Drift Racing: Roaring straight into action for fans

Drift car racing with a new format will be on showcase at the Diesel, Demons and Daredevils event in Taupo this weekend. Photo/File

It has cost him a lot of sleepless nights in the past 10 months, so Wanganui drift racer Ricky Lee hopes his vision of a new fan-friendly competition goes off like clockwork at the Ricoh Taupo Motorsport Park tomorrow.

Lee and Wanganui-born race designer Andrew Stewart have put together a new format for a drift competition, which will be showcased at the annual Diesel, Demons and Daredevils event in Taupo this weekend by a field of 24 cars.

This competition does away with multiple practice sessions and instead goes straight into qualifying runs, where there will be 60 "battles" between two cars on the Saturday.

Based on the scores given by the six judges, which includes Wanganui's Karl Brown, the cars will then be separated to compete in three tiers of finals on Sunday.

The top six cars will go for the Cup, cars seeded 7th-12th will contest the Plate, and the remainder will go for the Bowl.

Lee said by just holding individual battles instead of a range of practices and qualifiers, it would be clearer for casual motor racing spectators as to what was happening.

"Unless you're a die-hard fan, for half of the [regular] event you won't understand it.

"This is 150km, within a metre of each other, sometimes touching paint.

"Right from 9am on Saturday through to 5.10pm on Sunday, there will be wall-to-wall action."

Drift Motorsport NZ has sanctioned the event and Lee is delighted to have attracted such a strong inaugural field, especially considering Round 6 of the Cody's D1NZ National Drifting Championship is upcoming in Auckland on May 23-24. "A lot of pros won't enter the other events," he said.

"I was pretty convinced my idea was a good idea, but we put it on the market basically.

"Within 48 hours, we had over 30 cars interested in the 24 spots."

This includes New Zealand's most well-known drifters, "Mad" Mike Whiddett and "Fanga Dan" Daniel Woolhouse, among the 14 professional drivers taking part.

Lee said he would love to have entered in his own event, but given the drifting takes place around the other race classes at the Taupo park including truck racing, drags, hot rods and motorbikes, he had to be supervising to make sure the event ran smoothly.

"I've spent about 10 months developing the programme and how it's going to work.

"It's the time factor with the other races. I want it to run like clockwork."

Lee said he had had expressions of interest from Australia and the United States about similar-styled competitions being run there.