After two rounds of the British Drift Championship completed with great results with Lwi sitting in 2nd position overall, it was time for Lwi to make the long trip across the water back to Ireland for the next round of the Drift Games National Championships. This round was to be in the Eikon Centre in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, a custom built circuit set up with one of the biggest car shows in Ireland. This was only a one day event with minimal practice for the whole field. Lwi was 13th in the DGN Championship when he arrived at the event. With only 4 rounds of the Championship, and a field of very talented drivers, he is looking to finish in top 10 at the end of the season. With the car checked and loaded up at the Allitalia base in North Wales, we headed off across the water with Irish Ferries once again, who always offer us an amazing discount on ferry crossing.
After limited morning practice for the 70+ field of drivers on the tight, technical circuit it was then time for qualification runs, the weather was warm and dry and competition was fierce. Just the wrong time for the normally extremely reliable BMW M3 to decide to leak brake fluid into the driver footwell. After a frantic time for the team trying to get to the bottom of the problem we found that it could not be repaired in time so decided to run with the leak and keep the fluid localised in the car while just refilling the reservoir in between runs. It was important to not let any fluid escape the confines of the car and contaminate the drift track, so we decided to make this the priority and cross fingers that the clutch would hold out during competition.
Qualification Runs, Lwi’s first run was smooth and precise as always, hitting all clips and running a nice line which gave him a score of 84. Under normal competition, this would be the top score, but in DGN, he was place in 5th place. Not content with this result, Lwi pulled out all the stops to put a near perfect line for his second run, with the judges applauding him and commenting that he had actually blackened the white marker line with his perfect positioning of the rear wheels. He finished with an amazing result of 94 points putting him in 1st position, only to be knocked off the top spot by the Championship leader and very talented Luke Barker at the very end of qualifying, so 2nd position finish was an amazing result again and best to date. Once again, the level of driving in Ireland is very high with 74 being the lowest score in top 32!
On to the battles and after topping up the clutch fluid and mopping out the fluid from the driver footwell, with some extra brake fluid given to us by first battle opponent Paddy O’Kane (just love this sport) it was time to start.
Top 32 Battle and Lwi was pitched against Paddy O’Kane (who kindly donated some brake fluid to help keep Lwi in the competition) with Lwi laying down his usual clinical qualifying line, his opponent held good proximity but had a few moments where he went off line and lost momentum. On the chase run, Lwi was more consistent and closer in places, so Lwi took the win.
Top 16 Battle was cut short after opponent Lee McFadden had a terminal driveshaft failure during the run and couldnt repair it, so Lwi had the ByRun to go through to the great 8. It was a shame as he was looking forward to the battle, but a bonus all the same.
Great 8 Battle was against a top class driver Cathal McLaughlin, it was going to be a hard battle and Lwi put in his usual clinical lead run, with Cathal hard on his door for the full run. With Cathal leading, Lwi had a slight struggle to keep up with the considerably higher horsepower of his Nissan but help good proximity. However, after the judges took a considerable amount of time to make their decision, the win went to Cathal. It was a close call but justified and Cathal went on to win the event, so obviously the best driver of the day
Another fantastic result for Young Blood, Lwi Edwards, qualifying in 2nd and battling to the Great 8. This has taken him up the championship table and he now sits in 8th position in the Drift Games National Championships with one more round to go in August 24th at Punchestown
We would like to thank everyone for the support this season that help make this happen, if you would like to get involved or support a young driver competing in two top championships please email us on support@lwiedwards.com for options, we would love to hear from you.
