Maxxis Tires and Ryan Tuerck have gotten into a tradition of doing walk through videos of all of the Formula D competition courses. Round 3 of the 2012 season was in Palm Beach, Florida. The course is short, but really exciting.
Achilles Tires posted this video of their Formula D Drivers Robbie Nishida and Daigo Saito. They talk a little bit about how they got into drifting and then there’s footage from the competition. Daigo Saito takes his first win for Achilles Tires in Formula D.
Vaughn Gittin Jr. took some time between Rounds 2 and 3 of the Formula Drift Series to take his Monster Energy Falken Mustang to the World Drift Series. The WDS was an international tournament held in the Olympic Stadium in Tianjin, China which has also hosted the Race of Champions in the past. At the end of the video, he dedicates his win to Carroll Shelby.
The guys at Best Motoring did an entire feature on the RX-8 a little bit after it came out. This excerpt is them doing a drift evaluation on the chassis ending with a test drive of an RX-8 that competes in the D1 Drift Championship. At the end of the video, they discuss the possibility of a turbocharged RX-7 making a return. That would have been the 2 door version of the RX-8 with a factory turbocharged engine. Unfortunately engine problems and weak sales of the RX-8 ended that idea. It was rumored that Mazda was going to try and apply its new high compression Sky Active philosophies to a new, larger displacement engine, but I think they gave up on that as well. As it sits now, it looks like the rotary engine won’t be able to overcome its reliability and fuel efficiency shortcomings to make a return to the market. At least Mazda is still making sporty cars and continues a massive grassroots motorsports support program.
Yasuyuki Kazama is a Japanese driver that used to compete in the D1 Drift Championship. In his prime, he was widely regarded as the best drifter in the world. While he was competing, he earned the nickname of “Waku Waku Kun” which means “Rodeo Clown” in Japanese. He got the nickname by driving his car while half hanging out of the window. He even got good enough to drift the car like this. Don’t try this at home, kids.