onehundredoctane

Ok everyone, myself and a friend are currently working on a drift practice at Florence Civic Center here in SC, it's roughly 2 hours from Charlotte, and 1 hour and 10 minutes from Myrtle Beach.

The purpose of this event is to provide a legal venue at an affordable price to participants for drifting. When more information becomes avalable I will pass it along to everyone here.

At this point the purpose of this post is to gauge interest for this event and make sure it will at least pay for itself. Cost to drivers will hopefully be less than $100, with a preregistration period before the event where drivers will be able to reserve their position for the event at a lower cost than what will be charged the day of at the gate. No date has been set yet, but for now we are shooting for a date in the next two to three months minimum.

Helmets will be required, no bicycle helmets here, full face helmets with chin straps will be required. Tech inspections will be performed before the event starts. When more information becomes available I will pass it along to everyone here.

To give everyone interested in the event an idea of how big the course may be, the main area that will be used for the event is approx.100 yards wide, and 200 yards long. For now this is all the information I have, please post here if you are interested in attending after we set a date.

SR2Zero

I'd possibly be interested, depending on when my car got done. Sounds good though, more and more local events is good.

onehundredoctane

^that's it?

come on people!

I've spoke with the event corrdinator, and we have a date set for a demo to show the operations and event corrdinator that the event we are wanting can be conducted safely, and show them possible track lay outs also to get their approval.

please, if you are interested post here. The more people we get involved early on, the better chance we have of making a go of this!

onehundredoctane

spoke with the event coordinator today, we're holding a test run for a select few drivers in the near future, this is also to help the event center see what kind of event we are wanting to host. hope it all goes well.

drift Kid

This Shit Gonna Be Dope As Hell..

onehundredoctane

we are holding a demo next week to show the facility director, and some staff, etc. exactly what drifting is, and how safe we plan to make the event. Hope everything goes according to plan so we might be invited to host there.

onehundredoctane

The Civic Center is gonna be a no go. The surface is too rough.

Looking into Darlington Raceway, I'll keep this thread updated.

SR2Zero

Still looking forward to this... Keep us updated!

onehundredoctane

Should be going back to Darlington this week to go over a few more things with the head of marketing, see what we can work out. I'm scared the sheer cost of the facility might hurt this idea. But everyone keep your hopes up.

onehundredoctane

Moving on, I met with Darlington Raceway last week, sounds promising if we can get some details worked out and do a demo there to see what area should be used, here are some pics for you guys.

This area is a small parking lot in the infield that has been used for a drift demo before I think by Dodge or Mopar (correct me if I'm wrong), it's roughly 450 ft x 284 ft.


Option 2 is around the garage area that the Nascar teams use, the drifting area would be the area where the haulers park.



size is 750 ft long x 117 ft wide on the short end and 185 ft wide on the long end
^there were some Craftsman Trucks teams there testing, so I didn't get to inspect the aprons of the track at the bottoms of the turns, I've already been told it would be okay if we have an event there to use the aprons. I'm sure there will be strict guidelines for that.


^ ok, I also asked about garage useage, and that was approved as well, so if we drift on the one side of the garage, the other side can be used for working on cars, shade, etc.


^ not sure how many people would be interested (pending the event actually happening) but we have the go ahead to buy 98 octane at the pump. (sorry, no onehundred, :angry )

The third area we have that could be used is a small cart track around the back side of the raceway, I only got a few pics of it. I meant to climb to the top of the bleachers and get an over head pic, but further down you'll see an aerial shot that shows it better.

size is 1,099 ft long x 180 ft wide on the short end and 220 wide on the long end
^this area is lined with used racing tires, and chalked off as well.

I didn't get a chance to edit the pic below, but if you look closely you can see the areas that I took pics of.





you wouldn't think that the apron would go that far back into the infield area, but it's all new asphalt there, and the old pit road leads into that apron, so it's not silly to think we couldn't work with it using old pit road as a staging. Anything is possible at this point, esp. the fact that they require a HUGE insurance policy. It's not silly to think that the old pit row that leads to this turn couldn't be used as staging and to get speed up. We'll see how the demo goes in August.

SR2Zero

Sounds awesome... So when could be a good estimate of when this whole deal is going down?

onehundredoctane

We're having a demo there middle to late August, testing each area that we have the option of using, it'll probbly be a whole day out there. After that we will be talking things over and trying to get reasonable quotes from insurance companies. I knew going in that the insurance would be more than the cost of the facility, and I was right on that one. The track requires fire and safety personnel at all events and they are limiting the number of cars that can participate due to their insurance regulations. This isn't set in stone yet, but I'm hoping to make the early part of the day a practice for all participants and the later half a competition if they allow us to run tandems.

To give you a straight answer, I don't know. There are just too many variables right now, but if we do go through with this it will be late 2008 or early 2009.

onehundredoctane

Update we are testing at Darlington the last week of this month, and word on the street is that Drift 411 might be getting involved.

Stay tuned!

SR2Zero

I'm ready to see this come through. If it isn't too expensive ( i pray not ) I'll be driving hopefully.

Keep us updated!

SR2Zero

Any updates on this yet?