MENA’s finest ready for Red Bull Car Park Drift Finals

Matt Jones - Editor 09:45 19/11/2015
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Mail
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • WhatsApp
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Smokin': Ahmad Daham in action in 2014.

    The Red Bull Car Park Drift Finals return to Dubai this weekend and is sure to fuel the imagination of the thousands of spectators expected to turn out for the final event of the 2015 series.

    After stops in Tunisia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritius, Jordan, Oman, Egypt and Qatar, the season finale hurtles into Dubai for the third year running with the UAE’s motor racing community plotting a course for the Meydan Hotel’s G12 car park for all the action on Friday night.

    The cream of MENA’s drifting crop will be out to put on a show in the Emirates, with defending champion Ahmad Daham the man everyone else will be hoping to put in their rearview mirror.

    Drifters will be judged according to a set of seven criteria. A total of 400 points are up for grabs for each driver, with a maximum of 80 points allocated to drifting skills during the first and second sections.

    The car’s looks and design, sound, tyre smoke, box and clipping point account for the rest of the things judges will be keeping a close eye on. As the experts say, the most important things in drifting are: line, angle, speed, and show factor.

    Abdo Feghali, who presides over track design, added fuel to the fire of excitement by claiming this year’s event will be bigger and better than ever.

    Egypt's Haytham Samir returns.

    “Last year’s final course proved tight and tricky for a number of competitors, but this hasn’t stopped us from turning up the heat by adding two new obstacles; the Pendulum and the Spiral,” the presenter of MBC Action’s popular motorsport show Driven, said.

    “These are sure to test the best on what is already considered one of the most technical courses in the championship’s eight seasons to date. Year on year, the Red Bull Car Park Drift is getting tougher and the addition of the Pendulum and the Spiral will surely add that extra challenge we are always after.

    “The calibre of the region’s drifters is improving, making competition fiercer and fiercer.

    “We made sure the track, which has a 40/60 split between closed and open areas of the Meydan Hotel parking lot, would push the drifters to the limit.”

    To give Feghali the title of presiding over track design, is to do him a disservice – he is the face of Red Bull Car Park Drift.

    Feghali is a Lebanese rally driver and triple national champion. He was crowned the Middle East’s Hill Climb champion from 2007 to 2010 and the Lebanese Hill Climb Champion between 2006 and 2012.

    He has four runners-up and three third-placed finishes at the Rally of Lebanon between 2000 and 2012 and won the overall Lebanese Rally Championship in 2013.

    He is passionate about drifting and has technically supervised the Red Bull Car Park Drift event since its birth in 2008.

    In 2012, Feghali broke the Guinness World Record for the longest drift at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit, although it was broken again in 2014.

    The Red Bull Car Park Drift event was born out of a drifting event held in 2005 in Hong Kong, which was attended by a Red Bull manager.

    Kuwait's Fahd Al Jadee.

    Lebanon hosted the first ever Red Bull Car Park Drift event in 2008 which is when Feghali became involved.

    The first-ever crowned King of Drift was Michel Feghali, Garo Haroutiounian taking the title a year later, while 2010 marked the first-ever regional competition series with 15 qualifiers in 10 countries.

    In 2011 the Red Bull Car Park Drift evolved to establish itself as the core developer of drifting in the Middle East and North Africa with 19 qualifiers and 11 participating countries.

    The first time the event came to Dubai was in 2013, with Lebanese drifter Jad Himo crowned King of Drift and Daham taking the accolade last year.

    From East to West

    Although it’s not exactly known precisely where and when drifting became a popular discipline of motorsport, Japan is widely considered the birthplace of the sport.

    In 1970 it featured in the prestigious All Japan Touring Car Championship and has since grown to become a fully-fledged sport across the world with America soon catching on and major events being staged in the States and beyond.

    Red Bull came on board in the middle part of the last decade and first introduced the Car Park Drift in 2008, with the first four finals taking place in Lebanon before the event switched to the UAE in 2012.

    Recommended