Opening the floor to talk about your best buds/teammates! I've noticed that there's really no good time or place for this, so go ahead and brag about your origins, milestones, achievements, and anything else related to your drift team!
I'll start with mine as I'm feeling a bit nostalgic today: UPRISE based in Northern California
We started as a group of five in 2012, just a bunch of dumb highschool kids looking for 240s on craigslist in the computer lab back when you could find a running S13 that passes smog for $1350 (and even that was on the expensive side).
Slowly over the years we became further intertwined with the car world and organically started adding more and more idiots that shared the same single brain cell as the rest of us. We weren't necessarily looking for the coolest cars or the best drivers, I think we were just building a really solid group of friends. Some of us practically grew up together, we celebrated wins and milestones, we've gotten drunk and cried together, supported eachother through hard times both emotionally and even financially, we saw the beginnings of relationships that turned into marriages that turned into parenthood. Truly the best times of my life were spent with these guys and I can't wait until we're a bunch of 70 year old farts driving around in our stupid cars together.
Cool cars and good(ish) driving was just a nice byproduct of all of this. I would consider us still very green to drifting, though we've recently started picking up the pace with one of our major milestones being our first Final Bout event: SSNW 2023. Much like a lot of other teams, our biggest goal is to drive at USAIR for Final Bout 😁
Fast forward to today and we're at 16 across Californa, Illinois, and Texas! To this day we're all best buds before a car group and I think that's what makes for the greatest teams. It was, is, and will always be more than just cars.
You can see the rest of the Uprise cars on our instagram page : @notuprise
I'm looking forward to reading about your stories!
Gold Star was founded one drunken night in 2011 when Angel and I were talking shit and sarcastically giving out metaphorical gold stars to cars, saying, "you tried." At one point we decided we were the most deserving of a gold star of all and thus our team name was born. A little self-deprecating humor is always good!
In the beginning we all had Miatas, but eventually some of us branched out. Angel kept it in the Mazda family and went with an FC while I returned to my s13 roots. At some point Angel sold a pair of wheels to Dom (z32) and we became fast friends. We had also been attending a monthly meet in Vacaville for a while and befriended Nick (s14) and Corbin (mx6).
In 2013, we got the invite to Final Bout and decided to all pitch in on a shop space so we could get our cars in tip-top shape for the event. We spent countless days and nights and consumed untold amounts of Coors in the 10 or so months leading up to FB.
September 2014 we loaded up 5 cars (Angel's, Aaron's, Dom's, Rus', and mine) into Corbin's boss' drag race trailer which he let us borrow, and set off to Wisconsin.
Corbin was definitely the MVP of the trip, driving the semi to and from the event even though he wasn't driving. What a legend!
After that we drove FB2, SSW, FBG, Super D Party 1+2, Super D Cup, and a bunch of little local events here and there. We've somewhat fallen off drifting-wise over the last 5 year due to adulting, family, moving, professional things, and just plain bad luck. It was always the friendship that made Gold Star what it is and luckily that is still very much intact - it's just more weddings, dinner parties, and camping than drift events these days.
Fortunately many of us have reached a place where we can pick up where we left off and hop back into the driver's seat and hopefully make it to whatever Final Bout has in store for their 10th anniversary.
Here are a few recent pictures of some of the dude's current cars. There are a few more cars in progress, but they're under wraps for now.
UPRISE HOOO-HA-HA. Within the next 2 years I vow to inject myself into a group picture with all of you.
worlds greatest filipino drift team