We’ve all seen the video of Ayrton Senna thrashing an NSX on track in a pair of loafers. Now, please enjoy this dude drifting the hell out of a Nissan Silvia in a pair of slides.
The track is Japan’s wonderful Sportsland Yamanashi and the driver is Toshiyuki Yanai, a “local hero,” as video uploader NoriYaro explains in his fuller video on this recent drift meet.
Yanai’s driving style is, well, extreme for someone wearing shoes that are designed to slip on and off.
That said, this is kind of A Thing in drifting, as being capital-X extreme isn’t as desirable as being stylish and cool. Going harder than the next guy and doing it in comfortable footwear is an easy way to make that clear, so it happens more often than you’d think. Take, for example, the great Noaki Nakamura drifting in Crocs.
I shall take this as a style guide for my day today, and hope to be both as low key and dialed in as him.