A drift Ferrari is still a Ferrari

This weekend was the first event of Formula D's 2018 season at Long Beach. There was a lot of hype and excitement over the debut of Federico Sceriffo and his 900hp twin-supercharged Ferrari 599 GTB drift car.

He qualified fairly poorly, looking uncomfortable with the car, being very wavery and not much angle or speed, but due to only 30 cars competing for a 32 car field, he still got in the show. Then on his first Top 32 run against Chelsea Denofa's Mustang, he hit Chelsea's Mustang and drove it into the wall. After quick repairs, they went back out for their second run.

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Then on his second run, he pulled off course, followed shortly by the front of the car being engulfed in flames. The cause is stated to be that a front knuckle broke and severed a fuel line, starting the flames. With a lot of one-off parts, severe fire damage and the next event in just a few weeks in Orlando, makes me wonder if this was both the beginning and end of the first Ferrari drift car.

There is plenty of time to execute repairs if the budget is there, but yeah, not exactly making friends on your big debut. Did they even get a chance to shake the car down before the first event? Is there not an on board fire system installed in the car? Just about every entry level division I've seen makes you have some kind of fire extinguisher. The response team showing up in t-shirts doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me either.

It seems like every year Formula D hypes up some foreign driver who no one has ever heard of, they show up to Long Beach and flunk out early and then are never seen again. At least this guys will have the excuse that his car burned, unlike the others. Also, I'm not sure what the FD rules are on fire suppression systems.

I don't really see the point in using expensive/rare machinery in a series where random destruction is pretty much part of the show.  And yes, I realize how crusty/old/"get off my lawn" that makes me sound.  

I love how he jumps out of the car and points to the fire, as if they wouldn't be able to figure out where the problem was.

Woody said:

I love how he jumps out of the car and points to the fire, as if they wouldn't be able to figure out where the problem was.

I also like how he throws his hands up in disgust and shakes them at the car in a very typical angry Italian manner

To be fair, the safety crew seemed neither very enthusiastic nor well-equipped for putting out a fire.

Come on, it's drifting. If nobody plows into a wall and catches their car on fire, something's gone wrong in your event. :P

That said, 900HP & twin-supercharged? Yikes. What do they even need all that power for when the drive wheels by definition never have traction? That's not a snarky diss on drifting, as I love it, but isn't there a point where adding more power makes zip all difference?

I'd rather watch the neighbor kid mow the lawn.

Jay said:

That said, 900HP & twin-supercharged? Yikes. What do they even need all that power for when the drive wheels by definition never have traction? That's not a snarky diss on drifting, as I love it, but isn't there a point where adding more power makes zip all difference?

These guys have built so much grip into their car that they actually need the power to light them up and to keep their forward velocity high enough to stay right on the the doors of the lead driver if they are in the chase position, or to distance themselves from the chase driver if they are in the lead position. Recently they had to make rules about debeading tires, because all the driver's are running 10-15psi of air trying to get all the grip they can, and 800-1200hp is normal at this level.

Take a look at a Pro Formula D car and under the skin they are some serious machinery.

Thanks to everyone that pointed out something I hadn't thought about. Drift cars are intentionally sideways all the time with the rear tires being burned off. That pretty much makes any front splitter or turning vane essentially stupid, useless, and a complete waste of time and effort.  Maybe now they'll start putting diffuser on the backside as well.

In reply to ncjay :

They also wrote a skid plate rule in such a way to preemptively ban flat bottoms before anybody tries it. 

In reply to ncjay :

No, it looks cool, especially to those less versed in car dynamics. Popular drivers bring sponsors, and sponsors bring tires and money. The splitters work, just not as intended .

The drivers do say that the aero does work to a degree. I remember one of them saying in an interview that they smashed their rear wing off on the concrete wall and didn't have time to work on it before the next run, and that they had to adjust to not having it for the next two rounds. Then the course got oiled down and they had some downtime and got it back on, and he said he had to readjust for having the wing back on.

If you want a look under the skin of a pro FD car, Hoonigans did a pretty cool in-depth feature on Justin Pawlak's 1000hp, carbon fiber-bodied Mustang. And honestly, this is one of the cars that is closer to production-spec, a point that Justin Pawlak prides himself on.

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I did have to laugh at carbon fiber body and closer to production used together. I do understand your point, though.

The driving doesn't interest me much, but the cars sure do. I've talked to a couple of drifters at the high amateur level and without fault they're all serious car guys who build/fab a lot of their own stuff. The know and love cars. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

The driving doesn't interest me much, but the cars sure do. I've talked to a couple of drifters at the high amateur level and without fault they're all serious car guys who build/fab a lot of their own stuff. The know and love cars. 

The pro-level cars are some of the most-advanced production-based cars out there. Lot of hardcore tech in them these days.

Ferrari spent a lot of money developing that car so it would stick, and go around corners deftly.

Then someone spent a ton MORE money un-doing what the Ferrari engineers had done--- and making it a sideways type car.  I can only imagine the total budget for that build.  (assuming they started with a genuine car)  

Not my bag....but it's always sad to see someone's pride and joy engulfed in flames.

Joe Gearin said:

 I can only imagine the total budget for that build.  (assuming they started with a genuine car)  

 

Not my bag....but it's always sad to see someone's pride and joy engulfed in flames.

My bet is that the car was likely totalled beforehand or some sort of salvage. There was a team running in Japan's D1GP with a Lexus LFA that had been flooded during that big tsunami, and the team bought it for cheap, gutted it, tossed in a NASCAR TRD V8 in it and went drifting.

That one time Forza leaked into real life.

I actually enjoy drifting but you pretty much have to be willing to crash the car. The power levels and speeds in pro drifting are getting higher every year. 

They did drifting at our local track for a while. Very amateur, but we had one or two quick guys. Corner entry speeds were high, mid corner speeds and exits were glacial. But man, watching them come in to turn one, you were convinced it was The Big One every time.

They also sounded like a continuous accident, I could not talk to anyone else in the pits while it was going on because I was so distracted. In the end, the sheer amount of damage they did to the track by digging holes after dropping wheels off made them unwelcome.

dropstep said:

I actually enjoy drifting but you pretty much have to be willing to crash the car. The power levels and speeds in pro drifting are getting higher every year. 

So it's getting even sillier than it started, then.

jstein77 said:

dropstep said:

I actually enjoy drifting but you pretty much have to be willing to crash the car. The power levels and speeds in pro drifting are getting higher every year. 

So it's getting even sillier than it started, then.

Yup. And I blame this thing.

In the 2012 season, when this car arrived, the average FD Pro car still had a radiator in the front, anywhere from 600-800hp, plenty of OEM sheetmetal and full trunk floors and sheetmetal structure ahead of the shock towers, 55 degrees of steering angle, OEM differentials and transmission, and could go for multiple matchups on tires. Then Daigo Saito arrived with this nuclear bomb of a car, with a 1200hp 2JZ, G-Force 4-speed dog box and quick-change rear end, rear mount radiator, tube structures in the front and rear, tons of angle. And it changed the sport almost overnight.

He laid waste to the competition because the car was such overkill. With so much more power and grip and less weight than the competition, in the lead run he could just power away from the competition and run and hide. In the chase position, he outpowered everyone so he could just mat it and run up on their door. And the car, between the power and aero chewed through tires and had to have new ones every two runs or they would come apart.

Come the '13 season and now, to compete, everyone had to have 4-digit power, and 75 degrees of steering angle, and completely gutted with fiberglass or carbon bodywork. And now, with tire consumption through the roof, you had to have a major tire sponsor or you would bankrupt yourself to compete. And suddenly all the privateers got squeezed out of existence, because they couldn't afford to build a car to the new standard and they couldn't afford to buy tires at the rate they would burn through them. 

The solution is that FD should put a limit on tire usage, make it so that they can only use so many tires per event. That would force guys to back down on the power and aero. Maybe require the usage of more OEM components. But the problem is then the cars would be slower and have less angle and make less smoke and be generally less interesting to the average viewer.