Four seasons ago, a 15-year-old and his dad showed up at one of our clinics with a cool, V8-swapped BMW E28. We weren’t even sure if he was going to be allowed to drive, but they got it figured out and he set off to learn the basics. Today, that same kid is first in this season’s Drift Indy Street League rankings and has been proving his mettle with pro drivers on the Drift Appalachia touges.
Cash Staub, now 18 and a high school graduate, lives and breathes drifting. He’s become a fixture of Drift Indy events, and it’s been super rewarding to watch him grow into an absolute shredder. Whether he’s behind the wheel of his Foxbody Mustang or his G35 sedan, he knows how to put on a good show.
I sat down with Cash at the Luau back in July and then again after his first-place finish at DISL Round 2 to talk through his influences and how drifting fits into the life of somebody fresh out of high school:
What first got you into drifting?
It's going to sound really cringe saying this because I feel like every kid that's my age says this, but watching YouTube and playing video games growing up.
So my dad was always into cars, but like American muscle cars and stuff. I was like kind of into it when I was younger, but I wasn't crazy about them. Then, I forget what Christmas it was, but one Christmas my dad bought me Forza Horizon Three, and I remember playing that a ton, and I found a bunch of dudes online and they were like, “dude, you should start drifting,” and I was like, “what's drifting?” and they showed me in this video game.
It's super cringey, but that's how it started. And then they convinced me to watch Initial D and I watched it and after that I was like, “This is sick, I want to do this,” and my dad was always wanting me to have a car hobby or at least something to do with cars, so I said “Hey, we should get a drift car.” Of course, my dad being my dad, a very country and old school type of guy, said “I will get you a drift car, but it has to have a V8.” So then he found that E28 that had a 5.0, like a 302 out of a Fox-body Mustang, and we got that.
It was an absolute turd. I remember when we bought that car it didn't have a dipstick on the engine and we said, “wait, how do you check the oil?” to the dude and he was like “I just give it a drink every now and again.”
But that's beside the point. I thought it was a turd, but I drove it, learned how to drift. I got a sim, I drove a lot on the sim, and I pretty much feel like all of my driving capabilities are from the sim. If you're a younger kid or even if you're an adult, if you want to get into drifting, obviously you're not going to have like $10,000 to go spend on a drift season or whatever. Even if you do it cheaply, you probably won't be able to do that. So if you can get a cheap sim and drive for a year on there and kill it, then I would work into a car.
I don't think in this day and age it's worth just going and getting a car and saying “yeah, I’m gonna learn to drift,” because you’re going to spend so much money. So you really can't beat a sim. It’s definitely the way to go. I play a lot less now than I used to, but still, like I said, I owe, like, everything to driving on the sim for sure.
Was it mostly Asetto?
Yeah, Assetto Corsa. Yeah. I tried other games like Forza and Car X on the wheel, but I didn't really like any of them. I just played Assetto. I'm not a big videogame nerd, but yeah, I drive sim.
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For a lot of the older (millennial and up) drivers I’ve spoken with, games like Need For Speed Underground have planted the seed that grows into a love for and obsession with drifting and modified cars more generally. For younger (Gen Z and Gen Alpha) drivers, I hear a lot more Forza and Assetto. Different games, but the same pipeline. It just so happens that Assetto Corsa might just translate a little bit more directly to actual driving than our beloved Need For Speed.
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So, this is your fourth season. How do you feel about your progression after three full seasons?
I feel like I've got to shout out Clint Stotts, because I know in the past year, actually probably the past half year, I have progressed more in that amount of time than I have in my entire drifting career, I think purely from him. I don't know how he got so good, but he must have just woke up one day and been good at drifting, because he's taught me a ton.
I could always do lead runs. I was pretty good at leads, but I sucked at following. I could never even get close to people. Like, I would think I was close and I would watch a video back and think, “Dude, you're like two miles behind the guy,” but then, I think it was Halloween bash last year, I remember he told me, “just hit my car,” And I was like, “Dude, why?” He said, “No, just hit my car, all right?” and I hit him, and after that, it flipped the switch. And ever since then, I've improved and improved.
And now I feel like every event I can get closer and closer to dudes and stay more consistent in my follow. Follows have always been my struggle, but I feel like in the past half year I have improved so much at that. So again, I just owe it all to him. Clint is the man.
Sometimes it just takes the right person saying the right thing, and obviously you’ve had some success with DISL this season and at the end of last season, too.
Yeah, that's what's funny. So last year at DISL was my main comp. When they did the Lite series, I did that one round, but yeah, last year was my first like actual DISL comp season, and I missed the first round last year. So I just had no expectations. I just wanted to get into it and feel it out. So last season, the second round last year, I barely qualified. It was pouring down rain. I think I qualified dead last. Barely qualified and then got paired up against Joey Ritter and thought, “Dude, I'm cooked. There's no way I'm winning against Joey,” And it was honestly embarrassing my battle with him. It was horrible. I lost and I was really beating myself up about it.
I was so mad, but then that's when I started talking to Clint more and like, learning from Clint. And then the last round of last season at Corbin, I got fourth overall and that was like the best I felt I had driven. And it felt really good to go from getting basically dead last place to getting fourth and actually being able to hold my own weight.
It felt really good. So coming into this season I thought, “Dude, at this point I don't even care about comps. I'm just here to have fun,” and that's exactly how I thought about the first round of DISL this season. Just have fun, and I kept having fun and then I took home second place and lost to Roy Outcalt.
Roy Outcalt was on a mission that weekend. I don't think anybody could have ever stopped him on that weekend. His car was fast. He was fast. He was driving like an animal.
But yeah, it's just crazy. Like I've been driving for four years or whatever, but this last year, half year, is like the only time that I've felt like I actually progressed in my driving and it's weird, but it feels really good.
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Having watched a lot of Cash’s laps myself, it’s been evident all season that he’s been driving with a fresh confidence. He looks like he’s having fun, and it’s paid dividends when it comes to his comp driving with DISL and other organizations.
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So this season, I feel like you’ve mostly been driving your G instead of the Fox-body. Is that accurate?
Yeah, we've had some bad luck with the Fox, we've had some issues. Yeah, so, speaking of Clint, I got that G from him. It was blue, it was rotted out, I got it for a good deal, because at the end of last season I wanted to just fill with the Fox and do some work on it. So I thought, “I need a car that I can beat on,” and that's exactly what I did, beat that car to piss. This winter I refreshed it, put a new wrap on it, new bodykit, all that, refreshed the Fox, and then I got the fox looking too good and I was scared to drive it.
I drove it at DISL and broke it, so I said, “I'll fix it, but I'm going to drive the G,” so I've been driving the G all season. And then with the Drift Appalachia stuff, I said, “Well, I'm going to keep the Fox purely just for Drift Appalachia and for DISL.”
Then, the last stage of DA I kind of boofed it a little bit in the Fox, so that's why I'm driving the G this weekend. I wanted to drive the Fox because I wanted to get comfortable again before USAir, I just don't have the parts yet, but hopefully we'll have it back out. My car's been through a lot so far. I think it's been totaled probably like four times in my ownership.
So talking about Drift Appalachia. What has that experience been like for you?
Gosh, like it's one of those events where, genuinely, words will never, ever be able to describe what those events actually are like. It's one of the few events that I've built up a bunch of hype in my mind before going, and then when actually had a better time than I thought I was going to have before the event, which is rare, that never happens.
Like, looking back, they don't feel real. It's something that most of us, everybody there has dreamt of and the fact that we actually get to do that is absolutely insane, and “insane” is the only word that makes sense for that. It's absolutely crazy.
It's funny because it all tied back into itself, like the driving on Forza Horizon Three with these online dudes that I've met, after watching Initial D, we would do these drifting races or whatever down these mountain roads and I thought, “man, I want to do that one day,” and now we're doing it right here in America, which is crazy, the fact that we even get to do it. It’s weird how that all comes full circle.
I'm super, super, super appreciative for the opportunity, but I was not expecting to get invited out for that, like ever in a million years. But I remember Derek King messaged my dad and was like, “Yo, is your son 18 yet?” before I had turned 18, and my dad told him I’d turn 18 in March. So then on my 18th birthday, Edgar calls me and said, “Dude, you get to drive Drift Appalachia,” And I was like, “Sign me up.”
I said this on a video recently, but the coolest thing about Drift Appalachia is you go there and if your car breaks or you can't drive or something, you still end up having more fun than any other drift event. Just the dudes that are there and the community of it is like nothing else I’ve ever seen anywhere else.
Derek King always says at the drivers’ meetings, “you guys are one big team for these events,” and that's exactly what it feels like. We all drive to save each other. No one's like, “I'm better than you, I'm worse than you,” everyone’s just driving to have fun, and that's how it should be.
Stylistically, what are some of your influences?
So this year, I'm sure everybody can tell, I picked a very weird body kit for the Fox. People were saying that it wasn't going to look good once I had it on. And I growing up again, my dad coming from a muscle car scene and stuff, I always liked 2000s sex-spec cars. Like, every car has Lambo Doors, every car has 22 inch wheels and the most outrageous body kit you've ever seen in your life. And I think that's cool because I was searching one day on Facebook marketplace and this random body kit that I'd never seen before pops up and I was like, “Dude, I need that for my car.”
So I think every car that I want to build in the future, I plan on building around that early 2000s sex-spec crazy, weird crap. I don't know. I like being different, and that's the whole reason I keep the Fox-body is like, there's never a Fox-body at events.
Just being weird and, you know, not being afraid to do what you think is cool. There's definitely a lot of dudes nowadays that will get on forums and like, shun dudes for not having their car look a certain way or not being how they would build the car and it's like,”Dude, you didn't spend the money to build the car.” There's a difference between constructive criticism and just hating for no reason.
How does drifting kind of fit into your life?
Drifting has unironically kind of become my life. Like everything I do is planned around being able to go to a drift event or going drifting. I can't imagine what my life would be if I hadn’t started drifting.
Every day I'm thinking, “I’ve gotta fix my car, I’ve gotta make it to this event, I’ve gotta go to this event. There's never an hour of a day where I'm not somehow or some way thinking of drifting or thinking of my drift cars.
So, unironically, and as cringey as it might sound, it literally is my life at this point, and I think I would like it to stay that way.
If I can stay at a position in my life where the hardest thing I can think about is what car I'm going to bring to a Drift event, that's pretty sick. So I'm super fortunate and super thankful to have a dad that supports it and cares enough to allow me to keep doing this and to use his truck and use his trailer because without him, I don't think I would be driving because I don't think I could afford it. So yeah, I mean, just big props to my dad.
He tries to come to all of the events and he pushes hard for me to keep doing what I'm doing. Big ups to Dad.
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Up to this point, the interview was all from before Round 2, now let's see what Cash has to say after his second podium in a row and first DISL win:
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So, tell me about Round Two and your win!
I think I might have said before that I was looking forward to USAir because it was like a dream track for me, and it definitely lived up to the expectations. When we got to the track, I was actually super intimidated by it, like it looked way different than it does in videos, but actually being there, looking at it, I thought, “this actually looks kind of hard to drive.”
And then spent, like you mentioned in your recap on the website, I feel like the first day everybody was scared to drive with anybody else. Everyone was doing solo laps and seemed scared about it, so then when I started driving it everyone else being cautious made me cautious too. So it was kind of weird, because most DISL practices don't go that. The first day is usually the hardest driving.
But anyways, I drove the first day, got comfortable, and I don't think I did like any tandem laps on the first day and then the second day I said, “alright, I need to. I'm not trying to get into comp and not know how to tandem.” So I drove a lot with Clint, Colty and Roy I think were the main dudes. I drove with Josh Estey a few times and I was feeling somewhat confident going into comp, but I wasn't expecting to do very well.
I was like, okay, with getting knocked out pretty early. And especially after we had the meeting and I saw who I got paired up against in the 32, Vance Kearns, I was like, “Yeah, I'm done.” I think I literally told him, like came up to him and said, “welp, there goes my weekend,” and then it ended up being like the sickest battle ever.
So after that one went one more time and I won, I was like “Sick! Oh wait, now I have to go battle Josh Estey.” I had the worst side of the bracket ever. I had like every single absolute heater.
I feel like usually in a comp, after you win your 32 battle the rest, just doesn’t feel real? Like you just kind of start doing stuff and it somehow works. Like, in your 32 battle, you're hyper focused and trying really hard, and then the rest of the comp you’re just actually having fun.
Then, eventually, with the Sam Cornewell battle, it was funny because after every battle we’d pull back into the staging area and we were sitting together and joking that we were going to see each other in the finals, and then we ended up together in the finals.
And actually right before our battle, when we were getting ready, he was like, “No matter what happens, I'm about to win more money than the amount of miles that’s on my engine,” and I was like “damn, that’s a flex!”
That was probably the most fun I had, was that round, just because after the 32, I just felt like nothing mattered and just drove how I wanted to drive the whole weekend, and I feel that is kind of the cheat code to winning. Just have fun. with you. If you get in your head too much during comps, I feel like that's when you mess up.
So then looking toward Round Three, how are you feeling?
I feel like I have a lot of weight on my shoulders. So, like, with me and Sam, I'm sure Sam probably feels similarly. We both podiumed back to back and now it's like we kind of have to try to podium again. And also with me and Sam being literally one point difference in the overall standings is insane. So I don't know, I'm kind of just hoping that I carry the same mentality that I've had the last two rounds of like, “just have fun and whatever happens happens,” but, at the same time, it would be pretty cool to come out on top.