Saturday was the Formula D drift racing finals.

Mr. W drove me and my parents to the Irwindale race track for that. Wandering around the booths and stuff beforehand with my parents, I grew concerned that my mom would find the loud music, cigarette smoke, and big crowd uncomfortable. She was a good sport, walking hand-in-hand with my dad, wondering what all the shocks, springs, car parts on display were.


I have concerns about the direction drifting is taking. It seemed to me that there were a lot of gang bangers there — more so than at a Nascar race function. It didn’t help that King Taco was a major sponsor; their publicity probably helped bring in a lot of the Mexican gangs from East LA. It was also unfortunate that they served beer. We had pretty cool seats on the grandstand, 3 rows up right in the center, but people started folding their flyers and advertisements they collected at the booths all day into paper airplanes, and trying to fly them down the stand and into the race track. There was a lot of drunken cheering whenever an airplane would squeeze through the large chain-link fence into the track, and drunken laughter whenever a plane would hit an unaware bystander on the head or neck as people tried to get to their seats. I was afraid to turn around and look into the stands for fear I may get an eye put out. I watched a college-age chick sitting directly in front of me get hit on the head by 4 paper airplanes, a beach ball, and a DVD. Her friend next to her got hit with a big pink inflated condom. I couldn’t believe security weren’t doing anything about that; paper on the tracks of a drift race could be some real hazards. I was even more dismayed when my dad threw an airplane, too. Twice. “It’s a strange disconcerting feeling when you realize you’re more mature than your parents,” I said to Mr. W. He thought it was funny. Childhood friend Vicky’s mom was sitting behind us, and at one point she picked up someone else’s paper airplane and handed it to my dad, saying, “Hey, help me throw this.” My dad eyed it skeptically. “This one isn’t going to fly right,” he said, and proceeded to re-fold it into an aerodynamic, ergodynamically engineered ad about some high-traction race tires. And threw it. And accidentally hit someone. GAH.

Anyway, the drift race itself started off disappointing; a few cars spun out and disqualified themselves, or they had technical problems, like one guy’s clutch went out and they couldn’t fix it in the 5-minute maximum time-out. But when it came down to the last 4 cars doing battle, now THAT was some cool stuff.


Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Share Photos – Free Video Hosting

My mom did have a headache from the noise and tire smoke and said it was going to be her first and last drift event, but it was very spiffy of her to come out with my dad for the experience.


See my first Formula D event w/photos here.