'Mad Mike' Whiddett drifts around Melbourne Grand Prix circuit with F1 driver Daniel Riccardo

  • 22/03/2018

Kiwi drifter 'Mad Mike' Whiddett has taken Australian Formula 1 star Daniel Ricciardo for a wild ride around the Melbourne Grand Prix circuit.

Driving around the 5km lap in Whiddett's Mazda MX-5, the Red Bull duo completed a lap of the track ahead of the F1 season opener.

For Whiddett, it was a dream to go for a spin around the Melbourne track, even though it wasn't in an F1 car.

"This track is so gnarly," said Whiddett. "It's so fast and it is an honour to bring drifting, and have the F1 teams be blown away and respect it,"

"Obviously, he knows this track really well. We were executing some really difficult angles, which he isn't used to, which is really fricken cool."

The 28-year-old Ricciardo was blown away at how drifting around the track gave him a different perspective of the tarmac.

"Drifting with 'Mad Mike' today was awesome," said Ricciardo. "It's completely different from our aim, which is getting around as fast as we can, but we still got around pretty quick today and we were sideways.

The Australian Grand Prix programme kicks off on March 22, with the big race scheduled for March 25.

Kiwi Brendon Hartley will compete at Melbourne in his first full season as an F1 driver in his Toro Rosso car.

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