Literally, it means a driver has dialed in too much steering into a turn. In a rear-drive car, oversteer usually results in the back end losing traction and the front wheels pointing in the opposite direction to the turn (i.e. your car is turning left, but the font wheels are pointed right). If not caught in time, the car can continue to spin out.

In car racing, oversteering’s definitely not the fastest way around a track. On the road, it’s simply not safe. In both cases, oversteer is a really, really bad thing.

But for the drivers and the enthusiastic fans of the Castol Drift Mania Canadian Championship, oversteer is a really, really good thing. In fact, oversteer is everything.

By definition, drifting is stringing together a series of high-speed slides through a marked out course. Over the course of a typical competitive drifting weekend event, drifters are judged first on a solo run, then with another car on the course at the same time (or tandem run). These tandem runs eliminate one driver at a time until there is a final winner.

Although the sport of drifting is experiencing tremendous growth in Europe, Australia, Japan, and the U.S., according to one of Drift Mania’s organizers, Ben Woo, it’s relatively new to Canada. When the fourth of five rounds of the three-year old Canadian drift championship came to Downsview Park last August, it wa the first ever professional drifting event in the GTA.

To the uninitiated, watching a drifting competition may be akin to viewing chase scene out takes from an old Starsky and Hutch episode. Or maybe your worst nightmare when you lend your teenager the family set of wheels.

But looking through all the high-revving noise and tire smoke, Woo thinks there’s more artistry in drifting than meets the uneducated eye.

“It’s like when you compare speed skating with figure skating,” said Woo at a press conference to promote the event held last week.

“In auto racing, it’s all about who’s fastest round a track. In drifting, it’s all about style. [Drifters] put on a show for the judges and the fans. The competitor with the most style, accuracy and technique wins.”

Woo detailed that drifters are marked in four areas.

“First is entrance speed and the way you swing the car at the initiation of the drift. Second, how much angle does the drifter have off the apex? (hint: more is better). Three is driving line. We’re not making up the driving line, you still have to respect the course. Fourth is style. Some people look boring and slow, others look really aggressive.”

So where did drifting come from?
“You can trace it back to one person: Keiichi Tsuchiya, aka The Drift King,” said Woo.

During the late 1980s and early s, Tsuchiya, a famous Japanese professional touring car driver, used to drift at night or on the weekends on the mountain passes of Japan. From there, drifting started out as a kind of an underground, practice thing.

The D1 professional championship (kind of like the F1 of drifting) began in Japan in the late s. In the U.S., grassroots drifting started showing up with some amateur events. A tipping point came in 2003 when D1 finally held an event in Irwindale, California.

Woo added, “As far as Canada is concerned, we’ve always followed the States. Whether it’s modifying cars or tuners or sports compacts. Obviously drifting falls into that category. We’re taking about mostly Japanese, four cylinder turbocharged vehicles, mostly compacts.”

Rear-wheel drive cars are the best for drifting, due to their drivetrain layout and weight balance. Toyota Corolla GTSs, Mazda RX-7s, Nissan 240SXs are popular. Unlike other forms of racing, there are no individual classes. Drifting is a run-what-ya-brung kind of event.

Because drifitng’s all about car control, having 1,000 hp doesn’t help. In fact, most of the cars have similar amount of power [between 200-400 hp]. Whether you drive an Corolla or a new Viper, it’s all about what you do with the car.

For authenticity—and increased street cred—some Canadian drifters have gone to the expense of importing Japanese right hand drive models.

One of Drift Mania’s competitors, Marcos Santos from Montreal, said drifting is also a relatively inexpensive motorpsort to get into.

“For the [five round] season, including the car, you can get away with spending about $40,000.”

This is Santos’s third season of drifting professionally, sitting third in this year’s championship. He came into drifting from drag racing.

“Getting the car to do what it’s not supposed to do—being driven sideways and smoking its tires—is awesome. It really gets my blood pumping.”

During the demos at the press conference, it’s obvious why the teams primary sponsor are tire companies.

Over the course of a competitive drifting weekend, each competitor will go through three to four sets of rubber.