How Mad Mike impressed Max

Mad Mike revealed details behind Max Verstappen’s first drift experience

When Red Bull wanted to teach Max Verstappen to drift, it drafted in the sport’s legend, Mad Mike Whiddett.

But what car would Mad Mike pick from his fleet of tyre-frying weapons that includes a Lamborghini Huracan (known as NIMBUL), his competition-bred Mazda RX-8 (BADBUL) or perhaps his compact Mazda MX-5 (RADBUL)?

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Actually, the choice was simple for Whiddett, he picked his original drift car, a 1992 Mazda RX-7 affectionately known as MADBUL. However, before the shoot, Mad Mike and his team had to overhaul the RX-7 back to its early form, after he and his team dramatically changed it by putting a RX-3 front-end on the car for several years.

Max Verstappen drifts Mad Mike’s Mazda RX-7 MADBUL

“We did the Max Vertsappen shoot, so I redid the old first generation Rocket Bunny [bodykit] I did with [Rocket Bunny founder Kei] Miura-san,” Whiddett said. “So we put that back on it, did some kind of traditional old-school livery, redid all the wheels with Rotiform and then we built our own motor. We’re doing our motors in-house at the MadLab here at my shop, so [we rebuilt the] same configuration rotor.”

So why this particular car? Whiddett explained his reasons in an interview with Torquecafe, revealing its purity and linear performance made it the obvious candidate to teach the Formula 1 champion. Even if it meant letting Verstappen become the first person other than himself to drive his prized vehicle.

Max Verstappen became the first person other than Mad Mike to drive the MADBUL

“It’s not the craziest, fastest weapon of the fleet, but it’s by far the most fun and it’s the most rewarding to drift,” he said. “That’s why of all the cars when I got the opportunity to put Max into a drift car I was like ‘it’s got to be MADBUL’ because it’s just that car you have to be so precise and perfect on the gearshifts and hard on the clutch and freaking foot flat to the floor on the throttle and the sound.”

Verstappen, unsurprisingly acquitted himself well in the MADBUL (check out the video below) and humbled Whiddett and his MadLab team with his compliments about the four-rotor engine.

“Actually Max, when he hopped out of that car, his words were like, ‘man, this is the most responsive engine I’ve ever felt in my life.’ And so like my team and, you know, I was absolutely humbled by it. As some Kiwi-built bloody rotary,” he said.