Somewhere around midnight on the Ebisu mountain, a man was lying flat on his back under the rear of a Toyota GR Supra, and the whole back end of the car was gone. That's the photo we kept coming back to after our first D1 Grand Prix Ebisu weekend in September 2025. Our first story from D1GP Ebisu has the results of rounds 5 and 6 and the cars on track. This is part II: the rest of the roll, unedited, with the bonnets up.
Engine bays of D1
D1 paddocks have no garages, just tents, so every engine bay is on show. Mao Yamanaka's #90 GR Supra from the Weins Toyota Kanagawa team sat under his name banner with the bonnet propped open, a big turbo on one side and a red floor fan blowing into the bay to cool it between runs. Yamanaka made the most of the weekend: third in Sunday's round 6 battle and fourth in the solo run.
The strangest engine of the weekend lives in a chrome-blue Silvia S15. Hisashi Saito's #38 Team Miyaseimitsu car runs a custom four-rotor rotary, and the bumper even says so: a little "RX 15 four" sticker under the headlight. Under the bonnet, a polished intake plenum with the Miyaseimitsu name on it sits where a Nissan SR20 used to be. Mazda's own four-rotor famously won Le Mans in the 787B in 1991; seeing one in a drift Silvia is something else.
On track: S13, GR86 and a GR Corolla
Rookie Ryu Nakamura's purple and pink #76 S13 was one of the stars of the weekend. He finished third in round 5 after taking second in the solo run with 98.49 points, and here he is sliding past the banners on the hill, with the wing of a red D-MAX Silvia blurring past in front of us.
Team Toyo Tires Drift brought a fleet of GR86s. We can't read the number on the one above, so it stays "a Team Toyo Tires GR86". The team's GR86 drivers at Ebisu included season champion Hideyuki Fujino (#66), Masato Kawabata (#88) and Yuki Tano (#80).
From the same team, Hokuto Matsuyama's #77 GR Corolla rolled through the paddock with its swan-neck wing and white wheels. A hatchback drift car sounds like a joke until you see the scoreboard: Matsuyama topped Sunday's solo run with 99.38, the best score of the weekend.
The grid
Before the battles, fans walk the grid among the cars. Rookie Ryo Ishii's #50 Team BuzzBreak Mark II JZX100 shows why the radiator lives in the boot: louvred vents cut into the bootlid, an Oakley logo across the rear window. Nearby, a red S15 in Shibatire colours had its rear window covered in hand-written names of supporters, next to a blue Rocket Bunny-liveried Silvia, most likely Hirotaka Kano's #91.
And over the whole place, flags. The biggest one we saw was black, with 斎藤太吾, Daigo Saito's name, in huge white kanji.
Night work: the Fat Five Supra
That brings us back to the opening. Saito's #87 Fat Five Racing GR Supra, the car he debuted at this very event, sat under the Monster Energy tent after dark with its rear bumper, diffuser and rear suspension arms laid out on the tarmac, one mechanic underneath and another kneeling in the light. A few tents along, the Toyo Tires crew had Matsuyama's GR Corolla up on stands with its bonnet open. Nobody was going home early.
If you want to see where Saito's cars are built, we spent a Christmas at his place: Christmas BBQ at Fat Five Racing.
Why part II
Results tell you who won. These photos tell you what it costs: tyres stacked by the tent, fans blowing into hot engines, and crews working past midnight so a car can go sideways for one more run the next morning. That's D1. Go once and Ebisu will replay in your head too.
Photos: One Breath Pictures.
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