We’ve seen unpredictability in Drift Masters on many occasions in the past, but today’s Qualifying session here at Round 3 at Finland’s PowerPark might just be one of the most unpredictable days ever witnessed in Drift Masters history. When the dust settled, Conor Shanahan would be the one leaving the session and heading into the Qualifying Showdown the happiest, having taken top spot in Qualifying here on the first day of our third round of the season, but there’s certainly far more to the story of today than that …
As mentioned in the title of this very article, today was very much a tale of two halves, with the first segment of today’s Qualifying session taking place in incredibly patchy, damp and sometimes rainy conditions, which saw Finnish fan favourite Lauri Heinonen sitting top spot after the first half of the session with a 91-point run, much to the delight of the adoring fans.
One of the biggest stories at that point though would be the list of names that would be sitting outside the Top 32 heading into the second half of our Qualifying session, including Kevin Pesur, Benediktas Cirba, Jack Shanahan, James Deane, Adam Zalewski, Orjan Nilsen, Duane McKeever, Oliver Randalu, Juha Rintanen and Jakub Król to name just a few!
As you can imagine, the air was incredibly tense heading into the second run with many drivers having it all left to play for, but the weather would clear part way through, leading to a dramatically different roster of runs than what we saw during the first half, culminating in a top spot finish for reigning champion, Conor Shanahan – a man who was also our winner here in Finland last season.
Then with the introduction of the Qualifying Showdown portion of the competition this season, all eyes would then turn to spots 2-4 in the Qualifying leaderboard, where with all said and done, the Finnish fans couldn’t contain their delight, with a Finn in the form of Juha Pöytälaakso taking second place in Qualifying, with his fellow countryman Lauri Heinonen taking third place and Norwegian driver Orjan Nilsen rounding out our Top 4 drivers heading into the showdown. The stage was set. Shanahan vs. Nilsen and then an all-Finnish battle between Lauri and Juha. What a way to end a wild day on day one of our Round 3 action!
The first of our Showdown battles would see Shanahan take on Nilsen, where it would be the Norwegian driver Nilsen proceeding to today’s Showdown finale after an uncharacteristic error from the Irishman in the chase position.
We then moved to the battle that would see the Finnish fans happy either way, but it would be firm fan-favourite Lauri Heinonen being the one heading into the finale to face Nilsen for the additional championship points on the line.
And then there were two. Heinonen vs. Nilsen - a battle that proved to delight the fans watching on both here at the PowerPark and online, and a battle that gave us all a fantastic glimpse of what we can expect when we return for our Round 3 Top 32 Battles tomorrow at 1.00pm local Finnish time, which you can of course tune into exclusively live on Red Bull TV!
But before we get into tomorrow’s action, here’s a reminder of today’s Qualifying session results as well as our Top 32 Battle bracket to whet your appetite.
