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JIC USA and Hankook Tires is proud to announce a 3rd place podium finish at Formula Drift Round 4 in Sonoma, California! After a full week of testing, tuning, and practicing, JIC USA / Hankook Tires Nissan S15 and driver Kenji Yamanaka, set their sights on coming up on top. With added tweaks and some fine tuning, the JIC USA / Hankook Tires Nissan S15 was feeling better than ever.

During the qualifiers, Kenji impressed the judges with his clean drifting line and fast entry speed. He was clocked in at 75mph into the first main corner and got an overall score of 93.25 that secured him a spot of 7th place out of 32 drivers. Kenji had his adrenaline flowing as he came up to the first round of tandem battles against the Blue Bridgestone Tires V8 powered S13 driven by Mike Peters. In the first run, Kenji lead as Mike Peters followed. Kenji kept a consistent and clean line as he gained a 7-3 advantage over Mike Peters. In the second run against Mike, Kenji followed him closely. As they came up to the first line, Mike initiated the drift but ended up sliding into the k-rail and Kenji came out victorious to advance to the next round of tandem battles.

In the Great 8 of tandem battles, Kenji was paired up with Tyler McQuarrie with the RS*R Honda S2000. Kenji was looking forward to this match as it would be redemption from Round 3 of Formula D in Chicago. In Chicago, Kenji could not advance past Tyler due to mechanical problems but this time would be different. Kenji was the lead car as Tyler was the chaser car and they both battled through the first run and both displayed clean lines but judges believed Kenji as Tyler could not keep up with him. On the second run, Kenji was able to stick with Tyler and got extremely close to Tyler on the "tear drop" portion of the track. Kenji was able to pull off a win and advanced to the Final Four.

For the Final Four round, Kenji lined up against Rhys Millen in the Red Bull / Pontiac Racing GTO. This round would determine who would advanced to either 1st or 2nd place. Rhys lead as they both ran down the long downhill as Kenji was able to pull off an extremely aggressive drift and was able to come behind Rhys within inches but as they came around the sharp corner of the "tear drop" Kenji bumped Rhys' rear quarter panel which caused Kenji to spin. For the second run of the battle, Kenji lead as Rhys followed. Rhys made some minor corrections and Kenji lead a perfect drift line. He did win the second run, but due to the spin in the first run, Rhys advanced and Kenji was now in the running for a 3rd place spot.

The battle for 3rd place paired Kenji up with Samuel Hubinnette in the Mopar Viper SRT-10. As they went into their first run Kenji followed Samuel. Right off the line, Samuel took off and left Kenji far back as the power advantages go to Samuel. Although Samuel had an obvious lead, Kenji was able to maintain a good distance to Samuel as they went through the course with clean lines and plenty of smoke. The judges noticed that Samuel did not wait for Kenji and that run was nullified and was forced to do a restart. On the restart, Kenji stuck on the Viper's rear bumper and displayed a textbook tandem run against Mopar. The advantage went to Kenji with a 7 to 3 score. For the final run, Kenji lead as Samuel followed. Kenji, again demonstrated a perfect drift line but Samuel could not keep up leaving a large gap between the two. The win went to Kenji.

Kenji was awarded with the 3rd place cup and the traditional champagne shower as JIC USA and Hankook Tires celebrated this well deserved victory. JIC USA could have not pulled off this victory without the following support from our sponsors: Hankook Tires USA (http://www.hankooktireusa.com), Vertex T&E, Tomei Powered, Works Bell, Exedy Clutches, Stoptech Brakes, Meguiar's and to all the fans and teams that cheered us to victory!