NEZ Drift Championship - Estonia

This post is going to be a long one, because of really simple reason. This is motorsports and I got shitloads of photos and some video examples for you as well. It was 9th June when NEZ drift championship event happened in Estonia. I'm a huge fan of drift and many kinds of motorsports overall so there was no chance I'm gonna miss this( I have only missed 2 drifting contests since 2009 when it all started in Estonia). Since 2009, drifting in Estonia has been getting more popular every year and I'm glad to see more and more people getting involved here, building cars and race them on the track. Not only contestants, also spectators count has been risen enormously since then.

Let's get on with this event. I hope most of you have heard or seen in person or from the internet what drifting is, in case you haven't heard anything about it, don't worry, I will write about basic rules and how all this works when this post progresses. Anyway, when I got to the location, straight on I walked to the pit area to see what cars we have and to photograph them.

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There were contestants from Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia

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By the time I got there, some of the contestants managed to crash their cars during the training sessions and their teams tried to fix the cars as soon as possible, that's kinda usual.

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Pretty soon after it was time to begin with the qualifying runs. Qualifying in drifting means that drivers are driving on the track alone. They have 2 runs to come out with the score highest they possibly can. You may ask what are the rules. First of all and the most important one, they have to complete the track sideways, driving straight will result in score 0. There are several factors on how to acquire high scores. More angle you have when going sideways the better, of course when you spin out its a zero and when you go off the track, its zero as well. Also, there are show points. If the drive is awesome to watch, there are loads of smoke and you make a big jump from the jump, you get high show points. Speed matters as well, higher the speed, higher the score, simple right 😀 Now let's get to the photos of qualifying.

_{The First corner of the track}

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_{Last corner of the rack}

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I moved to the bridge in a middle of the track, this gave a pretty nice view of the center part of the track but the problem was that it was too far away from the jump. Still, I managed to take some acceptable shots of the Competition. In Estonia, we have no other official tracks which has this big jump included.

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I will make things more interesting, check this video which shows a driver qualifying.

_{This is called wall kiss when you touch the wall with the back bumper and if this scenario doesn't destroy a car and trajectory stays the same, you get show points!}

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After the qualifying rounds end, the driver's introduction. This means all the drivers are coming to the track to make a show for the spectators. Well, they only make burnouts and show if they have money to spare for tires. Here are some photos of the driver's introduction. I didn't want to make many photos of this, I preferred to take a video clip of this and you will see this separately in my other post soon!

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After the introduction, the fun part starts. People familiar with drifting know what I mean ;) the tandem drives.
Let me educate you what that means. Tandem means there are 2 driver on the track at the same time, drivin side by side.
Pairs are made from the results drivers got from the qualifyng rounds. Every driver gets to drive on the track 2 times for 1 round. Firstly in the front and after in the back, following the front driver. Basically driver at the front must follow his trajectory he drove in the qualifying rounds and the one following the first one must replicate the first driver as best as he could. Thats it, let the best one win. There is always one winner from a pair and goes forward to top 16, top 8 or whatever and gets a new opponent till the finals. Trust me tandem drives are one of the most awesome sights you can watch.
See the pics!

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Now you can see the tandem drive in its full glory, you can see Estonian driver at the following position on the jump, doing what the jump is for, JUMPING!

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There is a reason why its an extreme sport, shit happens, drivers crash and this is one of them

I also captured a video of this crash. The best part is not the crash, look at the red BMW when driver steps out of the car, door feels off, it's just hilarous. 1 in a million you can get something like this on tape lol.

_Result

Now it is time to end the competition, winners are know( at least judges know . Usually they wont announce podium places before awarding, probably to prevent people leaving after the races. Doesn't matter im always there.

Here are the podium drivers and their cars.

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_{Where is drift, there are girls}

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1ST- Ingus Jekabsons (Latvia)
2ND - Oliver Randalu (Estonia)
3RD - Mihkel-Norman Tults (Estonia)

Usually, podium drivers make a final burnout and finish their tires after the ceremony. I will add this video separately in days to come so stay tuned. One Latvian guy crashes during the burnout into the fence because he didn't see anything in the smoke cloud he made.

Finally couple of pics I took after everything

_{A1M Motorpsorts drift team}

You people who made this post to the end, I hope you enjoyed this.

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                USUALLY HERE IS MY STEEMIT LOGO BUT IM AWAY AND I DONT HAVE THE FILE :) @greddyforce