Minimal

Not content with visiting Silverstone for the F1, I was back the next weekend for D1. There’s a fair chance that “D1” doesn’t mean a lot to the people who read this blog, so here’s the low-down...

D1GP is the World Drifting championship. What’s drifting, you say? Have you seen the trailers for The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift lately? That’s what we’re talking about. Nutters driving powerful rear-wheel-drive cars very fast and very sideways. They achieve the sideways bit by various means, but mainly via a tweak on the handbrake followed by flooring the gas to force power oversteer. Actually, trying to explain one term by introducing loads of other ones probably isn’t helping, so here’s a video from the event:

This was the first drift event I’d been to, so I wasn’t sure of the rules. Thankfully, the programme soon filled me in. Overall, it feels most closely comparable to figure skating. The course on which the drivers drift is just a few corners of the track as a whole and a judge tells them beforehand exactly what lines they’re expected to take. It’s then up to the drivers to follow that line while also:

• keeping the rear end out as long as possible
• keeping the rear end out at as great an angle as possible
• creating as much tyre smoke as possible (from wheelspin)
• taking as smooth a line as possible through the corners
• maintaining as much speed as possible
• generally entertaining the crowd (judges can be swayed by crowd approval)

At least, that’s how it works for qualifying. The judge scores each driver over 3 runs and the 16 with the highest scores go into a one-on-one knock-out competition. Each one-on-one drifting battle then consists of two runs: one car leading on the first; then the other leading the second.

The job of the leader is just as in qualifying, but with the addition of having to leave a single car’s width on the inside of the corners. The guy behind must simply match everything the leader does, keeping the distance between the two cars as short as possible. He must also try to tuck his car’s nose inside the leader on the corners. It’s all a bit of a high-speed, tyre-shredding ballet.

On each run, 10 points are distributed between the two drivers, say 7-3 or 5-5. A spin for either driver results in an instant 0-10. The winner of the battle is the driver with more points after both runs are completed. If it’s a draw, they take another couple of runs till it’s decided.

Ok, so they’re the rules, but what was it like? Answer: absolutely bloomin’ spectacular! It was serious entertainment. The cars didn’t actually get as close to each other as I’d hoped they might (with one expensive exception), but it just demonstrated how damned difficult it was and how talented the guys were. Bearing in mind they were doing over 100mph as they threw it sideways for the first corner, it’s a miracle there wasn’t a smash on every run.

As the title of this post suggests, this was a friendly match, with loads of Japanese drivers from the D1GP world championship competing against their lesser European counterparts. Eventual winner was the world champ himself, Yasuyuki Kazama, with Masato Kawabata the runner-up. Both were awesome. Top-placed European driver was Holland’s Paul Vlasblom in his seriously loud BMW 3-series estate. In fact, he was the only guy to beat any of the Japanese drivers, such is their dominance of the sport.

Really, I’m a bit lost for what to say about it other than “Get yourself to a drift event, dammit!” It’s really all about entertainment, showing off and having a great time. You even get to chat with the drivers over lunch and generally have a good mooch about the paddock. Add to that the Barry Boy’s paradise of burger vans, merchandise and car club stands and you’ve got a great day out. Hell, they even played some decent hip-hop over the tannoy during practice. If you’ve got even 5% boy racer in your blood, you’ll love it. Fingers crossed they come to Croft sometime. :)