“Leroy” The Corvette Transforms From Dragster To Drifter For The Day
Two completely different principals, one very capable, and fast, car.
We’ve all seen how Cleetus McFarland’s Corvette, lovingly named Leroy, has dominated the drag strip and set records, but there’s one thing it hasn’t done yet: drifting. McFarland never lets an opportunity pass, so he went with some friends to try it out.
McFarland meets up with drifting friend and guru Adam LZ to get some pointers.
“Today we are going to Orlando Speedworld. They have a skidpad there that Adam has rented out for the day.”
The whole thing sounds very promising. With the skidpad, there’s plenty of wide-open space to just practice holding the car in a slide. Obviously taking a car meant for the drag strip to a drift event is not ideal. However, with a simple swap of wheels and lower boost pressures, Leroy the Corvette makes up for not being built for drifting from the ground-up.
Things go surprisingly well in the first few practice runs, and with some minor tweaks to driving style and tire pressures, the C5 isn’t much of a handful. Which, really, is about the best compliment you can give a monster twin-turbo C5 ‘Vette Kart. Better yet, McFarland holds slides fairly well and is getting used to transitions between turns. Excited about trying an actual course, McFarland says,
“so what we’re going to do is just swap on the good ones so we have some nicer grip and I’m going to go out and try that course.”
McFarland’s experience as a first-time drifter goes far better than expected and he even had a chance to try out some properly set up drift cars as well. But overall, he was just thankful to gain experience and a bit of know-how in an area he hadn’t really tried before. His sign-off sums it up nicely: “I want to thank Adam for his extremely wise drifting lessons and knowledge. All his trips to Japan are really paying off for me.”
But enough from us, check out the video!
