Cork-native Conor Shanahan may still only be 16 years old, but he's already proven himself in the world of drift racing. Now he has been signed up by Red Bull as one of its full-time athletes. To date, he is the youngest driver to win Irish, British and European pro-drifting events and despite the current global situation he is keeping in top shape and ready to return to competitive action as soon as possible.
Speaking about the announcement, Conor said: "It's been a crazy journey to here, I've never dealt with something as big as this, so trying to adapt to all of this has been awesome, but also challenging at times. The car is looking unbelievable and it's been a dream come true to see the car finished. It is a real proud moment for myself and my whole family, to have the car looking like it does - it is a dream come true."
Using simulators to keep in top form
Throughout his racing career, Conor has used simulators to help practice and hone his craft. So it's no surprise that during the current restrictions on movement, Shanahan has turned to spending more hours on his home setup, though it's not purely drifting. "I've been virtual drifting for something like six years and even for my first event, I learned the track and based the car set up on what I learned from the sim, so it is a great background to have and I think if you can use a simulator you can drive the car - and sometimes the sim is harder to master than the actual car.
For training you sit down and analyse the track, see what gear you're going to use in real life and it can give you a great insight into the track even before you get there, which helps a lot. I was probably one of the first people in drifting to be constantly on the sim, now it's quite popular and there's a lot of drifters who have simulators. But at the start, it was just one other guy and me and funnily enough we battled a lot on the simulator and then in our first pro-am championship we battled it out for the championship in Mondello park."
But even when he's not practising for upcoming events, Conor can usually be found online racing against his friends online in a rally car. "I've got some good friends, and we have a good group of good drivers so we'd be on together and most of the time when you're having fun is when you learn the most stuff. Sometimes you'll find something new or a different approach or technique", added Conor.
Whenever the drifting season resumes, you'll be able to follow Conor as he aims for the championship title in is ballistic 700hp Red Bull Nissan.