Guest post author: Remi Mõngelius // Facebook / Instagram

Here’s a short story from early January of 2016.

It’s 10 pm on a Saturday night when i get a phone call from Henri Puhmas: ”Yo, i’m taking the Volvo barge drifting in Latvia tomorrow, wanna tag along?”
Promises of Volvos, drifting and a guarantee of smelling like Diesel and Oil by the end of the day.. Who could turn down such an offer?

Next day, I pulled myself together at 4 AM and we started driving at 5. The serene still asleep world felt surreal and was quite a sight to see and experience. Not that i could see much out of the front windshield.

As we stopped for gas in the last town, bordering with Latvia – we met up with a fellow Estonian pro drifter Jako Pino and his mates.

By the time we got to inner Latvia, the snowing had stopped and the skies lightened up for some beautiful sights illustrated in vibrant colors.

The 5 hour drive was filled with constant teasing and chatter over the walkie-talkies.

As the time passed 9am, we pulled in for the last fuel stop before the track.

After 5 hours of driving, we had finally reached the track and this was the welcoming sight. A complete, utter beemerfest.

We proceeded to switch out the tires and tried to scout the surroundings for a while. At least they had great coffee!

After Henri had finally been allowed on the track, we had some time to hang back and chat with Ardo Kalda and Dmitriy Illyuk, who were also on spot with Ardo’s #redbitch.

Eventually the practice was over and the competing 1v1 tandems started. As seen from the pictures above, Jako and Henri had no issues leaving the opponents behind for good.

However, due to plain bad luck – Henri and Jako went against eachother before finals, and Jako was pronounced the winner by the judges. An arguable decision.

In the end, Jako was also pronounced the winner of the whole event.