Fast and Furious 4: Sonoma Drift
Sep 3rd, 2007 by Charlie
[better late than never]
A few weeks back, Bob convinced me that it would be a great idea to go see a drift “race” up at Sears Point raceway in Sonoma. What exactly is going to go on at a drift race, I kept asking myself before we went. Maybe just a bunch of guys racing really slowly around the track—’cause screeching your tires around a turn, all drift style, definitely isn’t the fastest way to travel.
So, we headed up there. Me and Stephanie, Bob and his girlfriend (who’d recently been staging her way around Tokyo), and John.
The first thing that we figured out about the day was that there weren’t really that many people at the drift race, and more importantly that it meant that we could’ve brought beer directly into the event instead of paying ballpark prices for it. Next time.
The second thing I learned is that drifting isn’t run like a race where the fastest driver wins, it’s more like figure skating, where the fanciest and most technically correct moves get the most points.
The first even was qualifying, where cars hurtled solo down a hill, through a right hand 270° turn, and then back left through 180°. That’s it. That and a lot of tire-smoke.
Drivers get docked points for going off the track, spinning out, keeping a bad line, and not pleasing the crowd.
After qualifying, we shuffled down to where all the teams had camped out to show off their cars and give out massive amounts of swag. Plenty of scantily-clad, I-hate-my-dad floozies were prowling around for fat guy photo ops, too. We skipped the photos, Stephanie snagged a Blanco Basura Trucking Company shirt (means White Trash in Spanish, check the left picture below), and we all got hooked up with driver Ken Gushi’s face on a stick. Some teams were even handing out used tires. We passed on those.
On to the main event. The drivers that qualified line up in front of the judges pavilion, soak up some applause, and then proceed to do their meanest donuts on the way back up the starting gate. Somehow, I learned, it’s actually possible to do a donut while hanging out the window of a car, waving to fans. Bub, you must have some long legs and a cool hand.
The main event was run round-robin elimination style, but instead of going solo, the cars now went in pairs in double runs where each car got a chance to lead in one of the runs. This was way cooler than the qualifying, and got huge rises out of the crowd (me included) because they were usually going somewhere between 50 and 90 mph and in a state of near-collision while massive clouds of smoke were blasting out of their tires.
In the end, Chris Forsberg and his 350Z roadster won the race, with Vaughn “the hairy American winning machine” Gittin Jr taking second in his teal ‘Stang, and Ken Gushi (represent!) coming in third in his blue Mustang. Full results here.
Check out this video for a different look at the event.
[edit: I un-embedded the video because it was breaking my site, and I'm too lazy to figure out why]