Legends of Drift: Why New Jersey Is Becoming America’s Drift Capital Again

(Image: Sebastian Marko / Red Bull Content Pool)

By Adam Stafford, Editor-in-Chief, RaceFrontier 🏁

There’s something electric in the air at Raceway Park, Englishtown, New Jersey. Once famous for drag racing and grassroots car meets, the venue has reinvented itself as the beating heart of America’s drift culture. And the Legends of Drift festival is the perfect proof.

When the sun dips and the tire smoke starts to glow under the floodlights, Englishtown feels like Tokyo in the early 2000s — raw, loud, and unapologetically wild. Fans pile against the barriers, phones high, engines screaming at the limiter, and every slide feels like a statement: drifting is alive, and it’s thriving here in Jersey.

From drag strip to drift mecca

Raceway Park was once all about straight-line speed. But the track’s evolution tells a bigger story: America’s motorsport fans aren’t just chasing seconds on a stopwatch — they want style, smoke, and culture. The shift to drifting has turned Englishtown into a new-school arena where pros and underground heroes share the same asphalt.

Why NJ, why now?

Simple: location and passion. New Jersey sits right in the corridor between New York and Philadelphia, feeding off both crowds. Add in decades of car-scene history — from import tuners to muscle builds — and you get a community hungry for events that feel authentic. Legends of Drift tapped into that, and the result is a festival that feels less like a competition and more like a movement.

The culture factor

It’s not just about who wins. It’s about who sends it the hardest, who throws the wildest angle, who keeps the crowd screaming. Music, food trucks, car meets — it’s lifestyle first, competition second. That’s why fans are driving hours to be part of it: Englishtown has soul.

The bigger picture

While Formula Drift runs the national stage, Legends of Drift is carving its own lane. It’s grassroots, it’s gritty, and it’s exactly what the U.S. scene needs. Don’t be surprised if, in a few years, people start calling New Jersey the true home of American drifting.

Photo Credits: Sebastian Marko, © Red Bull Content Pool (used for editorial purposes only).