SEMA Ignited 2017
December, 16th 2017
SEMA Ignited 2017
For those that do not know what SEMA Ignited is, let me explain, while The SEMA Show itself is an industry only event held at the Las Vegas Convention Center SEMA Ignited is open to the public and is held in the Gold Lot across the street. SEMA Ignited features a good portion of the vehicles that were being shown at The SEMA Show but also includes drift displays by some drivers from Formula Drift. This year there was also a display by Max Verstappen in his Red Bull Racing Formula 1 car as well as a drift display by Kia featuring their new Kia Stinger.
Before any of the action started though there was the SEMA cruise, this was a roll in for all the show cars.
One of the interesting things to see was Kia allowing a bunch of professional drivers to beat on 100% stock Kia Stingers over and over again. As you can see they handled the abuse pretty well and dare I say did it well?
Think your car is loud? Think again! Max Verstappen had his Formula 1 car out in Vegas to do some displays and good god these cars are LOUD! Probably didnt help that I was standing about 6 to 10 feet from it at time but hey, gotta do what you gotta do!
The biggest attraction of the night was undoubtedly the Formula Drift displays which included drivers Micheal Essa, Jeff Jones, Odi Bakchis, Randall Waters & Cameron Moore. Major props have to go to Jeff Jones though, as you will see he smashed up the backside of his car pretty early in the night and yet he got it fixed and kept on drifting! Given that this was just a display for fans not in competition it was definitely surprising to see him come back after that!
Words: Gordon Lister
Photos: Gordon Lister