PUBLISHER’S STORY

Drift Enthusiast Team

Here we are! A mother and son on a fun drifting adventure together.

We’ve both loved cars, performance, and racing all our lives. For mom (aka Lyn), it all started with the original manga Mach GoGoGo (aka Speed Racer) anime’ television series back in the 60’s. She would scurry home after school every day, anxious to see Speed’s next driving adventure.

Fast forward, and from a very young age, Lyn’s son Justin loved everything that could skid. An avid snowboarder and skater, he would watch the older kids at the skate park do burnouts in their cars, and dream it was him. However, it was the JDM culture that would ultimately lead him to discover Hoonigan and the sport of drifting. By the age of 12, Justin was already glued to the Formula Drift live stream and begging mom to sit beside him to watch. Fast forward, and today, he hangs out, rides along, and wrenches with friends at the local tracks whenever he can, and spends the rest of his free time drifting on Assetto Corsa.

It wasn’t until the two went to Reno’s Hot August Nights (HAN) for the first time in 2017, that the drifting light actually went on for Lyn.

“It was the first year HAN had hosted a small, grassroots drift competition,” Justin recalled. “We had no idea the event would be happening beforehand, but when I saw it on the program, I was all over it.”

Even though it was a lovely walk through the pits, the 100+ degree day kept Lyn back in the shade for the first few rounds of the competition, but Justin wouldn’t leave the fence. It was the best vantage point he could find to snap a few key shots for his high school photography course, and it was as close as he could get to the action. Lyn eventually joined him, hungry for knowledge about how the techniques and scoring worked. Needless to say, she’s been hooked ever since!

Drift Enthusiast Magazine at FDLB 2022.

As Pacific Northwest/Seattle area natives, it wasn’t a huge leap for the duo to get to a local track together. Ironically, the first competitive pro event they attended was the 2017 Title Fight at Irwindale Speedway. Since then, the two have tracked every competition in every season together, followed and connected with many of the drivers, and attended as many events as possible as a team.

FD Driver Ken Gucci with Justin Fowler

The Magazine.

In addition to a decade of Justin closely connecting with influencers in the drifting world, Lyn brought a rich 30-year marketing and communications career to the table, which includes several years of lifestyle and business journalism.

In 2018, the two realized no mainstream media outlets existed that exclusively focused on the drifting motorsport and its wider community.

At that point, the idea of creating one was merely a distant dream, but they continued to add to the idea and during the 2021 PRO FD season, they finally decided to turn the key and make their dream into a reality.

Here we are!