Gridlife (festival)

Did You Know?

• GRIDLIFE Festival Tour events are broadcast live with TV-like production, including trackside cameras, drones, and on-screen graphics.
• Notable guest announcers for GRIDLIFE events include Greg Creamer, longtime announcer of SPEED World Challenge, and Jarod DeAnda, announcer of Formula D and Nitro Rallycross.

History

GRIDLIFE kicked off in May 2014 at Gingerman Raceway, drawing over 1,500 spectators, 220 HPDE and Time Attack drivers, and 30 drift competitors. The music lineup featured WillyJoy, The Hood Internet, and a surprise appearance by Autobot of Flosstradamus. By 2015, attendance jumped to nearly 4,000, with more than 300 drivers in HPDE. The time attack segment was rebranded as TrackBattle and saw over 80 entries, while headliners included RJD2, Keys N Krates, Party Favor, and Paul Basic.

In 2019, the wheel-to-wheel GRIDLIFE Touring Cup (GLTC) debuted with five races at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, and that year also marked the last GRIDLIFE South Festival at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. When the pandemic hit, GRIDLIFE kept running with social distancing, though the Midwest Festival shifted to October—a date that stuck until 2022, when it returned to its usual June slot. In fall 2022, the organization announced a major scheduling change for 2023: the 10–15 annual events would split into six Festival Tour stops and the rest as Club Weekends, with GLTC appearing only at the Festival Tour’s live broadcast rounds.

Motorsports

In 2019, GRIDLIFE launched the GRIDLIFE Touring Cup, or GLTC, a wheel-to-wheel racing series overseen by Motorsports Director Adam Jabaay. The series was built around a straightforward set of rules controlling power, weight, and tire width, featuring short, single-class sprint races held multiple times during each event weekend. A key philosophy here is racing for the love of the race rather than chasing results, with staff pushing hard for mutual respect on and off the track.

Contact, blocking, dive-bombs, and other poor sportsmanship are not tolerated, and this approach keeps incident rates low. Each weekend includes four races lasting 12 to 15 minutes each, with points from every race added up to determine a weekend champion. For the season title as of 2023, a driver’s best five rounds out of eight scoring events count toward the final tally. Depending on the venue, fields usually run between 30 and 60 cars.

Common choices include the Chevrolet Corvette, Honda S2000, Mazda MX-5 Miata, Honda Civic, and BMW M3. To build a car, competitors pick a chassis, weigh it, run it on a dyno, and then apply modifiers that add or remove weight from the competition total. For instance, a rear wing with a specific surface area adds a 3% weight penalty, while running without a working anti-lock braking system gives a 2% reduction. After all modifiers are tallied, the car lands in a table that sets the allowed tire width based on its horsepower and competition weight.

Most GLTC cars weigh between 2300 and 3400 pounds and produce 190 to 260 wheel horsepower. The GLTC schedule follows the GRIDLIFE Festival Tour, with two extra events in 2023: the season opener at Circuit of the Americas alongside Super Lap Battle, and a stop at Road America supporting the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

Drift

At GRIDLIFE festivals, drifting is a non-competitive, crowd-pleasing part of the on-track action. The annual Midwest Festival at GingerMan Raceway often brings in Formula Drift stars like Vaughn Gittin, Jr. and Chelsea DeNofa. Some drivers use their competition cars, while others build vehicles specifically for GRIDLIFE Drift. Without the pressure of scoring, the atmosphere stays lighthearted, letting drivers focus purely on putting on a show for spectators.

Schedule

Festival Tour events feature GRIDLIFE Touring Cup (GLTC), NOS Energy TrackBattle Time Attack, Drift, HPDE, a Car Concours, and occasionally music, and are designed as spectator-focused events broadcast live to GRIDLIFE's YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook channels. Club Weekends feature the NOS Energy TrackBattle Championship, HPDE, and occasionally Drift, with an emphasis on track time per dollar; they are not livestreamed. Venues where GRIDLIFE has hosted events but are not currently on the schedule include Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, Blackhawk Farms Raceway, Pikes Peak International Raceway, NOLA Motorsports Park, NCM Motorsports Park, and Atlanta Motorsports Park.