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Friday practice is always exciting; there is an interesting cocktail of emotions floating around the paddock. Drivers and their crews are busy setting up tents, making last minute fixes or changes to the cars as well as studying the track in the soon to be filled grandstands. This is usually the best time to catch up with friends before the flood of eager fans arrive. This is when I caught up with Frederic Aasbo and got his perspective on the course and this weekend.
“I like the course, it’s different from your typical FD layout, in the way that there are no concrete walls, it’s an actual road course and I like that. It reminds me of how the drift scene is back in Europe. It’s also a little D1, people say this track is similar to the famous Japanese track Tsukuba; it’s a nice change of pace, it’s a fast fun course.”
When the course layout was released few days before this weekend, I saw a lot of people complain and even poke fun at it with classic memes. Generally, once one person makes a stink about something, the bandwagoners jump in with the identical complaint, Frederic however, had a different perspective.
“… We are geared pretty heavy, so it’s a fourth gear track for most and triple digit entry speeds which is high for FD, but it’s not crazy high for Drifting. The center section of the course is really fast and that’s unusual for FD. Some people say it’s a very short course and it goes by in 20 seconds, but it is still very technical, it’s very hard to get that transition right coming into the U turn. I’d say it’s a good track set up, I think the spectator viewing could be better, would be cool to see the inside or get them a little closer, but other than that I like it.”
