Inside Formula Drift: How to Turn Pro

October 25, 2013
Story By
Kristin Cline

People such as Vaughn Gittin Jr., Michael Essa, and Forrest Wang don’t merely happen upon a career in driving professionally in Formula Drift. The road to becoming a professional drift driver is a long one. Not everyone gets their license the same way – ten years ago when drivers like Gittin and Forsberg started, the process was much different than it is now…and it continues to evolve. Racing at any professional level takes much more than merely driving skill. Cultivating a team that can work with sponsors, build a competitive car, keep it race-worthy, and travel to events cross-country takes a lot of time, money, and perseverance.

Turning Pro at the Outset

When beginning as a new series in 2003, the best way to ensure that teams were serious and up-to-par was to require a security deposit. While this provided good faith between teams and the series, it wasn’t the best way to ensure only experienced, top drivers were competing.

Yearly Licensing Competition

Formula Drift moved on to holding yearly end-of-year competitions, with the top 34 amateur drivers waged against one another during a single weekend. The top 8 would receive their professional Formula Drift licenses. However, going from competing in one region to a national series is a huge leap – not only for a team but for a car as well. What may be the best built car on a lower level of competition may not have the slightest chance when it comes to a professional series. Even now, with more rules meant to keep the field competitive in Formula Drift, “The top keeps getting closer and closer [in points] and then there’s a gap and it basically just falls from there,” notes Kevin Wells, Formula Drift’s Technical Manager.

Formula Drift Pro Am

Four years ago, Formula Drift began putting a ladder system in place, allowing drivers to step up in competition leading to pro more gradually. The Formula Drift Pro Am Affiliate system is an extension to the Formula Drift Pro Championship, made up of various regional point series' that caters to the team/driver in transition from amateur to professional level. Top drivers in these Pro-Am series are awarded Formula Drift professional licenses at the end of each year.

Future Formula Drift Licensing

Kevin notes there are still hugely significant hurdles to overcome in order to become competitive at a professional level. Further advancements in the ladder system are to come - most likely including a system that will segment cars more, leading drivers to develop in one platform and than graduate into something else on a higher level, rather than trying to advance a vehicle from Pro-Am to FD alongside its driver. “The cars theoretically are just gonna keep getting faster and faster. But, I think that’s more of a reason to have the middle series…so that is where you can do driver development, and then you can put them into another car, instead of having that car come up and then obviously it works better." For drivers working their way towards pro, up and coming Pro Am driver Mike Pollard provided his two-cents as reported by OMGdrift, “I think people really want to get their pro license and really want to just compete at that top series, but they don’t realize it’s just a waste of money and time. You might get a top 32, but you won’t go any further. Guys just really need to focus on driving local and as many series’ and as many events as you can travel to with stiffer competition to push your level. Everyone just needs to realize, I hate to say it, it’s not easy, but it’s not hard getting handed an FD license these days because you can do it in your own region. And then you show up to the big show and a lot of people take off a bit more than they can chew. I’ve learned a lot this year with car set up, ratios, taking it easy in practice, not pushing too hard. There’s a lot of things you can learn you don’t think you can learn that driving more will teach you.” -Kristin Cline

Catch the rest of DrivingLine's Inside Formula Drift Series:

...come back Monday for a Behind the Scenes look at FD Round 7: Irwindale!