Formula Drift Opens its 20th Season Sideways with Sold-Out Show, High Hopes

• The advantage of Formula Drift over other motorsports series is that it not only attracts the critical 18-24-year-old demographic, but deals almost exclusively in it.

• And the series continues to draw in more viewers, participants both in its Pro and Prospec categories, as well as increasing this season’s prize money.

• Formula Drift made some upgrades, too. Way back when every motorsport out there was struggling with the pandemic, FormulaD was adapting.

Formula Drift, the series that runs two cars at a time sideways as tire smoke pours out the back of each car and engulfs throngs of screaming fans in the critical 18-24-year-old demographic, is back. The sport has grown into its 20th anniversary year of competition with unprecedented viewership and as many thrills as ever.

The sport that started as an illegal activity in Japan (see Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift!) and was imported to the States by a pair of youthful marketing entrepreneurs continues to thrill.

At the season-opener April 7-8 on several turns of the IndyCar road course in the streets of Long Beach, Calif., 30 drivers in purpose-built drift cars battled it out for the best start to the eight-event season. With two spots unfilled on the Pro grid, number-one qualifier Ryan Tuerck and three-time champ (the only three years he ran it) Irishman James Deane got byes in the first round. They both made it to the quarterfinals before being out-scored in this judged competition, where pairs of cars compete door-to-door on a prescribed course, dancing on the edges of adhesion and in clouds and clouds of billowing tire smoke with a panel of three experts passing judgement as if it were a 1,000-hp version of paired figure skaters with a grudge.

In the semis it was Rome Charpentier all alone on his side of the bracket after Jonathan Hurst failed to advance. Charpentier would face the winner of the match on the other side of the bracket between three-time champ Fredric Aasbo and long-time rival Matt Field. And what a battle that was.

The pairs in Formula Drift are run twice, with each driver taking turns leading, like ballroom dancing in supercars. On the first run Aasbo lead and slowed just barely entering a spot on the course where rules say you have to be accelerating. That slowing, and possible contact between the cars, threw Field just enough out of whack to send him into the wall, damaging his front end, steering and intercooler.

The rules further say that you get 10 minutes to fix anything that breaks in a crash, plus your choice of another five-minutes you can take any time for whatever reason you want to. It took Field’s “Drift Cave” crew (“The Cave Men,” as they’re known) seemingly forever to get the hood off Field’s Corvette because of the impact. Then they had to figure out which broken things they had time to fix. In the end, when all seemed lost, Field drove out of his pit box with exactly zero seconds left on the fixit clock, and he drove to the staring line with no grille, no hood and wildly enthusiastic fans.

Though the young Charpentier did well, Field ran a perfect pair of runs, first from behind, then from in front, so perfect that announcer Jarod Deanda, a man perhaps known for hyperbole, yelled into his microphone, “Absolutely insane! A 100-point qualifying run! Outstanding! Gangster! The best from any of the drivers today!”

The judges agreed. Field was happy, especially since a similar encounter with Aasbo here last year had gone against him.

“It feels the best,” Field said after the win. “And yeah, quick shout out to Chris (Purceski) and (3D race car builders) Cage Kits (cagekits.org) because the only reason we were able to get back out there is because that crushable front end that I've been bragging about on my social media.”

Yes Field, perhaps anticipating just such a crash, had in the offseason commissioned a CAD-designed entirely new front structure for his Corvette that would allow quick repairs and replacements of busted parts, like intercoolers and steering boxes. It worked!

“Honestly, you guys (The Cave Men) made it happen because that thing took the hit: new intercooler, new parts, and we were back. So that's a testament to the upgrades that we made.”

Formula Drift made some upgrades, too. Way back when every motorsport out there was struggling with the pandemic, FormulaD was adapting.

“After COVID we kind of exploded in a way that I don't think that we really could have predicted, due to the fact that the state of the economy was such that people that were not doing anything during COVID, did not take advantage of market, capturing opportunities,” said Ryan Sage, co-founder (with Jim Liaw) and president of the series. "We did do something during COVID, we were able to bring in a whole new subset of fans that were either only knowing about us on the periphery or weren't knowing about us at all. 2021 was a record year for us, we thought that that was going to be the peak, that things would kind of mellow out in 2022, but we basically doubled 2021. So yeah, it's been on an incredible trajectory from, not just a business standpoint, but also just from overall growth.”

The advantage of Formula Drift over other motorsports series is that it not only attracts the critical 18-24-year-old demographic, but deals almost exclusively in it. And the series continues to draw in more viewers, participants both in its Pro and Prospec categories, as well as increasing this season’s prize money.

“The size of the audience, all revenues, in a certain sense, are like that as well,” Sage said. “But it's really just been about how the size of the audience has affected all the other facets of business.”

Formula Drift used to quote a figure of 150,000 viewers for its live webcasts of each of the eight rounds across the country that make up a season. But that was before COVID.

“Last year, we did 8 million viewers on the live stream,” said Sage. “That's total for the season. So, we're doing about a million per round. And we're doing about $75 million worth of social media value cumulatively between the series and the drivers.”

So does he think FormulaD would be a good use of sponsorship dollars versus, say, a sticker on the 42nd-highest car on a Cup grid?

“For the price of a sticker on a NASCAR car that finishes 42nd you could probably own a few teams.”

Next event is at Road Atlanta May 11-13. For the rest of the schedule see formulad.com. And if you’re GM and have a spare C8 engineering mule that you were going to crush and recycle anyway, or if you’re Dodge and want to get word out about that Charger Daytona SRT electric muscle car, join Ford and Toyota in participating in the best 18-24-year-old demographic-getter in motorsports.

See you in Braselton.