Justin Pawlak is a professional drifter in the Formula Drift series driving a ROUSH Performance Mustang which puts out near 1,000 horsepower and over 800 lb-ft of torque. Pawlak sat down with Hoonigan this week to have a beer and talk about himself for the recent episode of Hoonigan’s “A BREW WITH“.
The crew at Hoonigan know most if not all of the Formula Drift drivers and a few of them have stopped by for their sister series Daily Transmission, so being that they are friends, Pawlak jokes throughout filming with Hoonigan’s Hertrech Eugene Jr. who goes by Hert. Pawlak starts by going through his back story of why he got into cars and drifting and his answers are representative of most. He turned 16 and wanted to drive, didn’t we all? How he got into drifting was a more indirect route. He apparently played soccer in college and got hurt. He eventually moved to Arizona then California then eventually found himself in grassroots drifting with programs such as JustDrift.
He is asked the normal pool of questions, such as his favorite track? Long Beach. Dream car? 1960 Ford Galaxie Starliner. Favorite Movie? Rad, which initiates more Pawlak versus Hert hazing as Hert has not seen the movie.
Pawlak talks about his toughest Formula Drift battle which he says is battles with himself, he says when he is on he is on, but when he is off he beats himself. He also goes into talking about a fad he is happy to see dying out in drifting – drift missiles, basically a beat up run down car which purpose is to drift and beat on with no care on what it looks like. Pawlak tells a story of having a drift missile once. He had the car and photographer Larry Chen took photos of Pawlak drifting the car then Pawlak says he stripped the car and junked it.
He talks more on Formula Drift such as the 2011 season when he came closest to winning the championship and some on his RX-7. For more of the details check out the video below.
