VIDEO: Matt Powers practice at Formula D Road Atlanta
A MotoIQ Staff Report
Road Atlanta's drift course is a high speed and highly technical course which mixes a difficult high speed downhill entry with medium speed sweepers with elevation change with a tight and flat keyhole turn. If this part of the course is hard to drive while grip driving, imagine it while sliding sideways at over 90 miles an hour.
Ride with us in Matt Powers' Need For Speed Nissan S14 as he does tandem practice first with Mike Essa in his BMW Z4 then with the S13 of Megan Racing's Cyrus Martinez. You can see just how fast Matt's car can accelerate in this video. This is a car that weighs about 2650 lbs with driver powered by a 427 cubic inch Chevy LS7 that pumps out over 560 wheel hp. Basically this is a car capable of 10-11 second quarter mile times.
If you have doubts about the car control skills of top pro drifters, imagine this. Get in a 10 second car. Accelerate it as hard as you can through 4 gears then throw it sideways and hold on! In the video you can see just how much steering input you have to add while drifting and exactly how busy the driver is with shifting, braking and accelerating through the course.
We hope you like this video. We also had cameras in Matt's Need For Speed's Teammate Fredric Aasbo and will have a ride along video in his car soon.
Enjoy!
You can read Matt and Fredric's blogs on Speedhunters.com, one of our favorite sites!
Costa Gialamas of GTI Technical Innovations runs Matt's car.
