Georgia is an interesting place. I mean that in the nicest way possible. It’s more of a “good” interesting than a “uhh, I’m not sure about this place” type of interesting. I’ve always wanted to go see what Georgia was like because I’ve always felt that the south has some of the nicest people around. I went to Nashville in 2009 for the Import Alliance event and Atlanta was just a 3 hour drive away, it almost seemed like a shame not to go, but I just didn’t have the time. A couple years go by and the only time I had ever touched down in Atlanta was for a short stopover on my flight back home after another event, in another city. Many car events had come and gone in that area and I had just never been, but I’ve always heard great things about that area so I was intrigued…
I met Chris Stewart last year when I was out in Chicago for a Gridlife/Fatlace event during the summer. Ginash had invited me to fly out to do some coverage and that was honestly the first time I had ever heard of the Gridlife series. Chris was a nice dude. We chatted and he told me more about his events and what his mission was. He had a very grassroots-style approach when it came to putting on automotive events and I liked that. I think we try to change things up too often out here in the West Coast because people are always trying to be on the cusp of the “next big thing” that we sometimes forget about what made things good in the first place. Chris wanted to create something new with the Gridlife series but in a much different way. He set out to join multiple styles of events together into one place and transform it into one big festival. I think it is difficult to combine so many different types of events together because there is so much divide out on this side of the country. People are very “clique-y” out here so the guys that stick to time attack hate on car show people, and car show people generally shy away from real road race guys because they don’t want to be shunned or turned away because they don’t have “functional” vehicles. Drifting is popular, but with a very specific crowd. People that like watching drifting but those guys could care less about time attack. It is cool to like what you like but very rarely do you see people blend all those things together. In other parts of the country, this model works. Other regions of the U.S. don’t have nearly as many events as we do out here in the West and having a conglomerate of events makes a lot of sense. You put all these different styles of events together and it gives people an opportunity to experience all of it at the same time. People from other neighboring states will come out for it and it becomes a huge melting pot of both people and car stuff…
Chris and I spoke on and off that day about his event and he invited me out to check out one of the events in 2016. We exchanged contact info but didn’t really communicate too much after that. During SEMA of 2015 some months later, I ran into Chris at an industry party. It was one of those nights when I didn’t really feel like drinking and was just enjoying the ambiance of the night. Chris came up to me and he told me about some big plans that he had for 2016…the biggest one being the Gridlife South event which would be the first time he put together an event at the famed Road Atlanta raceway. I had only seen Road Atlanta in video games and was excited to hear that he wanted to fly me out to experience the biggest Gridlife event to date. I told him that I wanted to try to get Yuta out there with me so he could drive at Road Atlanta and Chris was more than willing to accommodate us. Ultimately, we didn’t have a car completed in time for Gridlife but Yuta still flew out with me and Tiffanie to see what Gridlife was all about…
The weather that weekend was hot…like FUCKING HOT, haha. We knew about it going into the event so we weren’t surprised, but being in hell still feels like hell, you know what I mean? The humidity is no joke out there and good lord, bugs were plenty abundant in Braselton, Georgia. The set-up for the event was like this: Gridlife South is a three-day long event. The Road Atlanta track would be used for both time attack and full-course drifting, which had never been attempted before at Road Atlanta. That meant that guys could start as fast as they wanted to and drift as much of the track as they possibly could. This sounds like a harrowing experience but if you knew how to drive, it’s a whole lot of fucking fun. The areas of that track that weren’t directly driving-related, would be used for a car show, spectator camping, and a series of concerts that would take place in the evenings after the track went cold. It’s crazy for some of us to think that people are willing to camp out at Road Atlanta but there were definitely a ton of people just chillin’ out there all day and night throughout the weekend. As you saw in the Vlogs, we spent most of our time hanging out in the paddock area looking at the drift cars and time attack competitors. For most of the track stuff, I shot mostly only the drifting. The time attack stuff I captured but it was pretty sparse. There were some cool cars in the pits so I did a lot of shooting at some of the more important details of individual builds…
Overall, I had a great time. Sure, the weather was a bit intense but we went into it expecting to sweat our asses off. I like the idea of having a festival-type event where you get a little bit of everything. I don’t think the formula would work out here in the West Coast, but for the Midwest and the right side of the coast, it makes a great deal of sense. You get the most out of what you spend your money on, and making the far trek to experience the event is worth it because of all that you get to see. Chris has a good thing going and I’m happy to have been invited to see it for myself. There’s a huge risk in trying to put something this big together because it could be a disastrous if it isn’t executed correctly. This works andI hope to see its continued evolution in the future…
The first set of photos you’ll see is what I captured on the first two days while we were there. You’ll see some drifting stuff along with some shots of the cars in the paddock area. I was granted VIP access to every area of the event but I found myself driving around in my rental and just getting out of the car to shoot. It just worked out better that way. We captured a lot that weekend so get ready to see some pretty cool stuff. Enjoy…
