Hashiriya Exports hit the nail on the head in their rant against D1GP. I think this small citation is the core of the blog item:
Your car is all ready, you have paid the ridiculous 70,000 yen entry fee again, the truck is loaded and everything is packed, you just got off the phone to your new tire sponsor, this year Yokohama who are happy to have you on board but did they forget to mention that you will never ever have a chance of wining D1 because of their main tire competitor Goodyear. Goodyear is one of the D1GP’s main sponsors who will always have the last say in who wins, thank the King for the that. You happen to being doing flawless runs but yet the Goodyear backed big guns still manage to score more points then you every run without fail, you can also thank the King for that.
I do have to agree for a great deal with them: we all saw D1GP changing over the year and getting to a much more “professional” level each season. D1GP is starting to get more and more criticism lately which is mainly due to the sport growing in such rapid way.
The whole D1GP circus is starting to look more and more like an insiders only circus for which we, the outsiders, are allowed to pay a great deal in entry tickets, magazines, videos and merchandising. Apparently we are not allowed to share the fun with them, however once in a while the clown (Nomuken) is asking some volunteer to go along in his act and he shows you can be as big a clown as he is!
BTW: don’t get me wrong here: Kazama, Tsuchiya, Inada and Nomuken are still my heroes!
D1GP going sideways or downward?
Of course we still have Formula D, Prodrift and several other bigger series but the question is how long it will take till those series have the same kind of trouble as D1GP is in?
Well, maybe it is the same as with the Formula One: the larger audience likes it anyway as long as there is enough action. Only the enthusiasts are complaining…