‘Everybody likes a good bit of drifting,’ said Richard Hammond, once, but he’s wrong. I’m part of everybody and I hate it.
I accept that drifting takes a good deal of skill. So does playing the hurdy-gurdy, but that’s no excuse for doing it. Like the hurdy-gurdy recital, drifting makes a godawful racket but also a terrible smell, so as a form of entertainment it ranks alongside someone playing the hurdy-gurdy while simultaneously cooking a packet of condoms on a barbecue.
For some reason, no car-themed event is now considered complete unless someone is making a deliberate balls-up of a simple corner; viz, the London Motor Show a couple of weeks ago. This ‘featured’ a continuous display of indoor drifting.
So there I was, trying to talk to an interesting bloke about the new TVR, but I couldn’t really hear what he was saying because of the ritual rubber sacrifice taking place at one side of the arena. And when I got home my shirt smelled like a burnt-out slot car. It’s antisocial.
'A continuous display of indoor drifting'
What really alarms me is that drifting seems to have been invented by the Japanese. I’m a big fan of Japan, having spent quite a bit of time there. Everything is exquisite: the fuel-station etiquette, the small rituals, the view of Mount Fuji in the morning mist, even the way they wrap and present a simple boiled sweet. It’s all wonderful.
Some Japanese enthusiasms can seem a little eccentric. On one visit, I seemed to have arrived in the middle of a craze for dressing up as Elvis Pressley, which is a difficult look to pull off if you’re five-foot six, of slight build, Japanese, and culturally averse to the idea of a cheeseburger. On another trip I found myself in the Museum of the Vulva, which was a garden shrine dedicated to naturally occurring objects that happened to resemble, vaguely, the silken purse. But because it was Japanese, it was excruciatingly tasteful.
But now it turns out they invented drifting, which obfuscates all their other achievements with a grey/blue fugg. And here we are in the West worried about North Korea.
What is it that’s so offensive about drifting? I think it’s because drifting is like a form of performance mooning. The car approaches the bend, flashes its arse at the baying crowd, and farts.
It’s disgusting.
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Comments (256)
Rubbish. Taken at face value it seems a bit dumb, I’ll give you that. But look deeper and it becomes clear that drifting is the punk rock of Motorsport. Encouraging rubber to change states of matter by using a thousand horsepower stick is no different from kicking over a drum set and smashing a guitar. Its rebellious, and hopefully leads to tradition’s death grip on Motorsport to be loosened a bit.
Well, that's not a bad thought.
Broken clocks and so on.
I agree to a point. The only place I find drifting logically correct is on a dirt rally stage or on a rallycross arena where the driver has to drift occasionally to get the car to turn around a corner without crashing
You are sort of right.
But it's not about being logically correct.
Richard drifting at the Michelin track in Ladoux,on The Grand Tour season 1 episode 13 was wonderful to watch,Richard got it in the end,lovely film footage,and camera angles.
I completely agree,Pamela!,this was fascinating to watch,and there is definitely an art too it,indeed Wonderful to watch,Richard definitely got it right!😃😉
You've just made me choke merrily on my coffee. No wonder you abhor barbecues, what with the reckless hurdy-gurdying and tragic misuse of prophylactics.
Whether I agree with you or not iirrelevant I'm just posting to let you know how bloody brilliant is your style of writing. Oh another thing saying this at the risk of the drift happy ape losing his grin but I also do agree with you have made in this article. Thank you for existing and another thanks for writing.