What Is Formula Drifting?
Unless you are a aficionado of racing cars, there is a decent chance that you have not heard of Formula D Racing. Formula D has its followers naturally, yet it is still not as widely known as the other forms of racing like Formula One, Drag Car Racing, NASCAR or Cross Country Rallying. This is partly because it is a fairly new kind of car racing.
Every year the national television coverage is a bit more extensive, yet it is taking a long time to prise some of the airtime away from the more traditional sports. Once you have seen a competition though, the likelihood is that you will become hooked on this exciting sport that they have Christened Formula D.
The ‘D’ in Formula D stands for ‘drifting’ which is another name given to the sport. Drifting refers to the angle of the car with reference to the sides of the road at any given moment. Drifting around bends permits the car to maintain its highest possible speed in a bend. Drifting sounds natural and therefore commonplace, but it is actually very difficult to do well.
Drifting takes skill and plenty of practice. Drivers are judged in part on their talent at drifting. There are in fact two facets of Formula D or two sorts of drifting. There are the traditional style qualifying runs but there are also tandem battles. Qualifying runs involve the driver racing solo flat out against the clock, drifting as necessary to maintain the highest speed possible.
However, tandem runs involve two car drivers who are being scored on their skills at outwitting the other driver. The judges are looking for the line of drift, the speed of the cars, overtaking, crashes and much more. Driving in the tandem runs definitely sorts the men out from the boys.
Formula Drifting grew up a little haphazardly, but there have been serious attempts to regulate it. At the moment the Formula Drift Championship is the only professional drifting championship that is sanctioned by SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) Pro Racing in the United States, although there are frequently amateur local drifting competitions held unofficially.
There has to be more officially sanctioned races so that standards are maintained and each driver follows the same set of regulations. This is the only way that the television channels will pick up on drifting and help advertise it more. Drifting is new to the United States, but the first Drifting Races took place in 2004, so not all that long ago anyway. It is still very much a modern sport.
At the moment the country where Formula D is most well-liked is Japan, but that is likely to change once the American media gets to grips with Drifting. At the moment it is still not that easy to watch drifting activities unless you live in California, Washington, Georgia or New Jersey and it is still not simple to watch it on TV unless you have G4TechTV, which is commonly known as G4.
Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with how to compare tyre prices. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Car Tyres For Sale.