One Burnt Tyre at a Time: How Torque Titans Is Changing Lives Through Drifting
Updated: 37 minutes ago
I travel internationally constantly, and I often find myself in the company of some incredibly influential people. Yet in the past five years I cannot remember staying longer than thirty minutes at an event. This weekend was different. This weekend I felt part of something.
I arrived as a stranger. I felt welcomed into a family, into a community, and into an environment that felt like home. That sense of belonging is profoundly special. You simply cannot put a price on it, and I believe that in itself is a story worth telling, one that deserves to be brought into the spotlight.
So here it is. Grab a cold drink. This is a long one, and every word of it is true.
The day we were put in the front seat
The event was Japan Drive on the KZN South Coast, a weekend of Japanese car culture presented by Gas Magazine, with drifting at the very heart of it. Thousands of people came. They came with their families and their children on their shoulders, and the air smelled of hot rubber, which, if you ask me, is the true perfume of a good weekend.
We were there as VVIP guests of the van der Walt family, owners of Rock Raceway, who were special guests at the event themselves, working alongside Gas Magazine and the raceway to make the day happen. Then something happened that I did not expect. They put us in the front seat, in front of thousands of people.
Now, at Adventure Lifestyle Magazine we have a saying: nobody gets left behind, and nobody should take the back seat in life. I have said it on stages and written it in emails. I have never had it handed back to me so literally, with a roaring engine attached.
Meet Hennie
Every movement has a person at the centre of it. For this one, his name is Hennie van der Walt.
Hennie is the force behind Torque Titans, and he is the kind of man who makes a big dream sound like a perfectly reasonable Tuesday plan. He is building drifting in South Africa from the ground up, and he is doing it with a stubborn belief that a sport should belong to everyone, not only to those who can afford it.
He does it on three fronts at once. There is the Torque Titans Drift Series, which fills grandstands and pits the best against the best. There is the drift school, where children as young as ten learn to drift in specialised cars, built and tuned in his own workshop. And there is the quiet work, the part that does not go on a poster, which I will come to in a moment.
When we said goodbye he signed off the way he signs off everything: SEND IT SIDEWAYS. Three words, and somehow also a whole philosophy of life.
Two young drivers who stole the show
If Hennie is the heart of the movement, the youngsters are its pulse. Two of them stole the day: Brandon van der Walt, eighteen, and Nathan van Rensburg, fifteen. Fifteen! When I was fifteen, the most dangerous thing I did was borrow a hairdryer without asking.
Brandon drives the purple number 92, a Silvia with a plate that reads SUZAKU. Between runs he stood beside it, helmet still on, eyes calm behind clear glasses, and looked at the camera like a young man who already knows exactly where he is going. His helmet carries his name along the jaw and is covered in colour like a stained glass window.
What struck me most was how they carried themselves. These are young people who have been handed something real, a skill, a team, a place to belong, and they treat it with respect. That is what the right kind of sport does to a teenager. It gives the restlessness somewhere to go.
The granny, and the thing that happened to her face
I have to tell you about the granny, because she is the whole story in two photographs.
She took a passenger ride. In the first photo, hands are tightening the strap of her helmet and her face is doing a very honest impression of someone who has just remembered that she is about to be driven sideways at speed. She was, in a word, petrified.
In the second photo she is laughing so hard you can nearly hear it. Same helmet, same woman, entirely different human being. She stepped out of that car glowing and she wanted to go again, immediately, please, right now.
That is the point of all of this. Drifting is not only for the young, or the male, or the wealthy, or the already brave. It belongs to a granny who walked in nervous and walked out fearless. It belongs to everyone.
This is Ubuntu. This is Simunye. This is a movement.
Where the cars come from
Behind the smoke is a workshop. KM PowerLab, Hennie's other company, builds the custom drift cars you see on the track and the ones the children learn in. Its slogan is Zero limits, one standard, and it describes itself as specialists in performance and drift vehicles, from diagnostics and ECU tuning to custom builds and drift preparation. Its new performance workshop opened on 1 November, so the doors have literally just swung open.
That matters to this story for a simple reason. A school needs cars. A series needs cars. A kid with no money and a big dream needs somebody who can build a car to a budget. Hennie can build any custom car to your budget, and he treats that as a promise instead of a sales line. Nobody gets left behind, remember.
The part that does not go on a poster
Now to the thing that made me put down my camera for a minute.
Hennie has helped children from his community who could never afford a prosthesis. He has seen that they were fitted with state-of-the-art legs, and he has gone further, gifting running blades as well. He does not make a song and dance about it, which is exactly why it deserves one.
The cause we were pointed to is the Orthocross Amputee Foundation, a registered non-profit that helps people who cannot afford prosthetic limbs get them. Its message is simple: together, we can help more amputees move forward. If you want to be part of that, you can write to them at info@orthocross.co.za.
A man who builds a car for a young driver on Monday and helps a child walk and run on Tuesday has understood what a sport is for. We commend him. Properly, loudly and in print.
Look at the boy who climbed into the driver's seat with a thumbs up. Whatever is going on in his heart right now, you can see that it is enormous. This is what “get them off the streets and behind steering wheels” looks like when it works.
Dear Red Bull, we need to talk
When my husband Matt and I started this magazine, we started with nothing, not a single rand. Our very first goal was a media pass to a Red Bull event with David Coulthard. We have never stopped believing in what that brand stands for: giving people wings, and giving young talent a stage.
So, @redbull, here is the story we think you were born to be part of, and here is why we believe it should be sponsored as soon as possible.
It is real grassroots. Children as young as ten are learning to drift at a school that builds and tunes its own cars. That is the pipeline every energetic brand dreams of, and it already exists.
The talent is already here. An eighteen-year-old and a fifteen-year-old drove in front of thousands and held the crowd in their hands.
The crowds are real. Thousands came to a single day. Families, kids, grannies. This is a mainstream audience, not a niche.
It has a heart. A sport that gets young people off the streets, and a founder who helps children who cannot afford prostheses walk and run. Few stories in South African motorsport carry that much meaning.
It is ready to go international. Drifting in South Africa is ready to go international. The only missing ingredient is you.
We are coming for that sponsorship, and we will tell this story in every corner of Adventure Lifestyle Magazine until the right people at Red Bull see it. Come and stand trackside with us. Feel the engines in your chest. Then tell us this is not worth backing.
With wings and tyre smoke,
Jake-Lee Coetzee
Come and see it for yourself
There is more action on the way, and you do not want to hear about it second-hand. Follow us and follow Torque Titans to see the next events, the dates and the build-up as they are announced. Find us at Adventure Lifestyle Magazine and them at @torquetitans_drift, and bring your family. Bring your granny.
What is your social development contribution?
To every business reading this: you spend money on sponsorship and marketing every year. What are you doing with it for the people around you? Want to make a contribution that changes a life? Get in touch with us at Adventure Lifestyle Magazine, or contact Torque Titans directly through @torquetitans_drift, and see how you could change a life.
Brands that stand next to a movement like this do not just get a logo on a bonnet. They get to be remembered for what they did when it counted.
I will close where the weekend closed me. I came to see cars go sideways, and I left having watched a granny find her courage, a teenager find his calling and a whole community find itself. That is a story worth telling. It deserves a spotlight, and a great deal more than a single magazine can give it.
So keep an eye on drifting in South Africa. Hennie and his incredible team are paving the way for young drifters from far and wide, and they are touching a life one burnt tyre at a time.
SEND IT SIDEWAYS!!!
Planning a birthday? Read these next
Follow the movement: @torquetitans_drift, @hennie_van_der_walt, @kmpowerlab, @rockraceway, @gasmotorshow, @redbull. More stories at adventurelifestylemagazine.com
Comments