Tag Archive: Levin

HACHIROKU DAY AT NIKKO CIRCUIT: Part I

By in 17-08-2009 12:30 am

I was going to editorialise a bit here, but since it was going to be unrelated to AE86s, and because my column for the UK’s Banzai Magazine is due in a couple of days and I need to save up my opinion juice, I’ll save it for another post.

Until then, enjoy the first half of Noriyaro’s coverage of the 6th of August AE86 meeting at Nikko Circuit.

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WEEKEND EDITION: D1 Grand Prix Autopolis Qualifying Results

By in 25-04-2009 11:46 pm


(photo: Copyright 2009 D1 CORPORATION All Rights Reserved)

Considering that I’m going to driving a lot at Ebisu Circuit next week at the Spring Drift Matsuri, I figured I’ve give travelling all the way down to Fukuoka to watch D1 a miss for this round.

That doesn’t mean I can’t still throw up some results! There are a lot of unknown faces ranking particularly well this round,

This is a list of all the unseeded drivers who have qualified to enter tomorrow’s second round of qualifying. Number one was SunRise’s Tetsuya Hibino in Toshiking’s old NOS-boosted naturally-aspirated AE86. It seems he’s added some bolt-on fenders for this round too, and it doesn’t look half bad!

1 25 Hibino Tetsuya AE86 DL 98.75
2 14 Kawabata Masato RPS13 TY 98.62
3 19 Takahashi Kuniaki JZX100 GY 97.50
4 28 Fujinaka Manabu FD3S YH 96.50
5 17 Minowa Shinji JZX90 DL 96.12
6 22 Yamashita Koichi JZX100 YH 95.62
7 23 Tanaka Kazuhiro GDB YH 95.00
8 21 Sakuma Tatsuya S15 TY 94.75
9 13 Utsumi Akira PS13 YH 94.25
10 20 Okamura Kazuyoshi S15 YH 94.25
11 31 Hayashi Wataru S15 DL 92.25
12 26 Nakamura Naoki S15 FD 90.37
13 35 Yamaguchi Osamu S14 YH 90.00
14 40 Ota Isao FD3S TY/FD 89.87
15 12 Suenaga Naoto CT9A YH 89.37
16 15 Tokita Masayoshi GRS180 GY 89.25
17 38 Kitashiba Michiyuki JZZ 30 YH 85.75
18 33 Hirano Tomokazu S15 YH 84. 50
19 27 Matsukawa Kazuya UZZ40 YH 82.75
20 18 Imamura (Drift Samurai) Takahiro FC3S TY 74.25

DL = Dunlop, GY = Goodyear, YH = Yokohama, TY = Toyo, FD = Federal

I’m almost sure those names are right, as some of the kanji were pretty hard to work out. Just out of interest, Takahiro Ueno’s new BMW didn’t qualify.

Click here for these results on the D1GP official site.

EDIT: Looks like the wet conditions gave a few of the drivers a bit of trouble, like Matsukawa here.

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ALL WEATHER FIGHTER: Tadashi Yanagawa’s AE86 Levin three-door

By in 02-04-2009 12:30 am

This car belongs to an unassuming bloke by the name of Tadashi Yanagawa. The interesting thing about him is that he can drift as fast in totally wet conditions as he can in the dry. I saw him at a recent track day at Nikko Circuit and had to have a look at his car. Surprisingly, there’s not much more to it than many other AE86s out there, but it’s still pretty damn cool.

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WAN MEIKU: Option2 x Mercury AE86 race at Tsukuba Part I

By in 05-02-2009 12:30 am

A while back when I took the Skyline to go drifting at Tsukuba Circuit, there was a series of AE86-only one-make races being held by Option2 magazine and Ken Satoh’s Mercury workshop on the same day. The drifting sessions were filling the dead time between races, which was the main event of the morning.

Naturally, there were a whole bunch of very quick hachis there competing in the roughly ten-minute races, running the gamut from expertly tuned and prepared to completely boro and awesome.

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