The SileightyMania Podcast - Drifting Interviews with OGs and Pioneers

Moto Miwa's Full Interview from our previous Irwindale Speedway Tribute Episode Moto Miwa is the founder of Club4AG, co-founder of Drift Association. He's the man behind providing instruction to some of America's first drifting events in the early 2000s as well as providing track support for some of the earliest Option Video and D1GP events in the USA. 00:17 Moto intro 00:37 Creation,...

Doug Stokes's Full Interview from our previous Irwindale Speedway Tribute EpisodeDoug Stokes is Irwindale Speedway's 2nd employee and retired after 20 years as the VP of Communications. He was instrumental in planning and building the track, and was often seen at the major events and early practice events. Fun fact: Doug can be seen in Option Video when Keiichi thought he was the track own...

Ken Gushi's Full Interview from our previous Irwindale Speedway Tribute Episode Ken Gushi is a Formula D/Formula D Japan/D1 Grand Prix veteran and Toyota sponsored driver. In this uncut interview, he shares some memories from Irwindale Speedway and thoughts on how the famous track has helped shaped modern day drifting culture. https://www.youtube.com/kengushimotorsports #driftinghistory #drifting...

Dai Yoshihara's Full Interview from our previous Irwindale Speedway Tribute Episode. Dai Yoshihara, a Formula D veteran and champion, tells us that Irwindale Speedway is the first place he drifted in the USA and considers it his home track. In this full interview, he shares some of his highs and lows at Irwindale Speedway, and walks us through an ideal lap at the infamous House of Drift that n...

Teddy Danh's Full Interview from our previous Irwindale Speedway Tribute Episode. Teddy Phu-Thanh-Danh⁠ is the founder of drift team Auto Factory Realize, was there for opening night of Irwindale Speedway in 1999, and champion of early 2000s Japanese style drift cars. ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AutoFactoryREALIZE #driftinghistory #drifting #driftingpodcast #podcast #irwindale #irwindalespeedway...

Our beloved Irwindale Speedway had its last event and closed its gates for good in December of 2024.  It was a very important place for many people's careers and passions, and it was especially important for the sport of drifting in the USA. In this episode, we provide some history about the track, and we share some details about the sale that lead to its closing.   We also interview several n...

Hiroshi Takahashi aka Kaicho is back for part 2 of his interview, and he does not disappoint. Listen as he provides first-hand accounts of significant people and events related to drifting in Japan! Get ready for some serious history lessons! Kaicho discusses many topics, such as Akira Nakai of current day RWB fame becoming the inspiration for Kaicho's drifting style, the origins of the term &...

Hiroshi Takahashi aka Kaicho is an AE86/hachiroku drifting legend from Tokyo, Japan. He started drifting in 1989 and is a self-proclaimed 2nd generation drifter. In this episode, Kaicho gives us a history lesson and describes the drifting scene in Japan in the 80s and 90s, and some of the people who inspired him. He tells us about joining team RUNNING FREE, and shares some stories about teammate K...

Tony Angelo is a US drifting pioneer from Doylestown, PA. He found drifting from Initial D in the early 2000s and started sliding his car around PA back roads, meeting Chris Forsberg in the process. In their turbo FC Mazda RX-7s, they were heavily into drifting before anybody in their area knew what it was. They eventually hosted sanctioned events at Englishtown Raceway, introducing drifting to ot...

Jonathan Wong, proudly grew up in the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California. He was introduced to import racing in the 80s by his older cousins. After buying his EF Civic Si, he and his teammates from Team Macross 7 strived to make an imprint on import car culture through car shows and drag racing. He started his career at the bottom at a magazine called Super Street and eventually moved his w...

Phill Lee is one of the first street drifters in the Chicago area.  He co-founded ClubFR, an organization created to get drifting off the streets and to legitimize drifting in Chicago and the Midwest area.  Under his watch, ClubFR has helped produce D1 drivers and Formula D drivers, they’ve hosted the RS-R Drift Festival, Formula D Pro-Am, and most recently, Final Bout.  From ClubFR’s inception to...

Robbie Nishida started drifting in the 90s in Japan, forming an all AE86 Team Hey Man! with his friends at Yokota Air Base.  He shares stories of the origins of his “drifting team”, how they befriended legends of Japanese drifting such as Nobushige Kumakubo, Dart Izumi Jr., and Hideo Hiraoka. Robbie discusses his 13 year long career in Formula D as a competitor and how he became an FD Judge.  He t...

We're pushing the Robbie Nishida release date to next week 1/9/2024. Thank you for your understanding.

Calvin Wan is one of the earliest drifters in the USA, drifting his red Mazda RX-7 (FD3S) in the Bay Area of California. He is a 6 year Formula Drift veteran, driving from 2003 to 2009. During that time, he had multiple podiums, including a 1st place finish in front of his home crowd in Sonoma, being the first import car to win a round of Formula D. He’s also a D1GP licensed driver, author, stunt...

Gary Castillo is an OG who has been a part of the early import drag racing days in the 90s all the way to today’s premier pro drifting series Formula Drift.  He started as a mechanic, became a magazine editor then turned into a fabricator. Gary witnessed almost the entire spectrum of import car culture in the USA as he watched both import drag racing and drifting go from their illegal street racin...

Chris Parry, aka Paz, is an AE86 and drifting legend in the drifting scene in the UK. When he bought his first AE86 and started drifting in the early 2000s, Japanese style ae86s and drifting didn't exist in the UK. Over the next several years, Paz owned several different AE86s, and he spearheaded the drifting movement and was a shining light for aggressive driving in low horsepower drift cars in t...

IT'S A PODCAST CROSSOVER! Palmer is our feature guest and we're also guests on the Goodestcast podcast dropping 9/7! Please check out our interview on his podcast to see what it's like when the interviewers become interviewed, Goodestcast style. Palmer Sanderson is the youngest guest so far on the podcast, but he is making waves in the drifting community in more ways than one. He becam...

Chris Forsberg is a US drifting pioneer from Doylestown, PA. He has a 20 year long career as a professional driver in Formula D, and is well-known as a Nissan Z drifting icon. His love for drifting started in the early 2000s with his Mazda FC RX-7 after meeting Tony Angelo. The two would eventually run DGTA, an organization hosting events that would provide a legal alternative to street drifting....

Rob Riter started drifting in the early 2000s and is a drifting pioneer in the Midwest, specifically the Chicago area. He started drifting in his NB Miata and became a hub for Mazda Miata drifting information and style through his website roadsterdrift.com. A founding member of ClubFR, they helped bring drifting off the streets and onto the track. He became one of the best drifters in the Midwest...

LA is a major part of drifting in the Mid-West. You can often find him working at Final Bout and ClubFR events. Before that, he lived in Japan and is a self proclaimed JZX100 otaku. He met and befriended Yokohama drifting legends like Yubo Takahashi and Kuniyaki Takahashi of drift team Night Walkers. He lived that JZX100 life as he owned several (and crashed several). In this interview, he talks a...

Nikolay Konstantinov started drifting in the early 2000s and even competed in Formula D. He built a tribute car paying homage to his hero Yoshinori Koguchi. He explains the challenges of building a green s13 hatch inspired by a car that no longer exists in that form. He also recounts a recent magical trip to Japan where he got to hang out with Drift Zamurai and The Emperor Koguchi. He even got to...

Lindsay Ross is an OG US drifter, starting in the early 2000s. He has always been big on Japanese drifting style and Japanese drift car styling. One day he met up with Aaron Suarez aka Dousan and the two of them decided to form a drift team called Pink Godzira. The two were one of the earliest US drift teams to properly color coordinate the way drift teams do in Japan and they did it with style. T...

Benson Hsu won 1st place at Falken Drift Showoff in Irwindale Speedway on March 02, 2003.  It was the first time we'd ever seen a pro drifter on US soil doing drifting demos.  Yoshinori Koguchi, Seigo Yamamoto, Fumiaki Komatsu and Kazuya Bai, very famous and influential drivers from Japan, flew in with their cars for demos and judging.  It was a day that introduced so many to drifting and insp...

Mark Arcenal, from the Bay Area in California, is an artist and a trailblazer in fashion and car culture.  He is a major reason for what is widely known today as "stanced cars". We talk about his love for both industries and how they influenced his journey to create his website Fatlace and Illest brand. He is an inspirational person to many and this interview will show you why. For this...

Nadine wrote a kid's drifting book! You may know our beloved co-host Nadine Hsu as one of the first female drifters in the USA, or as one of the first women to compete in Formula Drift. Maybe you know her as the co-founder of Drifting Pretty, the first all female drifting program and eventually all female drifting team in the USA. She is now a children's drifting book author! She's her...