About Drift HQ
In the world of drifting, everyone is welcome. And even though we all started from nowhere, you don’t have to follow the same path as everyone else.
Our Mission
To grow a drift community and welcome newcomers by being a one-stop-shop for drift car parts and guidance you can trust.
Our Story
Drift HQ was reborn as a drifting-only online hub for drift car parts and education.
In December 2017, Drift HQ was reborn with my trusted partners, Savio Silva and Joel Garcia, as a drifting-only online hub for drift car parts and education. With this website and our fun, on-track events, we can share our trial and error knowledge with drifters of all experience levels to reduce the headaches of newcomers, save them money and help them fall in love with drifting the same way we did.
Our Team
Duarte Viana
Duarte Viana
Like so many journeys in the world of drifting, ours was also paved with mistakes and pizza. At 15 years old, I managed a Domino’s Pizza store where I worked 40 hours per week while attending an auto tech high school during the day. I spent every penny that I made on brand name car parts. I didn’t have a license, or a drift car. I just had a dream. In 2013, I bought a 2004 BMW M3 and brought it directly to a local performance shop in Fort Myers to start building my first drift car. I didn’t need anything too fancy; just a safe car with some drift parts to help initiate “the drift”. It seemed easy enough until I realized that very few shops had the expertise needed to build a drift car. So even my first, simple upgrades (roll cage, suspension components, brakes, fluids and a hydro e-brake) took an entire year of research, part hunting, installation and learning the Formula Drift rules. But what initially started with me thinking I’d never finish my first drift car, ended with me realizing what a desperate need there was for a shop that specializes in drifting. Soon, Drift HQ opened its doors to provide drift-focused service and maintenance along with drift car and drift trike building. As drifting grew in South Florida, so did we. Business was booming as more and more people discovered the sport and began sponsoring drivers on tracks around the country, including our local Punta Gorda track, which became our home track and hub for our business. So when this track closed, despite a year of our best efforts to keep it open, Drift HQ closed its doors as well. So, I dedicated myself to a new project car, a salvaged E46 BMW M3. By trial and error, I starting learning the importance of using quality brand name parts to build a finished product that was not only reliable, but respected by the drifting community. Unlike many other drivers, I was lucky enough to have industry connections and friends in the parts industry that helped me assemble this project the right way. Still, it was an incredible, year-long challenge because I chose to follow Formula Drift’s pro specs with no exceptions. When it was finally ready to be shown at local shows, my team quickly realized that we had built something magnificent. Not only did it turn heads, it had the same performance of top-rated professional drift cars. Once I was out of the garage and back in the drifting world, everything I’d experienced started to form a larger picture. The shop, the track events, the trial and error project cars and all the sleepless nights spent under the hood showed me the two things I’m most passionate about: drifting car parts and being part of a community that helped one another.
Savio Silva
Savio Silva
In January of 2014, a broken collar bone pushed me away from motocross racing. So by April of that year, I was already looking for something else to give me the adrenaline that I used to get from triples and big doubles on my dirt bike. Around the time Duarte just happened to buy his first E46 M3, I found an S14 SR20DET red top for a decent price, and little by little, started making modifications to make it more driftable. In 2014, I drifted for the first time at Three Palm Speedway. The adrenaline rush was so intense, it caused me to push a little harder than I should have, lose control and crash. After that, I was bitten by the drifting bug. So when Duarte came up with the idea of opening a shop, I was immediately in. We called Drift HQ and it took off as we built cars, attended events, broke parts, crashed, learned and never gave up in our search for new tracks and crazy amount of fun (including 100 mph entries and the most intense drifting experiences I’ve ever had). Drifting has changed my life and become one of the biggest motivators in my life. If you want a nice, fun car to drift and burn tires with, you’ve got to make money, and that always pushed me to work harder. My driver page, Trinity Drift, also comes from my business, Trinity Marble and Granite Inc., which keeps me drifting as I kill tires, make friends and travel to new tracks. Drift HQ has opened doors to me and so many others as it becomes a bigger part of the Florida (and worldwide) drifting community every year.
Joel Garcia
Joel Garcia
I was six years old when my parents took me to my aunt and uncle’s house for a typical family get together in Miami, Florida in 1999. After all the boring formalities, my cousin took me into a bedroom where a racing seat and steering wheel was setup in front of a big projection screen TV. He sat me down and the intro movie to the game, Gran Turismo 2 started playing. The sound of “My Favorite Game,” by The Cardigans, filled the room. It was the most amazing display of motorsports I had ever seen and from that day on, it changed my life. I had already liked cars, but now it became an obsession. I couldn’t shut up about it. I watched every car movie I could find, especially the “Fast and Furious” series. There was one in particular that stood apart from the rest, and it was “Tokyo Drift”. From the story to the cars to the style and the driving, there was just something about it. As I got older, I met friends through skateboarding, including my best friend, Danny. The day he got a Nissan 240sx, I had a rekindled fire inside me that was burning for fast cars. Danny taught me all about cars and parts since I really didn’t know anything other than the information I got in the video games. I didn’t have my own cool rear wheel drive car until I bought my first BMW E36 when I turned 20. That car taught me everything I know. There probably isn’t a single bolt I haven’t taken off. Having such a cool car took me places where I met people, bought lots of tickets, learned lots of lessons, had lots of crashes and lost and gained friendships and relationships. It took a lot of crashes for me to finally understand my car and what was too much. Once my car was all crashed up, I decided to go full on drift car with it and worked as a Chinese food delivery driver to earn money that I could dump into my car. I also became pretty familiar with the BMW car scene in Florida and started buying, selling and trading. Through one of those trades, I met Duarte Viana. I knew of the old Drift HQ shop but never imagined I’d become so involved with them. But from our first interaction, trading an M3 transmission for the craziest front bash bar/bumper you’d ever seen, they were awesome. No one else in their right mind would have stayed until midnight installing that stupid thing, especially for a stranger. Down the line, I ended up constantly bugging Duarte with BMW questions. Eventually, I even offered to make videos for him in exchange for a partial Drift HQ sponsorship. Long story short, they did most of the work on my car and always kept in touch. In February 2017, I started hearing Duarte’s plans for the new Drift HQ concept that went from an idea to reality fast. Today, I’m proud to be living in the world of fast cars as co-owner of Drift HQ, alongside my drift bros, Duarte and Savio.
