We all knew Shane Van Gisbergen was a madman right? Well he got the opportunity to pilot an insane V8 Supercars spec VF Holden Commodore, with a custom wide body and steering assembly.
Red Bull Racing Australia say their engineers have been quietly working on a 9 month secret project at their Brisbane HQ. The goal was to create a driftable Red Bull Racing Supercar. Normally the challenge is to ensure the traction is maintained around the turns, but in this case the opposite was true. We all know the V8s have power for days, but setting up the car to take the turns sideways is its own unique challenge.
The car is actually team mate Jamie Whincup’s old chassis that actually won race 14 in Townsville, before being replaced by a new car in August.
While Van Gisbergen recently joined Red Bull, he’s a man of many talents and added drifting to his resume back in 2012. The gearshift was repositioned slightly to allow the handbrake to be fitted so the cockpit looks busy. There’s a raft of levers to the left of the steering and all are fairly close together. Good chance most of us mere mortals would grab the wrong one at the wrong time. SVG (whose car control is phenomenal) can do it with ease (probably with his eyes closed).
Because of the rotation necessary to initiate, catch and control the drift, there was also a more traditional round steering wheel fitted to the car.
Known as Project Night Drift, the result was made even more impressive with sparks flying as the Commodore’s front splitter scraped through corners. At one point he was flat in 5th gear sliding around Corporate Hill in the opposite direction to what he’s used to. With 640+ horsepower of pure V8 goodness under the hood it makes for a mighty Drift car performing smoke screens from the rear wheels with ease.
Here’s a great behind the scenes video on how the whole thing came together.
