A South African journalist has set a record for drifting, a sport genre using a technique where the motorist deploys skill to drive a long distance with the front wheels pointing in the opposite direction of the turn he is taking.
Jesse Adams drove 165 kilometres in 1,000 laps at the internationally-acclaimed Gerotek testing facility for motor vehicles in Pretoria in a time of 5 hours 6 minutes to better the three-year-old record set by the German Harald Muller in Turkey, when the latter completed 612 laps of a 235.5-metre course in 2 hours and 25 minutes in his second attempt.
Both drivers used a Japanese-built Toyota GT86.
Although four official witnesses were among the crowd at the event, official verification of the record from Guinness is still awaited.
Adams admitted there were at least two stages in the test of endurance when he considered giving up.
"At about 400 laps I started to think to myself, what excuses can I give because I wanted to give up, and at 600, I wanted to give up again when the rear wheels started to do funny things," Adams told fellow motoring journalists.
"I didn't think I was going to make it, but I did, and probably could have done another 200," he added.
Drifting competitions started in Japan in the 1970's and today are held worldwide and are judged according to the speed, angle, showmanship and line taken through a corner or set of corners.
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