ABOVE: Roy Urata's RC (remote control) car catches the drift during Team Saiko's weekly practice at Aina Koa Park in Honolulu.
Motors rev, wheels spin and slick, shiny cars speed along a course full of hairpin turns, hugging the lane lines and coming within a hair's breadth of the walls. One after another, the tricked-out vehicles lose traction with the ground, sliding through switchbacks. This is drifting, a motorsport that prioritizes precision over speed. Victory goes to those with the best handle on inertia. But these drift cars are only one-tenth scale, and instead of steering wheels the drivers clutch remote controls with knobs for steering and triggers for acceleration.
"It's an amazing sport at any scale," says Roy Urata of Team Saiko, one of four clubs in Hawaii devoted to radio-control (RC) drifting; Saiko, on Oahu, started up in 2009. "A lot of the RC cars are based on real drift car bodies, and people can hand-paint and customize them to look like the real thing. It's surprising how realistic a lot of the cars are getting, compared to the full-size drift cars you can see on YouTube or in person at live drift events."
At one of Team Saiko's regular practices in Aina Koa Park near Kahala, multiple drifters guide their RC cars around an intricate temporary track laid out in white tape on the polished concrete pavilion floor. These drivers are preparing for regional and national competitions, where RC drift cars engage in "battles" to win points toward national rankings. Speed is not a factor, says Urata, who works for the state Department of Health when he's not putting time in at the track. "It's not a race. The goal is for the lead car to set a course, and then the chase cars try to mimic it." Team Saiko has done well in regional competitions, but big international wins in places like Japan and Europe remain elusive. The 2025 World Championship, to be held at Super-G RC Drift Arena in Baldwin Park, California, is Saiko's next shot at drifting glory.
Precision rather than speed is the goal, regardless of scale. "Our team graphics design is inspired by Signal Audio, which brought two competition drift cars from Japan in 2003 for an event at Hawaii Raceway Park," Urata says. "That was my first experience of drifting, and it changed my life."
The objective of drifting competitions (for both full-size and at scale) isn't to be first across a finish line. It's about achieving near-perfect synchrony among the cars. The cars and drivers pair up and take turns leading and following. When drivers are really in the groove, their cars mirror each other's movements nearly identically, leaving almost no space between them. Speeding and sliding across the curves in graceful chaos, the poetry in motion of RC drifting is a lot more like tango than Grand Prix.
Getting started is pretty easy, says Urata. Competitors range from as young as nine to well past their sixties. But once you're hooked, you'll be dreaming about the next turn.
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