not to make any errors. Marco Blasutta is at his “post” as well, watching the last corner like a hawk, ready to identify any driver mistakes. Everybody is watching, nobody is talking about anything else but the race. King of Europe at maximum intensity!
First up, Antony Ply meets greek driver Tasos Kourpouanidis. In a rather strange manner, both of them are BMW’s. One is entirely german, and one is german only by heart. M3 E36 Drift Warrior versus Skyline R32 V8 Crazy FrenchDude. This has really been an interesting battle. The first pass was a simple one, just so the people in the audience can have a better look at the two cars, and while Tasos kept drifting slowly through the corners, Antony kept a steady pace, not bothering his rear tyres at all. The first judged run changed the course of things, both of them going like crazy, with full throttle entries and big angle drifting. Pretty equal until the last corner, where, nobody understands how, Tasos straightened out for a second, loosing precious points, leaving Antony with a 7-3 advantage! And the greek spectators were all hoping for a comeback from Tasos in the second run. Again, they were pretty equal until the last corner, where Antony seemed to slow down a bit, maybe hopping that him being left behind for a bit will not make such a big difference in the initial result. And it didn’t, because the final score was 6-4 for Tasos, pushing Antony into the Final Battle!
Altough most of the greeks were confident that Margaritis would win the battle against the , some would say crazy, Romanian driver, Dobre Niculae, there were still people that feared that the Grav Drift Team driver would harras the Alfa driver to such a state where he could maybe spin or make a slight mistake. The difference in horsepower was more than obvious in the first run, Margaritis leaving Dobre way behind on the last straight of the track, and getting some absolutely out of this world drifting angle in the final corner. Dobre kept his hopes and speed as high as he could, but the score was 7-3 for Margaritis. The second run, Dobre was up in front, and surprinsingly to say, he had a bit more speed than Margaritis coming into the final corner, but definitely a bit less drifting angle. So that balanced the situation, resulting in a 5-5 outcome, establishing Antony’s Ply rival in the final Battle.
The battle for 3rd place took place between Dobre Niculae and Tasos Kourpouanidis.First run, Dobre was following, but his speed was no match for that of the E36’s, and the score was 6-4 for Kourpouanidis, making the crowd go all crazy! There was still some hope for the Romanians in the second run, with Dobre leading, but in the end, it was only a tie, so 3rd place goes to Tasos Kourpouanidis from Ptolemaida, the M3 E36 Drift Warrior. After all, Dobre was not so disappointed, considering all the disadvantages he had during the race, and we hope to see him at the next round getting an even better result.
And it was time for the main attraction of the weekend. The moment everybody was waiting for. Both of the drivers were in the final battle of a King of Europe round for the first time. Katsanidis Margaritis, with his 500+ twin turbo Alfa Romeo , racing on home territory, in front of a big crowd that was cheering for him all day long. Antony Ply, the lonely driver, with no team of mechanics to back him up like Margaritis had, hoping the Crazy French Dude nickname will be associated with the title of King of Europe Round 2 Winner. France versus Greece. NISS-BMW versus Alfa Romeo. Who would be the winner?
First run, Margaritis following. Going into the last corner, Margaritis displayed a bigger drifting angle and considerably more smoke coming out of the back wheels. So, 6-4 to Margaritis. You could only imagine the pressure that sat on the shoulders of French driver Antony Ply, knowing the fact that he had to recover points in order to win or take it to a one more time and passionately hoping to win his first King of Europe Round in his career. But, there was nothing to argue about in the second run, as Katsanidis Margaritis got a 6-4 score, being declared official winner of Round 2 of the KW King of Europe 2011 Drift Series in Greece, Serres . This just leaves us to congratulate him on his fine performance, hoping that he will not stop here in King of Europe, and come to future rounds as well. Also we are left with the question: How long before Antony Ply will win the title of King of Europe Drift Series , considering his sure and steady evolution ?
Looking over the rankings after two rounds we can say that they look very interesting, and that anything can still happen along the way. Antony Ply is in first place with 180 points, with Adam Kerenyi right behind him with 170. Dobre Niculae is in third place with 130 points. Tied on 4th position are Margaritis Katsanidis, Calin Ciortan and Sebastien Cornec with 120 points each. Remember that until this point there are 61 drivers registered in this season, and by the end of the year, anyone could surprise us with winning the championship! It’s just a matter of will and racing in as many races as possible!
Watching over the Team Championship Rankings, tied for 1st place are Dotz Drift Team – Adam Kerenyi and Sebastien Cornec and French Drift Team – Antony Ply and Nicolas Heyer both of them obtaining 290 points until this moment. On 3rd place we have Grav Drift Team from Romania with a total of 250 points. The difference between Grav Drift Team and 4th place ranked team is of 140 points, which may seem as a lot at first, but really can be surpassed in just one round if you think about it. This Team Championship Ranking really is extremely exciting to watch developing don’t you think?
Last but not least, the Serres event had another special thing going on with it, because King of Europe brought out for testing a new telemetry system, which will help eliminate any potential human error in judging the competition, system that has proved itself well during the 2 days of racing and that will most probably take drifting to a whole new level, even better than it was before! Summing up the Greece event, we can say it was an absolute success from every point of view, and thank everybody who was been involved in this event from drivers, to spectators, local organisers and of course the Official King of Europe Sponsors : KW Suspensions and Motul
Round 3 : Presov - Slovakia
More than one month had passed since the second KW King of Europe Drift Series 2011 Round 2 in Serres, Greece, and it was a common feeling that people started to miss the King of Europe racing and of course, the King of Europe Spirit!
This time, it was Slovakia’s turn for some share of the action, as King of Europe returned here for the second consecutive year, in the city of Presov, the third largest in Slovakia. In 2010, about 35 drivers from Europe took part of the King of Europe race, and it looked like things will get even better in the future for the slovakian drift fans. Last year, you could say that hungarian drifters set the level of driving, with Feher Zsolt taking the win in his BMW E36 V8, followed by Todor Dunev in second, with his 200SX, and Adam Kerenyi in third, with his M5 powered E36.
2011 round number 3 was the first round for our King of Europe new official partner: Hell Energy Drink , and everybody was waiting to see not only the european top level drifters, but also the Hell Energy Camaro and it’s driver, Varga “Puci” Tamas in action! The location that was chosen by the organisers, with Norbert Kovacik playing an important role in this, was , as last year, the Mestska Sportova Hala Presov. The main difference is that, for 2011, the track would be ran clockwise direction, while last year it was counterclockwise.
With a total of 38 drivers registered for this 3rd round, it seemed that we were going to have 3 days of hardcore drifting and continuous fighting for achieving top position. After the Serres round, the situation was pretty tied on top of the Drivers Ranking for the Season, with Adam Kerenyi having only 10 points more than Antony Ply. Also, not very far behind, the romanians from Grav Drift Team, Dobre Niculae and Calin Ciortan were aiming to become top dogs, with no Katsanidis Margaritis to get in their way. Marco Blasuta, Nicolas Heyer and even the Motul sponsored driver Sebastien Cornec could have had the chance to become first in ranking.
Friday morning, 1st of July, the weather wasn’t looking too promising, and some drivers feared that rain would interfere with the good well going of the race. Trailers with race cars started arriving one by one from Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and even Poland. After the press conference , it was time for registration. As the cars were passing through inspection, they would receive the usual sponsor stickers, and then they would be getting in line for practice! Going through the paddock area, you could see a lot of cars and drivers new to the 2011 King of Europe season. Actually, the paddock area was quite full, even though not everybody had yet arrived. The list of registered drivers had gone up a bit, now reaching more than 50, as compared to the initial 38. One reason for that is the registration of a few more polish drivers in the last few moments, and that was the sign that the battle for getting the round win would become even more interesting, considering the level of drifting Poland has reached by this time.
The paddock area was full of very interesting cars, suited to anyones taste. On the Slovakian side , Robert Szolga brought his Toyota Corolla AE86 powered by a CA18DET Nissan unit, and that seemed like a rather unusual choice until we saw it running. Marko Hucko showed up with a very interesting BMW E30 Pickup version, powered, of course, by a V8 engine. We must say that this has to be one of the most well done pickup conversions done to the E30 that we’ve seen until this moment. Timotej Stikar and Marian Nicks came with their E36 BMWs, and they seemed to be quite popular with the fans. You don’t see the 350Z very often drifting in European competitions, but this time we had no less than two such cars, and neither of them was anywhere close to their factory specifications. Peter Kurnava chose a compressor setup for his green Z while the Hungarian Attila Turi decided on using a turbo setup. On the girls side of view, we are sad to say that Iva Rusinova, the Bulgarian drift-girl, could not make it to this event, interrupting a line of 2 continuous races where she showed good promise for her future runs. Still, her absence was compensated by the presence of Slovakian drift-girl Kristina Spontakova, also driving a german car, but in her case it’s a BMW E30 with a V8 engine. Going back to the Japanese side, Frantisek Andras brought his lovely blue, single turbo Mazda Rx7, adding some rotary flavour to a otherwise piston-power only event. Among other local drifters, King of Europe regular driver Roman Kolesar was also there, with his blue M3 E46, and he was definitely one of the top contenders for the win.
Moving on, the Hungarian crew, with Szabolcs Beres in the lead, also started arriving, all of them being ready to go full throttle and recover for the second round in Serres that they missed. MT Triangle Team, made up of Geza Toth (BMW E36 V8) and Szabo Szilard ( Mercedes E500) came to Presov as well, and they seemed ready more than ever to put on a fabulous show. Ferencs Szekeres , the 3rd place winner in Kragujevac, Serbia, did not make the event, but we expect to see him driving in Mariapocs. Feher Zsolt did not have his car ready, so he came and raced using his fellow team mates cars. A very interesting appearance was that of Attila Ladi. Now, we all knew that he used a V8 compressor setup on his BMW E36. But once he started his engine, we realized that things might have just gone up a notch for him. Because the compressor whine was no more, and the V8 rumble had turned into something more interesting. From the last time we’ve seen Ladi in King of Europe, he had gone for a M5 E60 V10 engine for his car, and the sound of that thing revving was quite something you should hear! Szylvester Gyorgy came with his normal aspirated (for now) M3 E46, and most people could not take their eyes of his car. Watch closely at his side-stickers and you will understand what his plans for the car are! Porkolab Peter and Janos Mester also brought their BMWs, together with Zsolt Zahuczki and Zsolt Grozinger, leaving Adam Kerenyi and Papp Peter to arrive in Presov Saturday morning.
The Romanian team came with only 4 drivers, with two of the last year Presov round participants not being able to come- Marius Mitrache with his Skyline R33 and Sorin Ene with his S14 Silvia. Dobre Niculae came with the same car he’s gotten us used to until now, while Calin Ciortan brought the same Skyline he did in Serres, his big project still not being completed. This time, Calin would really have to push things a bit, to proove that 2010 was no lucky strike for him getting 3rd position, and to wash away the not so favorable results he obtained in the first two King of Europe Rounds in this year. GTT Racing team was also on site, with Razvan Fratianu and his M3 E36 not missing any King of Europe round in this season, and Gabi Onofrei with his spectacular 500+ Horsepower Nissan Silvia S15.
On the list of: “Did not miss any King of Europe Event this year” you can count on French drivers Antony Ply in the convertible R32 Skyline, Nicolas Heyer in the Turbotechnique Sierra and Sebastien Cornec who brought out a Nissan Silvia S14 for this Slovakian round, his Skyline having some harder to fix engine problems. Also full season run for the two Italian top drivers Marco Blasutta and Diego Quaranta, both of them coming out with fresh power after the engine problems they suffered in Greece.
Now on to the Polish crew. This round was the first round of the 2011 season where the drifters from Poland registered, and they decided to come with a rather big team. The cars were split up between BMW’s and Nissans, and most of them seemed very well prepared. A rather curious presence was that of a black S14, driven by Marcinek Wierzbicki. This car did not retain it’s original SR20DET engine,and neither did it have any other Nissan unit. Instead , it used a 4.4 litre V8 engine coming out of a BMW, and looking at the livery of the car, it was soon obvious to us that this guy might have been studying Formula D driver Matt Powers in his S14 modifying choices. Judging by the outside appearance of the cars, one BMW from Poland also caught our attention. We’re talking about Wojtek Gozdzewicz’s E36, which had a rather wide bodykit and a pretty big wing in the back. It seems that he also used a V8 engine, but with a more, let’s say, exotique origin, coming of a BMW 650. That’s good enough for almost 370 horsepower in stock form. Alongside other well tuned BMW’s, like that of Marek Wartalowicz, you could also notice a very interesting S14, which had a turning angle that could rival that of Enrico Sartori’s E36, and could very well obtain an interesting result against fellow competitors.
After registration is was time for the drivers to enter the course, one by one, and test out the layout, while trying to accommodate to the slightly rough surface, and trying to find the aproppiate lines, speeds and angles of attack. Among the first cars to test the track was the Nissan Powered AE86, and judging by the speed and smoke of it, the car worked really well and the driver certainly had some good skills. Frantisek also entered the track, and altough he would not smoke his rear tyres as you would expect from a 400+ horsepower machine, he seemed to be glyding nicely over the track, with good speed and a very angry sound coming from the rotary engine. Car after car, run after run, the weather was still in favour of the drivers and audience, and the surface of the track was starting to get darker and darker from the rubber. Some noticeable runs were being put down by the polish Wartalowicz , in the V8 with NOS powered BMW E30. Coming out of the large right-hand corner situated towards the end of the track, he would literally raise huge clouds of smoke behind him, leaving the people cheering and struggling to see what’s happening at the same time. Another polish driver that looked good on the track was the above mentioned Wojtan Gozdziewicz, in the BMW “348” E36. Nicolas Heyer was also pushing hard in his high-power Ford Sierra, and it seemed like he was going to have a good racing weekend. The V8 powered S14 from Poland also came on track, and you could actually see that the combination Marcinek made was pulling out some interesting results. No turbo lag for him, no need to struggle with lack of throttle response. He was just pushing it hard, and the V8 swap started to make a bit of sense. As always, the fans were very happy to see so many different styles of cars and drivers, as everybody was different in their own way. Kurnava’s 350z was screaming like mad , even though it looked a bit heavy around the corners, the slovakian guys were also feeling right at home, having no problems with going around the track with full throttle, and ocassionaly you could see the lovely backfire coming out from several machines like Tomek Antoniak’s R33 for example. V8’s seemed to be the biggest smoke makers of the day, with Szabo Szilard throwing his E500 around like crazy, as Geza Toth did too in his 340 E36, to the delight of the audience and fans alike. Another kind of show was being given to us by Pawel Belonski, in the S14.5 , with his wheels turning so much that they seemed like they were just about to break or somehow fall off. Attila Ladi was really making nice use of his brand new V10, and maybe some people could have been fooled that Slovakia is organising a Formula event in Presov, because of the high pitched sound of the hungarian’s E36. Calin Ciortan was showing good promise, with evermore aggressive entries and big speeds, while driving his screaming “Black Devil”, while his team mate, Dobre, was showing some sign of lack in power and mechanical problems.
Altough it wasn’t raining, you couldn’t say that the weather was warm or anything along that line, but things got a bit hot when Hell came. And no, we’re not talking about the ipothetical “hell”, we’re talking about our partners at Hell Energy Drink, who made things a bit more interesting by bringing out their DEMO(nical) Chevrolet Camaro , with Puci, one of Hungary’s top drifters, at the wheel. Altough it wasn’t flaming as you might expect, it sure was making a LOT of smoke, and the roar of the LS V8 engine was sufficient enough to make you show some respect. And this is how the first day went on, with the usual taxi drift sessions included, where a lot of people were standing in line to get the chance to ride in their favourite cars or with their favourite drivers. And by the end of the day most of them got their chance and judging by their faces, everybody was more than happy!
After the day was over it was time for the City Parade, which has really become something that many people look after at the King of Europe events, especially after the succes this sort of thing has had in Serbia, Kragujevac. You can just imagine the glorious lineup of cars, led by the Camaro from Hell , running in a orderly manner towards the city centre, with engines revving, flames blowing out of the exhaust (especially out of Frantisek’s Rx7 exhaust) and hundreds of peoples ready with their cameras to record and photograph every single moment of the whole thing. You can really feel the King of Europe Spirit during this parades, and you can feel your heart beating harder every time you think of them ! And this was not all that was in store for fans and drivers, because after the city parade, it was time for the Playboy Party! And most drivers were more than happy to take part in this sort of thing, considering the fact that the next day their schedule would be a little more free, because of the King of Drift Slovakia race.
Saturday morning, if you were sitting in the city centre, you could cleary hear the sounds of the engines revving and tyres screeching from the track, with the most distinctive sounds probably coming from Attila’s V10, Calin ‘s Black Devil and Frantisek’s rotary. Sadly to say, to weather just got worse, and rain drops started falling over the city of Presov. Some drivers were dissapointed about this, but there were some of them that didn’t seem to be at all phased by this, for them, minor issue. Contrary to the majority’s belief, you don’t really need a light car to have “light” movements across wet surfaces while drifting, as Szabo Szilard prooved to everyone with his rather large bodied Mercedes. Of course, the wet surface meant that drivers were starting to spin, and some of them would hit the tyres spread across the track or on it’s margins, scraping their bumpers, fenders and in some cases getting out with a bit more damage than expected. Altough wet-drifting is not at all as spectacular as huge-smoke-high-speed dry asphalt drifting, this is how the true skills of a driver can come into play, and each and every one of them were struggling to coordinate their moves in such a manner as not to spin out or maybe worse, to crash. Saturday was also the day when the 2009 champion arrived in Presov, and we are talking about Adam Kerenyi of course, who had no sort of problems drifting in the wet, and if you look back just a while back, you can see he already won a wet-round this year in Serbia. After some individual practice runs, the drivers got involved in tandeming, which is of course a lot more troublesome in the wet, and the first guys who tried it out were two E30 drivers, one from Hungary (Porkolab Peter) and one from Poland (Marek Wartalowicz). Altough they lowered the speed level, their angles seemed to be the same as the day before, showing some very nice control of their V8s. Zoran Savic from Serbia was struggling a bit with the grip level of his tyres, and altough he tried to adjust his suspension setup, things were not going quite exactly as he had planned initially. Roman Kolesar and the felow slovakian drifters were putting on a good show for the local fans, and constantly pushing their cars towards the grip limit. Gabriel Onofrei’s mighty S15 was really having some serious grip problems. As it would accelerate from the start line, the wheels would spin like crazy no matter the throttle control used, and it was very hard for the romanian to keep his car on track. Most drivers would loose their bumpers while drifting too close to the tyres, and Szylvester Gyorgy was one of them. This is not because he spun out, by the contrary, he was one of the drivers that would have extremely good control over his car, his only problem was forcing to ride the ideal line under such poor grip conditions. Oh well, that’s drifting for you, your car will always have battle scars. We also have to mention that the two italian drivers were really moving fabulous in the wet, throwing their cars like crazy into the first corner, like the surface was dry for them..
Some of the drivers were suffering because of the rain more than others. We are talking about the drivers who were taking part of the King of Drift Slovakia race, not only local slovakian drifters, but KOE drifters as well.With qualifying in the morning and Top16 in the evening, they all struggled to do their best, but not everything ended the way they thought it would. Qualifying session belonged to the expert Geza Toth who got 96 points. But, by the end of the day the podium was comprised of: local Timo Stikar in first place, followed by the polish Gozdziewicz in second, Janos Mester from Hungary in third and Robert Szolga in 4th.
The second day was over with some casualties. No, no people were hurt, but some cars were instead. Janos Mester (M3 E36 cabrio) had a pretty bad collision with Janecek (the pink M5 powered E30). While the hungarian’s car was deemed incapable of moving itself to the paddock area, a small fire broke under the hood of the E30, but everything turned out ok, and both the cars were towed away. Robert Szolga also had some problems with his Corolla, making him unable to race the next day in the King of Europe race. Attila Turi also hit his Z on Saturday, and on Sunday his car was loaded onto the trailer , ready to depart from Presov. Dobre also took a hit while tandeming and the lateral side of his car was pretty badly hit, while his differential gave out. Thus, instead of clubbing or resting Saturday night, he had to stay up with his teammate and fix the issue until dawn. While some drivers were having problems because of the wet surface, some drivers had mechanical issues , like Nicolas Heyer for example, who’s engine mount gave out at a certain moment, causing some headache to him. The thing that bothered the drivers most on Saturday was perhaps not the fact that it rained, but the fact that the rain stopped at one moment, and the surface was starting to dry up. Thus, there were wet areas and there were dry areas, and the sudden changes in grip level were certainly a big problem while drifting. This also prooved to be a problem to stuntman Becman, who came to add some flavour to the event, with his usual somewhat death defying act and mini-hot-rod.
3rd of july, the day that everyone was waiting for. And the day we would see one more time the King of Europe Rain Spirit! The day started with the usual first practice session, followed by the pre-qualifying briefing. Only 46 of the initial drivers were able to compete on this day, and it was looking like 14 of them will not have the chance to go on to the battles. There was no rain, and everybody could drive without the fear of catching a wet section and spinning out because of that. Driver after driver, we saw it all, from the beginner-like mistakes that led to spinning out to the “Oh my god that was some crazy drifting” action. It came as no surprise that the King of Drift Slovakia top qualifyer, got first place in qualifications for King of Europe as well. Yes, Geza Toth, first place in qualifying. Second place , again with no surprise, went to Szabo Szilard, who was really running well this weekend, with a total of 90.3 points. A very impressive run by Calin Ciortan secured 3rd position for him with 89.9 points. Just 0.1 points behind Calin was the Army-style Camo BMW E30 driven by Peter Porkolab from Hungary. Marco Blasutta, Diego Quaranta, Marek Wartalowicz, Adam Kerenyi and Marcinek Wierzbicki were also among the drivers to finish in top 10 in qualifying, the difference between 1st and 10th place being a total of 6 points. It seems that Antony Ply could not keep up the strong runs he showed in Greece where he qualifyed first, and he had to settle for 15th place in Presov qualifying. You might be wondering how such close scores were judged. Well, Presov was the first official round to use the telemetry system, which was working flawlessly, giving out a lot of valuable info for the drivers. Now, the drivers that might have complained about their qualifying runs in the past were totally pleased to see their detailed evolution. Some drivers even stated that the info given by the telemetry system was more than enough for them, and that they don’t even need to know so many details about their runs. For example, the table displayed at the Motul tent situated at the start line revealed a whole lot of interesting aspects. The highest entry speed of the day was secured by Diego Quaranta in his 1.8 turbo E36, with 79km/h. That guaranteed a total of 5 points out of the 87.8 he received eventually. The second most fastest driver was (why are we not surprised), Dobre Niculae from Romania, with 77km/h, gaining him a total of 4.9 points out of his final 76.5. Talking about Angle Attack, 44 degrees were obtained by a number of drivers like Toth Geza, Szabo Szilard, Marek Wartalowicz, Diego Quaranta, Marcinek Wierzbicki, Timotej Stikar and Kalotka. When it came down to average angle, the winner was Jakub Tatara from Poland, nicknamed Musk, a guy that you might remember from a certain trailer crash on youtube. He got an average of 39 degrees that got him 25 points from his total of 86. You could have noticed that the overall fastest drivers on the track were Adam Kerenyi, Marian Niks and Wojtan Michal maybe even without seeing the telemetry results. They all got 69km/h, getting them some well deserved 25 points. As one last piece of information, the drivers that had the best lines were awarded 30 points. We are talking about number 4 and 6 qualifyers: Porkolab and Golasiewicz.
Among the drivers that did not qualify in Top32, Tomek Antoniak and Kristina Spontakova spun out in all three rounds, a bit surprising to say so, after they had some pretty good runs during the last two days. Also, very surprising was the fact that Nicolas Heyer could not qualify,for the first time in this 2011 season, maybe because of the problems with the engine mount that he had just welded Saturday night. Also surprisingly missing from Top32 were Frantisek Andras with the Rx7, needing 0.4 points to qualify and Peter Kurnava with the compressor 350z, with 2 points short of Top32.
Altough it was quite cold, and the rain that started after the qualifying session was pretty anoying, people seemed to ignore this, and move on with doing what they would have usually done. Drivers were psyching themselves up, mentally preparing for what would come. Mechanics were checking the last details on the cars. Media teams were running relentlessly around the track, with video cameras and photo cameras, ready to capture every possible image and frame. The audience was sticking together with umbrelas over their head, patiently waiting for the race to begin. The judges were up in the air, in the low temperature-vulnerable to wind and rain conditions, depending only on themselves for scoring, because the telemetry system is not yet compatible with rainy situations. Everything was set, the only thing needed was for the main organiser to give the Go, go sign, and the guy at the starting line would unleash the drivers that made Top32, two at a time.
Number 1 qualifyer Geza Toth met number 32 qualifyer Wojtek Gozdziewicz, and it seemed like the chances were pretty slim that the polish driver could defeat his opponent. Geza seemed to have the upper advantage in terms of angle and speed, so he was the one to go on to top16. It was then time for King of Europe veteran Roman Kolesar to take on polish driver Adrian Pekala with his BMW M Garage Team E30. As a chaser, Kolesar was quite aggressive, and as a leader he was also a faster, which resulted in Pekala being eliminated from the race.
It’s rather unpleasant when you have to fight the guy that is part of your own team, especially when we’re thinking about the new King of Europe Team Ranking. So was the case with Dotz Drift Team, Adam Kerenyi having to face Sebastien Cornec in his replacement car S14. Cornec hadn’t quite gotten the chance to adapt to his new car, and Adam took the pass for Top16. It was time for an all E36 battle between Diego Quaranta with his freshly rebuilt 1.8is Turbo engine and Marian Niks with his more common solution: V8! Diego was very fast all day long, and things did not change for battle, and he took the win against the slovakian, advancing one step further.
Hungary versus Hungary in the battle between two V8s, one of american origin- Peter Papp with the Dotz Camaro and one of german origin – Peter Porkolab with the camo E30. The heavy body Camaro could not keep up with the lighter BMW, especially considering the wet surface, and the “army” like BMW took the win. BMW’s are really a common sight in King of Europe, but they are always evolving, and drivers always try to find interesting solutions to modify them. For example, the next battle took place between Szylvester Gyorgy with his M3 E46 with very interesting livery and Pawel “Koala” with his V8 with NOS powered BMW E30. Altough both of them race in very strong championships, Gyorgy was the one to win the battle and advance to Top16.
Hopes were not very high for Gabriel Onofrei and his high power S15, as the car did not have sufficient grip, and his opponent, Wartalowicz was having some extremely good runs! This is just one of the amazing things about drifting! You can never know who will win, and you can never be sure that you will win just because of investing more money into the sport. Drifting is about balance! And so the polish driver took out the romanian driver, leaving the amazing Ichi-Go (15) out of the race. With Marian Niks out of the competition and Roman Kolesar going to Top16, Timotej Stikar was (together with Vlcek) the last slovakian in the race, and he had to face Zsolt Zahucksi, driving a V8 powered BMW E30. Timotej prooved that his King of Drift Slovakia win was no good luck strike, and he displayed some quite interesting angles, taking the win in this 8th battle of Top32.
We then moved on to an all romanian drift tandem, between last year’s 3rd place in King of Europe Rankings, Grav Drift Team driver Calin Ciortan and GTT Racing Team driver Razvan Fratianu. Their recent tandeming history was favorable for Calin, who wad just beaten Razvan in the last romanian round in the semifinal, and above that, Calin was having an excelent day, with great drifting angles and pretty good speed. The odds were really against Razvan, and he could not win this battle, having to settle with points gained from getting to Top32.
Ivan Vlcek had to drive against polish driver Jakub Tatara, known better after his nickname Musk. The rusty and pretty bashed E36 driven by Musk was all over the much nicer looking M3 E46, and the result was easy to tell, taking the final slovakian drifter left in Top32 out of the race. The last romanian in the race, Dobre Niculae, had to put his black E30 against Galaciewicz’s E36. And, as Dobre said it himself, his car really doesn’t get along with rainy days, so everybody was expecting to see a polish win. In the practice run, Dobre spun out in the first corner, and you can imagine that had a negative effect on his conscience. The first judged run, the odds were in favour of the polish driver, who decided to play it safe in the second run, and take the win against the Grav Drift Team driver.
Driving some else’s car is no easy task, and as Feher Zsolt, the last year Presov winner tried to fight off Attila Ladi, using Szilard’s E500, the initial sentence was proven to be correct. Maybe when his car will be finished things will be different in the battle between the two. Only time can tell! The very experienced italian Marco Blasutta took out the newcomer Belonski, showing us some great skills, but with the polish driver putting on a good fight till the end. Afterwards we had the opportunity to see a very close battle between polish drivers Marcinek Wierzbicki and Michal Wojtan. Both of them with V8 engines under the hood, but you could say that Marcinek had the upper advantage in chassy. They were both fighting with everything they had, and it seemed like it could go on all day, but in the end, the S14 driver took the win.
Antony Ply, the Crazy French drifter took on Zsolt Grozinger from Hungary. Antony was in top shape, and in the round where we was the chaser he even overtook Zsolt, leaving him spining behind. This then led to the idea that Antony touched Zsolt, and the win should have gone to the hungarian driver. After analyzing the footage together with the judges, it was established that there was absolutely no contact between the two and that Ply is the rightful winner. In the final Top32 battle, E46 driver Kalydy had to fight the 2nd place qualifyer Szabo Szilard, who seems to be somewhat of a rain expert. The final result between the two was victory for Szabo.
On to top 16 now, with 6 hungarians, 4 polish, 2 slovakians, 2 italians , 1 french and 1 romanian still in the race. First up an extremely interesting battle between top drivers Roman Kolesar and Geza Toth. With Geza as a leader, Roman stuck really close to him, giving the impression he might just want to overtake his opponent. When the roles switched, and Roman became leader, Geza could not really keep up very well to his adversary, and the day was finished for him. Still, he continues to prove by each round that he is a top driver, and we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him in 2012 taking the King of Europe Championship Title. Kerenyi had to fight Quaranta. Two E36’s, with approximately similar horsepower figures, both very fast drivers as seen in qualifying, but Kerenyi had the upper hand on the wet surface and took the win. With so many hungarians still left in the race, it was quite sure that they were going to be fighting against eachother, and the first example was that of Porkolab Peter getting to battle Szylvester Gyorgy. Two very skilled an spectacular drivers, but this time the advantage was on Porkolab’s side. Things will probably change after Gyorgy is going to get some extra horsepower, but, as said before, only time can tell what will happen.
After Wartalowicz succeed in taking out the young slovakian driver Stikar, it was time for Musk to face the romanian driver Calin Ciortan. Altough Musk is a very strong and bold driver, he had just met a similar opponent to his style, but with a probably better prepared car and with somewhat more of an experience. So Musk was taken out of the competition, leaving Calin Ciortan to advance to top8. The polish team took another shot at the Hungarian side, with Golaciewicz taking out the lovely sounding V10 driven by Attila Ladi.
Now with two drivers from Poland already in Top 8, it was Marcinek Wierzbicki’s turn to show his skills, against the powerfull Marco Blasutta from Italy. Few might have thought that Blasutta could have problems with this race, but, again, the unexpected happened. Marco Blasutta was somehow out of the race. Next up, Szabo Szilard was given the opportunity to avenge his fellow hungarian , by fighting off Antony Ply from France. And Szabo Szilard won the race, having had more angle, speed and a better line than Antony.
It was now down to the final eight drivers, with Adam Kerenyi having to fight Roman Kolesar, Porkolab Peter having to go against Marek Wartalowicz, Calin Ciortan being put against Golaciewicz and Szabo Szilard having to battle Marcineck Wierzbicki. The first Top8 battle, Kerenyi drove the only way he knows how to do that…FAST! So it didn’t come as a surprise to anyone to see him win another difficult battle.
Two of the last remaining E30s in the race were up next, with Porkolab Peter facing Marek Wartalowicz. The hungarian displayed some ovbiously smaller angle than the polish driver, and the judges did not have a hard decision in their hands, giving Wartalowicz the win. Calin Ciortan went up against yet another polish driver, represented by Golaciewicz, driving an E36. At some point, the polish representative seemed to be desperately chasing after the black Skyline, with almost no angle, just trying to keep up. This was of course a big mistake for him, and we was eliminated by the romanian driver. If at first there were more hungarian drivers in Top16 than polish ones, the situation was now shifted, and Wierzbicki would add to this, by taking out Szabo Szilard, who could not go as fast as the V8 S14.
On to the semifinals, Adam Kerenyi was up against E30 driver Wartalowicz, rumoured to be among the top class drivers in Poland. Still, you can’t argue about Adam’s great skill and experience both alike and he remained top dog for this battle as well, even though Wartalowicz tried his best to win, putting on quite an impressive show.
The other semifinal was no less spectacular, with Calin Ciortan putting his 350+ rear wheel horse power beast against Wierzbicki’s 4.4 liter V8 powered S14. The battle was a close one, with each of the drivers sticking close to eachother with Calin as a leader. When the polish driver took the lead, he tried to force his way out of the situation , by trying to get further away from Calin than he managed to do in the first round. Consequently, the distance between the two increased, and there was nothing left to do for the romanian than to battle Wartalowicz in the fight for 3rd place. A 3rd place battle where , with Calin leading, Wartalowicz would get very close behind him and stick to that distance. When the roles changed, Calin could not be able to use the power of his machine to keep up with the swifter E30, and so Marek was granted 3rd place, leaving the romanian driver in 4th.
The final battle, the moment that everybody was eagerly waiting to see, and without which nobody dared to move their eyes from the track. Adam Kerenyi, the 2009 champion would face the newly appeared polish talent, driving a V8 powered S14. It was going to be a battle of two very skilled drivers, one with the advantage of experience, and one counting on his guts to win the 3rd Round of the KW King of Europe Drift Series 2011 . Wierzbicki tried to apply the same tactics as he did with Calin in the first round, while chasing, but things did not turn out as he planned, and Adam was having the advantage. Roles changed, and Adam was keeping really close behind the Polish driver. After just two rounds, Adam Kerenyi took the battle win, and along with it the Round Win, securing his second victory of the season, and increasing the distance in rankings between him and occupier of the second place.
All in all, it was a spectacular event, and we cannot help but think how explosive things would have turned out if there was no rain, and if maybe some of the top guys from Greece and a few more italians would have turned up for this 3rd round of King of Europe.
Regardless, the championship is still open, and even though Kerenyi is now in the lead, the situation can change at any moment, because that’s how drifting goes. The key to succes is constant racing, constant training and a strong will to move on and to get to the highest point possible. Untill the next race, we would like to thank our sponsors, which are most important to us and subsequently to the growth of european drifting in general: We are talking about KW Suspensions, Hell Energy Drink, Motul Lubricants, MotorsTV, Arab Motors, Casula Enterprises and Power Concept. We will talk more about the championship rankings right after Round 4 that will take place, as we’ve already gotten used to, in Mariapocs at the RabocsiRing. Be sure to get there!
Round 4 : Mariapocs - Hungary
We’re halfway through the KW King of Europe Drift Series 2011 season, as the round in Mariapocs, Hungary has come to an end, and there are four more rounds to go. This has been the second consecutive weekend of drifting for King of Europe at the start of july.
For the 5th time, King of Europe has come to Mariapocs in Hungary to host one of it’s events, in front of the crazy-about-drifting local and international fans both alike. As few of you might know, Mariapocs is better known around Europe as a place of pilgrimage for religious upholders. But starting from a few years back, like 1996 when it was opened, or in recent years when hungarian drifting started skyrocketing, Mariapocs has a become a place of pilgrimage for Drifters and fans of drifting alike. RabocsiRing can be considered an European Temple of Drifting, giving the drivers the opportunity to test both high speed and technical drifting as well.
As previously stated, King of Europe has returned in 2011 in Mariapocs, with the first ever KOE event held here in september 2007, with Vernon Zwaneveld and Paul Vlasblom taking the win and second place. For 2008 you could think of it as already becoming a tradition for going to Mariapocs, and this idea would be backed up by the 2009 round, when Adam Kerenyi took the win, being followed by another local hungarian drifter: Istvan Szerencses. For 2010, the stakes were going even higher, with more and more drivers registering for the race. A total of 52 drifters were in, from which 28 were foreigners!
Finally, 2011. After Round 3 in Slovakia was finished, drivers left Presov in different directions. The polish crew went home, after having raced the last few other weekends. But most of the drivers were heading straight to Mariapocs, everybody with their minds set on getting the best possible result. Things were still pretty tight in Driver and Team Rankings, and everybody had a chance of making a comeback, or in some cases, increasing their lead.
After two days of practice on Wednesday and Thursday , 6th and 7th of june, it was time for everybody to get prepared for a much more important day on Friday. The paddock area was now a bit more crowded, people were running around,and some cars were being brought back to “life”. And we say some because this was not the case for all of them. Antony Ply, Nicolas Heyer and Octavian Chelaru all had problems with their cars. Antony’s engine was dead, Nicolas’s gearbox had been left with only two gears, and the R33 from Kamikaze Team also had serious engine problems. Adam Frank’s E30 also had to face some problems, so he decided on driving Efrat Hofmann’s E36 V8. Only two drivers came from Slovakia: Roman Kolesar with the blue Aquaseed M3 E46 and Peter Kurnava in his green Compressor 350Z. The italian crew, with Marco Blasutta and Diego Quaranta having raced in all King of Europe rounds this season was further enlarged by the presence of Enrico Sartori and his wild E36 and another italian driver behind the wheel of a very nice and rarely seen in european drifting competions, Ford Mustang. On the romanian side of things, Gabi Onofrei and his S15 were no longer present. The guys from Grav Drift Team could not miss this round, but they were both having some mechanical issues. Razvan Fratianu could not miss out as well, and there were two more drivers new to the 2011 season, Marius Mitrache (who had raced in Mariapocs in 2009 ) and Girda Rares who was at his first test with the new car setup: Nissan 200SX powered by a 4.1 litre Nissan VH engine. Continuing along the line of car problems was Sebastien Cornec, who struggled to make his turbo work properly, after the car seemed to work fine in Slovakia. Zoran Savic was again the only serbian driver to take part in the race, and we’re looking forward to more of his fellow countrymen to get involved.
Dmitriy Illyuk was back once again, after missing out on the Slovakian round. His engine gave out in Greece, in the second round, and he has brought something new to Mariapocs. Still an SR20DET, but seemingly much more powerfull and well balanced , with an estimate of 500 horsepower. From any stand point , you have to agree with the fact that the ukrainean S13 is one awesome built drift car! To the line up of impressing cars that took part in this round you can add Miro Zrncevic’s Skyline R34, part of the croatian Links Team. We were expecting his team mate, Josip Zagar to come to the event as well, but sadly to say that did not happen.
Coming with newly found strenght from the west were the 3 drivers that also took part in the Serbian King of Europe Round: Carola Mecan and her green-mean S14, Arno Bruggner and the compact E36, and Benno Frieden with his pink-second place serbian winner E36 M3. As everyone would expect, the hungarian crew was more than prepared for this race, and each and every one of them, from the less experienced to those that can be already considered veterans were aiming to keep all the top spots in Hungary. Of course Adam Kerenyi was there, and most people were thinking that this can be his 3rd win of the season. MT Triangle Team, Geza Toth and Szabo Szilard , two drivers than always get the crowd going, were also aiming high for this round, as they showed extremely good driving all season but never really scored high points in the ladder. But theese were not the only drivers that left a good impression this season and that could possibly win the race. Driver of the M3 E36 with compressor, Szegeszdi was also threatening to climb on the podium. Attila Ladi was sure to show us the true capability of his V10 powered E36. Also Porkolab Peter, Szyvlester Gyorgy and Zahuczky were at the location, willing to improve their previous results. 4th place winner from Serbia, Ferencs Szekeres also returned after missing out on the two last rounds, and he was hoping to climb up the ranking ladder. Feher Zsolt had come up with a temporary car , an E36 V8, which was not yet set to his desired standards. Zoltan “Laky Boy” Lakatos was too back in King of Europe, after a rather large period of absence, now with his newly discovered weapon : a RB26 powered Nissan Silvia S13! Remember that he can be considered a true KoE veteran, and that he took second place in the 2008 championship, with only a small difference in points behind the leader! King of Europe fans were also glad to see that Nikki Szanto was back with her V8 powered Z4, that was looking as good as it always does! A new appearance in King of Europe for this year was Istvan Szerencses who brought a pretty interesting BMW M3 E92, a car more often seen in the Italian Drift Championship.
Everybody was getting pretty much ready for action, so the drivers were starting to line up to enter the track for their practice sessions. Soon, RabocsiRing was quiet no more. And the usual smell of nature was replaced by the smell of fresh rubber being layed down by Miro’s R34 Skyline and all of the other drivers. Most drivers were pushing hard, having already have some two day practice before, and for some the experience of the past on RabocsiRing. Szegesdi was really driving fast in his compressor M3 E36 and the amount of smoke he left behind was unbelievable! The single turbo Rx7 driven by Solymos was also hauling around the corners, and it gave us the impression that rotaries are finally becoming more popular in King of Europe. Walking through the cars that were lining up at the start line, you could have noticed a very young driver behind the steering wheel of an M3 E36. His name is Varga Attilla, and, at 15 years old, he has to be one of the best under 18 drivers ever to take part in King of Europe. Hell Energy Drink driver, Varga “Puci” Tamas was out all day driving his BMW E30, with the Camaro being scheduled to do some demo drifting on Saturday. Enrico Sartori was having some minor issues with his car, but otherwise he was driving crazy, just as he did at the beginning of the year in Serbia. Italian drivers Marco Blasutta and Diego Quaranta were putting on a fabulous show for the audience, with their extremely close, high speed, neck-and-neck tandeming. At one point, you might have thought that they were japanese drifters, that’s just the level of skill theese guys have reached!
After a few sessions of training, it was time to up the ante a bit, and lay down the clipping points. Well, lay down is not quite the most appropiate description. Because two of the clipping points were actually hanging. Just imagine this for a second. The course started off with a long straight line, were most drivers would go up to third and fourth gear. Then, they would initiate coming into a left hand corner, with the clipping point being placed on the outside, hanged to the wall. Next up, they would have to slow down coming into a hairpin and prepare for a right hand transition, again with an outside clipping point. Continuing to drift on the small section of straight line, and going into a right hand corner, preparing for transition into the left hand, wide, long, high speed, full throttle final corner, with an outside clipping point also hanged to the wall. The exit line was towards the inside, getting very close to the wall and the near by tree, and continuing towards the outside wall, in full throtle, throwing up smoke like crazy and making everybody clap their hands frantically! If you’ve ever watched drifting, or have done it yourself, you might acknowledge the fact that getting close to an outside clipping point that is hanging to a wall is not at all easy. Coming in with high speeds, you need to gently control your car and back end, hook up with the ideal line and feel your car’s exact size, as to avoid hitting the wall. Scrape the wall, kiss the wall, but do not crash into it! Seeing how no major accidents have happened because of this outside clipping points, and seeing the speeds and angles obtained by the drivers, it is only obvious to us that King of Europe drifters have really reached a very high level, and they continue to improve themselves from round to round.
After all the practice, it was time for qualifying. Most people lived up to the crowd’s expectations, and qualified as they could best. Maybe it came as a surprise to many that the top qualifier was no local hungarian driver. And it was no King of Europe veteran as they say. Instead, everybody knew of him as an extremely aggressive and highly skilled driver. The top qualifying position went to the Grav Drift Team driver, Dobre Nicolae from Romania, with a total of 91.09 points obtained in his best run. Earlier we were talking about Dmitryis well tuned car, and he proved us right by qualifying second, just a tad difference behind Dobre. Two of the italian drivers came next, with Sartori getting a bit higher score than Quaranta, and Blasutta having to settle with 8th. Very surprising qualification from Antony Ply, who jumped into 6th, after racing in Diego Quaranta’s car, one that he has never driven before in his life! Porkolab, Szegesdi and Zahucski completed Top10, also with Benno Frieden inside, him prooving that he is a very good driver in the dry , not only in the wet. You might want to remember the driver that took 11th place in qualifying, as we are going to hear more about this guy later on. Really, who would expect to see a Ford Focus take part in a drifting competition? A bit surprising for everybody, the top qualifyers from Slovakia, Calin, Szilard and Toth were only occupying 14th, 15th and 16th positions. Calin might have had the best explanation for this, as his car was starting to act up all crazy , and at some point he had to drive the less prepared car of Razvan Fratianu. On the less fortunate side of surprising, Nicolas Heyer did not qualify, but you simply have to admire this guy for trying to race with only 1st and 2nd gear available, and with no clutch!! Can you imagine that he got 33rd out of 48 drivers with only 2 gears! That is trully a proof of skill and experience! Cornec’s engine problems did not allow him to enter Top32, and we have yet to know if he is bringing back the Skyline or continuing on with the S14. Western European wise, Carola Mecan and Arno Bruggner did not qualify, altough they were driving pretty good. But all the drivers that made top32 were driving more than good, they were driving like crazy! Peter Kurnava did not manage to qualify either, and he even had a pretty nasty crash coming out of the final corner. Hope he fixes the car soon! Altough the turbo VQ engine sounds amazing, neither did the other 350Z in the race succeed in qualifying, so Attila Turi was left to watch the race from the side. Even more surprising, Laky Boy and Puci did not qualify for the battles, but they will surely make a comeback in the near future.
The first day was over and most of the drivers that did not qualify loaded the car onto the trailers and some of them even left for good. Saturday was again time for some practice sessions in the morning. Also, the Hell Energy Camaro was unleashed on RabocsRing, causing the usual chaos it always does, with Puci seemingly feeling more comfortable behind the steering wheel than compared to what he previously did with the E30. A few hours of taxi drifting gave the audience the opportunity to try out their favourite cars, and we can almost guarantee that we’ve never seen such a big queue of people waiting to get a taste of live drifting. The hungarian people really have a big love for this sport! And this was not only obvious because of taxi drifting, but also because of the fact that the number of people that attended the event on Saturday was higher than that of Friday. Please take in consideration the outside temperature, which was almost reaching 40 degrees Celsius!
The first battle of the day was a fairly quick one, top qualifyer Dobre Nicolae taking out local hungarian Temesvari with really no trouble at all. (10-0 in both runs). The next battle was definitely an interesting one. And people were talking about the outcome from the very moment the match-up was displayed on Friday. Adam Kerenyi, the drifting veteran was going up against rising star Geza Toth. Both driving E36’s, both with rather different styles. While Adam is known as a very calm driver, Geza is a really aggressive one, and both their characters are obvious by looking at their driving. First run, the score was 6-4 for Geza. Second run turned things around, with Geza having a little bit less angle and being a bit less fast than Adam. It was going to a one more time! Geza was leading again with a 6 to 4, and in the second run the judges deemed the battle to be equally weighed. So Geza Toth succeeded what few people thought he could!
Next up, Marco Blasutta was going up against hungarian driver Kalydy, and everybody thought that things were going to end quickly in the italian’s favour.But things got dragged into a one more time, where Blasu won in the second run, with Kalydy spinning out. Living in Hungary, but originary from Israel, Adam Frank had two issues on his hands. First off, he was not driving his own car. Second, he was going up against one of the best drivers on site. Altough maybe some people thought the swiss driver would end things quickly, the margin between the two was only a small one, and maybe Frank would have had a much better chance if driving his E30. Quaranta then had to face Szerencses, and he won by a very close margin, after 8-2 in the first run and 3-7 in the second run. Yet another proof that a newer car is not necessarily a better one.
Rosza’s old BMW E21 was no match for Szekeres’s E30, who took the won in both runs, hoping that we could somehow get into top 4 again as he did in Serbia. Next up, Porkolab went on further to Top16 with no fight, with Szollosi being taken out of the race. Next up was a battle of Skylines. R33 versus R34. Miro Zrncevic is a pretty experience drifter, and he probably had a bit more practice on Mariapocs than Mitrache. Also, Mitrache did not take part in any KOE race since 2010, and his R33 is nearly a stock one. Not even the romanian fans were having too high hopes towards their fellow countryman. The first run it seemed that the croatian driver is going to take the win, after the score was 7-3. But Marius KNS returned the favour, and the battle went to a one more time. Zrncevic had the advantage after the third run, but his mistakes would cost him the win, the final score being 8-2 for the romanian driver.
Up next the hungarian audience were cheering for their local driver, Attila Ladi, in a battle between very powerfull E36’s. His V10 was going against the NOS powered M3 driven by Enrico Sartori, who was obviously one of the favourite drivers for winning this King of Europe round. Coming of from the starting line, both cars were giving out unbelievable sounds, and closing your eyes could have seemed like the end of the world was coming. But towards the end of the first corner, Ladi made a huge mistake, and the final result of the first run was 10-0 for Sartori. The chances were pretty slim now for the Hungarian driver, and he tried to do his best in the second run. He gained a 6-4 , and this made people wonder what would have had happened if not for his first run spin.
10th battle of the day was a reediting of a slovakian battle. Which itself was a reediting of a romanian championship battle. Luckily for Ciortan, his car was working again, but still Razvan Fratianu made him struggle for a bit, taking it to a one more time, where the Grav Drift Team driver sealed the final outcome. Right after winning, Calin got out of his car, and Antony Ply, who had watched the race from the Motul Tent placed at the end of the judged course, jumped into the “Black Devil” to go up against Roman Kolesar. This is yet another proof of the King of Europe Spirit and bonds that develop between people. Can you imagine any other competition where one driver would help a potentially threatening adversary? After driving Diego’s naturally aspirated E36, Antony was in for something new. Still, he proved that he is a top driver, by quickly adapting to the Skyline, and driving it almost to it’s limits, threatening to take out Roman Kolesar, and taking the battle to a one more time. In the end, the slovakian driver won by just one point , and the last french driver in the race was out.
Young Attis was then up against Zentai’s flame spitting Focus, and the situation had to be settled in the one more time, where the Ford driver took the win, taking the 15 year old out of the competition. Feher Zsolt was not feeling very at hand with his car, so he spun out twice against Szegesdi, leaving the competition early on. Surprisingly, newly comer Zahuczki took out the more experienced Nikkolet Szanto, with some bad luck for the NeroM3 driver. It seems that this is very fought battle between Szabo Szilard and Szylvester Gyorgy. Altough Gyorgy was very fast, Szabo kept displaying his ridiculously big drifting angles and big clouds of smoke, and took the win in both runs. The final battle was expected to be a quick one, and not even the local hungarian guys were having too much for Janos Mester. After all, Dmitryi’s S13 is extremely well prepared, and Janos had just crashed the car in Slovakia. It was 8-2 in the first run for Dmitryi, but then something very strange happened, and the score was 10-0 for Mester.
Moving on to Top16, it was time for Dobre to face a very strong opponent, represented by Geza Toth. Dobre is a very skilled driver, but the amount of practice he gets compared to any of the hungarian drivers is practically null, so everybody was pretty curious what the outcome will be. Geza had a bit of bad luck, and spun out in the first run, and, with the score being 7-3 for him in the second run, the romanian driver was on his way to Top8.
Next up, there was going to be a very interesting battle between Marco Blasutta and Benno Frieden, both driving two very similar cars, and both of them being considered Top Level drivers in King of Europe. Blasutta showed Frieden the way around the track in the first run, the outcome being 6-4. But the final outcome was in favor of the swiss driver, after a 7-3 for him in the second run! A bit shocking for most fans, but that’s just the way drifting goes! Diego Quaranta was up against Szekeres, and that had to be one of the most tied up battles of the day, with 3 runs ending with a 5-5. Finally, Szekeres made a fatal mistake, and Diego was on to Top8. Mitrache’s advancing in the ladder was also stopped by Porkolab Peter. Then, the last romanian left in the race, Calin Ciortan, had to go up against Enrico Sartori. Maybe it was about mechanical problems, maybe it was because of stress, anger, heat, no sleep, or who knows what the reason, but Calin spun out in the first run, and he almost never does that, and the score was 10-0 for Sartori, who took the win afterwards with a 6-4. Going on to another battle of top16, Kolesar was having some car problems, which seemed to have come because of the fact he didn’t have enough fuel in the tank. Zentai was the guy to take the slovakian out of the race, and the hungarian audience was already going wild! With so many local hungarian drivers registered to the race, it was obvious that some of them would have to fight eachother, and so was the case between Szegesdi and Zahucski, the first one taking the win, and between Szabo Szilard and Mester Janos, with some very good runs for the E500 driver, who took the win of course!
On to top4, the first battle was going to be an amazing one. Dobre was going up against Frieden. And everybody knew what both drivers were capable off. With Dobre leading, he did not manage to get away from the swiss driver, and the score was equal. Then it was time for the second run. It is pretty hard, if not impossible to describe what happened. But entering the first corner, time seemed to slow down, even for the people looking from aside. We can only imagine what was going on in the mind of the two drivers. Coming in strong from behind, Dobre forced and passed Frieden, while slowly hitting his front bumper. The bumper then caught under the E36, which kept rolling, and the car were so close to eachother that mirrors were almost touching. Either way, this really was one of the most breath taking moments in the 2011 season, and we’re sure that neither of the two drivers will forget about it too soon. Finally , the win was given to Frieden, because Dobre attack was considered to be unsafe and the contact between the cars was going to seal the decision.
Next up, we don’t really know if Porkolab was not so much of a headache for Quaranta, or if Quaranta was really getting hyped up about everything, but the final result was in favour of the italian driver. Next up, the other italian left in the race was still chasing the win, and he got a 6-4 in the first run against local favourite Zentai. But the antilag-flame spittin- crazy going Ford was going to ruin the italian’s hopes, and make the hungarian crowd celebrate. The score was 8-2 for Zentai in the 2nd round, and he was going on to the semifinal! The last quarter final battle, saw Szegesdi being taken out finally by Szabo Szillard, who was looking forward to battle against Zentai. Again, the situation was pretty tight, as both drivers knew their cars and the track very well, but the Focus driver was the one to take the win and advance to the final eventually! We can’t really tell what was inside of Frieden’s mind, but he seemed a little bit shaken up by his previous battle against the romanian driver, so maybe he could not focus enough to fight off Il Gommaro. Thus, the battle for 3rd place took place between Szabo Szilard and Benno Frieden. Benno’s luck seemed to have ran out, and Szilard was the man to claim 3rd place in this KW King of Europe 2011 Drift Series round in Hungary, Mariapocs. It was already dark, and the light were lit up on RabocsRing. Zentai was going to light up his own back-lights, and I’m not talking about usual light, but about the once-every-5 seconds backfire out of his exhaust. Both drivers were feeling quite new to taking part in a King of Europe final battle, and both were hoping to win. The first run made it look like the battle is going to take on forever, but Diego Quaranta made a mistake, and the local hungarian people got what they craved for: hungarian victory!
With two local driver on the podium, all of the hungarian people in the audience were more than happy, and the feeling you would get by standing in the middle of the race track and hearing them shout for their favourites is something you cannot easily forget. It is really a certain thing that hungarians love drifting, and that they are growing fast in this sport, as King of Europe is as well and the odds are very high that in 2012 King of Europe will return to RabocsRing for an even more action-packed event!
Taking a look over the rankings after this round, it seems that Adam Kerenyi is still in first place with 330 points, and he is closely followed by Antony Ply with 270 points. Tied for third are the drivers from Grav Drift Team with 260 points. Szabo Szilard is also staying close, with 210 points, with Benno Frieden and Diego Quaranta coming right up with 200 points. We cannot still forsee who is going to win the championship , as there are still a few rounds to come, and things might shift from one driver to another. In the meanwhile, Grav Drift Team is first in Team Ranking, and if they make the trip to Spain, and no driver of Dotz Drift Team does that, they will surely pull of an advantage, making it harder for the guys coming next to recover. This 2011 season really is very exciting to watch and things are sure to become even more interesting in the future!
Last but not least, we would like to thank all of our sponsors, the people and companies that make sure to help drifting grow, to help King of Europe improve, and to create a better environment in which all european drivers can enjoy the art of drifting, and live the King of Europe Spirit to it’s fullest. Thank you KW Suspensions, Hell Energy Drink, Motul, Motors TV, Arab Motors, Casula Enterprises and Power Concept! We will keep on growing together ! Be sure to keep your eyes on the next round that will take place in Spain in August and our facebook pages for more updates regarding King of Europe news!
Round 5 : Castelloli - Spain
It’s already august, and it seems like the 2011 season had started just yesterday. The truth is that this weekend, 19th -21st of august , was the 5th weekend in the King of Europe Drift Series Calendar, and also the second 3 Day Drift Festival of this summer for us. 4 great rounds took place until this moment, and we can really say that so far, it has been an excellent year for drifting, and we see no reason for things to change.
The 2011 KW King of Europe Drift series made it’s debut in Serbia, Kragujevac, opening the season with a fabulous street drift-parade, then moved south towards Greece, in the high speed track of Serres. After that, King of Europe “travelled” to northern Slovakia and it’s beautiful girls and more and more skilled drifters, only to move in the Temple of Drifting after just a few days, more exactly speaking, in Hungary, Mariapocs. After 4 rounds in less than 3 months, King of Europe had a small break which only lasted about a month, but it already made everybody anxious to return to the championship, to see their friends, and to put their machines to the test once again. Some of the drivers got their chance , but some didn’t, considering that for Round 5, King of Europe moved in western Europe, all the way to Spain, more than 2000kms away from the area where the first part of the year was spent. Seeing as this was a highly competitive season, and more and more top drivers have risen to claim the title of King of Europe, the ranking situation was pretty tight before the Spanish round.
Adam Kerenyi was in the lead , after he won two out of the three rounds he raced in, and he was ahead of french upcoming star Antony Ply with 60 points! Romanian drivers are growing stronger by the moment, and as Calin Ciortan maintained his last year position (3rd), his teammate Dobre Niculae joined him with the same number of points. Right behind them, hungarian, swiss and italian drivers were also fighting for top positions, all of them having their own problems this year. Marco Blasutta and Diego Quaranta have had engine problems in round 2 in Serres, and Szabo Szillard only made it to three out of the 4 rounds until that moment, while Benno Frieden only raced in two events this year, which is even more amazing!
So, the situation was very close, and Spain could have meant that anybody could take the lead, or further enhance it. At first, it seemed that all of the Top10 ranked drivers were coming to the event, except for Calin Ciortan, and it looked like they were going to have some pretty serious battles for gaining some important points.
As expected, the driver list for round 5 was featuring some new drivers in the 2011 season, coming from Italy, France and of course Spain. Italy was bringing some of it’s top drivers and cars, with Emanuel Festival driving Nobushige Kumakubo’s former Subaru Impreza GDB and Alberto Cona driving a very interesting “Hybrid” Nissan Silvia S14, which has been transformed into a pickup, has received a Toyota Celica front end and Acura Integra DC2 rear lights and a big V8 engine coming of a Chevrolet Corvette. Besides the new names in King of Europe, France was throwing in the battle Benjamin Boulbes, who is no stranger to King of Europe, and Spain was ready with Alberto Canedo (BTOKS), Lluis Lopez and a few other good skilled drifters.
2011 is actually the third year for King of Europe in Spain, even though every time the track has changed. Initially it took place in Alcaniz, in 2009, and you just might remember that Nikki Szanto, Alberto Canedo and Lluis Lopez were on top of things back then. Afterwards, for 2010, the event moved 2500 metres in altitude , in the mountains of Andorra, and the scenery this track provided was just as amazing as the battles we saw between the drivers, eventually leading to Adam Kerenyi, Benjamin Boulbes and Todor Dunev taking the podium. For 2011, the action has moved on to a much bigger track, near Barcelona, in Castelloli. Even for those who had never been there until that moment, the movies uploaded by Alberto Canedo on the King of Europe website were enough to make drifters want to test out the track for themselves. The track is very wide and thus there is plenty of room for high speed drifting and for errors, the scenery is amazing and lots of top drivers were sure to show up for this battle.
As always, we expected that the actual driver list would be much bigger when we would arrive to the event, and so it happened. Everybody seemed to have brought friends, and so, the registered driver list really did not do any justice to the real deal. Just to name a couple of examples, the italians brought along one of their top drivers, Andrea Sapino , driving a car that is not that often seen in drifting competitions, especially if talking about low-budget drivers, a BMW M3 E92, painted orange and using an ear-drum killing Titanium Akrapovic exhaust system. France brought, among some other very skilled drivers, Sebastien Lepert and the “Yoda” Rx7, a car that has competed before in a King of Europe Spanish round, in Andorra to be more specific.
But things in the registered list changed quite a bit in a bad way of saying things too. Adam Kerenyi and Szabo Szillard could not make the trip to the event, and this was the case as well for romanian star Niculae Dobre, who could not finish repairing and adjusting his car, after it suffered some damage during a Romanian National Drift Championship round.Benno Frieden too missed out on the event, loosing the chance of gaining some more pretious points, which could have put him into the lead. With all this being said, you could think of this 5th round as a truly western-European event, with all of the drivers being from the west, leaving the “core” of King of Europe drifters waiting for a future, closer to home event.
Setting up the event as a three day festival was a good idea, even for drivers not travelling from so far away. This way, everyone had the chance of coming after a quite long drive, passing through registrations and Sponsor-stickering proceses and afterwards getting to know the track better and prepare for Saturday qualifying.
This year the weather has been a mix of Rainy and Sunny days. In Kragujevac we had both, then in Serres it was very hot but still middle of spring. Slovakia was quite cold and rainy, and Mariapocs was once again sunny and hot. But Spain has surpassed them all. The weather was so hot, and the track was requiring very much from both men and machines alike, and it was inevitable for less pleasant things to happen. Cooling your engine is indeed a very important issue in drifting, and the way you achieve this might just be either the road to succes or the road to failure. One of the cars that seemed to have some serious issues was Alberto Cona’s S14, and this did not come as a surprise, as the engine it used was nothing short of 6.2 liters of displacement. Big toys for big boys do require special care, and finally it seemed that Alberto is a professional at what he does , and his pickup S14 kept on going , removing any fear of braking down. This was not the case for everyone else though. Maxwell Camu lost the engine on his S13, Sebastien Cornec once again had problems with the engine on the R32 and this was not all. The ex D1GP GDB Impreza now driven by Emanuel Festival also gave up, making the event a bit more sad, after one of it’s pistons had melted. The heat and demanding track continued to take their tolls, and right after qualifying bad luck struck the italian camp. For the second time this year, Marco Blasutta had suffered an engine failure, after he had just qualified in 7th Place. To put an end to the series of unfortunate events, on Sunday, another French driver suffered serious engine problems, and we are very sad to say that Antony Ply will probably not be able to race again in this 2011 season, with this being his second engine failure in two consecutive rounds.
As mentioned earlier, Saturday evening was the moment for qualifying, after drivers got their chance of training all day long. The telemetry system was once again put to good use in a succesfull manner, and it is a certain thing that telemetry is extremely important when facing with judging some extremely high skilled drivers that drift in an almost perfect style. Just by watching the results, you can better understand theese words.
French driver Benjamin Boulbes, driving his 5.0 liter V8 powered BMW E36 was on top of qualifying, prooving that , while he hadn’t raced in King of Europe until now during 2011, he has had quite some practice in other strong championships. His best run was worth a total of 95.48 points. Following closely, in 2nd place, was Italian champion Andrea Sapino , who’s BMW was sure to make some extremely aggressive sounds while passing by your side. Sebastien Lepert from France drove his 400 horsepower Mazda Rx7 to 3rd place in qualifying, being followed by local Alberto Canedo in the M3 E36 powered BMW E30 in 4th. You can really understand the high level of the italian drivers just by watching the qualifying sheet, as positions 5 to 10 were occupied by 4 italians and two other drivers.
Antony Ply was out with his new engine, and you could not expect him to already get the same results as he did in Serres, where he qualifyed first, so 12th place was going to be the final result of the day for him. In a somewhat dissapointing way, Lluis Lopez only managed to get into 17th position with a total of almost 77 points. Nicolas Heyer has never missed a round this season, and, even though his Sierra was waiting for him at home, having suffered some more serious issues, he drove his teammmate’s Skyline towards qualifying in Top32, which is quite a good result from a number of point of views: new car, new track, car with problems, and so on.
As always, telemetry can supply us with some additional very interesting data. According to it, the highest judged entry speed was of 92.6 km/h , with Juan Cares driving. Not far behind him were drivers Andrea Sapino, Alberto Canedo and Oscar Arino with 87 kms/h. Judging by highest attack angle, Antony Ply and Morilla did very well, achieving 46 degrees, but Arona was going to take the win in this one with 48 degrees.
If Boulbi’s number 1 qualifying position was covered by the fact that he had the best average angle of the day , with 36 degrees, then Alberto Canedo prooved why he can be regarded as being a teacher for the Castelloli track, with his average track speed being of 104.9 km/h, with only other 4 drivers making it across the 100 km/h barrier: Lepert, Blasutta, Sartori and Sapino. The trio Boulbi-Sapino-Quaranta were also deemed to achieve the Best Line and Best Show for the race, which is proof of their hard work and skill.
After some relaxation on Saturday night and a big Barbecue, it was time for the drivers and spectators both alike to face the main event. Sunday Battles that is.
First battle was between two fellow french drivers, but Boulbi was sure to have the upper hand, with Heyer not driving his own car, and Antony’s Skyline having some serious issues. Still, Nicolas just lost , because of his own mistake, because otherwise things might have been different. Lluis Lopes was trying to proove that he is still one of the spanish top drivers, and he finally succeeded on taking out Juan Cares from Top32. Number 115 driver Arnau had no trouble whatsoever in getting past by number 110 driver Andreu, after two rounds that ended with 10-0.
You really have to admire Enrico Sartori’s car and driving. His full attack style of drifting is what makes this motorsport continously improve and get more and more attention from people. Still, Enrico did not have the chance to fight his first opponent, as Martinez’s car was not able to go on. This was the same case for drivers Alberto Canedo and Lopez Lopez, which both went to Top16 withouth having to put up a fight.
Alberto Cona drove his Ameri-Japanese machine towards victory against Boffard and moved on to top16. After Nicolas had driven the car, the S-Team93 Skyline was no longer able to run, and so, Antony Ply has been forced to retire from the race at an early stage. In the fight between french drivers, Sebastien Lepert prooved to be the better one, with “stronger force” inside than in Charlois’s S14. While Quaranta had his way with spanish driver Oscar, Blasutta was forced to watch the action as a simple spectator, and it’s easy to understand that loosing a drift car’s engine is not at all a pleasant thing. Same thing happened to his Top32 opponent, and the car “death toll” was really a sad one to watch.
Lluis Lopez’s team mate, Fran Dengra lost because of a mistake in front of Sehic and Andrea Sapino didn’t have too much of an headache for eliminating “Best attack angle qualifyer” Arona.
Moving on to Top16, there was an interesting fight between top spanish and french power, with Benjamin Boulbes having to batlle against Lluis Lopez. After an 8-2 in the first round, Lluis could not recover the difference and even though he got a 4-6 (Boulbi- Lopez) we could not take the win and move on to Top8. Sartori had some small problems, but finally got to the place he was aiming from the start, reaching Top8 himself. Good luck again for spanish driver Guidi and extremely bad luck for BTOKS, who made a bad mistake and was awarded 0 points for his second round. While Cona, Lepert and Infantes did not have too much trouble in Top16, things were not the same for Diego Quaranta, who wad to go on to a One More Time to settle things with Morilla. Quaranta eventually won this battle, giving the audience the best overtake of the weekend , in true italian style. In the end, with slight worries, Andrea Sapino also managed to move on to Top8, and things seemed like he was going to be up on the podium.
Moving on to Top8, the first battle was one between two very powerfull BMW E36’s and two very skilled drivers. French drifter Boulbi was up against italian drifter Enrico Sartori. Enrico was facing some mechanical troubles, and after two rounds, Boulbi won with 7-3 and 7-3. Alberto Cona was driving like mad, and he it looked like he was there to take the big trophy, after he defeated Guidi in both of their runs . A very interesting match-up was that between Sebastien Lepert and Diego Quaranta, who is becoming faster and faster everytime we see him. The battle was very close, and both drivers and cars were very fast and quite equally matched. Altough Diego was suffering from overheating issues himself, he finaly managed to defeat Lepert after a one more time. The last quarterfinal of the day was that between Infantes and Sapino, but the spanish driver could not deal with the highly skilled italian and lost after just two runs.
With 3 italians in the semifinals, it was obvious that theese guys were dead serious about the race. Boulbi had the chance of fighting Alberto Cona, in a battle of V8s, one european and one american. After a good run from Boulbi in the first run, the score was 6-4, but he lost his rhythm in the second run and made his only mistake of the weekend, and Alberto Cona won the battle with a score of 8-2. The second semifinal was that between the two very strong italians, Diego Quaranta and Andrea Sapino, and we’re sure that this was not the first time they were going against eachother. With Sapino for the first time in King of Europe, not many people would have expected him to go so high up in the ladder, but he sure has some great skills, but so does Diego. Sapino took the lead with a 6-4 in the first round, and the older generation of the M3 driven by Quaranta could not keep up to the E92, and so the score in the second run was 5-5, and Sapino was moving on the final.
Fighting over 3rd place were the two E36 drivers Quaranta and Boulbi. With a very tight first run, the score was obviously going to be a 5-5, but Quaranta really wanted to uphold the result he obtained in Mariapocs, were he finished second, and so he gave it his best and took 3rd place after a 6-4 in the second run. Maybe this weekend has opened Boulbi’s appetite for King of Europe, and we are pretty sure we are going to see more of him in the future.
The final battle of the weekend is as always, the moment everybody was waiting for. The most tense moment for everyone, but especially for the 2 main drivers, which, in this case, were new to the King of Europe Drift Series. Two drivers with pretty different machines, mechanical and exterior wise, but with similar fighting spirit and skill. Andrea Sapino made a very good first run, but so did Alberto Cona, but the judges decided in favour of the M3 driver, making the score 6-4. It was all down to the second run, and both drivers went in like crazy, but neither of them got an advantage on the run. So the score was deemed 5-5, giving Andrea Sapino his first win in King of Europe, with Alberto Cona coming in a very respectfull 2nd place.
After the Spanish round, the championship is still open to anyone, as there are 420 points left to collect for those who look towards finishing in 1st place. Adam Kerenyi is still number one for now, and he might just become the King of Europe for the second time in his career, joining in on Paul Vlasblom, who is the only driver to win two KoE titles. Antony Ply is still in second , with 20 points behind Adam Kerenyi, but his chances for competing in the next rounds for this season are next to none after the second engine failure. Diego Quaranta has gone up to 3rd Place with a total of 300 points, and he might become the first italian driver to win the King of Europe series if he keeps the current rhythm up.
We are looking forward to returning to Spain in the future, where Alberto Canedo, who is in fact mexican (and that shows that King of Europe is not limited to our continent, and we might surprise you outside of Europe in 2012) has been a great partner and has provided King of Europe with his valuable help, making the event a very succesful one. We are sure that Spanish drivers will not abandon the fight, and that next year they will come back with more power, more training and more determination to win against fellow european drivers. We are also sure that next year, more eastern european drifters will come join in on the spectacular and exciting spanish round!
In the middle of September we will be heading back to eastern-Europe, in Romania, for the third year in a row, in a very new and special location. The event is going to take place and officialy open Romania’s first racing track,in Prejmer, near the mountains of Brasov and we are sure that the romanian drivers are going to put up one hell of a fight! Be sure to keep your eye on us for some extremely exciting drifting!
Round 6 : Brasov - Romania
“Time flies when you’re having fun”. “ Keep Drifting Fun”. You’ve probably heard these two phrases more than once. Well, combine the two, and also add King of Europe to the ecuation, and you’ll understand why so many people get the feeling that this season is coming to and end too soon. 5 rounds seem to have passed so fast. So many new drivers have registered this year, so many new cars and the level has surely gone up a lot.
After the long trip to western Europe, in Spain, it was time for King of Europe to return to the east, where the biggest part of the championship drivers are located. The round in Spain made some modifications to the championships rankings, as no driver from the east made it to this round. Sure, Adam Kerenyi was still in 1st position, but his advantage was now a smaller one. Diego Quaranta “jumped” to third, with just 30 points behind the leader, Calin and Dobre were now down to 4th, and Marco Blasutta was right behind them in 6th. This meant that the championship title was still up for grabs, and that all the drivers would do their best to score as many points as possible in the upcoming event.
The Romanian drivers were long looking forward to the King of Europe event, and this has a double meaning behind it. First of all, everybody wanted to be able to go up against their European rivals, and get to improve their driving skills, and everybody was anxious to see the new Romanian racing track in Prejmer , near the city of Brasov, in the Carpathian mountains. Also, everybody was looking forward to the event, as it was being organized after almost 1 month of pause in between.
King of Europe first came to Romania in 2008, only as a demo event for the local drift fans, bringing along 3 drivers , with Norbert Kovacik driving his E46 M3 and Nikki Szanto driving her E30 M3 and another Rx8 coming from Hungary. For 2009 and 2010, King of Europe established official rounds for Romania, and both of them took place in the city of Cluj. In 2009, Adam Kerenyi took the win, and you can say that the only Romanian driver that posed a real threat to his win was Florin Cozmuta, more commonly known in Romanian circles as Tengu. In 2010, Adam Kerenyi took the win again, but this time, the level of the Romanian drifters was already higher, and he had to fight with Calin Ciortan for the win. So, for 2011, everybody was curious to see what the final outcome would be. Would Adam claim his 3rd consecutive Romanian Round win and also the 3rd one for the 2011 season? Romanian drivers have improved a lot, and drifting in this area has risen to a much more professional level than before.
The event was scheduled for a three day period, and it was going to include the 5th round of the GTT Drift Series as well. As a new addition for Romania, this round was going to have a City Parade, like we had in Kragujevac, Serbia and in Presov, Slovakia.
Friday was, as usual, registration and free training day, for both King of Europe drivers and Romanian National Series ones. After all of the drivers had the opportunity of getting some valuable training for the next two days of racing, everybody hopped into their cars and started the journey to Brasov, where they were going to unleash their machines on the very streets of the city. Literally, thousands of people gathered to see the show on the improvised street track, and what a show it was! Just think about all the race prepped machines, revving their engines hard, smoking their tyres, going sideways in a seemingly dangerous but very controlled manner, giving the opportunity to a large majority of people of seeing something they have never before witnessed in their lives! Driver after driver, car after car, the show was having a constant flow, with some cars making a bigger impression than others. Gabi Onofrei was out in his very powerfull and aggressive looking Silvia S15, doing what he knew best to impress his fellow city inhabitants. Dobre Niculae was also pushing hard in his black E30 fitted with a roaring V8 engine, and it’s of no wonder that he has become quite an audience favourite together with his team mate Calin Ciortan and the turbo E30. A very big impression, and cloud of smoke at the same time was left behind by the Supercharged Camaro SS from Hell, a car that is not for the faint hearted! The two Italian drivers that made it to the race also showed the audience that they are highly-skilled, and that they will do everything they can to win the round. All in all, almost 30 drift cars cause controlled chaos on the city streets, much to everybody’s delight, and they were also accompanied by a rally car show, a very rare and special KTM X-Bow and some motorcycle stunt-riding.
The first day was over afterwards, and the cars returned to the race track, in order for them to be prepared for Race Day number 1. Going through the paddock area, you could see the exact line up of cars that were prepared for the weekend. The team from Hungary was onsite, with 5 cars, but 6 drivers ready to compete: Adam Kerenyi and his M5 powered BMW E36,Tamas Kalydy and his screaming E46, Zsolt Grozinger and his M5 V8 powered E36, Szilvester Gyorgy and his nicely designed E46 M3, and the two MT Triangle Team drivers, Geza Toth and Szilard Szabo, who were both going to compete in Szilard’s Mercedes E500. Moving on, Nicolas Heyer was the only Frenchman in the race, as he succeeded in fixing his Turbo Sierra for this event. Next to him was the SR20VET powered S13 from Ukraine, driven by Dmitryi Illyuk. GTT Drift Team was the next crew in the paddock, with Gabi Onofrei’s S15 being parked next to Razvan Fratianu’s BMW E36 M3. Going on, Calin Ciortan finally succeeded in bringing his long sought after project to King Of Europe. From the outside, it looks basically like the same car he won 3rd place in 2010, the same red BMW E30. But the car has changed a lot, and the level it’s at right now is a very high one to say the least! The car has lost a lot of weight, through the use of fiberglass, and has gained quite a lot of power. The car literally lost 2 M5 V8 engines last year, so a choice was made, and a inline 6 cylinder engine was chosen, coming off a BMW M3 E46. Running on 0.6 bars of boost, the car is developing 500 horsepower, but we’re expecting to see it running over 650 horsepower for the final round in Greece. Next to Calin was of course his Grav Drift Team colleague, Niculae Dobre, who came with some visual changes for this round and a revised rear axle, after the car had a small crash almost one month ago. Roman Kolesar seems to like Romania, because this is his 3rd year when he comes to compete for this round, but we expect him to be there in 2012 with an upgraded machine! Marco Blasutta and Diego Quaranta were sitting under the same tent, and next to it you could see something written on the asphalt: ENRICO SARTORI. They were obviously saving that spot for their fellow Italian driver, but sadly to say Enrico could not make it to the event. This was just half of the cars that were in the paddock area, but we will talk a bit more about the other ones later on in this review.
Some of the drivers that came to compete in the King of Europe decided not to waste any time and also register to compete in the Romanian round. After the usual qualifying session, it was time for top16. The most interesting battles in Top16 were those between Szilard Szabo and Catalin Trifan, who was driving a blue 2.8 liter turbo BMW E30 , and the one between the two Grav Drift Team drivers, Calin and Dobre. Both battles required to go into a one more time, and finally Catalin Trifan and Dobre Niculae were the one that emerged victorious (Dobre and Calin had to go to Sudden Death, were Calin spun out) . The only two foreign drivers left in Top8, Szilvester and Toth, took out their opponents, and advanced not only to the semifinals , but to the final battle itself. Consequently,
Szilvester was deemed to be the Romanian Round Winner, with Geza Toth in 2nd place, and Catalin Trifan in 3rd place. The day ended with some additional King of Europe training sessions, until it was too dark to continue. All in all, it was a very good day for training and racing, as the sun was up in the sky and the weather was somewhat similar to that in Mariapocs in July. The people were more than happy at the end of the day, for seeing an amazing show given by all of the racers and of course by the Hell Energy Drink Camaro, that was driven nicely by Puci, leaving most of the Romanian drift fans dreaming about the machine.
Sunday morning, the situation was a little bit more tense than it was on Friday and Saturday. The stakes were really high right now, especially for those leading the King of Europe rankings. Everybody knew that Diego Quaranta and Marco Blasutta could make their move for grabbing first positions in rankings. Also, drivers were aware of the fact that if Adam Kerenyi will win this round too, it’s going to be a bit hard to catch up, even if the final round means double the points. Finally, but not least, the two Grav Drift Team drivers had the home turf advantage, and they could provide with a major upset in the championship, taking 1st and 2nd place in individual rankings, and establishing a solid lead as a team for this season. But, as always, you can never know what’s going to happen in drifting, so everyone could only hope for the best, and try to do their best.
A total of 27 drives took part of the qualifying session. They would start off in front of the paddock area, accelerate all the way up to 3rd (or in some cases only 2nd gear), initiate for the right hand corner, then transition to the left, transition back towards the last , right hand, full throttle corner. The telemetry system was going to be put to good use once again, leaving it to accurately judge each driver’s run , and provide the correct number of points. As always, 4 values would count for the qualifying results: Speed, Angle, Line and Show.
The biggest entry speed was attained by Roman Kolesar and his blue M3 E46, from Slovakia, with him getting 81,4 kph, wich is not at all a big speed for a King of Europe event, but was a more than decent speed for the Prejmer Race track, which was built having karting competitions in mind. In the battle for speed, two other drivers could not have missed out, and we are talking about Dobre Niculae and Diego Quaranta, both of them being clocked at the same exact entry speed: 79,6 kph! You might remember that Dobre set the pace in the 4th round of King of Europe, held in Mariapocs, in the beginning of July, where he had over 100kph entry speed into the first big corner on the track. Talking about average speed of going around the track, you could only expect a very fast car and driver to get the most out of this, and you would be right to assume that Dmitryi Illiuk and his S13 set the pace for the other drivers, with 69,8 kph. Adam Kerenyi was 2nd from this point of view, with 68.4 kph.
Talking about biggest attack angle, Calin Ciortan displayed some very nice angles all day long, and it was more than once that he seemed he was going to spin out, but kept on going. Calin and Quaranta took the most points in the battle for the biggest attack angle, but Marius Mitrache (Skyline R33) and Girda Rares (Sil80 V8) took the most points for the average angle.
Talking about line, more than one driver succeeded in following the ideal line established by the judges, nailing all of the clipping points that were set up on the track. Szilard Szabo, Niculae Dobre, Adam Kerenyi, Razvan Fratianu , Marco Blasutta and Szolt Grozinger were some of the drivers that managed to follow the ideal line, and this shows that the general level of King of Europe driving is a pretty high one, and that it’s constantly growing.
Compiling the results noted above, the drivers could see the list with the final points. Having had only 27 drivers compete, the idea was to take it to a Top32 battle, with the first 5 drivers advancing straight to Top16. Theese 5 top drivers were: Marco Blasutta in 1st, Szilard Szabo in 2nd, Zsolt Grozinger in 3rd, Dobre Niculae in 4th, and Adam Kerenyi in 5th! Marco Blasutta had a really amazing weekend, and he obtained no less than 97.52 points in qualifying, getting so close to the 100 points level that so many drifters dream about. The other 5 drivers that completed Top10 were: Razvan Fratianu in 6th place, Cristi Vasile (Mouse) in 7th place,Geza Toth in 8th, Marius Mitrache in 9th and Roman Kolesar in 10th. After the qualifying was over, it was time again for some demo drifting with the Hell Energy Camaro, just to make sure everybody is prepared for the upcoming battles.
All in all, the battles were going to take place between 16 romanian drivers and 11 foreigners. Starting off with Top32, rookie driver Catalin Trifan, who had just won 3rd place in the national round one day before, was going up against veteran Sorin Ene (HAI-u), who also used to drive a BMW E30 in the past, before switching to the Silvia S14. Trifan had the upper hand in the first run, and seeing as the second run ended in a tie, he was the one to move on to Top16. Geza Toth really seemed to have gotten along well with Szilard’s Mercedes, and in the first run against Nicolas Heyer, he had quite a considerable lead, getting a 6-4 score. In the second run, they were both tied at 5-5, but that meant that the Hungarian driver was the one to move up to the next level. Next up, Marius Mitrache was going to take his Skyline R33 against Romanian rookie Bogdan Padurariu, driving a very rare Audi Quattro that has been converted to RWD. The Audi seemed to be very fast throughout the weekend, and the driver seems to have some craziness factor inside of him, so there were a lot of people expecting to see the rookie win. He somehow spun out in the first run, and event though he got a 6-4 in the second run, it was not enough to keep him in the race. A very interesting battle from Top32 was the one between Romanian driver Calin Ciortan, and Szilvester Gyorgy, who had just won the Romanian round one day before. Everyone knows that these two guys are top drivers, and every single Romanian was hoping that Calin would avenge their previous Saturday defeat. Calin spun out on the practice run, and you can imagine that the adrenaline level was rising quickly in his blood, with him having a strong will for winning the race. Seeing as both drivers posses similar skills, it was very hard for the judges to decide on a outcome. The first two runs were scored with 5-5, so it was on to a One More Time, where Calin would get a 7-3 in the first run that would seal the final result: Gyorgy was out of the race. Next , Dmitryi went up against Tamas Kalydy and showed him that he has a lot of experience to back him up, by winning the battle using the first run score : 7-3. The youngest Romanian driver to have ever competed in King of Europe, Iulian Jumuga, driving a BMW E36 that uses a 2.5 engine, was up against another driver that has not yet reached his full potential: Tica Razvan, driving an E30 built along the lines of Adam Kerenyi’s E36. Altough Jumy had the disadvantage when it came to age, their experience is somewhat similar, and Jumy took the win, with Razvan not yet fully adapted to his newest car mods. Up next, Razvan Fratianu did not have much problems in taking out Alexandru Popescu, who hasn’t been involved in any battles for over a year now, because of his car problems, and you might say that he’s become a bit rusty when it comes to tandeming. Diego Quaranta was put up against local Romanian driver Octav Chelaru, and he was going all out, literally sticking to the romanian’s S13 while chasing him. The crowd was really going wild during their battle! The guy behind Calin Ciortan’s Skyline, Andrei Troase, was taken out by more experienced driver Cristi George and his somewhat underpowered E36. Roman Kolesar had to battle with Gabi Onofrei and the GTT Racing S15, and he won by just 1 one point of advantage, that he attained in the first run. In the last battle of top32, Gabi Imre (BMW E30) took out Rares Girda (Nissan Sil80 V8)
Moving on to Top16, Catalin Trifan’s hopes of climbing as high in the KoE ladder as he did the previous day in the GTT race where shattered while going up against Marco Blasutta, who really was driving amazing, and looked like he was almost unstoppable. In the battle between Toth Geza and Marius Mitrache, few people would expect the Romanian to win against the Hungarian driver that has taken part in quite a few drift events this year, and has had some very good moments during the season. It all started bad for Marius, with the score being 7-3 for Geza, but things turned the other way around in the second run, at it was on for a one more time. Geza got the upper hand once more , and , in the 2nd run, the Romanian driver was awarded 0 points for going at a speed that was 11% smaller than the one he had during qualifying. Call it faith, or call it bad luck, or call it good luck (from the audience’s point of view), but the next battle was going to be held between the two Grav Drift Team Drivers, after they had already fought it off one day before, during the GTT Drift Series round. These two guys have been battling each other for some time now, they both know how the other drives, and they are both trying to push themselves and their cars to the limit, trying to give the audience the best possible show. And they succeeded in doing so once again. It only took 2 rounds this time, with a draw in the first one, to establish the winner. The difference was very small, but Calin finally took the win this time, leaving Dobre out of the race and hoping to do a better job in the final round. Adam Kerenyi was going up against Dmitryi Illyuk, and they both knew that it wasn’t going to be an easy battle. In the end, the score was the same in the two runs, and maybe the extra power available for Dmitryi was the winning factor, or maybe something else, but the thing is that Adam’s consecutive Romanian strike has come to a halt, propelling the Ukraine drifter into Top8. Coming up, Zsolt Grozinger took out Jumuga Iulian, having the advantage of a much bigger experience behind him. Razvan Fratianu then battled with Diego Quaranta, but it seemed that the Italians could not be touched this weekend, so the Romanian was out of the race. With a bit of luck, Cristi George succeeded in defeating Roman Kolesar, after the Slovakian spun out in the second run. On the other hand, Gabi Imre was not so lucky, and he was defeated by the much more experienced Szilard Szabo.
With Top16 over, you know that what you’re going to see up next is only top quality battles, door to door tandeming, killer tyre smoking, roaring engines revving to the redline, people running all over the paddock area to make sure their teams can perform in an adequate manner and so on. The first battle was going to be one between Marco Blasutta and Geza Toth. Yes, it would have been much more interesting to see Geza run in his own car, but for this weekend, he had to try and figure out how to drive the Mercedes as good as he could. The first run score wasn’t very encouraging though for Geza, as Marco won with a 7-3. The second run looked a bit more promising, but the Hungarian driver did not manage to obtain any clear advatange over his Italian counterpart. So, Marco Blasutta was going to continue his road. In a battle between two of the most modified cars in King of Europe, Calin Ciortan was going to take his turbo BMW M3 against Dmitryi’s crazy set up Nissan S13. Dmitryi is indeed a very experienced driver, but let’s not forget that Calin has won 3rd place in King of Europe in 2010. The first run was a very bad one for the Romanian driver, and Dmitryi had a big advantage coming his way, with the score being 8-2 for him. Calin pushed hard for the second run, but he missed the victory by just one point, having won with 7-3. We haven’t seen too much of Grozinger this year in King of Europe, with him racing in another car, but in Brasov we was really running impressive! Going against Diego Quaranta was not going to be easy though, as Diego really proved himself to be a top driver in the last few KoE rounds. The score was in favour of the Hungarian driver in the first run, but he got 0 points in the 2nd one, so you could say that the Italian won having being backed by a bit of good luck. In the 4th quarterfinal, the last Romanian driver in the race, Cristi George, was going up against Szilard Szabo. Now, Cristi drives a BMW M3 E36, the 3.0 litre version, which has an output of less than 300 horsepower. He had some good runs in the weekend, but it was hard for many to believe that he will be able to defeat the Hungarian driver. But good luck struck once again, and Szilard spun out in the chasing run, and Mouse was going to be the only Romanian driver in the semifinals.
Dmitryi’s car was now working fine, after the small problems it had on Saturday, but he was a bit unlucky in the battle against Marco Blasutta, getting 0 points in the first run. He won the second one with 6-4, but we all know that was not enough to make him advance to the final battle, leaving him hoping to catch the podium in 3rd. In the other semifinal, Cristi Vasile bravely fought Diego Quaranta, getting a 5-5 in the first run. But the M3 E36 engine is no match for the E46 one on Diego’s car, and you could say that power/speed was a decisive factor in Quaranta’s win.
Going on to the battle for 3rd place, nobody thought that Mouse will stand a chance, having given the huge difference between his car and Dmitryi’s car, and also the difference between their experience. Dmitryi was all over Mouse in their first run, when Dmitryi was chasing. But, he was pushing too much, and just a few metres before the finish line, he spun out, being thrown into the grass, but without any serious damage to his car. In the second run, it was time for Mouse to make a mistake, as he displayed some major understeer which would cost him a lot. The judges decided that the battle should go to a one more time, but the Romanian driver did not want to do that again, for different reasons, and Dmitriy was awarded 3rd place.
Sometimes , the final battle is not as long as you would like it to be. That’s just the way it is, it can be over in 2 runs, or it can seem like it’s taking for ever to decide who is going to win. But this was really not the case for this 6th round. Marco Blasutta and Diego Quaranta were going to have an all Italian battle, as they get to do this quite a lot during training. Please remember that this final battle was the longest one for the 6Th round, having require quite a few one more times in order to establish a winner. They even had to change their tyres at one point! The two drivers were literally door to door in each run, going at , some would say, ridiculous speeds, and not making any mistakes. You would just look at them and remember the T-Shirt worn by Marco, with the Team Orange logo written on it. After 4 runs that ended in 5-5, Blasutta made just a small mistake, loosing some distance from Diego. This was the run that decided the whole situation, and Diego Quaranta from Italy was declared the winner of the round!
All in all, it was a great weekend for drifting, and, even though the track might have been smaller than most drivers wished for, it still gave them the right opportunity of racing in a controlled environment, in a much more professional manner than it would have been inside a parking lot for example.
So, the championship rankings have changed quite a bit. Diego Quaranta is now the leader, with a 40 points advantage in front of Adam Kerenyi. Marco Blasutta has gotten up to 3rd place now, and he is 60 points behind the leader. Calin Ciortan and Dobre Niculae are following in 4th and 5th place. But still, it is almost impossible to predict who is going to be declared at the end of the season. Because the final round in Greece, established for the 8th and 9th of October is going to have double the points, so the situation can change drastically in the last minute! One thing is for sure, this final round is going to be packed with heart stopping action, and we are sure that the greek drivers are not going to stop for anything in trying to win their local battle!
Regarding the Team Rankings, you can see that the Romanians from Grav Drift Team are currently in 1st place, with a 60 points of advantage in front of Dotz Drift Team, which has lost it’s pace because of the problems suffered by Sebastien Cornec’s car. Still, the battle is on, and the result can be turned in the final moment!
Final : Heraklion - Crete
For the third year in a row, the King of Europe Drift Series final battle took place in Greece. While in 2009, the season ended on the Serres racetrack, for 2010 Greece had two King of Europe events that succeeded one after another, in Patra and finally in Heraklion. This year, King of Europe has gone back to Heraklion, with the 7th round of the season, with 5 drivers still in the race for winning the 2011 championship title!
Diego Quaranta from Italy was 1 st in rankings before this run, and he had a 40 points advantage in front of Adam Kerenyi. Marco Blasutta was in 3rd place, with just 20 points behind Adam, 30 points in front of Calin Ciortan and 50 points in front of Dobre Niculae. So, the total difference of points between 1st and 5th place was of only 110 points. Seeing as the final round means double the points, the difference between 1st and 5th could have easily been recovered and surpassed. 2011 has also been the first year for Team Rankings, and there were three teams that could have still one the title: Grav Drift Team, composed of Dobre Niculae and Calin Ciortan, who were actually in 1st place, Dotz Drift Team, composed of Adam Kerenyi and Sebastien Cornec and French Drift Team, now composed only of Nicolas Heyer, but who could have the difference on his own considering the double points system. The Hungarians drivers from MT Triangle Drift Team, Geza Toth and Szabo Szilard did not make the trip for this event, although they would have had pretty big chances of scoring high in the Team Championship, and even in the driver individual rankings.
It was very curious to see if, at last, the greek drivers could be beaten. Because everytime a King of Europe event took place in Greece, the winners were coming from the local side, and we are talking about a total of 4 events in 3 years! So, everybody was both curious and anxious to see what was going to happen for this last round. Things were also being made more interesting because two of the greek drivers that have won King of Europe rounds were also present for the event. Margaritis Katsanidis and his spectacular twin turbo Alfa Romeo has won this year in Serres, and Papapasxos and his JZ powered S13 was the winner of last year’s round in Heraklion! So, the outside drifter could expect stiff competition, and the audience could expect some good battles for the last King of Europe Drift Series event of the year. Also coming out for this event were two Turkish drivers and another one from Bulgaria.
But things were not going to have a good start for them. The Turkish drivers have been retained by the police just because of filming with some GoPro cameras , but the worst part happened to Alexander Yazov from Bulgaria, who was deemed to pay a 9000 euros ticket, because of passing the regular weight allowed for his car. Travelling around Europe for King of Europe can be very fun and interesting, but it can be also very difficult, when talking about countries that have more difficult restrictions. Roman Kolesar was also present for the event, as he hasn’t missed any rounds this year except for Spain. The same situation goes for Razvan Fratianu who also brought Gabriel Onofrei and the GTT S15 out for this event as well.
The last greek events have always been very hot and sunny, and everybody was hoping that this weekend would follow on the exact same pattern. The first part of Saturday was ok, sunny, 38 degrees Celsius, and everything was looking fine. Drivers were having their usual training sessions, everyone was getting used to the track, everything was doing some lat minute adjustements on their machines. But then, after the mid-day break, it started getting cold and eventually raining like crazy, and none of the drivers seemed to be very happy about that, especially those of them that were running high power turbo engines under the hood. Maybe one of the few drivers that hasn’t had problem in the wet this year has been Adam Kerenyi, with him winning two races in such conditions, in Serbia and in Slovakia. Still, none of the drivers were going to give up or get angry about the situation. Not even Dobre Nicuale from Romania, who has hated rainy events this year, because he has improved the throttle control of his machine, to make it more controllable in sketchy situations like these. At least, the first 5 drivers in rankings had to retain their calm, because on Sunday, they could either make it or break it. After a long season of travelling around Europe, you could imagine that everybody was going in for the victory!
As usual, after the first practice sessions in the morning, it was time for qualifying. A total of 40 drivers would go out to try and catch the Top32 battles, as to get the chance of enjoying their last King of Europe battles for this 2011 season. Seeing as the surface where the drivers would perform was not in a pretty good shape because of the rain, it was almost sure that some of the drivers were going to have a pretty hard time qualifying. While Calin Ciortan (25 th in qualifying) and Marco Blasutta (10th in qualifying) didn’t really seem to be in top shape for this round, Dobre , Kerenyi and Quaranta were really on top, and that was obvious from the moment the qualifying results came out. For the second time in this season, Dobre managed to qualify first, with a total of 91.95 points, as he set the reference level for how the track should have been run. Diego Quaranta was not at all far behind, with 89,62 points, and Adam Kerenyi was following in 3rd with 87,32 points. Two greek drivers were following in 4th and 5th place, at a very small difference behind Adam. Marinakis and his E30 took 4th place in front of Margaritis Katsanidis and his crazy twin turbo Alfa Romeo, and it seemed like none of the Japanese machines could do anything to stand in the way of their European counteirparts. A very interesting presence in the Top32 qualifyers was Xenikos and his turbo Lada, a car that you wouldn’t think much about it at first sight, but which put him in 6th place for qualifying. A noticeable presence in qualifying was that of an orange BMW E30, powered by a turbo M5 E34 engine which was developing almost 600 horsepower at 0.7 psi worth of boost (GT40 turbo) and driven by Nikos Zilimpinakis. While he was only in 13th place, that meant he was just 9 points behind the top qualifier, but his driving seemed to be very good, and we were expecting to see him go very up in the Top32. Going on with the qualifying results, both drivers of GTT Drift Team from Romania, Gabi Onofrei (Nissan Silvia S15) and Razvan Fratianu (BMW M3 E36) managed to qualify in 14th and 15th place. Roman Kolesar was just behind Razvan Fratianu, and the difference was again very small between them. Onofrei managed to score 81,78 points, Fratianu got 81,39 and Kolesar obtained 81.17. You can imagine that this would have been very hard if not impossible to judge without the help of the Telemetry System, which accurately judges all the decisive aspects when it comes to both qualifying and battles. Moving on, Nicolas Heyer has been to all of the King of Europe rounds this year, but has had quite some bad luck to say the least. In Greece, he got his license suspended for parking the car at the airport while waiting for King of Europe members, and then, in Heraklion, his car was not actually doing it’s best. Still, he managed to qualify in 21st place, with a total of 75,10 points. Turkish driver Ali Atacik also managed to qualify for the Top32, in his final run, because in the first two he was given 0 points for spinning. The season came to an end just after qualifying for Sebastien Cornec, who has had a pretty though season, having had problems with his main drift machine, the R32 Skyline and with the car he had brought for Slovakia, a Silvia S14. With him not qualifying for Top32, it meant that the fight for Team Rankings was going to be fought alone by his team mate Adam Kerenyi.
Looking at the best individual criterias from the qualying results, you can see that, maybe for the first time in the King of Europe telemetry judged round, a driver that got the biggest attack speed, did not qualify, and we are talking about greek drifter Sgourakis, who got 85kph, drove fast on first corner but without drifting, so he got stranded in 33 rd, leaving him out of the race. Katsanidis Margaritis and his Alfa were not far behind tough, with a best clocked speed of more than 83kph. Karabakakis got the best attack angle, of 41 degrees, at the wheel of his lovely S13.5, and he also managed to qualify for Top32, in 22nd place. Dobre did not only get 1st place in qualifying, but he also got the best average angle on his runs -42 degrees, and this seems like a new performance for him, because usually he has the biggest speed, not the biggest average angle. Best average speed was won by Adam Kerenyi, as we all know he has a very steady rhythm even in the wet, and that he is not phased by the poor grip conditions when pushing the throttle of his M5 powered E36. He got a total of 68.6 kph. Calin Ciortan was not far behind, although he had some problems with his turbo M3 powered E30, as he got a total of 66kph average speed of running the track.
The surface of the Heraklion harbour was still wet when the battles started, and it was for sure that the stress was on for the judges. There were going to be a lot of spinouts, and a lot of close battles between drivers that could win the championship. With so many greek drivers inside Top32, and with them having developed their skills quite a lot in the past few years, it was for sure that the other European drivers were going to have a real headache in fighting for advancing towards the top positions. Dobre Niculae, member of Grav Drift Team, took his fiercesome flat black BMW E30 powered by a 4.0 liter V8 engine against greek driver Geomelos, who was also driving a BMW E30. The battle between the two seemed to be pretty balanced , with Dobre wining 6-4 and then loosing 4-6, so it was going to be a One More Time. Altough they were tied 5-5 in the second run, the greek driver made a mistake in his first run, and Dobre was the one to advance to Top16. At the wheel of his BMW E30, Dionisis Koufoudakis made a big mistake in the first run against Roman Kolesar, and even though he won the second one, Roman was going to take his blue M3 E46 into Top16. Calin won both runs 10-0 against greek driver Pleas, and he was also going to Top16. Because of the tricky weather, you couldn’t tell who was going to come out on top, so it didn’t really count that you were better ranked in qualifying than your opponent, you could still loose. This was exactly the case in the greek tandem between 9 th ranked Andriotis and 24th ranked Gavriil, with the second one of them progressing to Top16. Turkish driver Atacik had a bit of good luck, as his opponent was knocked out of the race by his own car, which stopped working for some reason or another. Earlier on, we were talking about Nikos Zilimpinakis and his fairly nice turbo E30. As predicted, he was running strong all day long, and you could say he got past his opponent Zerbalakis without too much of a headache. Of course, everyone that has been to Serres this year for the King of Europe round was expecting to see Margaritis do a good job, but you could say his win in Top32 was supported by some good luck, as his opponent spun out during their first run, sealing the fate of the battle. The season was going to come to an end for Nicolas Heyer as well, who was again having gearbox issues, as he lost to greek driver Hantzaras. Adam Kerenyi was running smooth and calm, and he succeeded in defeating his Top32 opponent after 8-2 in the first run and 6-4 in the second one. The GTT racing S15 is not an easy machine to handle in the wet, as we’ve seen before in Slovakia and Serbia, so Gabi Onofrei really couldn’t do much against fellow opponent Voutanis, who was going to advance to Top16. Up next, there were two fairly interesting battles, both of them being fought between greek drivers, and taken to One More Time, where spinning would be the decisive factor. A lot of spinouts in the upcoming 4 battles as well! Andriotis would win against Metaxakis, Blasutta would go on to win against Costas, Fratianu would barely win against Doguscan, after they both spun out in the first run, and finally Quaranta won against Koufoudakis. It seemed really like the greek drivers were not very experienced in the rain, as most of their races are in sunny weather and high grip conditions, but maybe this will change until next year, when some of them are threatening to do the entire King of Europe season, and challenge their fellow European opponents to some very interesting battles! You are more than welcome guys!
Moving on to Top16, it was a make it or break situation for Dobre one more time. He was running pretty good while he was in the lead. Roman Kolesar had spun out behind him, but Dobre did not know that, and he decided to give it all he got, and spun out too. Now this is the disadvantage of not having a spotter on sight to keep you informed with your runs. In the second run, all was going to come to an end, as Dobre spun out again, and his 2011 season, a very good one to say the least, had came to an end. His teammate, Calin Ciortan, was up next, against greek driver Gavriil. Calin spun out in the first battle, and even though he won with 8-2 in the second one, there was no going back for him, and his season was finished as well. Zilimpinakis was holding on strongly, and he was going to move on to Top8 after defeating Atacik in both their two runs. Psychological battle going on between Margaritis and Hantzaras. Spin for Hantzaras in the first run, then spin for Margaritis. Spin for Hantzaras, and then his car broke down, and Margaritis was the one to move on. Adam Kerenyi took the victory by a slight margin against Voutanis, after winning 7-3 in the first run and loosing 4-6 in the second one. Same situation for Papaxsos in his battle against Daskalakis. Next up, something happened that is going to change the telemetry system a bit. Marco Blasutta spun out on the finish line, leaving him 0-10 against Andriotis. And then, in the second battle, he lost hist temper and got overtaken by his opponent, which just shows that keeping your cool is very important in drifting! For next year, some automatic warning are going to be included in the telemetry system, as to improve the way it works and analyses the situations given. The final battle in Top16 was the one between two E36 drivers, Diego Quaranta and Razvan Fratianu. Altough Razvan has improved a lot this year, coming to almost all the KoE rounds, his car still needs some tweaking, and he is probably getting way less practice than Diego does, so the final outcome was in favour of the Italian driver for this time .
Roman Kolesar made the trip all the way from Slovakia, and you can imagine it was a pretty long distance to travel, so he wasn’t just going to leave Greece without a good result. So he won another battle, this time against Gavriil, and he was moving towards the semifinals in Heraklion! Next up, battle between the two greek “giants” , Zilimpinakis and Katsanidis, both of them driving 550+ horsepower machines. Nobody could really anticipate what was going to happen, so it was up to the drivers to show what they had. The surface was starting to dry up as well, so they could really make use of some of the big horsepower they had at their disposal. Margaritis won the first run 6-4, and people were starting to think that he might just win his second King of Europe event this year, but Zilimpinakis made the decisive move in the second run by winning 7-3. While Diego Quaranta didn’t have much of a headache in the battle against Andriotis, having won both runs, you couldn’t say the same for Adam Kerenyi, who was having a hard time against top greek driver Papapasxos. The first two runs the score was 5-5, as both of them were really chasing for the win. In the One More Time battle, the greek driver made just a slight mistake in the first run, and that was going to seal the deal, taking Adam Kerenyi to the semifinals and one step closer to the championship title!
None of the two upcoming battles were going to be easy. In fact, for the King of Europe judges , these two battles might have just been two of the most stressfull ones in the history of King of Europe. Everything was going to be checked and double checked, every decision would be thought out thouroughly , to make sure no errors occur. So, Kolesar was going up against Zilimpinakis, now the only greek driver left in the race. 5-5 in the first two runs, and it seemed like it was going to take some time for the result to be decided. Kolesar made a big mistake on his first run, and Zilimpinakis did the same in the second run. So it was on for a Sudden Death run, where the greek driver would be the one to triumph! And now, the most nerve recking battle of the season. Adam Kerenyi against Diego Quaranta. If Diego would win, he would automatically win the championship! Otherwise, Adam would have had to win against Zilimpinakis to take the title. First run, everybody was nervous. Fans on the side were hoping that their favourite would win, but only the two drivers could make the difference. 6-4 for Adam in the first run, but this is drifting, anything could happen in the second run. And everything did happen, but in a wrong way for Diego, and a happy way for Adam. Diego spun out, and Adam was going to move on to the final battle, and get the chance of winning his second King of Europe Championship title! But first, in the battle for 3 rd place, Roman Kolesar,King of Europe veteran, who was at his best event probably in this season was going up against “newcomer” for 2011 Diego Quaranta. Altough driving different chassis, both of them were getting power from the same M3 E46 engine, and both of them have had a very good weekend. Things were tight in the first two runs, and a decision could not be made related to who is going to step on the podium for this last round. The Italian has really proven himself well this season, going to absolutely every round , and putting on a good show each time he got on the track. And it seemed like he wasn’t going to just give up the fight, even if he was not going into the final battle. So, Diego Quaranta was the one to take 3rd place for this round.
The final battle is, as always , the most exciting one! Sometimes, it’s over before you can even tell it started, but sometimes it gets dragged into over time, as it happened for this Heraklion round. On one hand, Adam Kerenyi has become quite famous in eastern Europe for his victories and for his 2009 King of Europe championship win. His BMW E36 was quite an amazing machine when it first came out, sporting the M5 E34 inline 6 engine that was pushed way back for better balance of the car. Still, we are living times when horsepower is getting bigger and bigger, and this was obvious with Nikos Zilimpinakis, who is himself a very well know greek drifter. In fact, he is the 2010 champion of DriftWars, and even though he has only 3 years of drifting behind him, his odds were balanced by the extra horsepower that was at his disposal. With 580 of them to be more exact, that meant he had an almost 200horsepower advantage over Adam Kerenyi. From what Nikos says, the chances are pretty big that , with the appropriate budget, we are going to see more of him in King of Europe for the 2012 season, but not only in Greece, but throughout Europe. Their first run was a hard one to say the least for both, as they have never driven against eachother, and they did not really know what to expect. So, the advantage was on Adam’s side, with 6-4. Nikos got back in the game, as he won the second run with the exact same score. Then, in the One More Time, Adam won with 6-4 again, and the tension was so high that you could barely breath! It was all down to the 4 th run.
Could Adam be the first ever non-greek driver to win a King of Europe Drift Series Greek event? Could Adam take the championship for the second time in his career? Or would he go on to loose this battle and turn Diego Quaranta into the first Italian driver to win the King of Europe drift Series? So many questions, so many dreams could be won or shattered in just one final run. The last run of the weekend. The last run of the 2011 KW King of Europe Drift Series. Who was going to win? With the huge pressure, one of the drivers was surely going to make a mistake. And the one to make it was Adam Kerenyi. The score was deemed to be 7-3 by the judges, 1 point for distance, 1 point for less angle and Nikos Zilimpinakis won the Heraklion battle, which meant Diego Quaranta is now the 2011 KW King of Europe Drift Series champion! Adam Kerenyi got 2 nd place for the event, and also 2nd place in the series, for the 2nd year in a row, but we expect him to come back with some newly found strength, new machine next year and do a much better job! Anyway the season podium was completed by yet another formidable Italian driver, Marco Blasuta, leaving the guys from Grav Drift Team in 4th (Dobre Niculae) and 5th (Calin Ciortan).
But with them taking the win for the Team Championship! After this round, it has become clear that the round in Spain was a very strategical one. If Adam would have been there, he would have already won both the championship and the team championship. The situation would have been even more exciting if the two Grav drivers would have done the same thing. Also, the Hungarian drivers could have taken the win, but they missed out on three rounds this year, and that’s definitely a big disadvantage when trying to get the most possible out of a fight! It has been an amazing season, the best King of Europe Drift Series ever in fact, and things are going towards to the best for the 2012 season! We will come back to you with a detailed review about this 2011 year , so that you can get a glance of how amazing it has been for the drivers, fans, organizers and everyone else involved in this great family. It should also be clear that everything has been so amazing with the big help from all of the sponsors: KW Suspensions, Hell Energy Drink, Motul, Motors TV, Arab Motors, Casula Enterprises, Power Concept and Dotz! Be sure to check out the photo gallery down below and keep your eye out for the season review and for news regarding the 2012 season!
