Review: Goodyear Formula Drift Thailand

With the inaugural Malaysian round of the Goodyear Formula Drift happening this weekend, tensions are ablaze among the organisers as expectations are running high and with the enormous success of the previous two FD events in Singapore and Thailand, the heat is on the organisers of the Malaysian round. So while we wait for the action to start here, we’re going to review the previous two Goodyear Formula Drift events starting with the most recent one in Bangkok.

So Goodyear invited us to attend the Formula Drift in Thailand and of course we were not going to turn that down, what, with a great mix of motorsports in an exotic Asian city and great friends as company, there really is no reason not to go. The Thai round of FD didn’t exactly happen in Bangkok, it took place about thirty minutes out of town at the Wonderland Park in a suburb called Ramindra.The drift track was built to international standards with more 3000 seats under shade and plenty of other areas for spectators to watch the action, and it all took just about a  month to turn from bush area to professional drift track.

Of course it wasn’t all work and we did have our fair share of time to wreck havoc in the Asian capital of fun but that’s one of those things that we left back there and swore never to speak of again. So about Formula Drift Thailand it is then and it was absolutely amazing. The level of skill of the drifters was amazing, and the competitiveness amongst them was nail-biting, each and every one of the drifters went all out that day with a do-or-die attitude and us, the fans, were left stunned, even during practise.

The drifters first went out solo during practise to gauge the track and accustom themselves with the super-intimidating concrete barriers. The thing about Formula Drift is that the judges award more points to the drifter that is able to get closest to the wall, this is known as “riding the wall”, the further you are from the wall the less points you score. So with such a stringent points system, the drifters have no choice but to get friendly with the wall and hope that it doesn’t end up turning their machines into scrap metal, besides hopes, there’s skills and any drifter with enough skill will get past the wall without a problem. So the wall is there for a reason – to separate the drifters from the “wannabe’s”.

On to qualifying then, all drifters went out in tandem and were awarded points on their bravery, smoothness, proximity to the wall and of course, ability to keep up with the lead drifter. The key word here is keeping up with the lead drifter as zero points are awarded to any following car that overtakes the lead drifter. This took up all of Saturday and by the of the day we had our Top 32 bracket. All Goodyear drifters made it to the Top 32 except for Jane Cheah who sadly missed out on the final round. The top three spots were obviously dominated by the giants of the sport, qualifying in 1st place was Ryuji Miki, in second was Tengku Djan, and in third was Mad Mike Whiddet. The final podium would see the trio reunite though in different positions.

Battle day. Bright and early. The racket of the legendary Thai traffic was drowned out by the sound of tyres squelling for grip, engines screaming at high rpms and the tyre smoke coming out of the Wonderland Park had the locals lining up along the freeway flyovers (see above) just to catch a glimpse of the world-class machines defy physics and race sideways. So here we had 32 drifters vying for the top spot but only one among them will be crowned champion. The local Thai drifters looked as if they had been practising for years for this special day because they were breathing down the necks of champions, giving Tengku Djan a real scare and Mad Mike had his work cut out as well.

By the time the evening came around we were in the quarter finals of the session with rain looming overhead threatening to ruin grip levels and make the walls a lot more intimidating.

Well the rain just splattered for about 10 minutes and the action started all over again, we were in the semi-finals this time and it was nail-bitting to the end.

It was Ryuji Miki against Pat (a Thai drifter) but the real battle was between Mad Mike and Tengku Djan. Ryuji saw off Pat with relative ease but it seemed as if the finals was between Djan and Mike. The duo were so close in terms of performance and skill that they had to go out against each other for a good six rounds! Djan had the first round then Mike had the second, both made mistakes in the third round and the same again in the fourth. At one point it seemed as if Djan had taken the win but a “one-more-time” was called by the judges and this went on till more rain spoilt everything, Djan who was on fresh tyres could not get the tyres up to grip in the wet and spun out, awarding Mike the win in controversial style.

Mad Mike in his four-rotor RX-7FD went on to beat Ryuji Miki in his Toyota Supra and Djan had to be content with third place. A sorry reward for such great effort from The Prince.

With the Thailand round of the Goodyear Formula Drift being such a massive success, we can only hope that the Malaysian round of the Goodyear Formula Drift turns out to be better. The Malaysian round already has the largest number of competitors with more than 50 drifters vying for the top spot, so thrills and spills are guaranteed. So see you this weekend then at the Malaysian round of the Goodyear Formula Drift at the Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang. Visit formuladrift.com.my for more information. Check out the galleries below for more than 500 pictures of the Goodyear Formula Drift Thailand.

Gallery One

Gallery Two