10 Things We Learned at Formula DRIFT Long Beach: Shoreline Showdown

He walked in with a 47-point lead, but the title wasn’t mathematically done. Then he drew Jhonnattan Castro in the Top 32. Castro dropped two tires outside the track limits in Zone 4, and Conor became champion in only his third year in the series, finishing 224 points to Deane’s 218. He was then knocked out in the Top 16 by Simen Olsen, which hardly mattered. That’s how you win a title: you show up and stay consistent

Deane had his worst showing in Vegas due to a mechanical failure. Four weeks later, the five-time champ won the final round of the season and took second in the standings, just six points behind Conor. Jack Shanahan topped qualifying with a 91.5, ahead of Deane’s 90.4, and got a bye through the first heat because only 31 drivers qualified for 32 spots. In the final he chased Deane all the way to Zone 6 before spinning out while trying to keep the pressure on. His take afterward was that he thought he had it, until he didn’t. Third in the championship is a good second season, but he’d trade it for the win.

Conor, Deane and Jack took the top three spots in the championship, and Aasbo (Norway) and Bakchis (Lithuania) came sixth and seventh, so five of the top seven are European. Conor also won the 2025 Drift Masters title, and Deane finished second in the Drift Masters opener in Rome before heading to Atlanta. The American counterpoint is Vaughn Gittin Jr.’s surprise Atlanta win, and he’s semi-retired. So is Europe simply better right now, or is America between heavy hitters?

LZ lost a tight Final 4 battle to Jack, but his third-place finish was his best of the season and moved him from 14th to ninth in the standings. He then told the grandstands he won’t be back in 2027. He says it’s not over for him, just a pause. He wasn’t the only one leaving. Simen Olsen is leaving the series after joining in 2021, and he knocked out Conor in the Top 16 on his way out. Ryan Tuerck, who announced his exit at the beginning of the season, went out in the Top 32 in his last start as a full-timer. Judge Brian Eggert is stepping down after 15 seasons. That’s a lot of history leaving in one weekend.

Branden started the night fighting for a top-three finish. A broken power steering pulley on the Sorensen Motorsports Quad Lock BMW ended it in the Top 32, and he finished 17th. He still finished fourth overall with 165 points, ahead of Matt Field, Chris Forsberg, Cole Richards and Vaughn Gittin Jr. Behind the three Irishmen he’s the top-ranked American, and he’s 21. The family isn’t slowing down either: 14-year-old Camren Sorensen became the youngest winner in Formula DRIFT history at Indianapolis. Remember the name for 2027.

Rome Charpentier might have gotten away with one in his Top 32 battle at FD Long Beach 2. After making contact with Connor O’Sullivan, the subsequent spin seemed rather suspicious, but neither the judges nor the Wally scoring system could definitively prove foul intent. In a sport where every inch of proximity and every movement gets scrutinized, that's a pretty convenient gray area. Whether it was a calculated move or an instinctive reaction, the lack of a clear call meant Charpentier lived to fight another battle. Sometimes the best luck you can have is when the evidence just isn't there.

The three-time champion fought mechanical problems all weekend and didn’t reach the Top 16. He finished the year 11th in the standings with 82 points, a long way from where he started. In May he topped rain-interrupted qualifying in Orlando, so the speed was there. The car just didn’t always cooperate.

Richards fought engine trouble from practice onward and lost to Tommy Lemaire in the Top 32. But Cody Buchanan and Nate Chen went out early too, and the 41-point cushion he’d built was enough to hold off his rivals. It wasn’t the way he’d have drawn it up, but the trophy counts the same.

Field beat Olsen in the Top 8, then got aggressive on Deane in the Final 4. The two collided on the initiation into Zone 1 and Field’s night was over. He finished fourth, which moved him from seventh to fifth in the standings. Hard to fault the commitment.

Conor drives the Red Bull / GT Radial / JYR Toyota GT86, and GT Radial had said it wanted its first-ever Driver’s Championship. Conor delivered it. The brand also won the Tire Cup for the second year in a row, by a significant margin, its third after the first in 2023 and one in 2025. 

The bigger question: LZ, Olsen, Tuerck and Eggert are out, Forsberg is 44 and winless in the standings’ top ten, Conor is 23 with a title, and three Irishmen own the top of the table. Who is Formula DRIFT built around in 2027, and can an American close the gap?