Typically, we would have between six and 13 attempts at two- or three-car drift shots behind a camera car, most of which wouldn’t result in any synchronised oversteer whatsoever. Badly timed and positioned sliding, narrow avoidance of collision and general bad temper, embarrassment and blaming of the workman’s tools from those responsible would be their primary content.
Every synchronised skidding display would also have to end with at least one of the car’s rear tyres delaminating, after which it couldn’t take part in any subsequent part of the show.
The members of Skidmark Synchro would each have honorary responsibilities. Skidmark 1 would have the most celebrated reputation as a ‘helmsman’ driver. They would turn up at every display an hour late, never having fuelled their car, be the first to leave and insist on taking the most powerful car with them, whether it’s still needed or not.
The full team would number some 10 in total, but Skidmark 1 would only be willing to talk to Skidmark 2 (the next most senior) and Skidmark 8 (always 20 minutes early, brings cleaning gear and flasks of tea and spends most of the display worrying about what everyone is having for lunch).
Skidmark 4 is the ambitious renegade most likely to agree to a misguided jump shot. Skidmark 6 is universally liked, wears ostentatious trainers and can drift one-handed while simultaneously tapping out a WhatsApp funny. Skidmark 7 is a taciturn vegan of mercurial talent, whom it is impossible to feed from the average garage ‘food to go’ chiller.
And Skidmark 10 is the ‘work experience’ reserve driver, who turns up at every display in his 25-year-old Mazda MX-5, spends displays cleaning, fuelling and shuttling cars around and getting rained on, and yet inexplicably manages to remain chipper and film it all for his or her DriveTribe account.
Skidmark 1 last cleaned a car in 1993. I haven’t worked out yet how much I will charge for tickets, but I am taking applications for positions in the squadron. If you’re interested, you know what to do.
