Johan Schwartz is a damned fine driver, a BMW instructor, the Guinness World Record holder for completing the world’s longest drift (at more then 51-MILES in lenght) and is a guy I spent 24 hours with in a truck driving from Massachusetts to Virginia and back in the Spring of 2002. Life is a weird ass thing. The connections you make with people that you pretty much assume you’ll never see again immediately roar to the front of your consciousness when a familiar name catches your ear or eye.

Why did I spend 24 hours straight driving in a truck with Schwartz? Go karts and a heart attack essentially. At the time, the UMass Motorsports Club was seeing the fruits of about two years labor when the university approved an endurance go kart race in a parking lot on campus. Schwartz had started a company called Endurance Karting (which is still in operation) and he’d show up with the karts, timing equipment, etc for your event. The club built the course out of tires that we were given by local tire shops (and then shoved in a trailer behind another tire shop very late one night) and on Thursday evening we were set for Saturday action. Then we got word of a little problem. The guy hauling the go kart trailer had a heart attack in Virginia and was in the hospital. Johan had driven himself into the ground trying to get to our event on time was not looking too excited to haul ass down to Virginia and rescue the karts. We needed those things because we had teams of people who paid to participate.

The alarm was sounded and since I was the only guy in the club at the time with a CDL and big truck driving experience, I was nominated to be the tiller man on this cannonball run. My girlfriend (now my wife) was furious as she had scheduled a party at our place that night and I was going to be eastbound and down when that whole deal got rolling. I went anyway, of course.

We pulled out late on Thursday afternoon. I should note that our rig was an awesome Ford F-650 Super Crewzer. It had a big Allison automatic transmission and a Caterpillar engine. That thing rolled down the road great, was fully optioned, and went like a top the whole time. A couple hours into our drive, Johan went to sleep. I got a fuel card from him and he went snoring straight through the night. We hitched to the trailer about 12 hours after we left UMass and honestly didn’t wait one second to get going north. It was less than 5 minutes between locating the trailer and heading back on the highway.

I drove the entire trip. I went crosseyed the first night at like 3:45am. The truck was weaving back and forth and I almost stopped for sleep but then came around. Once I got comfy in the morning, I didn’t want to leave the seat unless I was made to. Blowing the horn in celebration upon our return, we were greeted like heroes by the guys in the club who had taken the liberty of getting blind drunk in our absence.

The race itself was an abject disaster marred by rain, wind, and generally awful conditions. Half of the teams bailed out early, there were kart issues, and I was wondering why the hell I had nearly killed myself to get these go karts that no one wanted to ride.

So that’s how I know Johan Schwartz. A short time ago, he drifted a BMW M5 more than 50 miles around a wet skid pad/handling circle. That’s a pretty impressive feat, water of not. My eyes about bugged out of my head when I saw his photo leaning on the hood of the BMW used for the record. Hey…I know that guy!

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE JOHAN SCHWARTZ BREAK HIS OWN GUINNESS WORLD RECORD OF DRIFTING CONSTANTLY FOR 51 MILES!