Posts Tagged ‘Daigo Saito’

Meet the Achilles Radial Team & See What Makes Them Run

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The Achilles Radial team released the following video yesterday giving a brief insight into their FD US Team and Bridges Racing. I think for a small clip it gives a great insight on what this team feels is important and necessary to run such a successful program with not only one but three(I believe it is 3 as I know they have been helping Dean Kearney for sure, but I have seen them with Walker Wilkerson’s car in the pits but I think that is due to the Achilles Sponsorship mainly) cars to run per event. I also think it’s great to show the team and how they feel about the program and drivers and not just focus on the drivers. Great small video.

Conrad Grunewald Retires 2012 Camaro to Build… Another Camaro?

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Last night Conrad Grunewald, pilot of the Hankook Camaro and star of the dozen restarts match between Daigo Saito vs Conrad Grunewald took to Facebook last night to post the following photo of his 2012 Formula D Camaro announcing its retirement.
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After about a dozen people asking what was next and hoping for something new he just said it would “Still a Camaro of course. This one is going to be amazing though.” Not sure how amazing a Camaro can be, but let’s see. He also took a moment to respond to a fans inquiry about selling the Camaro and poke fun at Mustangs.
conrad-facebook

What will be of Formula D in 2013 – Daigo Saito

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I was going to write an article about a few of the FD drivers, what is known about them thus far in the off season, how 2012 treated them and any information we may have leading into the 2013 season, but after writing just the first one I realized it may be better as a series of posts so, here is the first of the series “What will be of Formula D in 2013”, Daigo Saito edition…


Daigo Saito 2012

Let me start off by saying that I am not a big Daigo fan and think that Formula D’s stance on him as a Rookie is weak to say the least. However, I have to give credit where it is due: he had 4 podium finishes in his first year, 2 first place and 2 third place finishes and managed to surprise everyone and take the FD 2012 championship. He also racked up a slew of 2012 FD awards including (obviously) Rookie of the Year, Top Gun of the Year, Ace of the Year, Hardest Charging Driver, and Fan Favorite Car of the Year. What is more impressive is the fact that amongst all the other V8 NA cars he did it all in a boosted 2JZ engine pulling close to 1200HP.
Now as I am not a native Japanese speaker it’s hard for me to follow Daigo in this off season, but it has been covered on a couple other blogs that Daigo purchased Samuel Hubinette’s Dodge Challenger a little while ago. As well as there being rumors that he purchased 2 NASCAR Dodge engines a while back. There had been rumors during the 2012 season that he might be bringing a Supra to FD in 2013. During the after season there were rumors of him working on a Dodge SRT Viper, but those may have been caused by the purchase of the NASCAR v8 engines. All of this information shatters the previously safe assumption that Daigo would be sticking with a Lexus/Toyota chassis as he seems to have been doing throughout his career and from what I can tell all of the series he has been driving in. In addition, Daigo is the only driver to have driven on 4 different tire manufacturers during his career so there isn’t even a safe assumption as to what he will be driving on next season.
So it looks like as of right now Daigo seems to be, as Winston Churchill said, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Daigo Saito's 2012 FD Vehicle - Lexus SC430