I am a motorcycle person. I have been one for as long as I remember, and in all likelihood, I will always remain one. I am a reasonable person
as well, so I have not fallen for the usual tropes of liking something and absolutely abhorring something else. But admittedly, when it comes
to cars, I have always seen them as cages. It is just that motorcycles evoke certain emotions that cars simply do not. Well, at least not the widely available ones.

I like fast cars. Cars that demand every iota of your attention and are willing to chew your head off if you are careless with them. I have driven
a fair few of those kinds of cars, and travelled to new places with them too. The BMW i8 was one I was quite fond of because I drove it on the
good’ol ‘Ring. Then there have been a fair few Ferraris, Porsches, Aston Martins, Rolls-Royces, and so on.

I have always liked those kinds of cars. But I did not do much with them. I believe that one must not go all out in one go. One must always have something in one’s back pocket for later in life. So stuff with cars is something I kept in my back pocket. A few years ago, that ‘later in life’ arrived, and I got myself my first performance car, a MINI Cooper S 3-door. A fun little number. Then, I moved on to the BMW M340i, and that is when stuff changed, and I wanted to do more with cars.

All of this setup was not to tell you that I wanted to cruise around in performance cars later in my life. I wanted to do substantial stuff with them, stuff that excites me. So I have driven a fair few on the racetrack. I have driven an M340i at the high-speed test track at NATRAX. And now, I am learning how to drift. Yes, burning rubber, spewing smoke, steering going lock to lock, and the whole deal. Why? Because it is fun.

I can sense a lot of people scoffing. Drifting seems almost pointless. An exercise purely meant for aesthetics. If you ride on the racetrack, your skill improves on the road. If you drive on the racetrack, same thing. But if you drift? Well, you do sharpen your reaction times, and you do have a better understanding of traction or the lack of it. But still, for the most part, it does not give you much since the cars that are driven daily are as good for drifting as a Gold Wing on the racetrack. So, why? Because it is fun!

Now, what do you need for drifting? A car, first of all. Preferably a rear-wheel drive car with a decent amount of power and torque. If you have enough talent, you can probably drift a front-wheel drive car as well, if you want to call it drifting. After all, if drifting can be a tool for delivering tofu real quick (a reference to the absolutely legendary Initial D), why not? Ideally, you need an RWD.

Now, as I mentioned, my first performance car was the MINI Cooper S, an FWD. So it was not really meant for something like this. Though I can imagine how cool it’d look if it could. But the M340i? Well, it got me interested. Before you come marauding to MotoVilla shouting it is X-drive or all-wheel drive, stay your axes and tomahawks for a bit and read on.

As with every new skill you want to acquire, you need a teacher and a safe learning environment. Drifting is still a novelty sport in India, so it was going to be a tough quest. But, as fate would have it, I had exactly what I needed and that too, in my vicinity. I got in touch with Mudit, who runs Bad Boi Drifts and has been a champion drifter with even international podiums under his belt. They operate out of the Balola Motor Complex in Gurgaon. Talk about convenience. More on them a bit later. Let us get down to business.

So, about the place, the complex offers a smooth tiled surface for drivers to practice on. What that does is that it makes breaking traction slightly easier and also chews up fewer tyres. I was taught for about an hour, starting from going around a drum doing doughnuts, progressing to figure eight, and finally, going around a circle in a continuous drift. That is a lot to squeeze in an hour, but these guys have a structured program that gets things done.

They also have specially prepared drift cars. I started in an old Mercedes. It was barebones. Just two bucket seats with an insanely hot interior. It made around 200 horses, had a manual gearbox, and hand levers for advanced techniques. Drifting can be done in automatics, but manuals are considered to be more hands-on. It also had an angled wheel kit, which makes it slightly easier to initiate drifts and keep them.

My first go was pretty, let’s say, interesting. I went around the drum, and to break traction, I just pressed the accelerator, and the rear started coming around. And counter-steering came intuitively for some reason. It may have something to do with years of motorcycling, and people do drift on motorcycles, but the dynamics are very different. With cars, you have a lot more heft to control and keep from hitting something, the drum in this case. And seeing how beat up the drums and the tyre walls were, I felt that a lot of people were really ‘learning’.

Now, with the instructor around, things came to me really easily. I was almost lulled into a sense of overconfidence. Doughnuts were coming on fine, and the figure eight was also progressing swiftly. But keeping myself grounded, I realised that it was because this was a purpose-built car. It made things seem much easier than they are in a normal car. So the next step, sure enough, was giving it a go in my M340i.

Now, it is X-Drive, which means the power goes to the front wheels as well. Now, if you are trained enough, you can pull it off, but it needs more space and a lot more skill because it is difficult to break traction; they get up to speed real quick, and they want to keep going in the same direction. I was not going to give that a try, of course, so I deleted the X-Drive system. Let me explain.

It is done via the means of a small device that costs around INR 5,000/-. It is attached to the diagnostic port of the M340i, situated under the steering wheel. Then the next step is to connect it to an app, preferably installed on an old Android smartphone. It has a subscription system that you have to get, and it costs around INR 120/- a month. In addition to being able to disable X-Drive, you also get other features, mostly gimmicks such as messing with the headlights and stuff.

Since I just wanted to get the X-Drive disabled, I moved on without touching the other features. Once it is done, you get a message on the screen that says, “You can continue driving without the 4-Wheel Drive System.” Also, please note that if you switch off the car, the process needs to be repeated, but since it does not take too long, it isn’t a crisis.

Now, the M340i had nearly double the power of that old Mercedes, around 400 ponies. But it was decidedly heavier as well. It is bound to be. It had all the creature comforts and the luxuries that I loved the M340i for! Still, while it may not be an M4, the M340i is a sleeper, a very
powerful car. Since the gearbox is automatic, I put it in Drive, selected Sport Mode, and used the pedal shifters to get as close to a manual as possible.

Bad Boi Drifts is India’s first drift ecosystem. Founded by Mudit Grover, India’s leading drift athlete, and Mugdha Grover, the first female
drifter in India, they are pioneers in professional drift training, events, car builds, and motorsport promotion. Based at Balola Motorplex, India’s first & only dedicated drift track in Gurugram, they offer a fully-equipped track designed for professional-level drifting. They offer all-inclusive training programs (lasting from 1-3 days) that cover everything from professional instruction and track access to fuel, tyres, and even damage cover, allowing learners to focus entirely on learning the skill in a controlled, safe environment.

In this one, it took a little time. It was harder to get the rear to come around, and when it did, it was hard to feather the throttle and control
the direction with the steering wheel. I am not a teacher, so I cannot explain how I got the hang of it, but it happens with practice. Like any other skill, drifting takes time to master.

Still, within an hour or so, I had the hang of the basics. All I can tell you is that you have to be smooth with your inputs. And like in motorcycling, you go where you look. If you react too harshly or too softly or lose sight of where you want to go, you either lose the drift or worse. I experienced the latter once. I hit the drum and caught a little dent on my M340i. But it is okay, battle scars, I guess.

Another interesting thing I witnessed was how they cool the engines and the tyres. They have leaf blowers, sprays, and other stuff they use on the radiator. Since the revs are high but the speed isn’t, overheating is a real issue. This takes care of that—also, a big shoutout to Castrol Edge. Drifting is tough on the driver but tougher on the engine. You are holding gears, revs are high, bouncing off the rev limiter and overall, just trying to hurt the engine. That is where Castrol Edge comes in. It not only protects the engine but also gives it the extra poke you need for drifting, thanks to its PowerBoost Technology.

We also need to talk about tyres. Since you go through a fair few of them, it is better to get cheap alloy wheels and have them ready with cheap tyres (mostly used), ready to go in case you need a change. My 340i has 19” wheels, but I got cheap 17” ones with semi-used tyres for my sessions. That is why I mentioned in the beginning that the tiled surface is better because on asphalt, you’d go through tyres as a bodybuilder goes through whey.

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That is more or less it. I had a ton of fun learning to drift, and Bad Boi Drifts is the place to do it if you want to do it properly and under expert guidance. A big shoutout to Mudit for singling out this niche, popularising it, and making it seem like a piece of cake even for the ones who are not well-versed in the art. If you are interested, check them out at www.badboidrifts.com