This has got be be the meatiest interview we’ve done yet. Pour yourself a drink, sit down, and enjoy this fantastic conversation between pro drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr.and Patrick Soderlund, the EA executive and co-driver of the Team NFS BMW Z4.

This conversation happened back in the spring when Vaughn traveled to the UK to get his first taste of FIA GT racing.

VG: So, how long have you been racing?

PS: Not that long, about 5 and a half years.

VG: Where are you from?

PS: Stockholm, Sweden. I started Racing with my wife. Apart from work I was volleyball player, I played for national team, world championships and that kind of thing. When I stopped playing, my wife told me I needed to do something else because she couldn’t stand me being home obnoxious all of the time. I’ve had a huge passion for cars since I was small, so she gave me one of those driver instruction things where I went for a couple of days to a course. I got totally hooked. On the way home from my first license test, I bought a race car.

VG: So you fell in love?

PS: Yes, I decided I need to do this somehow. I quickly got into long distance endurance racing with several drivers that go for 6,8,12, and 24 hour races. I’d been doing that for a while, and then got more interested in the sprint racing and the shorter stuff. I met Edward Sandstrom about five years ago and he’s been teaching me how to do this.

VG: So Edward, who is your teammate has been kind of a mentor to you?

PS: Yeah. He’s been helping me out with the driving stuff. It just happened we became good friends. For this year when Rod told me that we want you to do the FIA GT3 series. I thought, OK that sounds cool. Then I asked Edward if he wanted to do it with me, because I knew he’d be a good teammate.

VG: Does that mentorship still translate now when you guys come to the track?

PS: Oh totally. When we walk the track he’ll show me where the lines are. When he went to the hotel last night and watched the videos, we quickly found parts where my line wasn’t aggressive enough, we talked about that. Unfortunately we couldn’t apply that today during the qualifying session because of the fuel problems we had with the team. But he totally helps me. It’s in his best interest right? Because we are teammates.

VG: Right, that’s huge to have somebody be there. Especially somebody you’ve been working with for so long. I guess you guys are friends, you don’t hate each other.

PS: Oh no. (laughs)

VG:  What was that first car that you bought?

PS: It was a BMW Z3 ’98. It wasn’t like our Z4 that’s built by BMW Motorsport, It was a private car that someone bought and converted into a race car. It was good learning. We got to do all the dirty work,  me and a friend did all the mechanics ourselves. We had to learn what a car was and how it functioned. That was pretty cool actually, to learn all those things.

VG: So being a driver obviously means time away from home. I know that I need a big support system. Is your family really supportive?

PS: It’s funny that you mention it. I had the worst presumption that I was sick last night, so my wife calls me up and she’s extremely supportive. I have two young girls at home, one three and one five. Obviously with my work I travel quite a bit, and then with the racing added to it. It wasn’t easy to decide because there is a lot of racing this year, a lot of weekends away from home. I asked my wife if she thought it would be OK. She eventually came around and said I think this is cool, you should try it.

It’s kind of heartbreaking actually, yesterday my daughter, the five year old, she cried in the car on the way home from a party saying “why’s daddy always away?” That made me feel like sh** to be honest. So I’m gonna go home and repair that. So you do need a lot of support from home. It’s hard, especially for me with both the work and this. I have a job that sucks up 60 hours a week easily, and then to do this on top of it.

VG: It’s like a balancing act, right? You obviously have your family life that you love. Your passionate about your work, your passionate about racing, your passionate about your family. There’s not enough time in the day.

PS: It’s been crazy for me, but that’s gonna calm down. It’s gonna be one race a month which is totally different. There’s been seven test days before this. A couple weeks ago we did the Nurburgring LM race in Germany which is outside of this. We are also doing the Nurburgring 24hrs this year. On Tuesday I fly to San Francisco for work, and then go home on Friday. Then on Wednesday I go to Germany for the Nurburgring 24H. The following weekend after that is the Czech Republic. The next three weeks are gonna be insanity. Then it’s gonna calm down, with about a month until the next one. There’s 2-3 tough weeks in front of me, but it’s cool.

VG: You’re having the opportunity to do some thing that you love.

PS: This is just one of those things where I wish I was 30. You know, I was probably 5 inches shorter and 10 years younger. I would have been fine.

VG: I relate so much. When I first started I was working an IT job. My job was an hour and a half from my house in Virgina. I’d literally leave work early to go practice events. Drive all night, come back in the morning, go to work. Then it got to the point as drifting was raising up and I was a pro where I’d leave work early on Thursday, fly to the event on Friday, come home on Sunday on a red-eye, then drive an hour and a half  to work at six in the morning. It’s something that’s hard to explain to someone.

PS: You left your job?

VG: 2007 I left my job, it kind of got that breaking point for me. I just had to focus on one or the other. I went for it, and it’s been a dream come true.

VG: So speaking of jobs, tell us a little about your role at EA.

PS: At EA the company is basically divided into two big parts. We have the development piece, and the publishing piece. The developmental side is the people that develop the products, the publishing side does all the publishing work, making sure the games come into the stores, marketing, etc. I’ve worked on the development side for about 13 years now. What I do is…we’re divided into genres inside the company. I oversee everything that has to do with first-person shooters and driving games.

VG: So what is your role and involvement in the actual Need for Speed brand?

PS: In the brand itself I’m very involved. Ultimately EA holds me responsible for the success of the brand and the franchise and the products we sell. I would say that I’m probably ultimately responsible, but I also have a lot of talented people that work with me. I don’t know if it’s fair to say that I set the general direction. Obviously people like Rod and Keith our marketing director and the people that made the games take it over and run with it. When I took over the brand in November, I had a thought in my head what I wanted to do. It needed a reset, the brand needed to start feeling cool again, a lot more connected with the younger audience, and much more into the car scene that Rod’s working on, drifting etc. There was a lot more that we needed to do with for it to stay cool. What worked six or seven years ago with the Underground products, it doesn’t work any more. Fast and the Furious is not what kids are interested in any longer. That’s what the company still unfortunately thought it was. The neon lights under the cars…

VG:...are not cool any more. So it was time to evolve, and you kind of put that in place.

PS: That’s when we promoted Rod to be the Creative Director and to be involved in all the products. He has such a good look and feel and understands the culture, which ultimately is the audience that we are trying to sell to.

VG: He obviously gets it right, he lives and breathes it. Seeing him this weekend at the race was like a kid in the candy store. I know Rod and see him at events and we hang out, but I’ve never gone to an event with him in this capacity and seen his passion for just being at an event. Us as drivers, I’d imagine you’re like me. Watching a race is one thing, but you see five laps and you’re like cool, let me drive the car. That’s really awesome with you being where you are with the Need for Speed team, but also that you also drive and that you’re an enthusiast. When you first sat down you said you’ve always loved cars.

PS: That is true,

VG: Do you have input. Do you go play the game and say oh wow, this feels good, I’d like to see this, I’d like to see that. You’re involved in that part of the development?

PS: Totally. And NFS Shift to a large extent, the true driver’s experience that we had in Shift – it’s a game that I was a big part in creating. I’ve always been more involved in the actual game development than the normal “executive” is. My philosophy is as an executive at the company, if you don’t understand what we do and what we make money from, then how can you do a good job? I don’t understand people inside our company and other game companies that are high up in the ranks but never play games. I don’t get it. To me it’s extremely important to stay connected to what the competitors are doing, the trends, and where we need to be in 1,2,3 years from now.

VG: It’s kind of been like, I don’t wanna say destiny, but it just so happened that your a car enthusiast, working for EA,  moving up the ranks in racing starting with GT3. But now you’re also a huge part of the biggest racing game franchise in the world.

PS: My main is objective is gonna be my work. The other thing is a hobby. It’s a great hobby that I love to do, I aspire to be quicker and better at it, but at the same time I’m 36, not an 18 year old kid in a Formula car. That’s why I like the GT3 Championship, the whole idea is to have professionals racing with amateurs. That’s how the whole the system is built up. Ultimately I assume the amateurs help to fund some of it. It makes for an interesting competition. It’s a good mix, and you point that it’s a good coincidence that I ended up this way. I love making racing games. I love with working with the teams that create these games. They are highly talented. Especially being out with Rod and Will and those guys, they are so good at what they do. I’ve actually used the Speedhunters team as an example for what I want Need for Speed to represent. If you look at what they do with very small means, it is extreme quality in everything they do. All the photos and everything are extremely high quality. Everything is made for a reason. They don’t just do sh**. It’s there for a reason.

VG: Cause they understand it. It’s what they like. The people that are making Speedhunters, this is the culture they live.

PS: I use them quite a bit as an example for how I want our brand to feel. How I want our brand to be seen upon.

VG: Well it’s just real. You want it to feel real. Me personally, I’ve been somebody who’s played sims for a long time. I’ve used sims in the offseason for hand-eye coordination. For me to be pulled in for Shift for the drifting portion, it was a really cool thing that EA as a whole is reaching out to work with real people that live and breathe these things. It’s obvious to me now that a lot of this has come from you. Because you just said that you’ve wanted it to be real. You’ve wanted people that have been living in an office to stop making the games. You want to reach out and make it real so that the real drifters and the aspiring drifters or the real race car drivers and the aspiring race car drivers feel the brand it again. To me it can’t fail.

PS: I hope so. I hope it’s the right strategy. That’s obviously the idea we have for the authentic side of our business. We still have the action-based side of our business which is cop chases and that kind of thing, we’ll keep evolving that too. But for the authentic bit, which is a market we haven’t been in for a long time, I think the Need for Speed brand has shown with Shift that we can coexist. We can exist in the authentic space. I prefer to call it authentic because I don’t see any video game as a simulation yet. Shift is not meant to be a simulation, it’s meant to be perceived reality. It’s a game after all. At some points it’s exaggerated to make sense.

VG: It’s definitely a lot cheaper than wrecking a real car.

PS: It totally is. We saw that today. So hopefully that’s the right approach, it’s gonna be interesting to see how it unfolds.

VG: So what is that you love about racing. Is it the challenge? Is it the battle of you with the car? The technology?

PS: It’s interesting. To me, the first thing I have to say is probably the car. I don’t know that I could be in a car that I didn’t like, or this might sound weird – that I thought looked ugly or uncool.

VG: You couldn’t just race anything.

PS: There’s a reason that I quickly got into Porsches, because I always liked the shape of them. Then when I saw the BMW Z4, I saw pictures, I’m like yep that works for me. I’m actually less about the overall technology and aerodynamics and that kind of stuff. I kind of trust in BMW and  Porsche to figure that out. That’s one of the important pieces for me. The most important though, is my own personal development. People that know me will say that I’m extremely competitive in everything I do. Down to the point that it’s ridiculous. Everything needs to be a competition. The way that you compete in racing is a big part of it. The first two or three rounds of this is gonna be how much I can personally improve, and where do I need to be in relation for Edward for us as a team to competitive. That’s gonna be my main focus. That’s what makes me feel hungry about this. I know that need to improve, I need to be better and work with different techniques on how to get there. Look at videos, look at data, driver coaching, driver training, different lines. That is the constant kind of progression of myself.

VG: The majority of it is the challenge of yourself. To better yourself, learn from your mistakes. One aspect is having a car that you think is sexy, you wanna be in it, you wanna drive it, you wanna master that car, but more so it’s about self-challenge. You said you were a pro volleyball player, so it’s kind of the same thing. You got into it and wanted to be the best you could.

PS: Yeah same thing. That’s what it is. It’ll be different for different people. I’m not much at all for fame and glory, I couldn’t care less about that. It’s for me personally. I don’t care about the other stuff.

VG:  You definitely seem like that. For being an executive at EA, for someone that’s a self-built man you’re very humble. You get out of the car and you’re hanging out and talking, there’s no arrogance about you.

PS: That’s good I don’t want that.

VG: This is the first time I’ve ever met you. Again, you’re an executive at one of the biggest video game companies in the world, and you’re out the doing what you like to do, because you want to. You’ve worked hard to put yourself in a position where you can.

PS: I do this because this is what I wanna do. I don’t care what people think or don’t think about it. It’s because I really enjoy doing it. It’s something that I love to do, and I’m extremely grateful for that. This whole Team Need for Speed thing, I had an idea, I said if we are gonna be doing authentic motorsport I want us to be recognized with famous drivers both in drifting and all the other sections of motorsport. I want us to be evolve and progress. I set Red Bull as good example. I’m not saying we’re gonna be Red Bull, because they are everywhere, but if we can have the same approach to it, but a little bit different and less corporate. Even though they are cool, they are corporate. I want us to be less corporate, and much more grassroots level.

VG: Having a good time and being real. That’s what motorsport is about. It’s not about EA being a multi-billion dollar company. You have a team of people on Need for Speed that are passionate, and everyone I’ve met on the team loves racing, loves cars. You’re wanting to show that, instead of just putting a video game out. You want to let people know, hey were not some schmucks behind a desk trying to sell you a video game. You guys take feedback from people and want to make the coolest product out there.

PS: That’s spot on. I came to Rod and Keith the Marketing VP and said here’s what I want to do. Rod was like woooaah, obviously pumped.

VG: It’s funny when you see the announcement on Speedhunters. I know Rod, I can imagine him coming out of that meeting. He has his dream, the power to make all this cool stuff happen.

PS: I told him go out and get the best drivers that fit our brand and make sure we collaborate with them long term. And he did, that’s the cool part about this. This if the first step, next year I want it to grow and become a lot bigger. Hopefully by bigger, we can sponsor with more money, get more involved, and be at the highest level. Me personally, I don’t envision myself being a part of it for maybe more than next year. I want this to be a platform for younger drivers that are moving up. I think Rod wanted me to be in it because it kind of justifies the brand so to say. He really thinks it’s cool for me to be racing while doing this. I see that as a one or two year thing. I’ll continue to race, but not under the Team Need for Speed umbrella, but rather spend more time looking after it and making sure that we expand and evolve it.

VG: You say you are constantly developing and watching videos. Do you do any kind of mental training or visualization, stuff like that?

PS: I do but, but it’s actually a part of me that I lost a little bit. I listened to you when you said it today, and thought I need to do more of that. I did it a lot when I played volleyball. It was a big part of =preparing for a game. When I went to bed the night before the game, I’d visualize myself being successful and doing well in the game. In the morning same thing. 10 minutes before the game started I’d go into the bathroom to be left alone, put the lights out, just sit there and concentrate. It’s part of me that’s a little bit lost. I need to start doing that a lot more. I’ve seen Edward do it, and it’s something that I know helps me.

VG: It’s huge.

PS: Totally. It makes a lot of sense for me. I’ve really been helped by it before, and it took so long for me to freakin’ realize that. When you said it, that’s when my coin kinda dropped. I need to be doing that. I really wanna get out and see what it’s like for you to compete.

VG: Well let me ask you, what do you think about drifting? Obviously you haven’t done it. As a driver that’s been racing for years, what’s your opinion on it?

PS: One thing that shocked me was how precise it seems to be, how it’s such a precision-driven sport. I’ve seen those close-to-the-wall drifting movies that Rod’s shown me. What I like about it is it’s a big balancing act. Just looking at it, it’s a balance of speed and precision. I also like the format of the competition, it’s very crowd-friendly. I’ve seen drifting before but I was like whatever, I don’t care about that.

VG: (laughs)

PS: Honestly, I started to watch it a lot more, as I did with NASCAR. NASCAR was a big joke to me for a long time, but I started watching it and was like this is pretty cool. Same thing with drifting. I’m totally gonna watch the races online from now on. I realize it’s something that I need to know more about, and something that I know I will like. I’ve spent the winters in Sweden going up to lakes and drifting with ice tires.

VG: The biggest thing we get from traditional road racers is, they don’t get it, there’s no checkered flag, a lot of people don’t open their mind to a judged motorsport. But even if you don’t want to compete, the art of drifting is huge for car control. I’d imagine after having fun on the ice, you’d pick it up. You have an open invitation to come out and drive the Mustang for sure.

PS: You need to see Edward too, he can drift for sure.

VG: My number one in arch-enemy in drifting is Sam Hubinette. He’s a great guy, and he’s Swedish. He kills it, he’s a great driver, won our championship the first year. He comes from ice racing and now he’s one of the top drivers in the series. Him and I get in some serious battles. He’s extremely competitive, just like me. I hate him on the track, but a cool guy off the track.

PS: What does he drive?

VG: He’s been driving a Viper forever, and now he drives a Challenger. So once again, my rival – Mustang vs. Challenger. It’s a lot of fun. His wife is out there and she’s his spotter. She supports him, it’s really cool to see. Like me, my girlfriend Abby, she’s like my teammate. She does all my PR, makes sure I’m on schedule, makes sure I’m up to work out, makes sure I do all my stuff at the event. It’s that support system that we talked about. I really like when I see that. That’s a huge part of us as drivers, we need that support and any extra stress at the track draining the back of your brain.

You know, it’s so weird for me to even talk to like this, because drifting was just something I did for fun. It was just a hobby. I did soccer and I played baseball and basketball and I raced motocross and I’ve always been into competitive sports. When you’re going through the steps of going to the next level, first you start off with being better in the car. Then your skills are great in the car, but you’re still not the best. It’s the little things, the support system. Are you eating right before the event? Are you eating crappy? Are you staying energized through the event and not just drinking sodas?

PS: So what’s a typical race weekend for you?

VG: Thursday we usually have practice, Friday is practice again and qualifying. Saturday is practice and Top 32 tandem. For me, I start prepping at least a week or two before. Watching videos, getting my brain cleared, no partying, no hanging out, just focused and getting ready. Once we get a week of four days before the event, I’m like a whole different person. I can’t carry on conversations, it’s like lock me in a room until the event’s over. Abby really has to deal with a lot with that, we’ll be at dinner and she’ll talk to me and I’ll be like what? I was just driving Road Atlanta in my mind. It’s really cool to have her deal with it. That’s what pays my bills, so she kinda has to (laughs).

VG: For me, with drifting and where this is gone, I’ve been a pioneer in the US and I not only do it for myself. There’s a ton of kids out there that drifting has now become their life. A lot of the things I do, the demos, the places I go, I continue to go out of my way to support grassroots events to help build the series. I love going to grassroots events, but it’s not like it used to be where I just drive my car there. Now I have to spend a ton of money to bring my rig and tire machine and crew, because there’s a lot of other things that go along with it. You know, I can’t really be there changing my own tires because I have lines of people to talk to. It’s hard to explain. I’m not whining about it, this is a dream come that’s come true for me. It’s all so crazy that this sport that I fell in love with, that was just a hobby is now my career. It’s nuts.

PS: Couldn’t be better. To see someone like Edward, he’s one of the fastest drivers in Sweden to be honest. A very very strong driver, and he’s struggling to do this professionally. The competition is so steep in Europe, there’s so many good drivers. And also if you’re a good German driver, the chances of you getting a factory job at BMW, Porsche, Audi, Mercedes, pretty good right? When you’re from Sweden, who the f*** cares?

VG: So he’s extremely good, but he’s an untapped talent. Just like a ton of guys out there.

PS: Just like the other 250 people out there that are as good as him. I really jell with him, cause he’s a humble guy, very calm. We were friends before this, and this is just something we managed to do together.

VG: It does seem like you guys get along great. He seems really cool, he’s very personable. From the second I got there, when were talking he seemed very cool and mutually interested.

PS: He’s a road racing guy that has a huge respect for drifting. He watches it a lot, he knows about it. Same thing with NASCAR. The other guy, Mattias Ekstrom who’s a very famous Swedish driver, one of the few that have been successful in DTM – they live very close together and both of them are very much into American car culture and American cars. It’s kind of unusual, because Europeans are mostly into what we do here.

VG: Just like Americans are mostly into what we do there.

PS: It’s kind of obvious.

 PS: I told Rod that we need to get all the Team NFS drivers together, rent a track somewhere, get a couple cars and just have fun. Have Will and those guys make a montage of that and put it on Speedhunters.

VG: That would be awesome. Get a bunch of Mustangs together or something fun to play with.

PS: That’d be awesome.

VG: Something that doesn’t matter if you break it.

PS: (laughs)

VG: But that’d be cool. Hopefully it can happen this year, if not maybe next year. We can do some track, and some drift. and just have a fun day, do a video.

PS: We can probably do both.

VG: We can do whatever we want. It’s our world, right. (laughs) Well, I know you’ve got a race tomorrow…

PS: And you have a flight to catch, so again really nice to meet you.

VG. You too!

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