The D1 Grand Prix 2011 season has come to a close with Fuji Speedway last month and these great images show some of the action. We have enjoyed some of the memories with this season that was delayed due to the huge earthquake earlier in the year. Back in March we were looking at a damaged Ebisu Circuit from the earthquake and less than six months later they had an event at the track undamaged. The lead photo shows the Team Orange Mitsubishi Evo X fading long time D1 star Ken Nomura at the high speed Fuji Speedway. Once the new 2012 D1GP schedule is posted up we will have it ready for you guys!

The guys from Modern Automotive Performance posted this D1 Grand Prix bed. Now I have a huge feeling this is a photoshop job but I like the idea of where they are going with this. We were at the release of this drift car back at the 2008 Tokyo Auto Salon when Team Orange released this new car in the Yokohama Tire booth. If you can prove your a bigger drifting fan than this guy with his D1GP bed please send us pictures and we will get you on the website ASAP!

Source: http://www.facebook.com/modernautomotiveperformance

Former D1GP champion Daigo Saito was seen all around LVMS this past weekend. In fact, he was even spotting for Robbie Nishida who performed amazing this weekend in his Silvia. This photo with team owner Gary Gardella gives us hope that he can provide a ride for the D1GP champion a ride in 2012. He has been rumored and rumored to come stateside time and time again. We do know he has some spare chassis sitting around the shop back home in New Jersey so maybe he could field a ride for both of these guys in 2012?

The double round at Ebisu was a tough one on the drivers but Daigo Saito pulled off the second win of the weekend at Round 7. We couldn’t find much information on this round but we are sure Daigo Saito ran down the field. After watching him at Matsuri take that jump in his missile car over and over he is quite the crowd pleaser attacking this track. Here are some other photograph highlights of Round 7 bel0w:

It was a huge double D1GP weekend at the Ebisu Circuit South over the weekend. Round 6 took place on Saturday and Yoshinori Koguchi took home the win over Masato Kawabata in an insane tandem battle. Kawabata ended up making a huge error after the jump and straightened out resulting in the loss. Here are some other snaps from Round 6:

The 2009 D1GP champion put on a great performance in this SGC S15 and wound up qualifying first at Round 6 of the D1GP season. Formula Drift star Robbie Nishida ended up snagging 5th place according to his FB account for the event as well putting on a great showing for the Japanese crowd. Here are a few snaps from the qualifying round:

The new August issue of Option 2 is right around the corner from hitting newsstands in Japan. The magazine is notorious for it’s loaded coverage of the D1 Grand Prix series in the past. This makes sense logically since the magazine is based in Japan along with the D1GP drifting series. It has been one of the leading series in the world but during the past year some cracks in the world wide series have cropped up.

Teams have cried foul and the founders have walked away from the series. Option 2 magazine has now taken a step to promote another big drifting series worldwide that isn’t D1. We have to hold out on telling you what series that is but we hope you can figure it out with some deductive reasoning.

A recap show will be featured in the DVD insert and the magazine will include some drifting coverage from the series. We are told the official release of this announcement will come out shortly (by end of week perhaps) from the series but it will be a huge announcement. This comes as a pretty big blow to the D1GP series who has dominated the pages/DVDs of Option 2 magazine in years past.

Normally this part of the blog post is reserved for some meaningless diatribe that none of you will ever read anyway…. However, this car has rendered me speechless!

The postponed D1GP Odaiba event took place over the weekend as drifting was happening all over the world. The guys at the Re-Extreme blog have decided to speak out about the things they don’t like about D1GP this year and how the sponsor favoritism is staying the course in the series. Back in 2009 we reported on a story someone wrote: “The Death of D1 – The Rise and Fall,” and it seems like nothing has really changed in light of the series. Here are a few notes of what Re-Extreme has to say and follow the link to read his whole report.

“It seems the D1 world hasn’t changed since the departure of Dai and Keiichi. Still pleasing the teams with connections and money to offer.

I was looking forward to this year as a fresh start but it seems worse than before.”

It is possible that this is an upset team not making it for the race weekend but this seems to be a common theme flowing from Japan since 2009. That year we witnessed some serious turmoil here in the United States with the series as well before it closed the doors and moved on back to Japan. His blog post has some more details and thoughts on the series bias and unfair judging.

Read More: http://rextreme.blogspot.com/2011/06/d1gp-2011-round-1-odaiba-parking-drift.html

DriftColors with Luke Huxham at Ebisu Circuit – Episode 4

Luke Huxham from DriftColors.com just released his fourth episode from his series on Drift Matsuri at Ebisu. The video showcases some pretty sweet runs and and unfortunate crash on the minami wall, and Daigo Saito going into the tire barrier. This is part 2 of the drivers interview video. We get to hear from Daigo Saito and many others about what they drive and how they got into drifting.

Watch the video: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/watchvideo/driftcolors-with-luke-huxham-at-ebisu-circuit