LZ World Tour & how I ended up here.
Words : Adam Ivell
Photography : Jordan Butters
I’m sat here once again at my desk in good old Colchester Town, after a weekend that I will never forget.
The thing is, during your life, how much do you do that you actually remember? Theres only ever really certain moments that years later you can remember with such detail that you can take yourself back there with a few minutes of silence on your own. Well, this past weekend will be one of them for me.
I got asked 2 weeks ago whilst away in Finland to step up into a job that I never expected to receive, because my friend & work colleague Ian Waddington had a family emergency he needed to tend too over the next 2 weeks, which left his job that he does amazingly well for the LZ world tour open & Dave Egan, a man who has transformed my last few years into what feels like a dream I am going to wake up from very soon & be absolutely heartbroken by it being only a dream, asked me if I wanted to take on the roll of doing the Live reporting from the pits for the LZ world tour.
Lets break this down from the beginning so everyone understands.
Adam LZ is a world famous youtuber, internet personality, Formula Drift Driver (and winner of round 2 of this season) with millions of followers worldwide.
Dave Egan is the brain behind Drift Games. Irish Youtubers, Car builders, Car Show & event runners, my boss at Drift Masters for the Media! And once again, HUGE internet following, fans all around the world love what these guys do, and so do I.
Together these guys & their teams have created for 2023 the LZ world tour. 4 Countries, 100’s of drivers across the tour, with some of the biggest online personalities in the Drift world Mixed with some of the BEST drivers in drifting, all come out and compete on street tyres in front of a live audience & the rest of the world online.
Right we’re caught up.
Let me explain what I usually do, I normally get to be at the event & I capture what happens for the social media, I’m hidden behind a phone for the most part, i get to do the intro & outro for the day but mainly it is just capture the event vibes & the behind the scenes stuff.
Well, this time, I would be on the mic, LIVE in front of Mondello Park 12000+ People ? I don’t know the exact number who came, im completely guessing here but It had to be a lot, 3 grandstands full and full around the track too. Insane! BUT not just here, we were also going LIVE on Adam LZ’s youtube Channel. 160K plus viewers after me checking when writing this. Absolutely nuts to someone like me whos happy when you hit 5k views on a video after a week lol.
I got the go from Graham my Camera man and BOOM We were LIVE. My first introduction, to a live thing EVER haha. Before this moment I was SCARED for the first time in years i felt that beautiful feeling, god I’ve missed it! It was awesome to be able to open from the pits with Adam LZ. Thankfully for me, I met Adam about 6 years ago, so I was comfortable working with him & he made things super easy for me.
Day 1 went really well, I started my driver interviews with Jack Shanahan, someone i consider now a very good friend of mine. I’m very lucky to travel with Drift Masters & He competes in that series. He also gave me a drift lesson back in 2017 so we go back a long way now!
Finished up my work for the day with the Amazing Rudnik. This guy was one of the funniest dudes I’ve ever met. I loved working with him!
I felt really good after day 1. I have a lot to learn still but i watched back the first days livestream & felt awesome with it for a first try.
Day 2 on the other hand. Blimey. WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL GAME INCOMING.
Day 2 comes around and I find out, im not in the pits anymore. Nope, now I’m in front of the Mondello Park audience. HOLY FKN you what!! Are you kidding! I found this out, after my first interview from the day, I had no idea this was coming if im honest and im kind of glad I had no idea as theres no time to syke yourself out.
First interview was with two of my favourite charaters on the grid. Josh (Drift Games) and Chris (Ricer Miata). If these two had their own Show it would be a HIT. Straight after this interview, my Camera Man goes “we’ve been told we’re now on the track”……
Well, no going back now aha. Getting to share the camera with such people as you see above for my first ever time, Jimmy Oakes & HERT ! I couldnt believe that I’m even in the same area as these guys let alone sharing the Camera. Man what a buzz ! & the guys are so awesome to work with, i loved it, real smiles, real laughter. What an honour to share this with these people!
Getting to interview before & after their battles was an absolute joy with Josh & Chris. Seeing Josh out also made me so happy, this guy is brilliant & has always allowed me a place to stay when I’m over in Ireland, always putting in the graft. So glad he got to have a moment on the big stage with his cars & Chris !
If you’d have told me I’d be posing in front of however many thousands of eye balls that were watching this event with Adam LZ & Jimmy Oakes id have laughed at you. I have a good relationship with both of these guys but to be on the stage with them after a battle, posing down the cameras, moments ill remember forever. Absolutely brilliant
Another 2 Gents that it was an absolute honour to share the mic with was The Machine himself James Deane & Baggsy. Both guys who have been insanely important to my own story in drifting. James Deane was the first ever battle I saw & Baggsy is local to me & was one of the first Pro Drifters to ever give me a second of his time when I was starting out. Seeing both of them out there, shredding tyres & having huge smiles on their faces doing so was just amazing & getting to be the guy in the middle of them with the mic, couldn’t have asked for a better moment.
I guess I need to summarise. I still am trying to phathom what happened. I cant believe I got the trust from Dave & the team to be the guy on the Mic, I have never, ever done anything like this live before. Infact, the last time I had a mic in my hand was when I did my last stand up comedy gig to 60 people in a pub in london and no one laughed. So there was some mental gymnastics done this weekend for myself, but I really had a great time & I hope you did too if you tuned in, If you missed it, the videos are over on Adam LZ’s youtube channel. Go check it out, its a great laugh, lots of action & The whole team worked so so hard.
Thank you again to the Team for having me. Thank you LZ World Tour!
Praying I dont wake up & all this was a dream…..
Adam
