Drifting + jumps = awesome

The art of drifting is quite a spectacle. It’s got all the major components of a Good Thing: lots of noise, lots of speed, lots of smoke. But there’s one inherent thing that it’s missing to take it to next-level visual entertainment. Jumps.

Allow us then, to introduce you to Estonia’s Kehala Ring race track. A bit like the famous Minami jump at Ebisu in Japan, this newly paved race circuit in northern Europe has a humpback built into it. It’s part of a new rallycross circuit that recently held its first drift event. The results can only be described as spectacular.

As you can see from the rather committed BMW E36 in the first video above, if you pendulum your car in time with the jump and hit it with enough gusto, you catapult your four-wheeled smoke bomb skywards. And then, down. And when a stiffly-sprung drift car comes down, it comes down hard. Bouncing back up in the air before coming down again for a sharp left-hander under a bridge with no run-off and nothing but hard concrete barriers to hit.

Luckily, the driver managed to keep his run going. As you can see in the wonderful second video, other drivers weren’t so lucky.

So, hands up who wants to send their car over this sideways?