As We Arrived At The Drifting Competition,

there was a break in proceedings so we looked around at some of the cars,

Toyota's seemed to be the car of choice for most competitors.

but there were also some cars on display that were not being raced like this Lamborghini,

I have to admit I do not know what this one is that it seems to be based on a Ferrari,

and then spotted this Chrysler L300, I have to admit I really like the shape of these when they first came out in UK some years ago, at the time they were £30,000 each but then Chrysler got into difficulties and the dealers were offering two for the price of one, then things got really bad when one dealer allegedly advertised that if you agreed not to sell them for five years if you bought one you got two for free! which bought the price down to just £10,000 each, I wonder how much they are today?

but onto the racers,

as I mentioned before Toyota's seemed to be in the majority of the preferred cars here,

like this one,

all using a twin overhead cam 3 litter turbocharged engine,

after practise,

the cars made their way towards the stage,

for a photo shoot,

it was surprising how many cars were here,

I did not think that this form of motor sport was so popular in Thailand,

and this is where the action will be taking place unlike other race tracks I have walked over where the surface has been very course, here the surface was very smooth and slick,

as it was a photo shoot I decided to take some pictures of the cars,

but unfortunately these ladies kept getting in the way,

but the drivers did not seem to mind,

it appears there were teams from many countries competing,

in case you're wondering why the cones have been tipped over I believe it is to indicate to drivers the direction of travel, with upright cones marking the inside of the corners,

a view along some of the cars,

in all there were 40 or perhaps 50 cars competing some from individual garages,

and others judging by the paintwork were from a team effort,

the commentary for the racing was delivered from here and I guess this is also where the prize giving took place,

there were lots of paparazzi here,

but then the photo shoot was over and the racing began,

unlike the practise every driver gave everything they had to put on a good show,

another car that featured here was a Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R, arguably if you look at its reputation and overall wins one of the best road cars in the world, this car was nicknamed "Godzilla" by the Australian motoring publication Wheels in its July 1989 edition, the BNR32 (R32 GT-R) would end up winning 29 straight victories out of 29 races, unfortunately for us in Great Britain the car was not available, you could only buy them second-hand and used from Japan, the Skyline GT-R was never manufactured outside of Japan, and the sole export markets were Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand,

it was at this stage that Diana asked me a couple of questions, firstly whether there were any Lancias here? we had just watched a Top Gear programme featuring Lancias and the massive successes they had at rallying, her next question was were there any big block V8's here? unfortunately none of the cars here featured a V8 engine,

but despite the lacking of Lancias and V8's all of the cars and drivers put on a good show,

so it was a great surprise when we first arrived that we found that this drifting competitions taking place, it was now getting quite late in the afternoon so we now made a move home for our evening meal.