Track Day – Cars Break

The Day I Became a Stunt Driver

The…. one day I got weirdly lucky and landed a stunt driving gig because I wouldn’t let the company’s guy drive my car. Yes, it’s a technicality but dammit I’m the guy driving in a commercial!

I was at Utah Motorsports Campus showing the worker ladies how TopDrift works and they let told me someone was looking for a nice car to film while drifting. There is a drift club in Salt Lake City but I guess their cars were too beat up for prime time.

The client turned out to be Xinsurance, a company who claims they will insure anything. To make the point clear, they show all kinds of extreme sports and the voice over keeps saying “THIS is covered, THIS is covered” etc. The video shoot at UMC was two hours and I was in the commercial for a total of less than two seconds but I’m not complaining. This is the commercial that aired on Monday night football:

Needless to say I was pretty stoked when this came out. I was certain it’s only a matter of time before big brands come knocking and want to pay big bucks for my driving skills. They haven’t yet, but any day now…..

Here’s more footage from the shoot. Hard to be satisfied with .75 seconds of drift footage when you spent two hours thrashing your car around.

TopDrift’s first event in Utah!

Are you a drifter? Do you meander from town to town looking for your next meal or grift? Do you mumble barely audible nonsense as you rummage through people’s trash? Then TopDrift is PERFECT for you!

Every guy out there thinks he’s the best driver in the world. Or, at least could be if he just had the right shot, coaching, budget, etc. I’d also like to argue that drifting is indeed the universal language. Everyone loves sliding a car around in a snowy parking lot. Everyone has a dream car. But what do you really want to do in that dream car? Compete for fastest lap at Laguna Seca? Win a glorious race against top competition and against all odds? I’d argue nay.

What people want more than anything is to burn rubber in a controlled slide. All over the world, all cultures want this more than anything. To the world’s humans I present: TopDrift.net

TopDrift allows everyone to enjoy the thrill of drifting in a controlled, safe environment with an added twist of competition and fun.

Normally formula drift is scored like figure skating – very qualitative and based on opinion. Winners smile big while losers cry foul. Not with TopDrift. We have objective telemetry equipment measuring your drift angle so we know exactly how many points you scored. And how many you didn’t because of a spin. Our first event is July 5, 2019 at Utah Motorsports Campus. Come on out and enjoy!

Track Day: Utah Motorsport Campus West with 2018 BMW M3 Manual

In 2006 Utah was given one of the greatest gifts a state can get: an international-quality racetrack. Back then it was called Miller Motorsports Park and it was sponsored by the legendary Larry H. Miller of car dealership and NBA Jazz owner fame.

The track recently changed ownership and is now called Utah Motorsports Campus. They hold races like Moto America, Super Moto, Pirelli World Challenge, and many more. In addition to big racing series they also have open track days for which I am incredibly grateful.

This track is unique in that it can be broken up into 3 different configurations: East, West, and Outer. East and West are both 2.2 miles and Outer is 3.06 which makes it one of the longer tracks in the USA. One neat feature about UMC is that it’s one of the safer racetracks out there. Many of the turns have a very large dirt area to slide off into instead of greeting a concrete wall. Les Tracks:

East is really fun because it still has the “attitudes” which is basically a 3-part chicane and is super fun.

I’ve only done West once, and it’s very different from East as you’ll find out in the video.

Outer is the best because it has all the best turns of the track and a freaking HUGE 1/2 mile straight. Some bikes can get up to 200mph on this part. My record thus far is in my Dinan Stage 1 340i @ 143mph but I haven’t had a chance to take the M3 on it just yet.

And this is what the track looks like all together:

And now for the good stuff: watching me make a fool out of myself trying to chase down a $100k+ non street-legal lotus driven by a former champion motorcycle racer. It was still a ton of fun and I benefitted directly from UMC’s nice dirt slide off areas.

I did have some good laps, though, and my best of the day was a 1:57.06, which is about on par with some of the amateur racing clubs out there with fully prepped Miatas or Porsche 944s. Anyone who has done track days knows that keeping up with any class of racing while in a full interior daily driver is not too shabby.