[Drift.com]

NOPI Motorsports and the NOPI Professional Drift Series is happy to announce its partnership with Tomitaka. Many of you know Hideo as the man behind the historic success of The D1 Grand Prix of professional drifting in the United States. However, there is much more to the story. In addition to being a proficient race organizer, Hideo was a pilot, a motocross rider, a life guard and a boxer.

Hideo’s competitive edge in sports has led him to many successes in the professional motor sports industry. From 1990 to 2002, Hideo was the owner and operator of a high performance vehicle tuning shop in San Diego, California called Eurox. As if owning and operating his own shop wasn’t enough, he also worked as Director for GREDDY a major tuning parts manufacturer. This experience in the tuning world led him to the D1 Grand Prix, serving as the Vice President of U.S. Operations from 2003 to 2006.

During his tenure, Hideo engineered most of the events that facilitated many of the fantastic historic moments in D1 drifting history. Hideo organized the 1st D1 event on US soil at Irwindale Speedway in 2003 which took America by storm, received monumental media attention and shattered track attendance records at Irwindale previously held by a NASCAR event. Hideo was also responsible for organizing one of the most exciting drifting events ever staged in D1 history when Vaughn Gittin Jr. earned the right to be called the first American Drifter to ever beat a Japanese Driver in D1. This momentous occasion was matched in the summer of 2006 as Hideo organized the first NASCAR Nextel Cup Vs. D1 in the Drift Charity event at Irwindale Speedway, which fielded NASCAR drivers like Kasey Kahne, Casey Mears, Robbie Gordon and Matt Kenseth going against top Drift drivers like Sam Hubinette, Rhys Millen and Vaugh Gittin Jr.



Today Hideo is corralling his vast experience in the motorsports world to serve as a consultant and Race Director to the new NOPI Professional Drift Series. Hideo will be responsible for track layouts to racer relations. It has been his dream to bring drifting to all American race fans while providing great customer service to his partners and treating the drivers in the league with the respect they deserve. Hideo’s dreams are now coming true.

When talking to NOPI Motorsports President, Michael Meyers, he said “We are all very excited about this partnership. Hideo comes to the table with great experience and knowledge of Drifting. This is an exciting year for NOPI Motorsports, with the announcement and launch of the NOPI Professional Drift Series. This has been something that we have been working on for a while now, and to see some of the key elements come together like this really makes things exciting. This is just the beginning of things to come. We have some great stuff in the works for the NOPI Professional Drift Series in 07, and we will be excited to announce them here shortly.”

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[Kevin]

This is an interesting development. I expect Hideo to expand Nopi's drift program to the west coast to include the House of Drift at Irwindale.