Today we finally reach the concluding section of my four-part Final Bout Special Stage West coverage. I know most of you aren’t too used to seeing drifting content on The Chronicles but I always thoroughly enjoy being at Final Bout events. I believe in this series and hope that it continues to grow. It seems like only yesterday when I first discovered what Final Bout was while Ryan Der and I were perusing YouTube one random evening. Something about seeing a team drifting competition in North America with some really great cars just sounded like tons of fun. The environment and community aspect of it just seemed so genuine that I wanted to experience it first-hand. A year later I was able to fly to Wisconsin, completely unknown to pretty much anyone in that community, and have been going ever since. The group behind the Final Bout event series were so welcoming, as was mostly everyone else that I’ve encountered during my trips to their events. I’ve met so many people that both drive and spectate at their events that I still talk to quite regularly today…

If someone were to ask me what I enjoy the most about Final Bout, I’d just simply say that it’s always just generally a pretty great time. There’s never much stress and everyone just looks like they’re having a blast. Sure, it’s a competition but…is it really? It seems like just a means to an end to get everyone together—and really, what more can you ask for from an event? I know they were supposed to head to Oregon for their next event just a few weeks after Special Stage West but with this whole pandemic happening, and getting much worse after Final Bout SSW I might add, it was no surprise that the Pacific Northwest event was postponed. Now is just not a good time to gather and its important to keep that in mind as we move forward into unprecedented times. We stay safe now so that we can be together later. I’m just glad we were able to have Special Stage West as the last event we could attend before everything was shuttered. I had a lot of fun and look forward to a time when we can all do it again. Thanks to the team from Final Bout and all those who were involved with making this (private) event so enjoyable. Here are the rest of the photos…

Tomoya Suzuki from SEXY KNIGHTS and his baby blue FC wearing BN Sports aero with added over fenders for that needed width…

Ilia from PROCEED and his FD RX-7 which he DROVE all the way from Illinois to drive at Horse Thief Mile in California. The car made it all the way back to Illinois with no issues either proving that 13B engines can be reliable, contrary to popular belief…

Josh from PROCEED and Tomoya getting some tandem runs in after the competition officially ended…

One of my favorite photos from that afternoon featuring Josh from MPAC and his white PS13 coupe. Instead of using the horizon line in the background as the base, I decided to flatten out the car in the frame which gives the setting a very unique feel with some symmetry…

Another angle of Josh’s S13 with his rare Uras Exsol wheels and multitude of horns on the underside of his G-Corp front bumper…

Chad Soares and JR Wayne from RUN UP! crew…

Didn’t get enough photos of Chad’s Zenki but it was definitely one of the better looking, really clean, street-styled builds in attendance….

What I really enjoy about the cars from RUN UP! is that they’re all very subtle and cleanly executed. They could do drift events and be at a car show the next day and vice versa…

Team Auto Factory Realize improved throughout the day. The GoPro that you see mounted to the windshield of Gary’s S13 is actually mine and the one we used for the Vlog. Eventually he went off and hit one of the flag poles which caused the camera to point up into the air, ruining some potentially good footage, lol…

I miss seeing the Volk GT-N wheels on Josh Maghirang’s RPS13 but the Nismo wheels aren’t looking too bad in action…

Free runs also allowed for some mix-up tandems with guys from different crews…

Suzuki running with a gathering of other FC-chassis RX-7s…

Huge thanks to Simba Nyemba from Final Bout for giving me the opportunity to shoot the event and always being so welcoming…

RUN UP! represented the Bay Area well down in Southern California…

I think I first encountered Joey Gonzales’s 240SX at the Wekfest San Jose event last year. Cool to see it in action and not parked inside a convention hall at Final Bout SSW…

I hid behind a bush to get a couple more shots of Josh Maghirang’s RPS13 from PROCEED…

Also snapped a couple more of Tomoya and his FC. Though the color scheme is identical, this particular FC looks way better than the one they put together and raffled-off last year for Final Bout…

Congrats to drift team HAMMERTIME for some solid driving throughout the day and taking home 1st place in the team competition…

A tandem sequence featuring Tomoya’s RX-7 and Simba’s 240SX…

All the boys from RUN UP! together in the pit area…

Another fantastic looking build from RUN UP! was this SR-powered RPS13 wearing rare GT1 aero, Ganador mirrors, and BEE*R B5 wheels…

Ken Gushi’s 1JZ-GTE swapped IS300 on Auto Couture Magnifique wheels reppin’ HANDSOME BOYS…

Simba and Ilia having a conversation about Final Bout things…

The ANIMAL STYLE guys go hard at every event they drive at and their cars definitely show the wear by the end of the day. At Special Stage West, most of their aero was all gone by the late afternoon…

The saying “go hard or go home” definitely holds true for these guys…

Josh also went pretty hard but thankfully his aero remained intact as the car was set to head back home to Chicago just a day after Final Bout SSW…

The legendary APEX’i FD3S once a popular competitor in the early days of competitive drifting here in the U.S. now just a reminder of the glory days. It’s so great that the car remains completely unchanged after all these years considering how many ended-up wrecked or sold and re-purposed…

Speaking of legends, Benson Hsu made an appearance at Final Bout SSW and even got some driving in before blowing-up his gearbox…

Simba’s S13 is another out-of-state car that was transported into California for Special Stage West…

Tomoya Suzuki’s FC parked next to Daigo Miura’s old FC which is now owned by Nieko from HAMMERTIME…

Rodney from HANDSOME BOYS with all his BN aero back together on his 1JZ-powered Mark II-face Cressida…

Not too many guys out here rocking the Zenki face anymore, so its nice to see Chad representing it well…

Nic Michuda’s IS300 running full Elixir aero with custom rear quarter panel work for more width…

How can you tell a true long-discontinued BEE*R B5 wheel from an imitation? Easy, get up close and look for the dual valve stems…

Before I left that late afternoon, I caught a photo of Gio’s RPS13 as he pulled-up into the pit area. He also has a pretty cool Civic as well but his 240SX is a recently finished project featuring a JDM Type-X front with the lower half sectioned off from a GT1 front, GP-Sports Type-R style sides and 2-piece Work Meister S1 wheels which have been re-finished in bronze. Great-looking car but that seemed to be a running theme that day so it came as no surprise…

And that’s all folks! We’re now entering some unknown territory now with no events coming in the foreseeable future. Time to get creative and continue to find new ways to keep content coming on this site. Stay tuned, I promise most of it will be good, lol!…