It's been a long time coming, but finally my son Derek had the opportunity to try his hand (feet/eyes/brain) at 'drifting' yesterday, 22nd June, in Cairns Far North Qld.

For anyone who may ask "what the...?', basically, 'drifting' is the art of throwing your car into a controlled tail slide around a corner.
A local go-kart track was hired by the Cairns Street Scene club where just ten people could come along and in a controlled, regulated and safe environment have a go at a sport which they aspire to.
Their vehicles were safety checked, they had to wear helmets and emergency crews were on standby.

Having just come back from Japan where he attended the D1GP (Drift 1 Grand Prix) in SUZUKA, young Derek was all for a shot at the game himself.
He's studied and read up the techniques, watched countless videos (including 'The Drifting Bible') now was his chance to see how scary it was!

This was his very first attempt in his own car, the Toyota Ae86 Sprinter (special tyres fitted for the day, as they soon get worn).
I recon he did darn well, infact of the ten people, he was I think the only driver who didn't hit a tyre wall at some point. He really didn't want to damage his car...



For anyone curious about the video.
A freind of Dereks shot the footage using a Pentax Optio 750Z (a small point'n'shoot). The in-car footage was shot on a different lap, I just chopped it about and tried to make it appear to be the one lap. I used MPEG Video Wizard for the editing which was exported as an xVid encoded .avi prior to upload to youtube (who convert to flash video and lower the bitrate considerably, so the quality drops a lot unfortunately).

Although I couldn't attend the actual event, I was not far away, elsewhere in Cairns - just incase he needed a lift home