· Drivers

Kazuhiro Tanaka was born July 4, 1970 in Ibaraki, Japan. Drift Team Orange member Kazuhiro Tanaka has been drifting in the D1 Grand Prix Series since the very first competition in Japan back in 2001. Tanaka first gained recognition drifting his orange Nissan S15 Silvia but later in 2005 Tanaka switched to the Subaru GDB Impreza like the car his teammate Nobushige Kumakubo drives.

During high school, Tanaka got his first taste of drifting when an older classmate that drove a Toyota AE86 Hachiroku executed a simple drift at an intersection.

“I was blown away at that moment to learn that a car is capable of moving this way,” says Tanaka. “Since I didn’t know anything about cars at the time, I was easily amused. I definitely wanted to try whatever he did after that experience. After obtaining my drivers license I purchased a Hachiroku! Since I knew that I needed to get used to speed before even trying to drift, I drove the car grip style for a month. Day after day I went up to the mountains and even racked up my gas bill to 400,000 Yen! ($4,000 USD) I worked hard after that to recover the money.”

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Daijiro Inada may be the largest celebrity in Japanese automotive culture. Daijiro Inada is most notably the founder of Option Magazine and its video spin-off series, creator of the D1 Grand Prix series, and founder of the Tokyo Auto Salon, which is the largest automotive event in the world. Daijiro Inada is the heart of Japanese automotive culture.

Daijiro Inada was not always at the top of the Japanese automotive market. He got his start as an automotive journalist. “At the very beginning, before I even got into this industry, I was a big fan of automotive racing. For me to foresee a future in motorsports as a racer was hard because it was so costly at the time. I could not become one unless I was a millionaire or financially established so I decided to get involved with a publishing company to deal with racecars and write about racecars,” Inada said. “Back about 25 years ago the tuning industry in Japan started prospering. I could see the tuning industry becoming a good size and mainstream. I quickly organized the origins of Tokyo Auto Salon and about five years from the beginning of the first auto salon I started publishing a magazine.” That publication would become Option Magazine.

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Yasuyuki Kazama is the 2005 Japanese D1 Grand Prix champion. Kazama also holds the record for most wins in a single D1 Grand Prix season with three wins to his credit. The drift car that took Yasuyuki Kazama to the championship was the Kei-Office sponsored S15 Nissan Silvia.

Yasuyuki Kazama was born February 1, 1970 in Nagano, Japan. Kazama started his drifting career at age 17 drifting his Toyota Corolla Levin AE86. Kazama paid for his drift car with proceeds from his job working at a gas station. While learning how to drift on Japan’s touges, Kazama narrowly escaped death when his drift car slid off the side of a mountain!

When Yasuyuki Kazama first entered drift contests, he was driving a Nissan S14 Silvia then later Kazama was sponsored by Keiichi “Drift King” Tsuchiya’s very own drift shop - Kei Office. Later in life, Kazama would become a mechanic for Tsuchiya’s Kei Office. After Tsuchiya sold Kei Office in 2004, Kazama opened his own garage named Rodextyle.

Kazama is rather well known in the United Kingdom and the United States with his mainstream TV appearance on the BBC2 show, Top Gear. In the episode of Top Gear, Yasuyuki Kazama is teaching Richard Hammond how to drift while driving a Vauxhall Monaro VXR. Kazama has also been featured in automotive magazines like Autocar in April 2006 and more recently in Octane Magazine, February 2007.

Rodextyle Official Blog

http://rodex.seesaa.net/

Manabu “Max” Orido is an underground street racer that has made his way to the D1 Grand Prix Judges table and into the world of professional Japanese GT Championship (JGTC) racing. Orido’s drifting career launched after he won the Japanese Carboy drift contest.

Manabu Orido was one of the original D1 Grand Prix judges and shares a similar racing background with fellow D1GP judge Keiichi “Drift King” Tsuchiya. Orido and Tsuchiya both started their racing careers in illegal underground street races, then progressed to touge racing in Japan’s mountains and finally began professional racing in the Japanese GT Championship. Much of Orido’s fame comes from being a D1 Grand Prix judge, the fact that he is one of the only drivers to use a Toyota Supra in drift competitions, his success in the JGTC series, and his appearance in popular import racing videos like Best Motoring, Video Option, and Hot Version.

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Nobushige Kumakubo is the 2006 Japanese D1 Grand Prix Champion and the owner of the legendary Japanese drift track Ebisu Circuit. Kumakubo is the lead driver for drift Team Orange and the creator of Big X, which is an insane drifting event that combines drifting, freestyle motocross, street bike stunts, and car stunts. Kumakubo is also a fan of RC drift cars and recently announced that an indoor RC drift track would be built inside the Ebisu Circuit facility.

Nobushige Kumakubo, born February 10, 1970 in the Fukushima Prefecture of Japan, was born to a wealthy family that owns a large portion of land in the Fukushima countryside. Fukushima, Japan is roughly three hours, by train, north of Tokyo. There you will find lush forest, rice paddies, green rolling hills, and most noteworthy to drifters - twisty mountain roads or touge. It is in these Japanese mountains, on the Kumakubo’s family land, that Nobushige has built Ebisu Circuit. Nobushige not only designed Ebisu Circuit on paper, he also drove the bulldozer that carved the touge. Ebisu Circuit is legendary in Japan because of the numerous drifting events that have taken place there like Carboy Dori-Con, BM Cup, Big X, and D1 Grand Prix.

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Ken “Nomuken” Nomura, or “Monkey Man,” as he is known by drift fans, is a D1 Grand Prix fan favorite because Nomura knows how to light up the Dunlop tires on his Blitz D1 Spec ER34 Nissan Skyline. Smoking drifts, personality, and showmanship set Ken Nomura apart from other D1 drivers and has earned Nomura the additional nick name, “The Smokin’ Drifter.”

Ken “Nomuken” Nomura was born in Fukuoka, Japan on May 9, 1965. Early in life, Nomura was a well-known baseball player that showed big league professional potential. A sport injury set Ken’s life in a new direction. After his injury, Nomura focused his talents on property development but that would not satiate Nomuken’s competitive spirit for long. Soon after receiving his drivers license, Nomura began underground street racing and progressed to racing touge in Japan’s back mountain roads. In 1992, Nomura was runner up in the “All Japan Ikaten” Finals and later progressed to the D1 Grand Prix series where Nomura continues to gain popularity for his wild monkey behavior and drifting skill.

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Keiichi Tsuchiya or the “Drift King,” as he is more widely known, is a living legend within the drifting community. Keiichi Tsuchiya is credited with developing several drifting techniques widely used by professional drivers today. Unlike most professional drivers that come from wealthy families or have previous racing experience in other motorsports, Keiichi Tsuchiya earned his reputation and honed his drift skills from illegal underground street races. In fact, Drift King Keiichi Tsuchiya had his license suspended for illegal street racing not long after he began his professional racing career in the amateur Fuji Freshman racing series.

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