Competition Format - Understanding EDC

As Drifting is a judged sport, it is won or lost on outright performance judging to a set criteria,much the same as any other judged sport, say… Ice Skating for instance. Unlike a ‘race’ its winner is not decided on who crosses the finish line first or in how much time. 

We have a judging panel which are looking for 4 main elements of criteria, these are:

• Speed – Highest speed possible into the first corner and throughout the course
• Angle – Biggest sideways angle on entry and throughout the course
• Line – Cars must follow the designated ‘Drift Line’ which is sometimes different from a ‘racing line’
• Overall Presentation –  Overall appearance of the entire run, how many oversteer corrections, tyre smoke etc

Previously in our Championship and currently still in others around the world use a qualifying session, with each car running the circuit on its own and being judged and scored according to performance to decide its competition placing, however for 2009 we introduced a revolutionary system which is geared more towards crowd participation and excitment for those watching at the track leaves leaves the battles more to chance to mix up the field and create unknowns in the competitions, increasing the excitement and drama for the spectators and teams.

 Our competition twin Drift battles are decided as follows:

When the drivers are practicing we select a member the crowd pull numbered balls out of two bags, the balls relate to the drivers numbers/names. As the balls and names are pulled out the twin Drift pairings are established as a completely random process although the two bags are split between the strongest point scores and the weakest.

The cars are then run in twin Drift battles with both drivers having the same focus having to battle against each other within the judging criteria trying to out-do one another and maybe even overtake, pushing each other for go faster while maintaining maximum angle. These battles are scores are based on a maximum of 10 points between both cars, such as 6-4 or 7-3,or an even run as 5-5 for example. Each twin battle consists of 3 runs, a warm up and two scored runs with the cars alternating as the leading car.