When Jörg Söhner of International Drift Series got on the phone to me early Friday asking me to bring enough warm clothes, I already knew that my day covering the event would be not the most comfortable job in the world. We were headed to that famous racetrack, originally called Lausitzring, now the Eurospeedway Lausitz. Even though the track was built to extremely high safety standards, the history of the track is punctuated with mishaps that send a chill down the spine. The track has previously taken the life of the ex-F1 driver Michele Alboreto while testing an Audi R8 Le Mans Prototype and it's also the same place where the two time American CART series champion Alex Zanardi lost both his legs in a freak accident.

This did get some drivers shaken up a bit before the safety briefing, but as the day went on and the sun shined through, the drivers began pushing themselves on the subsection of the track that was used for judged drifting. The biggest hurdle was pushing the car more towards its limit on the round 800m long main stretch while at the same time keeping the speed reasonable. Drivers were warned during briefing not to go full pelt on the main straight, but despite that most cars had entry speeds of around 180-200 km/h.

Here is clip of the current championship leader and Falken driver Lars Verbraeken throwing his E30 around the track.

-Alok

I have posted pictures of this car before on my own blog . But I haven't seen any progress since, so I was hoping that the Speedhunters audience could shed some light what happened with this E30 twin turbo V8. So does anybody have any info on this car? Please let me know in the comments. -Jeroen Willemsen

I was just checking the Build Threads blog were I found this superb build of E30 M3 V10. It is not your typical engine conversion. It's more like a car conversion. The only original thing about this car are some of the bodypanels and interior pieces....

Now you can enjoy one of the most universally loved BMW's of all time in high resolution for your desktop. As if I needed to say, widescreen and standard versions available now in the Desktops section. -Mike Garrett...

Hi fellow Speedhunters! My name is Alok Paleri. I hail from India, but I have been living in Germany for almost six years now. I was a car nut since I was a kid, and coming to Germany only helped the cause. I took my first ever photo in the summer of 2004, and spent the better half of 2006 and 07 visiting the Nürburgring Nordschleife to hitch passenger rides and take photos of the exotics that flock there - until I accidentally had a brush with the drift scene. I've been working in the field since then and am now the official media man for the International Drift Series, the leading and growing series in Germany. Seen here are some of the drift BMWs that run for gold in the drift scene over here. BMW is the most popular choice among drifters, especially the e30 for their low cost and the plethora of tuning parts as, well as common knowledge about the cars available. ...

While we at Speedhunters were busy preparing for the VAG month the event called Bimmerfest took place in Santa Barbara on the 2 nd of may. Thanks to Mike Burroughs we can enjoy some of the photo's he took during this event. I am told that this is one of the biggest gathering in the USA for BMW enthusiast and judging by the pictures the level of cars is pretty high. The car in the opening shot looks to me like a E21 3 series. I love the color and the stance with the wheels color coded in the chassis...

The King Of Europe is a drift series that is being held on Europe's mainland. They have eight rounds in various countries like France, Hungary, Belgium and the Czech Republic making it a true European Championship. It is more like a grassroots event, without big teams and sponsored cars and it's quite different than the drift series that are being held in the UK. I'm still hoping that the EDC will come to continental Europe to host a true European Drift Championship. The major drawback in the King Of Europe for me is that not all the drivers attend all the rounds. But then again we must not forget that most of the drifters do this for a hobby and that they have normal day jobs......