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Motorsport

Video: Is this the most impressive drift in history?

Watch Vaughn Gittin Jr. sustain a silly-long skid around Barcelona’s F1 circuit

Published: 27 Oct 2016

Turn three at Barcelona’s Catalunya circuit is a long sweeping right-hander. Lewis Hamilton and his mates go round it flat-out at silly miles an hour while pulling four G. Professional drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr. has a different approach. See, Vaughn does go round it flat-out at silly miles an hour, but he does it while looking out of the side window. All 3,200-feet of it.

Grab your headphones, turn the vol up to max and check it out in the video above.

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“After reviewing the circuit on paper, I was a bit sceptical as to whether or not I was going to be able to carry enough speed out of Turn 2 and maintain the momentum and wheel speed to link all of Turn 3,” Vaughn said.  

Luckily he had the right tool for the job – his deranged 900bhp Ford Mustang RTR with more steering lock than you can think of.

Fitted with a 7.1-litre Ford Performance/Roush Yates-tuned V8 (with individual throttle body injection and a spangly air filter), it pumps out over 900bhp at a very, very lovely and noisy 9,000rpm. This was adequate grunt to allow the dorifto king to get to work and pull off the balletic and rather beautiful feat.

Barreling down the pit straight, Vaughn pitched his Mustang into a drift right about where the F1 boys slam their brakes on. This allowed him to back it in around Turn 1 and then pendulum through the chicane at Turn 2 to set up for the monster that is Turn 3. As you can see from the video, when the drift is initiated, he locks it in and just sits there – car perfectly balanced at an angle with the throttle steady. Then he just drifts and drifts and drifts before hitting the straight to Turn 4.

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“It was literally like I was drifting forever,” he said afterwards. "I have never been at a sustained angle for that long in my 14-years of drifting.”

Aside from the visual spectacle of sustained sideways and filling the clear blue skies with clouds of tyre smoke (we’re pretty sure it’s been constantly overcast in Spain since), there’s the noise. Sitting on the limiter of that monster V8 has an angry, metallic soundtrack that needs to be heard to be believed. Which you can do by hitting play above.

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