Battle Evome is a now defunct event series that, in it’s prime, was among the most popular time attack event hosts at Tsukuba, running from the late 90’s through 2016. 7 years ago to this day (Jan 16th 2016), I was attending one of the final Battle Evome events ever when I ran into Okizo and his Silvia.
I met Masato during my recent trip to Garage Mak. He and our friend Tsubaki both attended the same engineering school, and naturally became friends over their first year of college. While I was in Nagano, I had the chance to get a closer look at his S13.
About a week after arriving in Japan, I received a message from my good friend Tsubaki. Since I photographed his S15 for Import Tuner back in 2014, we’ve always made sure to stay in touch as the years pass.
This past weekend I headed to Nagano to photograph my friend Tsubaki’s new S15 delivery. He had the car fixed and fitted with the new Garage Mak Type 6 front end. While I was there, we take a close look at Amemiya’s 1,000+hp S15 at the shop, and I also took some photographs of our friend Masato’s DIY S13.
I ran into Mitsuyoshi at Suzuka Circuit late January during the Attack event after not having seen him or his car for some time. Having a background in drifting has given him a strong grasp of car control, and now with a car that’s becoming finely tuned, his lap times have been getting very quick.
Every once in awhile I’ll come across some new faces at Tsukuba that really catch my attention. In most cases though, just because they’re new to me, doesn’t mean that they’re new to the circuit. The Garage PEAX Silvia is one such example and the it’s high 59 second lap times at Tsukuba proves this fact. Taking a little bit deeper look into the build reveals a car, and an owner, who have been gradually making changes to achieve the goal of a sub-minute lap time at TC2000.
The diversity of Idlers events is comparable to few other races. Just one glance at the entry list reveals everything from old Citroen’s and Alfa’s to Honda’s, Toyota’s and of course plenty of Porsche’s. Each entrant is interesting to check out as they compete in all levels of tuning, but none stood out to me more than this Silvia from Garage Infinity.
I think, for the sake of variety, that I’m going to switch gears a bit this week. While there is much more time attack coverage to share with you (not sure that I’ll ever have a shortage of that), I do have quite a bit of files in the NDF archive that have been collecting dust. Case in point, earlier this winter I visited Go-san at G-Corporation in Chiba and in his somewhat large driveway sat this beautiful red Silvia.
For a good sixteen years now, the Miyagawa brothers have been designing body panels for a wide variety of cars under the Garage Mak name. Creative to say the least, they are able to envision […]
The Landmark Tower in Sakuragicho, since it’s completion in July of 1993, has always been a favorite building of mine. The area around the tower has since developed immensely, and it’s turned into quite […]
I had messaged Nakamura-san a few weeks back in hopes I could catch him one evening to shoot the new G Corp demo car. Sekinei and I had dropped by one afternoon on the […]
Our partners over at Garage Mak put on a very impressive display at Motor Games last weekend at Fuji. Amemiya’s S15 looked particularly great on the new Enkei RS05RR. その後、程なくして、Formura Driftの写真。午前の予選が終わり、Offset Kingの会場へBakkyさんにあって、彼のS15の写真をパチリ。相変わらずかっこいいです。そこで […]
Photos: Satsuei Seki / Processing: Sean / Words: Sean “Attack Meeting GLOW de Fever And Option 2 KAJI ‘S B-Day x Smily Shot & NDF At Doitsu Mura” Let’s just jump right into […]
Photos: Satsuei Seki / Processing: Sean / Words: Sean / Satsuei Seki “Attack Meeting GLOW de Fever And Option 2 KAJI ‘S B-Day x Smily Shot & NDF At Doitsu Mura” The calm […]
Nakagawa Shuichi’s S13 build is most likely one of the most well known on the internet. In fact, it was even on the cover of this month’s Super Street magazine. What amazes me though, […]
Wow. Such Drift. Just kidding; I’ll do my best to maintain decent grammar. Sekinei attended the Lowbrain drift event last weekend, mainly to drive in it, but he also was able to snap a […]
Here’s another attack enthusiast you don’t see too much of; Okamura-san’s S13. Also a member of the Gokigenja family, this SR powered S13 coupe was built with the help of Hiteq Garage Brio – […]
Last Sunday, since we were in the area for the Minkara meeting anyway, we decided to stop by the Stance Nation meet at Fuji Speedway. Park and Matt were there as well so it was […]
The Drift Muscle competitor Motor Garage Jun Silvia doing a few grip laps a few weekends ago at Skyline Owner’s Battle.
This handsome looking 14.3 made an appearance at Fuji Speedway during the hellaflush show not too long ago. It’s not too often you see 14.3 executed so well. Very enjoyable. […]
Dream Works | 高橋浩司 | 夢工房 NISMO 180SX | Battle Evome
Continuing my walk around of the Queen Mary grounds where Wekfest was being held, we pick up around 1:30 pm when the crowds started to get bigger. The tour of shows that Weksos organizes has […]
One shot of the Brio S13 time attack coupe before Okamura takes it out for some heat around Tsukuba.
This past weekend Justin, who runs Autocon, messaged me about a trailer they were shooting in Los Angeles for the upcoming Autocon event on June 1st. It was last minute, so I couldn’t make […]
We pick up on circuit late morning in Tsukuba, where, lap by lap, the times are decreasing ever so slightly. By this time, many of the drivers have recorded personal bests or were well on […]
As the morning sun rose over Tsukuba, and the clock closed in on 9am, the lighthearted paddock conversations gave way to a sound that I’m not even clever enough to describe in words. The first […]
Battle Evome; the name itself invokes a sense of elitism and power. The event, held at Tsukuba Circuit just 4 times a year, attracts the fastest of the street and privateer time attack cars across […]
A few weeks ago Teddy blew a coolant hose on his drive home from work. With the 240 being his daily, this seemingly simple issue was one that needed to be addressed quickly. […]
レヴォルフェドットコム Revwolfe S.A. tuned S15 Autech Engine powered coupe. This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but make no mistake; this car is extremely cool. High Power & Save Energy.
. Random, but I wonder what happened to this car. I may have to research more… .
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So, last weekend I rode up with a couple of friends to Willow Springs Raceway for a drift event at Balcony that was put on by Colab. Whew, that sentence is way longer than it seemed when I started typing it. Now I’m wondering if I should even start this post off with it…whatever. If you don’t know what Balcony is; it’s a spot at the top of WSIR that is used for various things, but it’s probably most known for it’s use as a makeshift drift course. It’s actually a decent spot to practice and I’m sure organizing events there is much cheaper than HTM. I had nothing planned for the weekend when the guys told me about the event, so I figured it would be worth going along to get some practice shooting drift events; I really have never shot drifting before. Also, I’ve been wanting to shoot Kem’s 240 for awhile, and still want to do a decent shoot with it, but it was fun getting some shots of it sideways. That’s his car with the R33 intercooler – it’s a little crooked, but who cares this car is rad. Charlie brought out his RB25 240 as well, and there were a couple other cars out that day as well. This will mostly be random pictures with no story line or commentary because that’s basically what the day was. Pretty much every car broke anyway. Click past the break for more.
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I’m going to try and roll everything else I have left into a third and final, massive leftovers post of AutoCon 2012. I can only imagine how cool it will be – especially since I’m kicking it off with this fantastic coupe on Panasport G7s. As far as the timeline goes, it’s still pretty early in the day, and definitely still in the morning. The show opened to the public at about 12 o’clock, and that’s just around the time I said that I’ve had enough. I was fortunate to have a good jump on the show without too much foot traffic, so I really got a good look at the lot in it’s entirety before the gates opened. The lot was so big though, that I think even if I hadn’t I’d still be able to get some good shots. Recapping the show, I must say the entire roll-in process and media handling was a gigantic improvement over last year. Thanks to the AutoCon staff for another good show and I look forward to seeing this event gain in popularity over the next few years. Take a look past the break for a grip of pics that wrap up my coverage.
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As I type this I’m watching the qualifying of the F1 Chinese Grand Prix, and Vettel just got pipped in Q2. He’ll start the race in 11th place; It’ll be interesting to see how he can pull himself through the pack. On a semi-related note, I get to watch Rubens Barichello race his Indy car around the streets of Long Beach tomorrow afternoon; I couldn’t be more excited about that. Lastly, on a note more related than the first, here is some more coverage from Formula D in Long Beach this past weekend. I mentioned before that I didn’t have a media pass, so I apologize for not having action shots, but hopefully you’ll enjoy this look at some of the drift cars in the pits and at the show. Click past the break for more.
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Like I had said in my previous post, I hadn’t planned on going to Formula D, and I really didn’t plan on inquiring about a media pass (although from the looks of it I probably should have!). So, to say I was lucky I got in would be an understatement. I didn’t get many great shots of the actual tandem runs because the track was pretty well fenced off and the parts that you could have possibly shot through had huge banners covering it. That, and my zoom lens is a piece of shit. Seriously, worst lens ever. I don’t even know why I bother lugging it around. It’s OK though because I have another new prime on the way – a must for the Super GT & Taikyu races I’ll be shooting soon. Anyway, there was some serious down-time in between rounds so I had some good opportunities to snap the show that was going on in the parking lot. Every year Slammed Society and Fatlace put on a car show concurrent with the Formula D event. I never really bothered with it all the other times I went to Formula D here, but since there was nothing else to do I decided to check it out. There was the usual mix of awesome and not so awesome cars. I did get a chance to meet up with a few people, and make friends with some new faces which was great. Take a closer look at the show past the break.
. Hey NDF! I just got home from an awesome day in downtown Long Beach shooting the first round of Formula Drift and wanted to post up a little preview. Click here, or visit the […]
. . Alright, before I post up the breakdown of the day I had yesterday, I’ll give you this little video of a couple pulls of Addy’s Nissan. It ended up making 373.3 whp on […]
. 160 miles, 8 hours, 2 sandwiches, and 3 beers later I’m back home from San Diego. We made the trek from LA down south to finally get Adolfo’s HX35 equipped SR20 tuned at Cartune, […]
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I know you’re thinking right now, “Two back to back featured car posts?! I don’t believe it.” Well, believe it. That’s just how awesome we are. All jokes aside, I’m not sure why it took me so long to post this car up, as it has massive popularity among drift fans. D1-GP reverse-entry guru Masato Kawabata is the man responsible for piloting this ridiculously hot, 600 horsepower 180sx sideways through all the corners. I spotted the S all alone, basking in the light at the Toyo Tires booth as we were getting ready to take off from the Auto Salon in search of another UP Garage. So I decided to get up close and personal with it. Sit back and enjoy the shots!
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I like Team Burst. You probably like them too. I’d even venture to say that out of all the organized drift ‘teams’ in Japan, that Team Burst is the most recognized. This is largely due in part to Naoki Nakamura’s drift skill and media attention; whether it’s wanted or not. I’m sure that you’ve heard by now all the recent news that has surrounded Naoki, but if you haven’t click here, and then here. With that in mind, I thought it would be cool to do a little spotlight on the cars he drives in regularly, and for D1SL. I shot these on the last day of TAS, and you can see that the D1 banners have been removed already. Click past the break for the gallery.
