King of Nations Round 2 – Malaysia

Twenty-sixteen for me is a year of new things, I mentioned before heading off to Fujairah for King of Nations Round 1 that I hadn’t been outside of Europe since the age of four. After visiting Oman for the second time in a matter of weeks, we’d travel immediately after the King of Desert final to visit my second new continent and a place I’d always been desperate to visit – Asia.

We arrived a week early, which gave us a great opportunity to take in the sights and experience the culture that Kuala Lumpur had to offer. It’s an amazing city with awesome people and crazy humidity like I’d never experienced before, but undoubtedly worth it! I’d heard about the food on offer in these kind of places, but nothing quite prepares you for what is actually available, despite enjoying a lot of local food, I tried to play it as safe as possible! When I say safe, I wasn’t just avoiding frogs and bugs – these guys know how to make spicy food, be warned!

It’s crazy how cheap some things are in this side of the World, we took an Uber cab which spent most of the 40 minute journey in traffic, the final price? Less than £2. A good sized, delicious meal and drink can be had for even less than that! (It was real chicken, right?)

I took away some great memories from KL, from being high up and looking down in the city from above in the revolving tower, to stumbling upon crazy car meets on closed-off roads in the early hours of the morning.

I think it’s hard for any drift fan to not love Asia, after all, it’s the home of drifting and where it all started. We were headed to Melaka, Malaysia to see both familiar and unfamiliar drivers. One of the things I love about this competition is that you’ll always get local drivers who you’ve not yet heard about who actually end up causing a huge upset by being underestimated.

With a day of practice which was followed by qualifying and battles, this round would undoubtedly be the hottest temperatures that I’ve worked in to date. With the mercury reaching the early 40’s, and with no shade out on track whilst you roast in the intense sun for 8 hours a day, was it worth it? Definitely.

This round would also be the first for GAIA Wheels Drift Team driver Michael Prosenik, who was driving a brand-new build S15, he’d go up against fellow Australian Luke Fink in the final before eventually taking his first well-deserved first King of Nations victory. It was clear early on that he and his team had entered the competition with big ambitions, and they couldn’t have hoped for a better start.