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Calvin Wan (Discount Tire / Falken Tires Nissan S15 Silvia)

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Calvin Wan has always been passionate about cars and performance. As a kid growing up, he was captivated by anything with wheels and speed. From playing with R/C cars and extreme sports like skateboarding and snowboarding to building and racing full out competition racecars, Calvin has always been an remarkable performer. He has been immersed deep in automotive culture at all levels. He is a car builder, and has been building up his personal cars for competitive use since 1995. Calvin has owned and competed with over 25 cars, motorcycles, and competition vehicles over the years. He is an avid die cast car collector and has several of his competition drift cars made into die cast replicas from renowned toy companies like Jada Toys.

The first type of racing Calvin got into was drag racing back in 1995 when the import drag racing scene in the west coast was first starting up. He collected over 100+ time slips over the 3 years he was heavily involved with the sport. Calvin then discovered autocrossing in 1998. He was intrigued with the sport because it involved more driver skill than just all out car performance. He autocrossed with several different car platforms and became a successful driver competing at the national level. This translated into rallycrossing, which gave him a taste of sliding cars around in the dirt.

Always eager to try new things, Calvin began riding sport bikes and attended a renowned motorcycle track school called DP Safety School in 2001. His love for speed got him hooked on racetracks, which lead him to participate in a lot of motorcycle track days for the next couple of years.

Calvin has always been fond of Japanese car tuning. He has been exposed to a lot of Japanese car magazines and videos as early as the mid / early 90’s. Born and raised in San Francisco, Calvin was one of the select few that knew about drifting early on and first found out about Drifting through these Japanese media outlets. His first attempts of drifting was back in 1996 with a front wheel drive, then later with several other rear drive platforms including a couple of AE86’s. But it wasn’t until he heard that Speedtrials was holding drift run groups during their track days back in 2002 that he finally got serious about drifting. He has been hooked ever since.

Calvin’s first drift competition was back in Jan. 2003 when Option Video came to the US and held an Ikaten event. Dedicated to the sport, he then traveled down to Southern California every month from SF to drive and compete at any drift event that came up. Calvin’s professional drifting career started later that year when he became one of the first US drivers to compete in the inaugural D1 Grand Prix USA professional drift event.

Calvin has competed in every round of the Formula Drift Championship series since their inaugural season in 2004 and has always been a major player in the series. Calvin became a full time Team Driver for Falken Tires in 2004 and began driving Falken owned works cars for them ever since. He piloted the Discount Tire / Falken 240sx to a 3rd place podium finish during round 3, and finished 4th overall in the championship series that year. In 2005, Calvin hade history and became the first driver in the Formula Drift series to win in an import car with the Falken Tire Infiniti G35. He has driven the Falken Mazda RX-7 at many prestigious events both nationally and internationally over the years. For the 2009 season, Calvin will be piloting the new Falken Nissan S15 Silvia. On top of the main championship series, Calvin also competes in Formula D’s International Competitions and Team Drifting Competition Series in which his teams received 1st Place Overall in 2008 and 2nd place overall in 2007.

Outside of the Formula D series, Calvin got selected to be one of the stunt drivers for the Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift movie. From that movie, he became a member of the Screen Actors Guild and has been stunt driving for other films and TV commercials like Crank 2 and Toyota. On top of stunt driving, Calvin has continued his racing efforts and received his racing license back in 2003. He has since competed in several NASA’s 25hr endurance race including the inaugural race in 2003, as well as other road races and time attacks achieving several podium finishes. Calvin attends over 20 professional events each year and has gotten extensive media coverage with both national and international media outlets throughout the years.

In 2007, Calvin became a published author writing the Calvin Wan’s Drifting Performance Handbook with Motorbooks International. Calvin also is an experienced Drifting Judge and Instructor. He has judged for several organizations such as Drift Mania Canadian Championship and Drift Showoff. He also holds Drifting Performance Clinics and offers private and group drift instruction. From becoming one the first US D1 Grand Prix drivers in 2003, to becoming the first professional driver to write a book about drifting, C.Wan is considered one of the pioneers in the sport of drifting.



 
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