Fieldnotes: LZ World Tour, Poutine and 7Up in Montreal

The third and final round of the season of the LZ World Tour took drivers and fans to Canada’s ICAR Mirabel Motorsports Complex earlier this month and gave me an excellent excuse to visit a city I’ve been meaning to see for a few years now.

Montreal is Canada’s second largest city, and the largest in its French-speaking province, Quebec. Now, I’ve got a degree in French and have spent some time in France, but I’ve always been curious about North America’s French-speaking populations. My exposure to Québécois French, the dialect spoken in Canada, doesn’t extend much beyond one French professor that I had that was from the province whose class I dropped partly because I had such a hard time understanding his accent after only ever being exposed to French accents. Anyways, I was excited to get to speak some French for the first time in five or so years, even if I was pretty out of practice.

I travelled with my fiancée and fellow drift photographer, Allie, for the weekend event. We flew in and stayed in Laval, a little north of Montreal proper and half-way between the city and the track. Our room was at the Grand Times Hotel, a very cool, pretty new hotel in an area that, according to one of our Uber drivers, has been growing like crazy. There are a ton of nice-looking new highrise apartment/condo buildings. The hotel also had a very sick air-cooled 911 in a special room in the lobby.

Canada’s car culture is interesting. They’ve got a lower average car age than in the US, partly because of all the road salt from their harsh winters. I didn’t notice a huge difference in the types of cars they choose to buy, though. Lots of SUVs and crossovers. As far as “enthusiast” picks go, there were less American muscle cars and it felt like they were opting more for European sports cars. They love their burble tunes up there. Instead of hearing Chargers with shitty exhausts all night, it was Golfs and Audi Q3s crackling and popping and banging.

On the way to the track Saturday morning we passed a couple convoys of cars on their way to the event and I was pretty impressed by the quality of build. The first one I saw was a very clean Chaser, which turned out to be a lot more common up there than they are here in the States. Canada’s import laws don’t include the same, annoyingly restrictive rule that kept us from getting so many rad JDM cars from the 90s and early 00s, so we were treated to the sight of a bunch of cool stuff that you barely ever see at home.

The ICAR complex, located in a portion of an active airport and right next to a big Airbus facility, is a pretty sick spot for a drift track. What it lacks in elevation changes and size, it makes up for with its atmosphere and accessibility. It’s a relatively compact facility, so getting around the event was easy and there were several cool spots to watch the driving from. Having planes taking off and landing on the runways in the background gives it a pretty unique allure.

The driver roster featured a number of Canadian drivers in addition to its usual cast of big names from the US. For those unfamiliar with the format of an LZWT event, like I was, they sort of feel like an All-star game in other sports. Yes, there’s a competition, but the larger focus is definitely on putting on a good show for the fans. Both Saturday and Sunday included time for “fantasy battles,” which feature pre-arranged battles with the crowd choosing the winner after two runs. They included matchups like TJ Hunt vs. Adam LZ, Tommy Lemaire vs. Danny Neville and Josiah Fallaise in his tiny Legend car vs. Brandon Tothero in Jenny the Drift Boat. They’re a good time.

Off the track we were treated to some pretty solid, very Quebecois food options. There was a big poutine truck whose line was always long as hell, like double at least what it was at some of the other food trucks. And there was another, smaller poutine truck that had almost as many people waiting at it! Also, Subway seems pretty big up there for whatever reason. I love Subway, but seeing a food tent at the event with the whole sandwich assembly line set up was bizarre. I’ve never seen that here in the US, but maybe it’s a thing in New England, too.

Saturday finished up with their Last Chance Top 16, a unique qualifying structure that lets the drivers who didn’t score within the Top 13 spots compete to fill the final three spots in the main event. I don’t know if the format would work well for every series, especially ones with a larger field, but it works well for the LZWT. More battles, especially with something at stake, means even more exciting viewing for the fans. Dave Egan, Marc Landreville and Josh Deliz took the top three last chance spots.

In an effort to further immerse ourselves in Canadian culture after having poutine at the track for lunch, we wanted to go watch some hockey at a sports bar that night. We settled on Boston Pizza, a chain that kind of felt like Buffalo Wild Wings if someone with some Italian ancestry had started it. We had some mozzarella sticks that were gas, but my pizza was a 6.5/10 at best. Pretty disappointing, but I won’t hold it against Montreal since it was a chain. Hockey’s a lot more fun to watch in person, but watching the Canadiens on about a million TVs with a bunch of fans was pretty cool.

Sunday kicked off with three hours of practice and one of the sorest throats I’ve had in a long time. I’d picked up a pretty annoying head cold that meant I wasn’t good for much beyond standing still and taking pictures. I’m really brave, though, so I just got over it. They had some more fantasy battles after lunch and a track break. LZ’s four rotor Mk. 5 Supra was a fan favorite the whole weekend, thanks in part to how many flames it spit every lap. It also seemed to work fairly well as a drift car, despite the rotary’s poor reputation as a drift powerplant. Corvettes seem to be getting more and more popular in the motorsport, even with our northern neighbors. It turns out they’re a good height to backflip off of, too, as Tommy Lemaire demonstrated a few times.

There was this really rad, RWD-converted, VR6-powered Audi RS5 from Toronto-based TSH Auto that really ripped. After getting past the weirdness of seeing an Audi sliding, it was a lot of fun to watch and it sounded sick. I was curious about it and found this Drift HQ build breakdown video that goes into it.

The Top 16 comp got started later in the afternoon and there were some pretty fun matchups. Chelsea DeNofa, the top qualifier, put on a clinic behind the wheel of a very clean, B58-swapped E46 coupe on his way to a final matchup with LZ. His semifinal battle with TJ Hunt was a unique one. TJ put down a respectable chase in the first leg, but knowing he needed to make something special happen to advance past the former FD champ, he sent it super hard into the initiation and spun. Not satisfied with beating him the easy way, DeNofa requested they run it back.

“The rules of the LZ World Tour state: there are no rules in the LZ World Tour,” said Dave Egan from the announcers’ box after stealing Jacob Gettins’ mic.

DeNofa, in typical DeNofa fashion, backed up the big game he was talking and got the nod. Jonathan Guitard, a local and Drift Mania Canadian Championship (the Canadian pro series) veteran, squared off with LZ in the other half of the semis. Guitard did a very solid job in the chase behind a strong lead from the rotary-swapped Supra, but both drivers had something of a sloppy second half. LZ just barely held on to his initiation, basically throwing a backie and having to dig out of it to keep some proximity. Guitard hit his zones in the lead, but chopped the course slightly coming off the wall of containers. It felt like it could’ve gone one more time, but the judges ruled unanimously in LZ’s favor.

DeNofa and LZ’s battle for the final was all set up to be an all-time classic for the series, and the first half didn’t disappoint. DeNofa put down a textbook lead with LZ tight behind him throughout the lap. With the roles reversed, though, it was DeNofa who pushed too hard and shunted the Supra on a transition, putting LZ into the wall and giving him his first ever LZWT win.

Overall, I was impressed with the quality of event they put on. The competition was tight and I appreciated how many local drivers they highlighted. I wasn’t familiar with the DMCC before this event, but the representative talent in the field at this event gave me a lot of respect for the series. Between the fantasy battles and Tothero’s boat laps during pauses in the competition, they handled downtime far better than some other big series I can think of.

Montreal is a very cool city and I wish we had had more time to spend downtown. Aside from our first night on Friday when we walked around near Concordia University and got an excellent dinner at the Winston Churchill Pub, we weren’t able to really make it into the city. I had my favorite meal of the trip at the pub, some absolutely killer tortellini. Laval has a pretty impressive mall that we visited before heading to the airport on Monday, but a lot of our time was spent in Ubers to and from the track on Saturday and Sunday. 

Culturally, Quebec felt a lot like other areas of Canada, albeit with way, way more French influence. They do a great job of including lots of green space, and the natural areas around the city, which is technically on an island, are beautiful. Everyone we spoke to was very kind and helpful. It does seem like it could be tricky to get around at times if you don’t know any French, but I think they’re very used to dealing with people who only speak English, especially at places like hotels and restaurants.

One big culture shock that I can’t not mention came with how much they seem to love 7Up up there. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone going for a 7Up over a Sprite or something else here at home, but in Montreal it felt like I was seeing it everywhere, including in people’s hands pretty regularly. Maybe it pairs well with poutine; I didn’t think to try that.

Oh, they also have cold, vending machine pizzas. At least our hotel did. After seeing the same one in the machine for three days, I bought it and tried it. Honestly? Not that bad. It just tasted like a leftover slice of a Chicago-style deep dish pizza, though not a really good one.

Montreal is rad and I look forward to going back, hopefully sooner rather than later. The LZ World Tour was a lot of fun and made for a great first international drift event experience for both Allie and I. We might just have to jet over to Europe for an event or two next year.

You can check out the full event gallery here!