Spoiler: it was already their record.
To kick off 2018, BMW wants to remind us all how its cars are good at doing stuff sideways. Demonstrating this requires an M5, and yet another one to help it out. The intention was, secondarily, to set a new world record for the longest sustained drift - a title it wanted to reclaim.
Officially, the record is described by Guinness World Records as ‘Longest Vehicle Drift in 8 Hours’, and they’ve smashed past the old record of 144km by 230km (374km total in non-stop drifting). But to set it, they need some modifications be made.
Presumably with the all-wheel drive system decoupled from the front axle, the all-new F90 BMW M5 would soon run out of fuel before exceeding the previous yardstick when being driven in that manner - that is, always sideways on a circular concrete track drenched in constant artificial rain.
Refuelling on the go meant another car would need to drift in alongside it to allow another man in fireproof racing overalls hanging out the rear window to lock in the nozzle to a specially installed tank that’s fed by a cutout in just ahead of the Hofmeister kink. In this case, they used a slightly older F10 generation M5 - which still looks amazing.
With five refuels, each force-feeding about about 50-litres of petrol in the span of about a minute, and not all of them going so smoothly, the 8 hour ordeal definitely had its moments. We recommend watching the video just to see those cars trading dark blue paint. Nonetheless, the lead car’s driver never lost control of the sustained drift.
We’re not sure how many years it will be until BMW returns to the record with the aim of topping it with yet a newer car, but since no other real attempt was made by any other automaker to steal it away from the Munich team in the years intervening, we suspect it’ll stay unchallenged until the M division gets bored.
For more on BMW cars, check out our Showroom.
