Drifting requires a lot of car control, and that’s something that F1 drivers have in spades, as demonstrated by Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu
- While in Australia for the F1 Grand Prix, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu were invited to try drifting.
- The two Formula One drivers competed in three tasks – and showed why they race at motorsports’ top tier championship.
- In fact they were so good, their instructor told them “you absolutely killed it on level 1”.
To not only be fast but also excel in a Formula One car, drivers must master the art of maintaining strict control to prevent sliding at all costs. But can these top athletes be trained to apply that same precision to a different pursuit—one that prioritizes going sideways over going quickly?
Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber decided to find out and put its drivers, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, behind the wheel of a pair of drift cars in a new video. The drivers were invited to try these impressive machines out while they were in Australia for the Grand Prix.
Read: Stellantis Design Boss Ralph Gilles Shows He Can Drift As Well As He Can Draw
While it may not come as an enormous surprise that professional drivers are good even when they aren’t in the cars they’re most comfortable in, it’s impressive that both Bottas and Zhou took to drifting like ducks to water.
Given the opportunity to try their hand at three drifting techniques, both F1 pilots were remarkably successful. In the first challenge, they were tasked with doing donuts, and their comfort surprised even their instructor.
“I didn’t actually see that coming,” the instructor tells Bottas and Zhou. “You both absolutely killed it on level 1. Hats off, hats off.”
In the second challenge, the driver must take off from a stop, slide to face the other direction, and then do another 180-degree drift into a parking spot. So confident is Bottas that he doesn’t even ask for a demonstration, and decides to just give it a shot.
Although he ends up a little short of the parking spot in his first attempt, he nails on just his second try, and even the host can hardly contain his excitement. Zhou also ends up in the spot on just his second attempt, though he overcooks it and ends up a little askew.
Finally, the two F1 pilots take to a proper track, and are asked to perform a second-gear drift into a wall of boxes. While the impact sends Bottas spinning, Zhou keeps his momentum up and manages to keep sliding around the course despite his windshield being covered in green chalk. It’s an impressive performance for both drivers, and proves that car control is an important skill, no matter what you want to achieve.