Double Formula One world champion Max Verstappen has picked up some fresh driving tricks after a lesson in sliding sideways from New Zealand's drift car king 'Mad Mike' Whiddett.
The Dutch driver, enjoying some time off to do something different in a dominant season, smoked the tyres of a 600 horsepower MADBUL Mazda RX-7 in a video released on Red Bull Motorsport's YouTube channel on Wednesday.
"I think it was the most nervous I’ve been in the past two years just because it’s not natural to how I normally drive," said the 25-year-old Red Bull racer. "It felt like I was 16 again and jumping into an F1 car for the first time.
"As soon as the engine started and I began drifting with the wheels spinning, I got more into my natural zone where I was finding the limits of the car, as I do in F1. I felt that same adrenaline rush and my instinct took over."
One test featured 'Horner Corner' - a 100-metre arc lined by 10 cardboard cutouts of Red Bull team boss Christian Horner with an extended over-large right hand ready for the back end of the car to high-five.
"You're a natural, mate," declared Whiddett at one point, before a familiar comment for someone who has won 10 of 12 races so far this season and the last eight in a row: "It's like a walk in the park."
Whiddett is renowned for repurposing high-performance speed machines into drift marvels. He notably transformed a Lamborghini Huracan, a car built for precision and speed, into a drifting spectacle for the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed.
In a similar vein, now he's channelling that expertise, not to convert the Formula One car, but to mould their drivers — turning an F1 Champion into a drift maestro.
While Verstappen’s usual F1 cars are aerodynamic marvels designed for speed and grip, the MADBUL, an FD3S Mazda RX-7 with 447kW, is built to slide gracefully. It’s a machine that demands mastery to control its sideways dance across the circuit.
Reuters