The unique requirements of drifting at venues like Long Beach have honed ACP’s skllls. (LAT photo) » More Photos

“Drifting is an awesome,” he told me. “There’s a lot of things that relate to rallying; a lot of the car control stuff. Tanner Foust and Rhys Millen have been at it for a while. Tanner has been trying to convince me to come. I think it’s a great sport and I’m just trying to think of how it might work.”

He’s navigated more than that across the bridge connecting drifting and rally. He’s tested a powerful Dodge Viper drift machine with maybe 1000 HP, more than twice his Mitsubishi Evo rally car.

“It’s all car control. The funny thing is the new orthodoxy in rallying is to slide less…” Orthodoxy? Only ACP would use the term orthodoxy in casual conversation!

“OK,” he smiled, “the new technique in rallying is not to slide. We’re sliding a lot less than we were three or four years ago. Here (in drifting), you’ve got to get that slip angle. You’ve got to be sideways. You’ve got to make the smoke. It’s part of the fun. But it’s the same car control skills.”
He went on to talk about the skillsets that also cross the bridge between rallying and drifting.

“One of the great things I’m enjoying about drifting is it’s improving my rallying. I’d never really clutch kicked in rallying before. (It’s a method of initiating a slide in drifting.) It’s not something most rallyists would think of. But a couple times on my last rally I was a little bit wide on a corner – I didn’t have the angle I needed – so I just dipped the clutch – bang – and it changed the angle of the car. So I think crossing over of the sports can improve your techniques.”

Is ACP going to switch to drifting?

“For this to work out, it would be like falling into a Subaru or Mitsubishi factory ride in rallying. All of that’s up in the air to be honest. We’re just working on where the money would come from.

“The expenses of drifting are a little different than rallying. In rallying, we break all parts of the car all the time. In drifting, if you’re tidy, you don’t break the car. You burn through tires but the tire companies are enthusiastically involved. But if you hit a wall, which is not uncommon, the damage can be pretty impressive. You’ve got to know how to pay for it.”

So, here’s a guy from the weathered plains of Canada who’s iPod includes Shaun Mullins, which is kind of folk rock, Peter Gabriel and the Talking Heads. He also admitted to “quite a lot of Chemical Brothers (and) the dirty secret is Avril Lavigne, a home girl who grew up 15 miles from my shop.”

So, rallying or drifting?

“I don’t think it’s an either or. It’s all the same thing. It’s car control. I like anything that’s really challenging. I’m in to rallying because it’s hard. What I like here at Long Beach, for example, is that you’re staring down a tunnel of concrete and you’ve got to be sideways and smoking through it. That’s hard! Any motorsports like that has its unique challenges. I’ve been a rally guy for years now. I see all the challenges in drifting