Rice was slippery. It was a noun, a verb and an adjective, and might signify either a person, place or thing. It was an insult, an expletive, a fighting word, but it was also a silly word. Rice was both the joke and the punch line, all show, no go. Traditionally, it was an abbreviation for “rice rocket,” which was a nickname for a tricked-out import car, which was a car made in Asia, driven, usually, by Asians. But, to Nadine’s girls at least, rice was the state of thinking you’re hot, but you’re not.
At the Drifting Pretty Awards Day, held in one of the girls’ living room in a palatial, marble-floored house in Irvine, Nadine gave a pop quiz on engine parts. Amanda, who was the only one to sketch out cartoon diagrams of coilovers and differentials, won the award for Highest Points Holder (a.k.a. Points Whore) of the Quarter. Lisa, who was shipping off in a few weeks to Japan to pack parachutes for the military, was named Miss Congeniality. And for the coveted Girl Drifter of the Quarter award, Thao was a unanimous choice. Nadine, beaming proud mama, handed each of the winners certificates printed on petal-pink stationery, as well as new floor mats — the same Hawaiian surfer-girl mats she has in her car.
In Nadine’s cult of girl racers, there will be, as in the Girl Scouts, a rule book for everybody to abide by. They will all be connected, a society of girl drifters in America. There will be Drifting Pretty chapters across the states. “No, notlike a cult!” she corrected. “More a network. I’m not like, ‘Die, guys, die!’” She dreams of the day when her girls will be excellent enough drifters to merit a visit from one of Japan’s all-girl pro-level drift teams. Team Kumakazoku perhaps. It will be like a United Nations meeting. They will discuss drifting techniques and watch drifting videos. Perhaps they will go clubbing.
But the truth is that there are no really good girl drivers here yet. Nadine and her girlfriends are okay, but they’re not great. As much as they’ve improved, there’s still the intimidation factor, the one-girl syndrome. “I feel that the reason I’m not that good yet is because all last year when I was at the monthly practices at the track, it was just me and occasionally Yoshie,” said Nadine. “And all the guys were watching me. And they were like, there’s that one girl. I was like, just drive. I didn’t want to compete, either. Because there’s that . . . expectation. You have to have the right mindset. If you’re not confident, you’re gonna hit the wall. That really kind of screwed things up,” she said. “Now we have to get good.”
Recently, a new girl appeared on the scene, an Asian model named Verena Mei who enrolled in a driving school. “She just popped up this year. I saw her at an event and said, ‘Who is she?’” Nadine said. A twinge of cattiness bubbled to the surface, then was gone. Nadine generously admitted that Verena Mei was cute, but noted that she only drives the driving school’s car. “She’s actually going to compete in the middle of this year at one of the events. I’m happy for her that she’s not going to be a typical model and that she’s going to get out there and drive . . . I’m going to try to get to know her.”
In July, it is Yoshie who will get to know Verena Mei — as a driver. The two will be the only girl competitors in Sonoma at the semiannual Formula D, which will feature all the top drifters in the U.S. “I don’t know how good she is,” mused Yoshie in a sprawling parking lot at the California Speedway in Fontana, where the girls had gathered for their monthly practice. Nadine wasn’t there, having gone to play pit honey to Benson at a drift competition in Georgia. “Sometimes there is less pressure when she’s not here,” said Yoshie meaningfully. We wondered how Nadine would do at this year’s D1 in December, when it was her turn. “She has a better car than all of us, but she has not yet experienced that kind of harsh environment,” said Yoshie, who has. “She says she’s not yet ready. I don’t know what’s stopping her.” In the coned lot, the girls skidded around, timidly at first then more aggressively as the day wore on. I thought of the stares from the guys. The walls. The poles of doom.
“You rocked out there!” one girl said to another. “You were crazy.” It was thrilling to see the girls throwing the weight of their cars around, kicking up dust, making smoke. The radio in someone’s car played a Jessica Simpson remake of “Take My Breath Away.” It was Thao’s 20th birthday, and at the end of the day, the girls gathered around a cake atop the trunk of Noelle’s Nissan. They cut the cake with a chopstick and passed messy chunks of it around on paper napkins. In a few months, Nadine and Yoshie would be choosing the five best girls to make up Team Drifting Pretty, the first official girls’ competitive drift-racing team in the U.S. Yokohama had promised them tires. This was a generation of girls who had no readily available role models in a sport that was itself just coming of age. So in a way, they were pioneers. Whatever happened, whichever of them won or lost or made it onto the team or didn’t, in the end this was how I wanted to remember them. Just a bunch of girls covered in a fine layer of track dust, laughing, complex; drifting together, with purpose, on burning wheels.
