IRWINDALE SPEEDWAY: JAPANESE DRIVER CLAIMS D1 TITLE.

Byline: Keith Lair Staff Writer

IRWINDALE - Yasuyuki Kazama was doing donuts on the Irwindale Speedway infield, waving wildly to the grandstands.

After five minutes of celebrating in his car, Kazama celebrated on it. He pulled up to the grandstand, climbed on top of his Nissan and waved the trophy given to him as the first D1 Grand Prix USA Professional Drift champion.

Saturday was a day of firsts for the 34-year-old from Nagano, Japan, and for the four-year-old Japanese series. The win, defeating Nobuteru Taniguchi in sudden death in head-to-head competition, was his first in five years of drifting. And he did it before a standing room-only crowd 9,500, the largest regular-season attendance in the sport's history.

In drifting, drivers try to get their cars as sideways as possible in two-lap runs. They are judged on style and angle as they maneuver a course surrounded by K-rail, soft rail and pylons. Points are deducted for hitting objects.

The course started on the track's half-mile back stretch and the cars slid through turns 3 and 4, going about 80 mph. They negotiated a slide through a chicane onto the track's third-mile oval and slid through a sharp 270-degree turn along the third-mile oval's Turns 1 and 2, and then directly into a 90-degree right-hander back onto the track's back straight.

The first round of qualifying was single-car with the top 16 drivers advancing to side-side racing.

Americans Rhys Millen of Newport Beach, driving the first American car in a D1 event, and Sam Hubinette, also of Newport Beach, advanced to the Round of 16 before being eliminated.