Its both hard and not hard to believe halfway hangs has been happening for 10 years now. Its hard to believe how quickly time flies, and not hard to believe that the event has made it this far. It is hands down the best event for the drift community each year, and with each year it keeps growing and growing, this year was no different. The quality of the cars was outstanding, the vibe in the park was unreal as always, although I do miss seeing some of the old faces from the secret drift forums, thats probably the only let down for me, although talking with some of the forum guys that still attend and reminiscing is always great time.

I managed to get a lot of the maintenance tasks done early on in the year, with that just leaving me to put the car back together after paint. I painted the last front end myself with the help of Elliot, but even with a lot of the maintenance done I was running out of time, so i left it in Elliots hands, and the result came out beautiful. Ofcourse issues would arise the day before we were set to leave, with my gearbox still having a bad leak due to a crack in the casing, and losing bolts that hold my tow bar set up on the hilux, after sorting all that out I loaded it all up, met up with Kev and Scott the next morning at 4am and set off for the 501km drive. It was pretty smooth sailing the whole way up, although i did get pulled over which was nothing more than just losing about 15mins of the trip, everything checked out and i was on my way. Kev and I get up early for work, so getting up early to leave for halfway wasn’t hard and im glad we did, as we arrived around 12pm.

Friday set out to be a pretty awesome day, The car show was full of quality cars, I pinstriped a few cars and as always talked & caught up with a tonne of people. With friday done I focused on saturday which wouldnt be the best day for me and the Corolla. Luke and i set off early that morning and secured our pit spots, under some shade and central to everything. After the morning activities were done i set off to get my first few laps in to shake my anxiety away I always get first lap out. After turn 1 I had got rid of that anxiety with a huge smile on my face, every time i drive this car it feels like the first time I took it drifting with the 4age, but that was short lived, after about 4 laps in the car kept cutting out mid corner, feeling like it was surging, I limped it back in and found the alternator had died, which wouldnt have been a major problem as I have a spare one but thats in Kevs car atm, Jordan had a spare one but it didnt suit, so I sold my spot and packed up to watch some drifting. After getting back to the cabins, Jordan realised that we could just swap the internals from his spare one to mine, which worked a treat, so I was ready for TGD.

TGD lived up to its name as everyone on the day got down, all day everyone was throwing down great runs, improving and all in all having a great time, it really is a grassroots event. Corolla drove perfectly all day mechanically. Suspension wise it sucked, bouncy as all hell but I pushed through and pissed with the dick I got. One new thing Raleigh opened up was the fast line, so after turn 1 from the starting line, instead of doing the; right, left, right corner you drove a little further straight and cut those two corners, which made for some really fun and fast runs, im really keen to come back to do that corner with my suspension sorted. All in all it was a surreal weekend, i cant wait to do it all again in a few months.

-AL

(Photos by Danny D!)