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CITY CENTRE MOTORSPORT RED BULL DRIFT SHIFTERS
If Formula 1 is motorsport’s equivalent of the 100-metre butterfly in an Olympic swimming pool and rallying’s akin to an open water race, then drifting is competitive diving. Timing is critical and it’s meticulously judged. To some it’s an artwork, but others would be loath to consider it a proper sport.
That didn’t stop Red Bull from bringing drifting to the streets of Liverpool with
Drift Shifters last month. Tyre smoke billowed to cloud the Liver Building from the skyline as heavily modified, 1000bhp cars slithered around the city’s waterfront.
What makes Red Bull’s take different to the normal, regulated drifting events is that the fizzy drinks company has tried to bring an arcade game to life. Much like with its
Air Race Championship and the Cliff Diving World Series, this takes what you know of a discipline and turns it up to 11.
Instead of a strictly demarcated route, as in traditional events, Drift Shifters entrants freestyled their way around a closed-road obstacle course, including passing under a lorry trailer, navigating red phone boxes and, because it’s Liverpool, a yellow submarine.
As the creator of Drift Shifters, New Zealander’s ‘Mad’ Mike Whiddett explained to Autosport what makes the event that little bit more special.
“We’ve essentially created a giant pinball machine for pro drift cars that slide around and the track scores the drivers,” he said. “The track has radar guns for speed, proximity sensors for how close the cars get to the walls, angle sensors… all the stuff we’re judged on in a traditional drifting format – only it’s all automated. It’s all in real-time on a big screen – the points counting up, the time counting down.”
“Usually in drifting we’re scored by three judges. What we’ve done is take out the human error or politics that can be involved with any judged sport.”
While the order of the day is flamboyance, it’d be wrong to dismiss the cars as show ponies instead of taking them seriously as highly fettled machines. The smallest packs 500bhp from an engine that’s happy to clatter into the rev limiter all day. Each has specialist suspension and differentials, plus a hydraulic handbrake to provoke the rear axle into stepping out of line.
Combination scores were on offer for anyone tripping all sensors on a particular section – up to seven of them. As well as the big screen readout, there were sound effects and lights shone to show the crowd which particular spots had been triggered by
“DRIFT SHIFTERS HAS TAKEN WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW AND TURNED IT UP TO 11”
a fiercely sideways car. Whiddett calling it a “pinball machine” isn’t mere hyperbole.
What started on the mountain roads of Japan has since become a global export, with drifting events springing up across the globe. It’s now a mainstay of the Goodwood Festival of Speed too, leaving black lines all the way up the Duke of Richmond’s driveway. Times are changing with its popularity, and that means so too are the weapons of choice. While the three highest scorers in Liverpool used Japanese machinery, some of the most spectacular flame-spitting antics came from Dean ‘Karnage’ Kearney’s Dodge Viper, which has a gloriously excessive 8.3-litre V10.
By comparison, winner Gaz Whiter was driving a Nissan Silvia that sported a modest 680bhp. He was the only driver out of the 12 to score over 6million points.
“When you’re on the course, the adrenaline is crazy,” Whiter told Autosport. “All the coloured barriers and the lights, it gets a bit much. You just have to pick a run and stick to it.”
From inside the smoke-filled cockpit, he had little idea of how well he was scoring: “You hear the odd sound effect, but you’re just driving what you’ve got in your head. Then you get to the end and see the crowd and someone tells you your score.”
Liverpool grew as a vital port for the UK import-export industry and Red Bull Drift Shifters is the latest successful cargo to pass through, all the way from Japan.