What it takes to win the world's biggest drift event
The Drift Masters final hits Warsaw this weekend, and winning it is about the hardest thing there is in the sport. Here's what it actually takes, and why the Irish keep pulling it off.
The Drift Masters final is on this weekend, and it's the biggest thing drifting has. 55,000 people packed into a football stadium in Warsaw, the best drivers in the world, a title that comes down to the very last runs of the year. If you've any interest in cars, you want to watch it. And it's worth knowing what you're looking at, because winning this is brutally hard.
Start with where they do it. They build a 450-metre asymmetrical figure of eight on the floor of the stadium and wall the whole thing in with concrete. Barely a car's width to play with, a barrier waiting on every mistake, a fresh and slippery surface, and all of it indoors with a full house looking down on you. It's the tightest, most unforgiving arena in the sport.
It starts with qualifying: two runs at a line the judges set, scored on how close and committed you run it with the concrete a few feet away the whole time. Conor Shanahan put down a 98 out of 100 at the last round in Germany and made it look boring. Making something that hard look calm is most of the skill.
Then the tandems, and this is where it's really won and lost, because you have to nail both ends of it. Leading, the whole game is momentum, and here that means being brave enough to hold a wide line, right out by the concrete, to keep the car flowing. It's the fastest, most fluid way round, and it's the easiest way to put it in the wall. Chasing is its own kind of nasty: an awkward initiation to time, and then the last transition into the final corner, the one that's caught chaser after chaser out over the years. Time it right and you come across the line still pinned to the lead car's door, exactly what the judges want to see. Get it a fraction wrong and the gap opens, or you kiss the wall, and that's your weekend. Do it right five rounds running, on tyres that give up after two laps, and the title's yours.
This one's won in the last few seconds. On that final transition, still glued to the lead car's door.
At this level it's a team sport too. The two drivers leading the championship are both Polish, Piotr Więcek and Paweł Korpuliński, and Więcek has help coming. His spotter of many years, Łukasz Kaliszewski, is in the field this weekend, in the very car Więcek handed down to him, and every rival Kaliszewski takes out is one fewer threat to the leader. A title gets settled on more than who drives best. It comes down to who takes points off whom, and who has someone in their corner when it counts.
Which is where the Irish come in, and it's worth looking at the actual table. Of the top seven drivers in the world this season, five are Irish. Conor Shanahan sits third, closest of anyone to the two Poles. James Deane, a five-time Formula Drift champion, is fourth. Jack Shanahan is fifth. Conor Falvey and Duane McKeever are next. Conor, James and Jack can all still catch the title with a big enough weekend, and every one of the Irish can take a chunk out of a Pole in a tandem. Five rounds of that, and Warsaw gets very awkward for Więcek and Korpuliński.
They've each got their own weekend to chase, too. Duane McKeever owns this floor, he swept it in 2024 with a perfect score, and he'll want that feeling again after a couple of quieter years. Alan Hynes turns up as the reigning Irish Drift Champion and does what Hynes does, no fuss, plenty of pace. Harry Kerr has had a rough season in the E46, and a big run in front of this crowd would go a long way to proving he belongs on this grid.
And there's a goodbye wrapped up in it. Drift Games, the team David Egan built, runs its last event this weekend before it winds up. Egan came up owning the British Drift Championship and commentating on Drift Masters before he ever got in a car himself, and his young Cork driver Conor Falvey has had the year of his life, a first Drift Masters podium and sixth in the world. Ending a team is a strange, heavy thing. Ending it with a result, in front of 55,000 people, is the version everyone in that garage is chasing.
Every one of those drivers was a nervous beginner once, Shanahan included. The first go at this is a lot closer than a stadium in Warsaw makes it look. You come to Bishopscourt, we put you in a real drift car with a coach beside you, and by the end of the day you're doing the thing you've spent the weekend watching. Most people surprise themselves.
The first slide is yours whenever you want it. Watch the best in the world go at it this weekend, then come and do it yourself.
See upcoming dates at Bishopscourt
The Red Bull Drift Masters Grand Finale is live on Red Bull TV this weekend, 11 to 12 September.
Hero image: James Deane, Drift Masters / Paddy McGrath.