Formula Drift’s 2026 season ends this weekend where it started, in Long Beach, with Round 8 running Friday and Saturday, October 23 and 24, as the Shoreline Showdown. I was downtown on Thursday to pick up credentials, and with a few hours to fill before the Type S Night Lights meet in the 400 Garage, I walked the pits while the teams were still unloading. Thursday is the quiet part of a Formula Drift weekend, with cars half out of trailers, tire stacks still wrapped, and crews doing the work nobody sees on Friday and Saturday, which is exactly why it’s worth shooting. The photos below are day zero, before anyone has turned a lap.
The championship heading into this round is close to decided but not done. Conor Shanahan has won three of the six rounds that actually ran this year, taking Round 1 here in Long Beach back in April for his first Formula Drift win, then going back-to-back at Evergreen in August and Las Vegas in September. Vaughn Gittin Jr. won Atlanta, Aurimas Bakchis won Orlando, James Deane won Stafford, and Indianapolis was rained out with only qualifying points awarded. That leaves Shanahan at 212 points in the Red Bull GT Radial JYR Toyota GT86, 47 clear of Deane, with Branden Sorensen one point further back and Jack Shanahan two behind him. The math is simple: Deane, Sorensen, or Jack need to win Saturday while Conor scores nothing, and a single heat win for Conor settles it.
This is also the first time Long Beach has hosted a standalone night round for the PRO championship, run on the course next to the Long Beach Arena, so Saturday’s finale is going to look different from the April opener regardless of how the title plays out.
Our coverage of the Shoreline Showdown is sponsored by Enjuku Racing, who have been behind Tunerzine since the relaunch and whose drag S13 we featured earlier this year. Thanks to the Enjuku crew for making this weekend’s coverage possible. Qualifying and competition galleries follow over the next two days.
GalleryPhotos by Jason Siu
