Good Ol' Boys

 

 

For our final driving event of 2012, we wanted to have some fun. CFRC has an annual Halloween themed event. This event is known, as FRANKENSLIDE!!!! (*crashes of thunder and flashes of lighting/*woman screaming)


Taste of Frankenslide from Brice Burkhardt on Vimeo.

Every year drivers are encouraged to decorate his/her drift cars for the event and make a real show of it. This year they added a little twist, there would be a team tandem competition. Team tandem is when 2 drivers put on an exhibition “battle” but are trying to make a good drift show, i.e. get door to door, and be entertaining. Teams are judged as an overall impression. So combining the two ideas, we were looking to have a good teammate and a creative costume for the car.

 

Drivers were pairing up via FaceBook and I was looking to go stag and team up on site. A couple of days before, we were asked by long time friend, Charlie Thompson, to team up for the competition. He even had a theme- Dukes of Hazzard. My mind started to soar with how we could be a cop car to his General Lee. I found some clear red and clear blue colored vinyl baskets at Dollar Tree, cut off the film, and wrapped the headlights. My girlfriend Hazel, being the artist that she is, made big Sherrif stars for the car doors.  I really wanted a lightbar for the roof, but at several hundred to well over a thousand dollars price tags, that wouldn’t work. I considered a fun noodle wrapped with colored glow necklaces, but it wasn’t good enough! After countless ideas, I found some small strobe lights at a party store, but they ran off of a wall outlet. My dad helped me wire up a small power inverter to our battery and we installed a switch activated set of red and blue mini strobes for the top of the car. It was quite amazing and looked awesome.

Another idea hit me. Let’s make my helmet fit the theme! With Hazel’s help, we painted, and glued props to the helmet and made it into a pig! Come on now, how great is it to see a pig drifting a cop car!?! Brilliant!

Charlie’s 4-door Q45 had to be covered with Orange construction paper, and the obvious “01” on the side. On roof he had the rebel flag and best part of all? HE HAD THE HORN! We had a great team theme going! We eluded to it by choosing the name “Team Hazzardous” (not sure how many caught the spelling clue).

Because this was a “show” based competition, we didn’t run it straight up. We knew that he was heavier and had about 150rwhp less, that our tandems would be more difficult than the nearly identical car team of Pat Goodin (FD Driver) and Tom Barnhart in their LS1 S13s, or that of Jeremy Lowe (FD driver) and Dan Chilton in their turbo RX7 FC’s. Charlie and I decided to have him chase first, and as we got near the crowd I turned my car around and parked it (one fluid drift). He then did donuts around me, like the Duke boys messing with Boss Hog or something. I turned on my strobes (crowd went nuts, they had been kept secret) and chased him off the course and we immediately flew back into the course as if we were now in a high-speed pursuit! Being the faster car I was able to stay right with him and close in on his door.

 

After all of the teams had made their runs, Rob Fleming used his driftwizard.com site for judging. He is able to post a “poll” with the team names, and open up voting to anyone with a smart phone. People in the crowd actually go on and voted our team into 2^nd Place only behind the rotary twins of Dan and Jeremy. We didn’t come in expecting to win, we just were looking for a fun time, but having taken 2^nd place was a great finish to a fun-tastic night.