The track was laid out for the annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, but on this overcast Saturday in Southern California, the tracks belonged to the drifters in Round One of the Formula Drift Pro Championship Series. The track was slightly modified from last year's layout to provide a little more room for the drivers to get into 3rd gear at the first turn as well as more space near one of the clipping points because last year's course was pretty tight.
Normally, in professional car races, you don't want the rear end of your car to be sliding from under you because you lose traction and most importantly time. But with drifting, this is what's expected and desired. In other motorsport events, you are trying to beat the clock, but in drifting, you get points based upon not only speed, but also attack angle, proximity to clipping points and finesse as you maneuver around the course.
The real fun is when drivers go head to head in tsuiso (a.k.a. chase attack) battles. In these runs, one car will lead while the other follows. Depending on the amount of space between cars, the angles while entering corners, and how close your car gets to indicated clipping points determines whether you win or lose that round. If there is a tie in a tsuiso battle, then the crowd normally shouts "One more time", and the racers run the course again to the crowd's delight.
It was an exciting day and the huge crowd that attended was quite pleased with the display of power, precision, and the enormous clouds of tire smoke filling the air. One of the surprises in this round was that some of the top seeded drivers from last year did not make it to the winners' podium. But this is just a single round in the series and it takes consistency on all of the circuit's courses to win the series.
Round 1 Results:
1st Mitsuru Haruguchi - 104 pts
2nd Tanner Foust - 96 pts.
3rd Daijiro Yoshihara - 83 pts.
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