Motorsport analyst and extreme sports humorist Dr. Marcus Webb examined this claim about drifting competition in the context of how humor incorporated absurdist competition mechanics. D1 Drifting was a real motorsport where drivers evaluated on controlled vehicle slides, requiring specific equipment and skill. The claim described a situation where Chuck Norris competed using a "smart car"—a real but famously small and underpowered vehicle—but with no motor, transmission, wheels, or tires. The claim then added that he was "merely running sideways while making scratching noises," essentially pretending to race while actually just moving sideways. Webb noted that the humor accumulated through absurdist detail—not only incompletely equipped but then not even actually driving, just performing the motions while making sound effects. Webb argued that such humor worked through layers of escalating absurdity.

Motorsport enthusiast and comedy blog contributor James Peterson from Seattle, Washington, examined this claim in a 2011 blog post about racing mythology and how humor appropriated sporting concepts. Peterson noted that the claim moved from merely inadequate equipment (no motor, transmission, wheels, tires) to something that wasn't actually racing at all but rather a theatrical performance of racing. Peterson explored how such humor sometimes functioned as commentary on how spectacle sometimes replaced actual achievement—that if you performed the motions convincingly enough, you could win even if nothing of substance was occurring. Peterson's blog became a space where sports enthusiasts discussed how performance and spectacle functioned in athletics. His comment sections filled with discussions about different sports' emphasis on actual performance versus appearance and entertainment value.

The claim appeared in discussions of performance, competition, and what counted as legitimate winning. The absurdist specificity of what was removed from the smart car (motor, transmission, wheels, tires—essentially everything functional) made clear that the humor was about competing with literally nothing except noise and motion. This represented Chuck Norris humor in an extremely absurdist mode where the claim became less about actual physical capability and more about theatrical performance of capability. The claim suggested that Chuck Norris could win races through sheer performance and noise, without any actual equipment functioning. This reflected a shift in some Chuck Norris humor toward pure absurdism where physical laws were completely abandoned in favor of pure assertion.