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Posted
Nov 17 2008, 09:57 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 9 comment(s)
This weekend was D1 Street Legal Rd.6 at Sekia Hills down in Kyushu and one of the newsworthy items from the event was the D1SL debut of Tsuyoshi Tezuka in this freshly completed ER34 Skyline coupe. The car has a good look to it and I think it supplements his yellow R32 D1 machine quite well. Tezuka was able to score third place in the competition which was a very good result for the car's first run. And the winner of the event? Our own Naoto Suenaga who added another win to his dominant year in D1 Street Legal. There is just one round left which will happen next month at Tsukuba Circuit and I can't wait to see what happens for myself. Of course you can expect full coverage here on Speedhunters. Congrats to both Naoto and Tezuka!...
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Posted
Sep 29 2008, 09:34 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 7 comment(s)
September will be over in a couple days, and as the '08 drift season begins to draw to a close I thought this would be a good time for a quick review of the current standings in the Japanese D1 Grand Prix and D1 Street Legal series....
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Posted
Sep 09 2008, 08:30 AM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 17 comment(s)
Just look at the water in these photos! Soooooo much rain! I've shot photos in the rain before, but I've never ever shot photos in so much rain! See all the water covering the ground in the photo above? This is a photo of our fellow Speedhunter Naoto Suenaga, drifting his GC1 Impreza on Ebisu Circuit's legendary South Course during D1 Practice! I don't even know how he could drift through so much water - this was Hydroplane City! Look at all that water splashing! That is from the...
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Posted
Sep 08 2008, 01:20 PM
by
Naoto Suenaga
with 7 comment(s)
Hey everyone! Naoto Suenaga from Team Orange here with another blog entry. For this post I want to talk about D1 Street Legal Rd.4 which was held on August 30th at the Ebisu Circuit South Course. As you saw in Antonio's post, I won the event, and I would like to thank everyone for the nice comments! Thanks to all of my supporters, sponsors, and fans I have won three out of the four D1SL events so far this season and I really appreciate all of the support!...
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Posted
Sep 08 2008, 07:00 AM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 12 comment(s)
The D1 Street Legal competition at Ebisu Circuit was extremely rough for competitors (and the guys shooting photos trackside!), as the torrential rains coming down presented a bit of a problem... Ebisu's South Course became extremely slippery and difficult to negotiate, but that didn't stop the hardcore drivers from running! Check out the cool purple Nissan Laurel above... I wish we saw cool 4-door Japanese drift cars like Laurels, Cefiros, Mark IIs and Chasers in the USA! And check out the...
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Posted
Aug 30 2008, 04:07 AM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 12 comment(s)
Right now I'm sitting in Kumakubo's office, which is perched high above Ebisu's East Course, with a stunning view of the circuit's back side. However, right now I'm not too interested in taking in the view, as I'm soaking wet from shooting in the heavy rain that plagued today's D1 Street Legal event - my socks and shoes are ruined with mud and rain... my t-shirt and shorts are soaking wet, as is my designer leather wallet, and my small Canon point-and-shoot digital camera...
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Posted
Aug 15 2008, 04:00 PM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 13 comment(s)
As you all know, Rod and I have been at Ebisu Circuit every day for the past week - it's been super fun! So I just wanted to share some photos with you from this past week... we met up with some very good friends at Ebisu. Two of my friends, Chris and Jody (from The Speed Lounge ), decided to come to Japan and visit our friends at Ebisu Circuit for their honeymoon!!! Yeah, I thought it was crazy... they just got married (in Las Vegas, the day before Formula D) and instead of going to Hawaii or...
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Posted
Aug 15 2008, 10:09 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 12 comment(s)
I'm realizing that the rhythm of life in this small Japanese town of Nihonmatsu is quite a lot slower than I'm accustomed to. I seem to be permanently hardwired to a high speed pace: go, go, go - at all times! It's that or I am the most impatient person in the world.... or I have the attention span of a three year old.... or probably all of the above. I seem to have something inside of me that needs to keep pushing forward at all times. Call it drive or ambition, I don't know, all...
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Posted
Aug 12 2008, 05:26 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 3 comment(s)
While the world may be watching the Beijing Olympics right now, thanks to Speedhunter Naoto Suenaga we got our own take on China with his recent post chronicling Team Orange's trip to Shanghai for some drift action.. As a follow up to Naoto's post ,we now have some video of the Toyota REIZ drift show performed by Suenaga and the rest of his teammates. The video can be found on the official Toyota REIZ site, and even though you may not be able to read or understand Chinese, the video is certainly...
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Posted
Aug 08 2008, 02:14 PM
by
Naoto Suenaga
with 7 comment(s)
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...
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Posted
Jun 27 2008, 10:02 AM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 4 comment(s)
You may be wondering why there's an AE86 behind Yoshioka in this photo, rather than a red SC430. I took this photo of Yoshioka at Suzuka Circuit last year. But check this out - I just got the most random, but funny phone call right now. It's the middle of the night right now, and for some reason, my phone was ringing. Just as I was getting up to answer it, I'm thinking, "dang, I hope it's a hot chick calling" but sigh... no such luck. On the other end of the line, I hear...
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Posted
Jun 10 2008, 05:00 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 24 comment(s)
Fans who attended the D1GP Tokyo Drift exhibition match over the weekend were treated to much much more than just your standard D1 drift competition. Given the event's high profile locale and the desire to make sure ticket buyers got their money's worth, event organizers saw to adding several demo runs and performances that were held over the course of the weekend......
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Posted
Jun 06 2008, 10:45 AM
by
Naoto Suenaga
with 13 comment(s)
Hello again everyone, it's Naoto Suenaga from Team Orange. For this post, I'd like to talk about the Ebisu Spring Drift Matsuri (festival) that was held this May at my workplace, Ebisu Ciruit. I will also describe a little about the different courses at Ebisu. The big Drift Matsuri events are held at Ebisu three times each year with one in the spring, summer, and fall. Normally, the east and west courses at Ebisu are not used for drifting, but for two whole days during the Drift Matsuri ALL...
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Posted
May 28 2008, 06:29 AM
by
Naoto Suenaga
with 12 comment(s)
Hello everyone! I am Naoto Suenaga from Team Orange. For my first blog post, I'd like to introduce Team Orange's drivers and cars for 2008. For '08 we have added one more driver to our roster. We are now participating in the D1 Grand Prix with a four car team! Here is the rear view of our cars. All of the Imprezas have rear-mounted radiators! First, we have our team leader Nobushige Kumakubo's Lancer Evolution 9. This car has had the engine changed from a horizontal position to a...
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Posted
May 23 2008, 05:09 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 1 comment(s)
Motorland SP is a small racing circuit located in Aomori Prefecture at the far northern end of Japan's main island. Unfortunately, due to its somewhat isolated location the, track does not see a lot of action from the the big names in Japanese drifting. A few weekends ago, however, the track hosted a special two day event where a number of D1 and D1 Street Legal drivers, including our beloved Team Orange, were on hand to show Northern Japan some top level drifting. The guys from Hipertekspeed...
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