This is the last part of the three-part series about the wonderful misadventures of Blooper, a drift car attending a trackcross event! If you haven’t read the first two parts, you should! You can find part one here and part two here.
You would think that a drift car can’t cause many problems when it’s sitting still, but oh no, it can. They shouldn’t be left unattended for long. Blooper summarizes every standard issue with a 350Z, with his own problematic quirks on top. On Saturday night during Rainbow Road in West Virginia, a heavy storm rolled through and soaked everything. Blooper’s lifelong goal of becoming a hardtop bathtub was fulfilled, and we found him full of standing water on Sunday morning before we hit the road course. It’s not the kind of wet and wild I want when knee deep in the passenger seat, but Blooper does what he wants.
A friend came in clutch with a mini shop vac (thanks Sprinks!) and the forecast for the day looked clear with cooler temperatures, so the broken AC wasn’t as much of an issue. Later, on the long trip home through another storm, I would learn that water was pouring in through the upper door speakers.
Because the road course was higher speed than the triple-skidpad and surrounded by forests, we had an extended drivers meeting in the morning that mostly boiled down to “pavement good, grass bad” which was even written on the whiteboard in big letters. Stay on the surface where you have traction and stay off the surface where you don’t.
I had no interest in hamming it up for a non-existent crowd, so my morning session runs were relatively tame. I slid a couple corners at lower speeds and got a feel for what Blooper was like when turning at higher speeds. The welded diff still made itself known when trying to turn, and the derpy blue drift car shovel-nosed his way through winding curves like a bulldozer on a country road. It wasn’t elegant, but this was more like a joyride than anything and I was just happy to not be cooking in the heat for the first time in a week.
I took several ride-alongs who were entertained by the speed and how silly Blooper felt while turning. Blasting Chappell Roan at full volume on a big kid track in my fastest car? Hell yeah! Again, we were at the bottom on the timing chart, but I didn’t care. When the afternoon rolled around, the course changed directions again and I was feeling more confident in this new format.
The final turn was downhill and hooked left into a straight to the finish line, which passed in front of the spectators in the paddock and snaked right to return to the grid. It was the only spot on the track to really show off, so I flagged Dom over to ride shotgun with me. We were jamming like true Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girls, having a wild time on the twisty course, and I punched into third gear to send it.
“Good luck, babe!” said Blooper.
The moment my foot left the clutch, I knew we were wrong. Wrong position. Wrong speed. Wrong angle. Stock steering met full lock and there was nothing left to give as all four tires lost their grip. Dom and I watched through the windshield then the passenger window as the vehicle rotated and the pavement ran out. Blooper’s bovine urge to eat grass took over and we went flying off the course. Grass, twigs, and foliage scattered past the windshield in slow motion like a cartoon.
It was a big spin, but I held the clutch and didn’t let him stall. In drifting you learn how to spin out before you learn how to slide, and the main priority is to keep moving. The moment we stopped rotating, I dumped Blooper into first gear and pedaled the throttle to tip back towards the pavement to get moving. Everyone in the forest around that course could hear the desperate trombone braaap, braaap, BRAAAAP as he scrambled off the grass to safe ground and went speeding across the finish line.
There were no spectators, so no one saw us eat shit, right? We didn’t slow anyone down or get in the way – it was totally fine! I gracefully slid to the right around the curve in front of the paddock to get back to the grid lineup… and saw the timing and safety director standing there waiting for me. Whoops. Turns out the entire timing crew had front row seats to that corner getting wasted like a first date on a Friday night.
After a brief chat, we were cleared to continue and warned to not touch the grass again. The quick recovery was appreciated but the romping through foliage was (understandably) not, and I admitted my fault immediately. Dom got the entire “spin fast, eat grass” incident on video, which was brilliant. Join the Out Motorsports Discord to see that and more mayhem from behind the scenes.
When I pulled to the starting line afterwards, I was flagged to stop as one of the crew members bent down below the hood to grab something. I half-expected a piece of the flappy, cracked bumper to be hanging off. Instead, I was offered a massive chunk of dirt and grass that Blooper had collected as a snack for later.
The rest of the event went smoothly. Blooper continued to put down garbage times and ultimately came in dead last for timing, but he won the hearts of nearly everyone. This stupid-looking, grass-munching, puddle-filled drift car had tottered a very long way from home to come play with others in a sport neither of us had done before. We met dozens of new friends, saw some amazing drives, and this was the highlight of an otherwise depressing summer. Several people came to this event not knowing anyone and left with a pile of new friends. It was sad to depart on the long trek home, but it was worth all the effort.
Make it happen. Book the trip. Take the time off work. Drive to a track or road rally or meet-up with us. More events will be coming out soon, and I’m looking forward to meeting more new faces. You might catch a certain drift car crashing another event.