driftsession.com Blog

The glass ceiling of drifting

A friend of mine in the drifting community forwarded me a flyer for the Formula D event at the 2008 Long Beach Grand Prix. I laughed after I saw that Rob (of MTV Rob & Big fame) is officially Formula D’s grand marshal at this event. This announcement and a few other items on the flyer brought me to realize a few things:

The progress for drifting in the USA appears to have stagnated. There’s little to no progression of the sport in and of itself. Things are being added to surround the event of drifting, but drifting itself is not moving forward. What people were doing 2 years ago is the same thing they’re doing today: mostly single-file, stop-and-go drifting practice events, competitions modeled after D1, same style of cars, same drivers, etc.

For Formula D, that’s the reason why they do things like have Rob (of Rob & Big) grand marshall their events; it’s because their audience has reached its glass ceiling; meaning they’ve reached their market’s limit in terms of attracting an audience based solely on drifting. At this point, I don’t think anything will grow their events other than adding additional features which have the potential to bring in non-drifting related audiences. Why not have Paris Hilton grand marshal the next event while you’re at it?

While side-show trickery may increase their audience slightly today, it will not expand their audience long term and may even reduce their enthusiastic core audience of drifting fans. What’s most disturbing about Formula D’s trend in the USA is that drifting has more exposure than ever and a large portion of the population has heard of it, however their core market does not seem to be expanding. That’s what happens when there’s too much growth at the top of the sport without the development of the start-up.

To all the small time event promoters out there, running events which truly expand the sport (at a sustainable pace) and increase the skills of the drivers, I salute you.

Christmas Gifts for Drifters: Idea #2

Drifting Video Games

Chances are if someone you know is into drifting they have some sort of home video gaming system. Gone are the days of forcing your car to oversteer in prehistoric games like Ridge Racer. There are now a whole new generation of games available for those who are into drifting and sport compact cars. Here are a few suggestions:

D1 Grand Prix: a pretty good version of the professional drifting series. Players customize the look and handling of their own vehicles and then go head to head with the pros of the D1. The game is somewhat difficult though. Car control isn’t easy and will take some time to master. Because it’s not easy to master, that’ll guarantee a lot of playing time, unless you’re is a punk bitch that quits easily.

Tokyo Extreme Racer: not about drifting, but still a reasonably fun game. Besides, if they already have a drift car built, this game will give them another genre to fantasize with: Freeway Racing. The game consists mostly of a free run mode in which you roam Japan’s highway system looking for impromptu races with other street racers cruising the road.

Need for Speed: Underground (series): these games tend to play up the street racing “lifestyle” which looks a lot cooler than it really is. I don’t think they’d be able to sell many video games of guys eating ramen noodles while they work overtime for extra money and their girlfriends talk shit with their friends.

Christmas Gifts for Drifters

Searching for something to buy for the drifter in your life? Or maybe you just need to drop your girlfriend a hint by emailing her this blog. I thought I’d put up a few suggestions for those who are into drifting. I’ll probably update this list over a few days, so check back often.

Suggestion #1: a Remote Controlled Drift Car

The main companies that sell 1/10 scale remote controlled drift cars are Yokomo, Tamiya, and HPI. I personally prefer the Tamiya TL-01 chassis, but just about any 4-wheel-drive, electric 1/10th scale r/c vehicle should suffice. If you can’t manage to find an actual drift car that comes with drift type tires, you can always use 2″ diameter black ABS piping that you’d find a Home Depot as tires instead. The ABS plastic “tires” cause the car to slip and skid in a very realistic drifting motion that can still be accurately controlled.

Other than the car itself, you’ll also need to get a controller, a rechargeable battery, a battery charger, AA batteries for the controller, and paint for the car’s body. To make sure you have everything you need, it’s easiest to make the purchase from a shop that specializes in remote controlled vehicles. If you want to ensure that you have everything you need you can also go with a “ready to run” drift-car kit that comes with car, controller, and usually battery and charger too.

If you’re getting the ready to run kit and you’re absolutely sure that there will be no exchanges, you can always open up the kit early so you can charge the battery and install the controller AA batteries so that on Christmas morning, the car will be ready to go.

T-Mobile Wing

I received one of the T-Mobile Wing phones a few months ago from T-Mobile to test out. It’s actually the reworked version of their older MDA touchscreen smart phone that was released a few years ago. I thought I’d let you guys know what I think of it.

The Wing is one of T-Mobile’s smartphones; a phone that has a number of applications like Windows Mobile 6, Microsoft Office programs, games, camera, video recording and playback, voice recording, email, instant messaging, and real web browsing. The phone comes with a fairly large screen that is touch-sensitive so you can use the built in stylus to navigate the phone or while browsing webpages with Internet Explorer. The phone is also a slider that allows you to pull out a full qwerty keyboard to quickly type out emails and messages.
Being that it’s a smartphone, the Wing is a little big and bulky, however, smaller in length and width than a standard iPod and about as thick as a deck of playing cards. It fits easily into my pocket in both jeans and slacks. It’s covered with a non-slip rubber coating (like a Rhino lining) that prevents the phone from slipping out of your pocket or off of various surfaces easily.

The web browsing features on the phone have proven to be pretty useful. You can check email on the go, look for directions on Google maps, or find a lot of quick info through any search engine you choose. The large screen allows you to see most websites the same as if you were looking at a larger desktop monitor. The unlimited wireless internet access via EDGE network provided by T-Mobile runs about $30 per month in addition to whatever you pay for your standard phone service.

The built in camera is 2 mega-pixel and takes some decent photos. Various modes allow for twilight photos or even fast motion burst photos. Connection your phone to the computer via USB cable allows for quick downloading of whatever photos and video you have.

The memory on the phone is pretty small to begin with, but my phone came with a 2 gig storage card. Once that was installed, the was more room for photos, videos, and applications that I knew what to do with.

Pros: The Wing is a pretty cool looking phone. The full keyboard is larger than the ones you’d find on the blackberry or treo phones and allows for quick and easy typing. Web browsing looks like what you’d normally see on your regular desktop computer.

Cons: when typing on the qwerty keyboard the send button is located a little too close to the quick send button; you need to be careful you don’t send out a half typed message. The phone is a little slow on opening and closing programs (not instantaneously). When holding the phone up to your ear the touchscreen has a tendency to hit buttons and open programs.

Overall: If you spend a lot of time on the go, or if you have lots of down time, this is a great phone. The internet, email, and messaging access alone can keep you busy for hours. So far, the phone seems to be pretty sturdy and has decent qualities as a phone. It’s fairly easy to use but still has enough features to be cool. It’s about half the price of an iPhone with pretty similar capabilities but probably better usability. If you want to get one of these, check out pricing here.

UH Undefeated

For those of you who didn’t watch, the University of Hawaii just defeated the University of Washington 35 - 28 to remain undefeated.

I doubt many drift fans actually watch conventional sports, but I thought I’d share.

Formula D on ESPN

Caught a bit of this year’s Formula D coverage on ESPN this past weekend and it’s good to see drifting on more basic cable channels (rather than Speed TV or G4). The coverage looked pretty good, but I’m not so much into the whole lifestyle aspect of promoting the mad phat JDM tyte lyfestyle yo! Why do they keep doing that with drifting and import cars? The typical drifter lifestyle I know is more like eating $0.10 ramen noodles 3 times a day, and falling into massive credit card debt to fund a hobby.

For the guys producing the show, keep it coming. Tone down the lifestyle aspect unless it’s to introduce cool new electronic products, parts, and clothing. I’m guessing things that would be of interest for drifters to see featured on the show would be stories of privateer guys trying to make it in the big leagues, budget breakdowns for competing at local and national levels, drifting related video games and website reviews, and chicks.

Black Friday

I hope all of you out there had a good Thanksgiving. Now on to the Christmas season and buying all those gifts. I looked through the black Friday ads yesterday and didn’t see anything too amazing for car enthusiasts. However, if you feel the need to upgrade your car stereo and in-car entertainment center, there were a few things on sale at Best Buy, Circuit City, and Car Toys. One of them seemed to have a pretty good deal on in-car navigation systems. Pick one of those up so you’ll have an easier time driving between states for your next drifting event / competition. Happy hunting.

Happy Thanksgiving

Once again it’s time to reflect on all the things that we’re thankful for:

1. Be thankful you haven’t killed yourself or any of your friends yet with your driving, car tuning, etc. It’s easy to forget how quickly things can go from good to bad to totally fucked up in an instant.

2. Thanks for all of the drifting events in this country, regardless of the entry price. It was only 6 years ago that mainstream drifting events did not exist in the US.

3. Thanks to drifting for bringing like minded weirdos together. It probably wasn’t too long ago either that everyone you knew thought you were ridiculous for “power sliding” your car and buying a “rice burner.” At least now we all have friends who are as ridiculous as we are.

4. Thanks to our families, girlfriends, and wives that allow us to continue our hobby. Keep them away from calculators because if they ever add up the amount of money you’ve spent on tires, spare parts, and entry fees over the years they’re going to kick your ass.

Wrecked Magazine

I got an email the other day from the people over at Wrecked Magazine. It’s an online drifting magazine that’s done in a pretty cool format. It feels as though you’re looking at a real magazine, but on your computer screen. You can even flip through their virtual pages to see all of their drifting related content and advertisements.

I think this is a great concept for the drifting market. Most drifters I know are too cheap to purchase magazines so they just camp out in the magazine section of your local Borders or Barnes & Noble, reading magazines for free. If this is the case anyways, an online magazine is much more accurate to track how many actual readers (and unique views) you’re getting for your publication. All they need to do now is to add a comment section on their pages so every douche bag out there with an opinion can post up like their opinion matters.

All in all, two thumbs up Wrecked Magazine; cool concept. I hope that you can persuade all of the advertisers out there to advertise in your publication rather than sticking with archaic print media. For those of you that want to check things out yourself, go to Wrecked Magazine.

Get Ready for Snow

The weather reports say that it’s going to start snowing soon here. For those of you drifters out there, here’s a good opportunity for you to practice your skills. Especially for those of you out there that have never really drifted before, low traction weather conditions like snow and rain can provide some unique practice opportunities.

Snow on the ground will allow you to induce oversteer much easier than on dry ground. Get out to a private area (where you have permission to operate) and start with simple e-brake 180’s and donuts. The snow on the ground will allow you to break traction much easier, with lower speeds, and without having to rev the hell out of your motor. It won’t take much throttle to induce excessive wheel spin when the ground is slippery.