GRIDLIFE Midwest Festival Features Music, Drift Legends, Time Attack, 50-Car Touring Cup Field
South Haven, MI - The annual GRIDLIFE tradition of smashing together live music and the world of motorsports continues this weekend, September 9-12, at GingerMan Raceway in western Michigan. The festival is normally held in the first weekend in June, but will once again be held in early September as a result of the pandemic. Since 2019, GRIDLIFE Midwest has featured three distinct and unique motorsports - TrackBattle Time Attack, where drivers engineer their cars to do the fastest possible lap across a variety of classes, drift, where drivers create massive clouds of smoke and skillfully slide around the course at high speed, and GRIDLIFE Touring Cup - a diverse and competitive wheel-to-wheel racing series.
Headlined by The Floozies on Friday and Big Boi on Saturday, GRIDLIFE Midwest will feature Sunsquabi, A-Trak, Boogie T, JAWNS, Ajax Stacks, D-Wrex, Jimkata, and more as part of the music show that draws thousands each year. Attendees can camp next to the racetrack, enjoy food stands and trucks, a gaming arcade, live music, and motorsports action for three full days.
To add to the on-track action, big drift names like Chris Forsberg, Ryan Litteral, Odi Bakchis, Michael Essa from FCP Euro, and Matt Field will put on a show on the 2.21 mile, 11-turn road course. GRIDLIFE offers drifters a unique driving experience, drifting on the same track layout that the fastest cars of the weekend will use - offering context for just how fast and how skilled the drift field is. Announcing the action for the drift segment of the GRIDLIFE Livestream (available to watch on YouTube) will be Jarod DeAnda and Sam Nalvin - a dynamic duo that makes the production as fun and entertaining as the action itself.
For a second time, YouTuber T.J. Hunt will return to GRIDLIFE after his debut at the Alpine Horizon festival in July in his Valvoline Nissan 350z. Gears & Gasoline will also be on track with Valvoline branding, in the striking blue, red, and white EK Honda Civic driven by Ben Thorn, who will be defending his third place in the overall Time Attack Falken ClubTR class season points.
Seven different classes, from the approachable and inviting Sundae Cup category featuring cars like Honda Fits and Mazda2s, all the way to Unlimited class, with crazy wing assemblies and a rulebook with little in it, will be on track again for GRIDLIFE’s Time Attack competition. The Street Mod category has seen a fantastic points battle all season long, with Jackie Ding leading Michael Aumick, Dewey DeWitt, and Alex Moss. Ding’s Toyota Supra will not be present at GRIDLIFE Midwest, however, as the car is in prep for the season finale at Road America. Instead, the PhD driver will be competing in Street class in a Tesla Model 3.
The new-for-2021 Falken ClubTR category places competitors on identical-width Falken RT660 tires - and the battle between Ben Thorn and class leaders Ryan Seiler and Dana Basinski is only heating up with two rounds remaining in the season. GingerMan Raceway’s eleven turns often reward handling over power - highlighting very different car attributes than Road America.
GRIDLIFE Touring Cup, the wildly popular and diverse wheel-to-wheel racing series, returns to GingerMan for the second time this season. A 50+ car grid awaits four sprint races over the course of the weekend, plus an additional qualifying shootout, where the top 10 racers from the second race each get one lap to grab a higher grid spot for the third race. Only 7 points separate leader Eric Kutil from GLTC rookie Jeremy Swenson, whose freshman year of competition has shown his purple C5 Chevrolet Corvette can stick with the frontrunners.
The on-track action at GRIDLIFE Midwest can be watched in its entirety on YouTube, beginning on Friday morning.
The music lineup, schedule, tickets, and other information can be found at gridlifemidwest.com.