For a serious motorsports competitor, there is no such thing as the “off season”. So while the Formula Drift season in America was officially on hiatus over what was this year an exceptionally long and cold winter break, drivers like Vaughn Gittin Jr. weren’t idly wasting their time. Nope, Gittin was busy honing his driving chops over in China, of all places, where drifting has turned into a bit of a national phenomenon.

So while Gittin returns to the Streets of Long Beach this weekend for the season opener of Formula Drift, these past few months he’s been busy racking up the wins in the People’s Republic of China.

In fact, Gittin has won three consecutive World Drift Series championships, outgunning competitors in the lesser-known drifting series, and in the process creating a rabid following for the art of drifting. Driving his custom-built, 650 horsepower Mustang RTR in some of the very same stadiums that hosted the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Gittin has become drift champion of another country.

Winner of the 2010 Formula Drift Championship, Gittin has since struggled from season to season, capturing some magnificent wins and suffering some frustrating defeats, as the video recap of the 2013 season above shows. Through it all though, he’s never stopped racing, not even during the off-season. That could give him the edge needed to drift his way to another championship in 2014.