Category Archives: Drifting

Sometimes good things happen when you lose grip.

Mike Ryan’s Freightliner Race Truck

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Adam Carolla’s Car Cast got a behind the scenes look at Mike Ryan’s Freightliner rally/drifting truck. Mike Ryan has been the powerhouse in big rig racing up Pikes Peak and the Mt. Washington hill climb for the past several years. He also does most of big rig stunt driving you see in movies including the chase scene in Terminator 2. Some of Carolla’s commentary is kind of stupid and he goes off with a completely irrelevant and inappropriate story at the end, but they do get some good shots of the truck. It’s got a Detroit Diesel 60 series engine with a custom Borg-Warner compound turbo setup making 1950hp and 3400+ ft-lbs of torque. It weighs almost 10,000 pounds despite of the aluminum frame rails. The rear axle is a 3-link with a Watts link and the brakes have liquid cooling.


This is the big rig Gymkhana video that Mike released a while back if you want to see the truck in action:


He also competed in the Mt. Washington hill climb rally last year in the Freightliner. It’s a similar event to Pikes Peak in that part of the course is tarmac and part of it is dirt. The footage is pretty jaw-dropping.


Source: Adam Carolla’s Car Cast and autoedit on YouTube

2012 Australian Drift Grand Prix Round 1

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I’m always amazed at how the sport of drifting is able to attract highly talented photographers and video editors. Case in point: this is an amazingly executed video covering the first round of the Australian Drift Grand Prix that took place at Symmons Plains in Tasmania. The action and music are great and will have you smiling and enjoying yourself.


Source: Scott Mitchell on Vimeo

Rhys Millen at 2012 Formula D Round 2 Road Atlanta

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Rhys Millen and Hyundai are the first of what I’m sure will be several videos of coverage from the Road Atlanta round of the 2012 Formula D Championship. They offer some nice views of the custom suspension in action. Formula D reversed the direction around the loop this year compared to previous years which some people said gave the advantage to the high power cars.


Source: Hyundai USA on YouTube

HKS “Racing Performer” D1 FT-86

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This is a video released by HKS Japan and captioned in English by HKS Europe. What they’re doing is finding the baseline performance of a basic Toyota FT-86 / Scion FR-S / Subaru BRZ. The car has a stock engine but has been outfitted with HKS coilovers and an Endless big brake kit. Nobuteru “None Better” Tanaguchi takes the car around Tsukuba circuit after they pull the fuses for the stability, traction control and ABS. His initial impressions are that the car is light and handles well, but doesn’t have much power. Take this with a grain of salt, though. HKS is developing a GT Supercharger kit for the car so Tanaguchi can use it to compete in the D1 Drift Championship. There’s been footage of the car with the supercharger on, but it hasn’t been used in competition yet.

****Be sure to turn on the English captions with the “CC” button to the left of the video quality gear


Source: HKS Europe on Youtube

2012 D1GP in Odaiba

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Car Nifty TV just posted this video of some of the competition battles of the rainy Odaiba round of the D1GP Drift Championship that took place last month. Some highlights include Manabu Orido’s IS-F powered FT-86 (Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ) going head to head with Hibino’s Subaru EJ25 powered FT-86. There’s also the owner of Vertex Aero’s 2JZ powered BMW 3-Series going up against Nobuteru Tanaguchi’s Altezza (Lexus IS300). The round was won by Daigo Saito in his JZX100 chaser.


Source: Car Nifty TV on YouTube