Prodrift Fermoy – from the tower.
Last weekend I traveled to Prodrift Ireland RD1, Fermoy, Co.Cork. I was there for numerous reasons, none of them involved competing.
Amy G was driving in the Amateur Class first thing on Saturday morning so we had to leave Dublin at around 5am for the long journey down. Thankfully the weather was on our side so we enjoyed a great Saturday morning at the track while the Amateur practice and competitions took place. When the Pro class took over after lunch it was time to hit the spectator area and watch the Pro boys tear it up in Pre Qualifying.
Main event day on Sunday was again busy. Aside from the thousands of spectators that showed up, I was back in the Hankook race suit to offer ride alongs in the fleet of Monster Energy Prodrift Academy cars. This is a new feature to the Prodrift event whereby during the breaks on track, members of the public can pay for some passenger time as Peden (Prodrift Judge), Bergo (Prodrift other Judge) and myself take drift fans for flat out spins of the circuit.
During the course of the day we did over 70 passenger rides and by the end of it we were triple drifting on each others door. I had a blast, and I’m pretty sure that our passengers enjoyed it too.
It was also great to catch up with the old PD crew. Team Hankook were there in force and of course the guys that were over at Formula Drift only a week ago were also present. For the main event I joined Prodrift commentator John Gibbons in the tower for some MC work, which also gave me the best seat in the house to witness James Deane win his home event in style.
Many people were asking me when my Vtec Corolla will be back out on Irish circuits. Prodrift at Fermoy might just have given me the urge to get the cam back out of the workshop and onto the grid for some 2010 Prodrift fun. Watch this space.
The photos above were taken by PD Photographers, Daniel O’Shea & Martin Cunningham
