Drifting Article from New York Times
May 7, 2004
Drifting: The Fast Art of the Controlled Slide
By CHRIS DIXON
MONTEREY, Calif.
LEANING into the cockpit of a rumbling 2003 Dodge Viper, Terence
Jenkins has a few envious words. "You're very lucky," says Mr.
Jenkins, the manager of the Dodge/Mopar Lateral G drifting team.
"This is the first time a drifting car has been allowed to drive
around Laguna Seca."
Moments later, in a cloud of tire smoke, Mr. Jenkins's driver,
Samuel Hubinette, launches the 550-horsepower Viper straight
toward the Andretti Hairpin, a notorious switchback at this
famous raceway. But charging into this 180-degree turn at 90
miles per hour, Mr. Hubinette, a 32-year-old Swede, does not hit
the brakes. Instead, before a crowd of 5,000 cheering fans, he
slings the Viper into a magnificent, terrifying slide. As tires
scream and smoke pours into the open window, Mr. Hubinette, a
former ice racer, soon reaches a short straightaway. But he
doesn't go straight. In fact, for the entire 2.2 miles of the
track, he makes dizzying sideways slides across the pavement,
then rolls toward the pit area with a whoop. "That was a 75 to 80
percent run," he says. "Now I'm fired up."
Mr. Hubinette, who was competing in the $10,000 Winner-Take-All
International Drifting Shoot-Out last weekend, put on a rather
graphic display of the motor sport phenomenon called drifting.
Originating in Japan over a decade ago, drifting was first
practiced illegally on treacherous mountain roads. The drifter's
goal was, and is, to put the car into controlled slides,
maintaining speed and angle of attack through the curves. Unlike
races, drifting competitions are judged events, and winning takes
a combination of speed, angle and excitement. With the addition
of synchronized tandem or "battle" drifting - the main event at
Laguna Seca - the stakes, and risks, increase sharply.
Though drifting reached the United States only a couple of years
ago, the sport has grown explosively. There are more than 50
drifting events, from competitions to clinics, scheduled at North
American tracks this year. In the last two weeks, both Road
Atlanta and Laguna Seca, two of America's most storied
road-racing courses, have held their first drifting contests.
And these days, the heroes for tens, or perhaps hundreds, of
thousands of young American drivers are people like Mr.
Hubinette; Alex Pfeiffer, a driver for Team R-Sr; Kenjiro Gushi,
a 17-year-old wunderkind who doesn't even have a driver's
license; and Takumi Fujiwara, known as Initial D.
Actually, Initial D is not a real person; he's a Japanese Manga
comics character and is also featured in a PlayStation game. He
makes a living delivering tofu along the winding roads of Mount
Akina for his father, Bunta, a legendary racer. During the course
of his work, Initial D reluctantly comes to realize that - in an
underpowered Toyota Trueno AE86 (a rear-wheel-drive Corolla) - he
has become the best driver on the mountain. In the comics and in
the game, all the mysterious young man wants is to deliver his
tofu on time; all the local drifters want is to find out who he
is and beat him.
Like many young drifters, Richard Tang of Team Rotora, sponsored
by a performance brake manufacturer from City of Industry,
Calif., learned about drifting from the comic-book exploits of
Initial D. In the pits at Laguna Seca, he pointed out parallels
between the fictional hero and the young Mr. Gushi, who also
drives for Team Rotora. "Ken is very talented," he said. "Believe
it or not, he started driving at around age 13 with a Corolla,
and his dad has a WRX rally car just like Bunta."
Tsukasa Gushi, 37, a former rally and motorcycle racer who owns a
performance garage in San Gabriel, Calif., was standing nearby
and corrected Mr. Tang. His son actually learned to drive at age
8, when he used to get behind the wheel at his father's shop.
Then, when Ken was 13, "I took him to the desert and drove him
rally style. I showed him some moves, then said, `O.K., do
whatever you want.' He never stopped driving."
Ken Gushi recalled sliding across the floor of El Mirage, the
Mojave dry lake, in his father's 1986 Corolla. Today, behind the
wheel of his 300-horsepower 1992 Nissan 240 SX, he's one of the
top drifters in the country. For him, the appeal of drifting is
visceral. "At any point you can crash," he said. "There's a big
risk, and that's the biggest thrill of it."
And unlike more established motor sports like Nascar racing,
drifting doesn't yet require a $200,000 car. All it takes to get
started is a crisp-handling rear-wheel-drive car and $80 worth of
used tires from a junkyard. For established teams it's another
matter. Factory-sponsored drivers can go through as many as 10
$400 high-performance tires a day.
At Laguna Seca, Donald Ahn and Todd Ho of the NorCal Drift
Academy in San Francisco actually entered a stock 160-horsepower
1990 Mazda RX-7 that sported a large swath of red tape over a
dent in the rear quarter panel. "We drove our cars here," Mr. Ahn
said. "Everyone else has a trailer. The track guy didn't even
want to let us park. He said, `What are you guys doing here?' We
said, `We're racing.' `What car?' `This car!' "
Why spend his time putting his old car into death-defying skids?
"Why do you pop a wheelie on a bicycle?" Mr. Ho asked in
response. "You don't go any faster - it's just fun! It's very
much like freestyle motocross. The best way to describe it is
freestyle with cars."
FOR the fans all along the shortened three-quarter-mile drift
course, the sport's appeal seemed clear. Pressing up against the
chain-link fence, they cheered loudly as competitors pendulumed
back and forth amid choking clouds of smoke. At least once each
run, a crash between sliding vehicles was narrowly averted, and
several 80-m.p.h. fender scuffs and spinouts elicited roars.
"There's just no ignoring the cool factor," said Ed Nicolls,
Laguna Seca's spokesman, who added that the track was holding its
first drifting event to draw younger fans than traditional races
do. "The best part of racing is when the tires break away. That's
when people stand up."
Peter Stark, a senior writer for Racing magazine, had a similar
view of drifting's excitement value. "It's phenomenal," he said,
"that there's an organized act of driving cars like you stole
them. This is a sanctioned version of what every idiot high
school kid has done in a parking lot."
While many of the drifting professionals emphasized the
importance of putting rubber to the road only on approved courses
(Mr. Ahn and Mr. Ho's Drift Academy offers $80-to-$110 drifting
lessons at several tracks in the San Francisco area), many in the
crowd acknowledged having drifted under less than official
circumstances.
"It's something that keeps me out of trouble, but in trouble,"
said Brandon Gilbert, 19, of Seaside, Calif., rolling an
autographed tire (drivers give away the bald ones). His friend
Brian Palmer, 17, added: "It keeps you away from drugs. But
you're still, like, addicted to it."
When asked where they go drifting, the boys grinned sheepishly.
"Parking lots," said Jason Nguyen, 17.
Out on the track, Mr. Hubinette and Mr. Gushi made a spectacular
run that kept them inches apart through a series of deadly
looking skids. On the back stretch, the cars even scraped each
other. Though he had won in Atlanta the week before, Mr.
Hubinette's performance was not enough, and the three judges
awarded Mr. Gushi the round, moving him into the next elimination
heat.
Mr. Gushi then went on to narrowly squeal by some impressive
driving from Tanner Foust in Jasper Performance's Toyota Supra
Turbo and Rhys Millen in Team RMR's Pontiac GTO (Pontiac and
Dodge are the first two American makers to sponsor drifters). Mr.
Gushi's grand prize: a $10,000 check and a teary-eyed father.
Though he didn't win, Mr. Ho called breathing the rubber smoke
from Mr. Hubinette's Viper one of the most thrilling moments of
his life. "That's the point I'm trying to make," he said. "I
didn't have the money for a 400-horsepower motor or 18-inch
wheels. You can still do a lot with stock wheels and stock
alignment." Still he could not help being impressed by the cars
with stratospheric horsepower. "I think I've hit the limits of my
car," he said and sighed. "I might have to abandon the RX-7."
Drag racing is for fast cars. Solo 2 is for fast drivers.
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