The Struggles Of Motorsport Ft. Alex Williams
Posted by Matthew Marks on 22nd Jan 2025
This week, we caught up with drifter Alex Williams as he ran us through his first year of competition drifting, all of the struggles involved and a massively heartbreaking situation that happened a few months ago.
If you would prefer to watch the full interview video with Alex, we will post it below. Make sure to subscribe to the Exoracing YouTube channel while you're there!
Hi! Who are you, and how did you start drifting?
Hello, everyone. My name is Alex Williams. I'm 21 years old, and I've just finished my first year of competition drifting.
I started at the very end of 2023 and did an Autofest competition as a wildcard, so I won't class it as my first year of drifting. Then I went on to do Drift League GB and did a full year with them in my black S14.
Tell us about the competition car.
Some call it the 200sx, and others call it the S14. It was a second half, so it was a Kouki front end. It had a bolted-in roll cage and a fire extinguisher system to suit regulations, and it was pretty bog standard.
I have a front wisefab on it and nothing on the rear to start with, and then I moved the rear end to a wisefab system, so we have wisefab front and rear. It was very basic; it just had a turbo, a map, and a link ECU, so it was very basic power-wise.
Then, towards the middle of the season, I thought I was running out of power trying to keep up with the other lot. Then I decided to go with a fully built engine by HPWorx. God bless, they are brilliant and very helpful; yeah, they are just wonderful people.
How was your first-ever drift event?
The first event I ever did in my black S14 was Anglesey at Drift Matsuri.
That was a brilliant event that got all the snags out of the car. I learnt that it needed more angle, so I bought the wisefab: to be ready for the drift season ahead.
How did you find Drift League?
So my first season of drift league i was massively underprepared, underfunded, and underskilled. I chucked myself in the deep end massively, I sort of regret it, but I learned so much through doing it; it was amazing!
I learned that I needed a gazebo very fast, but luckily for Beacon Stoves, they had a gazebo on hand, and Rich from Beacon Stoves was brilliant.
He took me in like I was his brother, so I was with them for the season, and they helped me out whenever I needed it. I'm not mechanically minded, so they helped me out massively. Sam, Rich's mechanic, helped me with anything I needed.
What was your most memorable event?
One event was awful; I even crashed into the wall because they were running Teeside Autodrome backwards. It was awful because I hit the wall, it started to rain, and when I hit the wall, it bent my subframe.
Then Sam was brilliant enough to replace the subframes, but again, I was underprepared and underqualified for the job, so he helped me out.
Then I had to go to (I think) Manchester to get a subframe, so I had to go massively far overnight, but luckily, I had qualified... just.
Which events have you enjoyed?
In my drifting career, I have been lucky enough to be given the opportunity to drift as a demo driver/passenger driver for autofest shows. They have been brilliant, and Team Ronin, who was running it, has been brilliant as well.
I did have a slight whoopsy towards the end of the day. I did write the black S14 off into the banger track wall. It wasn't the most pleasing thing because it was just before a round of drift league, but luckily, the guys at Team Ronin helped me again as I'm really inexperienced with mechanical knowledge.
You can probably tell with this going on because you will see my try and waffle about my build, which I'm very new to doing.
How was the Autofest experience?
The Autofest experience was brilliant, I learned so much driving with, I would say, the veterans of the sport, and I call them all my drift dads because they are all older than me and all look after me!
So I've got Matt and Martin, who are team Betty's surf shop; they have taught me so much and have been with me throughout the drift league.
I had Kev and Paul, again like my drift dads, Team Ronin. They were helping me out massively, teaching me new things and said, "Just smash my door, just get on it, just do it".
Those few helping me like that have pushed me so much further and have actually made me so much more competitive in the Drift League.
What advice would you give to newer drifters?
As a new driver with drifting, I would definitely recommend asking a few people who have experience what to do because it does seem like quite a scary leap, but it's actually not that far.
If you have people that you can ask, just go up to people on drift days that you think might be a lot more experienced than you. It's very easy to get into drifting, and it's a brilliant sport, but do know that it's expensive.
What are the costs involved?
So, costs with drifting. It can fluctuate massively; you've got a good day, I would want to say below a thousand. I would say I do about 500 quid on tyres, and then I want to say around 100 quid each way for fuel, and then possibly the odd bit of fibreglass or a bent tie rod, so it adds up to around a thousand.
But on your bad days, you can go blowing up an engine, you can do subframes, you can do all of your drive assembly, you could do a gearbox, so it could go up massively. Or you could write the whole car off, like I did at autofest.
What happened with the new S15 you bought?
I bought an S15 off of Oliver evans, he was a drift masters driver. It was a brilliant car; it gave me a massive buzz, it had a sequential gearbox, it was a 2JZ built by DY Engines, andit was the dog's doodahs.
I must have owned it for 2 months, I put some little touches of mine into it. I took it for a few spins, and the car would spin in fifth gear; it was insane; it was like 800 plus brake horsepower and an amazing car.
I went to Malaysia because I got invited for a boat race, and whilst I was over there, I left it with HPWorx just to look over everything and make sure everything was squeaky clean and running right.
Unfortunately, a few units down ended up catching fire, and it spread to HPWorx, unfortunately, the S15 was in that fire, so it's gone now.
It was gutting as I was on holiday, it ruined my holiday/boat racing thing, and yeah, I was devastated. So the HPWorx unit went up in flames, and the floor above collapsed down and just engulfed it even more in flames.
So, as soon as I got back off my holiday/boat racing, I went and actually saw the extent of the damage. It was carnage. There was nothing salvageable; there was one other car which was completely gone and other cars that had melted away. It was devastating, to say the least. After the S15 had gone to the fire, obviously, I was gutted.
My future of drifting was over, and then I realised all the money I had been saving for my 2025 season was starting to add up, so I decided to get my shell, my S14 shell, out of storage, which I bought a few years back that I was meant to be doing up gradually.
I got that out of storage, and now I've decided to build it for my 2025 season, so my story hasn't come to an end, it's just beginning again, and I'm looking forward to the 2025 season, coming back stronger than ever.