Daily Slideshow: Tempted by a C6 Z06-R GT3 Drift Race Car

Bait and Switch

When Speedhunter’s Dino Dalle Carbonare planned a visit to champion drifter Daigo Saito’s home base, Fat Five Racing, he was hoping to check out Fat Five’s overfender-equipped Ferrari 599 drift car. He was impressed by Saito's earlier exotic exercise, a Lamborghini Murciélago, and he was looking forward to getting eyes and lenses on the drifter's latest nose-thumbing effort. Unfortunately for Carbonare, the 599 was shipped to the commissioning buyer before he had a chance to document the abomination project for the world to see. What Carbonare found instead was this recently-acquired Callaway Corvette Z06-R GT3, previously raced in the GT300 class of the 2011 Super GT Championships in Japan, awaiting its fate.

>>Join the conversation about this Callaway C6 drift race car right here in Corvette Forum.

The Drifter

Daigo Saito, the first driver to win the two major drifting championships—D1GP in 2008 and Formula D in 2012, is currently racing in the D1 Grand Prix series for ATR Radial/Monster Energy/Sunoco and Formula DRIFT USA, and in the World Championship series for Achilles Radial. Saito was into motorcycles as a kid, and got his bike license when he was 16. Soon after, he and his friends accidentally happened upon a drifting meet in the hills near his home and he was hooked. When the time came to transition to four wheels his dad was worried he'd try to drift whatever he got his hands on so he bought a Mini Cooper for Daigo. His father's fears came true, and when Daigo tried to drift the undriftable Mini he totaled it.

>>Join the conversation about this Callaway C6 drift race car right here in Corvette Forum.

Enter the Bowtie

The way you see the 'Vette here, is the way Saito got it, with all the scratches and bruises you'd expect from a racetrack veteran. But why take a GT3 car and adapt it to drifting, wouldn't it be easier starting from something a little closer to the intended target? That depends, but a few features of the Callaway racer lend themselves to a drift set-up, starting with the wide body fender treatments, which offer ample room for the extreme wheel and tire choices called for by a pro drift alignment set-up. One thing that will definitely needed to be looked at though is the road-hugging ride height the Corvette currently presents.

>>Join the conversation about this Callaway C6 drift race car right here in Corvette Forum.

Mods Wanted

Saito is also sure to introduce the C6 to a drastic weight loss plan, keeping only what's absolutely needed for its new job. The top-notch roll cage can probably stay since it was built to spec for stringent GT3 safety requirements, and adds all-important rigidity to the platform, though it's not out of the question for Saito to chop out or add bits as needed. Saito is likely to add the Moton race dampers to the chop list though, replacing them with units more suited to a drifting application.

>>Join the conversation about this Callaway C6 drift race car right here in Corvette Forum.

Finders Keepers

One thing that will almost surely stay is the Corvette's competent transaxle gearbox. The unit in this C6 is a sequentially-shifted race box, completely capable of handling whatever power Saito plans to put into it, while allowing for the ability to tweak the front-to-rear weight balance. The million dollar question is will the race-spec LS motor stay? All of Saito's championships have come in Toyota-powered vehicles and he's a known proponent of that company's 2JZ, so it will be interesting to see if he makes the swap to an iron-block straight-six, potentially putting more weight over the front wheels. Whatever its fate, we hope the Corvette fares better than that first Mini Cooper of Saito's.

>>Join the conversation about this Callaway C6 drift race car right here in Corvette Forum.

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