Here we talk to Shane Lynch and find out why he thinks the Maxxis MAZ1 Drifts are so good!

• Shane, can you tell us how you got into drifting?

I think it was 2005, 2006 and I had just finished circuit racing, I was racing British GPs for a long time and I kind of lost my love for motorsport so I decided to almost retire. Someone asked me if I had heard about drifting and I said I hadn’t, so I came to a test day at Silverstone and I haven’t been out of a drift car since pretty much. I sat in with a guy, and what he did in a car, I didn’t think was possible, it blew my mind and I thought I need to know how to do this and like I said, I’ve been doing it ever since. I love it. In terms of learning, it’s a little bit difficult or certainly was back then. To learn how to drift, I had to wait on track days and general days, but they were very few and far between, so as a kid I did a lot of tinkering with cars and rear wheel drive cars.

• What was your first vehicle?

My first car was a very famous drift car called an A86, which is a twin cam Corolla and the A86 was pretty much the first drift car, ever, almost, where Toyota have now developed the A86, which is the one that Paul McCallum is now driving and it’s nice to see them bringing it back, but back in my day, that was a serious car. I would have been 7 or 8 years old, me and one of my pals, we had two Corollas and then in the area came three, came four, came five and there was about seven Corollas in our area back in ‘93 and that was kind of drifting in its form back then and then it became a big sport from Japan, big high speed on track sport

• How long have you been competing in the BDC?

I’ve been competing in the BDC since the beginning, since year one and I’ve competed every year in the championship since; this is the first year that I won’t be doing a full championship due to work/music commitments. I’m going to miss a round definitely and possibly two, so this year’s a developing year, I call it and the team calls it, for the car. It’s going to be hard to win the championship as a team, constructors that is, because I’m not there for the whole thing, but I guess I’m looking forward to this year because there’s no pressure on me either, I’m going out there to have pure fun, I’m not thinking I’m going to win this championship, there’s none of those thoughts in my head, I’m going out there purely to smoke around and have a great time and score some points by all means but if the car blows up or something falls off it, I’m not that bothered this year, its fine, we’ll just fix it and go to the next round.

• Have you made any modifications to your car since last season?

We’ve rebuilt the car, went back to a complete shell and I’ve got a new forged engine so all the internals are basically made stronger which means we can run more power, so there’s not a lot of tricks and bits going on. Last year we had KW suspension put on and we didn’t develop it properly because of all the problems we had, so we’ll be able to tinker again this year and make the setup of the car a lot better

• How do you think these improvements will affect your performance this year?

The BDC and especially the super pro stuff, it just keeps going up and up, faster and faster, more expensive, more expensive. Back in the day, you ran a 4/500 break horse power, which was unbelievable, now that’s a slow car. Now you have the likes of Mark Luney pushing, if he wants, 1100 break horse power, that’s nearly double a formula one car, so it’s pretty insane stuff that we’re dealing with now, so I wouldn’t mind 7 and a half, 8 myself, that’s kind of what we’re aiming for.

• What do you think are the major attributes of the Maxxis MAZ1 Drift tyre?

I have to say the MAZ1s for me are a fantastic tyre, mostly because they don’t de-laminate. Back when your kind of doing 1st gear, 2nd gear drifts in the early 2000s, that’s all tyres could almost take, and as everything got bigger, faster, stronger, you know, you’ve got to upgrade your tyres as well, otherwise your wasting your time putting the power down and you can’t get the grip down either. And I think a lot of the time, with a lot of people, they misunderstand drifting, they don’t think you need grip, you do, you need a massive amount of grip. You need the power to break the grip and the grip to compliment the power. So again, it’s all about technical set ups, the MAZ1 I have felt to be an awesome tyre all the way down to cambers, and that’s the good thing about them and they don’t de-laminate. As far as the front end of the car is concerned, you don’t want it washing away either. With understeering, wet and dry, the MAZ1 is a spot on tyre

• How does the MAZ1 Drift compare to other tyres you’ve used for drifting in the past?

Compared to other tyres I’ve ran on, they give you nice feedback. I think a lot of tyres go off quickly, they’re one set of tyres on one corner and a completely other set on another and I don’t find Maxxis do that. Maxxis is a lot more consistent, so getting through corner to corner and left to right, because don’t forget that in drifting the main thing is transferring from left to right at high speed and drift to drift and you’re not just going round the corner, its sliding, and again whilst its sliding you need to stop sliding, so when you balance that on the throttle it responds very well to that to.

• The BDC is now one of the largest championships in Europe. How do you compare the BDC to other championships you’ve entered?

I think it’s fair to say that the BDC is certainly the leading European championship. You’ve got some big championships out there, but I think if you look at the quality of drivers, cars and car builds, there’s some good stuff here in the UK, hence why a lot of the drivers come and drive in the BDC. A lot of the Europeans and Americans come over to do BDC rounds a lot and I think that’s testimony to itself of what a great championship we have

• Who are your strongest competitors this year?

Do you know what? You look at the top 20 cars, 25 cars in super pro, and any one of them could take the title. As little as two years ago, you’d rock up next to somebody and go that’s so and so, and you wouldn’t have a worry about it because you’d know it’s your run and you knew you were going to take it. Nowadays everyone’s so good that anyone could take it.

• How are you going to make sure you’ve got the edge over your competitors?

To transcend anyone for me, I get myself in trouble sometimes, I’m a very aggressive driver and in my aggression its only performance. I’m aggressive because I want to be close and tight and I think drifting is all about the visual, close, tight, rubbing doors and that’s the performance. The closer you are and tighter you are, the more the crowd is entertained and that’s kind of my nature to do that, so I sometimes don’t play the wise card and run ragged as I always do, and run hard and run close when I have the run in the bag. I’m 73 up in points but I wanted to run close in the door and sometimes make a mistake when I’ve just got to hang back I would have gone onto the next top 8, top 4. That’s not really my style; my style is all and everything.

If you’ve got any questions for Shane, leave them in the Comments section below – we’ll be asking him some of our favourites for you!