Formula DRIFT #FDIRW 2022 - Friday Recap

Welcome to the House of Drift. That's right. We are ending another championship here. Eight rounds and it all culminates and it goes down. We are crowning a champion this weekend. Who's in the running? Well, Matt Field leads the pack. Frederick Osbo and Chelsea DeNova has a bit of a shot. Top five, Forsberg and Turk. And you know what? This year we celebrate the diversity of winning rounds, right? We've seen a different winner every round. Who's going to win this and who is going to be our 2022 Formula Drift champion? Just got back from qualifying here and we got a P1 and it tastes so sweet because practice was a little tough today. I didn't get in the groove until right when it really mattered fourth wall. We ran the car pretty loose, meaning it was pretty free and easy to place up there on the bank, which I think was key to do well here today. I think for tomorrow and the battles, though, it's going to be a different story. We're going to have to tighten up the car a bit, get some speed out of it, try and really put down good lines, but at the same time, bring the pace up. So we have our challenges cut out for us again and we can't take anything for granted here, even with that P1 position. So, you know, just got to be grateful for a great car, great team. The boys have been phenomenal all day. The car's been on rails, even with the little crash with Matt today in practice. The boys got it all back together. We're trying some new Wisefab cars and, you know, just doing whatever we can to go out there, put on a good show and ultimately really fight for that championship title. All right, so it's Irwindale. It's the final round. Pretty exciting feel here tonight. We saw practice, some drivers really pushing hard. Matt Field, Bumping Indig, everybody on the track even talked about it with Lorette. It's, I don't know if it's stress or if it's anxiety or if it's just wanting to push really hard, but you got to keep your car together for the competition. And tonight in qualifying, we saw some drivers that were having a hard time getting their cars positioned in the right place on the track, potentially due to the difference in grip going from a hot sunny day to a cool night with no sun on the track. The track seemed pretty grippy for a lot of drivers. So what does that mean about tomorrow's competition? We're going to have to see these drivers adapting quickly to changing conditions because tomorrow we're going to go from practice in the sun to competition in the cooler, grippier night time as well. So how precise can the drivers be and how well can they put together those lead runs to be able to move through the competition? And we've got two drivers that are really close to the top, Frederick Osbo and Matt Field, and they're going to meet potentially in the top four because of where they qualified. So a lot of excitement building up for tomorrow. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens in the finals here at Irwindale Speedway.