This past weekend the inaugural Xtreme Drift Championship season kicked off, and what better place to start than at Irwindale Speedway, the House of Drift. After hearing about this new series over the past months, I was excited to see how the first event of the new series would go down, and was itiching to shoot my first drift meet of the year…

Sitting somewhere in between an amateur drift series and a pro series like Formula D, the XDC will hold events across the United States this year. There were plenty of familiar faces kicking about, including Formula D drivers in the competition, FD MC Jarod DeAnda doing his think on the mic, and '09 champ Chris Forsberg serving as a judge.

There was also a large car show held alongside the drifting. Typically car shows at drift events are pretty small, but there were hundreds of show cars at Irwindale on Saturday. A lot of them were a bit too "circa 2002" to post here, but there were quite a few nice ones too. Take this slammed Z33 for example.

As for the driver roster, naerly every part of North America was represented. Here's Mike Pollard smoking it up in his S13, just as he did back in November at the FD Pro Am Nationals.

The Lone Star State had a strong contingent, namely the three green cars from Non Stop Tuning. They included the AE86 of Will Parsons, the LS1-powered S13 of Aaron Losey…

…and the BMW E36 of Chelsea DeNofa. Chelsea is another driver with experience at Irwindale, and it showed in his runs.

Of course an event like this wouldn't be complete with someone repping the Pacific Northwest. Here's Gleb Antonov in his blister-kitted S13.

Back in the car show for a moment – the infamous Phaze 2 EG Civic chilling under the shade of the grandstand. Somehow it looks lower than the last time I saw it…

When it came to outright driving excitement, Forrest Wang was the one to beat.

Unfortunatley late in the weekend his S13 had some mechanical hiccups, putting him at a disadvantage in the tandem competition. Can't wait to see what he can do in Formula Drift this year.

And speaking of Formula Drift, Alex Pfeiffer was out with his personal Lexus SC. Given his experience at Irwindale, he was also a favorite to take the win.

Another shot from the car show, with a mean-looking E46 sedan sitting on bronze BBS LM's.

Also in the car show I spotted this new body style Nissan Maxima done up "VIP" style. Not too shabby…

If there's one thing I learned over the weekend, it's that Arizona knows how to build a drift car. Case in point, Chase Goodman's S13.

Sadly though, during practice on Friday afternoon Chase hit the wall on the outer bank and the car took some heavy damage. Such a shame. We can only hope it'll be back up and running up soon.

Another badass Arizona machine – George Marstanovic's LS1-powered FC. The look, the sound, the moves. It's all here.

George had a strong showing in the competition, eventually being eliminated by the fellow V8 FC of Brian Peter.

Competition-wise, Formula D driver Jeff Jones took third place in his 1JZ-powered S13.

Quoc Ly, the winner of the NFS time attack tourney last year proved he can handle a real car just as well as a virtual one, taking second place in his Drift Speed S13.

At the end of the day, it was Ontario Canada's David Briggs that was standing on top of the podium. David and his S14 took out a number of tough opponents on the way to victory.

Congrats to David and all the other XDC drivers for kicking off the series on a high note. I'm interested to see how the rest of the season progresses.

More from the XDC on the way!

-Mike Garrett

Xtreme Drift Circuit