A life of racing is the best way to summarize Cory Talaska’s life. Every life decision made has revolved around some form of motorsport. At the age of 4 it was snowmobiles, a few years later go-karts, then next was Legends cars. After 15 years of racking up national championships, traveling all over the country there was a crossroads. After high school, there was a decision to keep pursuing big car oval racing, or take a year off and put a drift car together.
After only a few months, everything was sold, and an BMW E36 M3 was pur+ chased. The build process for a simple drift car was just as important for the Talaska Racing team as was seat time. Building and understanding how a drift car wants to work was part of the fun, being able to put all the circle track knowledge to use for the drift program.
After just 1 year of fun event drifting, Cory and his dad began their first pro-am season with his turboed E36. Many events later, Cory took 2nd spot on the podium next to now ProSpec champion Dimitry Brutskiy. Unfortunely that left him 4th in points, and without an FD license, but the drive didn’t stop there. Fast forward a year later and Cory was on the important podium once again at a licensing shootout event next to pro driver Josh Love and with an FD license in hand! Cory and Bill took the next year off to build a proper car that could handle the competition in the series and went for it.
Competing in ProSpec is thrilling, but also filled with valuable lessons. Being only 1 of 47 drivers in the world competing for a Formula Drift ProSpec title, it is some of the most fierce competition that Talaska Racing has come across. With 2024 being the best season yet finishing 14th in points with a top 8, and top 16s the rest of the season, 2025 can’t come soon enough. With a dialed car, 2025 is going to be a blast!
