~ by Daniel Demaras ~
Drifting on an open skidpad isn’t easy, but it’s a walk in the park compared to doing it on a live racetrack. All the free space, lack of barriers, and ability to choose your own line go out the window. On track, you have to send the car sideways, seemingly out of control, between the boundaries of the tarmac, surrounded by other cars doing the same thing, all at the limits of grip.
The FDF team gave me my first taste of drifting on track by taking me out in the passenger seat for 2 laps while a professional drifter sent the car around the track. It was a pretty extreme experience. When you know what you’re doing, you can keep the car sideways for an entire lap at Shannonville, on straightaways, and right up to the concrete barrier in the final corner. I knew that would be a little much for my first laps, but it showed me the general idea of how to send the car around this track.
My first session was a pretty tepid one. I tried to break the car loose without having the confidence to really commit to going into the corners with real speed, and no sooner did I start building up my confidence than I found myself spun around, watching the other drifters coming head-on towards me.
Little by little, I started to figure it out. Keeping the car in second gear, I found the right entry speeds to pull the handbrake and send myself into the corners in a full-on drift. At that point, it was a matter of throttle control, and I started chaining together corner after corner, switching back and forth, all in a controlled slide. Sometimes, I got ahead of myself and lost control, but it’s all part of the learning process.
One of the biggest challenges wasn’t even the driving itself, but driving around others. The track was full of experienced drifters running in tandem, pulling wicked moves and kicking up huge amounts of tire smoke. It was tempting to mirror those moves, but equally challenging. On the other hand, beginners like myself were something to keep an eye out for, as you have to be able to bail out of a drift mid-corner if the car in front of you spins out.
As the day drew to a close, people had pushed their cars and tires over the limit, and everyone was eager to get back out there for their last laps of the year. I really felt in my final session that I had progressed, and it was truly thrilling to slide almost sideways through Shannonville Motorsports Park’s long, sweeping bends.
Drifting is a discipline completely opposite to everything you know about normal racing. Every rule of driving, from smooth, slow hands to gentle entries, goes out the window in favour of abrupt movements meant to break the car loose. At Shannonville, where I’ve piloted open-wheelers and GT cars to victory and earned pole position at the 2021 KartStars Nationals, I took a completely different approach, tearing up the tires and driving at the absolute limits of adhesion.