You may recall that in the April 2022 issue of Motor Equipment News we featured the Techspan Motorsport Toyota GT86 that Jake Fastnedge (Thtguy Drift) and his dad Tim were building. This is no ordinary GT86 as it now sports a 6.2-litre Chevvy LS3 V8 delivering around 372kW along with drift focussed three way suspension modifications.
At that stage the car was new and unproven and Jake still had limited drifting experience, however Jake and the team have huge progress across 2022 in the D1NZ and MSC Challenge drift series. This started with some competitive outings in the D1NZ Pro-Sport class.
Jake focussed on the MSC Challenge run towards the end of 2022 in New Zealand by The Drift Academy. This is part of a feeder series to the top tier competition Formula Drift Japan. The top driver in the NZ MSC Challenge is awarded with Formula Drift Japan 2 driver licence.
The series was raced over four rounds at the Meremere Drift Park. The double header 3rd and 4th rounds featured Formula Drift Japan Ceo Iwata-san, and Robbie Nishida FD and FDJ judge coming over to New Zealand to observe and judge the events.
Jake ended up 4th in the series, missing out on 3rd place by one point to Clayton Dalley but getting 2nd in the final round ahead of the overall series winner Jordan Joyce, this followed on from a 3rd place podium finish in Round 1 and a fourth in Round 2.
It was a huge learning experience, Jake is looking to build on this for 2023 and the team are looking at options to attend the Formula Drift Japan series in 2024.
Jake puts out a huge thank you to Sky Zhao, Iwata-san, Robbie Nishida, Robbie Kiester Nishida the MSC staff and all the other drivers!
Thank you to all my sponsors and supporters...
• Techspan Motorsport New Zealand Limited
• Techspan Group
• ELMA Ultrasonics made in Germany
• Staubli Connectors & Couplings New Zealand
• Kaspa Transmissions
• Red Star Signs
• DroneTech
• DroneWolf
• CanTeen Aotearoa
• V.I.P Wheel & Tyre
• Jared Wemyss Shaun Smith Benji Atchison Luke Mckinnon
