The "Crazy Swede" Goes South

Team Mopar® driver Samuel Hübinette headlined the inaugural Formula DRIFT visit south of the border as the series goes global.

The “Crazy Swede” is Team Mopar® driver and two-time Formula DRIFT (FD) champion Samuel Hübinette’s nickname. But on one historic weekend in August, Hübinette heard an unfamiliar chant—El “Loco Swede”—as he helped take the FD Series global for an inaugural exhibition in Monterrey, Mexico.

Hübinette and the NuFormz Racing team, led by owner Shaun Carlson, proved effective ambassadors for Mopar and the sport of drifting at the Drift Mexico event. The perennial fan favorite drew large autograph-seeking crowds, and then drove his NuFormz Racing Mopar Dodge Charger SRT8® drift car to a second-place finish on Saturday, August 23, at the Monterrey Autodrome.

The Mexico crowd was treated to a rare appearance by Hübinette in the Mopar Dodge Charger he campaigned during the 2007 season. Carlson decided to save Hübinette’s regular Mopar Dodge Viper SRT10® drift cars for the remaining FD points events.

“I was very happy with the weekend overall,” said Hübinette. “We took second in my old Charger, but most importantly I was mobbed by fans for the entire event. They loved the HEMI®-powered Charger. This was the first time many of them had ever seen drifting. And we had great media coverage, including ESPN.”

Growing the sport of drifting has been a primary goal for FD president and co-founder Jim Liaw. The FD Series has firmly established itself as the premier drifting sanctioning body in North America. But for Liaw, that isn’t enough. He wants to turn the whole world sideways and give them a taste of the extreme sport that features drivers sliding their cars laterally in judged tandem runs at speeds near 100 mph.

Liaw made the move to take FD international this year—and it paid off. In addition to the Mexico exhibition, the FD series visited Singapore in April for a first-ever demo event before a sellout crowd of 11,000.

“We found some good partners in Mexico and Singapore,” said Liaw. “We worked with them, with their knowledge of their marketplace, to hold events. Going to Singapore, it was a spectacular event. The organizers were really good and were on it, and we sold out the venue. With Mexico, we brought sixteen drivers down there. It’s kind of the first time professional drifting has been down there. All the drivers thought the course was great. Weather kind of affected attendance a bit, but the fans were really amped up to see the event. The fans were totally into drifting.”

Fans outside of the U.S. can expect to see more FD events in the future, according to Liaw.

“Now that we’re there, we’re going to expand to two events next year, one round in Singapore and one in Malaysia, kind of like a mini Asian Cup,” Liaw said. “We also kind of made a splash there [in Mexico], and we’ll try to refine it and do it again next year.”

Hübinette, for one, is excited about the new international stops.

“I think it’s a great way to build the sport, by bringing a bunch of FD drivers out for the first time to a new country and get them ripping around out there,” said Hübinette. “I think we should bring even more drivers next time we come to Mexico. It was great exposure for my sponsors, Mopar and BFGoodrich, and also for drifting. We helped grow the sport in a new market.”