"The first time I saw him, I was like, 'Oh, my God, what is this queer doing?' " says a voice in the crowd. Now Derrick is closing in on the unlikeliest of scenarios: upstaging the more expensive, better-looking entries. On a little piece of concrete halfway to Galveston, the outcome is bizarrely, uniquely, overwhelmingly -- American.
"That's what's so cool!" gushes Dan Brockett, the documentary filmmaker, when he hears about the event. "We're taking a Japanese sport, drifting, Japanese cars, a Japanese mind-set -- and in Texas, we're going to Americanize this sport. We are…I think it's going to be kind of cool, because in a few years we're going to forget that it's so Japanese."
J. Michael Stovall
Four tons of drifting madness and several runs later,
Derrick Rogers is No. 1.
J. Michael Stovall
As the sun sets in Texas, Japan is waking up to the
news: Their game has gone global.
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Derrick parks the car after his final run and hops out, getting mobbed by his friends.
"Even if you don't win, very fucking cool!"
"Dude, Derrick, you rock!"
Someone jokes that the El Camino will show up as the secret car in some drifting video game one day and Derrick will be the driver, exporting reality back into video game fantasy.
"Man! You're going to be all over the Internet!" shouts James. "Now there's gonna be a run on El Caminos!" Another friend asks him, if they got a rope and a cowboy hat, would he drift while lassoing out the window?
"I expected to get my ass kicked," says Derrick. Then he corrects himself and asks if he can be quoted as saying "butt" and not "ass." They walk over to the stage for the announcement of the winners. Fourth place goes to a 240SX.
"You're not fourth!" one of Derrick's friends shouts at him.
"I'm not fourth!" Derrick repeats clumsily.
They announce someone else's name for third place, too.
"You're not third either!"
"Are you nervous?"
"Oh, hell, yeah!" says Derrick. Manners go out the window. This thing might really happen.
When the other guy's name is called, his buddies swarm him. From the stage: "The big daddy of them all: No. 21! Derrick Rogers!"
"Derr-rick!" "Derr-rick!" "Derr-rick!"
The unassuming math and physics major from HBU looks woozy as he walks up on stage to claim a trophy that's almost as tall as he is. An Asian model rubs up against him for photos. He tries catching his breath as a reporter from the Game Show Network interviews him. The word gets around that the Japanese pros want to drift his car, but they can't because of liability issues.
"I came out here expecting to get beat pretty badly," Derrick tells the camera guy. "I just got the feeling of the car and the track…" He trails off with his answers.
He tosses the trophy into the back of the El Camino, and he and his friends watch the Japanese guys drift some more before the sun goes down.
To view photographs from the Falken Tire Drift Showoff click here.
