POP YA HOOD, BRO

D1NZ ENGINE TECH

Walk pit lane at any round of the Demon Energy D1NZ National Drifting Championship and you will not only be greeted by a wash of colourful liveries fighting for your attention — dig a little deeper into the engine bays of the beasts, and you will find a weird and wonderful array of solutions to the same exact problem. Following the worldwide trend/evolution over the past 13 seasons of our national series, power figures have continued to rise, now reaching extraordinary levels. This season, the average power for a Pro-spec car is 471kW, which is why drifting is touted as being the most powerful tin-top motorsport on the planet.

Now we’re past the midway point of the season, we decided to take a closer look at the power plants of the front runners. What we found surprised us, as, unlike series overseas — which tend to see not much other than the mighty LS — back home in New Zealand, we do things a little differently and have a wide range of engine choices in our current top 10.