It’s the time of year where show season gets into full swing for us here at Team Japspeed. This weekend saw us return to Carfest North for BBC Children In Need where we put on a drift display every year down the tight straw bale lined course for the 40,000 strong crowds every day. This is a great event with something for everybody including a huge range of cars, horse displays, food exhibitions and stalls, live music all night and so much more.

Friday saw the rain come in very heavily meaning that we couldn’t put on quite the smoke show that we wanted to. However, Matt ‘Doorhunter’ Carter and Paul ‘Smokey’ Smith made sure that the crowd were presented with insane speeds in the wet sideways around the tight, blind corners and getting to the extremes of lock, scraping against the hay bales with their rear bumpers to put on an amazing show. If the visual spectacle wasn’t enough then the sound of Matt Carter’s savage anti-lag set up provided plenty to wow the crowds.

As the weekend moved forwards, the weather brightened up with Saturday being sunny meaning we were able to burn off our Maxxis tyres to full effect. With fellow Maxxis teammate, Jerry, setting the bar high with his off road truck burnouts on the start line, Carter and Smokey knew that had to do some serious burnouts to top it. With anti-lag switched on in both cars the challenge was accepted and a crazy smoke show was delivered to the crowd before they had even reached the start line.

With the track now dry, the guys were able to push faster and faster getting even closer to each other than before to make their performance even more exciting. Constant off-throttle flames and billowing tyre smoke made the demonstration a real crowd pleaser.

As Carfest is in aid of Children In Need we decided to join forces with Sporting Bears; an organisation of volunteers that offer passenger rides in their supercars in exchange for a donation to charity. Therefore, we sold a spot in the passenger seat for every outing the cars had allowing us to raise £1800 for Children In Need. It also meant that we could give some passengers an incredible experience for them to remember for a long time to come.

One of the highlights of Carfest is that when the track action has ended, the live music begins over on the main stage where we could enjoy music from artists such as Rick Astley, The Happy Mondays, Sea Sick Steve, Busted, The Vamps, The Kaiser Chiefs and Texas.

Always an incredible event; we had a great time at Carfest North and we can’t wait for the opportunity to return again next year!