Formula D – Are You An Enthusiast?

A lot of people have never even heard of Formula D or Formula Drifting, which offers a far better clue of what this motor sport is really all about. In fact, like all competitive motor sports it takes a great deal of skill, because the vehicles involved can be anything from 200 to 600 bhp.

The purpose is to manage your car while it slides sideways through a pre-set course in style. The more style the better, speed is secondary.

In a way, Formula D takes all the spectacle out of other racing and packages them into one competition. The US drifting scene takes the excitement a stage further though. They play two vehicles off against each other at the same time.

This makes it a great deal simpler to compare the abilities of the drivers and makes for some really exciting close driving – often the drivers’ vehicles are no more than inches apart.

This is exciting stuff as the drivers manipulate their vehicles through incredible slides that would leave many drivers quaking. The nearest most drivers come to anywhere near this degree of sliding is once a year on ice.

The sport of drifting actually began in Japan in the mid Nineties, but the drivers are now household names and the sport is crossing continents. In fact, there are fans of drifting all over the world, in spite of the fact that Formula D still gets relatively little coverage. There are now recognized amateur drifting events in the US, Australia and Europe.

You could in fact say that Drifting was an alternative sport until about 2003, when top Japanese professional drivers were brought to the United States for the first time to compete with local drivers en masse.

If you know of Formula D or would like to, please look up their website, because it is one of the few means along with watching it on TV that you can demonstrate that you support this exciting and relatively new motor sport, so that it will be able to stay afloat amid the harsh competition from more entrenched motor sports such as Formula One, NASCAR and Indy.

You can show your support as said above, but you could also talk to your friends about it. Regrettably, as yet, there are not a lot of venues where you can see live Formula D competitions, but some of the few are in California, Washington, Illinois and Georgia. If you can get along to one of these live competitions, then you are sure not to be dissatisfied.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on many topics, but is at present involved with thinking about the Poconos International Raceway in Pennsylvania. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Poconos Vacations.

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