Sumika Kubokawa, the Female Hero of Japanese Drifting

Who amongst you got himself a 2000 Civic and put big rims on it in order to join the local tuning community, thinking that hot girls wearing stilettos are part of the picture, just like in the Need for Speed games? Come on, be honest: did it turn out the way you expected it to? Of course not, because most girls are into nail polish and mascara, not piston rings and ECU remaps.

The world’s last hope in this respective lies with the land of the Initial D manga comicbook - Japan. Introducing, Sumika Kubokawa, a girl after our own hearts.

The 27 year old drifter is a member of the famous Team Orange, one of the leading drift teams in the D1 Grand Prix Series, and as you can tell from watching the Driftcolors video dedicated to her, she knows her stuff.

“I’ve liked driving for a long time and one day I saw a friend of mine driving sideways and I was totally surprised! I was 19 when this happened! It was a Skyline R32,” Sumika says.

She subsequently bought her own sideways-machine, a 180SX, a model known in North America as the 240SX. From that time her skills have only been applied to the Nissan model, of which she’s had seven up to now.

Sumika also says she street drifted for a while when she was younger, but the long arm of the law caught up to her and she hasn’t done it since.

“When I started driving D1 had already begun. At the time, I really didn’t know anyone. I just wanted to get better. No one taught me to drift. In town my friends helped me out a bit,” the female drifting ace adds.