DISL Round Three Brings Killer End to Drift Indy’s Twentieth Season
|
This year’s Drift Indy Street League season came to a killer conclusion Nov. 7 and 8 at Xenia, OH’s Darana Raceway. The round capped off Drift Indy’s twentieth season and saw a DISL rookie take home the season’s top spot.
The weekend started off a little on the rainy side with all of Friday’s practice going down on a wet or patchy track. They were running the classic DISL layout, but even some veterans of the series had a tough time re-acquainting themselves with the course’s technical initiation on the cold, slippery surface. On the positive side, everybody probably saved quite a few tires and got a ton of laps in. On the negative side, a lot of that practice went out the window when it came to Saturday’s practice session on a dry track.
Series leader Paul Tuttle came into this round with a four-point lead over Matt Berlin in second place and a five-point lead over third place Rodney Blankenship, making the series championship far from a runaway. Outside of the top three were a ton of competitors looking to dethrone them, including a few fresh additions to the season roster. Midwest OG Mike Feiock brought out his E60, and Drift Indy regulars JP Hunnicutt and TJ Walker threw their hats in the DISL ring for the first time this season.
After watching everybody ice skating on the wet track all day Friday, folks looked fast as hell Saturday. Always trying to push the drivers to improve their technical driving skills, the judges adjusted the course slightly. The changes included the addition of an outer zone along the wall at initiation and the placement of a barrel just before the final outer zone whose purpose was to pinch the line close and and encourage drivers to shoot past it, carrying their speed out to the zone. When they got it right, it was fast and looked sick. When they didn’t, the barrel got punted across the infield. Through practice, the barrel got punted a lot.
Judge Derek King told drivers during the drivers’ meeting to treat it as if it was a telephone pole, and emphasized that when it came to preliminary qualifying a barrel hit would mean a zero. It claimed the lives of many would-be qualifiers, but a solid group of 16 were able to navigate the line and punch their ticket to the main event. The top four qualifiers earned themselves a few prelim points. Mike Feiock qualified first, TJ Walker second, Derek Young third and JP Hunnicutt fourth.
With the Top 32 bracket assembled, the main event finally got underway with a battle between Paul Tuttle and Nate Roberts. Roberts got into the wall pretty hard at the end of the day Friday, but was able to get his FT86 back together in time to qualify Saturday, snagging the last spot and matching himself up against the series leader. Tuttle, in his typical, clinical fashion, took the first dub of the day. “He’s a surgeon,” said Edgar Sarmiento from the announcers’ booth.
The next battle took an unfortunate turn when young shredder Noah Woods smacked the wall on initiation against Feiock. Admittedly, I was in a port-a-potty during this battle, but the collision was hard enough that I could hear it from inside the plastic box a hundred or so feet outside of the opposite side of the track from where it happened. Woods had been looking really solid through practice in his very clean S14, and it was a shame to see him eliminated that way.
The Top 32 featured some pretty wacky matchups, including one between Justin Wantz in his 280ZX and JP Hunnicutt in his turbo New Edge Mustang. Wantz has a habit of ending up matched up with bigger power Mustangs in DISL, having come up against Matt Berlin’s S550 in last season’s final round. Despite the power deficit, he’s able to compete with all kinds of builds, and he was able to get the nod over Hunnicutt.
The day’s first one-more-time call came from another unusual pairing between Clay Gaiser’s GM 3800-swapped NA Miata and Justin Bailey’s LS-swapped BMW E90 sedan. It was a tight one, and Bailey was able to open up a little bit of a gap in his lead, but Gaiser, much like Wantz, did what he needed to to make up for the power difference. The judges weren’t swayed one way or the other after two runs, but when they ran it back Gaiser did enough to secure the upset over the higher-ranked Bailey.
Following close behind was the day’s second OMT, this time between Rodney Blankenship and Drift STL’s Scotch McDonald. Blankenship had been having some trouble in practice, including breaking a tie rod, and looked a little rattled at times as he pushed for the season’s top spot. When it came to the comp, though, he locked in and looked much more like the balls-to-the-wall driver the Drift Indy community knows and loves. McDonald, behind the wheel of a very sick jade green S13, put on a solid performance, but Blankenship did enough in the second set of runs to advance to the Top 16.
While it wasn’t a particularly important battle to the final outcome of the round or season, the battle between Derek Young and Chandler Marshall is worth mentioning firstly because it was yet another weird chassis pairing, with Young driving a 350Z and Marshall behind the wheel of a borrowed A60 Supra, and secondly because Marshall drove the whole battle with a lit cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Unfortunately for Marshall, the cig didn’t give him the edge and Young got the nod.
Team Smooth Brain’s Miles Harrelson came into this round ranked eighth overall, having been knocked out of both previous rounds by Tuttle. Harrelson has been pushing hard to earn himself some hardware this season and was looking especially confident throughout practice, and he carried that confidence into the main event. He got his first win of the day against a very solid driver in Angelo Mosjna.
One of the biggest upsets of the day came in the battle between Jonathan Brandt and the two seed, Matt Berlin. After driving his S550 at the first two rounds, Berlin opted to pilot his very clean G35 sedan for this final round. Brandt, behind the wheel of his 1UZ-swapped FC, looked calm and confident. It was a close battle between two very consistent drivers, but Brandt was able to find an edge over Berlin. This matchup likely cost Berlin his spot in the season’s final top three.
The Top 16 kicked off with an exciting, and important, battle between Tuttle and Feiock. Feiock, an OG who was driving with Drift Indy before Tuttle even had a driver’s license, and Tuttle, in his rookie season with DISL but leading the series standings, both were pushing hard to land on the podium at the end of the day. The first set of runs were too close to call, so the judges sent them back to the line for another OMT. In his lead, Tuttle managed to open up a gap on the big Bimmer, and followed that lap up with a chase run that saw him close behind Feiock all the way through the course. This win from Tuttle proved to be vital to his hunt for the season’s top spot.
Justin Keith, similarly to Harrelson, looked dangerous throughout practice and kept that momentum when it came to his matchups in the main event. Having beaten Zach Smith in the Top 32, Keith found himself facing off against Neil Dellaria. Dellaria’s no slouch, and he and Keith’s exciting driving styles made for a nice show for the spectators. It was yet another close one, but Keith’s killer chase run saw him matching Dellaria’s angle and staying right on his door all the way to the finish. Keith’s win and Wantz’s win over Gaiser sent them to a matchup in the Top Eight.
On the opposite side of the bracket, Blankenship advanced past Young and Tommy Coldwaters, then sixth-overall, won against Alec Descoteaux. Harrelson got the dub against Round Two’s Derek King Driver’s Award winner Zane Rohrbacher and Dayton local and DI regular Mike Drake knocked out Brandt.
The quarterfinals came down to matchups between Tuttle and Danny Worley, Keith and Wantz, Blankenship and Coldwaters, and Harrelson and Drake. With the sun setting behind the judges’ tower and casting the track into that nice golden hour glow, Worley and Tuttle kicked things off. Their battle consisted of fairly conservative runs from both sides, to the disappointment of the judges. Wanting to have seen more from the series leader to convince them, the judges went Worley’s way.
Despite Wantz’s confidence and consistency behind the wheel of his vintage ride, Keith proved too tall an order. He continued much as he had been all day, putting his Fortune Fleet-liveried 240 in all the right places and sending himself to the semifinals. Blankenship, having dispelled any earlier jitters, came into his battle with Coldwaters with his classic confidence. Carrying his own momentum from a second-place finish at Round Two, Coldwaters came out swinging, too. Their first pair of runs were too close to call, but when it came to their OMT laps Blankenship pushed just a little bit harder, finishing right up against the wall in his own lead and staying glued to Coldwaters’ slightly more shallow lead to get the dub.
Drake, finally finding some well-earned DISL success after seasons of mechanical issues that ended potentially strong performances, lined it up with a man on a mission in Harrelson. An early mistake from Drake in the chase position saw Harrelson swinging through the bank and the last half of the course with a few car lengths’ gap, and Harrelson followed it up with a very solid chase of his own to advance to the semis.
With all four semifinalists hungry for their first DISL podium, Worley and Keith threw down first. Worley led first, putting down a followable, albeit slightly shallow, run with Keith close behind. With the spots swapped, an early mistake from Worley saw Keith crossing the finish line alone, sending himself through to the finals.
Harrelson and Blankenship, in two very different builds, kicked off with Blankenship in the lead. Harrelson’s chase in his turbo M50 E36 was super solid behind a great lead from Blankenship and his New Edge Mustang, but Blankenship lagged behind when they swapped spots. As he pushed to try to close the gap he overcooked it slightly on the final turn, sending Harrelson to a final face off with Keith, and setting up a third-place matchup between himself and Worley.
The battle for bronze went first, and both Blankenship and Worley cleaned things up after their errors in the preceding battles. Blankenship pushed hard, throwing it as wide as he could and finishing through the final outer zone glued to Worley’s door, but in the end, Worley’s consistency won out, earning him his first DISL hardware.
Harrelson and Keith both came into the final battle with a full head of steam, and Keith’s lead run saw them cross the finish line side-by-side. Perhaps knowing that he needed to set his chase run apart after Harrelson’s solid follow, Keith threw it hard into the initiation behind the red E36. Unfortunately for him, he overcooked it while Harrelson kept it pushing, finishing the lap alone and earning himself the day’s top spot.
At the end of two days of stylish, competitive drifting, three killer drivers earned themselves their first DISL hardware. Miles Harrelson took home the gold, Justin Keith the silver and Danny Worley the bronze. It was something of a full-circle moment for Harrelson, whose first-ever drift event was an earlier DISL volume several seasons ago. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that outing didn’t go great for him.
“I did like three laps, didn’t know what I was doing, and then Edgar came and yelled at me and told me to leave,” he said. “But then later he came and talked to me and told me to come out and drive a regular drift day, and now here we are.”
The judges started off a little disappointed with the driving in practice, but as the day went on and the battles of the main event progressed, the driving improved and it ended up being a pretty solid day, and a great finale to Drift Indy’s twentieth season hosting events. It also capped off a killer DISL season, crowning a champion who, before round one, had never even driven in a comp before. With 58 points, Paul Tuttle took home the season’s top spot. Following close behind in second place with 54 points is Rodney Blankenship, and in third, with 49 points, Justin Keith.
