How To Start Drifting Ft. Professional Driver Martin Wonnacott
Posted by Matthew Marks on 12th Feb 2025
We caught up with professional competition drifter and one of our longest-sponsored drivers, Martin Wonnacott. He goes in-depth about how to start drifting, his experience, simulators, the competition car and heaps of helpful information for new drifters.
We have sponsored Martin for around 5 years and he has always run our heat management to keep his engine bay temperatures down.
If you would rather watch the interview, I'll add the video below, and whilst you're there, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
This interview is long but incredibly valuable for anyone starting to drift, so buckle up and get ready for an information overload, which he has gained with over a decade of drifting.
Hi! Who are you, and which events do you enjoy?
I'm Martin Wonnacott, the owner of a two-car team, team Betty Surf Shop and the car I drive is the Toyota Chaser. So, some of the biggest events I've been to, for me anyway, one of the Highlight ones were Germany and Iron Drift Kings that run alongside Drift Masters.
That was a big one. I didn't do so well there, but the atmosphere was amazing, so that was great. Ireland, for us, is always a really good place to go.
We class it as big events anyway because the Irish are so good. We've got BDC; the British Drift Championship was something that we had a big part of and also Drift League, which we've been doing for years and do quite well in, so that's the biggest ones for us.
That was probably the competition side of things. Then, for demos, we end up at Silverstone for Japfest and a couple of other events, and we do Castle Combe, all sorts. Um, yeah, we get around.
What is your experience in drifting?
So one of the probably most interesting ones is one of the furthest ones we've done: Iron Drift Kings alongside Drift Masters. It is such an amazing place to go, but the weather there is just so odd.
One minute, you're sweating, a typical UK sort of person, not liking the heat absolutely roasting in the car, to the next minute, these amazing lightning shows of flashes of lightning and thunder and people swamping out their pits.
It's just so mad; it's such an amazing place. The funny thing is it's one of the best experiences I've had drifting and probably the least amount of driving because I put the car into the wall quite early on.
It was a shame because I dialled the track very early but took too many risks in practice. The car ended up too damaged to mend properly, so we were spectators most of the time.
The atmosphere there was absolutely amazing, and that's why we say we don't do it just for driving. I took no notice of not driving, to be honest, in the end, because it was that good. So, yeah, that was one of the most interesting places to go.
What advice do you have for new drifters?
So, if you're new to drifting, well, for me, I didn't even worry about the drifting. First, I was into cars, and I bought a Jap car, and then I saw the drifting, so I just went to an event that was teaching you a little bit.
I went there, and as it was, I could drive a rear wheel drive car quite well, so if someone new wants to do it, you've just got to look for the places doing it. Don't even buy a car because there are so many places now that they'll rent the car out to you.
It might seem expensive when you look first, but believe me, it's not because if you're going to get into it, you will be spending a lot more money anyway.
You haven't got the risk, you know they've got the insurance, they know how a car has got to be set up to put you in it to see if you enjoy it, and I think you would get the most out of a day hiring a car with a coach there and they will make sure you do the right things to see if you know whether you're going to enjoy it or not because the next stage after that becomes a whole new world.
How to find your first drift event
So, what should you look for in one of your first events? You want to go with a few different people you know because being in groups is always much better. You have got people to talk to if things aren't going amazingly.
You've still got the banter, and you know that's why you're there. Look for somewhere not so far away, which is hard for us down here. Still, you know, look for somewhere as close as you can because the nearer you are again, the problems are less to deal with.
Somewhere that's not fast, you know, a massively fast track, something nice and simple, don't think too technical you know and ideally, the people running it, if you've looked into it.
They're very beginner-friendly because it can soon feel very daunting with the people there. Generally speaking, in drifting, even if you've got your Pros there, they are always willing to help as long as you're humble and accept that you're new to it.
Don't try to be the big guy/big girl. Just keep it simple.
Is drifting easy to start?
Drifting has always been very easy to get involved in if you want to, whether it's because you're following drivers or want to get into driving because you've only got to go on any social media now.
Just like myself and most of the drivers, if someone's into drifting and you want to ask questions, they get hold of me; I always answer back, long as they're not, you know, a bit of an a-hole, then you're fine.
You know, everyone has to learn from somewhere.
I've always found from the time I started when I was doing it and didn't know who to speak to right up to now when I'm one of the drivers, I've found it's always been the same and that everyone's happy to talk everyone's happy to meet you at the track.
People come up to me, talking to me like they know me. I don't know who they are until they say their name from Facebook, and I've been talking to them for months and didn't even know it, and that's what I've found the whole way through, so you just got to not be afraid to talk to people.
What are the track day essentials?
Some Essentials for taking to Drifting when you're going drifting. If we're talking lowkey, start drifting because it's different for us. We take a lot of gear now, but generally, you want a toolbox.
You could go to Halfords and get a toolbox. You don't have to spend a fortune.
You want a general toolbox, but most of the time, these toolboxes have got way too much in them because you use about 10% of it, so you could look at the main size nuts and bolts on your car and take just a handful of tools if weight's a problem.
If you can, you'll take a couple of arms or something you'll likely break. That's where, if you're going with a few of you, it's handy because you could all take something slightly different.
If you're driving the car to the track, you want to think about the rear lights, possibly because you need to get home, which gets broken a lot.
You don't need loads of stuff because you'll get caught out on something; we take a whole van full, and still, we end up with something broken that we can't mend.
You're all right if you got an S body or BMW, let's say, because usually someone's got something, but you'll never be able to take everything, so you can literally only take some of the small stuff, and you got to go from there.
It is a bit of potluck, to be honest. People try to come up with some special kit that you have to have, but there is no special kit.
You could take a few random nuts and bolts, but other than that, take the main things that you think you will break, but you will learn very quickly the things you need to bring.
Are simulators worth it?
So, Sim Racing is really good. I don't do it anymore. I did, and I used it in 2019 to my benefit, but I used it to dial in where clipping points were on a track.
For someone who hasn't done any drifting, not even driving, it's just been proven it works. I've seen so many people turn up our track, and they've never really done any drifting. They can drift like they've been doing it for a few years.
For someone who hasn't drifted, it's a very good way of getting into it before they spend a lot of money, although you can spend a lot of money on them now.
For someone like myself, people who have already been drifting and getting into Sims, you have to be a bit more patient because it's harder to get used to it, but you can still benefit in different ways, especially if you're into competition and all that.
I actually don't have one now, but it's purely because of the lack of room. I'm not very good with computers, so I struggle even to set things up. I've gone away from it, but if I had the budget, I would return to having one.
It's purely an extra I can't afford, so I haven't, but I recommend a SIM to anybody.
It's got to be how you can do a thousand laps, and it costs you nothing after you've spent out on the gear. So yeah, it's definitely the new way, the young way, and it's making it harder and harder to win the competitions out there with them all coming in after.
Which cars should beginner drifters use?
So, for first-time cars, you know, you got the usual ones, the BMWs and 350Zs, which are becoming much more popular. I've got a Lexus that I've been doing, which would be classified as a Grassroots car.
Don't spend too much; it will sound a bit cliche, but don't try and budget for this wrecker because you'll end up spending money. You need to start with the cheapest you can afford basic platform, but remember there will be a contingency you need in it.
If you've got £3,000 and spend £3,000 on that car, you will have to find some more money. Don't get me wrong, you don't have to do too much.
You can get a second-hand seat and get a handbrake. You know, you don't need very much. Lock the diff off, and away you go, you can try it. Maybe you can get a second-hand harness, so try to keep it basic.
If you're really getting into the drifting and it's not for the car so much, don't be putting body kits on it, you know, because, believe it or not, the standard bumpers, especially on a BMW, you can drive over the things and you can put them back on.
So keep it basic, but make sure the car is in good condition. Servicing is massive. So many people ignore the service side of it, ensuring everything's right. Again, it can be standard. You could use standard bushes, everything.
It will be fine for doing your first drift event, but it means you go to track. The biggest waste of money is going to track and getting two laps in, and the car breaks, so make sure that the car is up to scratch like it's going to be a road car and has to go through an MOT.
If it goes through an MOT properly, then it's more than likely to last a drift event, and that's what you need to do to save some money.
Things to avoid on your first drift car
Things not to do that most people end up doing when they first get a car to go drifting are definitely your lock kits. You know, WiseFab, FIGS, as I've got anything you don't need.
If you want to feel like you've changed your car a little bit, you're talking like some wheel spacers. You don't need it because you must learn how to drive that car first.
You'll never use that lock because you're not going fast enough. It's more of what you should do than not do.
I mean, as I said earlier on, don't be putting big body kits on it in that unless it's a car that you've done originally as a nice car and then you're going to use it, but you got to accept they're going to get smashed.
So, if you're buying the car to go drifting, start the drifting first and worry about the body kits later. Again, keep it simple: just some suspension; you don't need top-of-the-range suspension, so get some eBay suspension.
It will help a little bit. Weld that diff up, put the seat in, like I said, harness, and that is it. You don't need anything else. You don't need to worry about anything like the BMWs; they increase the rev limit.
You don't need it until you start competing or something like that. You don't need it, and it all costs. It's all more risky for the car; keep it as basic as possible.
How would you get into competition drifting?
People getting into competition for the first time, speaking obviously from experience, try not to take it too seriously. Everyone says it, treat it like practice, which is almost impossible to do, so I'm not going to go there with that, but that's what you're trying to do.
Practice is usually fine for people if they're confident, but it's when it comes to qualifying. Qualifying is the hardest thing in drifting, which I suffered for years.
I used to, as they say, win practice, used to get everyone saying, you're doing amazing, you're the best one out there, you're going to wipe the board of everyone, and then I'd go out and in qualifying you overdrive is what you do.
It's not that you make big mistakes. Still, you try doing too much and don't realize you were already as good enough driving as you were. You try another 10%, and you go over the edge or, you know, look a bit erratic, and that's what I did for years.
I have got a lot better at it. You still get your moments, but I'm a lot better at holding my concentration and keeping calm; you know, for anyone coming in, you have to try and switch off to it. You've got to accept it won't go right all the time. Don't set yourself too big of a target.
Regarding the battles, some people are better than others at that. I'm not too bad at battles, as I forget what I'm doing.
I start treating it more like practice, and you want to get on someone's door, or you want to do a good lead line for the driver behind, so I find that's the easier part, and believe it or not, it gets easier the further you go on in competition because you start to get into it.
I can be very negative about whether I win a battle at the beginning. I've always been like it, and by the time I reach the top eight, I stop thinking about it. All I want to do is have amazing driving with the other driver, which is usually a mate anyway.
You go out and want to put on the best show, so you must try and enjoy it. You will get nervous. Don't think you're not. They are also good for concentration, and keep doing it until you get better!
Tell us about your competition Toyota Chaser.
The Toyota Chaser you see beside me has competed for 8 years, which we were surprised at the other day. It's probably the longest car I've had in competition now, but it never feels like it because we built everything ourselves.
The shell I had a couple of years before that, in about 2015, it was something like that. It sat around because I had the JZX90 then and was going to build a JZX100. Then I changed my mind.
The JZX90 got tired and old, and we were just about to scrap or sell the Chaser shell. I was umming and arring about going over to a different chassis, S chassis or whatever. Still, I do like having a different car over the perfect drift car if you like.
I knew that I could jump into something else and be more competitive instantly, but we do like having a car that gets a lot of love, and this thing's always done that.
Corinna was against me going for something else; she liked having the big Chaser, so I got talked into it. We kept it, and it was a very short term. I had to build this car in, I don't know, about 3 months maximum, something like that.
So we started stripping it all down and got Huxley Motorsport to do the cage, which was the main thing; it had a bit of a bend in the front, so we had a bit of extra work to do.
I have all these ideas, and Huxley is so good with Fabrication stuff; we went a bit further than we thought we would, did some amazing things on it, and built the car; as I said, I'm sure it was about 3 months.
I worked night and day, and we got the thing ready and running. Since then, it's probably been rebuilt about four times properly, properly stripped down, but every year, I take it apart and always do something different.
It's had so many changes on the back, especially the back end and inside because I get bored and want to change it. I've changed the body kits on it.
We've made every part of the body kit now on it ourselves; we moulded it all ourselves; I do the fabrication now. I wouldn't do a cage, but I do all the space framing work at the back. That's work the best it's ever worked with, obviously learning all different things.
Throughout the years, it's had a couple of really good Wallops and stood the test of time, so again, it is a testimony to how Huxley builds a cage because the thing's still not bent.
When it goes on the alignment at Volkscraft, it's always straight, so the car has stood up to everything, and it's won a few trophies, that's for sure. Even for its looks funny enough as much as for what it does, we're pretty proud of it and we got fed up with it a couple of years ago.
We swapped over to a 1.5JZ engine and had nothing but trouble. Purely bad luck meant we were chasing our tail with other things. It was the worst two years I've had in drifting, and I was falling out of love with it. So I bought a GT86 again and went back to that.
Would I be better in something smaller? Then we got fed up with the 1.5JZ, so we built the 1JZ in it now. We returned to a 1JZ because that had been good for us for years.
We built the 1JZ here, and a Local Company did some of the engineering. Put the engine together ourselves, and the thing's been bulletproof for the last few years.
We fell in love with it again last year, building the team up and bringing Matt in with his PS13. It's made me fall in love with it again, and now, with the two cars together, I absolutely love them. This thing flies now, and I've got nothing to change.
2025 will be the first year that we don't take it apart, and we're building the camper instead, which I should have done about 3 years ago. We love the Chaser; it's not going anywhere, and we'll try to keep trying to keep up with those youngsters that are coming in.
Is there much misinformation in drifting?
So one of the wife's tales, as you say, I'd say more misinformation for me and one I don't agree with anyway, is when people are going for the most grip they can get, you hear them often talking about, you know, I've dialled more grip in I've got it faster.
I was prone to it a few years ago, and I've backed off. I've probably got less grip in my car than ever because there's more to a drift run than grip, and I'm a much faster driver. I can chase harder with a looser car and less grip, so I've been dialling grip out.
I've learned to concentrate on side bite but dial out some of the grip to make the car easier to drive. That's all it is. The easier the car is to drive, the better you'll be.
You can react to things and react to what other cars are doing in front of you because you trust your car more. If a car is totally gripped up, you've got to be an amazing driver to keep that car drifting, or you've got to hope that they don't do anything in front of you because you probably can't stop.
So yeah, you don't have to grip your car up.
How should you maintain your car?
I'm a big one for maintenance on your car; most people know that's why the car comes to bits so often. It's not because something's wrong; very rarely is there something wrong with my car; it's what people don't think about enough when they think of their cars.
I've heard people say so often well, there's nothing wrong with the car, so I'm not touching it. I've taken my car at a bits at the end of the season and there's effectively nothing wrong with it.
Still, I've found cracks in places, I've found something that's just about to give up, or you can see that it would give up soon, or something that's worn out. We spend so much money going to track, we spend so much money travelling, and to do these events when you get there.
You can only do two laps because something breaks, and it's silly; it's so annoying, and you've wasted so much money. So prevention is a massive thing, and it's definitely served me well.
I've won battles because of it; consistency in a season is huge. I've done well in Seasons without getting a podium or getting near the top just because my car has been on the line every time, and you get more enjoyment.
I've had a couple of years where my car wasn't consistent. It wasn't through a lack of maintenance on my side. It was unlucky, but if you don't maintain it and get even more problems, you won't enjoy it as much.
If you turn up, this year just gone was a prime example. My teammate Matt Smith and I turned up, and everyone noticed the Bonnet was never up. We're just having fun out off the track in the pits, jumping in our cars, going out in that, and having the crack with the car.
How would you go about potential sponsorships?
Okay, so sponsorship is a bit of a funny one. As far as I'm concerned, too many people are worrying about sponsorship, which some might think is funny coming from me as I'm quite well sponsored, but the honest truth is, the amount of time I've been doing it, I didn't focus on sponsorship.
I just enjoyed drifting, paying for it myself as much as I could, and that's what did it. People ask how you go for sponsorship. Well, you enjoy it, and you show that you enjoy it. You just put yourself across right and let time go by. Too many people think they'll say they're going to start drifting.
For example, it could be any Motorsport, but drifting for a start is you're not going to come into drifting. Even if you go and win an event or win a championship, you're not just suddenly going to get sponsors.
That's not what sponsorship is; it's basically another business besides the driving.
So you've got to accept you're going to have to put money into it yourself, you're going to have to put effort in whether it be going out working, doing extra hours, finding something else you can do, it is going to cost you money.
No one is going just suddenly to pay for you to go drifting. It's a hobby at the end of the day, and you must pay for it, so don't focus too much on sponsorship. Enjoy the sport for what it is.
Do your social media, do everything you enjoy doing, but do it because you enjoy doing it, not just to get a sponsor. Some of it will rely on luck; some of it's been luck with myself, and some of it's been hard work, but you make your luck.
One of my sponsors came from a follower, a fan, whatever you want to call them, and now a good friend, as it happens.
They passed me on to one of the companies that sponsor me now, so it was sort of luck, but the fact that I made myself approachable and we just enjoyed the sport for what it was, so you're going to have to sort of let it take it, it doesn't happen overnight sponsorship.
Tell us about your team
We have a team, which we did last year. It is good having a team. Most of the time, we've not had a team; it's been me and Corinna going on our own generally, and we still enjoy it because we tend to mingle with many other people.
We've been like an adopted team member at many teams. Slide Motorsport was one of the main ones we used to go to, and we nearly ended up on the team with them. That's another story, but we didn't. We treated ourselves like we were part of the team.
They treated us like we were part of the team.
It does make a massive difference because sometimes when you're on your own more on the competitive side, I don't think it matters so much in practice, but in competitive drifting, if you feel like you've got a real good team around you, say for instance when I was we used to park up by slide they weren't our actual team.
Because we felt like they were, I would come in if a couple of their drivers got knocked out. Corinna can't do anything major with the car, but I could pull in the pits and have three people jump on the car.
So it is really good because, as a driver, you struggle and are under pressure when things are going on, so having people around you is great.
A team is a funny thing because now me and Matt are a team, we are a proper team because we've got the cars the same colour and everything. You don't have to have that; a team is a group of guys or girls who turn up together and who work together, so you know teams are funny things.
I love this; I was getting a little bit, let's say, not bored, but I've been doing it so long. I was looking for something fresh and asked Matt to come on board properly. I'm getting him some of my sponsors, let's say, and putting us together. We were already a team effectively but weren't team Betty's Surf.
It was like Matt was Volkscraft because that's his business. I was Team Betty's Surf then, but we did everything together. We always turned up and had a laugh together, but now there are a few extra things we do together, and it just gives it that edge in the background.
It does help. It got us to a couple of events last year, one being Pembury for a big show, and that was probably the highlight of 2024 for me and Matt.
If you asked him, it would be because we turned up as a team and were treated well. You were out with Ex-Formula 1 and rally cars and things like that, so the team thing is good, but it doesn't have to be a set team.
It's a group of people who are basically enjoying themselves, and that's why it makes a difference in the pits and on track. So, one final thing to anybody getting into, or already into drifting, is to keep it sustainable for you because everyone is different.
What is sustainable for me is not sustainable for somebody else, and vice versa. Some people can do stuff easier than I can. I'm probably doing it easier than somebody else, especially youngsters coming into it.
So do it to keep it going long term to race away and make it look like you can afford it, and then you're gone the following year. It's no fun; you're better off keeping it within yourself and enjoying it, and the one big word is to enjoy it.
Conclusion
We want to thank Martin for taking the time to talk to us and explain everything in as much detail as he has.
If you have any questions for us or him, contact us on social media or hit the contact form at the top of the page. Search Wonnacott Pro Drifter on Facebook if you want to speak to Martin directly.
He would happily answer any questions regarding drifting or anything he has mentioned here today.