This isn’t the most recent of content, but before it disappears into the vaults of backed-up files, I thought it should finally make an appearance on the site.
Early last year, the Norwegian drift team Driftmonkey’s boss Ove Harlem asked me to find him a Japanese guest driver for the Gatebil event in Mantorp, Sweden. I suggested D1GP driver and Kids Heart manager Tsuyoshi Tezuka, since I knew he was keen to do some more drifting overseas. Driftmonkey usually has three cars, two driven by regular drivers Reidar Andresen and Anders Klerud, and a third for guest drivers.
After not too much messing around, Ove had both of us on a plane from Tokyo to Oslo, where picked us up and took us for a nice dinner at the port area of Aker Brygge, before heading to the Driftmonkey garages the next day in Rakkestad.
Many of you would have seen this video of Tsuyoshi Tezuka’s old pink JZX81, but did you know he is still sliding a pink JZX? This Mark II is his current personal practice car.
I was out at YZ Circuit yesterday for a Kids Heart event, and went along for an extremely wet and foggy ride. While this car is nowhere near as wild as his 81 was, it’s still pretty decent, with a GReddy TD06-25G on the stock VVTi 1JZ.
I took this photo back in 2005 on a trip to Japan with the Ben Ellis, the editor of the long defunct and much missed Drift Battle magazine (wow, I can’t believe that website is still up!), and Team Peer’s Darren Appleton.
We made a late-night visit to Kids Heart one day because it was on the way back home from Tezuka’s favourite ramen restaurant, if I recall correctly. Isn’t he a happy chappy with his purple umbrella?
I think the car just sitting up the front as an attention-getter while waiting to have the blown engine replaced. Tezuka was driving the Bee-R R324 by this time, so there was no real rush to fix it.
Think an interview might be a good idea the next time I see him?
Check out this edit of the Gatebil event at Mantorp Park in Sweden last month! This was the one I took Tsuyoshi Tezuka to, so he could drift the new Team Driftmonkey guest driver car.
I love the epic slide starting at 1:13 with all three Driftmonkey cars. That’s me on the interior GoPro with Tezuka.
I didn’t actually drive at the Mantorp event and only rode passenger with Tezuka to get used to the car so I could drive at the next Gatebil in Rudskogen. Since I couldn’t drift myself at Mantorp though, I ended up getting pretty good at the Crazy Cart we had at the booth, which you can see at the 3:24 mark.
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