Originally this post was going to be a narrative of how I missed Final Bout this year. Instead, I went to Vancouver Island on Labour Day weekend and watched some drifting. Somewhere in between, I ate poutine and made a joke about “Final Boat” after stumbling across a boat show in Victoria’s harbour.
The problem with writing a post like that is it doesn’t really inform or entertain. It just demonstrates how whiney I can be. Sure, I intended to end the post by expressing how much I love grassroots drifting. However, that seems pretty damn obvious because most of our event coverage for the last 5 years has been grassroots drifting. There’s really no revelation there.
I was going to use the mention of Final Bout as a segue to discuss the concept of style in drifting. It got a little convoluted, but the idea I’m trying to convey is pretty simple: nice drift cars exist everywhere (as do awful cars). Events like Final Bout bring out the best of the best and although the event is exclusive, the philosophy that makes it great is not. This philosophy – built around nice cars driving hard – can usually be found at grassroots drift events, on a much smaller scale. I understand that not everyone subscribes to this philosophy, but those who strive towards it are usually pretty easy to spot.
There’s no blueprint to building a nice drift car – only guidelines. Those guidelines may revolve around what is or what was hot in Japan, but everyone interprets them individually. It’s not unusual to see very different interpretations in different communities. But there’s no substitution for knowledge, and well-built drift cars usually come from a well-informed place.
If you ever hear onlookers say, “I can’t believe he actually drifts that. If I had that car, I wouldn’t drift it,” you’re probably on the right track. The risk of losing something great to a wall isn’t for everyone… but it raises the stakes and makes it nice to watch.
Of course, not every car can be pristine – especially after a season of driving multiple events and team tandem. However, what I noticed at the Capital Drift event, held at Western Speedway just outside Victoria, is that scars are often earned. It may not be as pretty as you want it to be, but those concerns are quickly dismissed by the level of aggressive driving that happens there.
Capital Drift events almost seem like a thinly veiled excuse to just run tandem trains and gain seat time. When the competition started on Sept. 7, the judges were pretty open about the fact that they were just looking for whatever looked the coolest. With that in mind and very little money up for grabs, it became clear that people were probably there just for fun.
I can’t argue with Capital Drift’s recipe for events as Vancouver Island has turned out some pretty great drivers. It’s funny that such aggressive driving comes from a region known for being so laid-back.
Maybe I missed Final Bout and maybe I’ll regret it for some time to come, but catching Capital Drift was a nice consolation prize. It can’t compare to the experience of Final Bout, but those glimpses of greatness are what grassroots drifting is all about.