Night-Import: Photography and Words by
William Lee
Most of you drifters who participated at Sideway Sundays are still talking about the issues regarding lack of time, professionalism of drifters, etc. on the facebook event page or through forums, and I was a bit hesitant about writing Part 2 today. Why? Because stating my own opinions might create an even longer ongoing conversation, but I was a participant, yet a staff, and heard from the organization on what happened, so I do have rights in every way to say what I got to say..right?
First of all, let me share my thoughts on the most asked and debated problem posted on the event page and forums.
1. Gate opening
-I arrived at Irwindale Speedway around 7:50am and according to the schedule I received, the gate was supposed to open at 8am. I believe gates were opened 10~20 minutes later after the staffs finished organizing the stage.
Although Adams Motorsports is the head of the drifting session, Irwindale Speedway has control on what goes around inside and outside of the track area and if anything does not satisfy their needs of a 'safe drifting' event, more time will be spent to organize. Do know both organizations want Sideway Sundays to be the best and safe event for all drifters, car show participants, and even for the spectators, so please understand some overtime.
2. Lack of time for drifting and price to drift being too expensive
-I heard a few different stories from a lot of participants and will not mention who said what, but before the event started, I was informed there were two separate groups; amateur drifters (including those who never drifted) & drifters (had some experience in drifting).
There were about 80 drifters in total and was separated into two groups. Let me compare to how many drifters participated in
Sideways Sundays #1 and
#2; a
bout 15~20 for the first event and ~40 for the second. I barely read and heard any complaints about those two events because each drifter
had enough time to drift more than 3 times.
Let's get to
Sideway Sundays #3. Because of the positive feedbacks that were written on forums and
facebook regarding the first and second event, the amount of drifting participants doubled. I saw the first group starting at around 10am and a lot of participants were spinning out, hitting cones, etc. and it definitely took much more time for each drifter to complete the track layout compared to those who participated in the first and second event. I'm not saying this is bad at all because Sideway Sundays is opened to everyone, amateurs and professionals. When considering this happening to the first group, the amount of attempts to drift definitely reduced. I also want to mention that this whole event was at
Irwindale Speedway. I'm not trying to make a huge deal out of this, but Irwindale Speedway is where the final rounds of Formula D occur and rarely do they even open the bank for drifters to drift. Only drifting event I know of at Irwindale would be
House of Drift outside of the track. It took a lot of time and effort for Adams Motorsports to organize this whole event so please keep that in mind rather than saying it was about the money.
Now to group 2, there were a lot of experienced drifters and most of them I saw were participants from the first and second event. There were also about 40 participants in this group including Formula D stars Mike Essa, Jeff Jones, and a few XDC leveled participants. Although a few amateurs were included in this group, it seemed as if everything went pretty smooth until one drifter crashed into the wall and took literally 40 minutes for the towing truck to get the car off the track layout. This incident greatly reduced the amount of time for the second group to attempt more drifting rounds.
I've read some other feedbacks, but I'll just leave it to here because I'm sure Troy from Adams will explain each situation thoroughly. Part 2 will mostly cover the drifting session and some of the Car Show parts I missed. There are actually other photos I didn't share in Part 1 so that will be posted on this parts coverage as well.
