2008: Saito wins the 2008 D1 Grand Prix

Moment in drift history · JP

Daigo Saito takes his first D1 Grand Prix championship, the breakthrough Japanese pro title of his career. Season footage goes viral on early YouTube, giving drift culture its first global long-form proof of the discipline.

D1 Grand Prix had been running for eight seasons by 2008. The series formalised drift competition globally, Japan first, then American and European expansions, and its rounds were the most-watched drift on the calendar.

Across the 2008 season Daigo Saito ran a 2JZ-swapped S-chassis at the peak of his D1 form and took his first championship. The season's tandem battles ran wheel-to-wheel, within centimetres on entry, no panic on corrections, and set the template international audiences would come to expect from pro drift.

The footage went viral on early YouTube. For an international audience that had only heard about Japanese pro drift through magazines and DVDs, the runs were the first long-form proof that the discipline was as visually intense as the source material implied. It set the modern reference for pro tandem language.