Another All Nighter With The Locals: Drift Edition.

After Tokyo Auto Salon day two was over, we decided to hit up a local conveyor belt sushi joint near our hotel in Chiba. Afterwards we met up with Ben Green, a drifter from Texas (yeah!) who now lives in Japan. When I reached Ben on Facebook, I told him that we would be coming to Japan and that it would be super awesome if he could show us around. Ben quickly suggested that he show us where the locals drift as he himself isn’t too shabby at the sport. So after taking a one hour train ride near Yokohama, Ben and his crew picked us up at the station and from there, we pretty much played cat and mouse with the cops as we jumped from one spot to another, sometimes with up to 30 other cars following behind. Let’s just say we got back to the hotel at 7:30am. It’s now 8:30am. I decided to do a quick post to let you guys know what we’re doing. We have tons more to cover. I’m only letting you guys see a smidgen of what me and Danh have managed to capture, and now we’re off to TAS day 3! Sleep is for the weak!

Ben and company come and pick us up from the JR station.

This is the kind of traffic I could get used to!

Team MaydayGarage getting to know the locals

Ben Green, our hero/drifter/friend showing us how they get down in Japan.

Ben's car unfortunately got hit the from behind by another normal car (non drift related) the day we flew in, but fixed it for tonight

This is Ray, a drifter from Philly who now lives in Japan

Ray was kind enough to drive us around in his 4 door skyline

Another one of Ben's friends who owns this GTS-T R33

Ben drifting through the intersection with potentially oncoming traffic

Starting a train

This was shot at 5:30am this morning. Hardcore

Don't let the clean looks fool you, like most all cars in Japan, they're built to perform as well.

I wasn't kidding.

There were a ton of cars to look at besides the drifters.

More to come later! Stay tuned!

–David–
David@maydaygarage.com

Event Coverage: 100 Drifters of December.

What a better way to start off my recent move to Maryland than a big grassroots drift event? Drift Nirvana’s yearly 100 drifters of December is exactly what it sounds like, to assemble 100+ drifters and invade every inch of Summit Point Motorsports park, a huge track nestled in a small town in West Virginia. What makes this event unique isn’t just the sheer amount of local and semi-pro drifters sliding around, but rather how they give drifters a choice on which track they’d like to drift. Yes. Multiple tracks all at once, kind of like how they do it at Ebisu in Japan.

S14's zooming by was a normal occurrence.

The Freed Engineering MX83 Cressy making it's rounds with a full boat

Everyone getting ready for battle

JDM duo

This S14 seems reaaaaal familiar...

Thanks to Jaime Clague and Justin Alacrious for letting me use this video! Be sure to check out Alacrious Media via Dodgemsquad.co.uk!

Continue reading

On The Run: Sumo Dinh’s Purple Stuff S13.

Sugar. Water. And of course, purple.

When me and Mikey set out to embark on a 6 hour (7 with breaks) drive in a cramped Mazda Miata for New Orleans, we didn’t know what to expect. The idea was to check out the local car scene in Louisiana and to also keep a look out for any cool cars that we wanted to feature later when we would come back. I had a few cars in mind that I wanted to check out in person, and one such car was Sumo Dinh’s S13 coupe which had just come out of the body shop wearing a new purple suit…

Grimace would be proud.

Sumo is all smiles, as he should be, he just had some white beans and rice.


Continue reading

OTWeb Video: MotorMavens/Justin Shreeve Films FD Finale.

Storming the interwebs this past week is a video released by MotorMavens and Justin Shreeve Films that has been shared again and again all over car forums and Facebook. This drift video filmed by none other than Justin Shreeve is exactly the type of videos I love, the type of drift video where you get to hear all of the sounds made by the cars- the tires squealing, the crowd cheering, crash crunching sound that a lot of other videos seem to dub over with rock or techno music.

Sit back and watch.

MotorMavens | Formula Drift Finale | Irwindale from Justin Shreeve on Vimeo.

–David–
David@maydaygarage.com

Formula D Irwindale: The Final Part- Everything Else in Pictures.

As we finally come to a close on our epic coverage of FormulaD Final Round, I wanted to make a final post about everything else there is to see attending one of these massive drift events as seen through our camera lenses. Sit back, sip on some coffee, and enjoy the photos!

Low and super wide.

The Mexican Standoff

Sadly, this was Melyssa's last event as "Miss FormulaD"

Fans, drivers, everyone wanted to see the action. Drivers were often seen where the fans were to enjoy the rest of the show

The sun sets over the Falken Booth

Continue reading

Quick Vid: MaydayGarage @ FormulaD.

I’m still gathering everyones final photos, and have been editing photos for the past 10 hours straight, but in the meantime, check out this short vid I compiled using the small clips recorded from two of our photographers, Khiem and D_Fan when they weren’t busying clicking off photos.

Note: I made this video in all but 15 minutes, so cut me some slack!
It’s in HD if you big screen guys want to watch it in full screen.

MaydayGarage does Formula D @ Irwindale from MayDay DavidD on Vimeo.

–David–
David@maydaygarage.com