Event Coverage: D1GP Hits the Chi!

D1GP: Soldier Field, Chicago August 1, 2009

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Photos: Jeremy Cliff, Ginash George, Brad Sillars
Video: Jeremy Cliff

The D1 Grand Prix (D1GP), is a production car drifting series from Japan. After several years of hosting amateur drifting contests, Option Magazine & Tokyo Auto Salon founder Daijiro Inada, and drifting legend Keiichi Tsuchiya hosted a professional level drifting contest in 1999 and 2000 to feed on the ever increasing skills of drifting drivers who were dominating drifting contests in various parts of Japan. In October 2000 Inada and Tsuchiya reformed the contest as a five round series. At the following year for the following round, it was the introduction of the two car tsuiou battle, run in a single-elimination tournament format, a common tradition for touge races which would become popular with car enthusiasts.

Since the beginning, the series has spread from the United States to United Kingdom and Malaysia to New Zealand with an ever increasing fan base all over the world. The series has since become a benchmark for all drifting series as its tsuisou format became widely adopted in drifting events throughout the world and is the most highly regarded of all series. The series also helped to turn not just its personnel, it also helped to turn many of its drivers into celebrities with appearances in TV shows and car magazines all over the world along with scale models and video game appearances for their cars. Also, it would be credited for the increase several-fold in tuning businesses specializing in drift set-ups.

D1GP made it’s debut in Chicago on Saturday August 1, 2009. Overall it was a good event and competition. The event featured a car show and of course the drifting. Results are as follows:

1st- Ken Nomura (R34 Nissan Skyline)
2nd- Forrest Wang (S14 240sx)
3rd- Harri Hokkanen (S14 240sx)

D1GP gave JDM Chicago rights to be the exclusive Pace Car for this weekend’s event! Read more about it here.

The official video:

Gallery I by Brad Sillars (click thumb to expand):

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Gallery II by Ginash George:

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Gallery III by Jeremy Cliff:

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