Manabu Orido campaigned a Toyota GT-86 powered by the V8 out of a Lexus IS-F for the 2012 season of the D1 Drifting Grand Prix. He had some reliability issues and was underpowered compared to some of the turbo inline-6 monsters that the other drivers were using. He made the choice to use an LS7 with NOS to make more power in a smaller and lighter package. The car now makes 700 horsepower with a lot more low end torque.
Manabu Orido picks highlights from the on-board cameras fitted to the cars that participated in the D1 Drifting Grand Prix’s demonstration at this year’s Tokyo Auto Salon. The focus of the footage is to show off how close the guys are able to get to each other while tandem drifting. These guys are some of the best in the world.
Extreme Driving TV is a new YouTube channel which seems to be endorsed by the Best Motoring and D1 Grand Prix drivers. They released this video with some highlights from this past year’s D1 Grand Prix Championship as a demonstration of the high standard of professional drifting in Japan.
Yasuyuki Kazama is a Japanese driver that used to compete in the D1 Drift Championship. In his prime, he was widely regarded as the best drifter in the world. While he was competing, he earned the nickname of “Waku Waku Kun” which means “Rodeo Clown” in Japanese. He got the nickname by driving his car while half hanging out of the window. He even got good enough to drift the car like this. Don’t try this at home, kids.
Jalopnik posted this video today of some grassroots drifting at the Ebisu circuit in Japan. Ebisu is the track with the famous jump from the Daigo Saito video. It’s kind of cool to see what the run up and the jump look like from inside the car. That’s gotta be one of the most exciting things to drift.