so last saturday i got to go down to a professional drift event down at evergreen raceway in monroe, "Formula D" (d is for drift). soooo rad. cool cars gettin sideways all day. we could even go walk the pits and chat to all the drivers. it was a pretty good course layout. a long straight into a big sweeping righthand banked turn. i think the pro drivers were hitting the first corner at speeds around 120ish mph. pretty intense. that corner is what starts it all off and then they link into a double left with a straight in the middle and then into a short right. there were a couple of hard wrecks. crowd pleasers lol. some awesome drifting tho. they were running 2 cars at once, otherwise known as "tandem". the lead car sets the tone with his line. being as agressive and precise as he can so the following car will have a harder time keeping up and scoring. the chaser car scores by being close to the lead car but not touching. if he rubs, or crashes into him, the chaser loses that round. they run 2 times each, so each driver gets to lead once. if there is no decision made by the judges on who was the better driver, they make em run again. drivers make mistakes both leading and chasing. so making a mistake leading will cost you points and let the chaser make up some points. throughout the course there are "clipping points". points in the corner where your car must be sideways, because you have to be drifting. the closer you are to these points the better. sometimes the clipping points are on the outside of the corner or the inside. depending on course layout and desired line. its not a race. the fastest car across the finish line doesn't win. most "drift battles" are won at the first corner. the chaser either gets right on the other car's door or, the leader loses the chaser in his smoke and lays down a real aggressive clean line.
exciting sport.
loud, cool, raw cars. cool being purely in the eye of the beholder.
expensive yes. if you do it at the pro level, even more so.
can't wait to go again!
*pics coming*
