2008 Red BullWorld Drift Champion is…………….Rhys Millen. He beat his team mate Daijiro Yoshihara in the final to take top spot.
In front of a full house down on the course laid out over the dockside at Long Beach, Millen and his Red Bull Pontiac Solstice dominated the opposition to win the title and $25,000 the largest purse in drifting history.
Second place overall was Yoshihara and his Bridgestone / RMR Pontiac GTO.
The final step on the podium was taken by Tanner Foust and the Rockstar / AEM Nissan 350Z who managed to shade Samuel Hubinette in the Nuformz / Mopar Dodge Viper in a close contest.
The real winner was the sport of drifting which really came of age today on the Californian Coast. The Speedhunters team is now heading back to their respective bases and the in depth coverage will continue during the week.
OFFICIAL SPEEDHUNTERS SUPPLIERS
no shock there
yeh your right, red bull probably rigged the event in front of thousands of spectators just so there driver could win. they definitely need it cause they are short of money and cheating is the best way to promote their drink....
nice one.
Oh cool, the 4 cars I care the least about came out on top.
were ANY of you there to see the event? If not then STFU!! Seems like there alot of hate for the results everywhere. NS.com, Driftworks, etc. we can't have an opinion about the results if we weren't THERE.
Congrats to Rhys Millen, for being OG World Champ. Hopefully there's an event next year and see someone take that title from Millen.
I was there.... almost left when dai beat ueo (who was smokin hot all weekend)
I was happy with the event, but bored with the outcome.... and did anyone mention that dai spun in a very uncharacteristic way after rhys understeered during the final...... fishy?
Great overall event though.
Rhys kinda needs all the money/sponsorship he can get after loosing pontiac.
person, they dont rig events, the judges are RedBull judges, so hopefully it was as fare as possible..
great event, nice to see millen back up there...
also i wanted to add as great as world event goes i think i like msc grassroot events more. just for the fact that blokes like me can have fun with people on all levels at one time and i get to drive. meh my 2 cents.
how did paul vlasbom do?
Well I wasn't surprised if the top 10 would be all the FD drivers. I mean they did compete on Long Beach in FD (albeit on a different layout) Thought Gittin should totally be the winner here, but yeah I'm happy that the best man wins. Congrats to Rhys Millen and Dai for putting such a great finals. My local hero Tengku Djan didn't do so bad either. He has beaten the wonderkid James Deane and gave a good fight with Hubinette. But I think his 180SX was no match for that V10 Viper........ =(
Glad the event is over, so that the guys will be back posting cooler posts than this one. I wasn't really crazy over the event cause most of the guys competing are not Japanese. I don't know about y'all but I think the best (and the coolest) drifters are from Japan. But, props to Ueo! He should have brought out his old and trusty AE86. Man, I miss those days. Why aren't the guys from D1GP competing anyway? It seems like they are avoiding US drift events lately?
I think if it's going to be a world drift championship, it should be held in the only place that makes sense......JAPAN!
this event looked good though but not enough world class drifters here. everyone knows a bunch of key players were missing.
How come US drivers never go to compete in Japanese events? If so, the coverage isn't big enough!
Guys if you read drifting.com you will see that the formula D guys pretty much bent over backwards for the D1 guys to come over. In the end D1 didnt show. I am a D1GP fan above all else but I think the way they act towards competing with forumla D really sucks. That being said, the fact that a world drifting event was not held in japan shows how much the sport has actually grown thanks to Formula D.
It does sound quite fishy about Rhys, I wasnt there, but I would imagine his nickname being madd skills might have something to do with the win as well.
D1gp has had a rule that their drivers cannot compete in other series. They've stuck to that rule very sternly for many years now. Nothing to be upset about.
I too am a bit bored with the results, but I can't comment on the quality of judging until I see the video myself.
Ueo was killing it. It's a shame he had to correct so much and that pretty much killed his run and ended up knocking him out. But he was a very strong driver with high potential for the podium. Boring finish. Some "One more time" calls were pretty questionable. But in the end, the ones who deserved the win got it.
awsome coverage guys, thanks for posting things up so fast!
from what i hear the pro am was gnarly all weekend.
I don't wanna play the devil's advocate....but I don't see many people on the stands....
Do someone know a site where i can find a spec list of the Rockstar / AEM 350Z ?
Some pretty negative comments there... I'm from New Zealand and I now have a lot more respect for the Formula D series drivers. Awesome event
any way we can get a full list of final results????
id like to know how alot of the other drivers faired.
like mike.
this was a big event for him i hope he did well.
Disco, this wasnt another series. This was a single event so I still dont see why D1 has to ban its drivers from coming. The whole deal was that D1 wanted to film this and turn it into a DVD. According to Jim Liaw, they (formula d) was more than willing to accommodate everything for the D1 people, then D1 canceled at the last minute. Its a real shame because when D1 came here, a lot of the FD guys showed up and competed with them. They should have returned the favor. 3 or 4 druvers aint gonna hurt. Imagine if some team orange guys were here for this?! It wouldve been insane! I'm sure these are management issues more than driver issues, too bad. Hope D1 cleans up their act for '09
i was being sarcastic if my post didnt make it clear enough
As much as i would like to agree with Jones. I can't help but think that the feild was abit small in terms of world drifters. i mean alot of the top japs didnt bother to show up. u have something like 10-16 americans and then 1 or 2 from each country. Speaking from a % point if u have 16 Americans you bound to get a american in the top group if not the ultimate winner. in the past we have seen jap vs america and it seems the japs win more. As for the rigged part, don't think it went on in this event. but it does look shady that a red bull sponsered car won and the sponser of the whole entire event was red bull. so the money goes right back in there pocket kinda. meh bottem line more world drivers less american drivers.
D1 and FD don't mix.
Its like Coke and Pepsi.
Too much money in contract NO RIGHTS.
Results Table is here.
http://formulad.com/redbull/drifting-world-championship/red_bull_results_2008.php
XD it's totally false... red bull is the winer of the red bul cahmpionship... ajajaja...
How do D1 and FD not mix? Its drifting mannnn
Je suis impatiens de voir les videos, pour avoir une bonne opinion
I would have thought that if you're going to call it a "World Championship" then yeah, you'd need more competitors from more countries and limit the amount from each. Some sort of run up series inside of each country that dictates who goes to take part.
Seems a strange naming of the event in any case. Much like the baseball "World Series". US Hosted International Drift Invitational would likely be a better title, even if it is a mouthful.
Still, for the most part, looks to have been a successful event so props to those involved in the undertaking of it and also props to the speedhunter chaps for the coverage. Good work guys.
I agree with the posters above. Ueo was by far the strongest driver yet every match he was judged "one more time" and ended up doing twice as many runs as Millen.
attn: that other BH isn't me. I would never ask about THAT car.
...now just lose that stupid digi camo crap.
I left after the UEO/Dai match. I really didn't care to see those other 3 drivers go. No thanks. They killed drifting.
as much as I HATE Millen, the guy drives SO F-ing good. His attitude sucks, his car sucks, everything sucks about him, but the driving is top notch. It wasn't "rigged". come on...
The event was very cool overall and I'd love to see it next year too.
The stands were NOT 100% full which was interesting. I do blame the ASHY air for some of this. I left early Saturday because of it.
I never liked Mad Mike before this, but his continuous drving after smashing into the wall and car made me enjoy it.
I saw Antonio and I told him I was going to get tacos....... DRIFT.
the battle between c. forsberg n s.hubinette was some bs!
shoulda done a omt.
ueo was a monstaaaaa
the semi-empty stands were due to the fact everyone was in the redbull club getting hammered for free. so cool.
What I find amusing are the Formula D judges.....they're NOBODY ! They have hardly any background-references ! (like datruth commented a while back).....they never won major events, but they judge....go figure....
On the other hand....Tsuchiya and Orido are legend in Japan because they made history in Japanese motorsport....
As far as people wondering why not many Japanese drifters didn't show up; most of them actually race in other motorsport- classes (like GT300-500)....and/or have regular job and don't have enough time/ $$$ to ship their cars/ parts/ mechanic and all that jazz to the US. Competing in D1 AND Formula D is not cheap.
Alex: Exactly what history did Orido make in Japanese motorsport? (Don't get me wrong, he's the man, but dial back the hyperbole) Apart from NOB and Orido (racing commitments) we all know the real reason the top Japanese guys like Nomura/Saito/Imamura didn't show and it wasn't money related (well not in the way you mean). Saito even put one of his cars on a boat, did he not have enough money for petrol once he arrived?
Judges need to be able to make consistent decisions based on a set criteria, they don't need to be top line drivers to do this. I've seen plenty of questionable decisions from Tsuchiya anyway.
Have to agree, Orido is my fav driver but he never made history. He's just really good. Same goes for Nob and the others.
I always thought Formula D Judging sucked, its the worst ever. I mean people can obviously see who had advantage over who yet these guys seem to flip a coin to decide. Idk how it went down at redbull but people are going crazy over Ueo. What happened? How did he get knocked out? What happened to my main man JR? As for Tsuchiya, I always find it funny how people question his judging, being that he's one of the main reasons pro drifting exists.
Alex... you dont know nothing...lol
although people think the results where kinda fishy u just had to be there. rhys was doing his thing he was pretty much consistent from wat i watched. the last match between dai though coaught me off gaurd, for some reason he spun out. he basicly had it won.
just throwing this out there but don't d1 judges and fd judges score differently for runs? for exaple i think d1 judges give better scores for people who drop tires and fd take points away if a driver drops a tire.