Sunday the 25th of September the 5th round of the D1:10 was held at the ERCE circuit in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Since this was the first gathering of the Team Orange drivers since the D1RC World Championship, we deciced to all use our Worlds bodyshell.
Lot’s of orange, 39 entries and a lovely weather made for a great day full of drifting!
Read more after the jump!
It was great to meet my fellow Team Orange drivers again, we shared lot’s of great stories and had a lot of fun. But this day wasn’t all about the fun, this was the second to last D1:10 round and the top 5 was very close. Lot’s of things could happen.
Qualifying time!
Edo, who has been driving very good this year and still had a chance to win the chamionship, had a bad qualifying run and qualified in the B-poule. Due to an off track in his battle he lost and ended somewhere in the B-poule.
I ended up qualifying in the Top 16 for the first time this year! On 14th place to be precise. I had high expectations that day, and I hoped I could finally have a chance to climb the podium.
Reinier qualified 12th, and things were looking good for Team Wreck it Sideways!
Tijs qualified a very nice 4th place, after showing some massive angle in his Boso’d-out MKII. Edwin Pols, the worlds number 2 and 2 times Dutch champion qualified 3rd with 87 points, just below Jim, who qualified 2nd with 90 points.
The battles were rather.. o wait, did I forget someone? Ahh yes, I forgot to mention that Ricardo won Top Qualifier with a staggering 94 points! This meant that he would be up against the loser of the B-poule finale, which gave him a rather big chance win..
Battle time!
As most of you probably know, the Top16 battles have the TQ against the no. 16, 2 vs. 15 etc. I did a quick calculation, and what I had feared came true…. I had to battle Edwin!
Edwin is a very consistent and professional driver, who can really stick to your door and has a lot of speed trough corners. I had to battle him at Coronel Kartracing in the semi finals, and after a rerun I went offtrack and he won. I didn’t want that to happen this time.
I managed to get a One More Time(6-4/4-6), but then, in my lead run, I got to nervous and went offtrack. Bollocks!
Reinier had to go up against Robin, and after 2 really close battles, Robin got the win with a 5-5/6-4.
Tijs had to battle Joost aka. “CS Master” in the Top 16. After a solid lead run and a very close chase Tijs got the win and proceeded tot the Top 8.
Here he met Jim, who was driving pretty good that day and even menaged to drive somewhat proper lines in stead of “Jim-lines”! After a OMT, Jim was given the win.
Ricardo won his Top 16 battle against Marijn, and proceeded to the top 8. In the top 8 he met Edwin, who had just beaten me. Ricardo had a very solid lead run, but one of the judges had seen something just before the finish. After a closer look at some HD slomo-footage it was revealed that Edwin had been off track with 3 wheels. This resulted in a 10-0 advantage for Ricardo. Ricardo managed to win with 10-0/4-6 and proceeded to the Semi Finals.
In the Semi Finals Ricardo won from Maurice and proceeded to the Finals! Here he met Jim, who had just won from Davey, and things were getting tense.
In the first battles, the scores were even, both were driving on the edge, which resulted in some spectacular runs! The judges couldn’t decide who did better and called for a OMT(5-5/5-5)
After two very close battles, and two drivers hoping that their batteries wouldnt die during the run, the score was as follows: 6-4/4-6… this meant that they would be going OMT, AGAIN!
They ran again, this time a lot slower since their batteries were almost dead, and this resulted in a winner…. After 6 runs, the winner was given a 5-5/6-4…. and the winner is:
Very well deserved, I think the only time i’ve seen closer battles was the D1RC World Championship finals! Ricardo won a much earned 2nd place.
The winner of the concours d’élegance was Arno with his V8-powered Vertex Team Orange Nissan Silvia.
And on that bombshell I’ll end this post. Well, almost. I would like to conclude with the final results of the day and what that means for the championship.
Top16
1 Jim
2 Ricardo
3 Maurice
4 Davey
5 Edwin
6 Tijs
7 Robin
8 Roy
9 Ronald
10 Lennaert
11 Roiheed
12 Reinier
13 Joost
14 Bop
15 Marijn
16 Ronny
Championship top 5
1-Edwin – 77
2-Jim – 62
3-Maurice – 60
4-Ricardo – 56
5-Edo – 53
TWS
4-Ricardo – 56
5-Edo – 53
8-Tijs – 41
15-Bop – 17
16-Reinier – 16
Lot’s of thing can happen at the final round, which will be held in Spijkenisse on the 13th of November!
– Bop
Pictures courtesy of Bart Stax from Dorigazo.nl
