Burning rubber

Yellow Cab and Army Navy are in the food biz, but they also support triathlon, cycling, and drifting teams. The two companies celebrated their teams’ accomplishments last Sept. 15 with an event called “Operation: Pit Stop” inside an inflatable tent in Fort Bonifacio that, from a distance, looked to me like the gigantic love child of a marshmallow and an igloo. I call it the “marshmalligloo.” It was quite comfortable inside. The air conditioning was neither too hot nor too cold, and the lighting was well executed: a good balance between practical lighting and the fancy lights casting pretty moving patterns of violet and green onto the white walls. Some time after the scheduled start, the event finally got underway. We watched a charming presentation about the different teams and their achievements and after that, the hosts and the team representatives spoke. Then the hosts generously announced that we had the opportunity to hop in a drift car as it did some tricks. I was the first to take a ride.

Outside the marshmalligloo, a crowd had gathered in the parking lot. I opened the door of the car I was to ride in. There was no passenger seat (or seatbelt, for that matter). Somehow I was to make myself comfortable. I glanced over at the driver’s racing seat and instantly preferred it. ‘This is why it pays to be the driver,’ I thought to myself as I wedged myself into a corner and held on to the roll cage, trying to find a position where I wasn’t poked in the back by odd pieces of metal.

The driver got into the car. He took off his Yellow Cab jersey with a dramatic flourish and handed it to a teammate waiting outside, revealing a tight black muscle shirt. His game face was on the entire time. After confirming I was ready, he started the car and proceeded to

Taking it to the ground: The S13 coupe as it gets in position for another set of donuts. Photos by WILLY SAW

execute several extremely tight doughnuts around his fellow teammates. This is much more complicated than it sounds on paper. Each maneuver couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, but it seemed much longer while I was hanging onto the bars of the roll cage. I knew I had braced myself well because I wasn’t hitting everything inside.

At times, we were less than six inches away from a living, breathing human being and we were drifting fast enough to make the outside world go into a mad blur. Twice while I was riding the driver deliberately had the tires smoking profusely, which made everything look even more impressive than it already was, albeit with the dual drawback of limited visibility and lung poisoning. It did not deter him or his driving ability. His teammates really seemed to trust his driving; a stranger unfamiliar with the superior automotive skills of this man might have simply collapsed to the ground, the closeness of the swiftly moving car giving the aforesaid stranger’s legs a gentle gift: the gift of the consistency of mush. This driver’s precision with a vehicle was astounding. About halfway through his routine, we switched to a car that was marginally smaller because he determined there wasn’t enough space in the parking lot to complete a particular fancy maneuver he wanted to do. (The apparent cause was a Ford Expedition that may or may not have been parked in a place it shouldn’t have been parked in.)

After my ride was done, I spoke with a friendly fellow named Ryan Agoncillo, also on the Yellow Cab drift team and a figure in the local entertainment industry. He identified the two cars I had ridden in as the coupe and fastback variations of the Nissan Silvia S13. They were gray market imports from Japan and had to be converted to left-hand drive. According to him, with enough skill any rear wheel drive car can drift although certain things make it much easier, among those being a two-way limited slip differential, a stiff, lowered suspension, high-performance tires, and a good amount of horsepower. Someone interested in getting into the sport could buy a secondhand stock Nissan Cefiro for P150,000 to P200,000 and spend roughly an equal amount on upgrades to end up with a car geared specifically for drifting. “The sport can be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be, bearing in mind that there are plenty of junkyard gems to be found (in the Philippines) that perform well for the money you spend,” said Agoncillo. He first got into the sport about three years ago, but only considers himself to have “gotten the hang of it” in the past year. I suspect he was being quite modest.

I left before the event was done due to hunger pangs from no vegetarian food being offered at dinner (a bowl of nachos was my only option — man cannot live on nachos alone!), but from what I understand the party that followed was totally kick-ass. There was an open bar with a sign that said cocktails served were mojitos, margaritas, and something titled only “vodka and rum.” The first two were fine by me. The third sounded like it would only appeal to someone already sloshed beyond the capacity to taste alcohol. Or maybe it’s a special drink reserved for hardcore athletes and automotive savants.

Ryan Agoncillo also mentioned to me an institution that offers a full-day lesson on drifting where all you need to do is show up with a driver’s license, the clothes you are (or should be) wearing and money in your pocket equaling P13,500 which is the all-inclusive per-student price, with a minimum of four students in a class.

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For more information on acquiring fast and furious driving skills, go to www.dmfdrift.com. There is nothing on their website that indicates anything to do with “vodka and rum.”

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You may e-mail the author at onceinabluemoon.ys@gmail.com.