DRIFTING · Competition Craft

TANDEM: THE CHASE RUN

13 min · Full library · written from fifteen years in the terrain

The point

After this lesson you can chase with genuine proximity in the places that score it, mirror a lead car's angle and transitions rather than copying them late, and make the risk decisions consciously instead of in the moment.

Half the answer, free

The Technique

  1. The chase is scored on proximity, mirroring and holding your own run together, and those three things fight each other. Proximity is not simply closest wins, because proximity in the middle of a long corner where nobody is looking counts for far less than proximity at the initiation and through the first outer zone. Mirroring means matching the lead's angle, line and transition points, not exceeding them. Holding your own run together means you are still expected to be on the course, at angle, without corrections, while doing all of that. Chase runs are lost far more often to a driver who was close and untidy than to a driver who was clean and a car length back.
  2. You cannot copy an initiation you can see. By the time you have processed the lead car rotating, you are already late, and late initiation is the root cause of most chase mistakes and most contact. So you learn their references instead. In practice and warm-up, watch where their brake lights come on, where the car takes its set, and what the rear quarter does in the instant before the tyres light up, because the car's attitude changes before the smoke appears. Then you initiate off your own reference, adjusted for theirs. The best chase drivers are effectively running their own qualifying run offset by a fixed distance, not following anybody.
Still under the glass
  • Safe following distance, mirroring angle, closing on exits, and where to spend your risk budget
  • 6 more technique steps
  • The 3 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
  • The drill that builds the reflex
  • The safety non-negotiables

It opens when you book a trip that runs drifting - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.

Book a trip, unlock this libraryOr put $200 down - unlock it today

Ridden with us already? Enter your Union key.

First Tracks

New lessons, new film and new Intel land after every Recon. First Tracks reads it before anyone else.

← Tandem: The Lead RunBetween Runs: Tyres, Fuel, Head … →

← Full drifting curriculum

Get In Touch

LET'S BUILD
YOUR
ADVENTURE

Whether you want to surf Japan's legendary powder, ride the Old Telegraph Track to the tip of Cape York, or chase a New Zealand winter - tell us what you're dreaming about and we'll build the trip around you.

BaseAustralia · Operating Globally
Instagram@deej_ayes_an_alias

Read this before you send

These sports kill people. Not rarely, and not only the reckless - every season they kill riders who were experienced, fit, well equipped and doing everything properly. That is the honest starting position and everything else we do sits on top of it.

The mountain does not know who you are. Snow releases on people with twenty years in it. Machines roll on riders who have done that line a hundred times. Water, rock, trees and other people are indifferent to how good you have become. Every time you go out you are accepting a real chance that it goes wrong, and no amount of skill removes that chance - it only changes the odds.

What that looks like in these disciplines, plainly: avalanche burial and asphyxiation, being crushed under a machine, head and spinal injuries from falls and impacts, drowning, hypothermia, and collisions with trees, rocks and other riders.

We work in remote country, so distance is part of it. A serious injury usually means hours before a helicopter can reach you, and weather sometimes means no helicopter at all. Help being close is not a feature of any trip we run.

This is exactly why we prepare the way we do. Training before you ride, gear standards, minimum party sizes, people who know the ground, and a willingness to call a day off. All of it is about improving your odds and making the group capable of looking after itself. None of it makes anything safe, none of it makes anyone competent, and passing our training is not a qualification. Anybody who tells you they can make this safe is selling something.

Everyone out there is relying on everyone else having been honest about what they can actually do. If reading this has made you hesitate, that is worth listening to rather than talking yourself out of.

The enquiry cannot be sent until this is typed.