May Editorial>> A Spotlight Down Under

Greetings from New Zealand! I’m taking a few weeks of rest and relaxation in Nelson on the South Island before I pop over to Sydney to meet up with fellow Speedhunters, Dino Dalle Carbonare and Casey Dhnaram. We’ve been hearing about the Australian World Time Attack Challenge since SEMA of last year and have been busy planning a trip out
ever since. Dino and I are going to arrive in Sydney on May 17th and plan to try and shoot some shops and cars before heading to Eastern Creek Raceway on Thursday May 20th. We hope that our Australian hardcore readers of Speedhunters will come out to meet us at the event and show us some cool Australian street machines. I’m armed with a stack of stickers too!

In the above photo Casey shot the hi Octane R34 in its final preparations for the World Time Attack Challenge. The car certainly faces some stiff competition.

… Including this legendary machine: the Cyber Evo. I would have to put my hat on this car to be the pre-event favourite, but it’s hard to say if this Tsukuba special will be able to adapt quickly to the Eastern Creek layout.

I’m not certain at this stage if the event will use the 3.930 km -2.442 mi Grand Prix Circuit or the shorter 2.800 km -1.740 mi Short Circuit but whatever the case, the track does look larger and faster than Tsukuba. This should aid the competitiveness of the FR machines like the legendary Pan Speed RX7.

The Pan Speed FD3S might be old news, but this R Magic machine is a brand new build. I’ll make sure to get as many shots of the car as possible.

I’m eagerly waiting for Patrick Soderlund to finish his driver blog post from Silverstone. He’s a pretty busy guy as you can imagine, running his corner of the EA gaming empire and all that… He’s also in for a crazy month too as he will be soon heading off to Germany to compete in the Nurburgring 24Hs. Here is a shot of the Team NFS car as it appeared in a VLN race at the Nurburgring in early April. Yes all four wheels are off the ground!

You’ll note here that since this photo was taken, we re-did the BMW in white to make it look more like the Formula D cars…

Right what was I talking about… ahh yes, the Nurburgring 24H. We’ll have three photographers on site this year: John Brooks, Paddy McGrath and Alok Paleri.

Some of you may remember John’s stellar coverage from the 24Hs last year.

He’ll be back in a similar capacity to do event coverage of the 2010 proceedings.

Paddy and Alok will concentrate on bringing the Team NFS behind the scenes action to life as well as Speedhunting all the auto culture that surrounds the event itself. Have fun guys and don’t forget your rain gear!

We haven’t quite finished our Silverstone GT1-GT3 coverage with some driver blogs still in the works…

… but soon it will be time for Jonathan Moore to get ready to ship out to Brno in the Czech Republic.

This will be a double header with the GT1 and GT3s so Patrick Soderlund and Edward Sandstrom will be present and ready for action too.

I’m reasonably pleased with their progress thus far and fully expect that we’ll get some good results before the year is out.

We’ll also close out the month with coverage of Prodrift round two from Punchestown, Ireland.

We’ll be on hand to see if James Deane can’t keep his winning ways going from Prodrift round one.

And a theme for the month? Well we’re going to try something different and run a themed week in late May: Drives Week.

The idea is like so: various Speedhunters around the world are going to drive on some of their favourite local roads and document the proceedings. The idea here is to celebrate the our love of driving, and look at the varied motoring experiences on offer across the planet, from the freeways of Tokyo and LA to the open roads of Ireland.

This theme is a bit of a test run, but if you guys like it we could repeat the theme later in the year.

And finally late this month we have an announcement for another component of Team NFS which we are doing with Vaughn Gittin JR. This isn’t a competition program, but a car build project which I’m really excited to lift the veil on. You’ll see hahaha…

Ok right…. going to try and not work for a while here…

:R

ADVERTISEMENT

Comments



Comments are closed.

30 comments

by Oldest
by Best by Newest by Oldest
2

The coverage on all the events is fantastic and Speedhunters is by far now the best ca site on the set ever PERIOD.

But i do feel like there is so much that its going a bit crazy, a little organisation and structure would make it easier to follow things... For instance, i dont know what is going on in GT, there so much to look at and i cant recall there being any coverage on the actual races, just a sea of photos...

3

Enjoy our sweet country bro

4

Let's just hope that "Drive's Week" doesn't get people speeding out on local secret roads, so that more police come out and plan more speedtraps on them. Initial D already ruined mountain driving with fanboy "drifters". Don't ruin this for me too.

5

Hi guys

Can you please annouce where/when you'll be at the Time Attack at Eastern Creek? It would be great to arrange a catch up!



Eastern Creek is a great track. I've driven on it many times. Corner one is very ballsy. On a track car with a good driver it is >200km/h!

6

Speedhunters really is killing it, an amazing website and amazing team of people behind it.



wake up in the morning get my coffee and then check speedhunters

7

Hey can you do what Chris said, looking forward to grabbing a couple of stickers off you guys and having a chat! Looks like a great month, looking forward to those driving posts, enjoy Australia :)

8

Drives. Gotta have GMR. That's in Mike Garretts general neighborhood. :)

9

yeah EC is awesome. i like it.



oh and pay a visit to the kart track right next to it too...and a have a go! its a great little circuit.



I'll be on site to catch you guys, and collect some stickers! haha.

should be a great couple of days out there.

10

speaking of drives too...you guys wont be that far from some awesome roads.

1 hour north and you'll hit the putty road, and 1 hour south and you'll hit the royal national park.



then from there, there is KV road, JV road and mac pass. all awesome.

11

how come we never get calendars anymore? i actually used those haha

12

Hey Rod,



Glad to hear you're visiting somewhere decent :D I grew up in Richmond, Nelson, so I know the place inside out. Where in Nelson are you staying?



In regards to the drives theme, if you have the time (and a rental car) go and check out the road between Greymouth and Westport, via Punakaiki. It's amazing scenery, amazing road, not too much traffic, and greymouth is about 3.5 hours south of Nelson so it's pretty quick to get to.



http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/west-coast-places/7/2

13

Great idea.. Drives Week - lets be careful out there... - keep it up Speedhunters! the coverage, the quality and the photo's are always second to none..

14

24H Nür? Will see if I meet one of those three guys there ;)

15

The Hi Octane Racing R34 GTR is just madness!

16

wish i had the weekend off so i could get to easter creek :(

17

I'm really hyped Rod! will be good to meet you mate

18

Welcome to New Zealand - Hope you enjoy your time here before 'heading over the ditch' :-)

19

Will see you guys soon in Sydney :D



Great pics and writeup.



Which shops are you planning to shoot?

20

Cant wait to attend Super Lap. Heading over with Casey and the ID crew :-)



Going to be great to see these time attack cars up close



if only my Drift car was ready for the comp...

21

no awd tc love?

boo

22

that's a f$@#ing great idea! here near by Amsterdam there is the Uitdammerdijk with some amazing twisties and for the dead striate my vote go's for the a31 Autobahn definitely lets you hit the vmax on that stretch of tarmac

23

Coming from NZ to watch Time Attack, can't wait! Hopefully I can grab a sticker or something!

24

Hi,

are you going to give out some speedhuntersstickers and stuff at the Nürburgring 24H? OR are you having a promotionstand there like at FD Long Beach ?

This year I am finally going to see it live... can't wait to get to the track !!!

25

Hi Rod



If you are coming down Kaikoura way to see the whales ,Let me know .there is a car collection that is worth a look and a few hidden cars that might be of some intrest .Plus the drive between blenheim and Kaikoura was voted one of the three best drives in the country .

26

P.s . I would like some stickers .

27

From what I'm hearing, FX Motorsports isn't going to be heading down under after all. Anyone else hear anything like this?

28

just like to point out that the picture for the socal meets is from nisei week not the eibach meet. :)

29

The drives theme is a great idea!

30

The World Time Attack Challenge is going to be the greaest shoot out in years. Can't wait to see skylines and RX7's and Evo's going head to head!

OFFICIAL SPEEDHUNTERS SUPPLIERS