By request, here’s a higher-quality re-upload of this old video, shot by myself and Laurence Janus (who made this famous video).
The driver is my good mate Yoshio Takahashi. His nickname is “Rii-chan”, which comes from the fact he is the leader of his drift team (say “leader” in a Japanese accent to understand), called “Side Attack”. If you put “-chan” on the end of someone’s name, it’s kind of like making their name sound cute, sort of like saying “Stevie” instead of “Steven”.
A few years ago when I was still just visiting Japan instead of living here, I visited a Drift Matsuri at Ebisu Circuit. Rii-chan was quite insistant that Laurence and I ride in his car on the high-speed Higashi course before the end of the event, because linking the front straight over the blind crest with his TD-06 SR20DET was his specialty at the time.
Just before the spin, you can hear the tyres making flapping noises as they delaminated, but Rii-chan wasn’t going to stop, even on the steep downhill section of Higashi. He was more concerned about my having a good time than he was about crashing! Before you ask about his helmet, it was a souvenir from an old job of his, and no, it’s not exactly regulation.
While we’re on the subject, does anyone else think there’s something majorly wrong with a lot of the drifting videos coming out these days? Am I the only person who doesn’t really want to see an entire video of high contrast slow-motion with tightly-cropped focus pulling, shots of weeds blowing in the wind and other things that have nothing to do with anything? Without some sort of narrative, human interest or personality to the video, it’s like eating a cake made entirely of icing.
Come on guys, you obviously have the skills behind the lens and with the mouse. I know you can do it. If you don’t want to change your style, but still want to make a nice cake, I’ll have a chocolate-orange marble sponge please.
I suppose I should put up or shut up and make my own videos eh? Uh-oh, did I just volunteer to do even more work? Who wants to sponsor Noriyaro with a nice little HD camera then?
You utter a curseword and try to do something about it with the steering wheel and pedals, then there’s that sound like someone stomping on a really big soda can.
Then, silence.
You look at the other guy, nod in a gentlemen’s agreement and drive back to the pits to inspect the damage.
While we’re on the subject of videos, take a look at Jesse Streeter’s latest wall-scraping video from Meihan Sports Land.
Jesse is a fellow Australian and friend of mine who lives in Osaka, and you probably would have seen him on the previous video with Vaughn if somebody had remembered to call him (sorry Jesse!). The video was shot and edited by Laurence Janus (otherwise known as Mr L) without a single bit of pointless slow-motion!
I took the Skyline out yesterday to Honjo Circuit for a soukoukai run by Shino Kouba X Amazement. What you’re looking at is a dedicated Porsche touge drift car. The owner regularly takes it on mountain drift runs, and only brought it to the circuit after a group of his friends who were attending begged him to come.
I’ve been going through more of the photos I took on some of my earlier trips to Japan, and there’s some fairly interesting stuff in there, like this little incident that happened at the first D1GP round I ever attended, at Ebisu Circuit in 2004.
Miki Ryuji, while trying to match Hibino’s ridiculous late-corner entry speed (Youtube video) ran a bit too wide and collided with the dirt wall.
A train of missile cars in an Expert Class session, led by D1 drivers Daigo Saito and Yukio Matsui, drifted into the first corner at Okegawa Circuit, a small go-kart-style track in Saitama Prefecture. The S13 driver, who was at the back of the group, came in a little bit too hot and was unable to see a stationary Mazda that had spun out just moments before. I’ll let the following pictures speak for themselves.
