Clubloose runs some of the biggest and best amateur and pro am drift events on the east coast and my local track, Raceway Park at Englishtown happens to be their home venue. After missing East Coast Bash, their biggest event of the year held back in June, I made sure I’d be ready to go for Freedom Moves held in September.

Back at Gardella Racing HQ there was a very stock and beat up looking solstice that had been sitting in the corner since I arrived in April. This car was an almost stock example that had done some time attack events and had also been used by Tuerck in a Red Bull drift demo at the Red Bull Arena earlier in the year.

The stock engine had been overheated badly so the decision was made to replace it with a built LNF engine from   the previous Solstice drift program.

After the team made the required modifications to the steering set up for more angle and some adjustments to the stock e brake the car was good to go for Freedom moves and plenty of laps of the Englishtown road course.

Saturday morning began with a quick driver briefing for the 3 separate classes. Group C were the novice guys, B the more experienced pro am guys and group A the top level drivers. Each class is allotted designated time on course but with two separate track layouts available to run at any one time everyone was able to get more than enough time to kill all their tires !.

This would be my first time running the Englishtown road course and in a new car to me so I spent a lot of saturday getting comfortable and making use of the grassy run off space on almost every corner. By the time the sun went down and the flood lights came on I had enough confidence to run in some of the 5 and 6 car trains that entertained the crowds until the track closed at ten o clock. From their it was onto the mobile bar that gets moved around the Englishtown facility that was for this weekend nicely situated by the grandstands at the banked turn on the road course. With such a huge turnout and almost everyone camping on site the bar saw as as much action as the track that day !.

Sunday was a slightly later start after the party the night before but once everyone got moving I spent most of my track time in the morning running the back course. This was a shorter layout than the main track but a lot more fun using a big sweeper and a completely blind over crest hairpin among other things. It could also be run either direction and after burning up two sets of tires I returned to the pits for some lunch and a quick check of the car.

Just before heading out for some finals runs in the afternoon GR boss Gary showed up with the family and felt like having his first drift lesson. We headed out to the quieter back track again to let him run at a second gear corner to see what he was made of !.

Surprisingly for a drag racer, he took to it very quickly and was using some weight shifting and good throttle control to initiate the car and power through the turn. Gradually building more speed, a slight off course excursion damaged the intercooler and put an end to the day just as the Clubloose crew ran the last cars through the main course, perfect timing !.

My first clubloose event had been one of the best weekends drifting I’ve ever experienced. Plenty of time on a seriously fun track, some awesome tandem runs with a lot of very fast drivers and all done in a very laid back and fun environment thanks to the awesome Clubloose crew. I plan on attending every one of their events that I can make it to in the future and with some improvements to the Gardella Racing missile solstice Im sure I can get the boss back out there and running the big course in no time !.

Finishing Moves from Alacrious Media on Vimeo.