Formula D Racing Info

Formula D Racing Brief Flashy History

Having a grasp on the roots of this elegant, dangerous and unique motoring sport makes you appreciate the beauty and fame of Formula D Drifting. The sport is about 10 years old in Japan and about 5 years in the US.

The sport started as a competitive sport to mountain-road racers of rural Japan. Unofficial challenges on mountain road corners became a spectacle of heavily financed, well-attended and advertised competitive events, regulated by organizations and held on private tracks. A folklore states that Tsuchiya Keiichi was dead last in a car race, to vent his frustrations he decided to swing his car around the corners thereby shocking and amazing the spectators. When asked later of his stunt, he responded that his style was drifting.

Organized Formula D Racing events is relatively new here in the United States. However, drifting has been around here for more than thirty years. It may have been informal and done in a secretive level of racing or on an underground level.  It is deemed illegal and dangerous. So when it came out in the open, the sponsors and advertisers were very much appreciative of the impact of the sport. The Need for Speed movie shows the sport is for keeps and there is a large fan base.

As it was an illegal activity then, a small drifting association was established to provide a safe venue, training and organization. Slipstream Global developed another company that is known as Formula Drift, Inc. It was the first and only group that owns and operates a professional drifting series in the United States.  The series are renowned as Formula D. Professional drifting is also referred to as Formula Drift or Formula Drifting.  This series was formed in 2003; however, Formula D events only began at 2004. In April of 2004, Road Atlanta, in Atlanta, Georgia, was home to the first ever-professional Formula D event.

Drifting has developed into a very cutthroat sport where drivers compete in rear-wheel drive cars to make their cars sideways for as long as possible. At the apex levels of contest that matter, especially the Option-run D1 Grand Prix in Japan and the US, drivers are able to keep their cars sliding for extended periods of time, often through several turns. Drifting competitions are judged based not on the time it takes to complete a course, but how much slip angle a driver can get, how long they hold it, and how close they stay to the racing line, or to the wall. Final rounds of competition often include tandem drift runs, where one sports car follows another through the course, attempting to keep up with or even pass the car in front. In the tsuiso rounds, even if the racing line is wrong, the only thing that matters is who can have the most exciting drift. A car does not even have to keep up, in some cases a car that was left behind on the straight produced a beautiful drift, winning him that round. A spin, under-steer, or collision results in a disqualification of the offending party.

The growth of the sport was aided by live broadcasts by a cable company G4TV. This company had an alliance with iTunes to air podcasts on the internet using the iTunes program. Public awareness and participation in the sport grew. Merchandise sales of items associated to the sport enjoyed patronage.