GRK's national final entry list runs to 121 drivers

The longest section of the post is not about the racing at all. It is about where to leave a car.

Competitors are asked to park only after the morning gate opening, and to follow the directions of the parking marshals, both in the car park inside the drift course and in the one next to it. The post is explicit that anything parked before the gate opens will be moved immediately. Drivers are also asked to keep off the road beside the car park, because it causes problems for people living nearby, and to time their arrival to the gate opening where they can.

For a 121-entrant event, that is less housekeeping than logistics: a field that size arrives with pit boxes, chargers, tire cases and spare shells, and the order in which cars come through a gate decides how the morning runs.

GRK is the drift RC chassis brand of Shibata Jidosha Co., Ltd. of Sakahogi, Gifu. The company was set up in 2010 and built a fine-asphalt RC drift circuit beside its car business that year; the first GRK chassis followed in May 2012, according to the brand's own history page.

Its current range, as the maker lists it, runs from the AWD GRK GLOBAL and GLOBAL STANDARD kits, through the switchable GLOBAL2 and GS2, to the RWD GRK4, GRK5, GRK5-R, GS2 EVO and GS2 Modified, plus the short-wheelbase GRK-M, which the maker describes as M-size with a 225 mm wheelbase. The brand writes itself as DR GRK on its site and as SHIBATA GRK in its manuals.

The announcement itself was posted to the R31HOUSE RC blog and signed SHIBATA. YAW has not confirmed how the organizing roles are split between the GRK operation and R31HOUSE RC for this event.

A field of 121 is a useful measure of how big a grassroots championship final has become, but on its own it does not describe the event. From this announcement alone, the following are not confirmed:

• the date and the venue
• whether entrants run in classes, and how a 121-driver field is split across them
• the qualifying format, and whether battles are run as tandem lead-and-chase
• the judging criteria
• whether a spec tire or any chassis restriction applies

Those are the sort of details an entry list usually arrives with separately, in a regulations document rather than a blog post. Until one is published or confirmed by the organizer, the honest version is the one above: 121 names, a timetable that may change, and a gate that opens in the morning.