![]() ![]() Props to the team behind this car for not forgetting that even ‘ hella functional’ race cars need to look good in order to inspire fans. Here’s a great panned shot from MotorMavens shooter Mike Kim, with Dai powering through the Long Beach course at maximum speed! I think Dai’s S13 is one of the best looking “corporate cars” in the Formula Drift season, and it’s all because of the car’s bodywork and stance, and graphical layout. I wonder when Dai’s going to get some sort of helmet with the top cut off, so it doesn’t ruin his pomade work and his hair can stick out as he drives. Here’s Mr Cool Hair himself, Daijiro Yoshihara, waving to his fans and supporters from atop the podium. I know they had a big celebratory team dinner after the event! I’m pretty sure the folks at Falken Tire were pretty happy about finishing 1-2 at Long Beach. Consider it a little payback for beating the 2011 Formula D Series Champion at the first event of the season. Here’s our boy JTP at the podium ceremony, getting sprayed in the face by Dai. Drifting is continuing to grow, and it’s now larger than its ever been!Īs everyone that’s following on Instagram and Facebook already knows, former FC3S RX7 driver Justin Pawlak won top honors at Long Beach for the second year in a row, driving his Falken Tire Ford Mustang in an intense battle against Falken teammate Daijiro Yoshihara. How about that, naysayers? Drifting isn’t dead just because YOU can’t get sponsors. The grandstands were completely full, with only standing room available. With a first time ever SOLD OUT event at Formula D Long Beach, the venue was packed with plenty of familiar faces (and a ton of new ones) from all over the world! I received a multitude of text messages over the course of the weekend from friends asking if I could help them get tickets, but the event really was sold out and packed to legal capacity. In recent months, I’ve actually heard people say that the sport of drifting is in a slump, but I beg to differ. It’s always exciting to see the newly built (or rebuilt) competition cars attack the streets of Long Beach on the weekend preceding the Long Beach Grand Prix. ![]() Learning to drift out here is like learning to fight in the Thunderdome.The first event of the Formula Drift Championship season is always something to look forward to. Out here, a big off means impact with a clutch of trees, a sheer rock wall, or both, after a long trip off a short ledge. And they do so with implicit knowledge that each run carries a fair chance of skidding off the road. They aren’t out here to flex their muscles, they’re not even out here to maintain them they’re out here to build them. These guys are pushing their cars past the limits of adhesion on the most dangerous roads in the state, if not the region. I’m more impressed by the rookies than anyone else. The second most experienced drifter out here spins his battle-scarred, SR20DET-swapped AE86 coupe at least as often as he pulls off graceful, arcing slides all the way through a corner. Drifting lost its innocence to corporatisation and vulgarity at a speed rivalled only by Miley Cyrus. ![]() There’s nothing romantic about a 900bhp Toyota splattered in a neon-vomit livery, liquidating tyres on a Nascar speedway’s afterthought of a road course. In a few short years, drifting transformed from the pre-dawn vice of an enthusiastic few to an international motorsport phenomenon.īut something was lost along the way. Then the Fast and Furious franchise hopped on the bandwagon, and the rest is history. But things have changed: touge nightlife inspired the immensely popular cartoon series Initial D, and the internet brought it - and a growing litany of Japanese drift videos - to every corner of the world. For decades, this werewolf symphony played almost exclusively on the winding mountain roads of Japan. Few things rip through the blanket stillness of 4am like the redline screams of a Toyota 4AGE and a Nissan SR20DET reverberating off a granite mountainside in concert. ![]()
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