Team Mopar’s Hübinette Drives to Top-Five at Red Bull Drifting World Championship
Team Mopar driver and two-time Formula Drift champ Samuel Hübinette finished just off the podium at the Red Bull Drifting World Championship on Sunday, Nov. 16, battling to a fourth-place finish amid a formidable field featuring 32 of the top drifters from around the world.
Hübinette forged through a group that included 17 past or current champions and handled rather difficult weather conditions—ash rained down on the Port of Long Beach drift course due to wildfires that raged throughout Southern California—to qualify his Mopar NuFormz Drift Dodge Viper SRT10® second out of 32 cars heading into the tandem eliminations.
He then headed up with Ryuji Miki in the round of 32, scoring a unanimous decision on the three judges’ "cards." In the Top 16, the Team Mopar veteran needed a "one more time" run to knock out Malaysian drift star Tengku Djan, with the two drivers waging a heated bumper-to-bumper battle. Hübinette dispatched Chris Forsberg in the Great Eight round, after Forsberg’s car died on the starting line prior to the first tandem run.
In the Final Four, Hübinette laid down a stellar opening run against Dai Yoshihara, posting a fast entry speed of 101.03 mph. However, during the second run, with Yoshihara leading, Hübinette bumped the wall and lost his drift line, leading to his defeat. Hübinette then fell in a close third-place fight with Tanner Foust, with the judges giving Foust the edge by a 2-1 split decision.
"It could have been better for sure. I would have liked to finish up on the podium for Mopar, NuFormz and BFGoodrich," said Hübinette, who will compete next year in a new Mopar Drift Dodge Challenger, which debuted recently at the 2008 SEMA Show. "But we came out strong and had a good show. Overall, we had a good weekend here, finished fourth and now we’re going to go into the off-season and test our new Challenger. It’s so exciting, a Mopar-powered V8 that is going to be so competitive. So we have a lot to look forward to."
"It was an awesome event, with a really unique location right in the Port of Long Beach," remarked NuFormz Racing team owner Shaun Carlson. "We qualified No. 2 and finished fourth, and we brought out the new Challenger on display, which received tons of positive feedback. We can’t wait for next year."
