The " I dont know if i can make it people" wont go pro and obviously dont really care. It may sounds stupid and my priorities may be alittle different then most but latley i have put drifting at the top of my to do list even over school. I feel if we dont treat it as a full time job then we arent going anywhere. The generation of drivers that we all are apart of could be the founders of drifting in canada, how exciting is that to be apart of a group that could possibly ignite the frenzy equivilent to formula D. Im not saying that DMCC isnt big, but the craze hasnt even begun yet. Canada has not seen drifting to its fullest.
lol that gives me the chills, thats deep man.
but so true!
It seems this is our biggest hill to climb, getting tracks to let us strut our stuff. All these tracks being listed, why havent we contacted any of them? Seems like we have had tracks sitting right under our noses. I know most of us take drifting seriously but we need the public to take it seriously aswell, and the only way is to show them what its all about.
we just cant go to big right off the start, you will fall flat on your face. we need to start with phase one, so to speek.
i have started to do some brain stroming, got a contact list for about 6 tracks, i am going to call them to get some info on what we can do with them. see what our options are, we need to start building relationships with track owners. get the scene out to the public. we need to build a name for our selves.
This would have to be ran as proffesionaly as possible.
The only problem is that most of the public still isn’t aware of what “Drifting” is. We need to get out and reach to the public and get them out to the events. Getting out there then attracts more attention to the sport and then before you know it you have tones of fans and the organizers have more fan money to set up more events and more advertising. I know that you can’t start off huge because as Intense has stated “You will fall flat on your face”. Its true, however… amatures do need a place to run and show off their abilities and have room to improve to pro level if they see fit. You amatures also could be helping the organization by small donations… same with pro for that matter. We all want the scene to be reconized and grow, but for all the competitors that want a place to run and the organization not having enough money…we could all help in making it bigger and taking off. If you love somthing or some one you will do whatever it takes to make it work right? Well if we all come together to support somthing we all love and want to participate in then lets all make it work as a huge team. So many of us love the sport but other than participating in the events what else are we doing to raise our community higher and raise awareness? I also think there is to much of a gap between pro and amature. How did you pro drivers go pro? Practice? Where did you do that in a safe and controlled enviroment? We all need a place to do things safe and the spectators that don’t “race” might want to get started and can’t if we close out amature and leave everything pro. We all need to run together and get the sport booming. Just my 2 cents and rant. Sorry if anyone took offense or dissagrees.
EDIT: ^^ lol you beat mee to it about how we need the public/fans. at first the organizers are going to lose money thats a giving but as your fan base grows you will earn it back so you have to market well and choose the right locations to drop the extra coins into an event.
The idea of having a lot of drift days doesnt mean we’re helping the scene as we are throwing away money that why I think if the people have the mentally I can make it to the next one. we have a small amount of “regulars” and it takes a toll on people to have like 2 drift days in a month. I barely kept up making it to all the events last year as money was an issue since i’m a student and paying for everything but thanks to my car being built proper I only had to worry about tires/gas/track fee.
what is the pro-am to you people? is it just a drift day were a bunch of drifters drift or is it a competition drift were you have a winner that killed the day and get a prize for giving it your best and making it on top for the day?
I think the pro-am should be high scaled in a way and have at most 3 events of the year as it gives the drivers time to get ready for next event were you go all or nothing and should have a market target to spectators and vendors well it won’t happen over night but that should be the main target. I prepare myself for dmcc pro-am saving my good stuff for that day (nismo rims and new tires) as I knew there were going to be a lot of pictures and people watching.
I get the idea of starting of small but if theres a way to get spectators out to watch drifting then I think we are in the right steps of making drifting bigger. The drifting fan base is just us the drifters that go out and have fun but really how far does that get drifting out there in ontario? its all word of mouth to try it as i got quite a bit of people into the drift scene.
cscs has the right idea for drifting and having spectators for it but its not just based on drifting and also the one car at a time rule is killing it for them. if you stand in the crowd that watches cscs drifting you hear people talking and saying mostly good remarks like thats a sick driver or that was a crazy angle. without the fans/spectator to watch how big will it really get?
if you look at ufc it got really big fast and now I have friends that got gym membership and even the more serious ones take up mma (mixed martial arts) and they put their money into it cause of ufc and according to my hardcore ufc friends it use to be unground and small but i dont really know nor care but i do watch the fights and put down money at resturants on food and drinks just to watch it. fan base is a huge help to the scene imo and also commited drivers.
thats exactly why im saying to start, 3 demos on intermision at three different oval tracks. the spectators there are already interested in motorsports. Educate them of the sport through an anouncer that introduces the drivers (were there from etc…) in the demo include a hot lap while the anouncer is expaining cliping points, how critical entery speeds are etc… then a coriagraphed demo run to show off.
its a good place to promote the sport because like i said the fans are already there and can promote other events for fans to come out and watch an exclusive drift event.
if we can get the publics interest, sponsors will come. well they will recognize our comunity if we have loyal fans…
and may be try and arange a ride along
Justin, you get me excited with all this demo buisness. Start as the side show then move up to the main show.
exactly!!!
got to do the foot work first
Sounds good Justin. Good point to SR20S13. I know in the past sunset speedway we did this. My father is friends with the racing co-ordinater there, I’m sure if you haven’t already Justin, we could set that up again for 09’. I still think we need to further reach out to other motorsports fans to get encouraged to come out to our drifting events. What if we had a radio station announcing a few weeks before, or posting small flyers in the paper or even panflets in our local parts suppliers?
ill see if i can get flamborro speedway on board. i gots them connections
I think we need one guy to oversee everything. They can delegate tasks to others but every organization needs a president.
Which is what drifting in Ontario needs, a single organization. With that we can get noticed in the papers and local t.v. etc.
If we get X amount of committed entries to the year for a set membership fee, then we can guarantee to the tracks we talk to that there will be X amount at each event.
Can we start a list of people willing to pay, lets say, $500 up front to the organizer to guarantee that they will be at each event during the year?
-Nick Narini (thats me!)
-Fiddy
^^ Totally agree.
We can only afford to have ONE organization that is UNBIASED to represent Ontario Drifting.
we need an organization and committee to start a club or association so we can get recognized by CASC so then they can start sanctioning our events. then have annual registration fees for the association to cover misc costs to have our affliated association. Its alot of work and it must follow a strict structure in order for it to go through.
I personally went to all but one drift event last season, that’s at total of 11 track days there were 12 that we all could have gone too if you average that out its a minimum of $80 to enter, so that’s 80X11= 880 , so 500 IS CHEAP.
DRIFT POSSE
I am working on this. i am in the proses of contacting tracks. I am going to meet with a few drift group/communites individualy (S1DC, Drift1, Drift Posse etc.)
I have a few guys in mind to help with Media, track officials, marketing, drivers etc.
My plan is to have 3 demos at three different tracks in Ontatio, to promote the sport and to get more fans/spectators involved in the sport.
Peter has shown some interest in organizing a series for the summer, i am goin to meet with him to talk about what we can do for orginized events.
this will be along prosses (it wont happen overnight) but if we can get a few solid comitted guys to help, I think we can realy make a difference.
We cant sit around and wait for someone to make this paradise for us, so we need to work together and make it happen.
I will make a thread very soon with some more detail after i talk to eveyone and put together a plan of things that need to be done.
Justin
PS. sorry Kdog we ruend your thread!
ill help u guys the best i can…
Over the last 7 years wayne, alex and I have contacted almost every track possible that could hold a drift event with very little luck. You can not rely on driver fees to cover the costs When we try to push prepay as much as we could to secure funds to operate the events we maybe get 10% and the rest show up day of or not at all.
Mix that with venues that are not spectator friendly or close to toronto makes it tough to cover your costs. Like most of us die hard drifting fans it’s not about the money but its hard to watch the bank accounts go down every single year and still have the drive to go another year. At the end of the day Alex Lee and Wayne have been forking out the costs for the track days and taking the financial responsibility.
Its great to hear more guys stepping up to the plate to get this scene going and I really hope drivers here get organized like Quebec.
You guys have great people willing to help so I suggest you all get together and form a solid plan.
50 people taking responsibility for the scene is hell of a lot better than 3 ya know?
I’ll be here to help but you drivers should be looking towards your mentors like Alex, Wayne, Justin, Vlad, Pat and Chris for direction.
Good on ya boys
And Kendrick, this is so true, tbh I can’t believe the amount of unreturned money you guys dump into this out of your own pockets every year, and people still bitch.
I wish I was closer so I could help more first hand, but I’m always willing to do what I can from here, whether it’s organizing, writing up proposal letters, or whatever.
I do want to see this scene flourish because I’ve already dumped a lot of my time into trying to be a productive member of this club and although I’m 7 hrs away and it doesn’t really help for making track events, this is still my club, and you guys are still my friends (those that I know well enough, of course).
I think the biggest thing is people need to realize it’s not all about the money anyway. Yes, financial assistance for running a track day is probably awesome, but really, I’m sure this would be a much easier load for Kendrick and the rest if there were others that could help in any way, volunteers at the track (Hey, no money for tires this week, come out anyway and be a volunteer, don’t just show up to burn tires and expect everything else will always be taken care of for you)… Anything that helps take some of the work load off these guys, especially actually showing up when you sign up for a track day… These guys spend thousands of their own dollars to try and get a track day and only hope they’ll make it back from people showing up… TBH I don’t think I could keep throwing myself at it if I organized these things and kept losing money.
Hell I’ve tried to organize a FREE cruise twice now over the last two years and had everyone but a handful flake, and all that was involved was showing up. Even with that, just the time and effort I put into organizing hotels, lunch stops, a route, etc… And to get zero return? I’m severely questioning trying to run another one this year because with no one willing to show up, it’s just not worth my time.
I’m sure these guys are feeling the same, people need to start really looking at what’s involved making this work.
I’m glad to hear all this talk, but I just hope it doesn’t end up like any other SON idea and it’s just a whole bunch of big talk backed by nothing.
/end rant…