A Look Inside Dai Yoshihara’s Pro Drift Machine
By Mike Kojima, photos by Jeff Naeyaert
A comment from one of my road racing friends prompted me to write this article. He said as a snide remark “I heard you are now involved with drifting, too bad those are not real cars”. No amount of arguing could convince him that a typical pro drift car is a sophisticated machine, one several times more massaged and engineered that his own race car.
So here we are. The car that triggered this stupid argument is the Lexus IS350 that Dai Yoshihara campaigns in Formula D for Falken and Discount Tire. The Lexus is part of the legendary Falken Drift Team and is supported by the tire mega dealer Discount Tire. Scott Dodgion of SPD Metalworks is Dai’s crew chief and the crafts master that constructed the Lexus. Rounding out the crew is master mechanic Steve Sprague and yours truly as the chassis engineer/set up guy.
So here we go on a virtual tour of Dai’s machine; I’ll be your tour guide.
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| Let’s take a look underneath! That’s where a lot of the cool stuff you can’t normally see is… |
