Mbeya Racing takes drifting to the southern highlands on 25–26 July 2026. Confirmed details, the judging format, the Toyota Crown rumour — and an honest list of what is still unknown.
Chunya Drift Season 2 runs on 25 and 26 July 2026 at the Chunya Drift Arena in Chunya, Mbeya Region. It is organised by the Mbeya Motorsports Club — Mbeya Racing — chaired by Steven Nyondo, and sponsored by Nyondo Mining Company. Registration is open.
Its stated aim is kuibua vipaji vipya: unearthing new drift talent and giving rookie drivers a shot at a national-level event. That single sentence is the most important thing about this event, and we will come back to it.
The organising body is the Mbeya Motorsports Club, generally known as Mbeya Racing, chaired by Steven Nyondo. The title sponsor is Nyondo Mining Company, of which Nyondo is director — the same company that appeared as an event partner at the Tanzanite TT in Arusha and at the Arusha Drift Car Park Event in March.
That is not a coincidence and it is worth understanding. Tanzanian motorsport does not yet have a governing calendar with central funding. What it has instead is a small number of people willing to underwrite events out of their own businesses. Follow the Nyondo name across 2026 and you have most of the season.
Chunya is a gold-mining district town in the southern highlands, reached via the escarpment climb out of the rift. If you are coming from Arusha or Dar es Salaam, this is a serious drive rather than a weekend jaunt — and that is precisely the point of holding it there.
Drifting in Tanzania has clustered heavily around Arusha and Dar. A driver in the southern highlands who wanted to compete has historically had to load the car and go north. Season 2 in Chunya inverts that: for once, the event is on the southern scene’s doorstep, and everyone else does the driving.
The mining connection also explains why the money is there. Chunya is a gold district, and Nyondo Mining is a local company backing a local event. This is not a national series parachuting in.
Mbeya Racing has published the criteria drivers are scored on:
Read that list carefully and it tells you exactly what kind of event this is. Half of these criteria are entertainment, not precision. Burnout, donut, spinning and pops and bangs are not how a strict competition format scores a run — they are how a crowd decides whether it had a good time.
That is a deliberate choice, and a sensible one for a rookie-focused event. A pure line-and-angle format rewards seat time that new drivers have not had yet. A format with showmanship in it gives a first-timer with a scruffy line something to win on while he learns the rest. We break the criteria down properly in our guide to how Chunya scores a run.
Here is where we have to be careful, because this is the detail everyone is asking about.
The Mbeya Racing chairman has indicated that the winner takes a major prize, possibly a brand new Toyota Crown. That is as far as the information goes. The official prize breakdown has not yet been published, and until it is, the Crown should be treated as an indication rather than a confirmed prize.
The winner takes a major prize, possibly a brand new Toyota Crown. The official prize breakdown has not yet been published.
We are flagging this rather than running the headline because a car as a drift prize would be genuinely significant for the region — and that is exactly the kind of claim that gets repeated until everyone assumes it was confirmed. It was not. When Mbeya Racing publishes the breakdown, we will update this post.
Registration is open, but a number of practical details have not been announced:
If you are planning to drive down from Arusha or Dar, that last list is the one that matters — it is a long way to travel on a schedule that has not been published yet. Watch Mbeya Racing’s channels, and we will update this page as things are confirmed.
Eight criteria, half of them showmanship. What each one actually means for a rookie driver turning up to his first national-level event.
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