Ja Ne!!

Time for the next adventure in the Land of the Rising Sun. Off to meet Chris soon and we are on our way to meet old friends and make new ones

Ja Ne means 'Seeya' in Japanese

That was 2007....

And what a year it was,plenty of travelling,experiences and stories, plenty of journeys both near and far and most went to plan too,the 2007 review will follow soon

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

UK Time Attack visits Tsukuba

Recently 4 of the leading cars from the Time Attack series were shipped to Tsukuba circuit in Japan for the RevSpeed Tsukuba Super Lap event, probably the best known and highest level Time Attack event in the world

The cars were:

Zen Performance Subaru Impreza (2007 Champion)

RC Developments Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 6 (winner of Round 2 2007)

Fensport Toyota Celica

Sumo Power Nissan 350Z

As part of the build up,some of my photos were used in RevSpeed mag (bottom left corner) - a great honour for me!

In October the cars were shipped to Japan where they were stored in the Do-Luck warehouse,Mr Ito doing a lot of the behind the scenes work on the Japan side.

Unfortunatley - as much as I wanted to I just could not go, and I knew this so for once it was not so bad being sat 12,000 miles away watching it all unfurl!



Onto December and all the cars arrived safely, but during some dyno tuning for the Japanese fuel the Zen car sheared a cam sprocket - not good. After a miraculous overnight rebuild completed at 5am it was off to the track, where a misssed gearchange caused the Fensport cars engine let go in a big way and with a few custom parts installed that are not available in Japan (strangely!!) a standard 3S-GTE was installed, which although greatly down on power at least made the car mobile again, with a best time of 1.04




More bad luck, with the Zen car throwing a rod though the block,caused by oil surge,a common fault with tuned Impreza engines - but before this,driver Phil Glew managed a 58.5 second lap, good enough for 11th overall!!

Current Tsukuba record holder Nob Taniguchi tested the RC car and after testing different setups recorded a 59.1 second lap, which placed them 14th overall, another fantastic result.
A very trouble free trip for the RC lads a testiment to their work

NOB prepares to go out,also in the photo is Abe san of Blitz



The Sumo Car with Andy Barnes at the wheel set a best time of 1.03.5, later Tarzan Yamada improved on this slightly with a 1.03. With a track the size of Tsukuba (1.29miles) half a second is a big difference!

Overall winner was the M-Speed Nissan R34 Skyline GTR with a time of 54.202,which sets a new GTR record. The overall record is still held by Taniguchi in the HKS Carbon Evo 8 with 53.999

Tarzan gives his opinion on the cars for the cameras

2008 should be good!!

When modifying goes bad

What do we have here,looks like someone wanted to make their ER34 Skyline look like the old Super GT/JGTC GT500 racecar. Looks ok from here (mostly) but the arches are a bit of a hint as to what is coming


Panel gaps are a bit amiss here and whats going on with the front wings?

Hmm looks like Tim Burton has had a hand in the design process,just what is going on with the front wing?


Oh dear,the idea is certainly there but it has not been executed particularly well,too much trying to be acheived here

What Id imagine they were trying to acheive,but you cant buy these

Night Fight

Probably my final UK trip for 2007 and what a trip it was to Teeside Autodrome in Middlesborough UK for the Night Fight event, a UK vs Ireland drift battle featuring an all star driver lineup from the UK,Ireland and Holland. No time lately so just photos

Team Falken NL RB26 powered R34 Skyline GTT

Brett Castle won in his S14 Silvia

Team Falken NL 350z

This is a former BN Sports / Koguchi power D1GP car

Former HippoSleek Toyota Chaser JZX100

Driftworks Toyota JZX81 Chaser

Skylinepart.com RB26 powered R34 GTT

Ex - D1GP SR20 powered AE86

Uh-oh!!

The new Nissan GTR is not even out 1 week and already this small,unassuming looking Japanese madman likes it........



It is of course Mr Kazuhiko "Smoky" Nagata, founder and president of Top Secret

New European 4wd 1/4 mile record

After a year of development and only the cars 4th run Sumo Powers Drag R33 Skyline GTR Fuujin (Japanese god of wind) set a new European record of 8.27 @ 164mph, which is official as a backup time of 8.4 was done,unlike the 8.3 second time set earlier in the year by another car. The time was set at Santa Pod

Onboard video