Home Local Sports MB Drift slides into Rockingham Speedway this weekend

MB Drift slides into Rockingham Speedway this weekend

Courtesy Phennec Photography

ROCKINGHAM — The team from MB Drift is excited to be a part of bringing motorsports back to Rockingham Speedway.

Marshall Eggerling, Zach Sebald and Devin Crezee are all drifters themselves.

Drifting, a form of motorsports that started in Japan, is basically “sliding around a race course,” according to Crezee.

“It’s almost like figure skating with a car instead of racing,” Crezee said.

“If you’re leading (in a drift competition), you want to lay down the right driving line with enough angle, the car kicked out far enough, and close enough to the clipping points that are set out,” Crezee added. 

The objective of the follow car, Crezee continued, is to stay as close to the lead driver as possible and follow their line through the course.

“You’re doing a rolling burnout as much as possible while using finesse to be able to control the car,” keeping it sideways through the entire course, Crezee said.

Typically there is only one car on the course during qualifying and two cars in tandem during the finals.

But, there can be up to six cars going around the track at one time during a “fun run.”

It’s different from other forms of racing, Crezee said.

“In other racing, you’re continuing to run laps, you’ve got a whole field of cars on there, versus drifting where it’s one lap, pretty much, then you shut it down,” Crezee said.

Then the drivers get in line to start again.

In competitions, Creezee added, drivers are judged on how well they perform, not on how fast they complete the course — “although speed is a characteristic that is judged amongst other criteria.”

Eggerling said MB Drift was founded in 2005 to get a program started in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area to give young drifters “a place to have fun with their cars not on the streets where they can get in trouble and get hurt.”

“We’d been going to events in Atlanta … and we wanted to get something more local,” he added.

Eggerling said they were approached by the general manager of Myrtle Beach Speedway to hold events there, which developed into a competition series over the past 15 years.

However, a recent zoning change led to the closing of the venue.

When the team found out the speedway was closing, they only had a few months to find a new home, Sebald said.

From the last event in September through late October, they visited several tracks, including Rockingham Speedway.

“That was all she wrote,” Sebald said. “Once we got in with them … they entrusted us and gave us a shot and it’s all history from there.”

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Their first event, Driftmas Matsuri, was held at the speedway the weekend prior to the CARS Tour tire test.

While at the track, they also shot a promotional video.

MB Drift has 10 races scheduled for the 2021 season at the speedway, starting with the Icebreaker Open Drift Day on Saturday.

The drifting starts at 10:30 a.m. and runs until 6 p.m. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the gate. Several food vendors are scheduled to be on site, including The Funnel Cake Guy and Britton’s BBQ and Grill.

Other events are scheduled for March 13, April 17-18, May 15, June 12, July 17, Aug. 14, Sept. 25, Oct. 23-24, and the season ender on Nov. 20.

Sebald said they hope to hold events at Rockingham “for many years to come.”

For more information, see the MB Drift Facebook page.

The MB Drift team: (from left) Devin Crezee, Marshall Eggerling and Zach Sebald. (Contributed photo)

 

 

 



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Managing Editor William R. Toler is an award-winning writer and photographer with experience in print, television and online media.