Oregon Raceway Park in Grass Valley Oregon is home to a massive 2.3 mile road course with great elevation changes and very fast turns. Mainly used for time attack, club days, and motorcycle racing this track sees quite a lot of action. But as of August of 2017 ORP has taken on a new event, TakeoverNW. From the minds of two brothers Tyler Marcus and Brandon Marcus came a weekend of drifting, time attack, concerts, and partying. There are only a handful of events like this happening already, the main one being Gridlife at Road Atlanta but there are none in the PNW area to accommodate the ever growing grassroots drift scene here.
The event gets held midway through August, starting on Friday night where they have the track lit up for some night driving, then on Saturday and Sunday there are half hour heats back and forth between drifting and time attack with a 10 minute period between each which was super useful for spectators and media like myself to get around the giant track. With not only a massive pit section, but plenty of grandstands throughout the track you can get a great view of all the action.
Like any grassroots type of event, the range of cars that attended and the skill level between each driver made for an awesome experience. You get to watch certain drivers shred the whole track from the beginning or see a driver make huge steps as they learn to overcome fears and get the technique down. Another great thing about these events is that Tyler and Brandon were around all day, talking to drivers, helping media, and making sure this event ran as smoothly as possible.
Not only is there killer driving going on, but there are food vendors right next to the pits, at night they have a massive stage setup with local music so you can party after a long day of driving, and a great facility with showers available which was great for getting off all the dust and dirt from hiking around all day. There is also plenty of space to setup your tent as a spectator if you're staying for the whole weekend and the track isn't terribly far from hotels and food either if you're not up for roughing it. I can't imagine the location will stay very spacious for long with how much growth this event is seeing however.
The amount of support for these events gets bigger with each year. For being a brand new event TakeoverNW still had pretty large group of drivers compared to some of the other drift events in the area. Some of these drivers being your podium holders in the Evergreen Pro-AM series, Formula D driver Cameron Moore, and two of the biggest drift youtubers right now, Orion Dajnowicz and Quentyn Deady. With such a new event bringing out such high caliber drivers it's sure to take off over the next couple years especially with how well run the whole event is. Next year is already being planned so keep an eye out and register early.
Big thanks to Oregon Raceway Park, Tyler and Brandon, all the volunteers and officials, and all the drivers for making this event so awesome. Will definitely return next year.
@luckyclub.us
@takeover_nw
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