Naoki Nakamura is a talented pro drifter. Like, series champion-talented. Has a Facebook group dedicated to studying his technique-talented. So the fact that he’s absolutely tearing up the track here, wearing weird rubber gardening shoes, is just hilarious.
Fans of the sport already know that fast and aggressive drifting requires particularly practiced footwork, and I just can not get over watching Nakamura’s talents on display while the dude is wearing Crocs.
With socks, no less! And actually now that I’ve watched this a couple times, it looks like they might be knockoff Crocs, which we better acknowledge lest I get some angry emails from dedicated Croc fans.
Regardless. LOL. What?
I guess I always imagine people at this level being super serious every time they climb into a car, or at least wearing something that goes above the bare minimum of safety attire while they’re on a race track. But nope, Nakamura is just chillin’ here with his sleeveless shirt, Crocs and some zip-tied wire precariously dangling in the car’s footwell like he’s halfway through a project and just had to run to the hardware store real quick.
Looks like most of the commenters on the Naoki Nakamura ファンボーイ Facebook page concur with the assessment that the Crocs are comical. Although if you’re interested in the substance beneath the, uh, “style” here, that fan site also has an Instagram page that goes into some analysis on what Nakamura is doing.
I don’t know enough about drifting to say whether or not @naokinakamuratechniquestudy’s breakdown is accurate, but if I could talk to Nakamura about this myself I’d only have one question anyway: WHAT ARE THOSE?!?
Hat tip to Paulo!