For the third article this week on Jack Shanahan we thought we would bring you something a bit different and take a look at the hard work that goes into keeping these performance cars running between rounds.
I took up the Shanahan’s offer to travel back to Ireland with them after the final round of the British Drift Championship and see what goes on behind the scenes.
In an ideal world Jack would have an easy week and some time to celebrate becoming the 2015 British Drift Champion.
In reality we got to their house at about 9:30am on the Monday following the final BDC round, the car was unloaded from the race truck by about 10:30.
By 11am the car had been loaded onto a flatbed and taken to DeaneMsport where Jack promptly disassembled the engine, removing the manifold and head to see what caused the issues during the previous event.
The head gasket had gone and the head was warped, this would need to be skimmed and everything reassembled ready for the next weekend for the final round of the Irish Drift Championship.
Whilst the head went away to be skimmed there wasn’t too much else that could be done so Jack headed off to school for a few days, by Thursday everything was starting to be put back together.
Friday came around quickly and the car was still needing work, once the engine was running the car still had to have the rear sub frame removed and the fuel tank dropped out to repair the cause of their fire earlier in the year.
It would be a late night before we could leave for the track, I think we left for Mondello Park sometime around 2am, I can’t even remember what time we arrived as by now I was struggling with the lack of sleep.
If you have read anything about the final round of the Irish Drift Championship then you will know that all of this work didn’t matter, Jack had to borrow a car to be able to compete due to the issues.
Personally I found a huge amount of respect for all of the people involved with drifting as although I knew roughly what goes into it all away from the events, it’s nothing until you have been in the garage for hours with the guys working on the cars.
