A killer group of drivers, spectators and friends came out this past weekend to help us kick off Drift Indy’s 20th season. Near-perfect weather combined with great driving to give the weekend pretty amazing vibes. The smiles in the stands and the pits bode well for what promises to be our best season yet.
Despite quite a few folks trying their best to jinx the weather by discussing the forecasted rain ahead of the event, we were fortunate enough to only have to deal with an hour or so of rain Friday morning. By midday the track was dry and the drivers were putting down heaters like we didn’t just come off a nearly five-month-long offseason. We even got some pretty impressive trains before the weekend was over.
The usual “Whose first time is it here at Kil-kare?” question at the start of Friday’s drivers’ meeting garnered seven or eight raised hands, and we had about five new media dudes joining us, too. Everybody seemed to ease right into the Drift Indy way of doing things.
Opening Day is, of course, a great opportunity for everybody to show off their off-season refreshes. Cash Staub finished up his rebuild a few days before the event and was looking super comfortable behind the wheel. Fellow Drift Indy Grand Prix driver Steve Scherzer showed off a super clean, super rad 240 hatch that he got some great laps in, despite some clutch issues. Colten Terrell flexed some new electronic bits and bobs from our friends at Link ECU and JEM Sport via our Drift Indy Driver Support Program that had his 1JZ S13 absolutely ripping.
Drift Team Groove out of Indy also showed out with their quad of small-wheeled rides: two nice S13 coupes, an AE86 and an R32 GTS-T. They made a lot of progress this event, and it’s gonna be fun to see them get better and better this season.I have no idea where everybody is finding all these minty S-chassis. I thought they were all rusted out or going for $50k and your left nut on Facebook Marketplace, but our last few events have had what feels like a ton of clean, new examples. No complaints here.
On the subject of teams, Team Bad Blood wasted no time getting a ton of laps in together. Their cars are cool as hell and it feels like they’re really close to meshing even better with their driving. These dudes are definitely going to be a problem in DISL this season.
Friday night meant a trip over to visit our friends at Vyral for the third and final round of our Drift Indy Virtual season. Each of the first two rounds produced eight qualifying drivers that were invited to come in-person to compete to win an absolutely sick Drift-Indy themed gaming PC built by the Vyral crew. The kind folks over at Grip Royal provided the second- and third-place awards, super clean custom steering wheels.
We also unveiled perhaps the world’s first drifting beer collaboration with Streetside Brewing, the Drift Indy Tandem American lager. They’re exclusively available at Vyral, and it was rad to see people enjoying them during the competition.
With the drivers rotating in and out of two sim rigs, the judges set up on the VIP stage and Shawn Allgood and Edgar Sarmiento hosting from Vyral’s livestream room, the comp got underway. For this round, the track was the very cool BC Racing Training Facility. We had a few bye runs in the bracket, but for the most part everybody made it out in person.
You can check out the whole comp here:
Once it was all said and done, Brad Johnson came out on top, Randy Noa took home the silver and Caleb Schmidt snagged the bronze. Brad drove down from Wisconsin in his GT86, won the comp and the PC, then came to the track the next day and put down some killer laps in said 86. Randy came all the way from Orlando and put on a really impressive showing, but Brad managed to edge him out in the final battle of the night. Caleb, too, had some great battles in there. It was a great way to bridge the gap between a really fun virtual season and the start of the in-person season.
With Friday night’s partying concluded, everybody showed up Saturday morning ready to get back down to business. Throughout the whole event, B group put on a killer show. A group was as exciting as always and C group showed tons of improvement throughout the weekend, but B was throwing down 8+ car trains by the end of the day.
It felt great to be back at Kil-kare watching guys and gals getting sideways with their friends again. The ever-famous track pizza still hits, despite a new guy running the stand. A bad Kil-kare pizza is still a good pizza, and this was far from a bad Kil-kare pizza. Media newcomer Lars Faria recounted his story of shooting an event down in Missouri and speaking to another photographer that had shot with us before. Reportedly he didn’t mention much about our killer drivers and their stylish cars, but did talk up that legendary track-side pizza stand. We’ll take it.
With an awesome first event of our 20th season under our belt, we’re all looking forward to keeping the great vibes rolling. Drift Indy Street League and the brand new Drift Indy Grand Prix have their first round of the season just a little over two weeks away, and the rest of the season is jam-packed with our classic marquee events. DISL and DIGP will take us up to the M1 Concourse track in Michigan for Round Two in August, putting us right next door to the Woodward Dream Cruise. If this first event of the year is anything to go by, this season is going to be chock-full of sick cars and sicker driving. We'll catch you back at Kil-kare April 18 and 19 for DISL and DIGP Round One.
