HAVING FUN - GRASSROOTS DRIFTING IN NORTH CAROLINA
If you’re into drifting, you’ll need to find a spot you can drift. Luckily, the East Coast has some of the best tracks with multiple drifting events happening nearly every month.
Lets start with a google map with all the East Coast Drifting events hosted in and near North Carolina:
HOW WE STARTED DRIFTING
Working on cars can be exciting, but what’s even better is driving something you’ve built yourself.
In college I owned a Nissan 240SX which is a drifters dream car. The chassis balance, rear wheel drive configuration, and stick shift option made it the perfect entry level drifting car.
I remember missing one of the first Formula DRIFT events hosted near my hometown of Chicago. I regret not going ever since.
Drifting is a controlled technique in which the driver forces a vehicle to oversteer (slide the rear end out) through a turn.
Fast forward 20 years later… I decided to take a small break on our auto builds to comb through the latest Formula Drift schedule. To my surprise, nothing was happening near our neck of the woods in North Carolina; a state known for racing.
So the next best thing was to look for some local drifting action. To my amazement, I found a few tracks close to Raleigh/Durham that host regular drift events near where we now live.
WATCH GRASSROOTS DRIFTING
We marked our calendar for an event hosted by Triad Street Scene at Piedmont Dragway and the best part was my family would also be in town. Car culture runs deep en la familia, so everyone was down for a road trip.
What is Grassroots Drifting? Grassroots Drifting is a gathering of local ordinary folks who share a common passion for drifting. The grassroots drifting movement is not about profiting or competing, but about having fun while drifting no matter the experience level or budget.
We packed up all the camera gear and off we went. The first outing wasn’t a full-blown drift event, but there was a burn-yard pit setup for burnouts and light drifting. Some cars performed your standard burnout, but a few others drifted around the pit. And just like that, I couldn’t get enough. We later found a full-blown drift event the same location, Piedmont Dragway hosted by Piedmont Drift.
These aren’t your typical pro drift drivers running $30k+ drift cars. It’s just your average RWD (rear-wheel drive) cars drifting through a number of twists and turns. This was some straight-up Grassroots Drifting…
We then made our way to Rockingham Speedway a once abandoned NASCAR track. MBDrift, a local grassroots group has taken up hosting regular drift events at that track.
We have yet to visit Southern National Motorsports Parkway or Virginia International Speedway on the east coast drifting map, but we started building our very own budget drift car to drift too.
GET YOUR DRIFT FIX ON A BUDGET
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