Currently reading: Goodwood Festival of Speed 2017: the drifters gallery

The likes of Mad Mike Whiddett, Vaughn Gittin Jnr, James Deane and Dean Kearney are making 'FOS2017' a great one for the art of going sideway. Our gallery brings you the best slide-rulers from the Goodwood hill

The profile of the world's most celebrated drifters has been growing steadily at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

This year, the likes of Mad Mike Whiddett, Vaughn Gittin Jnr, Steve Biagioni and James Deane will be competiting to be crowned the festival's drift champion on Sunday, being marked for by the show-going fans for style and car control and scored through a speed trap through the hillclimb's first corner onto the Park Straight.

The drift machinery on show includes Gittin's RTR Ford Mustang, Whiddett's remarkable rotary-engined Mazda MX-5, Deane's Nissan Silvia and 2009 Prodrift European Series winner Dean Kearney's Dodge Viper - all of them driving on the lock-stops as luridly as possible.

Our photographers have been out on the hill, capturing the most outrageous slides they've been pulling. Check them out in our gallery above.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce PhantomTesla RoadsterAriel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren SennaRenault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.

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