Racing: Skid Risk Drift Day Birmingham, UK

I was travelling to Birmingham with a friend to check out a car he wanted to buy. The car in question was a BMW 535i and it was for sale for 900£. The low price was what caught our attention but could also mean that the car was hiding something. You can begin to see where the problem stood - the car was looking too good for the money. I immediately suspected something was wrong and had a look at the cars'  previous MOTs. According to the document the last time the BMW was there it had 129000 miles on the clock. The speedo of the car however showed 159000 miles. That is a 30000 mile difference. I said to myself that maybe the previous owner had to drive urgently to Hong Kong and back. Three times. In one year. The surprises didn't end there: on the MOT before that the car was recoded at 87000 miles. The seller couldn't come up with a good explanation for these milage differences so we decided not to buy the BMW. On our way back to the train station we heard the unmistakable sound of loud exhausts,big turbos and dying tires - there was definitely somebody drifting close-by. The problem was that we couldn't locate where the drifting was happening. the sounds we soon found it - Birmingham Wheels. A whole complex dedicated to messing about in a car.

Interactive Map of Birmingham Wheels

When we got there we were surprised by the sheer amount of cars that were there. I counted more than 50 drift cars. Skid Risk were holding a Drift Practise Day and the place was crawling with cars and spectators. It's a shame that only 15 cars survived till the end of the day. There was an overwhelming presence of BMW-s because of the fact that an e36 325i without Tax and MOT can be bought for as low as 300£.

This BMW was one of the two best drifters of the day.  He was using the estates' heavy backside to initiate mind blowing drifts. 

That ring sticking out where the left headlight used to be on this 328 is an air filter mounted directly onto a big turbo that gave the car all the power it needed to make some spectacular smoke. Oh, and what a sound did it make. It is impossible to describe with words so click HERE for a video from the day.

As soon as the drifters saw me taking photos they began pushing their cars more and more. Soon enough there was an improvised competition in who could get as close to the wall as possible with the back of the car while drifting. This chap with his red-blue BMW e36 took the cake for me with this beautiful drift millimeters from the wall. 

As the "Kiss the Wall" competition was getting heated the inevitable happened and this BMWe36 head-butted the wall rather than kissing it. The car couldn't exit the track on it's own so the newest way of crashed car transportation was invented. It consisted of one BMW pulling the crashed BMW and another BMW that was pushing at the back. It looked like wounded soldiers rescuing their comrade after his legs had been blown off. 

A very popular drift car modification is to remove the front or the rear bumper, or both. This is done because as you are learning to drift you are going to crash your car. Period. And to avoid buying new bumpers every time they touched the wall, drifters arrive with all their body panels and remove them before going out on the track and then zip-tie them back on for the drive home. Removing the hood is another more "ghetto" drift modification that prevents the engine from overheating by letting the hot air escape much faster. It is also one less body panel to bend if they crash.  

This little stock Mazda was the only Japanese survivor at the end of the day. It's lack of power was compensated, by it's owners' aggressive driving which at times was so aggressive he ended up spinning out after most of his attempts to slide the Mx-5. It looked like the driver was still new to tail sliding and tire slaying but his enthusiasm was worth a praise. 

Some drifters had taken the removing of body panels quite far. This one had  removed even the boot and the rear window. 

I am very pleased that we found this drift track and will be coming back soon for more drift action. 

FOR MORE PHOTOS (70+) CLICK HERE!