T
he weather may be turning to shit as the winter months
roll in heavy this time of year, bringing the perils of rain
with them, but for those of you who care to spend your
weekend frying tyres, stacking angle, and putting the
front end right up your mates’ doors, there’s a shining
light in the middle of the cold snap: the annual Winter Drift Matsuri,
hosted by the team at Zeroclass Drift, this year over 6–7 July. It’s one
hell of a wild weekend that combines the crazy antics of a full-send
drift day with the professionalism and organization that we’ve come
to expect from the hosts, seeing everyone from D1NZ pros to first-
timers hit the track at Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park to carve outa piece of the fun. Winter Matsuri, much like its summer incarnation,
is a rad balance of controlled chaos and good vibes that few grass-
roots events are able to capture anymore. And with not one but two
days of this madness, the track time this year was almost endless
— if the tyre smoke ever cleared and there weren’t at least five cars
making corners their bitch, we never saw it.
Better yet is the mixed bag of driver personalities and machinery
that comes out of the woodwork, some going as far to sell all their
worldly possessions — including the living-room couch — just to be
there! We scoped out the talent on display to bring you a few of our
favourites in up-close detail and to find out why they do it. Enjoy.the
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WORDS: JADEN MARTIN
PHOTOS: KEEGAN CLARKE-LATHAMSCOPING OUT THE
TALENT AT THE 2019
WINTER DRIFT MATSURI