No special effects here: Mainer shocks fans, Internet viewers by drift racing with work truck

The 2006 Hollywood action blockbuster “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” brought so-called “drift racing” — or more commonly, “drifting” — into the mainstream.

But those stunt drivers were taking corners in suped-up, road-hugging racers.

It’d be impossible to slide around corners almost horizontally like that in, say, an everyday work truck, right?

Jeff Audet of Standish has proven otherwise, turning heads first at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough and then — through a third-party video compilation of his drifting adventures — on the Internet.

The YouTube video, posted by motorsports channel Carbon Video, has been viewed nearly a quarter of a million times as of this writing.

Said one commenter: “This dude drifts better in a work truck than half the people I know with modified 240s.”

Replied another: “I think it’s cooler watching a vehicle you wouldn’t think would be able to do it than it is watching a car [built] for it.”

Audet said many people can’t believe there’s not some trick to the video — that either his unassuming 2002 Chevy Silverado 2500hd was secretly enhanced or that the recording involves some kind of special effects.

“It’s stock,” the 45-year-old roofing specialist told the Bangor Daily News Friday. “It doesn’t have anything special — no special suspension. People can speculate all they want about it. I drive it every day to work. Or I did. It’s had a hard life.”

Audet said it wasn’t “The Fast and the Furious” movies that got him into drifting (the most recent one in the apparently neverending series, “Furious 7,” was released in April and is already the most profitable movie in Universal Studios history). Instead, Audet was a “Dukes of Hazard” fan growing up in Westbrook and Standish, where he and his brother used to push their starter cars to the limit careening around the frozen surface of a nearby swamp in the wintertime.

“I’ve been drifting for years,” he said. “I just have to work it a little harder than the normal [race car] people.

“I am an adrenaline junkie — I love going fast, and I love going sideways. And I guess I like putting on a show for people,” Audet continued. “I would love to have a truck that blazed like a son-of-a-gun with a lot of horsepower. But I also like going in as the underdog and pulling off upsets with a big, old three-quarter-ton truck.”

Those hoping to catch Audet’s act this summer at Beech Ridge may be disappointed. After more than 10 years and 220,000 miles on the road and on the track, his beloved Silverado blew its transmission this past winter when a neighbor borrowed it for a snow-plowing job.

Audet said he’s tried driving another truck, but it’s just not the same as his 2002 Chevy.

“If I have enough people who want me to get that black truck back out, I might do it,” he said. “But it’ll cost me a small fortune.”

With his newfound drifting exposure, maybe some sponsors will emerge to help get Audet back on the track.