You’re right. Guilty as charged. Drifting, and pretty much everything that goes with the sport, indeed the ‘lifestyle,’ is my current major motorsport passion.
Yes, I know some of you will be thinking…. ‘but hang-on, didn’t the bugger write a column recently about turning 60?’…..and trying to reconcile that thought with the usual ‘boy-racer/black-hoodie/cap-on-backwards’ clichés that my colleagues in the mass media still delight in wheeling out.
Don’t worry. I still can’t work it out myself, bar pointing out that it is a free world and that as my late mother-in-law used to say ‘it would be a dull old place if we all thought, acted and dressed the same’ (or words to that effect).
It’s not just me either, as I discovered at local ‘drift legend’ Mad Mike Whiddett’s annual Summer Bash ‘motorsport meeting’ at Hampton Downs on Saturday.
Punters of all ages, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds packed out the carparks and poured through the gates at Hampton Downs from well before 8.00am (which was when I arrived) until well after 3.00pm (which was when the Drift Comp was hotting up).
I’ve headed this column ‘What I learned from …etc. etc. because I think the organisers of other (how can I put this, more ‘mainstream?) motorsport events should have been there to see for themselves what a happy, ‘engaged’ crowd of several thousand actually looks and acts like!
Perhaps they were and I just didn’t see them…or not as the case may be.
1) For a start the meeting had a single compelling proposition; come along to see the ‘Mike-ster’ give his one-of-kind ‘Goodwood-build’ Drift-spec Lamborghini Huracan nicknamed Nimbul its local debut.
That’s right, not come along and try and make sense of a grab bag of competing classes…. Nope. Just come along to see Mike’s new Lambo.
Simple, effective and it obviously worked.
Because? Because it’s almost impossible to overestimate the effect on the global motorsport fraternity, the sleek ground-hugging (thanks to its air-bagged suspension front and rear) drift Supercar has already had.
That’s not quite right, it is actually quite easy to quantify some of the effect the car has had.
For a start over 1.3 million people have already watched the original Red Bull Motorsports’ build video (above), close to another million (OK 971,000 to be exact (as of Sunday afternoon as I was writing this) had watched the official Red Bull Motorsports video ‘first test’.
While a video of all the drift cars performing at this year’s Festival of Speed event at Goodwood (which includes Mike enjoying a smoky old time in NImbul) has so far clocked up 3.6 million views on (non-Red Bull) the 19Bozzy92 YouTube site alone.
Yes it is ‘just a car’ but I know for a fact that I was hanging out to finally ‘see it in the flesh,’ and believe, me when I finally did, it was actually more (more low, more wide, more amazingly awesome, more, well, just more everything really) than I was expecting.
Which was a nice surprise, because, so often in the past I have built things/people/events up in my own mind to such a crescendo that I’ve ended up disappointed.
Not this time.
2) Mix it up
By this I mean Drifting is Drifting and – if you do the same thing twice (particularly at the same venue) you run the risk of punters weighing up coming back for more of the same, or doing something else (for a change!!!).
Fortunately, each year Summer Bash has had a different sort of hook.
The first year (2016) it was the fact that Hampton Down’s new owner, Tony Quinn, had completed the planned international circuit with its famed ‘Double Bastard’ link between the new ‘club’ circuit, and the existing ‘national one.’
The long fast entry then odd double/single apex left-hander certainly lived up to its name, though to be fair is probably better drifted through than driven in grip…
This was also the year (I think!) that Kiwi fans got to see (not to mention hear) Mike’s most radical Mazda rotary build to date, the four rotor, twin-turbo MX5 dubbed Radbul.
Subsequent years have focused on one or another (or a whole garage full) of Mike’s cars, though this year’s NImbul debut is the one that really stands out for me.
Last year saw a sister car to the howling quad rotor 787B which won the Le Mans 24 Hour race in 1991, brought down from Japan to do some demo laps.
Mike also debuted his ‘Rotaxi,’ a 13B turbo (re) powered 929 Luce converted into a fully-certed four-seat ‘drift taxi.’ And while both had an impact, I don’t think it was on the same level as NImbul.
As much as Mike understands the very real appeal to his own cars, he also obviously still really understands the passion and camaraderie of his fellow enthusiasts.
It is for this reason that the track is opened up to ordinary, everyday punters in their modded cars (and this year two ‘Big Rig’ trucks!!!) for hour-long cruise sessions.
I wouldn’t normally pay these sessions much heed, bar to acknowledge their existence and congratulate Mike (and Azhar Bhamji, the bloke whose company, Premier Events, Mike contracted the actual running of this year’s Summer Bash to) for a job well done.
This time though, with time on my hands I joined some fellow early risers hanging off one of the fences taking in all the many and varied vehicles circulating the full international circuit first time around.
Most of the cars were two, three or four-up with mates getting all busy with their cellphones as their driver alternatively cruised or bruised along. And sure, there was the odd ‘sustained loss of traction’ and signs of some latent ‘hoonery’ but nothing (that I observed, anyway) that seemed to cause drama or offence.
3) Inside job
Silly me, too. It was only when I was taking a short-cut through the circuit’s ‘pit pavilion’ (or function room) that I realized there was another whole side to the event, an (in) side!
Sure, I had heard of scale model RC (Radio Control) drifting before (in fact Shane Van Gisbergen had offered me a ‘drive of’ or ‘go’ in/on/whatever the term is in/on/with his cool little AE86 Corolla.) But I had never really bothered to see what it was all about.
So, once I had done what I had meant to do (the reason for the original shortcut thru the pavilion) I went back and simply stood and observed as a bunch of blokes of varying ages ran multi-car drift trains round a simply (tape on carpet) course on the floor.
As a kid I got my first introduction to this wonderful world of motorized sport via slot cars and the multilane track a family friend had laid out in the showroom of his brick-laying business premises next to Curson Motors at the southern end of Gore’s main drag so it didn’t take me long to see the attraction.
Particularly because like full-size drift cars, these scaled down S13s, S14s, S15s, AE86s and FD3s had all had major mods done to them to improve steering angle. I also found out (by asking!!) that you can buy different tyres (to gain or lose grip) and change the final drive ratios depending on the course and nature (fast or slow entry) of the corners.
Who would have thought?
In a similar vein, I’ve been reading about celebrated Japanese Porsche ‘tuner’ Akira Nakai and his ‘cost-is-no-object’ ultra-wide Rauh Welt Begriff (RWB) body ‘transformations’ for years now. Yet to see three NZ-based models parked up then circulating the track…was again, something fairly special.
As was just being near enough to hear Rod Millen chat away about the rebuilt (or rather ‘re-born’) blister-guarded Mazda RX3 rally car he drove with some verve in a special rotary Legends Run around the circuit around mid-day.
Yes, I know Rod lives ‘just down the road’ and has a similar sort of ‘all-stars’ gathering meeting of his own (Leadfoot) at his Hahei property on the Coromandel each year. But his presence at Mike’s Summer Bash in a car which inspired a generation of Kiwi ‘rotor-heads’ was still both a surprise and a delight for a plain, simple old ‘fan-boy’ like me.
4) The ‘Voice of Formula Drift’
Jarod Deanda (aka Mr ‘Make some noise for……’ is a commentator who has been part of the success that is the US Formula Drift series since it’s inception. Flying him down for the first event to add some gravitas to the work of local ‘legend’ Warren Sare, was another of Mike’s many inspired moves. And Deanda has been back for a seasonal basting under our harsh UV-rich early summer sunshine since.
These days we live in a totally connected world and to have the guy who calls each Formula Drift round calling Summer Bash gives the event a standing which with pretty much instant access to the event via social media around the globe Deanda’s distinctive commentary is – literally – gold.
And I could go on and on and on.
Needless to say, I had a ball and considered the $40 entry fee entirely reasonable considering the smorgasbord of entertainment on offer.
As it turned out 4-time D1NZ champ Gaz Whiter ended up winning the Drift Comp again, this time from Mad Mike himself and Carl Thompson. But by that time, I was flagging; dog tired but with that nice contented feel you get when a day has not only gone well but has exceeded your expectations!
Which is a good thing.
My only concern is I can’t honestly say I haven’t felt the same way about a conventional motorsport meeting for some time.
What about you?
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