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Posted
Jan 04 2012, 02:00 PM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 27 comment(s)
Back in 2008, I made the trip across the Irish Sea to the opening round of the 2008 JDM Allstars Series. The event took place at Teesside Autodrome, just outside Middlesborough in the North East of England. Anyone who has had the privilage of witnessing what Teesside was like in its earlier drifting years, will know it's a special place. For the Saturday morning of the event, the competitors were left loose on the smaller, but equally amazing, West track. During the lunch hour, Martin Ffrench...
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Posted
May 03 2011, 02:00 PM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 13 comment(s)
Hello everyone, my name is Martin Ffrench a.k.a. 'Frenchy'. I'm the owner of Wexican Motorsport and drive the above SR20 powered Toyota Altezza in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Welcome to my guest blog from the first round of the 2011 Drift Allstars series ! And so our journey begins ! For me it started at 5AM on Easter Sunday morning. I drove, along with my mechanic and team chief for the weekend, to the headquarters of WKD Imports in county Carlow, Ireland. We had loaded and packed...
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Posted
Apr 30 2011, 09:00 AM
by
Ross Ianson
with 18 comment(s)
One of the things I love about Speedhunting is that you are never bored, you just don't have the time to be. No sooner had I finished up at Donington Park with the Opener of BDC, I was heading north up to Teesside Autodrome to meet Paddy for the first round of the Drift Allstars European Championship. Teesside is possibly the greatest drift track in the UK and is back on the drift calender for the 2011 season. I attended the very first drift day at the track back in 2004 and things have changed...
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Posted
Feb 20 2011, 02:30 PM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 22 comment(s)
On a rather wet and winter's day at Mondello Park, I finally got to see and be a part of something that I've been waiting for, for quite a long time. Some of you may remember the exclusive feature on Martin Ffrench's Wexican Motorsport Toyota Altezza , just last week the car returned from an intensive mapping session at Pro Tuner in the UK and finally made it's on track debut yesterday at an open drift practice day Mondello Park. For its first time in action, the car went and behaved...
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Posted
Nov 26 2010, 03:00 AM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 131 comment(s)
This story and this car mean an awful lot to me. I hope you can bear with me as I try to convey the full story for you. It won't be easy but I'll try. Recession is defined as a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced. It's a pretty cold way of looking at what the economies of the world have been experiencing for the last few years and it is especially cold if you've been hit harder than others. I suppose I don't really need to...
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Posted
Sep 14 2009, 06:46 PM
by
Martin Ffrench
with 71 comment(s)
I'm back again this month for an update to the current range of builds I have going on at the moment, I hope you'll enjoy the read. Some of you may remember a post back in March about my time attack build. The car sat lonely in the corner with no paint, as unattractive as any car can look yet the reaction we got to it was something we had never seen before. The picture appeared everywhere; on time attack forums around the world people were debating the legality of it and how fast could it...
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Posted
Aug 10 2009, 07:47 AM
by
Martin Ffrench
with 23 comment(s)
Hello everyone, my name is Martin Ffrench, but I'm better known as 'Frenchie'. Here's a little bit about myself... I've always been into drifting even though I didn't really know what it was at the time. When I was 15 or 16 years old, my first cars to rally around the yard and fields at home were Ford Sierra Saphires and 'old skool' KP61 RWD Starlets (but I suppose they weren't all that 'old skool' back then!). Oh yeah, how can I forget my Opel Kadet Coupe...
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Posted
Jul 12 2009, 09:00 AM
by
Ross Ianson
with 12 comment(s)
From the super fast sweeping turns of Brands Hatch to the tight and technical custom made Santapod track, round 5 of the NFS-EDC championship could not be more different to all of the previous rounds. 8am and the British summer time played its trump card and delivered a mix of drizzle and heavy showers of rain making conditions a little tricky. Designed by head judge Maz the track consisted of a fast sweeping righthander forcing the drivers out to the wall for the following hairpin then into a technical...
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Posted
Jun 29 2009, 08:06 AM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 10 comment(s)
I spent a while this month trying to come with an Exotics and Luxury feature . I'd know where I could find some well prepared JZX100's but I wanted to find something different, something a little bit more off the wall than the usual. Of course when Ffrench rang me to tell me what he was going to be finishing off the Irish Prodrift series in, 'Four door', 'Brown', 'Nissan' and 'Dished Chromes' were the exact words he used to describe it, I knew my luck had just...
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Posted
Apr 29 2009, 08:21 AM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 6 comment(s)
We got some requests from the Wall Rubbin' post for some more shots of the car, so thought it would be cool to pull Martin and the car aside for a quick spotlight ! The car is Martins T-Car, that is, it's his backup car whilst the Altezza is being completed. It's the same S14 you may remember from last year but with some minor and even major differences. The front bumper is Works 9, matched up with some URAS sideskirts and rear bumper. The rear wing is a custom buit Wexican Motorsport...
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Posted
Apr 25 2009, 02:51 PM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 9 comment(s)
Speedhunters endorsed Martin Ffrench returned to the Irish drifting scene today and nailed a perfect run to earn him number one qualifier going into tomorrows Top 16 battles of the first round of the 2009 Irish Prodrift Series. With runs as tight as this, it's not difficult to see why ! Some more coverage on Driftworks Full event coverage coming soon on Speedhunters.com !
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Posted
Apr 07 2009, 08:31 AM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 34 comment(s)
It was another early start for the Speedhunting and Wexican crew as we arrived at the track at 8 a.m. Before we arrived the judges, along with Dutch drive Olaf Commijs made some minor changes to the layout. Ffrench walked the track and reckoned that the new layout would suit the RX better as there was a better flow to it. Whilst Martin and Ross prepared the car for the first practice session, I strolled the paddock to eye up the competition and of course to share some eye candy ... Driftworks were...
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Posted
Apr 06 2009, 05:08 PM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 6 comment(s)
I'll pick up where we left off in the first post , where we were about to embark on an 1,100 mile roundtrip to the UK to compete at the first round of the 2009 JDM Allstars series. We left Ireland on a late sailing and arrived into the UK at around 1a.m. We headed through the night to south west England and to Devon, the home of rotary specialists Dragon Performance. We arrived at around 4a.m. and tried to get an hour or so sleep in the van but instead ended up watching WRC videos on Ffrenchie's...
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Posted
Apr 02 2009, 02:38 PM
by
Paddy McGrath
with 16 comment(s)
In about 12 hours we will be setting sail on an 1,100 mile round trip to Newcastle Upon Tyne in the United Kingdom. The event is JDM Allstars, the now traditional first major event of the 2009 drifting calendar. It features a host of well known EDC, Prodrift and even some continental competitors. For this weekend I'll be covering the event from the perspective of Speedhunter regular, Martin Ffrench. We will be leaving Ireland tomorrow morning, heading towards the home of Dragon Performance in south east England, to collect the infamous Race of Champions drift car, the Dragon RX7....
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Posted
Mar 13 2009, 02:47 PM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 7 comment(s)
The last couple of posts have all been about the motoring, but I know there's some keen photographers amongst the Speedhunter ranks, so I thought it might make a nice change to talk about the setup and the lighting for this latest Speedhunters desktop image. The car was located at the back of an old barn, having no running gear or suspension, it was going no where so I had to make to do with the location. Interestingly it turned out to be a pretty cool location and one that I may return to in...
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Posted
Mar 11 2009, 03:00 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 20 comment(s)
Yesterday we looked at Martin's 2010 Time Attack project . During the middle of the article I mentioned his SR20 powered Altezza which I mistakenly thought I had wrote about before. The joys of getting old, eh ? For 2009, Martin is planning on campaigning two Altezza's, one in Ireland and one in the United Kingdom. Both car's will be aesthetically similar but with contrasting paint work and some 'small' differences under the bodywork. The first car pictured is the Irish car. It...
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Posted
Mar 10 2009, 03:21 AM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 40 comment(s)
When Rod asked me to write an article on some up and coming builds from Ireland, I already knew what and who to write about. Some of you may remember Martin Ffrench's Altezza build from January, some of you may have seen him drifting the Race of Champions track on the new Redline Magazine DVD and even more of you will be aware of his talent behind the wheel. I've known Martin a few years now and I've come to learn that he won't settle for anything but absolute, one hundred percent...
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