IRWINDALE, California — It's been some twelve years since a few young drivers put up fifty or sixty cones in the Speedway parking lot and started what was it called? Oh yeah Drifting.
"There are still plenty of points available and some very unforgiving crashwalls at Toyota Speedway."
Since that time, the wildly smoking tires of drifting have taken the motorsports world by storm and Formula Drift has become a highly-respected professional sports organization that puts on sell-out spectator events across the country.
Starting in April at the Toyota Grand Prix in Long Beach, the tour went to Road Atlanta in May, Palm Beach in June, New Jersey in June, Monroe, Washington in July, and was at Las Vegas in August.
Of course, like Indy, or Le Mans, or Daytona the top pros and their fans always come back to the big one, the special one And that is Toyota Speedway, the house of drift, the place where it all began and the place that was "made for drifting".
Daijiro Yoshihara, from Tokyo has a narrow lead coming into the final event he leads Justin Pawlack (Kalamazoo, Michigan 470 to 451.25 points. Irishman Darren McNamara is third at 435.5, Chris Forsberg, from Doylesburg, Pennsylvania is third at 429, and San Diego's Matt Powers rounds out the top five with 418.5 points.
There are still plenty of points available and some very unforgiving crashwalls at Toyota Speedway where upsets are the rule, not the exception. A perfectly framed finale, this race is flat-out, iron-clad, solid guaranteed to live up to it's moniker: "Title Fight"
ONE MORE TIME!: This is the only motorsport (or any kind of competitive sport) where the fans in the stands can ask for one more (inning, play, pitch, lap, set, chucker, whatever). If the final pairing of the night is good enough, close enough, exciting enough the crowd can "influence" the judge's decision chanting "ONE MORE TIME, ONE MORE TIME" and they will send the pair out again (and again) until there's clear winner. No time limit, number of laps, frames, quarters, just race to the win. If you've never seen it, please Google drifting and you'll see why I call it "Drag racing around a corner " -Doug Stokes
THE TITLE FIGHT LIVE NOT ON PAY-FOR-VIEW (yet)
Tickets and more information are on-line now at: www.formulad.com
MEDIA: Your Speedway hard card will be good for pit and grandstands admission. If you need racetrack access or press box access you MUST contact the Formula Drift offices. This in NOT a regular Speedway racing event, and we do not control access for it.
