DriftCon 2023 Official Event Coverage

This June marked our tenth year hosting our early summer event at Evergreen Speedway (not counting 2020 for obvious reasons) and 2023 was our largest June event to date!

Photos by Brady Gunderson, Michael Ericson, and Nick Foskette. Text by Matt Haugness.

For this event we worked with Kevin Guthrie/Evergreen Drift to come up with a completely new 32 driver competition with large payouts for podium finishers. The payouts for 1-3 were the same as the Big Bounty Tournament in April with half the number of drivers! The name for this was the High Line Shootout since it would be held on the 3/8 bank. We sold out of the competition a few weeks before the event but added a few extra drivers to the roster just in case we lost any right before qualifying. Since we had extra drivers, drivers needed to qualify to compete in the bracket.

Practice was held on Friday June 2 and most High Line Shootout competitors were present. The layout was planned to be the Mini Irwindale which is the opposite bank from the traditional 3/8 layout that many drivers are familiar with. The last time this layout was ran in competition at a DriftCon event was in 2016. However, during practice it didn’t seem to flow as well as it did before. Even with moving the position of the clipping point in the middle of the infield only a few drivers were able to put down solid runs.

After considering safety with the wall present and the desire to have solid competition, we allowed the drivers to vote if they would prefer to keep this layout or go to a traditional 3/8 layout. Ideally this is not something that would have been done the morning of the event, but a vast majority of the drivers voted to transition to the traditional 3/8 layout.

Qualifying was a standard two run format starting with the high numbered drivers first. They needed to put a score on the board to compete in the bracket. Unfortunately, 6 drivers scored 0 points on both of their runs and did not make the show. A 32 driver bracket was created and 6 bye runs were in place. The top qualifiers still had to make a solo run to advance.

Competition was intense and it was great to have so many Canadian drivers that we recognized from past events at DriftCon after a long break. Tyler Mayer drove like a machine most of the day and managed to win the entire thing but only after some very close battles including a One More Time with Cole Townsend in the Final 4. Brandon Marcus was on point all day and after some inconsistent appearances at past events it was amazing to see him driving so well in his LS swapped 240SX. Brandon ended up in second place after a close battle with Tyler. Cole battled Jayce Habich (winner of the Big Bounty Tournament) for third place and managed to take the win and the final podium spot.

SEE HIGH LINE SHOOTOUT BRACKET

Here is a full replay of CW11 Home Track Heroes so you can watch all of the battles!

The Hoon-Off was next with a returning competitor bringing TWO cars to the competition for the first time. Jesse Nelson in his freshly built El Camino put on an epic show reminiscent of his previous Camaro performances but with an old school muscle car vibe. Jesse was awarded a trophy and $250 cash! Also noteworthy was the burnout by Garret Therriault in his freshly built Ride The Wall/Facing Fentanyl CTS-V.

Our Team Tandem Competition has been a staple of our June events since the very start. The guys at Goon Squad NW had won multiple Team Tandem events in a row and this year they decided to step away from competition to help create an even better show for the drivers and fans. This meant creating a completely unique GOON layout on a private day and then doing the actual qualifying/competition judging the day of the event. With 14 teams signed up – a good amount of cash was on the line! $1750 for first, $875 for second, and $525 for third.

We were running a little later than planned due to the High Line Shootout taking longer but we still had a full practice/qualifying session for Goon Squad NW to create the bracket. After about 45 minutes of practice the 2 best runs of each team were assigned a “score” by the judges. This made the bracket and the two highest qualified teams (Ratchet Slayers at P1 and Ride The Wall at P2) automatically moved on to the Great 8. See the full list of competing teams and their drivers here.

SEE TEAM TANDEM BRACKET

For Team Tandem each team got two chances to put on their best run unless a One More Time was called. The team with the single best run advanced in the bracket. Team Rocket (Basset Popal, Eddi Hughes, and Neil Poyorena) impressed the judges enough to win two sets of battles and finish in the Final 4. They were bested by Ride The Wall (Royce Tanner, Brendan Therriault, Garret Therriault, and Dario Retych) who managed to secure a spot on the podium in third place. Ratchet Slayers (Jarret Robertson, Matt Poyorena, and JR Goodwin) drove extremely well overall, but it was Proximity 3rd (Tyler Mayer, Simeon Mckinley, and Joseph Lin) that beat them in the final battle. This meant that Tyler Mayer had the top spot of the podium in both competitions at DriftCon 2023!

Special thanks to Jon Weigel, John Danyal, Julio Losh, and Junior Chhuon for putting the effort in to better the drifting community and the show. They will be back and competing at DriftCon Afterdark on September 30 so be sure to show up to watch them drive then!

The Trackside Car Show was held alongside the track as normal and was organized by ImportMeet.com. We had some amazing and unique competitors in attendance this year along with some of the regular builds that attend almost every DriftCon event. Daniel Nguyen in his 1996 Acura NSX took Best of Show after refreshing his car in the offseason. Best of Show Runner Up went to Eric Bullis in his updated 1993 Toyota Supra RZ.

Some awards were determined by our traditional voting method but Best of Show, Best Import, Best Domestic, and Best Make awards were judged by our judging staff (Rob Evo and Hiro Kanno – two top tier winners of the past). See the full list of award winners and gallery below.

Thank you to everyone that attended DriftCon 2023!

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

Official Tire Supplier:
Tire Streets

Major Sponsors:
ODF USA
The Import Guys

Sponsors:
Bardahl On The Go
DRIFT HQ
Nutbusters Design
Redstart Racing
Accelera Tires
Drift Enthusiast Magazine

Vendors:
StanceWars
Let’s Drift RC
Out of Love
Knight Shifts
Direct Import Parts Shop – DIP Shop
MoTork Vinyl
Chasing Legends
Urbn Panda
TDSR
Facing Fentanyl