Digital Social Hour
Inside the World of Professional Drifting & High-Speed Racing | Amanda Sorensen DSH #1241
Sun, 16 Mar
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🔥 Amanda Sorensen on Breaking Barriers in Drifting, Racing Extreme E & Making History 🚀 In this high-energy episode, we sit down with Amanda Sorensen, a professional drifter, off-road racer, and motorsports trailblazer, to discuss her journey to the top, competing in Formula Drift, Extreme E, and making history as the first female podium finisher in Formula Drift Pro Spec. Topics Covered: ✅ The intense world of professional drifting & what it takes to win ✅ Breaking barriers as a female in motorsports ✅ Competing in Extreme E & racing in Saudi Arabia ✅ How she built her own racing team & manages sponsorships ✅ The future of motorsports – from electric racing to hydrogen cars This episode is packed with adrenaline, strategy, and behind-the-scenes insights into one of the fastest-growing sports in the world! 📲 Follow Amanda Sorensen & Learn More: 🔗 Instagram: @Amanda.Sorensen12 🔗 YouTube: Amanda Sorensen 🔗 Website: AmandaSorensen.com ⏱ CHAPTERS ⏳ 00:00 – What It’s Like to Drift Inches Away from Competitors ⏳ 03:15 – The Mental & Physical Preparation for Drifting ⏳ 07:30 – The High Costs & Risks of Competitive Drifting ⏳ 12:10 – Making History: First Female Podium in Formula Drift Pro Spec ⏳ 17:40 – The Challenges of Competing in a Male-Dominated Sport ⏳ 23:50 – Competing in Extreme E & Racing in Saudi Arabia ⏳ 30:25 – The Future of Motorsports: Hydrogen & Electric Racing ⏳ 36:10 – Running Her Own Racing Team & Managing Sponsorships ⏳ 42:00 – The Rise of Drifting & Its International Popularity ⏳ 50:15 – Skydiving with the Air Force & Other Wild Adventures ⏳ 55:30 – What’s Next for Amanda Sorensen & Her Racing Career 🔥 Apply to Be on the Podcast & Business Inquiries: 🎙 APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application 📩 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] SPONSORS: SPECIALIZED RECRUITING GROUP: https://www.srgpros.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/
Chapter 1: What is professional drifting and how did Amanda Sorensen get involved?
saying your heart must be racing yeah we uh we go through a lot of taillights um gosh a lot of bumpers there's like definitely not like bumper budget is like another thing all right guys we got amanda on today professional drifter thanks for coming on yeah thanks for having me absolutely um i do not know much about drifting so i'd love to just hear the basics how you got into this and everything
Yeah, drifting is actually a very unique sport because it's more of like a competition style. It's not like who is the first person to cross the finish line with like typical racing. There's a lot of like mentality training that goes into it because you really just have one shot or you go home. But it's kind of like surfing or similar to like ice skating. There's three judges.
Chapter 2: How do drifting competitions work and what are the challenges?
You have line, angle, style. And we're driving on these tracks that are about like...
quarter of a mile and we're driving on the NASCAR tracks typically or like a road racing track like Atlanta so these are like same tracks that like a lot of the IMSA circuit goes on or NASCAR and they'll put out these clipping points so I can outside zone and inside zone and like the goal is you basically we get up to speed so speeds anywhere from like 80 to 120 going a straight line where you have full traction and
And then you break traction and go sideways. Holy crap. That sounds scary. You have to fill these zones. So outside zones, getting your rear bumper as close to the wall as possible. Damn.
Or your front bumper, like, as close to the clipping point as possible while maintaining your line, angle, and then style, which is broken down into, like, fluidity and commitment. Like, how committed are you? How good does it look? Is it graceful? Is it choppy? Like...
every small adjustment um is a deduction in points so there's 100 points that you can get in qualifying and then from there we go into competition style and uh top 16 drivers go into main competition and typically there's anywhere from 40 to 50 competitors that show up on a weekend Wow. That's a lot. You said you only got one attempt? Or how does it work?
So basically, it's a bracket style competition. And in order to determine your bracket, you have a qualifying. With qualifying, you have, and it's kind of different in every circuit. Some of them are, they want you to battle it out to where the top 32 drivers battled for those positions. Meaning like they did a proper tandem style competition.
Tandem, which means you have a lead driver and a follow driver. The lead driver is performing what they would call a perfect qualifying run, maintaining line angle style. You know, like how we talked about those outside zones, those inside zones. Yeah.
The follow driver has to be a mirror image of what the lead driver is doing. Holy crap. So, like, it's crazy because everything happens so fast. It's so important that you study your other components. Yeah. all of your other competition. And you want to know, okay, how is this person going to initiate? How are they going to adjust? At what speeds do they enter? How do they enter?
And as a follow driver, you want to mirror them. So then once they go and do their lead run, you swap, go back to the line, and then now it's your turn. You do a lead run, and your other person who's following does a follow run. That's insane.
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Chapter 3: What does it take to prepare mentally and physically for drifting?
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I know. Follow first. Some people have different preferences. It really just depends on the track, like who you're battling. Some people, there's a lot of like... There are some drivers that love to play games. So, you know, they'll hesitate on the takeoff or they'll be doing a certain type of initiation and entry every single time during practice.
But then as soon as it gets to competition, they'll change it. So like... You know, there's very, there's a lot of strategies that go on behind. I like that because I'm a chess player. Yeah, exactly. Kind of similar. So there's some mental games going on too. It's not just about the race.
So you got to really just, you cannot react to your lead driver. You have to anticipate your lead driver. You know, similar with chess. I'm not a big chess fan, but like, I've never really played chess to be honest. Assuming it's the same. It's a good game because it's all skill based. Yeah. I'm not a fan of luck. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of skill. Back to what I was saying, though, with, like, you have one chance. You have one chance to rely on your car to also work. You know, so, like, it's huge and it's crucial that the preparation that goes into preparing for the competition is very perfect. My team that I have, I have a team of quite a few people. And, you know, we have our engineers.
We have our tire changers. We have our fuelers. But even that, like our crew chief, like I could go out and my car could overheat at the line. Wow. And I can call a five-minute timeout and I have five minutes to fix the car. That's not happening to you? I've definitely had to call a five before. When you call a five, it's typically when you're on the spot, like up ready to go and compete.
Or possibly you do your lead run, you find a problem with the car, something happens, you want to call a five immediately. You're not allowed to touch the car until the technical directors are there and they start the clock at five minutes. If you touch the car, you're automatically disqualified. That's when your time starts.
The preparation that goes on behind the scenes with preseason prep is like, say we do get into a crash in my lead run, you know, and my guys have five minutes to fix the shock in the front arm. I have these spare boxes that are full complete sets of bolt on bolt off for each corner of the car. So typically in our trailer, we have my car as well as my brother's car.
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Chapter 4: How did Amanda Sorensen make history in Formula Drift?
Was she the first for NASCAR female? I don't know about, like, first, but she definitely was, like, an icon. Yeah, I remember watching her on ESPN as a kid. Yeah. Yeah, she was a legend. Yeah, it amazes me how people like her and you are, like... There's not many female competitors, right, in this scene at all.
Yeah, there's... We have one other female in my division. Internationally, there's about... I would say at a higher level, kind of like similar to my level, there's only about like five or six females. Damn. And I couldn't even put a number on how many males. Probably thousands. Yeah, exactly. And do you keep them separate? Like, are you friends with them or do you view them as competition?
No, we're all friends. Everyone. That's what I love about the drifting community. And like, even when I go to a practice event, like I'm going to on this Saturday and like you pull up to a practice event and it's so accessible to the general public, like the drifting events and just drifting in general, that there is such a large female audience there. Really?
So a lot of the females support each other. Over on the East Coast, they have this like club called Drift Kitchen. And it's like at least 20 females that have drift cars like in the state. And so a lot of the girls support each other. Everyone loves to just go out and like drive with your friends. Like that's the concept of drifting.
that's cool is it a new sport like how long has this been around drifting um so formula drift came to the united states in 2003 okay and i like was one years old like that time but um it's crazy because i didn't really follow it until about covid time like 2019 i would say um but it came to the united states in 2003 and it's the fastest growing motorsport wow in the usa right now that's impressive
So for me, I have really just been able to go and travel the world and see the other drift series other than just Formula Drift here. So there's like Drift Masters in Europe. Their last round is in Poland in a stadium that sells out with 60,000 people. Damn. So it's crazy because I didn't really understand the potential of this sport until I had gone international with it.
I also didn't understand my social media following until I had realized how huge it is like internationally in Brazil, in Europe, in Japan. Like the scenes over there are insane. So you got a big international following then. Yeah, exactly. And I didn't understand that, you know, like until I went to like a true like cultured car event. Yeah. Was that the Saudi Arabia trip you took or?
That was different. That was like a rally race that I was doing. So I raced in this series called Extreme E. There's 10 races. We race in five different remote locations in an electric race car. That's crazy. Electric race car.
All-wheel drive electric race car. I raced for GMC and our car was like a replica of a Hummer EV. I actually daily to Hummer EV, which I thought was like pretty great. Like I really wasn't into electric cars until I daily to one and I was like, okay, this is kind of cool. But yeah, I got to work a lot with the team on developing the front to rear power.
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Chapter 5: What is Amanda Sorensen's experience with Extreme E and electric racing?
I didn't know that was open yet. Yes. I need to get out there. I love Pickleball. Yeah. Was that the one with Andy Roddick and Andre Agassi, or was that a different Pickleball event?
I'm not sure. Oh, no, no, no. This was different. It's called Celebrity Pickleball Bash. We had like Terrell Owens, Brandi Chastain. So some fun like celebrities. And then we had a few like professional pickleball players. Nice. Was Ben Johns there? He's the number one, I think. I don't know anyone else.
Honestly, I was co-hosting the first day. There was so much going on. It was my first time co-hosting. I've never done anything like that. So I was just following the script. The script was going off. We were trying to get back on center. It was great.
yeah pickleball is fun it's um it's a hard sport actually people think it's easy but it's not like i think it's so like entry level like accessible but then as soon as you start playing with the pros you feel like there's levels oh yeah for sure yeah and my issue is i'm so tall so i want to hit everything yeah yeah yeah like you know yeah because it's going out but my instinct is to hit it some slams yeah i used to play tennis oh okay okay yeah you ever play tennis
No. So like this was my first time playing like like I'm not even going to ping pong, you know. So I was like, I'm going to go on stage and go play pickleball in front of all these people in the theater. And it was like NBA All-Star weekend. So, you know, we were in the theater in San Francisco and I was just like, all right, you know, like I'll be the laugh of the show.
I'm not going to be the pro. That's for sure. And I'm embracing it before I go out there. how'd you do um my team lost so you know it was fine i think um we were it was me and hunter pence i don't know um he's a former um basketball no former baseball player baseball yeah and so him and i were teammates he's very competitive he definitely held most of the way for our team but um
I've seen those videos where the guy is playing with the girl and the guy will just hit all the shots. I was playing against Brandi Chastain and also Uriah, who is like a former UFC. Uriah Hall? Yeah. Yeah, he was on the show. Yeah, so that's who I was playing against. Brandi just honestly bullied me so bad. She was just like, we're winning this. I was like, all right.
well you probably had you probably have really fast reaction time right yeah but honestly like when we were on the stage there were so many lights i couldn't see the ball coming oh and i was like i don't know if i'm like silly or what it is but also everyone played the day prior everyone was able they got loose you know like whatever so it was fun time though that's what it was about you did some stuff with the air force i saw on your youtube
Yeah, so I'm actually sponsored by the Air Force. Wow. I've been working with them. This is going to be year four working with them. So we are actually, we do a lot with their recruiting team. We really like to, you know, highlight the concept of in the Air Force, there's jets, right? And with the jets, there's a crew chief, tire changer, fueler.
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Chapter 6: How is the future of motorsports evolving with hydrogen and electric cars?
I was. i totally was until i jumped out of the airplane and i'm terrified of heights like i will not even cliff dive like i don't like jumping off cliffs i don't jump off the waterfall into the pool like i'm terrified of that wow um it makes me sick to my stomach but when i stood on the edge he was like okay like take another step and i was like what
But, like, for me, it was more just, like, the thought of, like, falling out before I was ready. You know what I mean? But, like, there was really no, like, time to be ready. Like, he was ready, so that didn't matter, you know? But once you jumped out of the plane, like, it was so peaceful. I find, like, it was very similar to, like, just, like, riding a Harley or, like, riding a motorcycle. Hmm.
You know, you have a lot of, like, wind in your face. So it was peaceful, though. Like, it was so cool. Once you, like, deploy the chute, you're kind of just floating around. We did some tricks. Like, we did a backflip. Oh, my God. On your first jump, you did a backflip? So, I mean, it was the Wings of Blue team. So, like, full trust in him. They've probably done thousands of those.
Insane amount of jumps. And we were at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. So we actually went up in the plane with quite a few other kids that were taking skydiving as an elective. That's an elective?
Yeah. In the Air Force, you can choose your electives. Wow. The only rule that I found out about, though, that I was like, there's no way. There was a guy that was in our plane and he was like, I'm jumping out for my first time. But he was by himself. Really?
So in the Air Force, like when you take this academy, like the Air Force Academy in Colorado, when you choose a selective, they train you and they do like the training facility is insane. You know, like there's rappels coming out of the roof, like simulating more of like skydiving for your first time. Got it.
But he trained for a certain amount of weeks and then he went up in the plane and that was his first time jumping. So the whole idea is to trust your process, trust in yourself. And like he packed his own shoe and everything like he jumped out of the plane. I'm like, this is your first time jumping out. Like there's no way I would jump out.
But I mean, I guess with that training, it's like it's crazy. But yeah, there was like a group of students up there and that was their elective is skydiving.
first time by yourself because i think if you do it like at a place you need to jump with like someone what a hundred times or something yeah yeah oh my gosh wow the air force does great training shout out to them yeah it is their training facilities are top notch and like i when i toured this air force academy um you know there's so much that's going on there they have
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