Battle Drift 2: Daigo Saito vs Baggsy

Cast your mind back to Monster Energy’s Battle Drift 2015.

Vaughn Gittin Jr. went head to head with Daigo Saito in a ‘Stang vs Lambo tyre fry-off. It was filmed in the Niigata Russian Village in rural Japan, and the touge battle looked epic on camera.

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Now, two years later, Monster has published the second instalment, in collaboration with Donut Brand Studio.

It’s hard to live up to that first face-off, but it’s still 100 per cent worth watching.

If you’ve got a short attention span, you’re in luck – you won’t be looking at the same shot for any more than a second or two.

For some reason, the editors decided to include so many jump cuts that it’s a little hard to keep track of what’s happening between Daigo Saito’s Lamborghini Murciélago flashing past, and shots of Baggsy’s hand clutching at the handbrake in his Nissan GT-R.

Admittedly, it makes it more intense, and director Andrew Laputka probably had creative reasoning behind it, but the skills displayed by the drivers should always be the focus of short films like this.

Still, the sequel injected a little more character and narrative into the video through the use of ‘the Cockney Gent’. That’ll do.

“We had a lot of fun filming the first edit on the mountain roads in Japan, and now the contrast of the dockside industrial setting is great," Daigo says.

“I pushed the car very hard on the second day of filming, and we have some incredible shots of Baggsy and I going door-to-door around the dockyard, and pulling a doughnut in the abandoned military fort.”

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Baggsy adds: “It was insane… probably one of the scariest day’s work I’ve had, jumping straight in the car against Daigo - one of the world’s best drifters - and trying to get to grips with the beast we created.”

There was also the surprise addition of Casey Currie, with his Baja-style off-road race Jeep.

Jumping over Murcielagos and GT-Rs is probably fine if you’ve got Monster’s stunt budget.

Still, if you want to really get a good look at Daigo’s skill with the Lambo, the first video is the way to go.

Re-live it, it’s worth it.