I'm a child of the '80s. I lived the bulk of my formative years during the '90s, but most of what I was into came from the '80s, especially skateboarding. If like me you spent school hours dreaming of speed, adrenaline and flying head-high above vert ramps (at least, more than 3-mph flatground inward heelflips), you can relate.
It was amidst '80s skateboarding's pop-culture explosion (bear with me… we'll get to drifting in just a sec) that a group of the day's most prominent pros became bummed out by the rapid commercialization/exploitation of their sport and embarked on a mission to seek the guidance of skateboarding’s inventor, in a Bones Brigade video titled “The Search for Animal Chin.” They had no real direction, and took each day as it came, exploring and skating everything in their path. At the end of it all (spoiler alert?) they never found the legendary Master Chin, but they had discovered that through the acts of simply enjoying the journey and working together toward their common goal of rediscovering the soul of their sport, they discovered it had been there all along.
Similarly, it might be safe to say that we’re living the golden era of professional drifting. These 1,000+hp machines are experiencing a technological renaissance similar to sports car racing's legendary Group C (something else I loved of the '80s). Competition is as fierce as ever. Crowds are sold out, packing people in even when it rains (like it did during Formula Drift's Long Beach event this past weekend). But as exciting as all that is, it's easy for amateur competitors to feel that professional success is out of reach, or for fans to feel too detached from the pros who enjoy it already.
In that regard, Top Drift is the soulful antithesis of professional drifting. It's a bunch of talented ams looking for the next step, living the life, taking it day by day. It's serious competition — don’t get me wrong. There's plenty of V8 power and custom steering angle on the paddock. But there are also fans on the paddock, as well as racers, mechanics, friends, kids, family, pets and BBQs of people who very often share many of those responsibilities at once (we still have yet to find a wrench-turning, burger-grilling dog, though). Top Drift is where instead of competitors blurring out images of their custom suspension parts on social media, they’re instead lending them to competitors who have broken their own. It's where instead of petitioning judges against “one more time” rounds, owner/driver/mechanics/pitmasters actually welcome the seat time of another tandem run and friendly competition. It's where your tire-sponsored, 600hp, V8/Wisefab S14 stands a real chance of getting knocked out by a guy in a Tacoma truck or the kid who drove his naturally-aspirated, 150hp AE86 Corolla to the track, nearly won the event, and drove home, all on one set of 195-series tires (Justin Nimmo in 14th place, and Kelvin Arreola in 3rd place, respectively).
Top Drift is also where you’ll find the next generation of Formula Drift pros, with the series awarding Pro 2 licenses to the season's top three finishers. Whether these pros will become pro drifting's future Tony Hawks or Steve Caballeros, who remind us all to have fun while chasing down success at the highest levels, remains to be seen. But if drifting's top amateur talent in one of its most fun competitive environments — if the soul of drifting — is what you’re searching for, spend a weekend at a Top Drift event. You’ll find it.
For more info on TopDrift, visit JustDrift.
Check out the mega gallery of drifting images from TopDrift's Formula Drift ProAm Round 1 event below!