A New RC Drift King Emerges
Having just taken down his second Drift King trophy out of two events, Russell Bennett, better known as Quickbeam of the Gauteng drift club, Drift Karnage, takes a moment to reflect with us.
We're talking 1/10th-scale radio-controlled car drifting here, an exciting new wave which is washing over the global RC scene with unprecedented force. It's easy to see why there's such hype really, these small machines with their exquisitely engineered chassis' which in most ways are so much like their full-sized counterparts, are positively mesmerising when they float by, an apparent sea of calm, within inches of one another's Lexan bodies at full opposite lock and all four driven wheels scrabbling in vain for meaningful traction. Just like the real deal, there's something more than balletic in this scaled-down automotive dance beyond the limits of ordinary physical concepts like grip.
In Gauteng, South Africa, this violent frenzy of brute power has caught-on in a massive way. In a nation so well known across the globe as committed petrolheads, it's no surprise really. For the 2008 calendar year, SA had two fully-fledged regional RC Drift Championships running, the D10 series for Cape-based competitors, and D10 GP for the landlocked capital region. Quickbeam has just done the double on the fifth round of the D10 GP series, and is looking decidedly pleased with his work.
"I wasn't so sure about this one, considering my first practice lap was also Qualifying round 1! But after hobbling through to the D10 class in qualifying, during the first free practice session, I really got the rhythm of this place blasting out a full 4200 battery around the layout here at Key West. It was actually one of those tracks that looked more technical than it was, and with very few major velocity changes to cope with it all just melds into one prolonged, all-out drift right the way round."
"As well as the lack of practice, the number of drifters out here today who've rapidly upped their skill levels since our last event at Esswex in Northcliff, as well as all the usual big guns, had turned out for this beautiful late winter Sunday afternoon so the heat was most definitely on. But after getting so comfortable with the drift before us during the practice session I was feeling much better and went into the late rounds confident and unfazed, which is probably worth about as much as R3000 worth of hop-ups out on the course!"
Quickbeam had come up against Dario (aka DrSnuggles) in the final round, and after putting in a flawless run while Dario had some points docked for a relatively minor collision with a kerb, the event commentator noted; "Looks like Russell has the lead heading into the last run of the day, but can Dario force an error from the front?".
Continues Quickbeam: "I heard that and thought, should I back off for enough gap to avoid any traps he might set? But I'm not one to back off really, so instead I got tighter and pushed him harder than I think I pushed anyone all day! Paid off in the end, the Drift King trophy is coming home once more!"
He's also chuffed with his chosen chassis, something of an oddball choice for a drift car, a race-optimised Tamiya TB Evo V, the latest incarnation of this ultra low-cg 4WD shaft-driven track monster from the famous Tamiya stable.
"After running all of last year with my trusty, entry-level TT-01, and spotting by the end of the year the limitations of the TT versus the higher-end chassis' being pulled out by the top runners, I initially went to a drifting favourite, a Yokomo SSG. I never really dialled-in to the SSG though, and had felt from the first time I ran my Evo V that it had massive drifting potential. So I made the shift after just our first event this year, and haven't looked back."
Russell reckons that the long-running arguments that abound about which car is the best to drift with - belt or shaft, carbon or plastic, front or rear-engined, comes down pretty much entirely to personal choice. The majority of the players in this elite cadre appear to have taken to the stable, smooth, and almost vice-free rotation of the mid-engined, belt-driven TA-05 or similar, but the Evo V retains the rearwards-biased motor positioning of almost all shaft-driven cars, which with the aid of a front one-way differential can be a real boon when confronted with the need to tighten a drift line late into the bend being attacked. The more benign nature of the TA-05 can also be made to behave similarly, but prefers a smoother, more measured approach, but there are a hundred different chassis' and thousands of individual drift styles, and the most important element of any chassis is exactly how much the driver bonds with it.
"All that low-mounted carbonfibre, so nicely complemented by all of that Tamiya-blue aluminium in the Evo V just really does it for me. It's a shaft-driven car that eats unsuspecting belts for breakfast. I like that, and it's just the perfect combination between benign but with hyper-fast responses for me," he enthuses.
His chances of taking the overall championship title this year seem pretty promising. Of the eight rounds scheduled, only individual drifter's top 5 are tallied on the final day of the season, so with three more rounds to come anything could happen, but at sixth spot overall, despite having missed the first event entirely, if he keeps up this winning slide (sic)...
"I think I can take the whole thing this year! I'm so in tune with this chassis now, and very comfortable and relaxed during my runs, both of which really go a long way towards the difference between kissing the apex and clipping the kerb. Honestly, in my current form and barring a catastrophic failure, the other teams are going to have to come to an event with positively inspired sideways action to pry this trophy from my grasp. Having said that, I know there are mad skills out there that, on a good day, could really take it to me, and mad skills which are still to flourish coming up through the ranks, and I look forward to taking them all on, one by one."
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