Wie weet waarom driften zo mateloos populair is in Japan?

Ze zijn sowieso nogal gek met auto's in Japan dus verbaasd het me ook niet dat ze gek zijn op driften.

Misschien heeft het te maken met Japans machogedrag.

Dit komt omdat enekele auto's die hier uitermate geschikt voor zijn (schijnt aardig verschil te zitten tussen auto's) uit Japan komen. Verder heb je daar ook veel meer dan bijvoorbeeld hier bochtige wegen waar het driften op is begonnen.

Denk bijvoorbeeld aan bergweggetjes waar mensen begonnen zijn met racen en gaanderweg zijn gaan driften.

Na lezen van vraag en even overdenken met andere Japanse sporten in gedachte vermoed ik dat als iets "gracieus" is dit de Japanners bekoord.

Misschien treedt de politie daar minder snel en hard op tegen dit soort activiteiten.

Hier in Nederland ben je als een bepaald soort auto bezit al verdacht. Ik ben duidelijk van buitenlandse komaf, reed vroeger in een sportwagen met iets meer vermogen dan strikt noodzakelijk, en nogal jong voor het soort auto (nog geen midlife crisis)... terwijl ik mij gewoon aan de regels hield ben ik regelmatig geobserveerd.

Modern drifting started out as a racing technique popular in the All Japan Touring Car Championship races over 30 years ago. Motorcycling legend turned driver, Kunimitsu Takahashi, was the foremost creator of drifting techniques in the 1970s. He was famous for hitting the apex (the point where the car is closest to the inside of a turn) at high speed and then drifting through the corner, preserving a high exit speed. This earned him several championships and a legion of fans who enjoyed the spectacle of burning tires. The bias ply racing tires of the 1960s-1980s lent themselves to driving styles with a high slip angle. As professional racers in Japan drove this way, so did the street racers.
Keiichi Tsuchiya (Dorikin) became particularly interested by Takahashi's drift techniques. Tsuchiya began practicing his drifting skills on the mountain roads of Japan, and quickly gained a reputation amongst the racing crowd. In 1987, several popular car magazines and tuning garages agreed to produce a video of Tsuchiya's drifting skills. The video, known as Pluspy, became a hit and inspired many of the professional drifting drivers on the circuits today. In 1988, alongside Option magazine founder and chief editor Daijiro Inada, he would help to organize one of the first events specifically for drifting called the D1 Grand Prix. He also drifted every turn in Tsukuba Circuit in Japan.
One of the earliest recorded drift events outside Japan was in 1996, held at Willow Springs Raceway in Willow Springs, California hosted by the Japanese drifting magazine and organization Option. Inada founder of the D1 Grand Prix in Japan, the NHRA Funny Car drag racer Kenji Okazaki and Dorikin, who also gave demonstrations in a Nissan 180SX that the magazine brought over from Japan, judged the event with Rhys Millen and Bryan Norris being two of the entrants. [1] Drifting has since exploded into a massively popular form of motorsport in North America, Australasia, and Europe. One of the first drifting competitions in Europe was hosted in 2002 by the OPT drift club at Turweston, run by a tuning business called Option Motorsport. The club held a championship called D1UK, then later became the Autoglym Drift Championship. For legal reasons, the business was forced to drop the Option and D1 name. The club has since been absorbed into the D1 Grand Prix franchise as a national series.