A Day in the Life of: Matt Field

March 22, 2014
Story By
Andrew Modena

If I were to describe Matt Field in one word, it would be ‘driven”. Not to sound cliché with Matt being a racing driver, but pursuing a college degree, building drift cars out of his own shop and rising up the ranks in the Formula Drift Pro Series all at the same time, “driven” seems to describe him perfectly. As if it wasn’t hard enough to accomplish just one of those things, Matt somehow manages to succeed and have fun doing all three. Did I mention that he is only 23 years old?

In conversations with Matt, you begin to understand how driven he is. His father raced off-road his whole life and Matt followed suit. Matt’s racing career started at 4 years old racing quads before moving on to 1/4 midgets and his father’s off-road race truck. As he got older, he turned his attention to drifting and has been hooked ever since. He earned his Formula Drift license at 19 becoming one of the youngest drivers to compete in the series. Matt still races off-road today and recently competed in the Mint 400 with his dad. It was also Matt’s parents that instilled the importance of a college education and pushed him to finish his college degree.

His aggressive driving style has earned him frequent appearances in Top 16, a best finish of 2^nd place at Texas Motor Speedway last year and arguably one of the most memorable battles in Formula Drift history against Daigo Saito at Irwindale in 2012.

With just weeks away from the start of the 2014 Formula Drift season, Matt was texting me about how he had to study for a test. In my mind, I thought, “Don’t you have a car to put together?” Recently finishing work on Charles Ng’s 2014 FD car, Matt has a bit more time to study and work on his own car. He says his daily routine is study, go to the shop and work on the car, then go home and study again – from 9am to 3am.

Conveniently for Matt, his shop The Drift Cave, is only about 4 blocks from the San Jose State University campus where he is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management. Unlike most college commutes that involve getting to school an hour early to look for parking followed by a 20 minute walk to class; Matt doesn’t have to worry about any of that. Instead of grabbing the keys to his luxurious, long wheelbase Jaguar XJ Vanden Plas (complete with lacquered wooden picnic tables behind the front seats) he grabs the keys of his golf cart, a gas powered cart he found for sale while out at an off-road race for $300.

He simply throws his backpack in the back, drives down the street, into campus and up to the front door of the Business building.

After taking a math test, Matt heads back to The Drift Cave, where some friends have come by to help work on his FD car along with some cars being built for other FD drivers.

The Drift Cave consists of his friends Dan Tredway, Dan Chow, Neil, Ty and Murray. Dan Tredway is Matt’s main mechanic and fabricator assisted by Neil and Ty. Dan Chow is Matt’s spotter but off the track he helps Matt with the backend, manages parts, scheduling and the business end of things. Murray handles the wiring and fiberglass work.

With school done for the day, Matt finally gets some time to take care of business. While deciding whats for lunch (possibly Matts only meal of the day), Matt replies to emails, checking the status of parts, sponsorship details and deciding on this year’s livery.

As is the case with just about every other FD driver, there is still a long road to the start of the season. The S14 is far from running; wiring still needs to be done, the Vortech supercharged LS3 is waiting for rings, his Rotiforms are in SoCal getting refinished, parts are in transit, etc. Once all the parts are in, they still need to be installed and tested. With a laundry list of things to do, Matt does not seem stressed one bit. Being his 5^th season competing in Formula Drift, he has gotten used to the tight schedule leading up to Long Beach; so has his girlfriend who has been by his side all of those seasons and even after 20 hour days at the shop.

After lunch its running from shop to shop picking up parts for his FD car and visiting sponsors like VEX Motorsports to check on the status of parts being shipped.

Who would have known that you can find parts fit for an FD car at OSH?

After a long day of driving all over San Jose picking up parts, Matt heads back to the shop for a long night of working on the car. Waiting outside for Matt were FedEx boxes – Sparco seats waiting to be installed - one thing down and a hundred more to go.

This is how Matt will spend every night until April 5^th when Matt and the rest of his Nitto Racing teammates fill the Downtown Long Beach skyline with Nitto tire smoke.

Matt Fields is one of the newest addition to the Nitto Racing Formula Drift team, follow them through the year at NittoRacing.com or keep tabs on him via Matt Field's Facebook page. Come out to see the action April 4 & 5th at Formula Drift's season opener, Streets of Long Beach.

A Day in the Life of: Matt Field

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