Coming off two podium finishes in a row at the end of the 2023 season, Geoff Donati is dialed in after a solid offseason and has his sights set firmly on the 2024 Formula Drift ProSpec championship.
“Last season was the best season I’ve ever had,” Donati said. “We went from crashing in Atlanta to rebuilding and slowly improving all season, even if it didn’t show on the scoreboard right away.”
That improvement did show when he snagged his first podium in St. Louis, coming in third. It was a moment made all that much more special since the season before, in 2022, Donati went to watch the St. Louis FD round as a fan and because it was also where he got his first ever Midwest Drift Union podium.
“Going from sitting in college classes reading MDU articles by Nick Quigley to this has been super rewarding,” he said.
Anyone that has seen Donati turning laps at Drift Indy events in his G37 coupe knows just how consistent he is, a quality that he carried over from the grassroots level into his 2JZ-powered E46 and FD ProSpec. He and Chris Scherzer, a friend and member of his team, can turn lap after lap together in their Gs almost robotically. That’s not to say that their driving isn’t exciting, though. They can put on a show.
“Last year, our motto was ‘two clean runs.’ I’m bringing that same mindset into this season, but on top of that I want to step everything up a notch. I want to leave it all on the track. No mechanical sympathy,” Donati said.
His team is composed of crew chief Brian Barnhill, spotter Christopher Michael Johnson, manager Ben Webster, Joe Lala of Dewla Dezign and Chris Scherzer. Most of them are familiar faces to anyone that has been around Drift Indy for a while. Donati makes a point of working with people that are just as detail-oriented as he is.
He and his team have spent the offseason buttoning up small things, but the car was so solid toward the end of last season that no major setup changes were necessary. The small changes should make the car even more reliable and allow him to focus on pushing even harder with his driving.
“Working with Drift Indy again was super important to me. It’s important to rep the Midwest,” Donati said.
As one of a number of homegrown talents that have progressed from the grassroots level and cut their teeth in competitions like MDU before making it to FD or FD ProSpec, he’s an excellent representative of Drift Indy and the midwest as a whole. We’re proud to be working with him on another campaign and confident in his ability to fight for the championship.
The ProSpec season kicks off this coming week, May 9-11, down in Atlanta, where Donati will look to build off the momentum and confidence he had at the end of last season.