Hmmm, it would have been a tough call. Powers had a slow transition behind Essa under the bridge, and it's slow enough to consider it straightening out for a short period of time. It's kind of hard to tell since his front wheels were hidden from the camera behind Essa's car. Maybe with another camera angle, we can better determine what had happened there. Then again, Powers was all over Essa's door.
Another thing on the first run you can argue about is comparing lines between the drivers. To me, the differences were too small to really consider them, but I did see Powers with a shallower line than Essa, but to be honest, when you watch it at speed, the fact that Powers was all over Essa's door, and really not all too far off the line, I feel like argument is not valid.
When they switched positions, it seemed like Essa couldn't adjust to what Powers was doing in front of him. As they were going through the first corner, Essa bumped into Powers, backed off a bit, and then came back up to Powers and bumped him into the final hairpin and had to back off again.
At the end of the day, Essa didn't look as clean as Powers IMO. You can argue about line all day, but the differences were not significant enough to me to count it against Powers. He did what he had to do to look cleaner than Essa on his follow runs. In drifting, you almost always win it from the back. You could have the best lead run in the world, but if the chase driver is all over your door, keeping similar lines, and isn't losing drift (I just see a slow transition in the video, but maybe there are other videos out there that say otherwise), the chase driver will win.
