BMW’s racing driver Johan Schwartz set a record for the world’s longest drift, while Matt Mullins, another professional BMW precision driver, was in charge of the car that was refuelling. The new M5 was refuelled five times over the eight hour period and averaged a speed of 46.67kph. The car covered a total of 374km.
The two cars also inadvertently set another record, they drifted in tandem for 79.26km over one hour, which is the longest twin-vehicle drift recorded by Guinness. BMW created a custom refuelling system for both cars to ensure the safety and smoothness of refuelling.
Schwartz said, “We knew that if we were going to recapture the world record for the longest sustained drift and set the bar as high as possible, we would need to find a way to keep the M5 going without stopping to refuel. In the end, the refuelling system worked flawlessly and the M5 performed as expected. It was a big win all around.”
German driver Harald Müller set the previous record in a Toyota GT86, which stood at 144.11km – less than half of BMW’s effort.
