In 2016, Super D held their Matsuri event at Grange Motor Circuit in California which brought over Naoki Nakamura and Miki Takagi, along with the Naoki's car, to show off their aggressive driving styles which have made them legends and highly ranked drifters in Japan and abroad.
The event was marked as a huge success, bringing over drivers to judge as well as actually tandem drifting with those participating. It was dubbed the "Revival of the Golden Age of Drifting" in the U.S. and has reignited the trend of sending the best and most exciting drivers from Japan to various locations around the world.
Sending drivers along with their cars from Japan is not cheap, with likely little to no returns on those costs. That did not stop the minds behind Super D to continue. Soon after the Super D Matsuri excitement settled down a bit, the team behind it started to think of ways to match or even better it. What they came up with was something unexpected, but very interesting.
Instead of bringing another big-name driver to the states, drift team Animal Style would bring their cars to Naoki's home circuit, the legendary Meihan Sportsland C Course. Meihan is known for its unforgiving layout that includes a wall along the main straight followed by a wall that likes to introduce itself to at least a few cars during every event.
Arriving a bit after the start, the wall had already claimed a JZX100 and later in the day would claim two more cars along with forcing several others to make repairs. For those experienced in driving at Meihan, it is an acceptable risk and as it was, it was the experienced drivers that experienced the most crashes.
For Animal Style members Ryan, Jason and Julian, it was their first time in Japan and their impressions were all-around positive. They were all undeterred when facing the intimidating Meihan walls along with legendary drivers who are well known for competing in various professional drift series including D1, Formula D and King of Nations. They definitely held their own with Julian breaking into the top-16 tandem tournament.
The biggest question was—how would the locals react to a foreign event coming to Japan? The answer was enthusiastically. Similar to Final Bout, most drifters in Japan have heard about Super D thanks to all of the media coverage Super D Matsuri received. This also means that many in attendance came to specifically see how the American style compared to Japanese style, in terms of both cars and driving. Everyone was impressed with both.
The event felt like a big deal, similar to Kansai All Stars—it had plenty of spectators, top-level drivers and of course, several vendors. For the Animal Style members, they are all now looking at ways to have cars in Japan and make regular trips to experience the variety of tracks. For Jason, he is looking forward to drifting at Nikko and Ebisu Circuits in the near future. We are definitely looking forward to their next visit over.
Everyone would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Wolfreign Motors who organized things stateside and Stacked who organized things in Japan. Also, a special thanks to Meihan Sportsland, Origin Labo and B-West Co. for running the event and their continued support of both Super D and Animal Style.