The Art of Sideways

"I (Martin) feel I'm more of a classically trained drifter if you will. Just because of the fact I drove in the mountains, and when I started, I didn't do it to go drifting. I went up there to have fun, drive my car, see how fast I could go. Um, I never really raced any of my friends. We'd go up and it was mostly having fun, keeping pace with, or challenging ourselves and keeping up with the other person. It wasn't an actual race. And that just kind of blended with our speed, and the fact that our tires would wear out, we just kind of started drifting naturally going through corners, and kind of just learned how to do it because it just happened."

Drifting is a sport that was born from the mountains of Japan. Calvin Wan, a Formula D driver, said that drifting came about from people racing in the mountains. They started to drive faster and faster to the point where they’d start to slide. Then people started trying to hold the slide longer and through multiple turns. Not long after, it wasn’t about the speed anymore. The angles, tire smoke, and control along with the driver’s style became more important. These drifters stay true to the racing line because it’s still the fastest path around a corner (Abad 2005). Drivers are awarded more points for showing off control. Some signature moves that some drivers use are excessive tire smoke, getting inches away from the lead car in a tandem run, and getting their bumpers as close to a wall as possible, sometimes trying to leave a paint streak on the wall.

Though drifting came about in the 1960’s, the first events geared toward drifting sprung about in the late 80’s. It never became a professionally recognized sport until the D1 Grand Prix came about in Japan in 2000 (D1GP.com). I was stationed in Okinawa at the time D1GP came out. Until then I didn’t know what drifting was. A year later, I would be driving with future Formula D drivers in the Angeles National Forest. In August of 2003, I attended the first D1GP in the United States at Irwindale, California. I had driven down with some students from San Jose State University who had a common interest in cars. The stands were packed, and the parking lot was full. We had to park in an industrial complex about a mile away. I was present when drifting went big in Japan and the United States.

Since none of my cars were the drifting type, I never really got into the sport. I didn’t have the RX-7 long enough to even get started. Many of my driving friends did have front engine rear wheel drive cars. One of them was Martin. I met him in the summer of 2002 at a popular windy pass near my home. We’d go up to the mountains and drive almost every weekend. Our new tires would be bald in a month’s time. When I left for San Jose, he continued to go to the mountains as much as he could. As I was studying in college, he was improving his driving techniques. When I finally got to talk to him this fall about his driving, he had won fourth place in the Formula D Pro Am and was preparing for the national competition in Bull Head City, Arizona.

In October, I met up with Martin at Diamond Plaza in Rowland Heights. It’s a Chinatown off the 60 freeway, and almost everyone who’s into mountain racing knows about that place. It happens to be a central hub to most of the best driving spots around Los Angeles. It wasn’t the best place to talk, so we relocated to a Denny’s not too far from there. I spoke with him for about an hour and I was surprised with his answers. I had built up a stereotype that he was a mountain racer like in the Initial D cartoon. I automatically assumed that he raced other people and used his drifting skill to give him and advantage. Martin’s reply caught me by surprise.

"I think they're (mountain racers) fools and anything like that where you're racing somebody for the sake of actually racing them or beating them normally leads one or both people to make a mistake, or it puts other people on the road in danger, because it is a public road and it's not something that should be done. And the people that I found out doing that, I give them a hard time, and I tell them that they're fools and they're idiots, and just because they don't hurt anybody tonight doesn't mean that they're not going to hurt anybody later."

Not only was I wrong there, but I automatically assumed his greatest fear would be the police. Most of the people I knew and spoke with didn’t go often anymore because they were afraid of getting pulled over. Martin’s fear was a surprise, but in some ways, it makes sense why the police are trying to control the activity in the mountains.

"The police are always there, but even if I get caught doing that, that's just me. If I have to pick one fear, I don't know if would be a fear, but it's something I'd feel the worst about would be getting into an accident with somebody minding their own business. Someone that wasn't involved in anyway, that was up there doing something 100% legal, and we just so happened to be cruising by and we hit them. Because heaven forbid anything happens, I would feel bad about that. Like if a cop pulls me over, yes I was racing, but I'm not going to feel bad about that. I might feel I was stupid, but if I actually hurt somebody, that would be the worst thing for me."

After the interview was over, I realized that I didn’t know Martin as well as I had thought. His roots are in the mountains and he’ll always drive them, but he’s using illegal mountain driving as a way into professional motorsports. Surprisingly, his Nissan 240sx happens to be very under tuned compared to his competitors with 300 to 600 horsepower, yet he manages to do well in the competitions. He doesn’t have the financial backing that his competitors do, so he has to make do with the most basic setup. I was glad to hear that he qualified fifteenth in the nation. Besides a career, I asked him why he drives the way he does, and he said, “It's relaxing, I don't know, some people paint, take walks, read books, I drive. To me it's what I do.” This left me with the conclusion that drivers who have gone legit use mountain racing as a stepping stone into motorsports, and it can also be a simple hobby. Regardless of his reasons, he finds a joy in driving. It’s strong enough to keep him coming back after several accidents.