If the graffiti scrawled asphalt of this sinister racing circuit could only talk. Brought to life in the 1920s in the town of Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, the Nürburgring, - and most notably the Nordschleife, aka “Northern Loop” - has played host to the greatest race cars and race car drivers since the great Rudolf Caracciola guided his Mercedes-Benz to victory at the circuit’s first race on June 19, 1927.
In the decades to follow every great auto racer on Planet Earth found their way onto the Nordschleife, building up their courage, snake eyeing and white knuckling their way the undulating marvel’s 172 bends.
And then Vaughn Gittin Jr. did this...
#DriftKingoftheRing, presented by Ford Performance, showcases Formula Drift Champion Vaughn Gittin Jr. drifting the entirety of the Green Hell—the most famous and arguably toughest racetrack in the world—fulfilling a dream of his to conquer the almost unimaginable task. Using a modified version of the best selling sports car in the world, a 2018 Ford Mustang, his supercharged Ford Performance Aluminator 5.0 XS powered Mustang RTR took to the legendary circuit and conquered it; showcasing his precision driving and legendary car control.
The Nürburgring is known as being an unforgiving track that tests not only all drivers, but also all manufacturers as the test bed for their future racing and road going technology. Drifting the entire course is something that is truly on another level of showcasing the Ford Mustang’s ability as a world-class sportscar. So with all of this crazy history and motor racing folklore and myth making, enter one Vaughn Gittin Jr and his 2018 Ford Mustang RTR Spec 5-D pushing 900 horsepower. Having jetted it over to the medieval castle of Nürburg in the jagged Eifel Mountains, the former Formula Drift champion was Green Hell bent on hustling the car Henry Ford had a hand in creating around the Nordschleife’s 73 corners, radical elevation changes, blind crests, menacing curbs – you name it.
“I did it and it turned into the most insane thing I’ve ever done in a car in my entire life,”declared Gittin. “You should have seen it, dude. Let’s talk about the Nürburgring. I’m still buzzing from it, man. The Mustang we used at the Nürburgring was actually really different. This car basically was a 2018 Ford Mustang RTR Spec 5-D, but it was very different from our race car. It had a 5.0-liter Ford Performance crate engine called an Aluminator XS in it. It also had a Vortech Centrifugal Supercharger on it. it was 12 miles of just wide open hell. We had a 160 mile an hour maximum speed, maximum gear in the car and it was maxed out multiple times.”
“I was out of my comfort zone for the majority of the hot laps,” Gittin Jr. recalls. “I did not know the Green Hell nearly as well as I thought I did. Everything changes when you’re going sideways at those speeds. When we stopped for the first tire change I was elated. I had to catch my breath, which is something I have never experienced behind the wheel since I was a rookie in Formula Drift.”
