•    01. May 2006    Collin in Hockenheim

At last it was Monday and I woke up really excited. I was going to Hockenheim. Not just to look at the track but to do a DRIFT course. Ok a drift course is just that... Learning to throw a car into a corner at an angle of about 90 grad and keep it there in a controlled fashion. It was organized through a good friend of mine Thomas Strohmayer, who does Safty Training's for people on the road and Race Track. They Invited some prominent people also: Sean Dundee, Bradly Carnell ( Kickers by Karlsruhe), Katja Poensgen and 2 Friends of Katja, Bert Poensgen (Boss Of Suzuki Germany), Manuel Chittaro Team EBS-Sturm Kawasaki And Myself...
I was race ready !!! ;o)
The Boss of ADAC Hockenheim, Mr Dr.-Ing. Jörg Soehner, Was also there at the Briefing and Thanks to him the whole day was organized for us. He was the one who lent us the special Mercedes CLK cars. Here a huge thanks to Mercedes and Dunlop. The cars had a locked diff. The TV Group Easy TV were there too keeping all our spin off's on the camera :o) And there were enough of them !!!Werner Gusenbauer (Drift Challenge Sieger 2005) Was our Trainer for the day and we gave him a few extra Grey Hairs :O))) It was awesome to watch him when he showed us how it was done. He has an extreme good feeling for the cars.
We Started off by doing the basics. They put up plastic markers and we had to drive around them. Then we had to turn hard next to them and Gas it to the next one. The car then started drifting a bit. After that we put to the test by making us drive over plate that moved when the car drove over it. You had to be extremely quick with the steering wheel to catch the car before it spun off. After the skid plate was a huge area with a special cowering which was very slippery. They Watered it all the time and that made it slick. Then the drifting started. There is an big circle which they watered and we started to see how far we could drift our cars. It was awesome .... After a few turns I could keep the car in drift around the whole circle. I was having some much fun I did `nt want to stop... Mr. Poensgen had his car good under control... I think it was the same reason as myself ;o) It comes from flying every where and renting cars.... Its always nice using some one else car in extrem situations. Ok just kidding :o)) Sean And Bradly were having a lot of fun as well. 
We then went to an area where you drove down a hill and at the bottom was a left hand corner which one could attack at 75 km/h. That was difficult. Werner showed us how it was done. We all just stood there and watched him with awe written on our faces. Where we just doing one corner he drove the whole drift course which consisted of 7 corners. Then it was time... We all drove down to the Sachs corner on the the race track. They wet the corner for us and we all had 3 test runs. In 3 of the cars there was a drift box connected via GPS. It calculated the Angle/ distance and speed and gave you points. We all only had 1 run that counted. I was 2nd and got there corner pretty well. Infact I was pretty happy with it. When I got back to the starting point I saw that my box was`nt working. Werner drove up and took the car for a test run and got it working. The problem was we turned the car off and in the excitement I did `nt turn the ESP off and my run was a disaster. At first I didnt know why but when I got back we found out what it was.
So I got to try again. ( :o) My Competition was `nt very happy ;o)) I got a good run. I had the car pretty sideways and lasted quite long. Bradly had a really good run too and it was close in the points. I ended up winning by a slim margin.

It was an exciting day and we all had a huge amount of fun. A special thanks to my Good Friend Tommy Strohmayer, who had the idea, Werner who took the time for us on a holiday.

And of cause Dr.-Ing. Jörg Soehner Thank you for a wonderful day.

I`ll  be back !!!!

P.S.: My pictures!