Drifting is one of the fastest growing motorsports in the world. The combination of smoky action, quick, heads-up races, and immediate results make for an entertaining day’s viewing for the fans. If you look at a typical field of drift cars it is dominated by Japanese performance machinery. This Ferrari 550VR drift car will certainly stand out amongst its rivals. The red machine featured here is, however, certainly not the first Ferrari drift car ever created. Click here to see another that we featured on this site early last year.

Old hand

Yoichi Imamura is stalwart of the drifting game in Japan. This former D1GP champ’s new steed started out as a Ferrari 550. His team completely overhauled it for its new competition role. The original V12 motor was ditched in favour of a V6 unit from a Nissan GT-R. Of course, the Nissan’s standard power output was just not gonna cut it in a series where 500 kW is considered the entry point.

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Imamura and his team had the Nissan’s motor punched out to 4,3-litres and replaced the two small turbochargers with a single massive unit. A huge, front-mounted cooler keeps temperatures in check during drift runs. The end result is a reported 900 kW of tyre-shredding power sent to the rear axle. In 2018 Imamura competed in a Toyota GT86. The twin-turbocharged V6 Toyota 86 had a “paltry” 750 kW on tap.

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Fans of drifting can catch the car in its debut event this weekend, taking place at the world-famous Tsukuba Circuit in Japan. You can see Ferrari 550VR drift car in action in the video below. If you speak and/or read Japanese, please let us know what they are saying.