By Eric Hang, Contributor
Formula Drift at Washington’s Evergreen Speedway is always something I look forward to each year. I’ve attended the event every year and covered it for many different websites and magazines. Lately I’ve been preoccupied with a new job, personal projects and various other obligations, which has been keeping me from following the 2016 Formula Drift season closely. From what I’ve been hearing, there have been a lot of mixed emotions about this season. There has been a lot of drama this season with drivers retiring/leaving FD, other drivers coming back to the series, and inconsistent judging leaving fans and viewers confused.
If there’s one thing to take away from this event, it’s probably that it’s the most exciting event of the series to watch. While Evergreen is not the most exciting track of the FD season, you definitely get to see all the drivers go at it hard. That’s not to say they don’t drive their best in the other events, but you’ll probably see more cars crash at this event than all of the previous rounds combined. In the top 32, a handful of drivers saw the end of their weekend in the bank or the k-rails during the transition into the next turn.
The top 32 ended with a good number of great runs, crashes and one more times. The event started off with a lot of action, setting the bar high for for the rest of the event. With the long (and unforgiving) bank of Evergreen Speedway, you got to see the top 16 drivers drift at speeds you don’t really get to see at a lot of the other events.
After the bank, drivers go into the first transition, which can be just as unforgiving as the bank. This section of k-rails had to be reset twice during the event, as it was hit pretty hard multiple times in the event. After transitioning, drivers continued to power through the last few turns to hit the final clipping point, which was positioned further from the wall than in previous years. I was honestly disappointed with this change; as a photographer, it’s exciting to get shots of drivers tapping the wall as they hit the final clipping point. For fans, it’s probably the closest you can get to the cars on the track, leaving you covered in smoke and tire rubber as the cars power out of the final clipping point.
As we watch the drivers battle it out to advance, we see many drivers do amazing jobs at leading and chasing. This also made it difficult for judges to make good calls for each tandem battle. In the end, we saw a lot of one more times and wins go to the other drivers. Many of the usual winners of this event were knocked out pretty early in the event, not even making it to the Great 8. In the top 4, we got to see some amazing driving by Matt Coffman.
In the final battle between Forsberg and Bakchis, both showed off drifting skills you’d expect from 1st and 2nd place winners. All it took was one little mistake from Forsberg to give Bakchis the win.
