McLaren P1 Drifting on Japan's Tsukuba Circuit Shows Extreme Car Control

If you ask us, the easiest way to monitor the level drifting awareness is to look at McLaren and Porsche. Despite being at the opposite ends of the road car production tradition, the two brands are led by the same obsession for high-velocity efficiency.

Nevertheless, both Woking and Zuffenhausen have integrated drifting into the activities over the last two years or so. We're talking about Porsche's customer training/demonstration programs, as well as both carmaker's marketing efforts.

Let's take McLaren's most recent Super Sport Series offering, the 675LT Spider. Once the car came out, the British automaker promoted it using a clip that saw Bruno Senna drifting the beast.

This might seem a bit counterintuitive, since McLaren's cars, which are all built around a main collection of elements, feature an open diff, albeit controlled by overly clever brake-actuating electronics. In other words, McLaren didn't exactly intend its vehicles to be drifted when it returned to the road car market in 2011.

However, since we're talking electronics here, it's easy to understand many things have changed since the days of the MP4-12C. As a result, the Macs we get nowadays are considerably more sideways friendly.

And the McLaren P1 moment in the piece of footage below only comes to confirm that. We're dealing with a $1.4 million machine pulling some respectable tire-melting moves on Japan's Tsukuba track.

Of course, the shenanigan took place in Japan - this is not only the place where drifting was born but also the country that currently features most of the sideways world's firsts, like drift cars based on vehicles such as a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and even a Suzuki Jimny.