May 17, 20243 min read

DoriDore Drift Festival In Japan - Full Send

I almost missed this event, but I was lucky enough that one of my friends from Japan gave me the heads up that this event was taking place the day after Wekfest and was just a couple of hours outside of Nagoya. So last minute, I changed my plans, which was a hard decision considering that DoriDore took place on the same day of the Super GT race at Fuji Speedway (I already had special access tickets, too).

Once I parked and walked in, all those worries quickly faded. Within the first minute, I knew I had made the right choice and was going to have a day full of perfectly stanced cars, just dialed in and ready to have fun.

The easiest way to explain this event is Full Send.

One thing that I wasn't used to was that everyone was having fun, it was like a party from the crowd and event workers cheering on the drivers to the drivers who would respond accordingly dialing up their performance.

On top of the main track and the car show (I'll get back to this) they also had a seperate "touge track" which once I found it, between the main sessions on the main track groups of cars would drive down the hill to where they had a touge run setup.

The touge run was actully the entrance driveway entry/exit and was super cool giving the cars a place to swing it through a handful of corners turn around at the end so they could do both an uphill and downhill run. I have to admit this was probably the coolest thing I've seen and I wish I had been able to spend more time. Next time I'll probably head here first.

Yep I'm already planning for next year, lol

Back up the hill their was a total of 3 parking/staging areas for the cars. The first 2 were for the cars going in and out to the track. The last was for the show car and vendors. Now as a complete bonus on my day there was a full car show.

Fenderist held a car show that I would have to say competed with the cars I saw the day before at wekfest. Actually some of the cars were the same ones. Which was cool to be able to shoot them outside.

Going through the show area was a blast, it was great to have back-to-back show days were the cars were the same but different. Let me explain.

What I found between Wekfest and just about all the cars at Doridore was how they do full project cars in Japan. In both cases, the cars were complete, not half-done projects, and one of the things that still gets me is they drive their cars. I would say more than 80-90% of the cars I saw at Doridore would never be driven here in the US (or SoCal). I was amazed when I saw almost all the cars at Wekfest being driven out/home. Very few were put on transports, but even some of those I saw headed back to Tokyo, which was a 6-hour drive or more, and I really don't blame them for not wanting to drive their piece of art that far.