10 Things We Learned At Formula Drift Vegas
|
Formula Drift hadn't been to Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 14 years.
After a long run of temporary courses, new venues and a 2026 season that has already taken teams across the country, the series finally came back to Vegas and dropped the PRO and PROSPEC fields into The Bullring. The track worked and by Saturday night, the championship picture had been turned completely upside down. But Vegas also felt like a late-season Formula Drift event in every possible way. The cars are tired, the drivers are tired, the points are getting serious and there isn't much room left for things to go wrong.
Here are ten things that stood out.
Dmitriy Brutskiy Is 3x PROSPEC Champion
Brutskiy came into Vegas leading the PROSPEC championship, but that lead wasn't exactly comfortable. Webb was seven points behind. The entire thing was close enough that one bad run could change everything. Brutskiy didn't need to win the event. He needed to get through it.
And he did.
By the end of the night, Brutskiy was the 2026 Formula Drift PROSPEC champion, beating out Webb and the rest of the field to claim the title. It's the kind of championship that gets decided over an entire season but can feel like it came down to a single weekend. The funny thing about Vegas is that Brutskiy's title probably won't be remembered because of one spectacular run. It'll be remembered because when the pressure showed up, he had enough of a points cushion to keep things pointed in the right direction.
That's how championships are won.
Braden Lons Had a Hell of a Weekend
Sixteen years old, first PROSPEC win and finishing third in the championship. Not bad for a weekend in the desert.
Lons arrived in Vegas sixth in the PROSPEC standings and left third after putting together a 50-point run through the final round. He beat Camren Sorensen in the championship fight by just two points, and his weekend included a Top 16 win over the Vegas native himself. The final against Kasey Kohl wasn't exactly a walk in the park either. The judges split the decision before Lons came away with the win.
The bigger story is what it means going forward. The top three in PROSPEC are eligible for a Formula Drift PRO license, and Lons is now sitting there with one of them. He's sixteen and the future of FD doesn't seem particularly interested in waiting its turn.
Jason Webb Was One Battle Away From a Different Story
Jason Webb came into Vegas seven points behind Dmitriy Brutskiy in the PROSPEC championship. That's close enough to make your whole weekend feel like the battle. Then his front suspension broke in the Top 8.
Webb finished fifth on the night and still walked away with the PROSPEC Rookie of the Year title, but the championship itself went to Brutskiy. There's something particularly brutal about a season ending that way. Webb had done the hard part by putting himself within striking distance. In the end, a piece of hardware underneath the car made the decision. That's racing. Sometimes the championship isn't lost because somebody drove worse. Sometimes the car simply decides it's done.
Branden Sorensen Started Vegas Like a Local Should
If there was one driver who looked like he had figured Vegas out before everybody else, it was Branden Sorensen. The Las Vegas native put up the fastest qualifying score on both of his runs, finishing with a 91.4 and earning the top qualifying spot, four championship points and a bye directly into the Top 16.
Then came Saturday.
Sorensen eventually lost to Matt Field in the Top 8 and finished fifth, but that's almost beside the point. He had put himself exactly where a championship contender needed to be, and he left Vegas third in the title fight. There was no fairy tale hometown win, however, it was a pretty damn good hometown performance
Conor Shanahan Just Blew the Championship Wide Open
Coming into Vegas, Conor Shanahan was five points behind James Deane and left with a 47-point lead. That's how crucial winning is when you're this late in the season.
Shanahan tore through Round 7 and finished the night by beating Matt Field in the Finals which definitely lived up to that standard, and the judges unanimously gave Shanahan the win. One round remains and suddenly, Conor Shanahan is the guy everybody else has to chase.
Matt Field Had One of His Better Weekends of the Season
Field didn't win but second place in Vegas may have been more important than it looks.
After finishing fourth in Seattle, Field backed it up with a Finals appearance in Vegas and moved from eighth to seventh in the championship standings. More importantly, the Corvette looked comfortable on a track where commitment and proximity were both being rewarded.
He and Shanahan were consistently near the top of the UDSM proximity numbers throughout the night, which made their Finals battles some of the most exciting battles of the weekend. Field has had a season with plenty of ups and downs. Vegas felt like one of the weekends where things finally started pointing in the right direction.
Cole Richards Is Making the Rookie Championship Boring
That's a compliment.
Richards finished tenth in Vegas, his second consecutive impressive late-season result after finishing tenth in Seattle as well. More importantly, he now holds a 41-point advantage over Cody Buchanan in the Rookie of the Year race.
There was another important number attached to that tenth-place finish: Richards sits 11th overall in the PRO championship.For a rookie driving a Toyota GT86 into a field full of established championship contenders, that's a pretty serious first season. At this point, the rookie championship isn't really about whether Richards belongs, it's about how well he’s going to do next year.
Daniel Stuke Came Out of Nowhere and Finished Fourth
Daniel Stuke might have had the result that gets overlooked when everyone starts talking about the podium.
He finished fourth and that's not a typo.
Stuke made it all the way to the Final 4 before his Vegas run ended, scoring 30 championship points and jumping into 13th in the overall standings. It's an especially notable result considering what happened to his car in Seattle. Stuke was forced to borrow a familiar loaned BMW after his car was involved in a heavy Top 32 collision with Dylan Hughes.
A month later, he's back in the Final 4 which is the kind of turnaround that tells you a little about the fellas behind these drives. The damage gets fixed, the car gets loaded back into the trailer and everybody goes again.
Trenton Beechum Is Quietly Putting Together a Season
Beechum finished seventh in Vegas.
That doesn't carry the same headline weight as a podium, but it's another solid result in a season where he has continued to chip away at the field. Henow sits 15th in the championship with 56 points, after his success in Vegas added another 20 to his total.
That's the thing about a season-long championship. Not every weekend needs to produce a career-defining moment. Sometimes it's about stacking enough decent weekends together that, when you look up at the end, you've quietly built something substantial.
Beechum's Vegas result was a prime example of one of those weekend and while he may be out for the 2026 championship, maybe this is the momentum he needs moving into next year.
These Cars Are Tired
By Vegas, the season was starting to show its mileage.
James Deane's championship leading Mustang didn't make it through the Top 32 after an engine failure and Odi Bakchis was forced out after an incident with Shinji Minowa, then suffered an engine failure when he returned to the line. Two of the biggest names in the field were suddenly spectators before the night really got going. That doesn't mean Formula Drift cars are unreliable. It means these cars have been through an entire season of abuse. Eventually, something gives.
And with Long Beach still ahead, everyone is asking the same question in a slightly different way: who’s going to survive the last round?
Maybe Vegas and Long Beach Should Swap Places
There was a lot to like about the return to Las Vegas.
The Bullring provided a legitimate drift course, Formula Drift invested in new paving and infrastructure, and more the stands were filled for the series' return after 14 years. The track itself was challenging and the layout gave the drivers enough room to actually create battles that were worth watching.
But then there's the heat.
Formula Drift's Saturday schedule had PRO competition running from the afternoon into late evening, with the Top 32 beginning at 3:30 p.m. and the Top 16 not starting until 8 p.m. The championship racing didn't wrap until after 11 p.m.
September in Las Vegas is still a brutal place to ask teams, drivers and spectators to spend an entire afternoon around a race track. Which raises the question.
What if Long Beach and Las Vegas swapped places?
Vegas later in the year would give the event a better shot at more comfortable temperatures and Vegas could then close the season, putting the championship finale on one of the biggest stages in the world. It would also give the series an opportunity to finish both championships on the same weekend, with the PROSPEC title already being decided in Vegas this year.
Obviously, schedules aren't Legos. Contracts, venue availability, weather and logistics all get involved. But after watching Vegas work as well as it did, it's hard not to think about how much better the experience could be if the temperature wasn't fighting the event, too.
