Formula D Long Beach 2012 Coverage…Part 2…


Moving along now with part 2 of the ongoing Formula D LBC 2012 coverage. Today will be much like part 1, where coverage consists of both the “Slammed Society Showcase” and the vendor section where the drift teams also set-up shop in between rounds. Again, if you are here to see crazy action and drifting shots, I apologize as I did not have the proper media credentials to get into the section where the other photographers were. I simply brought my car into the show and took whatever shots I saw while walking around throughout the day. I didn’t expect it to be that hot either as the days leading up to the weekend were nice and cool. The sun was beating down hard that day at FD and we often found ourselves looking for cover to get out of the sun and to prevent getting sun-burnt. Luckily the NOS Energy section had a huge tent that provided shade for us and we hung out there for the majority of the day. The Slammed Society Showcase area was blazing hot and since I didn’t have a booth this time around, I didn’t bring a canopy or chairs. In any case, here is the coverage from the early afternoon and tomorrow we will close out the coverage with part 3…

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Great looking FD RX-7 on Mag Blue Volk Racing TE37SLs…

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Z33 drift car from K-Sport…I remember seeing this thing at the SEMA show last year but had no idea it was an actual drift vehicle…

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Another shot of James Oliver’s BB6 Prelude…

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As well as another shot of Jackson Wong’s S2000…

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Wouldn’t be a “Slammed Society Showcase” if I didn’t throw in the occasional aggressive wheel fitment… I see this style quickly taking over the U.S. VIP scene and I’m not really a big fan of all that oni/demon camber….I prefer to have more than 30% of the tire on the ground at all times but what do I know? haha…

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A slammed skateboard…

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Speaking of wheel fitment, here’s a closer look at the Audi A3 wagon from part 1…

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Note how the owner specifically set-up his wheel sizing and offset in a way where, when the car is airred-down, the rear fender sits in between the tire and lip of the wheel…If you take a closer look, you can even see how the lip of the wheel is pushing the lip of the rear quarter panel inward…

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Here’s a look at the whole BBS LM wheel on the Audi…

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Z33 from Team Hybrid on some cream Meisters…

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My only attempt at capturing some live drifting…

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Don’t know why but I really liked this shot…I was walking around and this rusted drum caught my eye so I snapped a photo of it. I had never seen an actual drum of HKS Racing Fuel either so I just had to take a picture… If you want to see a larger version of a similar shot, click here (1400×933)

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A couple of guys working on an RX-8 drift car….

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Random shot of some AEM coils on Bisimoto’s turbo Civic coupe, which was on display in the Falken Tire area…

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I thought this Infiniti M drift car from Hankook Tires was really cool…I didn’t get to see it in action but it was on display all day by the NOS Energy booth…

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I love how it still retains it’s sedan-characteristics and now sports four Recaro bucket seats…

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It still retains the top half of its dashboard as well, with the wood finish and everything….

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Another shot of the Sportcar Motion time-attack DC2R…Can’t wait to see how this thing does when it participates in the upcoming Global Time Attack event…

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We were hanging out in the NOS Energy area when all of a sudden, a hoard of rollerskating gypsies showed up and took over the DJ area with their creepy roller-dancing…it was quite strange and random…Then they tried to hand us some fliers for some skate demo or something and DPK David signed one and gave it back to one of the girls…Shocked and confused, she rolled her gypsy-ass along and got away from us…

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NOS Energy girls were busy posing for photographers throughout the day while they also gave out NOS Energy Drink samples to patrons…

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Corissa Furr served as the spokesmodel for Mishimoto’s booth…

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Jonathan Wong and Sam Du from Super Street magazine…Also in the shot is Paul Wall, who apparently gained some weight recently…

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I really liked this shirt that was on display at the SSR/Tanabe booth…if anyone knows how I can get one of these bad boys, please let me know…

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Low Fat Pie was bored so he sat down to play some video games at the NOS Energy booth…Mischa Barton from the OC thought I was taking a picture of her, that’s why she’s smiling in the background…

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Ms. Julie Mai was enjoying her new gig as a NOS Energy girl…

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Titla McBoob was hanging out with the Me Gusta guy at the Pasmag booth…

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Here’s another shot of her with Hover Hand guy…if you don’t know what the Hover Hand is, read more about it HERE… So close, yet, so far…

After staring at Titla McBoob for awhile, we all suddenly had the urge for milk and got hungry, so we decided to take a break and grab some lunch…

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As we walked out of the venue, we were shocked by just how many spectators were in line to check out Formula D…Honestly, I had no idea FD was this big and how popular it was. It’s crazy… I want to say it resembled Wekfest SF to an extent but the venue is so vast that it’s hard to compare. People are down to watch drifting though and I think I’ll be attending more of these events in the future, knowing how big it is now…

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We headed over to The Pike, which was a well-known strip of restaurants in Long Beach. There were options but we ultimately decided on Hooters since we wanted to grab some cold beers and get out of the blazing sun… When we arrived it looked like it was closed so we had Pie call them from across the street to see if they were open, instead of just walking over to look inside. It turns out that it was just slow because a majority of the streets were closed for Formula D so we got a table and relax for a bit…

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I didn’t take any photos while inside because I was busy eating and my hands were greasy from the Hooters chicken wings, but here are a couple shots that the guys took with their cell phones…

It was nice to get out of the sun for awhile and Ryan also met up with us before heading to FD….we stayed for about an hour or so and then walked back to check out the event…

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Back at the NOS Energy booth, Natalia Marie was hosting some freestyle hip hop battle and it was kind of cheesy, so we went to the Slammed Society Showcase section to see how our cars were doing…

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DPK David decided to pop his hood for a little bit and it drew a small crowd of onlookers… Some guy even asked him if the car had been there the whole time because he didn’t recognize it with the hood popped….

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It’s obvious that everyone is a photographer these days with their DSLRs, but what’s become more popular as of late is video…there were people there with all sorts of elaborate equipment to capture video coverage…

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Love this VW…such a clean and timeless appeal about it…

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Yet another Amuse or “Amuse-style” widebody kit…This one is wingless and has a carbon hardtop….

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Bright green HREs on Vaughn Gitten Jr.’s Mustang…

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A random shot of his seats and door graphic…

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Gitten Jr.’s helmet hanging from his rear view…

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I noticed that the rear bumper was removed from the car and upon closer inspection, it looked like he had crashed that took the bumper clear off the car…Again, I didn’t catch any of the actual drifting but here’s a video of the tandem run where he clipped the rear…at around 37 seconds in is when he lost the rear bumper…

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Daijiro Yoshihara’s 6.7L V8….peep the 102mm throttle body…

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Dai’s DY Signature wheels…

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Gravel…

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Falken model Olivia Korte…

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Battle-scarred S15 Silvia drifter from RS*R…

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Steering and alignment repairs were being done on the fly on this Scion tC drift car…

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Stephan Papadakis and the Scion Racing crew handling some work on the tC’s steering rack…

Gonna stop here for today….come back tomorrow for the final installment of The Chronicles coverage of Formula D Long Beach 2012…thanks for looking. If you missed part 1, just look below or in the previous posts…

 

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