Today, April 28, 2012 I attended an event in the Las Vegas Motor Speed way called Vegas ProAm hosted by Vegas Drift, LLC. Pro AM is about competing with the sport of drifting.?? What is drift you may ask? Drift is a technique that controls the under steer of a corner when you turn.?? A lot of people may know drift from the movie called??? Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift???, in which this movie does show this sport today with the man who made the Drift mainstream, Keiichi Tsuchiya. Drift started in Japan, which was brought over to America by storm. I can go on with how it???s started, but instead I would like to speak more about the event today.
Vegas Pro-Am is where 30 drivers perform and competing with themselves on how good they drive and the winner in first place is rewarded with a Formula D License. ??This all takes place in 1 whole day, and a lot can happen with the amount of stress you poor onto your car to initiate the drift and holding the drift.?? The Vegas ProAm Judges Ernie Fixmer, Mike Bolanos, and Odi Bakchis. How Judging goes down is with Speed, Angle, and Style. They judge the entry speed and when you initiate the drift, the Angel is judges at each clipping point inside clipping points is how close the nose of the car is and the outside clipping points is how close to the wall you can get your tail end of the car to the wall or the 2 outside clipping points. Style is how well you can keep your line. In racing or driving you are in a line in traffic you want to keep inside your line at all costs more you are outside of your line more likely you will get negative points, and you might wreck your car also with style you are also judges on how well you keep your drift in the line with your technique, if you mash the E-Brake the judges frowns upon when being judged for style and angle.
Having a good technique when you initiate at a high rate of speed while keeping inside the lines and going as much sideways as possible to also cause a lot of smoke in the process to get the fans up with excitement.
My buddies with Get Nuts Lab, who has helped me with my ???Nissan Silvia 1987 200sx (S12)” with the M7 USA sponsors where there in full force today. As Forest Wang dominated XDC in Arizona last weekend, Just had a huge feeling they are going to dominate today.
 |
 |
 |
Over 30 drivers got cut down to 16 drivers. During this time of elimination all 30 cars go solo.??When it comes down to the top 16, this is where the real fun begins and the real accidents happen because Tandem starts, tandem is when 2 drive cars are drifting in a cat and mouse style of racing the car pushing from behind has to match the speed, style, and angle as the car in front. Total of 3 wrecks today, 2 coming from a gold colored, loud, Mazda FC ??? RX7 first time he wrecked he broke his rim, the second time he had to be towed out because he completely totaled the axle. Another wreck happened in the tandem part of the racing, he had way too much under steer and plummet into the K-Rail. It gets really interesting.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Most of the cars were the famous Nissan 240sx cars, also known in Japan as the Silvia. A few Mazda FC-RX7, 2 Mazda Miata, There was one GMC short bed pickup converted only for drifting, a couple Nissan???s fair lady 350z???s. and only 1 AE86 ( also known as the Mid 80???s Toyota Corolla GT-S, 4A-GE RWD car) very underpowered car but also great to drift in. The Nissan 240sx is one of the most popular cars for drifting today, a lot like to use the SR20DET Motor???s (2.0L Dual Over Head Cam Turbo 4Cyl Engine) or the famous GM LS1 swap (5.7L v8 engine all aluminum block.) One was running another popular swap from the MK4 Supra 2JZ engine, inline 6 turbo powered motor. Joshua Guild one of the famous drivers for the Pro-Am Series also in Formula D runs a special GM LS2 block from a Pontiac GTO in his custom 240sx. Some people actually swap in the Nissan???s Skyline GT-R engine in call the RB25DET ( the ???Race Breed??? inline 6 engine, 2.5L DOHC with a turbo. ) but due to limited parts in America for them they push for the LSx engine from GM.
After a few hours of tandem runs, It comes down to the final 4, Taking 1st place was Garrett Nikolich of Get Nuts Lab, and 2nd place was Forrest Wang of Get Nuts Lab, 3rd was Brandon Wicknick of D-Spare.
 |
 |
 |
That is my adventure for today. I’m hoping by 2013 I’ll be amongst them or at least attempting to be, It is one of my goals. To participate in 2013. Till Round 3, keep drifting fun.
For more images, check out my adventures for this event.
