Drift Race
Vaughn Gittin Jr. drag races his new 2016 Mustang RTR versus his 2014 RTR
By Steve Turner
Photos by Steve Turner and courtesy of Mustang RTR
For as long as we have been covering Vaughn Gittin Jr.’s Mustang drifting career, he has more often compared his competition cars with drag racers rather than road racers. Of late he has said that his new machine is essentially a 9-second drag car that he slides sideways.
Clearly the setups are different, but as Vaughn told us in our feature on the performance of drifting, his drift machines do need to hook up coming out of those slides and put down the 900 horsepower under his right foot.
In advance of the 2016 Formula Drift season, Vaughn wanted to see how his new Mustang RTR competition car and its independent rear suspension compared with his old solid-axle comp car.
“During testing I lined up my brand new 2016 Ford Mustang RTR against my old 2014 Competition-Spec Ford Mustang RTR for a drag race to see how well we have done after just one year of drifting development for the incredible new Ford Mustang,” Vaughn said. “Similar to drag racing, professional drifting is all about getting out of the hole and creating as much forward drive as possible while sideways. A drag race between these two cars was a perfect test to understand how all my team’s effort stacked up to our previous car, which was one of the fastest cars on the Formula Drift grid every year in which we battled with it.”
You can watch the drift ’Stang drag battle right here as Vaughn drives the S550 and former SVTP Mustang Week Burnout Contest champion, Jonathan Nerren, drives the S197…
[video=youtube;hdBREBIRtaw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdBREBIRtaw[/video]
“Ten years of development versus one year of development, live axle versus IRS, over 1,600 horsepower on the track!” Vaughn added. “Are you surprised with the result? We still have some learning to do with this new car, but I am pumped that all of our hard work has us in a good place to start the Formula Drift season next weekend in the streets of Long Beach!”
That’s right, you can watch Vaughn compete with his new ride in Formula Drift’s season opener on April 8-9 on the Streets of Long Beach in Long Beach, California.
To see how his new IRS-equipped 2016 Mustang stacked up to his old 2014 competition car, Vaughn decided to drag race his old car with fellow drifter Jonathan Nerren behind the wheel. It seems the new car has a bit of a performance advantage, which Vaughn hopes to put to good use in Formula Drift this season.
Both his 2014 and 2016 comp cars are powered by similar 9,000-rpm-capable, 436-cube small-blocks constructed by Roush-Yates racing. That makes for a pretty fair race from a power standpoint, but the new car is a bit lighter than this one.
