Pāpāmoa's Sam West gave a drifting demo at the final meeting of Baypark Speedway at the end of April.
Pāpāmoa's Sam West gave a drifting demo at the final meeting of Baypark Speedway at the end of April.
Sam West will line up for the final round of the 2023 National D1NZ Championship at Baypark this weekend sitting 10th overall, but happy with his season.
Brought up in Pāpāmoa, he was living in Australia when he became interested in the sport.
“I pretty much started watching on YouTube and that sort of thing and a few friends were doing it and I thought ‘I might give this a go’,” Sam says.
“I bought a cheap car and got into it and it escalated from there.”
His introduction to drifting in New Zealand didn’t end well.“When I came back to New Zealand I brought a car with me and actually wrote it off at Hampton Downs a week after I moved back.”
It featured top drivers including Tauranga’s Cole Armstrong and Adam Davies.
“I ended up coming up against both of them and beat them both - I actually won the whole competition and that was a turning point when I said ‘this competition stuff is pretty cool and I’m not bad at it’.
“Cole is definitely a guy I looked up to with his aggressive driving and that’s my style as well.”
Pāpāmoa's Sam West sits 10th in the D1NZ National Drifting Championship going into the final round at Baypark at the weekend.
Two years ago Sam took the plunge into the national D1NZ championship - competing in the Pro Sport Series last year then stepping up to the Pro Series this season.
The final round is tomorrow and Saturday.
Not much has been changed on his Nissan 180sx.
“This season was pretty much a learning curve to see how the pros do it - it’s a big jump up from Pro Sport,” Sam says.
“[The car] is pretty low on power, but it seems to still be doing all right. I ended up getting third place on my first round of pro, then at Taupō two rounds ago I qualified first - so I’ve had a couple of good results for the first season.”
While the Pro Sport drivers use street tyres, Pro Series competitors use semi-slicks.
“My first round [this season], I’d only driven on the semi-slicks maybe twice. The grip difference is huge - so it was just getting used to that grip and getting the car set up properly for each track.”
Now back living in Pāpāmoa, Baypark is his “home round”.
“I really want to qualify well and get on the podium - just to finish off a good season and get that kickstart for next year.”
He says the feeling he gets while competing is hard to explain.
“We are trying to get as close as we can to the car in front of us without making contact, but trying to follow their line. Most of the time, you can’t really see anything and you are upward of 100ks and you’ve got a concrete wall next to you, so the adrenaline’s going. You are pretty much always on the edge of failure.
“There’s such a fine line. You could be 30cm offline and you’ve pretty much written your car off - I think that’s the excitement of it.”
Sometimes a driver can push too far to find the limit.
“Last year at Baypark I hit the wall quite hard. I was on a good line, but just pushed a little too hard and caught the back and it sucked the front up the wall.”
A number of drivers, including Sam, have been visiting local schools to promote this weekend’s round.
“There are obviously a lot of people doing skids on the street and people think that’s what we do, so we spoke to them about keeping it off the streets.
“A lot of people think with drifting, that it starts with people doing skids on the streets and ruining places, but we try and educate them that we’ve got enough track days in New Zealand and it’s cheap enough to go to a skid pad that’s looked after and do that sort of thing.”
Over the winter Sam plans to change his car’s power plant.
“I’ll have a good motor in the car and good sponsors helping me out, so next year we’ll have had a year under our belts and know what to expect, so I’ll be going for all the big dogs next year.”
