Two months ago, the Formula Drift event in Connecticut played host to a first – an all-Irish podium. Evenmore unusual, all three actually grew up six minutes apart on a stretch of road between Mallow and Fermoy, Co Cork.
Right now, the same three men occupy three of the top five places in Europe’s premier drifting championship – and three of the top four in America’s. Between them, they hold five Formula Drift world titles and two Drift Masters European titles.
Drifting, unlike Formula One, is a judged motorsport. Two cars run a course sideways, sliding through corners in controlled, high-speed skids, with points awarded for speed and angle.
Competitors run in pairs – a “lead” car and a “chase” car – with the chase driver expected to copy the leader’s line as closely as possible without making contact. Each run lasts around 30 seconds and there’s no margin for error.
RM Block
Funnily enough, James Deane, Jack Shanahan and Conor Shanahan didn’t find each other through the sport.
“Where I grew up, it’s like one kilometre from their house,” Deane says. He was already drifting when Jack, the elder of the two brothers, started hanging around. Deane began teaching him the basics when Jack was 12. He’s 27 now. “That’s like 15 years, which is crazy.”
Conor came next, tagging along behind his brother. By 13, Conor was appearing on The Grand Tour with Richard Hammond. Within five years, he’d become the youngest driver ever to win British, Irish and European professional drifting titles – including, sensationally, a win over Deane in his Drift Masters rookie season in Poland.
“It’s wild,” Deane says. “The sport I’m doing, we’re competing against so many international drivers and the most competitive guys I battle are my neighbours.”
The three of them are, by any reasonable measure, each other’s fiercest rivals. But as Deane puts it: “We all support each other and help each other out. We try to practise together in the off-season so we can be as good as we can be.”
That closeness doesn’t dilute the rivalry. “We definitely all kind of know the tricks of the trade,” Deane says, “but in drifting at the highest level, it’s all about risk assessment. If you don’t risk it, there’s no reward. And sometimes, if you risk it too much, you can take yourself out. So it’s about finding that perfect balance in the heat of the moment.”
This June in Connecticut, the rivalry produced that piece of history: the first all-Irish podium in Formula Drift’s history, James Deane first followed by Jack Shanahan and Conor Shanahan.
“It was unbelievable,” Deane says. “We’re in America, competing against so many different nationalities all over the world that travel to Formula Drift to compete at the top level . . . And when it’s yourself and literally two neighbours from over the road that you’ve known for years, sharing a podium together and making history together [it’s special].”
Deane, now a five-time Formula Drift champion – the most in the sport’s history – leads this year’s US championship with three rounds remaining, while Jack sits third.
Conor is third in the European Drift Masters standings heading into the Grand Finale in Poland on September 12th, an event expected to draw a sell-out crowd of 55,000.
Deane is happy to credit the brothers with recognising something he’d already proven was possible. “They come from a motorsport background, but grassroots style, where it was self-funded, [with] local companies helping out where they can,” he says.
“But I guess when my career started to really take off . . . I think it opened a lot of people’s eyes. If we play our cards right, we can potentially make this our career, our job.”
For a sport with no real tradition in Ireland – a country better known internationally for rally driving – the concentration of talent from one small part of Cork is, even to Deane, slightly bewildering. There have been 15 Irish drifters down the years in the sport – all from Cork, with five from Buttevant alone. Clearly, there’s something in the tyre smoke.
Deane came into the sport through his brother, who won an Irish drift event in 2002 when Deane was nine or ten. “I just loved what I saw,” he says. “When I saw a sport that was only about cars sliding sideways, it ticked all the boxes.”
Two decades on, drifting’s global hierarchy has quietly inverted. “It used to be Japan,” he says. “Now everyone says the Irish drivers are the best in the world.”
In September, Deane will have been competing for 20 years. He’s marking it with his own event at Mondello Park, Co Kildare, on September 19th-20th. International names have answered the call and will participate in the event, including former Formula Drift rivals.
Fittingly, for a driver now racing for Ford, Deane points out that the connection between Cork and the Ford name runs deeper than his sponsorship. Henry Ford’s father, William, was born in West Cork before emigrating. That’s part of the reason why Ford built its first factory in Cork in 1917. “I feel like it’s 50-50 whether it’s an American car or an Irish one,” Deane quips.
Three drivers, one townland, two continents’ worth of championships between them. On September 12th, the three could be reunited again on the podium in Warsaw.
