If you’ve ever played a Forza Horizon game, you know the feeling: You’ve built out your perfect drift machine (mine is a widebody 2020 Supra with a 7.2-liter V8), dialed in your suspension settings (a touch more front camber and rear sway bar than the game suggests), and you’re getting comfortable in the Drift Zones; hanging the tail out through sweeping turns, mashing the handbrake for that last little bit of horizontal slide before a corner. “Hey,” you think to yourself, “I’m getting pretty good at this. I bet I could drift a real car.”
Here’s what happens when you test that theory out.
Fans of Formula Drift in the U.S. will know Piotr Więcek, one half of the all-conquering but ultimately short-lived Worthouse drift team. While the team pulled out of Formula Drift after 2019, Piotr and Worthouse are still drifting abroad — and winning championships, like this past Drift Masters European Championship.
But while Piotr was winning in his 900-horsepower left-hand-drive-converted S15 Silvia (seemingly the same 2JZ-powered car he used to compete in FD over here), another rising star of drift was winning his way through another Drift Masters championship: esports drifter Rhys Tatterson.
Rhys won the 2021 Drift Masters Virtual Championship, which came with the grand prize of a drift session with Piotr — and the chance to not only drive the Worthouse S15, but to tandem with Piotr in an R34 Nissan Skyline. Rhys, who claims to have little-to-no real-world drive experience, suddenly had nine hundred real-world horses at his disposal.
And he did great! I don’t know that he managed the kind of perfect run that Piotr’s used to drifting with, but he pulled it off better than our own Raphael Orlove did. So next time you’re three-starring a Drift Zone in Forza, dreaming of doing the same in a thousand-horsepower pro car, remember this video. You may not be as far off as you think.