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Posted
Nov 14 2008, 01:10 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 28 comment(s)
Well I certainly have had a crazy afternoon... after working the morning away blogging and emailing, John and I thundered down to the Long Beach Dockyards to check out the scenery...We certainly weren't disappointed! The location is absolutely amazing....
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Posted
Nov 06 2008, 06:40 PM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 36 comment(s)
Because it is Nissan month I thought it would be a good idea to let you choose which Nissan you think is the best car in the 2008 D1GP season. I'm not interested in which car has the most top 3 finishes or the car with the most horsepower. I just want to know which one is your personal favorite. The car in the opening picture has seen a lot of transformations and belongs to crowd favorite Ken Nomura. Of course it's my favorite car because I have driven his Street legal version for a few years...
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Posted
Oct 25 2008, 02:20 PM
by
Andy Blackmore
with 10 comment(s)
Just a quick heads-up for our North American Speedhunters. Speed TV's coverage of Formula D debuts this weekend at 4pm EST Sunday afteroon. The hour long programme featuresRound 1 from Long Beach. The programme will be repeated during the week and a new episode will air the following Sunday, all the way through to Christmas. Meanwhile, if you're in Europe, keep your eye on Motors TV. They are currently showing the EDC finale in Poland and UK Time Attack. Next air-ing is on Wednesday. - Andy...
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Posted
Oct 16 2008, 09:30 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 18 comment(s)
Here is the recipe for this story: Take one UK based sports and touring car photographer, add the ingredient of his killer 500mm camera lens setup, mix with the mayhem of top-calibre Formula Drift action and brew with the ambience of Irwindale Speedway. What you get from this is drifting as you have never seen it before . I've been a fan of the photographic style of Sportscarpros.com for a few years now and immediately thought of these guys as soon as we started to brainstorm ideas for the Speedhunters...
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Posted
Oct 07 2008, 10:15 AM
by
Calvin Wan
with 13 comment(s)
Recently, my wife Lea and I just acquired a 2001 BMW E46 M3. This has been forever Lea’s dream car and I have always been a fond BMW fan. Back around 1999-2000 before I had FD’s, I owned an ’88 E30 M3 that I loved, truly a BMW motorsport classic. So we decided to give up our trusty S14 240sx that we had for over 6 years and move on to something a bit more mature and classy. Soon after we got the M3, I find out that there was going to be a local Hot Import Night Drift Demo in Pleasanton...
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Posted
Sep 28 2008, 09:55 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 7 comment(s)
I wanted to share this video with you guys to give you a better look on the drifting in Europe. The video was shot at the final round of the JDM Allstars Series and Prodrift Series on Lydden Hill circuit. I already showed you the pictures and the results so now it's time to see these cars in action.
-Jeroen Willemsen
You can watch the video in HD at JDM Allstars Driftcast
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Posted
Sep 25 2008, 02:00 PM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 3 comment(s)
As Mike already mentioned in his event report of the Drift Australia Season Finale , it was a busy weekend for the drifting community. In the same weekend Europe witnessed the final of the Prodrift European Series and the JDM Allstars, who decided to join forces and give the audience one hell of an event. It was held on the Lydden Hill Circuit in the UK, that meant that a lot of drivers from Ireland made the journey to compete against UK's finest. Lydden Hill is famous for their high curbing...
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Posted
Sep 17 2008, 04:00 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 14 comment(s)
Things are busy, busy here at Need for Speed central ATM... The main dev team is putting the finishing touches on the new Need for Speed Undercover game which has them EXTREMELY busy as you can imagine. The final 5% to finish a game can be pretty tough going. Over in our little Speedhunters corner of the studio, we are in our own little mini crunch too. We are now over half-way through Porsche month, and have a hell of a lot more special features to finish. Much work to do yet!
So I'm pleased to say that we have finally finished our first Porsche film for the month. We had originally planned to get on this this film sooner, but I thought it would make a better film to grab some more footage of the car at the Sears... err Infineon round of Formula D this past weekend. Always brings the quality level of a film up if you have more than 1 location to work with....
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Posted
Sep 09 2008, 06:14 PM
by
Calvin Wan
with 12 comment(s)
After a very eventful 3 days of drifting at Portland International Raceway for the Final Formula D Team Drift Competition of the year, Team Drifting Performance was able to pull off a 1st place finish. It was my first time to this amazing track. The course features very fast and technical corners. The judged portion of the track started with a long right hand triple apex sweeper into a 90-degree left and finished with a tight right hairpin. Very fun track. I was not able to bring my RX-7 to this...
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Posted
Aug 18 2008, 02:30 PM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 23 comment(s)
While we were at the Ebisu Circuit Natsumatsuri - Summer Drift Festival, I couldn't take my eyes off this GX71 Toyota Cresta that was running Ebisu's Touge course! It's no secret that I absolutely love 1980sToyotas, but just look at how clean this Cresta is! This is a Toyota Cressida in the USA... isn't this clean Cresta inspiring? I know it makes me want to look for a clean Cressida with 5-speed manual transmission! I like the old school aluminum window visors, and the shape of the...
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Posted
Aug 13 2008, 10:15 PM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 8 comment(s)
The JDM Allstars is an invitational only event where the best drifters from Europe battle it out for top honors. Round two was held on a parking lot in front of Wembley stadium in London. To me it has the same feeling as the D1GP Odaiba event in Tokyo where the background consists of the landmark Fuji TV building. The track was laid out on the parking lot and build with 275 tonnes of concrete barriers. During the event some drivers found out the hard way and crashed their cars into the concrete walls...
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Posted
Aug 07 2008, 05:21 PM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 11 comment(s)
One of the nicest looking D1GP cars besides the ER34 from ‘Nomuken' is the FD RX7 build by R Magic, at least that's how I feel. The car is driven by Kenji Takayama, it's not a real top contender, yet I must add. It has all the potential but it just doesn't get past the top 16. The car is running a T51R turbo from HKS which gives it 579ps. Wheels are the new Gram Lights 57D in 9J-17" in the front and 9.5J-18"in the back wrapped in Advan Neova's. What is your favorite...
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Posted
Aug 05 2008, 07:20 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 6 comment(s)
One weekend, two of the most beautiful circuits in the World and a bunch of cool guys. That pretty much sums up my weekend with Rod, Antonio and John. I really had one of the coolest automotive weekends of my live. I left real early on Friday morning and drove to Liege in Belgium where Rod and the rest of the Speedhunters crew were staying. Once I arrived we headed straight to Spa and had a look at the training sessions on the circuit......
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Posted
Jul 24 2008, 01:54 PM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 8 comment(s)
The King Of Europe is a drift series that is being held on Europe's mainland. They have eight rounds in various countries like France, Hungary, Belgium and the Czech Republic making it a true European Championship. It is more like a grassroots event, without big teams and sponsored cars and it's quite different than the drift series that are being held in the UK. I'm still hoping that the EDC will come to continental Europe to host a true European Drift Championship. The major drawback in the King Of Europe for me is that not all the drivers attend all the rounds. But then again we must not forget that most of the drifters do this for a hobby and that they have normal day jobs......
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Posted
Jul 24 2008, 10:11 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 44 comment(s)
While looking for information on the Prodrift series a few days ago, I came across this hybrid car. I have heard a lot about the LS2 engine and people wanting to put into their car, seems like there are many advantages to running a big torque engine...... Personally, I'm not very familiar with the LS2 engine or any other engine derived from it..... All I know is that this engine came out of a Vauxhall Monaro (Vauxhall is part of the GM group and is also called a Opel in other countries) and the...
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Posted
Jul 23 2008, 06:00 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 6 comment(s)
The Pro Drift series from Ireland has begun to expand its territory, adding events across different parts of Europe. Even though it's being dominated by Irish drifters at the moment, new challenges from local drifters arise as the series moves from place to place.
Pro Drift features some impressive machinery, ranging from Skyline's to BMW's and everything in between. Let's have a look at all the different cars that compete in the Prodrift Series in no particular order:...
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Posted
Jul 21 2008, 03:06 AM
by
Calvin Wan
with 8 comment(s)
Round 4 of the 2008 Formula D Championship was held in a huge parking lot course at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Now when most people think of a parking lot course, you picture a big, safe wide open lot with a bunch of cones everywhere and nothing to hit. However, when Formula D sets up a parking lot course, they try to make the course as fast, treacherous and exciting as possible . They even made the entry look dangerous, as they had the k-walls narrowing your path which funnels you into the first...
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Posted
Jul 18 2008, 08:40 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 10 comment(s)
Earlier in the month I showcased a couple of my favorite cars that can be seen competing in the D1GP series and while we love pro drift cars like those, we haven't forgotten about the grassroots and street drift cars which are such an integral part of the scene. I found this particular Saitama-based Toyota JZX100 on Minkara and knew it would a make a perfect addition to our month-long look at the drift world. The car is owned by Minkara member "さ~たん" and beautifully combines elements seen on both drift cars and on VIP sedans. The first thing that sets this car apart is the body style. While the JZX100 is very popular chassis for drifting, the Cresta model is by far the most uncommonly seen version as Crestas are heavily outnumbered by their Mark II and Chaser counterparts at the circuit and on the street......
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Posted
Jul 17 2008, 04:13 PM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 39 comment(s)
If you check out my profile you'll see that I now own Ken Nomura's Blitz built Skyline ER34. Whereas my car was built to promote the D1 Street Legal Series, this S15 was built as a back up car for the D1GP 2004 season. It was the last season that Ryuji Miki competed in a S15 even after he won the that year's D1GP championship. For the 2005 season, the S15 was replaced by a Nissan Z33 with a RB26 transplant that debuted at the Irwindale Speedwayseason opener in California..
Unfortunately the new Z33 never got to the same level as the S15 with Ryuji Miki behind the wheel; he had a very poor season with it and eventually lost his ride with the team....
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Posted
Jul 09 2008, 04:30 PM
by
Calvin Wan
with 8 comment(s)
This last Formula D Round was held at a new competition track at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park's roadcourse, in Englishtown, New Jersey. It was my first time I have ever been on that track, but it instantly became my new favorite Formula D track. I love drifting on technical road courses that have fast accelerating, first corner entries and that was exactly what this course was. The course started with a long straighaway, which requires 3 rd or 4 th gear entries into a long, left-hand sweeper...
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