Round 4 of the Drift Allstars event was held at the Anneau du Rhin race track in France close to the Swiss German border. The track was an extremely fast set up.
The drift layout consisted of a long slightly kinked right left run in to the judged line, Scotty’s fastest entry speed was clcoked at 114mph! When asked what he thought of the entry speeds Scotty replied with a laugh stating “f*ckin’ scary!”. The track continued in to a very long shallow left then right followed by a short straight in to a sharp long right hairpin – extremely fast throughout.
Scotty loves the fast tracks and threw the Rocket Bunny through the course all day during practice only struggling to scrub off speed for the final hairpin to get the correct line the judges were looking for. Being a full time race track the grip levels were very high so Scotty spent most of the day raising the rear tyre pressures and stiffening the rear suspension to loosen up the rear end and help carry the car sideways, especially for the last short straight before the hairpin. True to recent form Scotty couldn’t quite get the required line in to the last hairpin.
Qualification time came and Scotty put in a crazy practice run leaving the track completely at the entry to the hairpin. Afterwards Scotty said he had to throw the car off the track on the final practice run just to test the exact point where he could transition in to the last corner at the last possible point. This must have worked because his first judged run was superb and for the first time he mastered the entry to the last corner that had bugged him throughout open practice. With a very solid high scoring first run he then went on to put in an even better second run almost going beyond the point of no return on the final corner, beyond 45 degrees!
The judges were impressed enough to put Scotty in the number one qualifying position. He was ecstatic with the result.
The top sixteen started with Scotty going against the number sixteen qualifier Laurent Goupil. Scotty leading the first run put in a blinding run taking it 8-2. In the second run Scotty was on the chase run following Laurent Goupil. Scotty gave Laurent a good few car lengths lead of the start as he knew he would be faster through the track. Unfortunately Scotty was catching Laurent with far to much speed in to the 2nd sweeping bend and had to put the Rocket Bunny at a greater angle to loose speed. This caused the rear wheels to go off track and nearly causing the car to spin resulting in loosing all momentum and straightening letting the Frenchman get away and loosing the battle.
Despite loosing the battle Scotty was very happy with the weekend finishing 9th overall, keeping his 3rd position in the championship and putting a few more points between 3rd and 4th place.
