Climbing aboard gnarly Formula Drift cars and a 911 GT3 ahead of IndyCar's Long Beach Grand Prix.
Next weekend, IndyCar racing takes over the streets of Long Beach, California, again for a weekend of screaming motorsport fun. Part of the festivities in addition to the open-wheeled racing will include a demonstration by Formula Drift of the increasingly popular sport's best drivers in some of the most aggressive cars imaginable.
Formula Drift's season opened the weekend before the official Grand Prix with two days of competition on Friday and Saturday, April 1 and 2, whittling down the field to 32 contestants, then 16, and eventually a final winner. Ahead of the action, FD invited me along with select media and celebrity guests to a day of practice sessions as the drivers dialed in their cars on the blocked-off Streets of the Long Beach circuit. Riding in some of the gnarliest drift cars on the planet sounded too good to pass up—and the day only got better from there.
Welcome To The Streets Of Long Beach
Despite growing up as an automotive-obsessed Los Angeleno, I never previously visited the Long Beach Grand Prix (mostly to avoid traffic but also because IndyCar never quite made it onto my radar). Driving down the 405, I definitely wished the day focused on Formula 1, rather than the American open-wheeled version, but with the recent news that F1 added a Las Vegas race to the calendar in addition to this year's Austin GP, perhaps Long Beach will play host to the likes of Hamilton, Verstappen, LeClerc, and Sainz someday soon. With the success of Drive to Survive on Netflix, additional expansion into the American market seems likely.
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IndyCar Returns To Los Angeles
Driving to Long Beach proved easier than expected, though the actual circuit around Shoreline Drive remains blocked off for most of the daytime leading up to the Grand Prix. Promotional opportunities for brands and celebrities alike included ridealongs in two-seater open-wheeled racecars, something I jotted into my mental notes for next time around. On media day, the drift teams open up their pit crews for anyone invited to get up close and personal, too.
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Title Sponsor Acura With NSX And TLX Ridealongs
Of course, as title sponsor, Acura offered rides in the NSX Type S supercar, plus a couple of TLX sedans. Somehow, next to the raucous drift cars and screaming IndyCars, the hybrid NSX sounded relatively tame—even if the all-wheel-drive layout probably allows for some pretty impressive lap times.
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Drift Practice Begins
But the sensory overload from Formula Drift fully overwhelmed the entire scene. Even just firing up the enormously powerful, unmuffled engines creating an echoic sensation off the shorefront apartment buildings overlooking Long Beach. And then as the drivers spun pirouettes warming up their tires, before shredding out at top speed through the drifting course, earplugs almost felt required for health purposes.
I first climbed aboard with Ryan Tuerck for a lap in his Toyota GR Corolla hatchback, though the actual time spent waiting in line, then warming up his tires, felt much longer and more informative than the actual 23-second-or-so drift course. Tuerck wanted to get as many practice laps in as possible, despite swapping journalists and celebs into his passenger seat between each go-round, but still fielded my questions about his car and team tactics with patience.
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Dialing In The Cars
All the FD drivers wanted to maximize their practice time throughout the day, given that Long Beach represents the season opener. But the teams also needed to dial in power output, suspension adjustments, and steering alignment between practice sessions. In a rush to get as much done as possible before the actual competition began, drivers even picked up wrenches to climb in and around their cars.
My second ridealong, I hopped in with Odi Bakchis as he began a second session driving his supercharged LS-swapped Nissan Silvia S15. He spent most of the time waiting in line to warm up his tires on the radio with his team discussing how to best fine tune his steering for the Long Beach layout, but gave me a little primer on the car before launching us off into the first corner at full throttle. Another 20 seconds later and I understood why he felt like his car needed a bit of work, as he seemed a little tentative approaching the outside walls with the tail of the Silvia.
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Stripped, Gutted, And Caged
In a funny twist of fate, the two drivers I rode with, Tuerck and Bakchis, ended up dueling in Saturday's final four. My gut feeling about Tuerck's practice session feeling more confident from the passenger seat proved true. In the GR Corolla hatch, he ended up qualifying with the most points and then took home the first win of the season on Saturday, as well, which Toyota execs must have loved given the official announcement that the GR Corolla will actually hit American dealers, unlike the GR Yaris.
But the all-wheel-drive hot hatch that Toyota plans to sell on these shores won't look much like Tuerck's car, pictured above with a stripped, gutted, and caged interior in addition to the rear-wheel-drive conversion, massive E-brake handle, and four-speed manual. Tuerck told me the little four-cylinder engine under the hood cranks out around 1,000 horsepower thanks to a nitrous system—a bit more than the 300 ponies on tap from the stock car's turbo-three (which will also mate to a six-speed stick, presumably to wrangle out better wheel-torque performance).
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Scoring A 911 GT3 Hot Lap
After the two FD ridealongs and some time spent checking out the teamwork on display in the pits, I spotted Porsche brand ambassador and former factory driver loafing around next to a bright yellow 992-generation GT3. As a promo for the nearby Porsche Experience Center in Carson, Porsche sent Long and the 911 down to the makeshift circuit for ridealongs—luckily, I managed to squeeze into the final slot of the day for a hot lap around the full 1.968-mile IndyCar course. Long wasted no time, launching off the line as I tried to hold onto my camera and then honing each corner at top speed to show off the rear-engined GT3's impressive handling. I asked him whether he prefers the newly unveiled GT4 RS, which for the first and only time in Cayman history employs a true GT3 engine mounted amidships, but he still loves the 911 a bit more. Talk about weight distribution, wider tires, or a bit more power all you want, but when Patrick Long says he'd take the GT3, maybe enthusiasts lining up to pay huge dealer markups on the GT4 RS need to hold their horses.
All in all, an opportunity to ride in FD cars definitely turned into a fun and informative day, as I witnessed the impressive engineering and teamwork that goes into successful drifting and even managed to talk my way into a hot lap with a recently retired motorsport legend. But ridealongs only go so far and, as usual, on the drive back home, I found myself thinking about Steve McQueen's old quote about racing, and spending the rest of my life waiting.
Sources: formulad.com, indycar.com, youtube.com, toyota.com, and porschedriving.com.
Hot Review: Green Apple Nissan Silvia S15 Transforms From Drift-Missile To Showroom Perfection Read NextShareTweetShareEmail Related TopicsAbout The AuthorMichael Van Runkle(2025 Articles Published)
Michael Van Runkle grew up surrounded by Los Angeles car culture, going to small enthusiast meets and enormous industry shows. He learned to drive stick shift in a 1948 Chevy pickup with no first gear and currently dailies his 1998 Mitsubishi Montero while daydreaming about one day finishing up that Porsche 914 project. He's written in various media since graduating from UC Berkeley in 2010 and started at HotCars in February 2018.
