History of Drift Racing
The roar of turbochargers and the sound of tires screeching on the pavement drown out all other unconscious thoughts in your mind. The smell of burning rubber, oil, and petrol fills your nostrils and all you can see is thick smoke where a second earlier,
two high performance drifting cars sped by. The car in front, a Nissan S15 Silvia driven by Tatsuya Sakuma, seems to have lost control around the final turn but at the last moment, a combination of the Nissan’s Trust TD06-25G engine, Sakuma’s skill, and pure
luck saves the car from sliding into a pile of tires alongside the track. The car competing against the Nissan is a Lexus SC430, powered by a fully tuned 3SGTE four cylinder engine and driver Toshiki Yoshioka. As Yoshioka tries to make it around the same turn,
he loses control and is unable to regain it, sending him hurtling into the wall of tires. Yoshioka is uninjured, except for his pride, and watches as Sakuma does donuts in his Silvia, celebrating victory and pleasing the crowd. The D1 Grand Prix (D1GP) takes
place every year in either Japan or the United States. The D1GP is where drifting All-Stars such as Sakuma and Yoshioka come to compete and take home the crown for D1GP Champion. But drifting was not always a special event. Drifting’s roots can be traced back
to touring car championships in Japan as far back as 30 years.
By definition, drifting refers to a technique used while driving, when the driver purposefully over steers, causing the rear tires to lose traction, while staying in control. This allows the driver to exit the turn at high speed, which drastically shortens
lap times in racing. Modern drift racing started as a racing technique in the All Japan Touring Car Championship. Kunimitsu Takahashi is the founder of this technique, and was noted for entering the turn at high speed and sliding his car through it. This new
style of driving won him many championships and the support of fans that enjoyed watching his drifts.
Keiichi Tsuchiya, who is known as “Dorikin” which means “Drift King”, took great interest in Takahashi’s new form of driving. Tsuchiya would practice his drifting on mountain roads of Japan and quickly gained a following from it. In 1987, a video was made
of Tsuchiya drifting, entitled “Pluspy,” which motivated many of the drifters today. In 1988, founder and editor of Option magazine Daijiro Inada helped Tsuchiya organize the very first D1 Grand Prix. He was also the first driver to drift every turn of the
famous Tsukuba Circuit in Japan.
In the present day, drifting has expanded throughout most of the world. Major countries in the world have started their own drifting organizations, such as Pro-Drift in Europe, Formula D in the United States, OzDriftGP in Australia, and SUPERDRIFT in Italy.
Amateur drifting on public roads in Saudi Arabia has become a considerable problem.
Watching a drift race can be fun to watch and it’s not about just making smoke and burning rubber. A drift competition judge will watch each vehicle that passes the judges stand carefully and score the driver based on angle, speed, show factor, and line.
In each “pass” of the judges’ stand, drivers try their best to impress the judges. A judge will analyse the driver’s angle of the drift, speed into the turn, during the drift, and exiting the turn, as well as show factor. Show factor refers to the crowd’s
response to the drift, how close the car gets to the wall or barrier, and amount of smoke. The racing “line” is determined beforehand by the judges, which basically traces the fastest path around the track. When a judge looks for the line, he checks to see
how close the driver was to the designated racing line. The judging of the race takes place in only one or two turns of a circuit. The other turns are extraneous except for controlling the temperature of the tires or setting up for the first corner to be judged.
In the final round of a drift competition, drivers are paired off and compete to impress the judges. However, in Australia, the “chase car,” or the car following the leader is judged on how well it can replicate the drift of the lead car.
Drifting has been around for only about 30 years, but fans have taken heart to this new form of driving, ranging from professional drivers to new drivers fooling around in parking lots. Therefore, it can safely be stated, that drifting is here to stay.
Tags: