Like ballet and
bullfighting

by RAF KATIGBAK

“What makes drifting so popular is that it’s really high impact,” and with the last word, driver Claude Poirier slams his fist into his palm. His choice of words and the forcefulness of the gesture make me uneasy and I choke a bit. After all, I was about to climb into the passenger side of Poirier’s ride—a modified Nissan 350Z convertible dubbed “Black Betty”—to experience drifting firsthand, and there’s just something unsettling about him describing what we’re about to do in terms of a collision. Sensing my hesitation, Poirier assures me that the sport isn’t really a contact sport. “In fact, it’s quite graceful.”

Poirier explains what we’re about to do in simple terms: he’s going to drive really, really fast, and just as we approach a corner, he’s going to turn the wheels one way, then quickly the other way. If he does it properly, the car should whip around the corner at a high speed, with the rear wheels skidding behind us. He doesn’t really get into the details of what happens if he does it wrong. But with his decades of experience in competitive racing, I know that I’m in good hands. I say a final non-denominational prayer to whatever higher power may be listening, suit up, strap the helmet on and climb into the car. The inside of the car is gutted, all of the extraneous comfort features are removed, just cold metal and safety straps. To get out, you need to pull on a zip-tie loop attached to a metal rod and in place of the dashboard, around which would normally sit a CD player and air-conditioning controls, is a welded metal plate with a few buttons and switches and a red t-bar pull that I immediately imagine is to launch the ejection seat.

One of the crew outfits me with arm restraints they call “nosepickers” that buckle to my waist. “This is just to make sure your don’t stick your hands outside of the car when you’re driving,” which seemed odd to me as the only thing I imagined my arms doing is holding on for dear life (I later found out that the straps are actually to prevent arms from getting crushed by the roll cage in the event the car flips and rolls over, which would indeed have been a bummer). I’m all strapped in and I give Poirier my thumbs up and he switches on the ignition. The first thing that strikes me is the sound of the engine, which is surprisingly high-pitched. Unlike the low rumble of flashy street sports cars, it’s the sound of an engine tuned for performance, a car made for “go” and not “show.” He revs the engine and peels out. As he steps on the gas, the engine growl chases us like a pack of wild animals, and I immediately shit my pants.

Pushing a car to the brink of control is understandably an intense experience. There’s a lot of frantic shifting, braking and jostling the steering wheel back and forth. At every corner, the cockpit fills with smoke so you can barely see, and the smell of the smoke, thick and toxic, sometimes makes it hard to even breathe. At this point, most of you must be wondering why people would even do this. Runs last only a few minutes and totally ruin your tires (and at $200–$300 a pop for a commercially available set of high-performance tires, it’s not cheap).

Well, while trying to make a car drift may be a lot of hard work, the act of drifting itself is actually beautiful. While your every sense is being assaulted, every sweeping entry and exit from a turn feels almost Zen-like and perfect. You’re surfing. In a smoky, several-hundred-pound hunk of metal whose engine is screaming, mind you, but surfing nonetheless.

Since drifting is a judged sport—with judges looking for how closely drivers follow the predetermined line, the amount of smoke, how close the car is to the wall and also the crowd reaction—it’s much more about style over speed.

Indeed, there is something amazing about taking a powerful machine to its limits: not only just being in control of something out of control, but also making it do something so smooth and graceful. It’s kind of like bull riding, if you could make the bull do a pirouette. To most people in the world, the sound of screeching tires activates a primal response: something’s wrong. But for drift drivers like Poirier, it’s the sound of music.

DRIFTERS PRACTISE AT THE ICAR CIRCUIT IN MIRABEL ON SATURDAYS,
AND SUNDAYS AT THE ST-EUSTACHE AUTODROME. VISIT CIRCUITICAR.COM
OR THE BFGOODRICH CANADA FACEBOOK PAGE FOR MORE DETAILS.