D1 Grand Prix Round 3: Chicago, IL - Drifting Event

D1GP Round 3: Soldier Field - Chicago, IL

By Charles Trieu, Photography by Charles Trieu, Henry Z. De Kuyper

I do love and appreciate how D1 has planned all their events to be held in the metropolitan cities and not out in the boonies. You would think using an already-built racetrack out in BFE would be better, but D1 shows us that they can construct a drift course in the heart of any major city.

This little showdown in Chi-town didn't go very smoothly for Team Orange. Near the end of the event, Kazuhiro Tanaka with the GD body WRX was matched against Forrest Wang and his S13.4 240SX. Wang had an advantage and took the first round. On the second round, there was a problem starting off and both cars eventually let off. A retake of the second round was to take place, but Tanaka thought a One More Time was announced instead, wherein both cars would do another best two out of three runs. Wang took the second run and was announced the winner. Due to the miscommunication Tanaka staged his car up for another run. Not knowing what the ruling was, and not knowing why the pit worker was refusing him to run again, Tanaka started revving his engine and doing spinouts in front of the pit worker in protest. As captain of Team Orange, Nobushige Kumakubo decided to back up the protest and not run his GC8 against Wang in the next round. Wang was given the automatic win, and Team Orange was slapped with a $17,500 fine for all of their infractions against D1GP rules.

Regardless of the drama, the mix of American, Japanese and other foreign drivers made the drifting top notch. In the end, Ken Nomura and his Blitz R34 Skyline took first place, while Forrest Wang in the Full Race/D-Max S13.4 took second, and Harri Hokkanen with third.