WITH the successful staging of the inaugural Red Bull Car Park Drift Competition on Saturday, October 1 at the Catherine Hall Sports Complex parking lot in Montego Bay under his belt, event organiser Dean Corrodus is looking to further increase the types of motorsports events on the island in the future.

“The Racezone Plaza Drift series is going to be an annual series. We’re also going to be entering into other genres of motorsports. We’re going to introduce time attack and we’re also going to reintroduce the sprint series to run in conjunction with the time attack events. From there, we have plans for other genres of motorsport in 2024 and 2025,” Corrodus told the Jamaica Observer‘s weekly Auto magazine.

No stranger to motorsports event organisation, Corrodus is one of the stalwarts in the space, having operated independently and as part of the Montego Bay Motoring Club. The Racezone Plaza Drift series was created this year to generate the finalists for the Red Bull Car Park Drift Competition and take advantage of the popularity of drifting on the western end of the island.

“It was an honour for Jamaica, such a small country, to be considered to hold the first edition of the Red Bull Car Park Drift Competition in the Western Hemisphere. It speaks volumes about our car culture and motorsports culture. We’re not just a sprint factory, but a race car driver factory as well,” Corrodus said.

The event received plenty of corporate support, local and international media coverage which Corrodus hopes will drive his move to proliferate the types of motorsports available to competitors and fans.

“Motorsports is increasing along the lines of the level of participation, reach, entertainment value, the level of spectatorship and viewership. Hopefully, what will follow is the level of corporate support with sponsorship. As this is the first that we’ve had formalised drifting in Jamaica, come next year when the series continues we plan to build it better and better, higher and higher,” Corrodus said.

The Red Bull Car Park Drift Competition itself was a taut battle that whittled down to a single victor from a pack of 20 drifters over three rounds. Competitors had to navigate a course filled with scored obstacles that showed off their drifting skills to the three judges and numerous patrons watching. So evenly matched were the top eight that it was more a case of who would make a mistake and miss an obstacle rather than completely messing up as drivers only had one run at the course.

Putting himself in the history books was Montegonian Nicholas Barnes, becoming the first Red Bull Car Park Drift Competition winner on this side of the planet of which his grand prize is a trip to the world finals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on December 7 through 8.

“It’s definitely an honour to represent my country in the world finals in Saudi Arabia. I plan to make Jamaica proud and Jamaicans should expect nothing less than the performance I gave tonight,” said Barnes.

The 23-year-old Dover Raceway star held off the man who taught him how to drift, Cleve Ottey — who finished second. Sheldon Johnson completed the top-three finishers.