drift naysayer, winning is about luck

Picture for a moment that you have access to drive some of the most powerful race cars in the world. Then, imagine being given free reign on an open race track. What would you do?

Would you go for a fast lap? What about burning some rubber? Or how about a massive tire shredding burnout, or even better – circle burners! And some power slides while you are at it? Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

I don’t see how naysayers fail to see the appeal of professional drifting. In essence, Formula Drift is about one weekend of driving high power race cars with one purpose – to destroy tires and to make little puffy clouds in the process.

Watching tire smoke billow out from under the wheel wells of these drift machines provides a spectacle unlike any other motorsport.

What amazes me is how much the sport has evolved in just a few short years.

I remember watching the first years of Formula Drift and D1GP thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Today, when I watch those videos from way back when, it’s really evident how different it is now.

Driver skill has improved tenfold. The Ken Gushi of today would run circles around the Ken Gushi from 2004.

The biggest difference of course, are the machines. With horsepower levels pushing four figures and proper race car suspension setups, these are not street cars anymore. No more driving to the track and home again afterwards in your competition car.

To think that Vaughn Gittin Jr. used an open trailer with a borrowed truck to tow his S13 to these very events many years ago, is pretty amazing.

He made the right moves when it counted back then, and now he is gunning for his second Formula Drift Pro Championship title.

The cars have changed as well as the strategy. I remember hanging out in a tire changing area back in 2006, when I overheard the teams yelling at the workers saying that tires do not go on the cars unless they have 50psi of air in them.

Of course, back then the cars didn’t have nearly as much power and it was hard to get high wheel speed if they were running low tire pressures. There were no thoughts of having forward grip in order to drift faster.

Now, it’s all about trying to get as much bite as possible. At almost every event, someone debeads a tire due to running such low tire pressure.

One of the side effects of todays wheel speed and grip, is the amount of smoke that’s produced.

At one point during practice last week in Florida it was almost a complete whiteout in front of the judges tower. The smoke was so thick sometimes that you couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of you.

I remember the first time I saw professional drifting. I wondered how the person following in a tandem battle could see anything. Now more than ever, drivers have to rely on experience and memory learned from previous runs, and pray they can keep up with the car in front of them.

Drifter frederic aasbo came back!

Whenever I attend an event I’ve been to before, I always try to cover it from a different angle. For Gatebil Mantorp in Sweden last weekend, I took that thinking quite literally and did something I’ve never previously attempted – shooting an entire story from the sky.

This was my first time at Gatebil’s annual Swedish event, and also my first time back in Scandinavia since I froze my behind off (true story) shooting Gatebil on Ice in January. This summer event, held about two hours south of Sweden’s capital city, Stockholm, is much larger than the winter event, but roughly half the size of Gatebil’s big Norwegian event taking place at Rudskogen in July.

Still, this was Gatebil, which means the region’s hottest cars gathering in one place for the world’s greatest track event. I highly suggest you guys take full advantage of the Presentation Mode (hit the screen icon near the title) for this article as there are many details you just won’t see viewing the story in the normal way.

We arrived early Thursday to a mostly-empty Mantorp Motorpark, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

By midday Friday the paddock was absolutely bursting at the seams. Just check out that line of cars waiting to get on track!

This is what the Speedhunters booth looked like when I first arrived.

Within 24 hours, however, the paddock had changed drastically. Car culture fans from far and wide gathered at the tiny race circuit.

After Speedhunters driver Fredric Aasbø came back from each session a crowd swarmed around the 86-X wanting to take a closer look. It was fun to shoot this sort of thing from a different perspective than I normally would.

By Sunday afternoon the paddock had already started to thin out, leaving shredded tires and trash bags for as far as the eye could see.