A BMW M235i and speedway world champion Karl Maier manage a five-hour-long drift around a 400-metre-long dirt speedway track.

WHILE SOME PEOPLE might immediately class drifting with hooning, there’s no mistaking the skill involved in a long controlled drift. So imagine trying to drift a BMW M235i around 400-metre-long dirt speedway track in Germany. For five hours. With a speedway motorbike drifting right along side you. Especially when the bloke on the bike is BMW motorcycle dealer and four-times dirt-track world champion Karl Maier.

The BMW M235i is powered by a 3.0-litre inline turbocharged six-cylinder petrol engine developing 240kWand 450 Nm and measures almost four-and-a-half metres in length. The speedway motorcycle, on the other hand, has an air-cooled 500cc single-cylinder engine, weighs 80 kg (as per speedway regulations), makes do with just a single gear and has no brakes. The specially designed methanol-fuelled machine has been built exclusively for speedway track use.

Sure, it was one of the most ridiculous tests in all of motoringdom, but it looks like fun, although five hours of drifting on dirt… Hmmm. Anyway, both driver and rider succeeded in fulfilling a common goal: five hours of “sheer drifting pleasure” – get it? We’d love to show you the video, but there isn’t one…