I want Tanner Foust’s job!

Tanner Foust is known for his exploits in drifting, in the American version of the Japanese D1 Series – Formula D. Tanner Foust is a professional racing driver, who is the first driver in Formula D history to win successive championships in 2007 and 2008. Yes I love drifting, but he can keep that job. So, which job am I referring to? Tanner Foust is also the host of Speed Tv’s program, SuperCars Exposed.

SuperCars

On his program, Tanner travels to locations worldwide, traversing continents, in search of very powerful, rare, sometimes very expensive, but ridiculously fast cars. After he has found them, can you believe that he spends the remainder of the program driving them! Now, if he was driving at a leisurely pace, I wouldn’t be this envious, but as if it wasn’t ostentatious enough, Tanner gets the opportunity to drive the wheels and everything else, off the extraordinarily high horsepower machines, that are featured on the program. The cars are driven at the limit and Tanner re-introduces the engines to rev ranges they did not remember they had. Do you want to see a Ruf Porsche 997 twin turbo drifting, shedding chunks of Michelin rubber as it struggles to maintain contact with the surface? Tanner’s abuse is underway!

Texas Mile

Tanner visited south Texas recently. In south Texas, on an abandoned airstrip, participants in the event which is known as the Texas Mile, are given a simple task – drive the car as fast as the laws of physics will allow. When Texans heard that Tanner would be in their section of the state, the offers for him to drive their supercars came in like pedestrians running to find shelter during a thunderstorm! Remember the name of the program is SuperCars Exposed, lesser machines are excluded. This is essentially a 200 mph club. In Texas, Tanner had the opportunity to flog machines the average car guy can only dream about. Just look at these three cars (which showed up in south Texas) and maybe you will understand :

- Bugatti EB 110 SS, 3.5L, Quad Turbo V 12, 560 hp, one of 35 made, a 1994 model, 274 miles on the odometer with a top speed of 207mph (I read many years ago that Michael Schumacher owned one of these cars).

- Porsche GT 1, 3.6L, Twin Turbo, 540 hp, top speed 192 mph, 1 of 2 preproduction prototypes built by Porsche and worth 2 million US dollars.

- Porsche 996 Turbo – called El Monstro, 1150 whp, which clocked an incredible 231mph standing mile run (Tanner did not drive this car).

My favorite, was a re-engineered Ford GT. The supercharger was ripped out and replaced with a twin turbo setup, giving it 1000 plus whp, which propelled Ford’s SuperCar to 235 mph! In this Ford GT, from a standing start (starting from zero, the opposite of a rolling start), Tanner hit 218 mph at the mile marker, despite a poor start!  This was a record, even for Tanner (his new personal top speed record). Who wouldn’t want this job? Tanner said it best after his standing mile run in the Ford GT “I don’t know what else you need in life, really, it’s a great, great feeling”. I want to be able to say that – I want his job!

Cecil Munroe Gleaner On-line Writer