Brian Eggert to Step Down as Formula DRIFT Judge After 15 Seasons

On January 13, 2004, Eggert and some friends traveled to Road Atlanta for a test day where he first met Formula DRIFT co-founders Jim Liaw and Ryan Sage.

It was before Formula DRIFT had held its first championship event, and even before paving created what would become the now-famous keyhole section of the Road Atlanta drift course that loops just before the bridge.

Among the drivers testing that day were Ben Schwartz in an S13, Tony Schulz in an S14, Jerry McGovern in an S13, and Mike Schneider in an AE86. Schwartz, Schulz, and McGovern would all go on to compete during Formula DRIFT's early years.

What started as a meeting at an empty racetrack would turn into more than two decades of involvement with the series and several of the programs that helped build its competitive ladder.

As Formula DRIFT began establishing professional drifting in North America, there was an obvious problem: aspiring drivers needed a legitimate path to get there.

Eggert and Naoki Kobayashi of Drift Association worked with Formula DRIFT on the concept that eventually became the Formula DRIFT PRO/AM licensing system; regional organizations around North America operating competitions that could identify and prepare drivers for the professional championship.

The Formula DRIFT PRO/AM Finals were held in Laughlin, Nevada in both 2006 and 2007, events that remain an important part of early American drifting history. A remarkable collection of drivers came through that early licensing system, including Mike Essa, Jeff Jones, Forrest Wang, Justin “JTP” Pawlak, Patrick Mordaunt, Joon Maeng, and Stephan Verdier, among many others.

Several would eventually become fixtures of Formula DRIFT, and Essa would go on to win the 2013 Formula DRIFT Championship.

The basic idea was to create a regional development ladder that gives emerging drivers somewhere to learn before throwing them directly into the highest level of competition would eventually become an even larger part of Formula DRIFT's structure.

By 2013, another gap had become apparent.

The jump from regional PRO/AM competition directly into Formula DRIFT PRO was enormous. The cars were faster, the level of driving was higher, budgets were larger, and new drivers were expected to learn professional competition while simultaneously competing against some of the best drifters in the world.

Eggert and Edgar Sarmiento, from Drift Indy,  met with Formula DRIFT and contributed to discussions surrounding another tier in the competition ladder.

In November 2013, Formula DRIFT officially announced PRO2, which would debut during the 2014 season as an intermediate championship between PRO/AM and the Formula DRIFT PRO Championship. Formula DRIFT described the new division as the primary bridge for PRO/AM drivers moving toward the premier series.

PRO2 would eventually evolve into what is known today as Formula DRIFT PROSPEC.

The concept that started with regional PRO/AM competition had become a complete ladder: 
Grassroots → PRO/AM → PRO2/PROSPEC → Formula DRIFT PRO.

Then there was the judging.

When Eggert officially joined Formula DRIFT in 2012, he brought years of judging experience from USDrift and regional competitions around the country. His first Formula DRIFT event as a judge was Long Beach on April 6-7, 2012. What followed was 15 seasons watching the sport change from one of the best, and occasionally least forgiving, seats in the house. The cars became dramatically faster. The level of precision increased. The courses evolved. Technology became an increasingly important judging tool. And the way competitors were asked to navigate those courses continued to change.

During Eggert's tenure, he was involved in discussions and development surrounding numerous judging concepts and sporting regulations, from revisions and additions to the Formula DRIFT rulebook to the physical way a competition course was presented to drivers.

Early Formula DRIFT courses relied heavily on orange cones to delineate clipping points, zones and course boundaries. Over time, painted lines and markings became increasingly important, giving competitors and spectators a far clearer visual reference for exactly what the judges expected.

Those changes might seem minor individually, but together they helped create a judging system capable of keeping pace with cars and drivers that had advanced far beyond what anyone was dealing with when Formula DRIFT began in 2004.

And through all of those changes, Eggert remained a near-constant presence in the tower. Judging drifting, of course, also means spending 15 years being told you're wrong. Every decision can be replayed, slowed down, dissected on social media, and debated by drivers, spotters, teams, and fans. Sometimes the debate ends when the next battle starts.

Sometimes it apparently lasts a decade.

That's part of the job.

Eggert's decision to step away isn't a departure from drifting. It's increasingly the opposite.

Over the past several years, his responsibilities outside the Formula DRIFT judges' tower have continued to grow through The Drift Group, whose umbrella includes Drift Appalachia, Wrecked Magazine, USDrift, and Drift Indy, along with additional projects currently in development. Not to mention time way from the sport with friends and family. Plus making time to get back behind the wheel of a drift car, which was the whole reason this all started. 

Eventually, there simply weren't enough weekends, or hours, to give everything the attention it deserved.

“Formula DRIFT has been a huge part of my life for more than 20 years, and judging the series for the past 15 seasons has been an experience that I'm incredibly grateful for. But The Drift Group and the projects underneath it have continued to grow, and we have several other things we're working on that are going to require significantly more of my time. I've reached a point where I've been a judge for long enough and the series will continue to progress with the rest of the judges; Robbie Nishida, Reese Marin, and Vernon Zwaneveld who I know and trust can take it to that next level.”

Stepping down also means leaving a group of people Eggert has spent a considerable portion of his adult life working alongside.

“I'll definitely miss working with the Formula DRIFT team. When you've traveled around the country and sometimes the world together for this long, those people become a big part of your life and like family. But I don't expect to become a stranger. I plan to attend as many rounds as I can next year, I'll just get to watch without having everyone blame me for the result haha.”

There is still one event left before that happens.

Long Beach.

The same place where Eggert sat behind a Formula DRIFT judges' table for the first time in April 2012.

Fourteen years, 15 seasons and more than a hundred Formula DRIFT events later, he'll return next month and do it one final time.

Formula DRIFT event No. 116. Judged event No. 114. From Long Beach to Long Beach.