Review: The Formula Drift app (it’s terrible)

Full disclosure, I’m a web developer who has done some mobile development for work.

I’ll also start this off with the fact that I hate this app. I’m on android but I doubt the iPhone version is any better. First, FD cheaped out on making an app and instead bought a prefab web app with little to no customization. Here is one and another app in the play store that looks the same minus small cosmetic changes like color theme. This by itself doesn’t mean the app is crap, but it does set my expectations low from the start.

To start off, here’s what the main menu looks like (minus the home link). Most of these menu options aren’t very useful unless you’re actually going to an FD event in person.

The below image is the main “Home” page today. I received a push notification from the app for “Trivia Tuesday” so I clicked on it. All I got was the home page. I clicked around and found nothing about trivia.

Update – After 4 hours, the link on the home page for “Trivia Tuesday” showed up. This is what it looks like. It’s just a cheap google form that displays poorly.
Update2 – It shows up fine now. But it’s still a google form.

Moving along. If you click on the “Buy Tickets” menu option, you get forwarded to the ticketmaster mobile web site. Note that there’s two menus on the top of the screen. I don’t get why anyone would use this feature. Why wouldn’t you buy this on a regular computer? Or why not just go to the ticketmaster website on your phone?

When you click “Watch Live” this is the screen you’re greeted with. Again, like the ticket link, this is just a shortcut to the FD live page. Which isn’t setup for mobile viewing. You could theoretically use this page by zooming in and clicking the “full screen” button but I would not expect this on a professional app.

The Schedule link is actually mostly useful. But clicking on anything just takes you to the main FD page anyway. And every one of those pages shoves tickets down your throat.

Although if you click on anything, you’re greeted with this screen.

The “Athletes” link was the one link I was looking forward to. I wanted stats and information about drivers and their careers. Nope. I just get “coming soon”.

This post is getting super picture heavy so I’ll cut out all the “Buying” screens. Much like the other links, this is simply a frame to the FD shop. Complete with the two menus!

“Raceday Info” actually looks like someone put thought into it. I had some hope. I kind of get that the seating chart for Atlanta is “coming soon”. But the “information” section is simply text straight from the website. At least the driving directions link gives me something useful.

Things like this “Contact Us” screen is just taking up space.

I suppose I should give “plus points” for the valid Long Beach parking link. But OSW’s doesn’t work and that’s 3 weeks away. I also now realize that the “Raceday Info” section isn’t in chronological order of tracks. Orlando Speed World and Road Atlanta are swapped.

Here’s a good one. The FD101 link is straight up scanned pages from PASMag. What’s even better is that I can’t read any of the text. If I zoom in, the text is just pixelated. I can read the title and the months.

Here’s something that works. The rewards system! I did put in a few redemption codes and scroll through stuff. So at least that works.

Of course this is the google forms way of redeeming your rewards. I don’t have near enough points but I submitted for a poster (500 points but I only have 100). I will update with what happens.

Conclusion: The reward points seem to be the only properly functioning part of this app. But the only reason it functions is because it’s most likely part of the prefab app from HopScotch. That’s why the redemption is just a google form. Everything else in this app either links to a literal website, is canned text from the website, or a coming soon image. I hope FD didn’t pay much for this app because it looks like something that could have been made in a week of an intern’s time.

I would be embarrassed of such a useless and incomplete app. I think a mobile version of the main FD website would have been a better use of money. If anyone at FD is reading this, I do both web development and apps 😀

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