Young Version — August 1999
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About this issue
The August 1999 issue of Young Version explores drift setups versus grip tuning through 22 shop demo cars, including S15 Silvias from Mine’s and Kazama Auto. Features cover front-wheel-drive builds taking on high-powered 4WD rivals, choosing a first drift car, and reviving a used AE86 Trueno on a ¥1 million total budget. Suspension fundamentals, engine-oil selection, rotary maintenance, new-parts tests, and reports from Hiroshima and California round out this look at Japan’s late-1990s tuning scene.
242 available scans from Young Version — August 1999, in right-to-left reading order. Japanese OCR and English translation drafts are available throughout. Drafts have not received exhaustive image proofreading; unreadable source remains recorded in the archival data.
Page 118 — English draft translation
We did it—second place, won through our own ability despite the handicap! At first we took it easy and watched how the car felt; once we understood it, we pushed. Ukyo, Toshio, and I secured second place. I drove 12 laps of the 13.6-km circuit, then continued for another 12 before the driver change. That’s about an hour and 40 minutes—a so-called stint. With a fully prepared team, we achieved the highest finish ever by a Japanese team at Le Mans. The result was second, but in terms of the race we had the edge: none of us ever lost a lap to the leading BMW. Without the pit-stop mistake, we should have been leading by Sunday morning. Late in the race we had cut the one-lap deficit to 53 seconds, but then came an unexpected tire problem… That was this year’s Le Mans, a race in which we kept chasing.
No regrets. Personally, I’m very satisfied. Until now, no Japanese driver had been recognized on the world stage at a race like this. At Le Mans, for the first time, we showed that Japanese drivers can be fast, strong, and consistent. A professional should deliver results when given a car capable of winning. We did have a handicap: cars No. 1 and 2 were 1999 models, while our No. 3 was a 1998 model. Still, second place showed us what we can do. We raced this year determined to win, without giving up or getting discouraged. There were problems. When Ukyo handed the car over to me, the brake pedal suddenly sank. At 340 km/h, what if the brakes didn’t work? It was terrifying; that moment keeps coming back to me. But drivers are strange: before I knew it, I had adapted.