Gridlife Laguna Seca Recap | 1:41.64
What an event! Being my first Gridlife festival, it reminded me awfully of a Forza Horizon festival brought to life. Loud cars, loud music, good vibes. Here's my recap:
A month prior to the event, I was tossing around the idea of selling my ticket because the last event I went to, Rennsport Reunion, felt like a collection of wealthy car enthusiasts showing off cars that rarely see the sun. Show cars and unmodified cars don't quite pique my interest.
Gridlife was completely different. It felt more grassroots, accessible, and actually what car enthusiasts are about—building and racing cars. Car shows and exotic race events are missing one of the two components that make events enjoyable for me.
In the morning, I somehow snuck into the paddock by asking for a driver wristband and parked my car with my new friends at 303 and Stabil. One of my friend's friends, Jerry, had a gray GT4RS competing in Street Mod, and I was right next to my old Chicagoland friend, Jackie, in his PhD M2 in the Eibach booth.
@phd_racing @jackiejding
Walking around the paddock, seeing the variation in builds from fully fledged drift missiles to garage-built time attack cars, really gives inspiration.
@ElitePerformance @gary_w114
Some notable cars I saw were an R31 Wagon, Elite Performance's Eggplant Supra, TJ Hunt's GT3RS, and Randy from Illiminate's R32 GTR.
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Before the event, I didn't fully grasp the concept of drifting. While it looked impressive on TV, I found it counterintuitive that cars designed for speed were deliberately driven slower through turns to (basically) create a smokescreen. I had it all wrong.
Watching Formula Drift cars slide sideways down the corkscrew with their engines roaring finally made me understand the appeal. YouTube and social media don't do it justice. Instead of it being about the engineering and precision of racecars, it's about the swagger and style of the cars and drivers. It's like comparing synchronized swimming to the 100-meter relay. Completely different disciplines that have a common denominator.
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After a long day, it was time to drive home and wake up early in the morning to come back for an HPDE day to try and shake down the newly installed JRZ RS Pro 2-way coilovers.
In an extremely foggy morning, I lowered my tire pressures to 29 psi cold, torqued my lug nuts, got tech'd by Gridlife, and set up my Garmin Catalyst for my first session.
Man, the traffic was bad. The limit for the number of cars on the track at once for an HPDE day at Laguna is 26 cars, and the intermediate group was at max capacity. The variation in lap times was quite large, with a Corvette in our group doing high 1:30s and a couple of cars in the 1:50s.
I ended up with a PB in the very last session of the day, with a 1:41.64, matching the times of my good friends @blisiono and @alfgsf. Excited to call Laguna Seca my new home track, and I'll be back soon for the sweet sub-40.
