Prior to the second round of the Formula Drift Pro Championship at Road Atlanta last year, Mobil 1 the Grid caught up with the one and only Rhys ‘Mad Skills’ Millen…

Tell me about drifting- explain it to our viewers…

You know the motor sport drifting as you would call it or sliding sideways is fairly new, er, internationally. In the US, it’s been here for five years and in Japan where its prominent status developed from, it’s been now, close to twenty years. It’s the only subjective motor sport that I’m aware of where the only objective element being speed on your entry. And people might say oh you just kind of set the cars up with stiff spring rates and slide the cars around completely opposite, it’s all about grip and speed and driving away from your component.

To most people skidding is sort of counter intuitive, you try not to skid typically- you guys want to, the whole time - how do you skid and still feel in control?

You know the best analogy to understand what the drivers are doing inside the cars, if you take your typical road course car, or when you do have grip. If you’re going through a corner, a sustained radius corner, if you’re hard on the throttle the car will track out it will run a bigger ark. If you were to half way through that corner lift, the weight transfer would go to the nose and the car would make a tighter ark. Throw that out drifting. If you’re hard up the throttle, the car is going to weight transfer to the rear, the rear is going to want to counter steer around the front making a tighter ark. Less throttle control, a little bit more steering angle, and you’ll run a wider slide angle, so there is a lot of typical racing you know situations that do not apply to sideways sliding in the drifting motor sport. But a lot of your dirt set ups do transfer to what we’re doing here- rally, off road, and a lot of the dirt track oval stuff as well.

Drifting started as an amateur sport on the streets; did you ever do the street drifting?

You know my background before transferring into the sport of drifting comes from rallying some ten years of, of [pikes, peak hill climb?] and traditional rallying in the US. And that situation you’re running in a very low grip environment, low grip surface transferring from snow, ice, mud, gravel, sand, and you have to develop and adjust your skill set as a driver, but also the set up of the car, softer spring rates, stiffer spring rates, sway bars, tyre pressures and tyre grooves, and drifting it’s effectively the same. You’re adjusting to, not only the track conditions but now you’re racing a component. You have to have a vehicle that’s fast at dynamic solo. One lap, by yourself on the course, and now tandem when you are chasing someone. So that car has to have speed, but it also have to be after sustained slow speed, slide angles as well.

How dangerous is Drifting?
Any motor sport is as dangerous as you want it, well it relates to do you want to be first on the podium standing on the top with a trophy or kicked out in the first round. If you’re confident in your vehicle, if you’re confident in your ability, you’re going to push the envelope, but there is always going to be mistakes in that situation. You know we had speeds at the world championships last year of a 103 to 105 mile an hour. Pulling the hand brake and sliding right up to the wall and kissing that wall. There is no room for error in that situation you need to be confident in your own ability, and you need to be confident in the vehicle your team gives you.

What is your favourite part of your job?
My favourite part is probably going home with a victory after a well earned weekend. You know we came here last year er zero points on the board, an engine that was malfunctioning, we fixed it, I think ten minutes before qualifying, er qualified not so great but ended up winning the event. And from the team’s point of view their perspective of working hard and developing a car, erm, and from a driver’s stand point that’s no better victory than coming from behind and winning. We have the new Hyundai Genesis Coupe here this weekend. The car is less than a few months old and it’s got, not as many laps as I’d hope it has. And we’re looking for the same result as we did last year, standing on top of the podium.

Do you like the challenge of testing new tyres, new cars?
You come out here, you develop a car, you develop to run solo, you develop to run against small cars, big cars, light cars, heavy cars. And as a driver you always need to be taking every lap and dissecting where your car capitalised on the component, or where it had a disadvantage. And in that situation, you’re constantly making changes. And that’s probably the best part about the sport. To run the same car year after year, it gets mundane, it gets boring. And I love the challenge of developing a new car and that’s what we’re doing here this weekend.

What has to be perfect with the car (component wise) for you to have a good race?

You know you can put the best driver in the worst car and they won’t be able to drive that car. They might be able to make it better but they won’t be able to drive that car. The two key points to this style of racing is drivability and torque from the engine and your contact patch with the ground. That’s your tyres. You’ve got to have grip and you’ve got to have control from your tyres. So the drivability of the 3.8 V6 Hyundai engine we have here as well as the tyres is what’s going to make this car fast.

You guys are judged on form, do you feel it’s fair, is it a good system?
You know I’m a I’m a purist for motor sport I come from racing against the clock and sometimes it’s very frustrating to have other drivers judge you on, how they felt you should have driven. Everyone’s got their slight different style although we’re all sliding, going for the same clipping points and the same line, we’re going to do it slightly different. All the vehicles are going to react slightly different, you’ve got this car with a hundred and eleven inch wheel base, you’ve got cars here with ninety five inch wheel bases. They’re all going to have different perspectives of the course that they’re going to have an advantage or a disadvantage. So you know if you take an event like Pikes Peak it’s against the clock. Wave the green flag and you better be prepared to beat me. Come out here, you might feel you are the best driver, and you might go home first.

Is there a particular style that you carry? Your trademark?
You know we got a new car so we’re developing it a little bit erm, we have been known in the past to hit the biggest angles of any car out here that started with the GTO. And then it went transition to speed because speed because the big element, and we focused on that. We’re hoping that this car, an event or two here will have the best of worlds, speed, and the angle.

Do you have any rituals you do before you compete?
No I don’t nothing. Just focus.

Any major crashes or bad moments that you’ve had on the track- what is the scariest moment you’ve ever had?

Yeah I think from any situation as a driver when you’re pushing the envelope trying to better yourself trying to push the car to the limit you’re always going to spin and a spin is not embarrassing it’s something you learn from. You either spun because you were trying too hard or you miss something with the set up in the vehicle. And I’ve had crashes, I’ve destroyed cars, I’ve…in rallying I’ve rolled probably six cars and cut em up and threw them away. But at that same point I was pushing as hard as I could. We came back the next time out and won or whatever we did, but yeah you’re always going to have crashes, you’re always going to have a bad day, but you hope that those are, minimal compared to your good days.

How difficult is it to get into the car after that happens?
Yeah I take example last year, erm, Las Vegas. We er had some issues with the rear differential. This sport is very abusive on your drive train, your clutch, your transmission, your rear differential and then the round of eight, the second round we actually broke the rear differential and the car wouldn’t transfer. It opened up the differential and basically went straight into the tyre wall at about sixty five, seventy mile an hour. Destroyed the whole front of the car, one week later was Pike’s Peak and that was, that was Saturday night…

Finally, how important is your crew?
Again the unique side of drifting is you don’t have a lap time, you don’t have a sector time to compare where you are making time or losing time. so we do radar speeds on every competitor. We log who they are because we might battle them in around of thirty two, sixteen eight or so forth. So you need a crew that is taking track information, air temperature, track temperature, tyre temperatures to compare that. But also what the other competitors are doing on making notes. Is this guy big angles, slow speed, or slow angle, or small angle, high speed, and, data logging. All that information outside of what the car is doing. We have a GPS data logger on board, we can run our own course and map overlay if we make a change and see if that change gave us more speed or slower speed what have you. So you need a strong infrastructure of a strong crew, one of the key elements, one of my drivers is also, or one of my crew members is also a driver so from the outside he can analyse what the car is doing visually. If I say I feel something, he can watch that and go, yes it is, make a compression or a rebound change and make the car work.