The best magazine
It`s difficult to say when exactly drifting started, as a sport it is accredited to one Kunimitsu Takahashi, who started using the techniques back in the 1970`s. His ability to get his rear tires to slip more than his front tires meant he could power around corners much faster than everyone else on the track. One particular street racer “Keiichi Tsuchiya” took these techniques and adapted them on the winding mountain roads around Japan, which quickly caught on with the street racing crowd. Several magazines started to publish articles and interviews back in the late 80`s. It was as they say all down-hill from there
Although drifting took off like wild fire around Japan, it took much longer to gain acceptance in the other petrol-head nations, the first recorded drift event held outside of Japan was back in 1996, at the Willow Springs Raceway in California.
The idea behind drifting is to slide the car into and out of a corner, a good drift is considered to be when the rear slip angle of the car is greater than the front slip angle, while initially this was done to get around corners faster than the competition, it today`s drifting it`s not possible to out run a race car. This is mainly due to the fact that when drifting you need to be as spectacular as possible, so more sideways angle and more speed means more crowd-pleasing moments. Unfortunately this is not the fastest way to get around a track.
Drifting is now as well know as most other classes of racing, it`s quickly catching on like so many other extreme sports. As more and more sponsors get their money into the sport we can expect to see bigger and better events all over the world, it`s only a matter of time before drifting out ranks the racing.
The death of racing.
The way I see it is that racing has so much money behind it, coupled with insane speeds it can be very difficult for a driver to pass another driver without turning into a flaming wreck, while faster is always better this doesn`t do much for the spectators, and as with so many sports, once the spectators leave, so do the sponsors and television rights and other money making sources.
While this may take many year to come to terms I don`t see how the major races, like F1 can compete, there is almost no overtaking at the time of this writing and it makes for better boring viewing, more than a couple of times this year I have wondered why I spent an afternoon watching a race where there was no racing, and wondering who I could contact to get my afternoon back.
So as drifting edges into the mainstream, and the other sports forgot what made them huge I expect we`ll see a move to immediate gratification, which is on the up rise all over the planet, a great example is the internet. People are used to getting what they want almost immediately, no need to wait for the news report on TV, no need to spend money on magazines, the information is available 24/7 for next to nothing.
The same applies to our leisure time, I for one would much rather spend 2 hours being entertained than waiting for the end of a race where I know who won at the first turn, the age of instant gratification is upon and it bodes poorly for the old school motor heads, at least in my humble opinion.
Source: ...