…on the top step alongside Daigo Saito for equal first place?! It was an interesting final for Saturday’s D1GP 2009 Round 3 event at Okayama International Circuit with both drivers punishing their cars in their battle for victory, destroying them in the process.

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Over the weekend it was a special cocktail of AE86 community love that brought everyone’s favourite Ebisu-jumping-drift master into the number one qualifying spot.  Driving Toshiki Yoshioka’s old red NOS-assisted 4A-GE, now painted in a striking coat of matte black (and sporting some wicked bolt on flares), Hibino worked his way into the top spot in preparation for Sunday’s showdown.

Unfortunately the race day was not as kind to him, as the final standings saw him in fourth position, knocked out in the semi by the eventual round winner (and AE86 legend himself) Youichi Imamura driving the Team BOSS Potenza-backed S15 . Fourth isn’t the win but still a position worthy of some praise – especially considering the calibre of top-notch sponsored teams up against him! Well done Hibino! Can’t wait for the exhibition round in Tokyo!

Hi everybody, Tobias here! I’m HR’s first international blogger and this will be my first blog entry here! As a first post I would like to share some impressions from my 2008 trip to Japan, of course focused on our beloved Hachiroku!

We arrived on a very humid Thursday in late August in Narita, Tokyo. We jumped on the limousine bus to the city and already had plans for the upcoming weekend!

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Few people garner as much respect from AE86 enthusiasts as Ueo Katsuhiro (植尾勝浩), In fact perhaps the only man to make ’86 fanboys jump with glee like giddy schoolgirls more would be Keiichi Tsuchiya himself. I thought it was high time we at HR Blog took an in-depth look at the history of the man who brought the AE86 to the world professional drifting stage. Should we stick to fact or legend? Is Ueo the greatest AE86 drift pilot of all time? Is that a worthy title? Let’s find out.

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By none other than Antonio Alvendia, man that guy gets around!

When it comes to building awesome AE86′s for both the street and the track, there a few shops more skilled than Tec-Arts which is located just outside of Tokyo in Saitama Prefecture.

Besides building numerous top level street cars, Tec-Arts AE86 racing experience also includes their famous N2 race car which has achieved great success at the N2 races held at Tsukuba Circuit. Tec-Arts also has an active D1GP project which has been in competition for a few years now. T

he driver of the Tec-Arts D1 Trueno is Kensaku Komoro and is currently competing in the D1GP. It helps set the standard for competition AE86 drift cars around the world and shows that the 25-year old chassis has plenty of life of left in it.

Check out the entire writeup @ SPEEDHUNTERS.

Prepare to witness some big crashes, its sad to see, but things like this just happen..

Source: Youtube

Want a sweet JDM AE86? Want it full of the best parts? Want it looking like it just came from a day at Tsukuba Circuit? Well now you can have everything you want!

We’re not at all sure of the legitimacy of service these guys provide, but their website has some DAAAAMN nice hachis on it.

Hit up this link for more insane D1 spec AE86 Love.