Evergreen

Formula D Round 4 took place at Evergreen in Monroe, Washington. It’s pretty close to Seattle but to the north. I’m kinda sad that we never actually saw Seattle on the way there, I’ve still not been…

Anyhow, the overall event was very well organized, as one would expect from an event as large as this. We didn’t have to pay for parking and I didn’t have to pay to get in. Thanks to a promo/giveaway that Drifting.com runs for every event, I got in for free with a special green bracelet.

Really, the green bracelet was cool… Haha. It’s what people with groups apparently get, even though I don’t quite understand it. I just overheard that bit. (Some guy at the will call asked about it before I got mine. I wasn’t expecting it!) When the people at the gate saw the bracelet, I was told to just go right in. How nice. (I felt really special all day, even though there were a lot of them… Ha.)

Drifting

When we got there, they were working on running the Pro-Am event. So it was quite the thing to show up and hear all the cars running right away. Before we even parked you could see the smoke from the tires as we got closer to Evergreen.

I’m really a huge fan of Pro-Am, since it’s the blend between some great drivers plus more of the grassroots aspect. Probably my favorite car in the Pro-Am was an ITB F20c tucked inside an AE86. My hubs talked to the guys later on in the day and apparently the ITB’s aren’t that hard to manage… (So he’s contemplating doing it to our own F20c again. It’s what he wanted in the first place anyhow haha.)

We didn’t watch too much of the actual drifting until it came down to the Top 16 and the ensuing elimination. It felt like a real treat to be there and see the level of skill that many of the drivers brought to the competition.

Booths

It felt like a fair when you walked through most of the place. There were booths set up everywhere, both for the teams and for vendors.

There was also plenty of free booty, something my husband was looking forward to. I do like the Nitto tire backpacks we got, they’re some of the small drawstring ones but fairly big for those and a nice material. I’m hoping the S2000’s Spoon wheel fits in one. (It killed the Yokohama bag we were using.)

Then, of course, there was being able to meet the drivers and get autographs. I only got one and my husband got one, but I got a couple of pictures with some of the guys I admire. You’ll have to wait a few days to see those yet.

Overall

Overall I really liked the event and I’m definitely looking forward to going again next year. I know I’ll be wearing a different outfit, ha. Oh, probably sunscreen too…

There were a lot of minimally dressed girls running everywhere, as to be expected when cars are involved. I understand the booth babes and other variously employed product girls, but really most every girl was dressed the same. I felt pretty out of place. (And then realized that there were a lot of girls dressed in ways they definitely shouldn’t because ew, nobody wants to see your fat hanging everywhere…. So I definitely should be able to ha.)

Of course, the employed girls were mostly very pretty and easy on the eyes. Especially the Falken girls. Most of the NOS girls weren’t so bad either, haha. (Yeah, I checked out the girls, who wasn’t?)

Between my husband and myself, I think our favorite bit was being around the booths and just the overall festival feel to it. The drifting? Not so much. It seemed fixed, really. By the time we made it to the Great 8, I had a sinking feeling Tanner Foust was going to win…

And guess who won. Tanner Foust.

What really annoyed me was how many people would cheer for him and not anybody else. It seemed like people overall latched onto a familiar name and went with it, you know? I guess you’d had to have been there to get that feeling.

Especially when it came to the Final Four battle with McNamara… I was definitely one of a handful cheering for McNamara. But in my opinion, he was doing some amazing driving — I think he was the best chaser there was out there that day. Always still on the lead car, no matter how much smoke there was.

Anyhow…

We will be going back next year!

And this got so long so quick, so I’m saving all the rest for the next post.

Autocross #2

The second official autocross of the year was March 7th, and yes I can be kinda slow and take this long to get the pictures that have been up on my Flickr for a while up here organized into a nice blog post. I apologize if you’ve seen them all before.

Through a new lens!

Where-as I only had my kit 18mm-55mm lens for the first autocross, I got to two-day ship my 55mm-200mm lens just to get it in time for the second race of the year. And boy, was it ever worth it!

I literally came home with pictures of every car that ran that day, to the tune of 260 photographs. Yikes. I think I may end up looking into an external drive for myself just to hold my pictures…. I’ll probably use it well at this rate. Something about my dSLR makes taking a ton of pictures easy and effortless, and somewhere amongst all the snaps are some jewels waiting to be recognized. At least that’s what I always hope for!!

I will, I promise…

My new lens gave me a pretty good excuse as to why I wasn’t racing that time, thankfully! I will be getting back out there at least once before we move, though. While track racing is where my heart is, autocross will remain my roots and I’ll always find it somewhat fun.

My favorite pics

This lovely spectator caught my eye for sure, I've always loved the 4S.

I can't help but take tons of photos of this car, I absolutely love her!

Fully decked out, race-only Porsche. Always turns out scary fast times!

There were a LOT of Miatas out that day!!

Zip ties are an art form on drift cars. And yes, she's drifted.

I didn't manage to catch the whole drift, but managed this shot.... It's my favorite from the day.

She was my first…

It’s not completely unusual to see cars being towed around here, as it is for most places I’m sure. But I hardly could believe what I was seeing here… The back end was completely unmistakable — a 240SX. She was very unique, though, as I could already tell she was a light lavender color, had a wing and altezza tails. (I still don’t like the altezzas, on anything but the Toyota Altezza.)

So I caught up to it and kinda sat next to it, taking her in. That’s when I noticed the “D1 Grand Prix” sticker above her competition number… Uh, hello, she drifts for a living! This was definitely driven home when I noticed her wheels – bronze Advans. Yeah, most people around here don’t roll on legit wheels like that. Or carry two sets of extra tires.

At that point, I knew she had to belong to an amateur drifter, as I had never seen any photos of the car before. And yes, I do follow drifting. Not religiously, but enough to know the cars and some of the drivers and what not. (Important things like Forsberg being the FD champion of 2009 in his 350Z, ya know?)

I also cursed my luck at not having my camera in easy access to snap a pic, not having the time to be able to stalk follow her and talk to the guys and for driving the Miata that day. I guess I thought if I had my 240SX I wouldn’t be so creepy then, but maybe I was a bit creepy anyhow. (If they noticed me.)

The search began.

As soon as I got home, I immediately began a search to find out about the car and to confirm my suspicions. Sadly, I couldn’t find anything on the car…

I had one snippet of a video from Risky Devils where I thought I saw the car, but I couldn’t be sure.

And then, one day, I found her… Thanks to the coverage by Speedhunters and MotorMavens on the Pro-Am drift event at Irwindale. It came as no shock that she’s from Texas, because that was the only logical reason why I would have run into her in that particular stretch of road going that direction in Arkansas.

It took me a while, but I finally found her out...

Okay, and…?

You may be wondering why I brought this up. I feel funny saying this, but I have a weird affection for this car for being the first drift car I’ve ever actually seen in person.

Yeah, for all of my love and obsession with drifting, I have thus far been completely removed from any involvement in it. Other that, you know, sliding around my Miata when it’s wet out.

This is part of the reason why I am completely ecstatic to get to Washington… I’ll be able to finally go and see some live drifting, hooray!!!

For now, I’ll have to be content that at least I’ve been in the presence of a car that goes and has a very good life, as far as I’m concerned. I can’t wait to see more cars that are lucky like her!

(Funny enough, MotorMavens just did an entire post on this car, here! Now I know, and will be eagerly watching her in the pros!)

Through the wonderful blog Risky Devils, I found this article, announcing several arrests of street drifters in Tokyo. The article saddened me deeply, but some of the comments simply infuriated me. Instead of writing back a heated comment that won’t get me anywhere, I’m outlining my grievances here.

All racers aren’t created equal.

While I enjoyed The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, I feel it did the sport way more injustice than it did it any good. Why? One easy fact: After watching the movie, everyone felt like an expert.

People who had never heard of drifting before suddenly thought they knew what it was all about. Kids thought it looked easy, and probably cracked up a bunch of cars doing it. Nobody seemed to get that drifting takes intense levels of skill. It’s car control on the very outer limits of control. It’s control where all control should just be lost, and you can tell it’s a blurry edge when you see the results of crashes in D1 Grand Prix competitions. Professionals put their cars into walls all the time, so what makes average Joe think he can go out and do it first time?

He can’t. Period. But everyone thinks they get drifting… They don’t.

What it is here isn’t what it is everywhere.

Here’s a fun fact for ya: Drifting was invented by Keichi Tsuchiya, but those who don’t know their drifting history sure believe that the “Drift King” was the one who created it. No, really, he just brought it mainstream… And the nickname “DK” was given to him on his JGTC victory lap, after he drifted every single corner of the track.

In reality, drifting has more humble roots, in the mountains of semi-rural Japan. Where people would go out and race up and down mountains in togue battles, and realized that, well, going sideways was fun. It was great to watch. It showed amazing talent when you can control the car at the edge of all possible control. After Tsuchiya brought it more mainstream, drifting slowly took off. Still, today, I feel that the Japanese are the best at drifting. They just understand it and have the dedication for it, plus the support.

Get your facts straight.

I am seriously glad that some commenters defended the drifters. Because the rest, to me, show an extreme level of ignorance that only exists because people can hide behind a screen name on the internet.

I have a great disdain for American street racers, because they’re extremely ridiculous about the whole thing. While many go to “deserted” places to set up drag races, many don’t. Many feel the need to race on the highways, well past the limits of their cars. But not all street racers are the American punks that have discolored the term so much.

The drifters referred to are, indeed street racers. Basically, they race on the streets… Empty streets. Extremely late at night and early in the morning, when nobody else is around. And they don’t race against each other… They race for the fun of it. The thrill of drifting around a corner in the middle of a sleepy city with ten other guys behind you and ten more in front of you doing the same thing.

The guys know what they’re doing. The cars are more than capable of doing it. And, my own feeling, is that many of them just can’t be professional drifters. Not everyone gets to do that… But to call them wrong for following their passion?! Hardly justified.

Age is just a number.

For people to bag on the guy for being 40 is just completely unreasonable. For me, if I could be 40 and enjoying my passion, I’d be loving life! Society seems to enjoy beating you down… Everyone tells you that you can be anything and do anything when you’re young, but once you’re an adult you’re expected to do certain things.

Sorry, us 20-somethings can’t build the cars that 30-somethings can. We just don’t have the funds. What you have is a guy who still has his passion, and finally the funds and the time to devote to it. That’s great, but nobody else seems to want to realize that.

I think a lot of people get jealous. They find themselves disenchanted with life and seem to feel that everyone else should be stuck in the same type of rut as themselves.

Is Ken Block any less a great driver because he’s 41? Any less of a capable racer because he didn’t start at 18? I don’t think so, and I can’t imagine anyone bagging on him for his age.

There’s a fine, fine line between calling someone out based on age and based on legal or illegal activities. I don’t condone illegal activities, but before people are so quick to caste the first stone, they need to look at their own lives. We all, at one point or another, do something illegal. Whether that’s drifting, excessive speeding or doing drugs. Nobody’s in a position to take the higher moral ground on that topic, because just about everyone’s guilty.

Chill out there…

Maybe I’m a bit too defensive, I’m sure that’s fair to say. I don’t exactly know the very nature of these arrests, nor do I know all of what the guys have done in their lives.

All I want is to point out that these are the very people for which I have to thank for drifting existing. They embody the passion of the sport, it’s very heart and soul and it’s roots. It’s great that drifting still exists in such a pure form… For the pure fun of it.

Just a shame that some people can’t get over what they don’t understand.