Yokohama Tires D1GP Japan

Well it looks like after this 2010 season the guys over here at D1GP USA weren’t the only ones having issues. My buddy Adam over at 7Tune broke this story this morning which I have been working on at the Wrecked Magazine office all weekend. Keiichi Tsuchiya confirmed on his blog he is pulling out of the D1GP series due to “disagreements with other members.” He has also vowed to start a new series from scratch. Keiichi Tsuchiya went as far to say this, “I am sorry to the fans and sponsors. We are going to start from zero and create a new future for drift in Japan.”

On top of all these issues Kazuyoshi Okamura (president of Yashio Factory) came out and said “Daijiro started talking earlier this year about D1 being finished if it stays like this…”, while going to say that, “…the distortion of the principles behind the D1 series has been growing for some time now and continues to grow.”

This comes as huge news and a large shock wave for the Japanese series. Politics and a superiority complex have seem to dominate the series decisions globally and internally for the last few years. On top of everything that 7Tune is reporting we have been told by more than one D1GP team now that Discount Yokohama Tires won’t be returning to D1GP in 2011. This is a huge hit to the series on top of Inada and Tsuchiya leaving I don’t have much hope for D1GP in 2011. So make sure you enjoy the end of this year on Speed Channel because it might be the last of D1GP in history. After you look over this timeline it might not come as a shocker to hear what is happening over in Japan right now. Hopefully these two masterminds of the culture and sport can put together a much better series in the near future and we can leave D1GP and all it’s antics in the past.