The 2009 N1, N1.5, Group A, N2, N2S & D1GP AE86′S Battle, which took place on 26th of December 2009, is finally out on Hot Version DVD #103. Not a bad way to spend Boxing Day huh? Check it out via YouTube:

There’s nothing we like more than AE86 festivals,and as it turns out there is a MASSIVE race/showoff happening on December 26th at Tsukuba Circuit! Featuring official races of N2, N2S, N1, N1.5 and even Group A, there will be nothing short of awesome on the track all day!  They are giving away massive prizes to the racers too, not the kinda prizes you noramlly see either – A 5-speed TRD Cross-mission gearbox sound good? Hell yeah! And 2 sets of RS Watanabe wheels and a bunch of Koyo racing radiators too. Not a bad haul eh? Off the track theres a used parts flea market, a show and shine event and a Q&A session with the top drivers of the weekend!

With more being announced daily, check out all the latest details over at the MercuryEP site!

What happens when you pit a handful of AE86s against a Civic Type-R, CRX, Celica, Cappuccino and an MX-5? Find out with parts 2, 3 & 4 here!

Idlers meets at Tsukuba Circuit.  Mike from SPEEDHUNTERS says “is where you’ll find the very best in Japanese automotive culture”. After seeing images such as these, I don’t doubt a single minute that he’s wrong! Here are some quotes from the article:

There have been a few changes to the event format since the last time I’ve been to one of these. There’s now an all-AE86 trophy race that’s been added to the festivities. It was a bit like an N2 race except that the cars were slightly more street-oriented.

and this one I’m still laughing over…

Although Idlers is strictly a grip event, it’s nearly impossible to get a bunch of tuned AE86 drivers together without at least a bit of tail-out antics.

Haha! It looks like we AE86 drivers have a bit of a reputation huh? I like that! Even though the event was dominated by Porsches, more than just a few AE86s turned up to race (and apparently get a little sideways too!), so jump over to SPEEDHUNTERS blog here and here to get all the pics!

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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Of all the tracks in all the world, what other circuit name can get you as excited as Tsukuba?  The Green Hell comes close but Tsukuba is where all the action goes down in our awesome world of hachiroku!

Alexi over at noriyaro has once again provided us disciples of the church of AE86 with a juicy sermon.

A while back when I took the Skyline to go drifting at Tsukuba Circuit, there was a series of AE86-only one-make races being held by Option2 magazine and Ken Sato’s Mercury workshop on the same day. The drifting sessions were filling the dead time between races, which was the main event of the morning.

Naturally, there were a whole bunch of very quick hachirokus there competing in the roughly ten-minute races, running the gamut from expertly tuned and prepared to completely boro and awesome.

The fastest car was Tsutomu Suzuki, driving his #18 Cashiew Trueno (pictured), with a best lap time of 1’02.885. Hibino competed in the race in his SR20 turbo D1 Levin, and came fifth overall.

Jump over there now and check out the sh*t-ton of pics… I just love the one without the rear windscreen… BORO!

Mike Garrett of Auto-Otaku and more recently Speedhunters fame has some sweet shots of drifting at a track which happens to be just around the corner from his house, the one and only Tsukuba Circuit!

The lucky guy spends many a day down at the infamous circuit and doesn’t disappoint with some of the best sideways action featuring a few awesome hachi roku’s getting their slide on!

Check out the pics after the jump and check out his site for more awesome automotive photography!

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Tsukuba Circuit played host to an AE86 vs VTEC Track Day. Which consisted of an open practice through out the day, with a race to finish it off in the afternoon. The race combined the fastest ’86s and Hondas from the earlier practice sessions and put them head-to-head in an all out battle for NA superiority. The race was taken out by the Techno Pro Spirit AE86 Levin affectionatly known as ‘Taro’ but it wasn’t given an easy time as it was pushed all the way to a nail-biting finish by the YellowFactory EG Civic (both pictured above).

Some pictures from the event after the jump.

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