I hope you had a thrill for Christmas. You know, a swim with crocodiles, dolphins, sharks, silverfish or sky diving, bungy diving, jet fighter flying, V8 driving, rally driving or radical driving.
If you did, you probably bought it through one of the two companies, Adrenalin and Red Balloon, that dominate the experience industry.
Their business model is very simple. The two companies act as the marketing arm of a supplier and in return take about 30 per cent of the price you pay for, say, a jump from a plane or, even more exciting, eight laps around Perth Airport in a Nissan GT-R.
The downside of this is the supplier loses a lot of margin they can make up for only by lifting prices (hard to do in the highly competitive thrill-a-minute business) or push as many people as possible through as they can.
As you know here at The Weekend Australian Motoring we are always putting our body on the line for our readers. Phil, Mark and I are like the Choice magazine of thrills. Last year we took on the Shitbox Rally, the 24 Hours of LeMons and drove 10 laps around Sandown with the V8Race people. The V8 experience was like a production line but once you got on the track it was worth every cent of the $500 we paid. Actually I couldn’t help paying $49 more for the framed pic of yours truly looking like I knew what I was doing.
Anyway, last month I bought the Hi-Tech Drift School Level 1 experience for $289 direct from the supplier so all margin for Mr Hi-Tech. Luckily the action was on the skidpan on my local track, Eastern Creek. These days the hipsters are in control of everything and the circuit is now called Sydney Motorsport Park. Of course it is still next to one of the city’s mega tips, which is known as Eastern Creek Resource Recovery Park.
It was a very warm Saturday and the resource recovery stinks were wafting over the skidpan mixing with the scent of a sweaty group waiting for the Fast and Furious experience. There was a very large number of would-be drifters.
It would also be fair to say that drift instructors are very different from race car instructors. While race car people like the Steve McQueen look, Drifters look like, well, the cast of Fast and Furious. This is maybe because they think going around a track in a normal sane way is for wussies. As Drift people explain it, they pair up and race against each other with “the aim of having the chase driver follow the lead driver as closely as possible, sitting door to door at massive speeds while hurtling around the track and as close to walls and other hurtful objects as possible”. Get on YouTube and see some of the most amazing driving and racing ever. These are super-skilled, albeit sideways, racers.
If you think you are the handbrake king or queen try it on a skidpan in front of a large crowd.
If you think you are the handbrake king or queen try it on a skidpan in front of a large crowd.
Despite my name starting with C, I was last on the very long list of students. After 45 minutes of waiting I hopped in a Toyota 86 with a seriously good instructor and we did a few handbrake turns. This is the foundation. You need to get the car sideways before you can go to the next step, which is driving the car in a constant state of oversteer. If you think you are the handbrake king or queen try it on a skidpan in front of a large crowd. No pressure, but I spun so many times my instructor went very green.
Read my final thoughts on Hi-Tech Drift School at The Australian
