A Brief History of Drifting
The precise history of drifting is still a topic that generates much debate among racing fans even today. While the identity of the first ever drifter is lost in the annals of automotive history, it is commonly accepted that Japanese driver Kunimitsu Takahashi was the first to use drifting manoeuvres during races in the late ’70s.
Kunimitsu Takahashi initially found fame as a champion motorcycle racer in the early ’60s – he holds the distinction of being the first Japanese winner of the Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix in 1961. Takahashi would switch to racing cars, however, after a serious motorcycle accident in 1962. He started his new career as a race-car driver in 1964 and slowly rose through the ranks in the coming years. At this point in his racing career Takahashi started drifting his car out of necessity to tackle tight corners while maintaining speed. These innovative cornering techniques, accompanied by screeching and smoking tyres won Takahashi many fans as well as quite a few races.
Takahashi’s drifting style caught the eye of Keiichi Tsuchiya, a brash young street racer and rising star of Japan’s Formula 3 scene. Not content to merely copy Takahashi’s techniques on the race track, Tsuchiya wanted to take drifting to the next level by making it a motor-sport in its own right. Tsuchiya began to hone his craft on the windy roads of Japanese mountain passes. The constant barrage of twists, turns and bends on such roads provided the perfect opportunity for continuous drifting. Tsuchiya attempts to take an obscure racing technique and change it into an art-form on those winding Japanese mountain roads have become the stuff of legends. The Japanese word for mountain pass, Touge, has become part of the vocabulary of the drift racing scene around the world.
In 1987 Tsuchiya and a few partners would team up to produce a video featuring footage of him drifting through mountain passes. The video, called Pluspy, was a huge hit generating a massive amount of followers in Japan’s racing scene. A year later Tsuchiya and his partners would organise the first ever drifting tournament, the D1 Grand Prix, which took place at the Ebisu Circuit in Fukushima, Japan. Thanks to the buzz created by Pluspy, the D1 Grand Prix was also a huge success and has been held annually ever since. Today the D1 Grand Prix remains the world’s leading drifting tournament where the top drifters from Japan and the world compete.
Since the first D1 tournament in 1988 drifting has made a huge impact in the world of automotive sports. Drifting pervades modern car culture at every level; drift-racing take place in D1 sanctioned tournaments at the world’s biggest race-tracks and also on impromptu races held illegally on public roads. Unlike Formula-1 or stock car racing the ease of entry into drift racing means that there is a thriving, yet highly illegal, underground drift racing scene where amateurs race each other in modified Japanese imports on the open road.
D1 Grand Prix Tournaments have gone beyond the borders of Japan and are now held in countries around the world. Past Championships have been held in the United States, UK, Malaysia and New Zealand – countries with a massive drift-racing following. The success of the sport has also lead to the growth of many local and regional drifting clubs and associations, outside of the D1 banner. These organisations have grown very influential over the years, often rivalling the D1 Grand Prix in terms of market share on their home turf. Some of the more powerful home-grown drifting organisations are the D1NZ and NZ Drift Series in New Zealand, Pro-Drift Mania in Canada, Formula-D in the US, Superdrift in Italy, and the British Drift Championship in the UK.
This article has been written by the team at Performance Industry. Performance Industry sells quality car clothing for the car enthusiast, no matter what style of cars you are into.
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