Drift Masters GP, biggest and wildest drift event in Europe. For the 3rd round the show moved to Riga, to the famous Bikernieki circuit. As with previous event I made a vlog together with my usual visual report. Hope you enjoy it and find somthing interesting there. Obviously I’m a noob in the fiend and just try different methods as I go forward.

In terms of photography, I mentioned this on the Wlog, I’m a bit tired of Bikernieki. I come here every year and it’s very hard to produce original content. I push myself and try to go to spots that no one likes, but there’s a reason why no one is there :)

As I just entered the track, I heard a screaming engine and that was Pawel Trela, one of my favourites in this championship. Lucky for me the day started great. First shot I did was sharp and had a great moment on it: Pawel with massive angle and fire trail from the exhaust.

It was the training day so there were very few tandem runs. Single runs are a great opportunity to try risky shots, get familiar with the angles – experiment. For team photographers they are the money shots for their drivers.

Few guys did go for tandem practice still

There were few “big players” that don’t run the full season, like Kristaps Bluss, Andrius Vasiliauskas or Juha Rintanen, but their cars were not dialed in, so they didn’t pass the qualifying.

Of course, other guys were pushing really hard, especially the ones who have something to lose.

This car did a 720 over the roof just an hour ago, you won’t think that, right?

It’s small break between the nervous qualifying runs and adrenalin pumped battles

And just before the battles – parade.

Strategic tip for anyone concerned: if the organisers say “no burnouts”, try going at the end of the field. There’s always somebody, who will break the rule and then others will follow. This is what I noticed this time, big teams like Monster and Red Bull rolled by silently, not getting much attention, but then smaller teams started the smoke show and media was creaming them.

This happened to me quite a lot, as soon as the battles start – rain starts as well. James Deane won the qualifying, so he was the first to battle and check the track conditions. At this moment I thought I’ll witness James getting defeated at Top 32, but Sebastian Fontijn did make mistakes of his own.

At this stage it was a proper storm out there, so I stayed under the roof – pussying it out (:

Shameless plug here – look at those RS Watanabes!

It got better and the track was drying out for the Top 8. Still, few puddles were on the trajectory.

Harold Valdma was knocked out by James Deane just before the Top 4

And second spot qualifier Grzegorz Hypki did a great job in the final, but was no match for James ‘The Machine’ Deane.