Kiwi drifter drops the jaws of the prim and proper at Goodwood
Nothing better underlines the general acceptance of drifting on the part of the motorsport industry and its purists by the fact that it's been touted as one of the cornerstones of the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England for the last few years.
The festival has typically been the domain of 'purist' forms of the sport. I guess in some ways, drifting has thus been given its 'purist' status.
And no driver has captured the sport's vibe and morselized it for this most correct of audiences than 'Mad Mike' Whiddett. He returned again in 2016, and has interestingly been met with the full embrace of the event. Their YouTube channel is lathered in videos of his Mazda RX-8 slithering its way up the course. Even Lord March got a spin in Whiddett's passenger seat for one of the runs.
More than that, the RX-7 that Whiddett brought to the venue last year is proudly placed as the 'thumbnail' for the event's live stream.
Consider that for a second. Organizers could have picked any car in the whole field to use as a 'cover' car — these range from incredible Formula 1 machines, historic cars from the WRC and Le Mans, and over all of them they picked a drift car built in Aotearoa and driven by a man who says 'bro' more often than the rest of the event staff, competitors, and spectators combined.