It`s difficult to say when exactly drifting started, as a sport it is accredited to one Kunimitsu Takahashi, who started using the techniques back in the 1970`s. His ability to get his rear tires to slip more than his front tires meant he could power around corners much faster than everyone else on the track.

One particular street racer "Keiichi Tsuchiya" took these techniques and adapted them on the winding mountain roads around Japan, which quickly caught on with the street racing crowd. Keiichi also made the AE86/1984 Corolla GT-S famous as the original drift machine. Using the AE86 he was able to drift faster than the other drivers could race during amateur events. In a famous story, he had his driving license revoked because of illegal street drifting in the mountains, this was while he was a professional racing driver. This is the spirit of drifting. Several magazines started to publish articles and interviews back in the late 80`s. It was as they say all down-hill from there. Ah the Toyota AE86...

Although drifting took off like wild fire around Japan, it took much longer to gain acceptance in the other petrol-head nations, the first recorded drift event held outside of Japan was back in 1996, at the Willow Springs Raceway in California.

The idea behind drifting is to slide the car into and out of a corner, a good drift is considered to be when the rear slip angle of the car is greater than the front slip angle, while initially this was done to get around corners faster than the competition, it today`s drifting it`s not possible to out run a race car. This is mainly due to the fact that when drifting you need to be as spectacular as possible, so more sideways angle and more speed means more crowd-pleasing moments. Unfortunately this is not the fastest way to get around a track.

Drifting is now as well know as most other classes of racing, it`s quickly catching on like so many other extreme sports. As more and more sponsors get their money into the sport we can expect to see bigger and better events all over the world, it`s only a matter of time before drifting out ranks the racing.

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