It's rainy season in Japan, so it was no surprise to see a few dark clouds looming overhead that day. Fortunately, the weather stayed clear, allowing the drivers to do what they do best: Lay down lots of smoke on the high-speed entries.
Tsukuba TC2000
The course layout was broken into five sections with the drivers starting just before the final sweeper before the straight and start finish line.
Drag racing their way off the line, the drivers build speed and begin to break traction midway through the sweeper, which leads to a chicane and then into Tsukuba's turn one. At turn one is where most of the problems occur due to over-speeding into the corner.
Driver's do not connect turn two into turn three, but instead build up speed to hit turn four, then flick the car back as they enter turn five and six where the drift course ends. To see all the action, one has to be up pretty high, but most want to see the action from turns four to six.
Tanso
The day began with the top 32 drivers making two runs to narrow the field down to the top 16. During this time a few drivers struggled after the chicane — either over-speeding or not carrying enough and losing their drift. Hibino scored the best qualifying run with a 100.15 in his new Honda S2000. Better than perfect.
Bracket to the Final 4
#1 Hibino went up against #16 Hayashi in his Toyota 86. Everything was going smoothly until Hibino came in too quickly into turn five, forcing him to scrub his speed and straighten out. This gave Hayashi the win and the biggest upset of the day.
#8 Teramachi eliminated #9 Tanaka as both S15s were performing well with Teramachi's orange S15, just edging out Tanaka's. #4 Matsui and his FD3S went up against #13 Hirajima who pulled off the second biggest upset occurred beating out Matsui to advance to the top 8. #5 Saito made quick work in his Corvette of #12 Utsumi in his S15. Utsumi could not keep up in his chase lap, while Saito made his chase lap look easy.
#2 Kawabata and his GTR35 dispatched #15 Takahashi and his JZX100 in almost the exact same scenario as Saito's round, with Kawabata pulling away on his lead run and not letting Takahashi pull away on his chase run. #7 Imamura and his Toyota 86 went up against #10 Hatanaka and his JZX100; the score was close, but Imamura would edge out Hatanaka.
#3 Suenaga finally made it into the top 16 with his own GTR35, and he made the most of it by defeating #14 Fujino and his RPS13. Finally, #6 Ueo and his S15 defeated #11 Tezuka in his Toyota 86. Ueo was able to continue despite spinning after the chicane.
After the upset, Hayashi went up against Teramachi. Both made mistakes in their runs, but Hayashi's was less severe, allowing him to continue and advance to the semi-finals. Next, Saito had no issues with Hirajima. The Corvette seemed to be finally dialed in and Saito was taking full advantage of it. Similar results for teammates Kawabata and Suenaga as both eliminated Imamura and Ueo, respectively.
Saito continued to make things look easy as he dominated the Hayashi in his Toyota 86. Hayashi didn't have anything to be disappointed about as he worked his way from qualifying in 16th place to finishing in the semi-finals.
For those that wanted to see an all Trust GTR35 final, it wasn't to be as teammates Kawabata and Suenaga met in the semi-finals. With Kawabata chasing during the first run, Suenaga was able to gain a half-point advantage. However, that was not enough as Suenaga had a big off on his lead run allowing Kawabata to proceed to the finals for the first time this year.
Suenaga took third place on the podium after defeating Hayashi. The power of the GTR35 was no match for the Toyota 86 as Suenaga pressed on the chase and pulled away on the lead.
The Final Battle
We have seen this before: the two giants of drift ready to battle it out — the classic battle of Kawabata against Saito. With Kawabata in the chase position, he applied the pressure to Daigo by placing his GTR35 door to door through turns five and six.
Swapping positions, Daigo was not able to match the chase performance of Kawabata's previous run. This gave the win to Kawabata.
Season Standings
This win was big for Kawabata, bumping him into the lead by nine points over Fujino. Yokoi, Imamura and Hirajima round out the top five. Suenaga moved to 22nd with his points of the season, and Saito breaks the top 10 finding himself in ninth but far behind the leaders.
