Solodex 3 - 21st May 2006
Photography by Paul Adam, Devi Nath, Duane Boodasingh and Ryan Ramsaran.

To Drift , Or Not To Drift 
Sideways action seemed the order of the day as events unfolded on Sunday May 21.  Twenty-two competitors came out to do battle as CARS set the stage for a very fast Solodex III.  With the championship heating up, the strategies and head games that played out were worthy of Formula 1……well maybe not quite F1, but cat-and-mouse seemed the order of the day, particularly in the ES class.

ES class favorite, Ryan Ramsaran had things a bit easy, with nearest rival Amir Hosein having to drive an unfamiliar car.  Novice driver Kevin Lalla generously allowed Amir to race his Nissan Sentra B13 to a well earned 3rd place, with some entertaining sideways action along the way.  Ryan finished in first, just over half a second ahead of Mikhail Ramadhar, making it a Honda Civic 1–2.  Behind the numbers, however, was a silent mind game of who was holding back to force someone else to make a mistake.  SD IV should be interesting…..

Kevin Lalla was not as successful in the novice class, finishing two seconds off the pace.  It was not a bad finish though, considering he was edged out by regular rookies Anthony Farah and Narend Sooknarine, plus the Subaru WRX STI-driving Donald Cameron.  Narend did not walk the course and struggled a bit to a final time of 70.567, good enough for second place.  Donald claimed his debut victory, with a respectable 68.039.  Narend did manage to entertain the crowd with his now trademark sideways antics, and some very expensive tyre smoke.

The small but consistent GS class saw the regular trio of Sanjay Singh, Alan Rajkumar-Maharaj, aka Zodiaque, and Kevin Singh.  Kevin pushed his MGB GT hard to stay ahead of Sanjay, finally finishing 0.645 seconds in front of Sanjay’s B11 Sunny, with a final time of 75.735 seconds to Sanjay’s 76.38.  It seemed Alan had repeated his SD2 win with a 75.605 until a marshall pointed out that his fastest run was a DNF.  The marshall has since been advised to stay clear of all RWD Lancers.  Alan went on to emulate Narend, with some sideways action of his own, proving that you CAN drift a car with double-digit horsepower.

The other small class was EP, with Ryan Pinheiro, Devi Nath and Barry Mykoo finishing in that order.  Barry was still getting used to his Evo6, having stepped up from his all conquering VW Golf GTI.  He did manage to raise the crowd to its feet with a spectacular 180° spin, and crossing the line backwards after being heckled by Ryan.. something about “dexers can also do it backwards.”!  Ryan also managed fastest time of the day with a 64.492, a tight 0.228 ahead of Devi.  Never a dull moment at dex…..

The hot class of the day was the HS class.  Kirk ‘Mr. Fixables’ Ho Hing took a break from ‘.phper the Friendly Wagon’ to race ‘Mummy’s Almera’.  With Kumho Victors the choice of the HS Wagon Boys, Kirk seemed to have an uphill battle…..right up until he posted his first time of the day, at 72.59.  Scott Dopson stepped up to the challenge, finishing 0.115 seconds behind Kirk for a well deserved second place.  Kerwyn Charles rounded off the top three.  Kirk’s best time of 70.664 put him once again at the top of the ‘man to beat’ list, regardless of car or classification.  It was later noted that Kirk was driving a Hellmera.  The GS class was last seen lobbying CARS to keep Kirk out of GS in the future……

At the close of competition, the traditional mad rush to line up for fun runs began, except that the mad rush was quite orderly.  The new tradition of everybody driving everybody else’s car continued, adding to the camaraderie that Solodex is well known for.  The next event will be a BYCC (Bring Yuh Cooler and Come), in preparation for SD IV, as well as to get in some friendly grudge matches.

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