Mazda RX-8 And Kamaz Dakar Truck Form Unusual Drift Team

"Mad" Mike Whiddett is an event-winning driver in the professional drifting scene and has a highly customized Mazda RX-8. Eduard Nikolaev has multiple class wins in the Dakar Rally in his giant Kamaz truck. In a new video, the unlikely pair meets up in Saint Petersburg, Russia, for a demonstration of their impressive skills behind the wheel. According to the clip's description, both of these machines pack roughly 1,000 horsepower (746 kilowatts), but they look completely different when transferring the ample outputs to the road.

Whiddett starts the show by sliding his RX-8 around the pillars of an empty warehouse. The close quarters don't provide enough room for the Kamaz, so the massive truck eventually joins the rotary-powered machine outside the building. They put on an eye-catching performance, too. Nikolaev makes the huge rig look quite nimble, and he's able to do long drifts with ease.

Whiddett deserves just as much credit, too. He's in the RX-8 and is so close to the Kamaz that he can only see its tires towering over his car. The truck looks like it could roll over the Mazda with ease if Nikolaev screws something up.

According to Whiddett, it took his team a little while to come up with a setup for matching the Kamaz's speed. Testing those tweaks until things were perfect must have been very stressful in case something went wrong.