Sanam Sekhon, also known as India’s Drift King, made it into the Guinness World Records for the world’s highest altitude car drift ever attempted. The drift, for the record, was done on 31 July at Umling La in Ladakh, which is the world’s highest motorable pass at 19,023 feet above sea level.
The daredevil stunt was accomplished under severe climate conditions and terrain conditions, with temperatures below freezing, thin air, and bumpy roads. Sanam, the first JK Tyre Drift Challenge winner in 2023, did the stunt in a tuned Lexus GS300.
Sanam shared his experience and said he is still sinking in. “It’s still settling in, to be honest. There was a lot of planning for nearly a month. Every day we had to ensure everything was going according to plan. Once we did it, it took some time to sink in, but yeah, it was great to feel once it was over.”
Drifting is chaos under control
For those new to the sport, Sanam explained that drifting is not about losing control but mastering it. “It’s like chaos under control. You’re literally driving the car by the power of the rear wheels. The steering does a bit, but mostly the rear does more action,” Sanam said in this exclusive chat with Firstpost.
Sanam and his team imported a tuner from Thailand, who is an expert in Toyota’s JZ engines, to prepare the car for Ladakh’s thin oxygen content. Describing his car setup, Sanam stated, “It was a 2JZ-GTE inline six-cylinder engine by Toyota fitted with a single turbo.”
Because oxygen is so much less, we had to tilt the car quite a bit in order to ensure that we had sufficient power to set the record. So the tuner spent around an hour or so getting everything in motion, and that was all done by the laptop driving the ECM. And yeah, that was about it. And there was a special fuel that had to be blended and used,” he clarified.
‘The first time I felt my car was running out of power’
Sanam described how drifting at high altitude was an entirely new challenge for him versus regular tracks at sea level. “It’s very, very, very different.
This was probably the first time I felt my car running out of power. Even first gear was sluggish. But the tuner did a really good job and helped us get there,” he said.
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Sanam said the team had made good safety arrangements before attempting the record, given the risks involved at such a height. “We had done a recce and planned a lot of things around it. There was an ambulance from the Army on standby and another one just for accidents. One was even specialized for high-altitude sickness. I’m just glad nothing went south,” he said.
JK Tyre’s role in the success
Sanam attributed JK Tyre with contributing significantly to achieving the record. “I believe the whole role was with JK. They had faith in everything I requested.
On that uneven surface at that height, the tires performed absolutely just as you expect them to. Whatever inputs I had given, the tires reacted exactly the way they do on regular ground,” he stated.
Looking back, Sanam explained the record taught him a large life lesson. “Nothing comes easy. We believed we’d just go, drift, and return. But it was an entirely different ballgame.
The entire team endured a lot, and we were very surprised at how well the tires did. At the end of it, we were like, “All the boxes are ticked; this is done.”
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