D1GP Round 1 - Stop And It Don't

The first pairing was Tsuyoshi Tezuka in the outrageously loud BEE Racing HCR32 Skyline against one of the Team Orange GDBs driven by Kazuhiro Tanaka. Tanaka took the early advantage against the backfiring Skyline and advanced to the next round. Tatsuya Sakuma, who finished second to JR with the Kawasaki Car Company S15 at the last event, was hit hard by Syuuichi Yoshioka in the Team Julius 180SX, giving Sakuma the go-ahead to the next round. The other Yoshioka, Toshiki in the Project Hachiroku, gave one of the best tandem performances of the day against Nomuken in the Blitz ER34 v1.0. Yoshioka proved that a Corolla could hang with a car as fast as a Skyline, keeping up with Nomuken's speed and line and forcing the judges to give a "one more time" call. But no matter how well Yoshioka kept up with Nomuken in spite of the Skyline's clear advantage, the judges felt that Nomuken was the top car and he advanced to the next round. Considering that Nomuken previously damaged the v2.0 ER34 and could not get it fixed in time, he did very well with the original setup even though he prefers the responsiveness of the v2.0 ER34 over this one.

Atsushi Kuroi rolls through with the River Side S13 powered by a RB26DETT.

Next up was last year's D1 champion, Yasuyuki Kazama in the DG5 S15 Silvia, against former Signal Auto driver Atsushi Kuroi in the River Side S13. While Kuroi's S13 boasts a monster RB26DETT engine configuration with 752bhp, he was just no match for Kazama, who has no problem going full power around the outer bank. Tetsuya Hibino in the Sunrise turbocharged Corolla AE86 went against the Vertex Soarer driven by Takahiro Ueno. While Hibino had the easy advantage over Ueno in the first tandem pass, he gave up that ticket to the Top 8 after hitting Ueno from the inside, giving Ueno a pass to the next round. Next was the most heated matchup of the day, pitting two Americans in Sam Hubinette and JR Gittin against each other. Both were hungry to advance and it showed as each driver came with aggression and increasing intensity with each pass, even coming into contact with each other and drawing a "one more time" from the judges and the crowd, but eventually it would be the Crazy Swede who would prevent JR from reaching another D1 podium.

GReddy's silent but deadly killer, Masato Kawabata in his blue S15 Silvia, who consistently blows by the judges with some of the fastest entry speeds in the D1GP series, took on Hiroshi Fukuda and the Power Enterprise 180SX. Kawabata took the early 7-3 advantage and moved to the Top 8. Crowd favorite Nobushige Kumakubo and the second Team Orange GDB went head-to-head against Youichi Imamura in the Top Secret Z33. While he drove the Fairlady withcunning reflexes, it was just not up to par as his time was behind the A'PEXi RX-7 and Kumakubo smoked the tires to the semi-finals.

Grrrrrrrrr-8!
As the sun set and the track temperature dropped into bone-chilling territory, the Top 8 read like a VIP list: No losers allowed. Each tandem battle had a clear and decisive winner with the exception of Kawabata and Kumakubo, who went with a one more time. An oil leak prevented Kawabata from going any further, allowing Kumakubo to go into the finals. Kazama took a fly-by right past Nomuken and Sam Hubinette took the Viper's V-10 power to the max, crushing Ueno's cool Soarer in the process. Tanaka fell short early on against Kazama's 7-3 advantage and then Kazama hit his A-game again, leaving Sam and Kumakubo the honor of determining who would join him in the final match-up. Sam took a penalty in the first run, forcing the two to line up again. Kumakubo caught the right line in the second run, going 6-4 against Sam, and the third pass resulted in a spinout by the Mopar Viper. With Kumakubo and Kazama pairing off to see who would catch the first set of high ranking points for the '06 season, everyone knew it would be a tough match, as both had cars that could easily win. It would be all up to driver's skill from this point on. But the win was decided early in the first run when Kumakubo hit a cone and spun out hard. As long as Kazama made a clean second pass it would be over, and sure enough, it was clean. If D1GP can maintain this level of excitement for the rest of the year, you can bet the next time it rolls through our way, you'll be able to witness drifting unlike any before.

D1 will be uniting with the NHRA in Las Vegas for an exhibition.

D1GP Goes Worldwide
Keiichi Tsuchiya, the Drift King and D1GP's head judge, announced that the D1GP would soon be expanding to countries outside the US and England. Starting this year, exhibition events will be held in Las Vegas with the NHRA Sport Compact Series, again at Silverstone in the UK, and for the first time ever in China at the Shanghai International Circuit. Next year, D1GP plans to go fully international with a points series held in countries spanning four continents, including Japan, USA, Korea, China, England, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. For more info, visit: www.d1gp.com.

By Jonathan Wong

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