Notes from the Field: Drift Masters Puts on a Show in Madrid

I got to Spain at around 6 in the morning Thursday, made it through customs and headed to the rental place to pick up my hybrid Peugeot 208. This was my first time ever driving internationally, but I picked the car up and headed straight for downtown Madrid.

I got pancakes for breakfast. Sorry to say, not as good as American pancakes. I probably should have tried a place with crepes, since that’s a European thing, but I figured pancakes were a conservative, safe pick. Not good at all, unfortunately. What was great, though, was the fresh-squeezed orange juice. Turns out that’s a big thing in Portugal and Spain, it’s crazy how good it is. I don’t know if they have a special kind of juicer or something, but it’s so good.

The atmosphere in the city was super cool. I went and chilled in a plaza for a little while that had some live music. It was really pretty there, a really nice area. After that I decided to go check out the Ali Express store because I was curious about what it would be like after hearing about it in Ireland. I’ve never ordered anything from there, but seeing all the cheap stuff in a physical store was pretty interesting. My next stop was at the Bernabéu, Real Madrid’s stadium. I used to watch football (soccer) a lot, and even though I was a Barcelona fan I appreciated how nice the stadium was. Shout out to my girlfriend for recommending I check that out. She gives me all my best travel tips.

My hotel was only like $77 a night, and it was a three star hotel. Pretty crazy considering how expensive nice hotels in big cities are back home. It even had a Japanese toilet, but I won’t get into the details of that. It was a super nice place to stay.

That night I had what may have been the best meal of my entire life up to this point. It was a steak place called Al Fuego, so of course I got the steak and it was so, so good. The sauce was incredible, the bread was killer, I was in heaven. From there, I went back to my hotel and eventually got to sleep, despite the jet lag.

Friday I headed to the track to shoot practice. Everybody was working in their pits first thing in the morning ahead of six practice sessions. The drivers were split into three groups, so each group got two sessions. My buddy Luke Tally showed up to help his Irish homies, watch and hang out.

One thing that became evident pretty quickly was that the second turn was pretty tricky for the drivers. The front straight leading up to it is really, really fast, so it made for a tough zone for a lot of the drivers. During qualifying on Saturday a few people went off pretty hard there. One guy went up on two wheels, kinda gnarly. Other than that, qualifying went great. It was a ton of fun to shoot, the layout and the track were really exciting and there were a ton of people there, like more than some Formula DRIFT rounds get. And that was just for qualifying!

The place was packed for the Top 32 on Sunday, too. Every seat filled, even the grass areas were pretty full. I spent some of the Top 32 shooting crowd reactions, then moved through some different spots as the day went on. I particularly enjoyed getting to watch Mika Keski-Korpi, this Finnish driver that was killing it in his Eurofighter BMW. It was an especially big event for him because it ended up being his first time on the podium.

Conor Shanahan knocked him out in the semifinals and sent him to a third-place matchup with James Deane, and he obviously beat him. A lot of people were super shocked, and it was a really good battle. Shout out to Mika, because that was a ton of fun to watch and he seems like a really nice guy and he was killing it that weekend.

Conor got second behind Piotr Wiecek and his GR Supra. The podium ceremony was really fun, too. It was put together super well, and they had Jacob Gettins announcing everybody. I see him all over, from Gridlife to FD to Drift Masters now. I got to chat with him a little bit earlier on in the event. I think that was probably my favorite podium ceremony I’ve ever been to, actually. They did a really good job.

With the event over I went to get some dinner finally, and opted to go for pizza. Funnily enough, they use pizza scissors instead of a traditional wheel-style pizza cutter. I guess they don’t like the wheel kind because it damages whatever you’re cutting on, so the scissors are a little bit less destructive. Regardless of how I cut it, the pizza was really good.

I also tried a Spanish McDonald’s for one of my meals that weekend. It was either Friday or Saturday, I can’t remember exactly. Anyways, I got their McBites, which is like popcorn chicken, and it was pretty good. I tried their McPops too, which was a dough ball filled with different stuff. One was a Biscoff filling, which was sick. I liked it better than the McDonald’s I tried in Ireland. In fact, overall I think I liked the food in Spain better than the food in Ireland, despite the disappointing pancakes my first day. Sorry, Ireland.

Anyways, the event was super cool and I really liked Spain. My hotel was great, travelling went smoothly and Madrid is a really nice city. My little rental Peugeot got around 66 mpg (roughly 28 km/L), which was nice since gas is so expensive. I only used like a quarter tank the whole weekend. I made it back home alright, and I’m already looking forward to coming back for Drift Masters’ fourth round in July over in Finland.