Gridlife wrapped up its 2026 season with the Gridlife Laguna Festival held at the world-renowned WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, California. For those who have yet to experience one of its events, “Gridlife produces club racing events and festivals across North America to the next generation of enthusiasts. We combine on-track competition across multiple disciplines and present it to thousands of fans in weekend-long celebrations of the full spectrum of car culture and music,” according to sources at Gridlife.
These events capture the enthusiasm of motorsports, balancing the experience of attendees and drivers alike.
The racing experience extends beyond times on track. Event coordinators treat drivers like racing professionals, while open paddocks allow drivers to interact with fans and offer once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, including riding shotgun with Formula Drift-licensed drivers.
Few enthusiasts have ridden in a roughly 1,000-hp race car powered by a boosted LS, JZ, or RB—honestly, take your pick. The experience challenges the mind’s understanding of physics.
Describing what makes the experience special for drivers inevitably overlaps with what makes it special for attendees. That’s exactly what Gridlife does best, combine these often separate segments together, offering opportunities for everyone to participate, feel appreciated and get involved.
The 2026 season featured six events at six tracks in six states: Carolina Motorsports Park in South Carolina, Road Atlanta in Georgia, Gingerman Raceway in Michigan, Watkins Glen International in New York, Lime Rock Park in Connecticut and WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in California.
Gridlife offers five motorsports’ disciplines: GL Track Battle Time Attack, GLTC Championship presented by Eibach, GLGT Grand Touring, GL Rush Series and GL Drift.
Each discipline offers its own path into Gridlife, giving drivers opportunities to race at a single event or travel with the series and commit to a full season of competition at Gridlife festivals.
Gridlife developed its own rulebook using existing rules from major sanctioning bodies such as the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and National Auto Sport Association (NASA), adapting those requirements while adding or removing rules to suit its events.
Lowering barriers to participation remains an ongoing responsibility for the motorsports industry, and Gridlife executes this well.
New Blood, New Opportunity
“This is the future, to be honest,” said Jonathan Lugod, owner of Shaftworks in Chino, California. Lugod has competed in motorsports for roughly 20 years.
“It all started with autocross,” began Lugod. “I run nationally competitive in SCCA autocross…I had Guy Ankeny from Ankeny Racing Enterprises build me dampers for my S2000. I won my first national championship in his car with the very same dampers, and I just kind of knew shocks were very important—in all aspects of racing. It’s a niche industry, and I enjoy the aspect of helping customers develop their cars.”
Piloting a Honda Del Sol fitted with custom Epsilon aero, WedSport TC105x wheels and large Paragon brakes that fill the wheel barrels, Lugod helps push the limits of competition in grassroots racing. Having raced with other sanctioning bodies, he appreciates the culture Gridlife brings to motorsports and the way it connects enthusiasts with competition.
“I’ve raced with a lot of official sanctioning bodies, and they provide great racing but, what they lack is drawing in new blood. Blending car culture and getting these guys and these kids energized to strive to want to do this stuff—I feel is the disconnect between the existing big orgs versus Gridlife,” he said.
“What Gridlife does well is the car culture—it’s top notch,” he said. “I mean everyone here is a car enthusiast, car enthusiast first, racer second.”
Racing brings people together, and competition builds bonds. Other sanctioning bodies excel at providing competition and building families within motorsports, but Gridlife approaches those connections through a broader celebration of car culture.
“It’s very much a camaraderie type of deal. It builds family. When you go racing with some other sanctioning bodies, its cutthroat—everyone is there to win. And, honestly, that’s great. That’s the place for that,” he explained. “But for bringing in new blood, keeping the racing thing going with the younger generation, I think Gridlife is doing a great job doing that.”
Lugod was one of many racers competing at the Gridlife Laguna Festival. While he entered the GLTC Championship, other disciplines brought drivers with different goals and experience to the same paddock.
The Long Journey
Many cars took to the track, representing a variety of builds. Among them, a 1983 Audi Quattro caught the eyes and ears of many. Its distinctive styling and five-cylinder symphony commanded attention as it screamed down the track, wielding a sound that rivaled bumbling engine of Mazda’s four-rotor heritage race car, the RX-792P.
Catching up with David Hackl, the Quattro’s owner, revealed a long journey from unreliable daily driver to purpose-built race car.
“This was a daily driver, a Gobi Beige, number 136. I bought it for either $2,500 or $3,000 from a friend who had bought it from another guy—he had a couple in Michigan,” Hackl began.
“It sat in a field for a couple of years, and then I started driving it, and it kept leaving me stranded on my way to the bank in downtown Chicago—a company called Northern Trust. I kept pushing it into parking lots in the middle of winter, then running to make the train. Just sucking.” He laughed.
Hackl began the build in 2007, buying panels in Germany from Carson Rose, “who was making these panels and building S1’s, Trans Am cars, and 1990’s IMSA cars,” according to Hackl.
In 2011, he built the car to FIA specifications for WRC to race Pikes Peak in Colorado, the famous “race to the clouds.” He and a team of builders put, “collectively 2,500 hours into it, in about 45 days—flying people in from all over the country,” said Hackl.
Troy Casteel, Hackl’s head builder from Casteel Motorsports in Arvada, Colorado, began mentally tallying the hours. “Oh man, I don’t even want to think about it,” he said. “Like, I don’t know over the years, there was many, many years that each year something changed with the car—it’s not a normal car. There aren’t parts on a shelf. It was making things work and play together sometimes,” said Casteel.
Unable to quantify the hours spent on the car, Casteel laughed and turned to Hackl. “I don’t know if I could ever—like from a business standpoint…He probably doesn’t want me to actually ever really count them.” Hackl laughed and shook his head.
Casteel and Hackl have since raced Pikes Peak 13 times and logged thousands of hours at HPDE events around the country. Hackl’s last race, a hillclimb at Mount Washington in Gorham, New Hampshire, was just a week before the Gridlife Laguna Festival. Although he participates in many racing events, Gridlife’s welcome still stood out to Hackl.
“It’s the community. What I see just from the organizers, from the top down, you’ve got guys emailing me at 10 at night [just to check-in] that makes it feel like this super California connected culture—but it’s spreading wildly across the United States. Event staff will come up to me and they’re like, ‘Hey, do you have any questions?’ Like, Historics’ or Monterey Car Week, nobody talks to me. Here, everyone wants to talk to you, you know, the car is the car, its iconic machine, but people that don’t even know me say, ‘Hey, glad you came,’ et cetera, it’s like—I’m nobody!” Hackl exclaimed.
“Gridlife is just a massive scaled vision that a collective bunch of people put together to bring people together, and I really love that.”
Pro Tip: Drive to Enjoy
Island reggae blared from under a trailer canopy. Parked, a bright green car with a contradictory demeanor of battle scarred aero and a calming livery reminiscent of an island paradise. As the adage goes, ‘if you know you know,’ so Tunerzine staff headed over to catch up with Forrest Wang and his left-hand-drive, 2JZ-powered Nissan S15 in the paddock.
Wang has drifted professionally since 2008, earning a reputation as a ‘driver’s driver’ with a rowdy yet expressive style. His S15 seemed to gracefully cover the width of the track, moving in a smooth but violent rhythm creating the quintessential trailing plume of tire smoke—art in motion.
This wasn’t Wang’s first Gridlife appearance. Earlier that year, he drove at Gridlife Special Stage ATL at Road Atlanta in Georgia, a collaboration with his racing ‘alma mater,’ Formula D. Afterward, he drove at Gridlife’s Midwest Festival at GingerMan Raceway in Michigan. He also recalled appearances at Gridlife Alpine Horizon when it held events at Pikes Peak International Raceway in Colorado.
Although Wang no longer competes in Formula D, his drifting remains sharp. Witnessing his driving style is exciting. His 2JZ-powered S15 could be heard before seen, as it aggressively spooled and chirped, he gracefully danced his way down the Corkscrew—chef’s kiss, a drifter’s delight.
Wang explained why he enjoys driving at Gridlife.
“It’s one of my favorite events of the year,” began Wang. “Good vibes, great weather, great fans. It’s really hard to beat the environment out here, honestly.”
“I’m definitely a big fan of Gridlife. I love what they do. The festivals are rad, because its drifting in the day and party at night. It’s a great family environment—I got my kids out here, it’s just hard to beat events like this,” he explained.
He was excited by the next generation of enthusiasts and offered some advice for aspiring drivers.
“My main recommendation with people aspiring to get into this sport is to keep it fun, keep it light.” He continued, “Don’t think you’re going to go pro overnight, you know? It takes time. It’s a lot of hours behind the wheel, a lot of trial and error—building and breaking, fixing and repeating. Just take your time and don’t get too consumed with how long it takes, you just have to enjoy the ride, have fun while you’re getting there.”
Words alone cannot fully capture the Gridlife experience. As one attendee described, “it’s better than Disneyland.” It’s a place where fans can find inspiration to become drivers, and drivers can build careers. The organizers nurture that enthusiasm by combining racing and live DJs at renowned tracks. Competitors and spectators share the same celebration of car culture. Echoing Lugod, it feels like the future of motorsports.
Get out there, make friends at the track, trade paint, trade stories, and trade experiences—Gridlife next year won’t disappoint.
GalleryPhotos by 3 Fold Collective
