North America, Welcome to Japan!

As promised in my profile, here is my attempt to bring Drift to a more well known status in North America. So what is Drifting? Basically, its doing a turn. Not so impressive right? Well what's so cool about it is how the drivers do their turn. They basically slide the car through the pipe so that the front of the car is angled towards the inside of the turn and the rear is angled to the outside. Pretty cool huh?

For anyone who has ever seen the movie Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, they will know what I'm talking about. For anyone else, the concept might be a bit hard to understand. The only way to understand it is to see it so when time permits it, go on YouTube or Google and check it out!

Now something people don't know about drifting is that it has already been introduced to the North American Continent. It's the D1 Grand Prix and it is huge. It's like the World Series, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup Finals, of the Drift World. Only the best of the best can become D1 drifters and only the best of the best of the best can win it. There are also D1 series in Japan, New Zealand, the UK, and even Malaysia.

But where did it come from? The first man to show the world the concept of sliding a car around was Kunimitsu Takahashi. He was famous for hitting the apex of a turn at high speed and then sliding through the corner so as to come out of the turn at speeds far beyond any of his opponents thus passing them with ease. But truth be told, he had a higher tire bill than his opponents.

Today, to be a drifter in Japan is like being a movie star or music star in the USA. They are international heroes and often are surrounded by mobs of people on a almost daily level.

Now the cars used are also very specialised to the drifting style, some costing over 200,00$ to build! Most drivers tend to choose import cars like the Nissan Skyline, Mazda RX-7 or Nissan Silvia but its not unusual to see a Ford Mustang or Dodge Charger ripping up the concrete.

Special parts, mostly suspensions and tire rims, must be maintained at an alarming rate and all too often, cars must leave the competition because of technical malfunctions even before doing a single turn.

Also, for those, like me, who are absolutely insane for drifting I have good news. There is a D1 Grand Prix Video Game! it came out to the US in 2006 and (unfortunatelly) is only available for the PS2. It is the official game of the D1 and all tracks and cars are relevent to the tournament (of 2004)!

Even in non-drift games, you can find some cars, tracks or events which come from the D1 world. For example, in Forza Motorsports 2, you can drive Ryuji Miki's "Top Secret" Nissan Silvia S15 and many Need for Speed games include drift modes and races.

Drifting is a high intenisty sport and its performance in the five countries of the D1 GP can attract tens of thousands of spectators. Its a growing, but expensive sport, and hopes that one day it will be better known around the globe. Besides, if F1 can do it, why can't D1?