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Originally a motorcycle racer, Takahashi found fame in 1961 as the first ever Japanese rider to win the Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix on a 250cc Honda. A serious injury in 1962 cut short his motorcycle racing career and made Takahashi switch to racing in cars. While racing the Japanese circuits Takahashi began using various drifting manoeuvres out of necessity to take on tight corners while maintaining speed. Not only did it help Takahashi win races, drifting on the speedway also won him many followers among the fans. Fans were excited by this brand new style of racing and Takahashi's crowd-pleasing antics on the track filled the stands.



Takahashi's drifting style caught the eye of Keiichi Tsuchiya, a brash young street racer and rising star of Japan's Formula 3 scene. Not content to merely copy Takahashi's techniques on the race track, Tsuchiya wanted to take drifting to the next level by making it a motor-sport in its own right. Tsuchiya began to hone his craft on the windy roads of Japanese mountain passes. The constant barrage of twists, turns and bends on such roads provided the perfect opportunity for continuous drifting. Tsuchiya attempts to take an obscure racing technique and change it into an art-form on those winding Japanese mountain roads have become the stuff of legends. The Japanese word for mountain pass, Touge, has become part of the vocabulary of the drift racing scene around the world.

Tsuchiya soon found backing from Japan's leading car tuning and racing magazines to produce a short video highlighting his drifting skills. This video, called Pluspy, became an instant hit among racing fans and muscle car aficionados, inspiring many amateurs to become drifters later on in their careers. A year after releasing Pluspy, Tsuchiya and his backers went on to organise the world's first drifting tournament called the D1 Grand Prix. Held for the first time at the Ebisu Circuit in Fukushima, Japan, the D1 Grand Prix was a massive success and has grown into the leading drifting tournament in the world.

Since debuting in the late '80s, competitive drifting has left an indelible mark in the racing world. Drifting is now a part of the modern motor-sports culture, with races taking place in speedways and highways all over the planet. The ease and relative low cost of modifying one's car for drifting has unfortunately lead to a vibrant, yet illegal, underground drifting scene in many countries. Unlike other forms of competitive motor-sports, it is fairly easy for the average muscle car owner to add a few mods to his vehicle to transform it into a drift racer. While great for attracting new fans, this also leads to the surge in illegal underground races held in public roads.

Today D1 tournaments take place all over the world in countries where drifting has the biggest amount of fans. To date there have been D1 championship events in Japan, the United States, the UK, Malaysia and New Zealand. Apart from the global reach of the D1 Grand Prix there also exists thriving local drifting clubs in many of these countries. These organisations normally cater to the regional drifting scene, and hold events and tournaments throughout the year. A few examples are the D1NZ and NZ Drift Series in New Zealand, Pro-Drift Mania in Canada, Formula-D in the US, Superdrift in Italy, and the British Drift Championship.