Notes from the Field: Irish Drift Series and Japfest at Mondello Park

Going to Ireland for this event was the first time I’d ever left the US, so seeing European culture for the first time was definitely an eye-opening experience. I’ve been wanting to leave the country for a long time and see things outside of our country and I was not disappointed at all. It was one of the best trips I've ever taken in my life. I got to the Dublin airport at about 11:00am Friday and hopped straight on a bus to the city of Naas, and then got a taxi to Mondello Park. I went and found my buddy, Matt Dobbs, and Jared from Canada. Funnily enough, he was the only other North American doing media.

The first thing I noticed right away is that the track is absolutely amazing. It’s a very, very nice track. The facility is very well taken care of and everyone I met was so kind. Even outside of the event, every person I talked to was super kind.

They showed me around, and I ended up going to a midday media meeting because practice was already halfway through on that day. I listened to the media meeting, got a vest and ended up going straight into covering the event, straight from the airport, pretty much. Practice was great, and another thing I noticed right away was the quality of the cars. That was something that really stood out to me.

I'd say 95% of the cars there were unbelievable, I mean, super good looking. People really, really care about the aesthetics and the look of these cars. I mean, the liveries and the attention to detail that these people have, it's just unbelievable. And then to top that, the drivers are also unbelievable. The quality of drifting and the quality of the cars, there's not very many events that I've been to other than this one that I would say fall in that category. Unless we're talking about Formula DRIFT or Drift Appalachia, there's not really many other events that have quality like that.

So this was the first round of the season for the Irish Drift Series, the pro series in Ireland, and it was held with Japfest, a car show that’s been going on for like 20 years now. They have both a Pro2 and a Pro level like FD, and their Pro2 comp went first on Saturday. Pro went down alongside the car show on Sunday. The pro cars are pretty powerful, I think they’re pretty comparable to ProSpec cars in FD, and I think several of the pro drivers have driven in Drift Masters. Really unbelievable driving.

So I shot the last half of practice on Friday and then headed to my Airbnb, which was basically right next to the track. The hosts there were great, so again shoutout to the people of Ireland for being so nice. My friends took me out to try Irish McDonald’s so I could compare it to how it is in the US, which was a pretty interesting experience.

Personally, I found their McDonald’s to be a little bit more bland than ours, but I think it’s because it was made of more real food than what we have here. It was like real chicken, and real, actual food, I think because they have stricter food regulations in Europe and they make sure things are much healthier. After that, we went to a supermarket and I tried a Club Rock Shandy soda, which is an orange-y lemon-y soda, kind of like a Fanta, and it was very, very good.

I woke up pretty jet lagged on Saturday and headed over to the track. After the media meeting, they headed into a couple hours of Pro2 practice, followed by qualifying and some Pro practice runs ahead of the Top 32 competition. I shot the whole competition and then went and found my buddy Luke Tally, who is the reason I was out there in the first place. He's the one that had me come out. He’d told me about it when he came to the States originally. Luke drives what he likes to call a GTR86, which is pretty much a GT86 with a GR86 front end. It’s done really well, got a really cool body kit on it.

I hung out with him in the pits for a while, and they offered to show me around the city a little and take me to my first ever pub. The pub was pretty “class,” as my new Irish friends would say, and we did a couple shots while we listened to the live music there. The nightclub was similarly cool, a lot like nightclubs here with a DJ and a nice lightshow. There was also an Italian restaurant close to the pub that I got a pizza from, and it might’ve been the best pizza I’ve ever had. It was made in a brick oven. So good.

I woke up Sunday morning and headed back to the track for the final, biggest day. Between Japfest and the IDS Pro competition, I heard they drew in about 16 or 17,000 people. They get about 500 cars for the show, so it’s pretty big. I think that number of spectators is kind of comparable to what some FD rounds get, so pretty solid. In Europe, people really like to show up for their motorsports.

Something cool that I noticed about their competition is that they really don’t like to have any dead time on the track, so in between sections they’ll have demos running. They had some rallycross cars turn some laps, and James Deane took his four-rotor FD RX-7 out for a rip with a kid riding shotgun for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. That car was unbelievable; probably in the top ten coolest cars I’ve seen in person.

Mondello Park is an international circuit, so they have real, proper pits. Just enough for the Pro guys, not Pro2, but it was still cool to see drift cars getting worked on under something other than a folding tent. It was about 80 drivers total between both. The whole facility was really nice, really colorful. It rains a ton there, so the grass was really healthy and green. Luckily, aside from a little rain Saturday morning, it was actually nice and sunny for the weekend.

In terms of media access, the track was pretty wide-open for us. They were very reasonable with what and where we were allowed to shoot, and that let me try out some new types of shots and get out of my comfort zone a little here and there.

The competition was great, really impressive driving from both the Pro and Pro2 guys. There were several Pro2 guys that I thought could hang with the Pro guys pretty easily. These were the podium finishers in each:

Pro:

1. Jakub Krzyczszak

2. Jason Mcinerney

3. Fionn Roche

Pro2:

1. Justin Murphy

2. David Fordde

3. Niall Mcinerney

Overall, my first trip abroad was an eye-opening experience and a ton of fun. I’ve been wanting to leave the country for a long time and see things outside of the US, and I was not disappointed at all. It was one of the best trips I've ever taken in my life. I’m really looking forward to coming back to Europe in a couple weeks for Drift Masters in Spain!