“The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” just like the last two films, will probably make over $100,000,000.00 domestically and bring a lot more attention to the sport of Drifting. Although I have not seen the movie yet, I can already see the merchandise flooding the stores and kids requesting the Fast and Furious: Tokyo drift value meals at a major fast food chain.
Since I am an event organizer, I must speak from my point of view and what I see in the future is not too pretty. Most of the organizers pretty much agree that this movie is going to shake up some of the events that currently exist today. I think we are left with a lot of questions. How do we separate the true enthusiasts to the people who just watched the movie? Should we have two separate events: One, for drivers that have been drifting before the movie and another event to cater to the poser wannabe drifter? Should we charge more simply because we will need to tolerate some of the stupid questions that will be associated with the movie? How do you give an answer to someone who specifically requests to drift like one of characters in the movie? Will they understand that drifting takes a lot of time and practice? Are there enough drivers out there that can explain the time and abuse they went through to learn the basic techniques on the track?
It really doesn’t help that Southern California is facing a dilemma with so many venues not allowing drifting on their property either. In the month of March, California Speedway in Fontana, Qualcomm Park in San Diego and Golden Gate fields in Northern California is no longer allowing drifting on their property. So where will everyone go to drift after the movie is released? You guessed it; on the streets. At that point there will be an enormous responsibility on the organizers to figure out how we are going to deal with the situation.
So what can we do to help alleviate the problem? I hope to see every person leaving the theatres going to the nearest computer to do their research on drifting and signing up for their first drift event. I hope people know where to go with questions and I certainly hope that there are people that are trying to educate the public about drifting. I hope the police officers do not pull over every single 240SX on the road. I know there are companies that are trying to keep drifting on the track. Companies such as Falken Tires are hitting the schools with their DOT program which is to educate students about legal drifting. It is good that they are starting before the movie is released to show that there is a concern for everyone.
Let’s keep it safe and off the Streets!
Naoki Kobayashi is the Owner/Operator of ‘Drift Association’. ‘Drift Association’ was a pioneer in bringing drifting from Japan, their organization ‘Drift Day’ holds legal drifting events in Southern California. For more information about legal drifting visit Drift Day’s website or view Drift Safe’s “Getting Involvedâ€? section.
Article first published on DriftSafe.org