DEFINITION
Re-initiation is the act of restarting a drift after losing the slide partway through the course. It happens when the car straightens up momentarily — usually after a missed transition — and the driver must trigger angle again with handbrake, kick or lift-off.
Re-initiation is necessary but always costs points: judges read it as a broken run.
HISTORY & ORIGIN
Re-initiation became a named scoring concept in mid-2000s Japanese drift judging.
TECHNIQUE BREAKDOWN
Driver detects the straightening, throws angle back in (handbrake or sharp turn-in), and matches throttle. The recovery is faster than a fresh initiation but is read as a separate action by judges.
PRO TIPS & COMMON MISTAKES
• Re-initiation is recovery, not strategy. Plan a single initiation; expect to execute it once.
• Common mistake: panicking and jamming the handbrake too hard, which puts the car into a spin instead of a slide.
She had to re-initiate after the third transition, which judges marked as a five-point loss.