Final Bout Gallery West Pt. 1

Final Bout Special Stage Events were cut short due to the beginning of the pandemic. The nationwide shut down began the weekend of Final Bout Special Stage West 3/15/2020, which is mentioned in a previous Final Bout post.

It has been a long year and we were so glad to see that Final Bout was ready to hit the ground running as soon as large events were allowed to be held. They wasted no time in scheduling to conclude their Special Stage Events in Oregon’s PARC, Connecticut’s Thompson Speedway, and the final 2-day event at Wisconsin’s USAir Motorsports Raceway. In-between all of the Special Stage Events we had Final Bout Gallery West, held on 7/17/21, at Willow Spring’s Horse Thief Mile :

I arrived to the event a little later, since I had to take a quick nap after a graveyard shift.. I expected to get there by 6 pm and begin shooting, but what I did not expect was the large line of spectators at the front of Willow Spring’s gates a couple hours after the event had already started! Last Final Bout was opened to only drivers and media, but this one was open to the public. This was an error on my part, but I did not mind the wait - I took poopy phone pics out of my dirty car below since my camera was in my trunk. It was one massive line that split into two large lines pictured below (the line begins all the way at that building in the middle).

After about 20+ minutes I was ready to be on my way to Horse Thief to shoot. The parking around the track was completely packed. Many spectators actually drove their own builds up to the track to enjoy an afternoon of spectating the Final Bout drivers. There were a lot of nice cars, which I regret not shooting. I was pretty adamant about getting to the hill before sun down.

Last year, we saw the A’PEXi RX-7 do a parade lap at Final Bout, but this year we had the opportunity to watch it run quite a few laps piloted by Jason @rivalautoworks. Beautiful driving and car.

This car is a big part of drifting history, especially in the U.S. Many of you know about D1 Grand Prix, which was a new drift series that started in 2000, judged by Keiichi Tsuchiya and Manabu Orido. Their first event was held at the famous track, Ebisu, and held 3,000 spectators. The event grew, and in 2003, there was a demo round at Irwindale Speedway in SoCal (later known as Toyota Speedway between the years of 2008-2011). Irwindale sold out to 10,000 spectators that day.. the largest crowd that the track has ever seen. This is where the A’PEXi RX-7, driven by Youichi Imamura, was first introduced in the U.S. and later won D1GP. A’PEXi had made 3 RX-7s, with this one being the only remaining one today. D1 continued to grow in the U.S. and helped create the drifting scene we see today!

Check out the crowd in Irwindale!

Always nice to see Mr. Michuda’s clean IS everytime he is in town from NorCal !

@sidewayshatch @babyjasons13 @palmder_sndrsn

From here on out are night shots (I shot what I could haha)

Enjoy the rest of the coverage!!

Little parade lap featuring all of the teams once sun down.

My favorite view! You can really gauge the night vibes in this one. What was not pictured were all of the people that hiked or went off-road to the top of the mountain left of me and all the spectators on the bottom right where the stands are.

@ggsimba working hard! He brought his car the previous year.

That concludes part 1 for now. Stay tuned for part 2 and a full gallery of everything taken that day :) !