Support PGP Meet - Official Event Coverage - May 26th 2012

Photos by Nick Poirier and TK Akiyama. Article by Matt Haugness.

On May 26, 2012 hundreds of car and motorcycle enthusiasts attended the Support PGP Meet at PGP Motorsports Park in Kent, WA. As you may know, King County recently restricted the use of their track to public and corporate rental karts which severely impacts their business. It has also hurt the motorsports community because PGP was such a affordable and convenient location for people who enjoy drifting, lapping, and Supermoto. The goal for the meet was to bring attention to the issue and show our support for the track by raising money for the PGP legal fund.

As cars entered the track, signatures were collected on a petition. Special "I ♥ PGP" stickers were sold by StickerUp Vinyls and the proceeds went directly to the PGP legal fund. NOS Energy Drink supplied free energy drinks to everyone in attendance and STAT Response (the first aid team for motorsports events) came out to show their support for the track.

During the rental kart session in the early afternoon, the fastest laps were recorded on boards near the timing booth. The winners of each award are listed below.

Fastest Lap of the Day:

Mo Shawver – 45.392

Fastest Ladies Lap of the Day:

Brooke B. – 48.321

Kart Drifting Competition

One of the more exciting competitions to watch was the Kart Drifting Competition. In this competition, 20 experienced drifters competed in an informal drifting competition on a wet corner of the track. It was fun to watch some big name drifters show that they can drift just about anything. The first 20 were judged and the top 10 moved onto the next round.

The second round was even more intense as the remaining competitors paired up and drifted in tandem around the corner. This is when the competition got even more exciting to watch as most of the drivers were entering the corner at maximum speed and some even started to get their kart sideways before the corner. In the end, it came down to Mo Shawver and Cody Griffith for first and second place. They competed against each other for two runs and on the final run Mo spun out which sent Cody's kart into the side of his kart. Nobody was hurt and they both walked away smiling. Cody was awarded 1st place by default since he wasn't the one that caused the accident.

Results:

1st: Cody Griffith
2nd: Mo Shawver
3rd: Mike Phillips

Fastest Forum:

NWGC

Another competition that was going on during the early afternoon rental sessions was the Fastest Forum competition. Each driver chose a forum to represent with their time on the boards. Around 4pm we took a look at the board and it appeared that the winner was S2KI (Honda S2000 forum). They had 7 members on the board with nearly all of them being some of the fastest laps of the day.

However, when their times were averaged, the forum time was 48.304. One member from another forum beat their average time and his name was Brandon M. from NWGC (North West Genesis Club) with a time of 48.017. We would have liked to see more forums participating but I'm not sure it was clear to everyone that this is what we were doing. Regardless, S2KI had the largest number of fast drivers even if the forum wasn't technically the fastest when averaged.

Thank you to everyone who came out and showed support for PGP Motorsports Park. We would like to give special thanks to the following sponsors for making this meet possible:

PGP Motorsports Park
StickerUp Vinyls
NOS Energy Drink
STAT Response
ImportMeet.com

Other event coverage:
Nw-built
Poirier Photography
Artem Lesnenko
Andrey Sharkov
Gwapo Nguyen
Leon Cheung