Everybody knows the toll for drifting your way around a corner is paid in stopwatch currency. Or so we thought. One drifter that made it to the podium at this year’s Pikes Peak showed that you can slide your cake and eat it.
We’re talking about professional drifter Ken Gushi, who took third place in the Time Attack 1 Division. The clip below shows Ken’s dance through the 156 turns of the 12.42 miles of Colorado asphalt. He finished with a time of 10:33.188.
It’s worth mentioning that Ken wasn’t the only drifter struggling not to return to the usual sideways habits at the 2014 Pikes Peak. There was also Toshiki Yoshioka, who followed Ken in 4th position, as well as Danny George. Danny competed in the Pikes Open class, but, unfortunately, he didn’t make it to the finish line.
In case his name and Pikes Peak bring put in the same sentence sounds familiar, it’s because Ken has done the climb dance multiple times before. The last two years saw him competing with another Toyota-owned brand, as he drove the Lexus IS F CCS-R.
Sure, the drifting part is only an episode here, but that doesn’t make things less impressive - when you’re out there battling the chronograph, every move counts, so racing drivers usually don’t indulge in oversteer pleasures.
What the drifter did was to pull a bit of handbrake-induced action. We’ll remind you that the handbrake is normally used as a recovery measure when one gets a corner wrong. For instance, Mark Higgings decided to redo his otherwise record-braking Isle of Man run last month, because he had made an error during a bend and was forced to correct using the emergency brake. He set yet another record in the end, but that’s another story.
Returning to Ken, you can see his sideways stint around the five minute mark of the video, which comes from GTChannel. Here you’ll see him manhandling his Scion FR-S through the “W” section after the course’s half way point.
As for the car itself, this is a 2013 Gredy Racing Scion FR-S, an old friend of the drifter. By the way, that Rocket Bunny body kit hides some 500 hp.
In his quest to bring you the most impressive automotive creations, Andrei relies on learning as a superpower. There's quite a bit of room in the garage that is this aficionado's heart, so factory-condition classics and widebody contraptions with turbos poking through the hood can peacefully coexist. Full profile
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