Drift Appalachia shuts down the streets of Beckley

By Jenny Harnish, RealWV

BEKCLEY, WV — They’re back! The supercharged motors of the world’s greatest drifters returned to Raleigh County over the weekend for a drift event on a closed country road and a community block party in downtown Beckley.

“We have a lot of people here from all across the United States,” said organizer Jedidiah Smith with Backroads of Appalachia. “We also have one international driver from the United Kingdom. We have a couple drivers from Canada as well. They couldn’t be more excited to be here driving these roads here in West Virginia.”

What are they doing here? Drifting.

“Drifting is a controlled slide,” Smith explains. “The great thing about the roads here in West Virginia is you have a lot of curves in a very compact area so you can really link those corners together and have a continuous drift.”

Watch below for multiple viewpoints of the drifting experience, as well as the block party in Beckley.

“The block party is something that we love to do to include the community,” says Smith.

“A lot of these events that we do in Drift Appalachia aren’t open to the public. So this is our way of giving back to the community, to make them feel includes, and give them the opportunity to come out here and shake hands with these drivers. And to let young kids enjoy these young cars.

“All these cars are powered by different engines. A lot of these cars don’t even have factory engine in them anymore. Very customized.”

Smith says one of their aims is to get kids interested in cars. “One of our mottos is we wanna get kids high on cars, not drugs. So this is our way of doing that.”

Click here for more information on Drift Appalachia and Backroads of Appalachia.