Kazama D-Link II Moriya

Today's adventure in Kazama D-Link II Moriya. High Speed drift track and Low Speed street course.

Took the RWB DRB and the XX TA-06 today for some D-Link action at Kazama's awesome venue.



Kazama's course is HUGE! There's so much space sometimes you don't know what to do.

Here's the view from the flag tower down the "straight" which, of course, you never actually drive straight.

You need some gearing changes here. oops  just noticed the body is Popped at the rear. haha.

This is the Pit/Entrance. the anti-clockwise direction allows a big high speed sideways flick as the car passes your feet. pretty cool. the straight is the tricky part. I'm glad Kazama-san changed the layout because before the main straight was on the far side and it was impossible to judge distance to the wall. This way it's MUCH better!!! I liked it.

My Yokomo DRB with RWB FD Porsche got a lot of use today. The chassis is PERFECT!  A larger track shows off a bad setting much more than a small circuit. I couldn't get the TA-06 with XX dialed in exactly today, too much rear rotation, but anyway, I still used it and had fun for 4 hours.

I swapped the carpet tyres to the Work Miesters. This is how RWB should roll! Rear height just a bit high, but under power it's good. I really need a diffuser for this. I think Street Jam are sold out of rear diffusers all over Japan.

BUT... here's the thing with a big track like this. There are so many different lines you can take on one corner.  In scale terms the width of the track would be about 8-10 car widths wide with so much run off.

It allows for sloppy driving. In the beginning I had every apex sorted, my mindset was perfect. But after driving with a few locals, I got all confused to which line was right? So I got sloppy, If you miss an apex you don't hit anything either. Any line was ok, I couldn't understand why they were using a particular line which to me seemed wrong.

The main straight was the only place I really made mistakes, but it's a small margin for error, It's also the only place with no runoff. you make a mistake at high speed and you are into the barrier. Not so good but it forces you to concentrate.

Compare this to Max One for example where there is One Line and One Line only, which makes for easy understanding and good battle action. Something a "few targets painted on the course might fix."

Anyway, a lot of courses have been upgraded to carpet recently. not too many more asphalt tracks left.
rain is not a problem.

Look in the display case for awesomeness.

Anyway, let's look at the new course. Before this was a small test course, but now it's polished linolium / concrete? I don't know what it is, but carpet tyres have very little success on here. I was using literally 5% throttle. Super slippery low speed action.

The DRB is super light at the moment which means no traction on a course like this. The TA-06 fared better with heavy NiMh packs to add weight and traction, but I didn't spend long on here even though I wanted to.

Because it looks great!

I think it's the colour and look of the fake asphalt that makes it so good. When the cars are sideways down the short straight it's awesome.

As a diorama course I'd say it's kind of half finished. I hope Kazama paints these buildings to add that touch more realism. Check my rear tyre contact patch... no wonder no grip!

It has the makings to be a nice little track and a very big change of pace. It was actually a good place to come when your batteries get to that point where the big track is difficult, but you want to finish off the pack.

I handed my car over to another driver for the above shots, so I took some of his JZX bodied RE-R in return.

I don't know what it is with Japan and Drift in general, but it seems there are only 2 bodies you should ever run. Nissan S-chassis and JZX of some kind. I guess it's understandable where I run, because Kazama is a JZX 110 and S15 man and WELD run the JZX 100 and you may remember their crazy chop top S15.

In any case, it was a good day at Kazama D-Link II Moriya and it confirmed a few things for me.

I want to replace my TA-06 with another DRB in Red.