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Team Falken’s Matt Field Earns Second Place In Driver’s Championship At Formula Drift Finale

IRWINDALE, CA – Between bursts of heavy rain and bursts of applause from a standing-room-only crowd, the Formula Drift Title Fight, held at a wet Irwindale Raceway last weekend, netted Team Falken Driver Matt Field second place in the Driver’s Championship for the 2022 season.

It has been a long haul since Round 1, which started just down the 710 Freeway in Long Beach back in April, with Team Falken criss-crossing the country to Atlanta, Orlando, New Jersey, St. Louis, Washington State, Utah, and finally, arriving at the House of Drift in Irwindale for the finale. Through most of the rounds, Field stood atop the driver standings.

However, in Round 8, the Title Fight, he suffered damage to his front suspension during his Top 16 defense and was unable to repair it within the allotted time period, ending his chance to take the championship. Nevertheless, Field scored enough points to secure second in the 2022 Formula D Championship and renewed his determination to take the crown next year.

“It’s been an incredible year,” Field declared. “My Falken Tires teammates and engineers and crew have been with me the whole time as we fought through the rounds. My AZENIS RT615K+ tires never failed and maintained their grip in every situation and on every track, even here at Irwindale where the surface was pretty unpredictable, thanks both to the rain and the fact that the Formula D officials reverted the layout to what we ran in 2019, giving all of us a new challenge.

“Obviously, there was a lot of pressure on me,” Field continued, “I was leading the championship by only 11 points, so I knew anything could change that, and I pushed hard. Unfortunately, I spun in the first turn in the second elimination round and hurt the suspension enough that I couldn’t defend my position going forward.”

“Matt did everything he could,” noted Gerald Alvarado, Falken’s Supervisor, Passenger Car Motorsports and Events. “All our Team Falken drivers support the team and each other and we’re cheering Matt on. We’ll come back even stronger next year.”

More than 80 Falken dealers from Southern California joined Team Falken at Irwindale along with 85 Falken Tires employees.

Qualifying saw Field in 4th; Aurimas “Odi” Bakchis in 8th; Dylan Hughes in 9th; and Justin Pawlak, in 15th.

Bakchis, Hughes, and Field advanced to the Top 16, but only Bakchis moved to the Top 8 where he was defeated by eventual Formula D Driver Champ Fredric Aasbo.

Final Driver Championship points standings for Team Falken placed Field in second, Hughes in 6th; Bakchis in 9th; and Pawlak, in 15th.

The 2023 season schedule will be announced in November.

Falken Tires x KurumaNFT Driver Cards

Falken Tires teamed up with KurumaNFT and gave away 200 Driver Cards, free of charge, during the Driver autograph signing at the Falken booth last weekend at Formula Drift in Irwindale Raceway. Visitors received their piece of history in the form of the first Falken Tires x KurumaCards NFT by visiting the Falken Tire booth during the event and scanning a QR code. Forty of the cards for each of the Falken drivers are standard, and ten additional cards per driver are special “foil” editions.