Although drifting isn’t really a “sport” in the sense that there is a clear, ‘first across the finish line’ winner, it’s still a sport in the eyes of its competitors and fans, many of whom travel great distances to see their favorite drivers compete in the smoke and fun-filled drift wars.

Back in 2007, when the drifting craze was all the rage on the West Coast, there were a large number of drivers taking to the course in all manner of machines – well-suited for drifting or not.

You’d think the Viper, with its low-slung chassis and huge meats, would be nearly impossible to put on the roof, but as we see in this this video of Chris Cook driving a Viper during a Formula Drift event back in 2007, that’s not the case.

With the hides boiling all the way around the tight, cattle-chute-filled course, left-right left-right, Cook appears to have a pretty good handle on his machine and is putting on a great show for the fans. As is the entire point of drifting, lots of tire smoke ensues, and all the way up to the end Cook has a good feel for the course – until he doesn’t. Unfortunately, as you might have gathered from the title of this post, that’s not how things end.

The driver gets slightly off his line, and the car climbs the jersey barrier and ends up on its roof. The driver was OK after the crackup, which destroyed not only a very expensive car, but also the camera gear that was installed on its side.

This was before the GoPro existed – so that was a real video camera, smashed to bits. At least we get a cool video out of it, right?