Desert Drift Street League is Fighting the Good Fight Out West

Every drift event I’ve attended across the USA and in Japan has been run by people who love drifting – by the community for the community, except for Arizona. It’s the one place that I’ve experienced where drifting was inherently different. Everywhere else, it’s still the same sport you love with a little bit of the local flavor thrown in. Growing up in Phoenix, it seemed like racetracks were merely “allowing drifting,” but not actively supporting the growth of the motorsport, leading to an eclectic mess of cars and drivers with no real sense of community or direction. Fortunately, there is a group that is trying to change that: Desert Drift Street League, or DDSL for short. I went to their first round of competition for 2026 to get the details. 

Their goal is simple – show people that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars just to go drift. They want to guide drifters into a more street-friendly style car, keeping mods simple with things like coilovers and modded knuckles, then go drive the wheels off the thing.

DDSL was started by two OGs in Southwestern USA drifting, Pat Reynolds and George Marstanovic. George has been drifting since 2001-2002, starting with a 240SX. After a couple years, he built an FC RX-7 and ended up competing in Formula Drift. The maple leaf livery on his FC was always one of my favorites. Pat, on the other hand, started drifting around 2007 with his NA Miata. He then moved to an FC RX7 as well. Today, George drifts an immaculate bright yellow FD RX7 and Pat ended up back in his original Miata with a highly sought-after hardtop and a turbocharged drivetrain.

Here they are, 20 or so years later helping guide the next generation of drifters. Hosting drift events isn’t for the faint of heart. Rarely is there any money or fame in it. When I asked what motivated them to start DDSL in AZ, George answered: “We decided to go to Final Bout. That’s our people. They like stylish cars, the driving is awesome, everybody is not only a team, but it’s a community of people that get it. To me, drift cars are just show cars you drive hard.” 

He went on to say, “We want to give people a way to do competitions without feeling like you have to build a monster car – where the recipe is suspension that is thousands of dollars per corner, rear mount everything, half the car is cut away and re-fabbed. Bring cars that aren’t like that. Bring cars that are more street style, cars that kids these days can more relate to and afford.”

I think George really hit the nail on the head with addressing some of the issues in the drift scene these days. I can’t even count how many times I see people get lost in the build process, then sell the car without turning a lap, leaving drifting before they get started. I feel like so many people don’t know what drifting was like in the early days, and they just jump straight into “I need to build a pro car” because that’s what they see on social media, without realizing that there are other ways to do it.

Arizona has a long history with drifting, George reminisced about the very first drift events in AZ hosted by NASA (National Auto Sport Association), where they would do driver education and grip driving on one day and drifting the next. This built some really fast drifters. And yet, growth in the sport here has not grown past this. In many ways, it’s regressed from it.

Most events here are either run by a “promoter” who is far removed from drift culture, or by a racetrack with volunteer staff, resulting in a lack of community and education. Pat put it a bit more eloquently, “I think people don’t know what to pursue. You have Hot Pit down the road, bash events in New Mexico, drift and drags where you bring whatever you want, internet builds that infiltrate people’s perspectives. They chase specs and parts, and not necessarily always driving.” 

I think this is a generational dilemma. We are in the era of “car-tok” and social media builds. Our parents and grandparents were building cars for their enjoyment and the enjoyment of those in their immediate circles, the drift old timers were building cars based on forums, magazines and Option videos, whereas most people these days are using social media as a platform to boost their builds and influence others, in an attempt to gain fame and fortune. Social media has fueled motorsports by adding influencer money, whereas back in the day we only had forums; and there was no way to monetize from it. Hearing George and Pat talk about trying to teach and direct newer people to drifting on how they can afford to do it on a budget was such good news to me. It gets back to the root of drifting, and teaches people how they can have fun without maxing out their credit cards.

Pat also doesn’t think that social media builds are inherently wrong either. “There isn’t a right or wrong way to do it. Drifting is this thing… that we all express differently. But I think you get all these unlike cars that converge at events and struggle to drive together. You get people all over the place, chasing what their version of drifting is, and there is not really a uniting style of event.”

I think it’s more than that. Not only is there not a uniting style of event, outside of DDSL, there is a serious lack of any type of uniting of a drift community at most events in the state.

There are two main tracks in Arizona to be aware of, Firebird Motorsports Park and Honda Musselman Circuit; plus, an honorable third mention to a private track called The Podium Club. Most of the events ran at Firebird are operated by one promoter that really isn’t actively involved in growing the sport of drifting. They function on a “low cost of entry, run what you brung” kind of mentality that carries over from drag racing. This is FANTASTIC for the budget conscious new drivers, except that they don’t necessarily staff the events with people who love drifting or are drifters themselves. What this can lead to is important key factors being overlooked; like driver’s meetings with course layouts, tips and tricks for new drivers, and the ever-important community aspect of drifting being dismissed. It also brings in so many drivers that event staff can get overwhelmed, and seat time suffers. They just don’t have enough drivers and enthusiasts involved in leading the events.

Musselman Circuit, on the other hand, has a better sense of drift community, because the track does involve some local talent and the layout is very conducive to high-quality driving. This is where DDSL chose to operate out of. The track itself is a mirrored version of the Japanese carting track Suzuka South Circuit. This makes it incredible for drifting with one or two high speed corners, and the rest gets tight and technical. At non-DDSL events the track usually has some local/experienced drifters who provide feedback and run some of the aspects of the event. Although, there are still some gaps to bridge that track management hasn’t quite figured out yet. For example: how to work with media personnel, tandem etiquette, track flow, and identifying high-risk versus low-risk areas based on driver experience. These are things that the good folks at DDSL are working on. They’ve been building a relationship with the track for a long time, and last year their efforts started coming to fruition when they officially started hosting events. They’ve been bringing stylish street cars and aggressive driving that has the potential to positively impact the drift community in all of Arizona, and hopefully even the Southwestern United States. 

George and Pat, as well as the other DDSL staff and volunteers, put an immense amount of effort into having clean cars that drive very well, and that’s the type of car and driver they try to attract. I especially love how many JDM imported cars they’ve attracted. I saw two JZX100s, a pink JZX90, an orange S15, plenty of US-spec S-chassis, BMWs and 350Zs. There was even a Blue Nissan Laurel in the pits, although I didn’t see it on track.

Sylas Gissendaner brought his SR20DET S13 – complete with an extremely rare, silver carbon fiber Origin Lab hood and was throwing backies any chance he could.

The competition format DDSL runs is a bit different than other typical drift events. It isn’t based on line/angle/style. It’s entry, consistency, and impact/style plus an additional 10 points for “cool factor”. It could be something like you did something cool, your car is cool, the judge likes the color of your car, etc. This keeps things a bit more light-hearted and fun, and puts emphasis on having a good-looking car and good driving instead of the overly aggressive competition driving that has been dominating the drift scene recently. You know, like where somebody drives with the intention of driving into the other car, or finding loopholes in judging criteria to gain some tiny little competitive edge.

DDSL has just about everything necessary for the formula to create perfect drift events. They have great cars and drivers showing up. They have experienced staff with time spent throughout all aspects of drifting - including the pro level of Formula Drift. The local drifters are talking about what DDSL is doing, even at a national level they are getting recognition for the events they’re putting on.

I think the hardest thing for just about any drift event is the relationship with the racetrack. This is important for scheduling, media access, track layouts, track safety, and more. The drift organization and racetrack need to be able to align their business objectives so the track can turn a profit, and the drift org can at least break even (ideally making a profit to do bigger and better events). Even though DDSL has been working on this relationship for years (not just for DDSL but drifting in general), it isn’t perfect.

Track management is known to double-book drift event weekends, both with DDSL and other private drift days. I experienced this last year when I attended the annual GSK Bash. Drivers were charged to drive a full day when they could only drive for a couple of hours at the end of the night on the first day. It also happened at DDSL Round One this year; the track couldn’t go hot until later afternoon/evening on day one because of another event taking place during the day.

While this is extremely frustrating for drivers and organizations, at the end of the day the track needs to turn a profit. Otherwise, the track will cease to exist. It’s extremely hard for a racetrack to be a profitable business and they are trying to maximize their profit by minimizing operational costs. It’s a smart business move, and since DDSL is still a growing series I could foresee this happening again in the future until the organization has enough drivers and spectators to make the track enough profit. Getting access to the track to shoot media and promotional material for the track and organizations is also difficult and expensive. The track sees media personnel as businesses operating out of their facility, similar to vendors, so they charge a premium. It’s on this premise that many media people have sworn off shooting anything at Musselman Circuit until it’s resolved, and I’m not sure the track realizes how detrimental this is.

Even with these challenges (that DDSL is working hard to overcome), I think that what they are doing is exactly what is needed in Arizona to help grow the drift community and steer it in the right direction. It’s like they are starting at square 1 with everything, and building it up “the right way”. I’m no oracle, but I think that as DDSL continues to grow and build up their series, these challenges will work themselves out. They’ve already been improving the media difficulties, and I think that as the track sees DDSL events grow, they’ll see the true value in drifting and what DDSL brings to the table, and be something that the Southwest region of the USA looks to as an example.