A municipal official in the city of Irkutsk in western Siberia got the boot after video popped up on YouTube of his subordinates racing tractors downtown.
Two tractors were filmed drift racing – a technique of sideways steering popular with street racers – at night in front of the city’s main sports venue, Trud.
The vehicles, fitted for snow plowing, are encircled by cars with lights on and cruise around to cheers from the crowd. An invisible spectator breathes out: “Damn, now that’s something” at one point.
The 1:45 video, apparently shot with a cell phone, appeared on YouTube last week, but did not make ripples in the media until this week.
The drivers were disciplined and stripped of bonuses, Radik Farazutdinov, who heads Irkutskavtodor, a municipal street cleaning company that owns the tractors, told Lifenews.ru tabloid.
The chief of the unit that allowed the misuse of company equipment would be fired, Farazutdinov said. He gave no names.
