Hello everyone, Naoto Suenaga from Team Orange here again. For this post I will be talking about my June trip to Shanghai, China for a drift event at Shanghai Tenmayama Circuit. Toyota of China held the event to promote the Toyota REIZ, which is called the Mark X in Japan. For the drift show, all four Team Orange drivers made the trip from Japan including Kumakubo, Tanaka, myself, and Hiraoka. We were also joined by two Chinese drivers to make a total of six.

The cars that we used were left hand drive which is unfamiliar to us. As for specs, they have 2.5L non-turbo V6 engines and 6 speed automatic transmissions. The e-brakes on the cars were the foot type which is not really suited for drifting use, but we all did our best!

Here is the place where the event was held, Shanghai Tenmayama Circuit.

Before the actual event, there was a press day. As you can see, everyone was posing with very serious expressions. For this event they even had special racing suits made for us! Wearing the unfamiliar red suits felt a little strange.

Here's the boss Kumakubo giving some drifting tips for the cameras. He was mostly explaining beginner's drifting techniques.

Starting early in the morning on the day of the event, tons of fans came out to the circuit to watch. They were really excited to see the drifting!

On the day of the event, all the drivers gathered for a quick photo before we started the show.

The drift show was about an hour long. During the show we gave ride-alongs to some of the spectators and fans. The fans were really excited to the six identical silver cars performing at once. Because there was so many cars driving at once, there was tons of tire smoke in the air!

This is Team Orange's four-car tandem drift! The foot-controlled e-brakes were so difficult to use!

Here we are performing four-car synchronized "donuts". The track was not very wide at all so there was no room for mistakes!

Here is a group photo with all of the event staff. All of the fans really enjoyed watching the event and this made it a great success!

I think we were able to make all the Chinese fans understand the fun of drifting. For more details about the event, check out the Toyota REIZ drift website at http://drift.reiz.com.cn/

Well then, see you next time!

-Naoto Suenaga