Repairs are needed, but Daniel Woolhouse is adamant the superficial damage his car took at round one of the Demon Energy D1NZ National Drifting Championship won't stop him at Manfeild.
Woolhouse, also known as Fanga Dan, had a decent showing on the revolutionary indoor track at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin.
Woolhouse made it through to the final eight before being beaten by Darryn Kelly in a battle of former champions, after earlier beating Stuart Baker.
"What an awesome track [Forsyth Barr Stadium], what an epic event. For me, I centred into the wall so we have a bit of fixing to do before round two."
"We push the car 110 per cent and on the chase run we ran our qualifying line and it sucked us out," Woolhouse said.
"We sat on the wall too much. Ended up sucking us in but the good thing about how we build these cars is there's no damage behind the bumpers and lights."
Woolhouse said when he hit the wall, the front of the car didn't move. The back squashed in and the boot lifted up, but it didn't affect his line."
"We were lucky enough to get another run as Stuey [Baker] spun out so the tie was classed as 0-0. It was lucky it was just superficial damage to the back as the car ran fine when we went out and took the win."
"Against Darryn Kelly, we stuck to our qualifying line. On that type of track I thought we'd swing out and hit all those clipping points and still have a reasonably good chase.
Overall we were stoked to qualify P2 and moving up to the top eight."
Round two sees the D1NZ National Championships head to Manfeild, where Woolhouse took out the event in early 2016.
But before he thinks about that, Woolhouse said he needed to sort out the damage on his car.
"We've got a new back bumper and new taillights sitting in the trailer to make the car look all new again," he said.
"All our fuel systems are hiding behind the jacking bar in the boot. Those bars can get hit in 45 degrees before it hits anything, which was something we thought about before building the car."
"The car's going to go into the wall; I'm going to send it into the wall to get maximum qualifying points and to put on a show."
"We're going to get stuck into it, rip it all apart, give it a big clean down. Coming back from Dunedin there was accidents and we had detours through gravel roads and all sorts of dust coming through the trailer so we're going to clean it before we get to fixing it."
The second round of the National Championship takes place on January 6-7 at Manfeild Raceway in Feilding.
- Northern Advocate