If you thought drifting was intense before, wait till it’s near pitch black, and you’re inside a hall

While the track itself challenged the drivers, a location inside buildings threw up its own health, safety, and visibility challenges.

“Early testing showed we would be combating tyre smoke, fumes, and carbon monoxide. Also, the venue needed us to abide by strict noise time frames, leading us to run Pro and Pro Sport categories on completely separate days, which we haven’t done before,” Jo Smaulder, D1NZ race controller, told us.

With TV the main focus, there was still live viewing, so large industrial fans were brought in and positioned at each door, while not one naked set of ears could be seen in the place — if you thought drifting was intense before, wait till it’s near pitch black and you’re inside a hall with external wastegates shooting flames and limiters popping off like machine guns.

The result was a hard-hitting, live-action drift arena like nothing we’ve seen in New Zealand. Once the floodlights were turned off, the once-familiar halls of the ASB Showgrounds were transformed into another world — drifting pandemonium, with an exceptional amount of noise and theatre.

“When you’re doing something different, you have to believe in yourself that it can be done and let nothing stop you. We have the right team and the right event foundations, and we let the results speak for themselves,” Brendon explains.

Banging doors, in a go-kart-sized circus circuit, in 500-pluskilowatt world-class flame-spitting machines sounds like something from a video game — thanks Covid-19; you’ve given us some weird and wonderful shit over the past few months, but this takes the cake!