Jalopnik: d1

60-Car Pileup On Austrian Autobahn

Ray Wert — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:30:00 EDT

The good folks at CarDomain were kind enough to point us to another example of vehicular destruction today. As if we hadn't already had our fill with that crushed Nissan GT-R in Malaysia and the toppled Genesis sedans. Maybe we're just starting to feel a little bit dangerously destructive these days. Who knows. Anyway, there was a 60-car pileup on a motorway near Seewalchen, Austria today. One dead, 30 injured. And look, there's video for all you sick fucks to enjoy. I'm going to go and open a new bottle of scotch. And no, not the good stuff — the real rot-gut, twist up your insides kind that you buy for cheap at the bodega down the street. Yeah, it's just that kind of a day. [MSNBC via CarDomain]

Down on the D1 Grand Prix: Ford RS200

Jonny Lieberman — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 08:30:30 EST

Oh snap, Jalopnik went drifting. We were there live when Japan's Nobushige Kumakubo and his Team Orange EVO won five rounds of Sudden Death! to capture the crown. And we'll get to that, in good time. But, Jalopnik being Jalopnik, our palms got way sweatier looking at this baby than they did watching three hours of choice precision driving. Sue us. Yeah, that's an RS200. Well, OK, it's a replica. But still, it's an RS200. You want details? Click here. You want to drool? Leaf through the gallery. When we asked if the engine was tuned to between 650 and 800 horsepower we were told, "Probably." Snap snap, snap snap.

Sideways in Saudi Arabia

Wes Siler — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:00:00 EDT

In the US, drifting has largely evolved into a responsible, professional sport. The same can't be said for the Kingdom of Saud, where, bereft of racetracks to practice on, bored teenagers are taking some incredible risks on the road. The last 16 seconds of this video may contain the most idiotic stunt ever attempted. The music in this video is NSFW.

Jalopnik at the D1 Grand Prix, Day Two: Finals

Mike Spinelli — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 14:41:31 EDT

[Las Vegas stringer Curtis Walker, who hasn't yet sublimated in the desert heat despite short odds to the contrary, brings us day two of the 2007 D1 Grand Prix.]. Narratively, we're always drawn to both underdogs and classic, rear-drive Japanese cars. So we caught up with John Russakoff to get the lowdown on his 1984 Toyota Corolla, the oldest drift car competing in this year's D1 circuit. The AE86 entry started out as a $200 "piece of shit." Twenty-five thousand bucks and a year- and-a-half later, the car was track worthy. Gone is the original Toyota powerplant, in favor of a 2006 Honda S2000 engine and matching six-speed tranny. Russakoff says he's done all of the work on this 1900-lb., 220 hp slider himself. As for his opinion of the searing heat, he says it more of a problem for the intercooled turbos, as they seem to be losing about 10 percent or more of their power. But it makes for a stickier track, and he's happy to have the extra traction.

During eliminations, however, Russakoff fell on hard times. In the most spectacular crash of the weekend, he powered into the tires, and the car launched several feet into the air on the rebound. Russakoff says he wanted to push the limits and please the judges. While Russakoff's first two passes were adequate, he says, his entry speeds were low. With a dearth of horsepower to play with, entry speed determines the entire run for the smaller cars. Despite this catastrophe, Russakoff managed to qualify 16th of 16. The crash took out his radiator and tweaked the front suspension, but he said it wouldn't be too expensive to fix. Though, even with parts from a friend's car, Russakoff couldn't get it back on the track in the four-hour window before Eliminations.

Twenty-four racers competing for 16 slots in the final leads to all manner of carnage. Weekend-ending crashes from Russakoff and Tiger Racing's Chanin earned them "good job" reprimands from the judges. Battles of attrition from Tiger teammate Jaytir and Kure racing's Fixmer's cars left a rich potpurri of car parts across the track from each of their three passes. But that wasn't enough to guarantee anyone a spot without fighting for it. In the end, the highest qualifying score was 99.9 and the lowest a hair's-breadth 99.0, with entry speeds ranging from 79.5 mph to 89.5 mph. Newcomer Forrest Wang made a crowd-pleasing drift, but only earned a 98.5. We have no doubt he's someone to keep an eye on in the future.

It wouldn't be a car show/race without a standard collection of garden-variety bikini babes. In addition to typical arm candy these events encourage, there was a bikini contest right after the main event. But it may have been most notable for its crowd-control benefits; the on-stage proceedings kept the crowd from migrating en masse to the parking lot like at most other events.

With eight pairs of drivers selected for the elimination round, the entire event shifted in tone. Where the qualifying round was like a demolition derby, the main event was more like The Magic Flute with burning rubber. All in all, only one bumper went flying, and that was due to unsportsmanlike contact between Ueo and Yoshioka. Apparently, Ueo has a reputation for taking opponents down with him, but tonight it only cost Yoshioka a rear bumper.

Because of the way that elimination pairs are chosen (#1 with #16, #2 with #15 and so forth) pitting both Team Orange drivers against each another provided counterpoint to the two's tandem runs they'd been practicing all weekend. Unfortunately, it made judging the two similar drivers with similar cars virtually impossible, causing seemingly endless sudden-death matches with neither driver flinching. Finally, Kumakubo, last year's series champ, slipped up and let his teammate progress to the semi-finals.

Ryan Hampton and his Corvette spun out, leading to a score of zero and his elimination, which was something of a disappointment, because his car was probably the best sounding car on the track and the only domestic model.

The final came down to Yoichi Imamura's widebody Nissan Z and Hideo Hiraoka's Silvia. In the end, Imamura made an unpopular victor. The crowd turned on him during the semi-final showdown against Yoshioka. He'd been passed spectacularly on the inside of a tight drift, only to have his opponent spin out and lose the heat. Regardless, to the victor goes the spoils. In this case, a $5,000 purse.

Best 16
Toshiki Yoshioka defeated Ernie Fixmer.
Katsuhiro Ueo defeated Kazuyoshi Okamura.
Yoichi Imamura defeated Michihiro Takatori.
Ken Nomura defeated Justin Pawlak.
Kazuhiro Tanaka defeated teammate Nobushige Kumakubo.
Tetsuya Hibino defeated Ryan Hampton.
Hideo Haraoka defeated Daigo Saito.
Takahiro Ueno defeated Quoc Ly.

Best 8
Toshiki Yoshioka defeated Katsuhiro Ueo.
Yoichi Imamura defeated Ken Nomura.
Kazuhiro Tanaka defeated Tetsuyo Hibino.
Hideo Hiraoka defeated Takahiro Ueno.

Semi-final
Yoichi Imamura defeated Toshiki Yoshioka.
Hideo Hiraoka defeated Kazuhiro Tanaka.

Final
Yoichi Imamura defeated Hideo Hiraoka.

(Results courtesy LVMS.com.)

Jalopnik at the D1 Grand Prix, Day One: Practice

Mike Spinelli — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 08:38:49 EDT

[Our Las Vegas stringer Curtis Walker is on scene making with the photos and words — ed.] With temps pegged in the triple digits by Friday afternoon, the air above the Las Vegas Motor Speedway hinted at a firestorm. The Formula D Grand Prix is in town, and that means wafts of tire smoke and smolder hanging over the Mojave for most of the weekend. Last year, D1's inaugural drift event was such a hit with the drift kids that more drivers and cars are here from Japan. With 13 of Nippon's finest and 10 domestic drivers vying for one of the 16 slots in Saturday's main event, something is bound to be set off up in here.

There's some impressive steel gathered here in the desert. Six Nissan 240SXs, Six Nissan Silvias, a couple of Subaru Imprezas, a selection of Toyotas, a Mazda RX-7 and, representing the continent, a Corvette C5. And that's not even counting the flurry of amateur cars taking part in the driver search event.

The D1 pits have a more casual feel than at other races. Crews wear flip flops, and drivers and crews are busy but approachable, always making the time to greet fans. But the laid-back feel doesn't extend to the judges who walk around docking points for litter and cigarette butts.

For the D1 circuit racers, Friday was all about practice. During the day, the parking-lot-turned-race-course topped 110 F. Tires tended toward liquification. Engines overheated after just a few laps. According to D1 commentator Toshi Hayama, drivers were operating at about 40 percent of their potential. Once the sun went down, he said, we got more like 80 percent.

Aside from the technical challenges presented by a July afternoon in the Mojave, the practice session went off without an abundance of carnage. Subaru driver Kazuhiro Tanaka managed to rip the rear bumper off his orange Subaru Impreza during a spectacular drift, while Toshiki Yoshioka did him one better by ripping off both bumpers of his Toyota Trueno.

One of the unique things about D1 is that they recruit amateur racers through a driver search event, or "Ikaten." Ikaten participants who receive their D1 license are then allowed to proceed to qualifying for that event and may register to qualify for any D1 Grand Prix USA competition that year before they have to renew their license. If they don't manage to score in the top 30 in at least one competition per year, they get their license revoked.

Ten wannabe D1 racers showed up with their souped up grocery getters, but after two crashes and numerous failed attempts at a convincing drift, only two managed to get their licenses: #12, Forrest Wang and his consistently impressive 80 point drifts and #4, Jason who managed to pull a 90-point drift on one of his passes. Sixty-year-old Daijiro Inada, founder of the D1GP, also competed in the Ikaten, but failed to deliver the goods. [D1GP Las Vegas]