DriftCon 2022 Official Event Coverage - June 4, 2022

Even though we now have three events on the calendar our June event has always been the “original” DriftCon and what started everything 8 years ago! On June 4, 2022 we held the EVD ProAm Shootout to determine the Evergreen Drift Formula Drift PROSPEC license alongside our Team Tandem Competition and trackside car show by ImportMeet.com.

Photos by Brady Gunderson and Michael Ericson. Text by Matt Haugness.

With the change from multiple rounds of ProAm every year to a single event to earn a license the decision was made early in the year by Evergreen that this would be a 5/8th’s round.

Due to changes in the licensing with Formula Drift every “shootout” type event now requires approximately 16 drivers in attendance to award one license. For two licenses the event needs 32 drivers. Getting this many drivers is always a challenge due to the safety requirements and the commitment required to drive the big bank. In the end, we had 14 experienced drivers at the event and it was great to see so many of them in attendance!

SEE SHOOTOUT BRACKET

Qualifying was done by random drawing and since this was a Double Elimination Bracket each driver would have a second chance if they got knocked out early. This bracket style was a bit confusing at first, but it led to some extremely fun to watch battles and intense rematches.

Kory Keezer drove his twin turbo LS swapped FD RX-7 with the skill we all remember to advance all the way through the Winner’s bracket to the final battle with the winner of the Loser’s bracket which was Jacob Corbett. Jacob also drove extremely well the entire day and managed to beat Kory in the first matchup in the finals. This was the first battle as Kory lost during the entire competition. This meant that Jacob had to “prove it” by beating Kory one more time to get the top spot on the podium. In their final battle Jacob had a mechanical failure on his car which led to it sliding into the 5/8th’s wall which ended his day. This was an unfortunate way to end the event, but he still finished second and Chase Schmidt finished third. Kory Keezer was awarded the Formula Drift PROSPEC license for 2022 and we can’t wait to see what he does with it next year!

Watch the CW11 Home Track Heroes for the full Shootout competition here.

Since we had off and on rain at the event it was a challenge to hold our Hoon-Off… Thankfully we had about 2 hours of dry weather which was just enough to dry the track to make sure there was lots of tire smoke. We had a total of 5 competitors which was considered a sold-out competition and a newcomer – Jesse Nelson in a 2002 Chevy Camaro SS convertible put on a heck of a show! Ben Whyte was impressed enough to choose him the winner after he popped a tire during the burnout. Tory Jelinek and Joshua Kubic also popped tires and it was an epic competition overall this year! Look for this to happen again at DriftCon Afterdark on September 24!

Despite running about 1 hour behind schedule we moved quickly into our Team Tandem Competition. This is a crowd favorite every event and we sold out of the 16 team spots quickly this year.

See the full list of teams with their respective drivers above.

The rain slowed the competition, but it was still a great show. Our judges (Nikolay Konstantinov, Patrick Heald, and Jake Hakarai) spent 30 minutes watching practice to qualify the teams and build the Top 16 bracket. We moved immediately into competition and due to time constraints only 1 run per team in the Top 16 was used to determine which team moved on. Then once we moved onto the Great 8 and deeper into the bracket each team had 2 runs to put on their best performance and knock the other team out.

With 16 teams signed up – real cash was on the line! $2000 for first, $1000 for second, and $600 for third. GoonSquad put on the best overall show and got first. This is their 4th time winning a Team Tandem event at a DriftCon event! Second was IGNANT who has been on the podium in the past and third was a new team – Team AATTAK. Congratulations to all the teams that drove so well together all day!

SEE TEAM TANDEM BRACKET

The Great 75 Car Show was held alongside the track like normal. We had some amazing and unique competitors in attendance this year along with some of the regular builds that attend almost every DriftCon event.

Some awards were determined by our traditional voting method but Best of Show, Best Import, Best Domestic, Best European, and Best Make awards were judged by our judging staff (Andrew Vun and Eric Bullis – two top tier winners of the past). We also made some tweaks to the voted awards to allow for some interesting changes in who won. See the full list of award winners and gallery below.

Thank you to everyone that attended DriftCon 2022!

Special thanks to all of our vendors and the following sponsors for their support of this event:

Major Sponsors:
The Import Guys
TDSR – Track Drift Stance Rally

Sponsors:
Nutbusters Design
Drift Enthusiast Magazine
Redstart Racing

Vendors:
StanceWars
OUT OF LOVE
Kimoji Style
Three Strikes Co.
Direct Import Parts Shop
Emerald City Drones & RC