'Mad Mike': The man, the myths

Mike Whiddett is a drifter. I’m not talking about the petty criminal type who floats from town to town thieving and corrupting. I’m talking about drift racing.

You know, make a car go sideways on a closed circuit – corners are good but not essential – while smoking up the rear treads and exhibiting the kind of car control most mortals can only dream of.

Mike, nicknamed ‘Mad Mike’ during his early motocross days, is an incredibly talented drifter. I know this because I've sat dumbfounded in the passenger seat of his 2.6-litre quad-rotor Mazda RX-7 Mad Bull as it blows great bursts of flame from the exhaust while ripping around the Hampton Downs race circuit in New Zealand.

‘Mad Mike’ also taught me how to drift in a Mazda RX-8, which doesn't look or sound as exciting, but it showed Mike's passion for the sport. Simply put, he wants to share the joy he finds in drift racing. There's even a grassroots drift event, the ‘Mad Mike Summer Bash’, which he organises every year.

His infectious enthusiasm for the sport left an indelible mark, and we spent a morning chatting with the easy-going racer about the life and times of ‘Mad Mike’.

You're now one of the best professional drifters in the world, but where did it all start for you?

My first rotary car was a Mazda 323, 1978, and that was a 1300cc piston engine. I swapped $100 and a skateboard for a crashed RX-7 and put the rotary engine in the 323, converted the motor and changed the cable clutch to hydraulic and figured it all out and then we were making noise.

I was hooked on that sound. We proved it's possible to start with no budget, just a dream and a lot of determination.

You raced motocross for several years, where you got the ‘Mad Mike’ nickname, but then made the switch to drifting in 2007. What's the biggest challenge today?

It’s very different to a lot of competitors in the championship, where drivers are purely drivers. They have a contract to drive the car for seven events and that’s the gig. They rock up, the car’s maintained, it’s prepped and they just try to get on the podium. Crash damage, whatever, it’s taken care of.

We do everything between us [wife Toni and Mike]. It’s good in some ways, it’s challenging, it’s a lot harder work, but it’s rewarding. We control 100 per cent what we do with the cars, where they go.

The Mad Bull is a tribute back to the RX-3 frame and it's a tribute to those cars that first captured my imagination.

A lot of people associate drifting with hooning – there'll always be that negative association. How do you resolve that critical element?

It takes one news presenter to say "boy racer does doughnut around roundabout" and it hurts the sport. That's not drifting. Drifting is on a race track, in a controlled environment. We have stringent safety requirements.

Having manufacturer support, having Mazda on board, having Red Bull on board, having these huge brands it lifts the profile and credibility of drifting. We get more exposure, we’ve done demos at F1, V8 Supercars, we’ve drifted at Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi, we were the first to drift there.

It's about showcasing the sport and the precision of drifting. People see it and think it's pretty basic, but get behind the wheel and it’s a lot harder than it looks. We do it on tracks with 240km/h corner entry speeds. It does require a lot precision and talent.

How long do you spend at home these days?

The longest I've been in NZ on the ground in the last few years is maybe four weeks. The rest of the world is on different seasons.

The [drifting] world championship last year was five rounds in Japan and nine in the USA. That’s just one championship. You have the demos at events, video shoots, with Red Bell, Vodafone, you do other stunts, lots of different events, whether at the F1 and stuff like that.

Talk about the cars – how important is it to field custom vehicles in the sport?

That’s a huge part of the fan base right there. People saying "What’s ‘Mad Mike’ going to build next?" So it’s always exciting. For me I'm like always trying to push and I'm very fortunate to work with the some of the world's biggest brands.

To be able to create everything from my own custom wheels to custom body kits and making half RX-7 half RX-3, that's pretty special.

Red Bull lets me design my graphics, my race suits, my helmets, I do all of them myself. I go through approval processes and it's really cool I get to do all the stickers and designs.

What are you working on next?

Drift taxi. You’ll see the Mad Cab soon. I want to keep it pretty basic. So now we’re growing this ‘Mad Mike Drift Force’, which is a real grass roots school.

It’s all about track time. People invest a lot into their cars. In competition you don’t get much practice. It’s a lot of investment for not a lot of seat time so we want to offer something to up and comers.

We hear racing runs in the family – and that your son has already eclipsed you in karts?

Here at Hampton Downs [my son] Lincoln actually has the lap record at the go-kart track. He wiped the competition, and it was his first time on a road circuit. He normally races off-road. So he did well, that was cool.

My little girl Jett, she's now nearly two and wants to drift and slide everything she can. She'll be a little maniac [laughs]!

Lincoln is nine. I have to miss some of his races because I'm overseas racing but him winning a trophy brings a bigger smile to face than any trophy I could possibly win.

It's cool, his passion to want to race.

And mum's OK with the kids going gangbusters with racing?

Yeah Toni is a car chic too. It’s cool. We’ve been together 15 years and she built her own cars for car shows, and won a load of awards at the car shows throughout New Zealand.

We put a 13B rotary from a series five RX-7 into an S-Class Mercedes from the '80s. We also did a twin-turbo Lexus V8 in another Merc. It’s cool to have Toni managing the program, but she's into it as much as I am.

Where do you see the future of drifting?

We did a ‘Mad Mike Summer Bash’, pros and amateurs were welcome, and the overall winner was a grassroots driver in an old 1970s Datsun with a 13B rotary engine. He wasted the competition, beat all the pros -- that’s really cool to see.

That's what I want to do now. Help grow the sport and hopefully I can inspire other drivers to follow in my footsteps.

What about your future? We've seen you cut some pretty fast laps in a McLaren 650S GT3 race car, without any sideways action…

I really enjoy circuit racing. In any judged sport, whether it's boxing, freestyle motocross or gymnastics, I guess there’s always the politics and frustration of what each individual judge thinks and wants to see.

So it's nice to actually to just race for a chequered flag.

Well actually not just a chequered flag, you're in a qualifying session and your lap time is on the screen and it's green. Then red, which means you're slower, so you’re like "keep it green, keep green," and you know everyone else's time, then you have a little whoopsie. It's fun. You're racing yourself too.

So you go from qualifying, trying to push out the fastest lap in a 10-minute jam session, to trying to hold the car together for 100 laps, and yourself mentally. Physically it's hard, mentally it's really hard. You get so exhausted.

There's so much intensity in drifting, so much work, so much time, so much travel. Then when you compete, its two or three corners. One tiny little mistake -- boom! -- you're on the trailer. Make a mistake in racing and you can learn from it or claw your way back.

GT3s are very expensive but as a driver there's nothing I want more than race time. I love drifting, it's explosive and exciting but it's just so short. I wish the tyres lasted forever.

Last but not least, you're a Red Bull athlete, you attend the Red Bull Performance Camps in Los Angeles and you have to be super fit to compete. So what's your secret?

I eat Maccas...

Riding BMX keeps me fit and the two kids keep me active. I don't have time to go to the gym but I don't drink alcohol, I want to stay focussed. I do love chocolate though.

I don't smoke ciggies but I smoke a lot of rubber!