About as far away as one can get from the mountain roads of Japan where the sport originated, the St-Eustache Autodrome is home to drifting in Quebec. This increasingly popular driving technique—where racers slide their cars sideways at high speeds around corners—has all the makings of a fan-friendly sporting phenomenon. Drifting’s combination of big smoke, audience participation, spinouts and near collisions is bringing a new, youthful audience to auto racing, even if it’s still trying to win over the diehards.
"The older fans really don’t know 
anything about the drift, while the young guys all get into it because of [the videogame] Need for Speed,” says Eric Belec, owner of DriftThing Nights, a weekly drifting event during the summer months that mixes fun freestyle events with actual tournaments. “It’s like two generations, the Ford Mustang generation and the Honda Civic generation.”
Stock car and drag racing fans have been slow to adopt this subdivision of sport 
racing. Created in the 1970s by motorcycle-turned-race-car driver Kunimitsu Takahashi—and similar to a driving technique used in rally racing—drifting is judged with a points system similar to figure skating. The most common method for drifting is, when at high speeds, the driver will pull the hand brake to cause the back wheels to lose traction. The driver then releases the clutch, hits the accelerator and deliberately oversteers. The result is the car navigating the turn with the front tires pointed in the opposite direction. Instead of being a contest of might, drifters must slide around each corner with correct speed and positioning in mind to receive high marks from judges and vocal fans. Drifting contests are often played in tandem, meaning there are two cars driving within inches of each other, hugging corners and sliding in a metal and asphalt version of synchronised swimming. “There’s no room for mistakes,” says Belec. “They’re so close sometimes, you can’t even put a hand between the cars when they’re sideways.”
Asphalt and power
Belec points out one can’t truly appreciate the skill involved in drifting just by observing from the stands, which is why anyone who attends a DriftThing night can pay to actually sit in the passenger seat with a trained drifter and experience a few laps in a souped-up sport coupe. In this case, I rode shotgun with Robert Ricci, owner of the five-member Ricci drift team and a participant on the Drift Mania Canadian Championship (DMCC) tour. The Rivière-des-Prairies native was previously a hobbyist street racer before trying drifting on a closed circuit four years ago.
“It’s not only about being into cars,” Ricci says. “It’s about being into the adrenaline rush of the drifting.”
His car—a hollowed-out Nissan 240SX built with Nissan S13 parts he brought from the scrap yard to the racetrack in 28 days—is similar to the other drift-specific cars on the track. The front bumper has been removed, as have the radio, glove compartment and backseat. Instead, there is a boost pressure gauge and electronic boost controller, in addition to the various wires sticking out in all directions.
It’s a tight fit in Ricci’s car, with my helmet-protected head perilously close to the frame of his vehicle. The speed is truly surprising, considering a drifter isn’t actually racing with max velocity in mind, but the car is moving very quickly even if the short straightaways don’t allow for much more than quick acceleration boosts. As he takes the first couple of warm-up turns, it becomes evident that being in a drifting race car is the equivalent of a roller coaster without a set track. Imagine riding the Monster at La Ronde, except the possibility of flying off the rails exists at any time.
As he takes each turn and my body is leaning in synergy with the car’s actions—despite being well-fastened—I notice how, in the midst of an oversteer, his hands don’t move all that much, and are hardly gripping the steering wheel. The wheel, on the other hand, is spinning wildly as he flicks it with his hands, even though the car is gliding in one set direction.
“It’s the same principal as when you’re gliding on the ice,” Belec said earlier, “but here, it’s asphalt with power.”
Smokin’ spinout
It wasn’t as prominent as it would have been on a sunny day (a constant drizzle on this afternoon kept most fans at home), but the tires take an absolute beating on the hot track, resulting in a lot of smoke. It’s one of the primary allures of drifting, and not surprisingly, the smoke starts rising to eye level in the cockpit, with the pungent odour of burning rubber invading the senses. The smoke is distracting, but it doesn’t seem to affect Ricci’s concentration or field of vision. Later on, Ricci says that, on a dry day, it’s not uncommon for the smoke to completely cover the inside of the car.
“When that happens, you open the sunroof,” he says. “And you don’t stop. When you’re in motion, the smoke starts to accumulate a bit inside, but normally, when you’re doing doughnuts, it really just gets to be too much. Your eyes start burning.” Some drifters will even ride with the rear windshield removed.
Near the end of our run, the car spins out, but Ricci is able to restart the engine and drive back onto the track without help. Afterwards, he says the spinout was the result of the tires becoming too hot. In a single session, a car can go through more than two sets of tires. Belec recalls previous incidents where tires heated up to the point where they exploded, leaving little bits of melted tire rubber sticking to the car and track like an acrylic paint.
At the St-Eustache Autodrome, anyone can pay to drift on their own or receive a lesson, provided they have the correct car for the job. Ricci, who has built his own drifting-ready cars, likes the more approachable aspects of drifting, which is in stark contrast to the multi-million-dollar research and development that goes into Formula One and NASCAR vehicles.
"Drifting is 80 per cent technique. If you have the right line and the right skills, you can go pretty high up in competitions,” he says. “Last year’s DMCC winner, Frederic Girard, didn’t win with 700 horsepower. Anyone can have more speed, but not everyone has the right technique. Other amateurs here have the same motor as I do, but only once they learn their cars, they’ll be able to advance to the pros.”
Author: Eric Leijon