The hillsides at Road Atlanta were already full before qualifying even started.
Fans packed the fences from Turn 10A all the way up the hill toward the bridge. Every shaded spot along the course turned into a campsite by mid-morning.
Vendors blasted music across the paddock while drift cars barked through anti-lag between runs. Somewhere behind all of it, Gridlife cars were still rolling through tech inspection while the smell of grilled food mixed with burnt tire smoke hung over the facility.
Formula Drift Atlanta always draws a crowd.
This year felt bigger than usual.
Part of that is just Road Atlanta itself. The place works perfectly for drifting. Everything happens downhill and fast, and the entire course rewards commitment. Drivers throw the cars into one of the fastest initiation zones in Formula Drift before trying to keep everything together through transitions that feel way steeper in person than they look on a livestream.
And this past weekend, almost nobody looked interested in leaving themselves a safety margin.
Even during practice, people around the fence were reacting to runs before drivers finished the course. That usually tells you the weekend is going to get interesting pretty quickly.
Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta has also become a huge part of Formula Drift history at this point. Back in 2004, the venue took a pretty big chance on Formula Drift by building the now-famous horseshoe section between Turns 10A and 10B specifically for the series. At the time, drifting was still proving itself in the United States, and now that section has become one of the defining pieces of the entire Formula Drift calendar.
The whole rhythm of the course changes there. Drivers have to transition direction while fully committed downhill, deep in smoke and inches from the wall, before firing toward the final clipping zones.
It’s one of the coolest sections in drifting anywhere.
Qualifying hinted at how serious the weekend was going to become. Aurimas Bakchis grabbed the top spot in his Subaru BRZ, followed by James Deane in his RTR Mustang and Branden Sorensen in his BMW.
Then Saturday night happened.
Top 32 immediately set the tone for the rest of the event. Drivers were entering outrageously deep into initiation, while chase cars stayed glued to doors through transitions where most people would instinctively lift.
One of the biggest surprises of the early rounds came when Adam LZ lined up against Trenton Beechum. LZ’s 2JZ-powered E36 looked aggressive right away, but the battle fell apart after he went wide at Outer Zone 3 and dropped the car into the dirt. The crowd reacted instantly as the BMW lost momentum exiting the zone, handing Trenton one of the bigger upset wins of the round.
The Shanahan brothers probably got some of the biggest reactions from the crowd during the early rounds, though. Jack Shanahan’s battle against Ryan Litteral woke up the entire hillside. Jack’s BMW looked completely planted through the downhill transitions, while Ryan threw everything at him trying to stay attached to the door.
A few battles later, Conor Shanahan and Rome Charpentier somehow turned an already aggressive course into complete chaos. Both drivers kept throwing massive angle into sections where it looked like neither car should realistically fit.
That’s the thing about Road Atlanta: The course rewards commitment more than almost any stop on the Formula Drift calendar, and drivers were using every inch of it all weekend.
By Top 16, the entire atmosphere changed. Night settled in, headlights started cutting through smoke, and suddenly every battle looked more violent under the lights.
And the battle everybody was talking about ended up being Jack Shanahan versus Conor Shanahan.
It was the first sibling battle in Formula Drift history, and it lived up to all the hype around it.
Jack led first in the BMW while Conor chased in the Subaru BRZ, and you could immediately see the level of trust both brothers had in each other. Conor kept the BRZ absolutely glued to the door through the downhill sections and transitions where most drivers would normally leave themselves at least a little room. Instead, both brothers drove each other like they had been doing it their entire lives.
Because they probably have.
The crowd absolutely lost it during the chase run. Fans along the fence were reacting before transitions were even finished as the BRZ stayed buried on the BMW’s door through the horseshoe.
Conor eventually got the win over his brother in one of the best battles of the entire weekend, but unfortunately his night ended shortly afterward when the BRZ suffered a clutch issue before the Great 8, forcing him to withdraw from competition.
Even with the mechanical issue, the Shanahan battle ended up becoming one of those moments people will probably remember from this event years from now.
Vaughn Gittin Jr. looked especially strong once the bracket tightened up. The Mustang seemed perfectly suited for Road Atlanta’s downhill entries, and Vaughn drove the car aggressively without overdriving it. His chase runs against Nate Chen were some of the closest of the weekend, especially through the final clipping zones, where most drivers usually leave at least a little room to recover.
The Great 8 ended up being one of the strongest parts of the entire event.
By that point, everybody left in the bracket was fully committed. Lead cars pushed deeper into clipping zones while chase drivers stopped giving themselves any margin whatsoever. Every run felt like somebody was about to either put together the best battle of the night or completely destroy a car.
Sometimes both.
Vaughn’s battle against Chris Forsberg turned into one of the defining moments of the weekend after contact in Zone 4 sent both cars into the smoke. The crowd immediately exploded while both drivers came to a stop halfway down the course.
And somehow the atmosphere only got louder after that.
By Final 4, the entire facility felt locked in. Tire smoke hung over the course under the lights while fans packed every fence line they could find.
This is where Formula Drift still feels different from most motorsports. The fans aren’t sitting quietly in grandstands politely clapping after battles. People react to drifting. Every big initiation, every near-contact moment and every aggressive chase run immediately gets a response from the crowd.
You can physically feel the energy move around the track.
The finals delivered exactly what everybody wanted, too.
The matchup between Vaughn Gittin Jr. and James Deane already felt huge before the cars even left the line. RTR teammates. Former champions. One of the fastest tracks on the calendar.
James looked incredibly strong all weekend, but a mistake in the finals opened the door for Vaughn, who stayed aggressive and clean through both runs to secure one of the biggest Road Atlanta wins of his Formula Drift career.
The victory meant even more considering it was Vaughn’s first win over James in four consecutive competition meetings between the two drivers. You could feel how much it meant to the RTR team after the final battle ended.
And honestly, it felt fitting.
Nobody looked interested in driving conservatively all weekend.
Walking back through the paddock after the trophy ceremony, the entire facility felt exhausted in the best possible way. Tire smoke covered everything. People sat on coolers replaying favorite battles while cars loaded into trailers under floodlights. Somewhere in the distance, engines still fired occasionally as teams packed up after one of the wildest weekends of the season.
Formula Drift Atlanta still feels a little raw compared to most modern racing events.
That’s probably why people love it so much.
Comments
Sounds like it was absolutely rowdy (in a good way).
I’ll second James’ assessment. Formula Drift got a hugggeee crowd. The atmosphere just rocks. Good vibes = good time, and that starts with the folks that run the entrance gate. Fun people.
SPG123
HalfDork
5/14/26 5:58 p.m.
I went to FD Atlanta in 2014 (my second FD event ever) and haven’t made it back since then. I’ve been to almost every FD Florida event since 2013, but none of them have been as good as that Atlanta round I went to all those years ago.
NickD
MegaDork
5/15/26 8:24 a.m.
While the driving and actual competition have been great this year (Vaughn’s march through the brackets at this event, and the Tuerck/Sorenson battles at Long Beach), Formula Drift as an organization has made some changes this year that are really hurting things for fans. A lot of people angry with some of the stuff they’ve done.
First, the whole automated judging system with the Race Data Labs “Wally” for qualifying flat-out doesn’t work. After Long Beach, there were drivers going on social media and saying that they were told by the event staff that the system wasn’t tracking positioning of the car properly. Supposedly it was fixed, but watching Long Beach, it seemed more like a Random Number Generator for completion of zones. Two cars could take the exact same line and place their cars identically and one guy might get 80% and the other might get 10%. Pretty telling when they would start deleting the zone completion graphic off the livestream at times, because it simply didn’t make any sense. And an issue that’s already starting to develop with the robo-judging is that there’s drivers that have figured out what its looking for and are making these weird, notchy, ugly runs that make “Wally” happy and qualify well despite the hit on style because “Wally” is so much more heavily weighted than the human judged portion for style.
Second, the move from YouTube to Racer+ was absolutely berkeleying stupid. Used to be you could watch Qualifying, Top 32, Top 16 on three different YouTube livestreams. Now, “to grow the sport” they’ve moved Top 16 to being exclusive to Racer+. No idea how taking content off of the largest video platform and moving it to some streaming app even most car guys haven’t heard of “grows the sport.” And they said that the partnership would allow better stream quality but at Long Beach, the colors and visual quality were absolutely atrocious, and then at Atlanta, every run in qualifying would drop the sound, freeze and display a green screen at least twice per run. Also, YouTube, you could watch the stream right after it finished but when I tried to watch the Racer+ Top 16 livestream the next morning, I had to become a paid subscriber. Sorry that I have a life and can’t watch the full event as it happens. Instead, I found some guy who ripped the whole stream and put it on YouTube who watched it there, And any complaints about the move to Racer+ either on social media or in YouTube comments gets very nasty, sarcastic remarks from the official Formula Drift accounts. Real professional, guys.
Third, they’ve now gotten really heavy into sports-betting, and it’s just tiring and a little predatory to have the commentators going on about betting on the sport and trying to convince people to basically get fleeced.
In reply to NickD :
You’re definitely not alone in feeling that way. The on-track driving has been strong this season—there have been some genuinely great battles—but a lot of the conversation around Formula Drift lately has shifted toward the experience around the circus rather than the driving itself.
The judging system is the biggest question mark right now. The Wally system in theory sounds great, drift masters has figured out how to make it work. We just need FD to figure it out as well and default to human judging when the system goes awry. Any time fans and drivers can’t clearly understand how scores are being generated, it creates skepticism fast. Transparency matters, especially when qualifying can shape an entire event.
The streaming change has also been a sticking point for me as well. I loved being able to pull up YouTube if I missed something due to life. The shift to racer seems like a money play in my opinion. Youtube is the largest platform in the world and it worked great up to this point. Accessibility is a huge part of growing any motorsport, and when fans feel like it’s harder—or more expensive—to watch, they’ll stop or complain. The FD staff openly being sassy and petty on social media to fans is unhinged and a poor look on the organization.
The gambling integration point is worth discussing too. Sports betting has become common across major sports these days whether we like it or not. I personally think we need to get rid of it and go back to Tobacco sponsors, I’d much rather see a Marlboro livery on a race car than a commentator egging viewers on to bet on their favorite drivers. That’s a slippery slope that will continue to cripple the Gen Z generation.
At the same time, Formula Drift is trying new things, and sometimes those changes take time to refine. We will see if it all works out or we will see things go back to how they were. Fans being vocal—constructively—is part of what pushes a series to improve.
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