BMW Sets New World Record of Longest Vehicle Drift
There are many reasons why a rear-wheel-drive car is better than a front-wheel-drive car. For me, one of those many reasons which purely makes me fall in love with RWD cars is the ability to drift. And whenever I imagine myself executing a perfect drift it’s always in BMW M powered car. No doubt BMW used its new-generation M5 to break the world record of the longest vehicle drift.
BMW has set this new record by completing a total distance of 374.1km sideways. It was BMW Performance Driving School instructor Johan Schwartz who was behind the wheel to make this happen. The skid pad was located at the BMW Performance Centre in South Carolina. It was kept damp to facilitate the drift.
The previous world record of longest vehicle drift was set up using a Toyota GT86 in July 2014. The total distance covered was 144.12km. Later in June 2017, the record was broken by again using a GT86 and the distance covered was 165.04km. BMW needed to do 549 laps of its skid pad in order to break the previous world record. However, Johan ended up doing over 2000 laps! And in this exercise, his M5 needed to be refuelled five times. BMW wanted to do that without interrupting the drift and hence, another M5 was used to refuel Johan’s M5, both cars drifting along each other to make that happen.
So, in the process of setting a new world record of longest vehicle drift, BMW also set up another world record for the world’s longest “Twin-Vehicle Drift” (water-assisted), with two BMW M5s drifting 79.26 km over the course of an hour.