Gallery>> Fd Vegas Presented In Cinemascope

Parties, alochol, girls, no sleep, alcohol, eating in excess, and, of course, alcohol are all things that is a part of the whole Las Vegas experience. Add in copius amounts of tire smoke –shaken, not stirred, of course– and Vegas becomes an absolutely unforgetable experience. The Las Vegas is, I believe, the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix equivilant on the Formula D calender. There’s glamour, glitz, and the constant mention and the actual consumption of alcohol throughout the weekend. This is the one drift event in the year where the drivers’, media’s and staff’s girlfriends and girls beg to come along!

But the one thing that is almost mentioned even more so than alcohol and partying was the relentless heat. Imagine walking down the strip at one o’clock in the morning and the ambient air temperature hovers just under 90* farenheit. No amount of three foot tall strawberry daquiries, margaritas or pina colatas can give relief to such temperatures…

Now, imagine even further when the next morning, all the Formula D drivers have to get up from their previous night of living it up Vegas style, climb into their heat boxes, and sit on the starting grid, in said heat boxes, to then proceed kick as much ass as possible on the Las Vegas Speedway . This is the life of Formula D Las Vegas! And well, its quite a life to live…

Here’s a look at the event in presented in widescreen format!

Because Las Vegas is so insanely hot during the day, the Formula D event doesn’t offically start until just about sundown. The opportunity to shoot anything, during what photographers call “magic hour,” will make any photo that much more magical. And add in a hint of gear head nerdiness with a few table spoons of photography, and you get a recipe that really is unmatched…

Here’s a phoot of Kazu Hayashida and Daijiro Yoshiara having a fist fight. It ended with Dai crashing into a tire wall during the top 32 and thus, giving the victory to Hayashida.

I agree with what Mike Garrett said previously how you can never have enough photos of Matt Powers’ car…

Here is Matt Powers and Katashiro Ueo duking it out in an epic struggle which resulted in two one more times and with Ueo walking away with the victory. Before the top 32 tadem battle started, I had was having a conversation with Matt in the pits when Ueo walks up to Matt’s car, then start to look it up and down. Matt stops mid sentence and says, “Hold on, Ueo is checking out my ride, I need to do something about this…” He walks over, puts his arms around Ueo some unaudiable words are exchanged, and Ueo walks away smiling… That is a great example of the hardcore competition and comradere that all these FD drivers have for each other.

Eric O’ Sullivan intitates into turn two. I love the colors of the livery, it really pops in photographs in any form of lighting.

Justin Pawlak leaving Tommy Brakiohiapa in the dust and with a defeat.

Here’s a shot of Vaughn Gittin’ Jr. drifting with what is left of the sunlight. Anything becomes beautiful when shot during magic hour…

Mike Essa and Yasu Kaondo.

Kyle Mohan and Patrick Mordaunt’s now boso car duke it out.

More Matt Powers…

This is one of my personal favorite shots from the weekend –a warm geniune, non-scripted, and non-practiced smile.

This is Tanner Foust’s Scion TC which is being powered by 1.21 gigawatts and straight into the future!

There’s something about shooting drifting at night that brings a whole new level to the photos. Chris Forsberg’s car is a car we’ve all seen over, and over again, but at night, it looks like a completely new monster…

Tyler McQuarrie throws his smoke monster into the high speed corner –not too far behind is Mike Essa in his RX-7…

If any of you had the opportunity to see the Formula One Singapore Grand Prix last season, the great thing about that grand prix was being able to see the sparks and backfire from the race cars’, which you would normally would not see during the day. The same thing happens at night during Formula D, you see sparks and backfires that you normally would never see. For example Ross Petty mega riced his Boso-Garage S15 with an underglow kit, drift strobes and under fender glow too. Stay with me here, because it really looked amazing in motion with tire smoke billowing out from the rear tires. Ken Gushi’s team fitted his Scion TC with violet colored LED lights. You’ll be able to see examples of these on both Joshua Herron and Will Roegge’s FD Vegas videos which should be out very soon…

Half of Kazu Hayashida’s car has already been warped into the future.

Ruji Miki walks away form an epic battle with Chris Forsberg, moving onto the finals, then taking second place at FormulaD round 4!

Ueo vs. Tureck. The stadium floodlights made for some amazing and moody imagery…

I close with this shot of Mike Essa because this is how the whole Las Vegas FormulaD experience is like. It’s a huge epic blur and cycle of heat, eating, alcohol, and tire smoke. Like I’ve said previously, this is the only event on the calender that has such glamour, glitz, and out right sleeziness at times. Everyone goes home, a bit hung over, with tons of amazing stories from the weekend and stories of fierce battles in the relentless heat of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Nearly passing out because of the heat? That’s worth it to experience the bibical epicness that is Las Vegas FormulaD!

-Linhbergh Nguyen

Speedhunters Formula D Las Vegas Coverage

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1

Brilliant, beautiful post!

2

sweet pics

3

brilliant photos

:)

4

Superb shots.... amazing.

5

desktop for first pic please

:D

6

Great shots as usual Linhbergh !

7

Thanks for the wrap up. Too bad that the photographs are... well, mediocre, because I'd really like to see what I missed, and not just poles, rails, smudges and blurs, all bathed in high contrast and most of them overexposed... There are still two or three nice ones in there, so thank you for them :)

8

That girl is gorgeous :)

So are the pics of course!

9

Are there cars in any of these pics I can't really tell?

10

"most of them overexposed... "



You don't know what the fuck your talking about. The photographer took near perfect pictures for the latitude of the camera/film provided. Do you see any fucking grain asshole? No. Shut the fuck up.



You don't know anything about how a fucking camera works, or how difficult it is to shoot properly at night.



Prove me wrong.

11

Well I don't know what the hell zahnpl is talking about, I think they turned out great. You know those trails you call crap shots, well some of like those, especially night drift events showing the whole drift from start to finish on a curve. So please reserve and think before you post your shitty comments and save that for some stupid ass forum, not this one, I respect this one! The best coverage above all as far as I'm concerned right now!

12

Nao so eu, como muitas outras pessoas, acgam o Drift uma esporte interessante, uma modalidade que atrai muito publico nos eventos e formam varios fans!!

Aqui no Brasil temos pilotos temos lugares onde praticar o esporte, mas o problema e que sao pouco os que levam isso pra frente, porque é uma modalidade que requer muitos gastos, e a maior dificuldade é o patrocinio!! Os grandes empresario confundem o Drift com corridas de ruas, cavalo de pau, enfim. Entao os pilotos que tem o talento da coisa acabam pagando pelos motoristas imprudentes que existem por ai!



13

excellent shots Linhbergh, but you mentioned Ross Petty's "riced" drift set-up, but gave us no pics??

14

Excellent Photo's and post! I wonder what camera was used?

15

Such photos has its own magic :) It express drift from a diffrent way ;) Amazing ^^

16

It's Katsuhiro Ueo, not Katashiro Ueo.

17

Don't be a sucker, they are all practiced smiles, some just have fewer miles on them.

18

Great Shots ! its truly magic !. I would like to take some great shots like this, any tips, trick or equipment for this specific style ?

19

I think if you stacked a few of these shots, by that I mean, put a few butted up against each other without the black border, It'd be a pretty awesome little image. Just a though. Really enjoy the looks of these shots. Good job Linh!

20

Desktop of the Hankook Model!



Shots are beyond amazing!

Great Work Linhbergh!

21

awesome stuff dude! viva las powers!

22

Whoa -- amazing shots... Loved the writing as well. Wonderful!

23

perfect-i love this "cinema" style

24

wallpapers =X

25

Just epic.

Mr. Nguyen, it seems your photos never fail to impress, or to inspire.

Amazing shot of the Hankook model. The fact that she is breathtakingly beautiful helps of course.

Did you take any shots with the Rolleicord?

26

WOW... I don't know what you shot this with - but it is AMAZING.

Great work man!

27

Lindbergh, you're the boss.

28

can we get a wallpaper of Essa VS McQuarrie???????

29

need a telephoto on that rollei... =P Punch Punch

30

Not only I, like many others, think the Drift an interesting sport, a sport that attracts the most public events and make fans more!



Here in Brazil we have pilots and places to practice the sport, but the problem is that there are few that take it forward because it is a method that requires many expenses, and greater difficulty is the sponsorship! The great entrepreneurs confuse the Drift with street racing, hobby, finally. So the pilots who have the talent to finish paying for something that reckless drivers are there! ae galera traduzii you can understand.



Brazil.

31

Desktop of pic.6 matt power PPLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEAAAAASSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEE

32

now this is drift photography at its best!! good job man.......

33

Amazing Photo. You Sir, are extremely talented.

34

Fantastic. Everybody else on this site should just give up.

35

Picture number five is a must-have desktop wallpaper. :D

36

I'll go ahead and bet that the smile, however non-scripted, was probably very well practiced.

Outside of that one bug, the post is AWESOME!

37

Whoah, I really didn't mean to start all that fight o_O Though I have to admit that that last comment may have sounded a little harsh - I'm sorry for that, so let me just get things straight: I have absolutely no doubt in Linhbergh Nguyen's gift. In fact, I used to have his 'The scene was set' shot as a wallpaper for quite a while and I l-l-l-love the latest Pikes Peak photos. I just wanted to show my disappointment that such an event was portrayed in such way... as it hadn't featured much portayal of the event as such ;]

And that I should correct as well - I admire the shots posted here - I just referred to them as mediocre as a medium of "documentation of an event". I'm just still a little bitter that I could not come and I probably expected something else...

Once again, I'm sorry that I had anyone's blood boiling. Linhbergh - I know you're a smart guy and I'm sure you treated my remark with proper distance. And cleslie - I salute you if you're able to spot grain at a shot descaled to 672 px [j/k] ;]

Have a nice day everyone :]

38

That shot with the girl smiline. i want a wide screen version for a desktop. O_o



That shot was perfect. O_O



Awesome coverage mr.linh

39

Ha, well you can straighten things out, but photographers like myself who do a damn good job to compose photographs, do not like to be called what was it, oh yeah "Too bad that the photographs are... well, mediocre, ". That's bs man!

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