Here are the Top 32 pairings for todays big event. Right now if your eye is on the championship you will care about Tyler McQuarrie Justin Pawlak and Dai Yoshihara photographed above. They are on the same side of the bracket and scheduled to meet in the Final Four if they can win their respective tandem battles for the weekend. Sadly Tyler McQuarrie and Justin Pawlak are on opposite sides of the ladder so they would not meet until the finals for a battle that would be huge after the controversy of the weekend.

Matt Powers Vs. Jeff Jones
Matt Field Vs. Fredric Aasbo
Conrad Grunewald Vs. Matt Walden
Ken Gushi vs. Tyler McQuarrie
Chris Forsberg Vs. Alex Lee
Ryan Tureck Vs. Charles Ng
Vaughn Gittin Jr. Vs. Cyrus Martinez
Darren McNamara Vs. Kyle Pollard
Rhys Millen Vs. Sam Hubinette
Dean Kearney Vs. Patrick Mordaunt
Kyle Mohan Vs. Dennis Mertzanis
Michael Essa Vs. Armando “Dio”
Robbie Nishida Vs. Justin Pawlak
Otto Graven Vs. Odi Bakchis
Daijiro Yoshihara Vs. Ross Petty
Ryan Kado Vs. Toshiki Yoshioka

UPDATE at 6:41pm: Formula D changed the Top 32 due to points not given to Ryan Tuerck. No update of rankings as of Top 32 has been posted or provided as of the event going on live in progress. We apologize for the errors in this post.

We found a picture making the car swap for the weekend a done deal. Justin Pawlak is on the Nissan 350z with his #13 car and all. Tyler McQuarrie is now in the Calvin Wan/James Deane S15. We wish James Deane could be driving it but nobody wants to bring him in from Ireland. This is going to shake up things and make Las Vegas quite the interesting weekend. We will keep you posted on how things wind up between these two drivers after qualifying.

One of our friends was driving up the I-15 heading into Las Vegas, Nevada and passed the Falken Tire S15 being pulled by our favorite tow truck (Emergency Hookers) heading to Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The car was dropped off over an hour ago to the track and we are not sure what the plans are for the weekend. Justin Pawlak’s Mustang doesn’t sound like it has been fixed as of yet (camshaft broken) and I am waiting from Falken Team Manager to return my call in a few minutes. So I will update this post as I get more information but I do know Tyler McQuarrie has driven RHD before and Justin Pawlak never has before. Not sure what the details of this will be but seems interested they have trailered up a spec legal Formula Drift car to the track. Sadly James Deane is still in Ireland so we won’t be seeing him!

UPDATE at 3:17pm PST: I spoke with J Brad and the Falken S15 is sitting at the track for Tyler McQuarrie in case they cannot get Justin Pawlak’s Ford Mustang fixed.

Justin Pawlak blew an engine yesterday at the track and apparently really wanted some seat time at the Thursday night practice. With the help of Team Falken he removed Tyler McQuarrie from the Nissan 350z and ran practice in his car. At one point Justin almost looked like he was going to crash the Nissan 350z which could of sidelined Tyler McQuarrie for the whole weekend.

Please note that Thursday practice isn’t an official Formula D practice so the one car rule is not applicable yet. This means that Justin Pawlak won’t have to spend the whole weekend competing in the 350z. We hope that they at least let Tyler head back to the Golden Nugget and gamble away the night since driving wasn’t an option for him. I reached out to Tyler after not seeing him at the track last night and never got a reply from him but something tells me he probably wasn’t very happy about this move in the least.

UPDATE 3:43pm – After talking to J Brad (Team Falken Motorsports Director) he has informed me that Justin Pawlak was not involved in the decision to remove Tyler. He said it was solely a team call made by him (a hard one at that). J Brad informed me that we can do a fan question based interview sometime after this event so look out for a post on the website. This will shed some more light on this deal.

Formula Drift launched an “Insider” weekly video podcast a la Drift Zone version 2.0 (for you old timers) this week. The first episode has Ryan Sage talking about the first 5 rounds of the series. Then Justin Pawlak visits for a minute to tell us about his broken clutch in Seattle and how he is ready for Las Vegas Motor Speedway in a few weeks. All of this bundled with a closing from a brunette named Marcella wrapped up the first episode. We will keep you posted on these if when they come out and talk about any topics they break for the sport.

Watch Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YeKSj6RDVw&feature=player_embedded

Our resident blogger Dennis Mertzanis told some stories about driving into the main event at Formula D Seattle after losing a tough battle to Chris Forsberg in the Top 16. He defeated Justin Pawlak who suffered mechanical troubles in the Top 32 moving along to face another Drift Alliance member. To show my appreciation for Dennis being a blogger I was even his umbrella girl (pictures if you follow his blog post link). Read about his weekend adventure at Evergreen Speedway.

Read his Blog: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/dennis/2011/08/03/seattle-wa-round-4-of-formula-drift/

So I spent a few minutes doing math (negating logic) and discovered that heading into Formula Drift Las Vegas 15 drivers still have a shot at the championship. While some of them will be quickly eliminated once Dai Yoshihara scores a qualifying spot in Las Vegas it is still pretty awesome to see that so many drivers could in theory make it happen. Thank Wrecked Magazine for doing math that you didn’t want to do or have no idea how to do later.

1. Daijiro Yoshihara
2. Justin Pawlak
3. Chris Forsberg
4. Darren McNamara
5. Matt Powers
6. Tyler McQuarrie
7. Ryan Tuerck
8. Conrad Grunewald
9. Vaughn Gittin Jr.
10. Kyle Mohan
11. Fredric Aasbo
12. Toshiki Yoshioka
13. Rhys Millen
14. Ken Gushi
15. Odi Bakchis

The first thing I thought of as I watched Justin Pawlak’s weekend go up in flames was that the near perfect 2010 season put on his by teammate Vaughn Gittin Jr. all fell apart at Evergreen Speedway as well. He had a super early elimination against Fredric Aasbo but found the podium every other weekend in the year.

Justin Pawlak started the weekend off by being parked during late night Friday practice as the ASD guys swapped his differential. He got bored and came out to the media pit where we put him to work as a Wrecked Magazine photographer for the evening. He stood out by the track chatting with us and Joon Maeng who was also suffering from some car issues at the time and not running.

Then moving into Saturday one could only think that the ASD Ford Mustang would be spot on for Top 32 and moving forward. Apparently some clutch issues plagued the Mustang and caused Justin Pawlak to mess up all around the track. This gave 31st qualifier Dennis Mertzanis the pass into the Top 16 as he put on the runs of his life preventing any errors to give the battle a OMT.

With only two events left on the schedule the car must hold together as he battles Daijiro Yoshihara for a championship. If the two Falken Tire drivers are not careful they could be passed by Chris Forsberg who now only sits 43 points behind Dai Yoshihara in the race.

The one thing Daijiro Yoshihara could do over the Round 5 weekend was drive his way to a first place finish to take back the championship lead and that is exactly what he did. He has managed to edge out Justin Pawlak with two rounds left after he suffered serious car problems throughout the weekend. Dai currently sits with 412 points while Justin Pawlak is back with 397 points in second.

Formula Drift Evergreen Speedway qualifying ended today with Tyler McQuarrie taking the top spot. The rest of the qualifying order is below:

1 Tyler McQuarrie – 94.5
2 Justin Pawlak – 93.5
3 Rhys. Millen – 89.6
4 Daijiro Yoshihara – 86.9
5 Odi Bakchis – 86
6 Conrad. Grunewald – 85.1
7 Joon. Maeng – 83.7
8 Fredric. Aasbo – 82.1
9 Dean. Kearney – 81.3
10 Ryan. Tuerck – 80.3
11 Michael. Essa – 76.4
12 Vaughn. Gittin – 75.7
13 Matt. Powers – 75.1
14 Walker Wilkerson – 74.7
15 Chris. Forsberg -74.5
16 Alex. Lee – 72.8
17 Alax. Pfeiffer – 71.4
18 Otto. Graven – 71.2
19 Darin. McNamara – 71
20 Charles. Ng – 66.8
21 Matt Field – 66.5
22 Kyle Mohan – 65.1
23 Toshiki Yoshioka – 64.6
24 Roland Gallagher – 62.8
25 Ross Petty – 61
26 Ken. Gushi – 60.6
27 Cyrus Martinez – 60.5
28 Robbie Nishida – 57
29 Jeff Jones – 56.1
30 Ryan Kado – 55.2
31 Dennis Mertzanis – 52.3
32 Luke Longberger – 52.2