- 1. Fredric Aasbo’s GR Supra
- 2. Ryan Tuerck’s GR Corolla
- 3. Suspension And Grip
- 4. Riding Shotgun
- 5. Pro Drifters Are Smooth!
These are two crazy cars.
When Toyota's Formula Drift pros tried to teach us to drift, we also got a close look at two of the team's competition cars – the GR Supra driven by Fredric Aasbo, and Ryan Tuerck's GR Corolla. Car builder and Papadakis Racing owner Stephan Papadakis gave us the rundown and patiently fielded questions on the cars before we got to experience them from the passenger seat with one of the pro drivers in the hot seat. We'll get to that, because it was one hell of an experience.
Papadakis was open, knows the cars inside out, and happily gave us an answer to every question asked. What's amazing when you see these cars go is that Formula Drift rules require factory unibody chassis, so these cars are not built on custom tube frames with factory bodywork over the top. They are modified but within the laws of the competition.
1. Fredric Aasbo’s GR Supra
The team took delivery of Aasbo's Supra in late 2019 with the 3.0-liter B58 engine. Nobody had tuned it for big power at that point, so the team started an engine program and managed to push the limits of the B58 quickly and tune it to over 1,000 horsepower. The engine is still being developed, almost as a back and forth between the drift team, street tuners, and drag racers.
Papadakis points out that the drag racers now have an extra 200 hp on top. Currently, the Supra drift car makes around 1,200 ethanol-fueled horsepower with 32 pounds of boost from the turbo, and power is passed to the back wheels by a four-speed dog-leg transmission with straight-cut gears. That's not the cushy synchromesh transmission from a road car, and it means it slams into gear and makes one hell of a noise but can take all the power and punishment demanded of it.
At the front, the suspension mount positions are modified within the rules set by Formula Drift, and the geometry is tuned for counter steering. The steering has 65 degrees of available angle rather than the stock 35 degrees, and keen eyes will notice that there's no radiator in the front, just a massive intercooler for the turbo system.
The radiator sits in the middle for a couple of reasons, but the main one is to get the weight closer to the rear wheels for grip. Counterintuitively, drifters want as much grip as possible to help with speed and control. In drifting, the lead car wants to get as far from the follow car as possible, and the follow car wants to stick as close to the lead car as possible.
2. Ryan Tuerck’s GR Corolla
While Fredric Aasbo and his Supra may have won two championships and the latter is an engineering marvel in itself, Tuerck's Corolla raises the bar on engine craziness – and Tuerck is no stranger to crazy.
Stock, the GR Corolla uses a turbocharged 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine to make 300 hp. That's no mean feat in a production car, but Tuerck's car uses the older and already well-developed four-cylinder engine turned 90 degrees for its rear-wheel-drive setup. The engine was developed from the Scion TC2 engine in 2010, and with 32 pounds of boost and nitrous injection, it makes in excess of 1,000 horsepower. Papadakis tells us that it's so highly strung that it's on the knife edge of reliability, and it sounds it.
It's the only four-cylinder car in Formula Drift and one of the few high-level four-cylinder drift cars out there. Tuerck runs with nitrous, but neither he nor Aasbo uses an anti-lag system for the turbos. In the case of the Corolla, the team found nitrous to be more reliable and consistent.
Also, what Papadakis described as “throwing more explosions at it” would put the four-cylinder engine over the limits of reliability. The fact that Aasbo doesn't like the feel of using anti-lag technology puts a full stop to the subject.
3. Suspension And Grip
The other big difference between drift cars and traditional race cars is in the wheel and tire setups. The first is the amount of negative camber (the inward angle that the wheels and tires are tilted inward at the top).
Like in regular racing, it's all about keeping as large of a contact patch on the ground in cornering, and the steep angle takes into account the forces of the car in corners as well as the angle the wheels typically reach. On top of that, the cars are typically running the tires at around 10 pounds of pressure to make a larger contact patch.
For some context, typical camber on a road car is just one or two degrees to help stability, but on the drift cars, it's five to seven degrees. Road car tires are typically 30-38 pounds on tire pressure and wear slowly. The tires on Formula Drift cars can lose up to five pounds in weight with each competition.
4. Riding Shotgun
If you've ever been in a race car, the inside of the Toyota Formula Drift cars will be familiar. You have to climb in through a safety cage, and, in the case of Tuerck's GR Corolla, it helps to be a five-foot-nothing gymnast, or you're folding yourself in.
Once inside, a racing bucket and straps hold you firmly in place, and it's hot. The radiator is behind you, and the inside is primarily bare metal. Thankfully, we were riding with windows out, so once Tuerck crunched it into gear, the car took off with the transmission whining and the engine making a noise akin to a demon that just stood on a Lego brick.
As drift cars are designed to always be moving sideways, Tuerck immediately pitched it left and countered right, and I had my first taste of looking forwards through the side window of a car for an extended period.
5. Pro Drifters Are Smooth!
While us amateurs were trying to do small circles in the Supra, we were in first gear all the time. The Formula Drift cars have four gears for a reason, and it's hard to describe the sensation of moving so sideways and so fast. What was surprising is how smoothly Tuerck's transitions from sliding one way to the other are from the inside. I was expecting to be jolted around a bit and end the day with a stiff neck, but these pros are super calm and smooth and completely in control all the time.
While it looks chaotic from the outside, from the inside, it's one long, relatively smooth, but incredibly noisy drift. And, while we are talking about the level of control, the drivers were repeatedly sliding into the makeshift pit area to park sideways on the white line. That's pure exhibitionism, but coming at full tilt and then shifting speed and angle using the car's momentum against itself to slide sideways in a parking spot shows that pro drifting has hit a whole new level of precision driving.
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Keyword: 5 Things You Need To Know About The Toyota Supra And GR Corolla Drift Cars