News

After a storming performance at the openning round of the 2013 D1GP drift season, Masato Kawabata finished on the podium in third after narrowly missing the final when his speed was judged to be slightly slower than eventual winner Yoshinori Koguchi. Disappointed by this decision, Kawabata put on an outstanding display to convincingly beat Masashi Yokoi for third place.

Ironically, second driver in the TOYO TIRES Drift with GP Sports team, Tatsuya Sakuma finished 10th after being drawn against Kawabata for their first round battle.

Masato Kawabata and Tatsuya Sakuma entered the first round of the D1GP on a high after their Team TOYOTIRES drift with GP Sports took a one-two in the exhibition match earlier this year at the Tokyo Auto Salom. Kawabata finished first with Sakuma second in the January event.

Osaka was the first of six rounds of the 2013 championship and took place for the first time ever at the Maishima Sports Island complex. 80.000 spectators are anticipated to watch thes events live in 2013 while hundreds of thousands more will watch D1GP on TV all over Asia, the US and Europe.

Other toyo drivers participating include Tadokoro Yoshifumi who finished an outstanding seventh and Seimi Tanaka who was 21s.

Race reports, driver profiles and more can be found on toyotires-drift.net (Japanese only but can be translated with google)