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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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ITASHA: Ranka Lee Lancer Evo wagon

By in 23-04-2009 12:30 am

I’ve been really busy the past couple of days, and haven’t had much time to go through any of older photos and develop them for the site, so check out this itasha seen in the parking lot at the recent Hyper Meeting, themed around Macross Frontier character, Ranka Lee.

It only makes sense, since this has been an all-girl week so far…

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YOU DRIFT LIKE A GIRL: Nikko Queen 2009

By in 20-04-2009 12:30 am

I’m not going to bother doing a big event report on this year’s Nikko Queen event, since a lot of the stuff I shot would be more fun as part of a few mini-features, so look forward to those.

Just to get the formalities out of the way though, here are the ladies who placed in the Expert Class competition!

First Place was Akari Nagasawa. It’s rare to see anyone drive Nikko Circuit’s first corner as neatly and consistently as she did all day. A quick flick in, stomp on the brakes to settle the car and full acceleration right out wide towards the judging stand with not a single bit of visible handbrake correction.

I have something new to try next time I drive at Nikko, I think…

Keep in mind, her boyfriend is D1 Street Legal driver Hideyuki Fujino, so you can imagine the sort of conversations that go on between those two.

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WEEKEND EDITION: Japanese blogs, April 19th

By in 19-04-2009 6:30 am

While being everywhere at once would be a great thing as far as this site is concerned, the laws of relativity and the expressway tolls I’d rack up mean that it’s not quite possible.

So, instead of trying to bend space-time, here’s a few interesting photos collected from some local blogs.

First, here’s the R34 GT-t that Tezuka Tsuyoshi is supporting in D1SL this year.

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