Conor Shanahan Takes The Bullring: Full Formula DRIFT Las Vegas PRO Coverage
Las Vegas did exactly what a new Formula DRIFT venue is supposed to do: it made everybody work for it.
The Bullring was not just another flat temporary course with a different wall layout. Formula DRIFT came back to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, put Round 7 inside the short-track oval, and gave the PRO field a bank-to-flat transition that was exposing setup problems before the battles even started.
Then the championship fight got turned upside down.
Formula DRIFT’s official Las Vegas results page now shows Conor Shanahan first, Matt Field second and Jack Shanahan third. The bracket is posted. The podium is posted. The points table on the event page is still marked Pending, and the main standings page has not yet been updated from the pre-Las Vegas totals, so we are not going to make up championship numbers that Formula DRIFT has not confirmed yet.
What we can say is this: James Deane came into Las Vegas leading Conor Shanahan by five points. Deane went out in the Top 32. Conor won the event. Whatever the finalized math looks like, the title picture going into Long Beach is very different than it was when the weekend started.
The Bullring was already telling on cars in qualifying
Thursday night made the first part of the story pretty obvious. Branden Sorensen put down a 91.4 and took top qualifier. Conor Shanahan was right behind him at 91.03. Chris Forsberg was third at 89.13.
Sorensen’s qualifying result was not a fluke. Formula DRIFT specifically noted that he put up the best score on both of his runs. At a brand-new competition venue, being able to repeat the lap mattered.
And the track was not being gentle.
One of the things we were watching closely was how hard some cars were getting into the ground coming off the banking. Jeff Jones was one of the clearest examples. The car was visibly bottoming out on the bank-to-flat transition in qualifying. That is not a criticism of the driver. That is exactly the kind of thing a new track exposes. The vertical load on the bank, the amount of travel the car uses, where the bump stop comes in, how quickly the damper lets the chassis recover, and what happens when the car unloads all show up at once.
You can have a car that feels great on a flat course and find out very quickly that it does not have enough margin when the track starts throwing vertical load into the equation.
Friday already gave us a preview of what Vegas was going to reward
Before the PRO field took over Saturday, PROSPEC gave everybody a full night of battles on the same surface.
Braden Lons won the final PROSPEC round. Kasey Kohl finished second. Dustyn Farrell took third in his rookie season after knocking out Dmitriy Brutskiy in the Top 8. Brutskiy still wrapped up his third PROSPEC championship, while Jason Webb finished second in the championship and Lons jumped all the way to third overall with the round win.
That Friday show was useful because it made one thing clear before PRO even started: this track was rewarding cars and drivers that could stay composed through the bank, get off it cleanly, and still be accurate through the rest of the course.
Deane getting knocked out in Top 32 changed the whole night
James Deane came into Vegas as the championship leader. He qualified seventh with an 86.66 and drew Rudy Hansen in the Top 32.
Hansen advanced.
That one result instantly changed the way the rest of the bracket felt. Conor Shanahan no longer needed to chase Deane through the later rounds. Deane was done for the night, and Conor suddenly had a clean opportunity to make up a huge amount of ground before the season finale.
There is a difference between “driving conservatively because you need points” and “driving to win because the guy ahead of you is already out.” Conor had the latter situation.
Conor’s route to the win was not soft
Conor started from the number-two qualifying position and had Rome Charpentier first. He moved through Charpentier, then Adam LZ, then Trenton Beechum.
That put him into the Final Four against his own brother, Jack Shanahan.
Jack had already put together one of the strongest runs of the night. He worked through Jhonnattan Castro, Ryan Tuerck and Chris Forsberg to get there. With the two brothers matched in the semifinal, one of them was guaranteed to be in the final and the other was still in position to take a podium.
Conor advanced.
That sent Jack to third and Conor into the final against Matt Field.
Matt Field finally got a weekend that looked like Matt Field again
Field came into Las Vegas eighth in the standings. That does not tell the whole story of what he is capable of, and Vegas was a pretty good reminder.
He qualified eighth, then went through Ryan Litteral, Tommy Lemaire, Branden Sorensen and Daniel Stuke to make the final.
The Sorensen battle was a big one. Sorensen had just been the top qualifier and came into the weekend third in the championship. He had the pace, he had the home-town angle, and he had a real opportunity to capitalize on Deane going out early.
Field ended that run in the Top 8.
From there he beat Stuke in the Final Four and got Conor in the final.
Conor took the win. Field took second. For a driver who has been near the front of this series for years, it was one of those rounds that looked much more like what people expect to see from that Corvette program.
Jack on the podium made the family photo even better
Jack Shanahan finished third, which meant both brothers left Las Vegas on the podium.
That is easy to gloss over because Conor’s championship situation is the bigger story, but Jack has been quietly putting together a very serious season of his own. He came into Vegas fourth in the standings, only one point ahead of Aurimas Bakchis and four ahead of Fredric Aasbo.
A third-place result keeps him right in the middle of that fight heading into the last round.
Sorensen was fast enough to win, but qualifying speed is not the same thing as surviving the bracket
Branden Sorensen was the fastest qualifier and earned the four qualifying points that came with it. With 31 drivers qualified, his number-one position gave him a bye through the opening slot and into the Top 16.
He beat Cole Richards there, then met Field in the Top 8.
Field advanced.
That is drifting in one sentence: you can be the fastest guy on Thursday and still be finished before the podium on Saturday. Qualifying puts you in position. Tandem decides whether you stay there.
Forsberg and Jones was another one worth watching
Chris Forsberg qualified third and drew Jeff Jones in the Top 32.
Forsberg moved on, then beat Ken Gushi before meeting Jack Shanahan in the Top 8. Jack ended his run there.
Jones qualified 30th with a 61.5. Again, the number by itself does not tell the setup story. Watching that car physically hit the bottom of its travel coming off the bank was one of the better reminders of how different this venue was from what these cars had been running most of the year.
That is the kind of issue a team can actually use. Video of where the car contacts, shock position data, bump-stop engagement, ride height, wheel travel and alignment change through compression all tell you something. “The car felt weird off the bank” does not tell you enough.
The new venue was doing what new venues are supposed to do
Formula DRIFT had not competed at Las Vegas Motor Speedway since the 2008-2012 era, and those events used a temporary course. This time the series moved into The Bullring as part of a three-year agreement and invested in paving and infrastructure updates.
That is good for the series.
The same venues every year eventually create a giant setup database. Everybody knows which gear they want, how much fuel they carry, where the bumps are, how the tire behaves, and roughly what ride height window survives the course.
A new place wipes some of that comfort away.
Vegas made teams figure out a banked oval, a new transition, new sight lines and a surface they had not competed on in this configuration before. Some cars looked immediately comfortable. Some were visibly fighting the transition. That is useful information for anybody who actually builds these things.
PROSPEC was not just filler between PRO sessions either
There is a reason we keep paying attention to PROSPEC and grassroots competition around the country. The next generation is already here.
Lons is 16 years old and just won the final round. Camren Sorensen finished the championship only two points behind him in fourth. Jason Webb finished second overall as a rookie. Dustyn Farrell closed his rookie season on the podium. Kasey Kohl recorded his best PROSPEC finish. Brian Wills won the seeding bracket.
That is a lot of movement in one weekend.
Now it goes back to Long Beach
Formula DRIFT’s schedule shows the final PRO round back on the Streets of Long Beach on October 23-24.
The championship table has not been officially updated from Las Vegas yet, so we are not going to pretend we know the final point spread before Formula DRIFT posts it.
What we do know is enough: Deane arrived in Vegas five points ahead of Conor. Deane went out in Top 32. Conor won. Sorensen qualified first but stopped in the Top 8. Jack finished third. Field finished second.
That is exactly the kind of round that makes the finale worth watching.
Las Vegas was not a throwaway stop before Long Beach. The Bullring changed the setup conversation, exposed cars that were short on margin, rewarded the teams that adapted fastest, gave PROSPEC one of its best storylines of the year, and handed the PRO championship a completely different shape heading into the final event.
That is what a new track is supposed to do.
Sources: Formula DRIFT official 2026 Las Vegas PRO results and bracket; Formula DRIFT Las Vegas qualifying report; Formula DRIFT PROSPEC Las Vegas final-round report; Formula DRIFT 2026 PRO standings; Formula DRIFT HIGH STAKES event page.
Photo note: Every photograph and event graphic used here is from the exact September 24-26, 2026 Formula DRIFT Las Vegas weekend at The Bullring. Several images are from PROSPEC sessions at the same event and are labeled that way rather than being presented as PRO-final photography. No archive-event images were used.
