Burke handling step up to Pro Class
From his results in the opening two legs of this year’s series, Liam Burke has proven he can hold his own in the Pro Class series of the D1NZ National Drifting Championship circuit after winning the second-tier pro sport class title last year and making the step up to the upper echelon.
Last weekend, the Kaitaia expat, who currently works and lives in Whangarei, qualified 7th out of 23 drivers in round 2/5 of the series in Wellington and if not for a little misfortune, could have finished considerably higher up the rankings.
In his first battle of the day, Burke beat Matty Hill (regarded as Australia’s No 1 drifter and winner of the Wellington leg of last year’s pro class, while Burke took out the pro-sport title there) to progress through to the top eight to drive off against Adam Davies.
After the first run, Liam’s brake light indicator — the LED light strip above front/rear windows tells the judges when the lead driver is applying the brakes for judging purposes and to alert the chase car to when the lead car is braking so they can brake and not hit them — became stuck.
He tried to quickly fix it on the track to save his five-minute mechanical (drivers at each event get one five-minute timeout phase to use during racing ) but officials made him go to the pits to fix it.
He returned and raced, only for the judges to call an OMT (one more time), which surprised the Far North racer’s legion of dedicated supporters, including father Brian.
“We thought he had well and truly won,” Brian noted, adding that Liam went back for a do-ordie run, only to find his clutch slipping. Having already used his five-minute mechanical, he could not return to the pits and try to fix the problem, so was forced to throw in the towel.
Liam’s performance in Wellington was still considered a great achievement, more so considering he has one of the only totally ‘homemade’ cars — a Nissan S13 with a Toyota 2JZ engine — racing in pro class class against teams with far greater budgets and resources.
Earlier in the season, Liam qualified from round 1 at Baypark last month, only to be knocked out in his very next race after spinning out. Dad Brian noted Liam was still at this point getting used to the wider tyres used in the pro sport class and which are semi-slick: “[They have] More grip than pro sport tyres but wear out faster.”
The Wellington result lifted Liam from 18th after Baypark to 12th place on the standings in a field of 26 drivers.
■ Other events in the D1NZ series are, round 3 at the Hampton Downs Motorsport Park from March 16-17; round 4 at Pukekohe from March 30-31; then round 5, the grand finale, at Manfeild Circuit Chris Amon from April 26-27.