Following a year out from racing, Irish driver Conor Grant returns to F4 in 2026 as he will compete in the GB4 championship in the coming months.
It has been a pretty remarkable journey to get to this point. The driver from County Wexford sat out 2025 after doing a single round of US F4 early last year. Financial constraints was yet again the problem.
Having raced and impressed with his pace at the legendary COTA in the Ligier JS F4 Series in 2024, Grant explained in an exclusive interview with Pit Debrief how multiple offers came his way Stateside for 2025.
However, following a series of car issues in testing and at round 1, a decision was taken to step back because of budget problems.
Conor Grant on the difficulties he faced trying to race in the US F4 championship because of financial difficulties
“After COTA, we said to ourselves, ‘look, we’ve performed. We’ve done a really good job. This is where we want to go. The formula ladder is where we want to be.’
“After that, we got three offers from three different teams in the US to come back racing for the year after. Then we were like, look, ‘we’ll go back, we’ll sit on it.’
“It was November that time last year [2024] is when we went, ‘okay, we’re going to need 300,000 to go racing in the US. How are we going to find that?’ It was just too late for us to start.
“Most companies had wrapped up their budgets and everything. We pushed on as hard as we could into the new year, and we just couldn’t secure the budget for it.
“Going into round one, we pulled everything together. We took out a few loans as well for the racing. We were still paying those back to the end of last year.
“We pulled the money together and go out and do it. Literally, second-hand car, everything was as cheap as we could get it.”
A series of problems with the car
“We did one-day testing because we actually had four days planned. We did one-day testing in the end because the engine blew up on the second day.
“Then yeah, we went into the race and it just didn’t work for us. We had a lot of problems with the car.
“Obviously, the engine blew up.We had to put a new one in. The clutch failed. The battery failed. We had multiple problems with the car. We had problems with the suspension. It just didn’t fall together very well.”
Stopping racing to focus on getting a drive in 2026 and making changes
As a family, the Grant household decided to focus on resetting and looking at Motorsport from a business point of view. With eye watering figures required to race in F4, F3 and F2, working on finding financial support was key.
Alongside that, the 2023 Senior X30 Champion also built his social media channels, a key part in many parts of modern life, including visibility for racing drivers looking to make it to Formula 1, IndyCar etc.
Grant has done that, amassing over 100k worth of followers across Instagram and TikTok.
“Then yeah, we kind of regrouped after that and said, look, ‘what are we going to do? We don’t have the money to keep going back.’ Going to the US is a lot more expensive than just taking a trip across to the UK.
“We said, ‘look, we’re going to take a step back. We’re going to focus on 2026. We need to completely change our approach.’ We were approaching it as a sport. We now need to approach it as a business. We completely pivoted, pretty much.
“We stopped racing. We said, ‘look, we’re going to take our time, build up for 2026 and make 2026 a big year.’ Then yeah, we started working on our proposals and all that.
“I went to myself, ‘look, what am I not doing right now that could help my career?’ That’s when I started building my socials. I was in the gym five days a week. I said, ‘look, once I get my opportunity, I want to be ready.’”
How the opportunity to test a GB4 car came about for Conor Grant
Grant revealed he spoke to a big figure in Irish racing circles, Cliff Dempsey. This opened the door for him to test with Douglas Motorsport at multiple tracks in the UK late last year as they evaluated drivers for their seats for this campaign.
In the end the 18-year-old proved his speed and talent in those tests, fending off plenty of other candidates. He got a drive in GB4 for 2026 with Douglas Motorsport. His teammates will be Dayton Coulthard and fellow Irishman Jason Smyth.
“Then yeah, we met Cliff Dempsey very briefly in Mondello. He said, ‘look, you need to stay in the car. Come out and do a test with Douglas [Motorsport]. I’ll be there.’
“Yeah, we did a test in Snetterton, which went really well. We were the fastest GB4 car on track, which was big for us. Again, coming out out of nowhere, we were able to adapt quickly. Tough track as well.
“Then yeah, we said, ‘alright, now this is time.’ We put everything we had, all our eggs into one basket, and we were able to secure our title sponsor for next year, which I can’t say just yet, but it’ll be out very soon.
“We were able to secure a title sponsor for next year, which has been able to get us back on track now. We’ve got our seat for next year.”
Very promising tests and winning a shootout for a seat at Douglas Motorsport
“We did two more tests with Douglas that year [2025]. One in Silverstone and then one in Oulton Park, which also went incredibly well at the two of those. We were extremely fast.
“Obviously Oulton Park, Silverstone and Snetterton are three very different tracks. To be able to get up to the pace of the front guys and guys who have done a year already in the car within four sessions in that one day was pretty incredible for us.
“It was a bit of a shootout for the Douglas seats. There was, as they told us, they could have filled the seats about three times with drivers coming to drive with them, but happy enough that we were one of the three that they picked. One of the two in the end, actually, that they picked because one of them had already been signed and sealed.
“We were really happy with that. That opportunity came to us that we’ve been waiting for for 18 months after we pulled out. It was all that work of 18 months was finally coming to fruition and now we’ve set our sights on ’26.
“Everything is in line, all our ducks are in a row and we can just go out and do what we know we can do.”
The long, exhausting journey to find sponsorship and secure a full-time seat in Formula 4
2026 has brought the end to a journey of well over a year for Conor Grant to secure the required funding to go racing through a whole season in single-seaters. As he mentioned above, they have secured a title sponsor to help him pay for his seat at Douglas Motorsport in 2026.
Reflecting on the long and difficult road to get here, the Wexford native talked about the close calls with potential parties in the past and whether it was time to give up.
“Yeah. I mean, look, we as a family couldn’t do it without sponsors.
“We were able to afford it racing in karts, but we took the step to F4 and it’s just an astronomical level compared to it.
“It’s been so hard for us and we’ve had so many moments where we’ve gotten all the way to the contract phase with a huge company and it’s just crumbled at the very end.
“Those are the moments you take a step back and you think, ‘is it time we stop now?’ That’s happened a lot in the last 16 months where we’ve gone, ‘okay, are we being unrealistic here thinking we can do this?’
“It never came after a bad weekend. It never came after a bad result. It always came after a very polite no from a company that we’ve been chasing for six months, like making decks for them and all that.
“It seemed like all the effort was going in and we were just getting nothing back. As a family, the three of us, me, my mam, my dad, we’ve worked incredibly hard and we haven’t stopped. It’s proven to us that out of sheer determination and will and refusal to quit that we can really make it happen.”
Conor Grant on the relief of having funding and a loyal sponsor
While the unnamed sponsor for the time being is unknown to the outside world, Grant’s happiness and relief was clear when discussing what they have already done to help him and his career. It means he and his family can relax in 2026 knowing they can get a full season under their belt without extreme financial worries.
“It’s definitely possible now. Our sponsor is fully on board with us. They’ve done a lot for us already.
“It’s been incredible just to have that bit of reassurance that we’re not in it alone anymore. We’ve got someone to help us.
“We’ve finally been able to crack it and now it’s getting easier and easier each weekend because having gotten to that one big stage, it’s easier to go, ‘yeah, we’ve got partial sum.’ We’re not looking for 300,000, 330,000 or 400,000.
“Whatever you need from a company, just one company, you’re looking for smaller increments. We’ve been able to break it up a little bit easier.
“Look, as a small family from a rural village in Wexford, Ireland, it’s definitely been a big rise to racing across the world.
“It’s very hard to go out each weekend without knowing that you’ll be able to go out the next. That was what kept us going. It’s like, ‘look, we had a bad weekend. We need to fix it. We had a good weekend. Let’s replicate that again next weekend. We had a good weekend, but where are we going to get the money for the next one?’ Which has always been the big fight.”
Finding the required budget an uphill task for any Irish racing driver
Motorsport in Ireland is a long way down the pecking order. With traditional worldwide sports ahead of it, alongside Gaelic Games, it makes things even tougher for Irish drivers to get the financial support required.
Nonetheless, things have become a tiny bit easier through this decade thanks to one young man in particular. Alex Dunne has proven to be a generational talent in Irish racing. He demolished the field in British F4 in 2022, before coming runner-up in GB3 in 2023.
Flashes of pace were shown in F3 in 2024 with a couple of podiums. However, last year was the time the whole racing world and lots of people in Ireland outside of Irish Motorsport took notice of Dunne. He won twice in F2, finishing P5 in the standings.
While the driver from Offaly stays in F2, Fionn McLaughlin will also carry the tricolour in F3. Alongside Grant in GB4 will be Alex O’Grady and Jason Smyth. It’s a historic period for Irish Motorsport.
“It’s the same for every driver. Coming from Ireland, pretty much every Irish driver has struggled with the budget and getting the money together.
“With obviously Alex [Dunne] now getting to F2 and having his go for F1, it’s become bigger and bigger in Ireland. There’s more and more people realising how important it is.
“For such a small country to be able to go out and compete at this level in comparison to everybody else, it’s been incredible.
“That’s been our big problem. We finally cracked it now. It’s time to just go from the survival instinct to performance.”
