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Story by Tom Suddard • Photos as Credited
In Chicago, the weather was idyllic: clear skies, highs in the 80s. The forecast for the coming weekend promised more of the same. It was August 2016, and Chicago magazine had just published “63 Things to Do in Chicago in August,” a list touting events like the Chicago Hot Dog Fest and the Chicago Musical Theater Festival.
But Chris Stewart didn’t care about the weather in Chicago. And he didn’t care about hot dogs.
Chris was indoors, signing paperwork at an area bank. With a stroke of a pen, he agreed to gamble everything he owned–everything he’d worked for–on something very hard to control: the weather at Road Atlanta one week later, the venue and date of the first #Gridlife South gathering.
If his fledgling festival went well, he’d be vindicated and his local event would instantly become a series with national notoriety. If it was rained out? His wife and kids would find themselves house hunting while he picked up the pieces of his dream.
Chris left the bank with a new mortgage on his house and a check in his pocket: the check he’d use to rent Road Atlanta for #Gridlife South on August 26, 2016.
The stakes weren’t always this high. In fact, most of Chris’s previous events hadn’t had stakes at all. He’s now 38, but his story starts back in 2002, when he was just a 22-year-old kid fresh out of art school.
Back then, he daily-drove his second car, a Honda CRX that he modified more for style than substance. It wore a body kit, five-spoke wheels and lots of stickers.
He organized a small-scale event, too: the West Michigan Honda Meet, a parking lot picnic in Grand Rapids aimed at like-minded car enthusiasts (Honda ownership not required). After a successful first event, Honda Meet became an annual tradition for Chris and his friends. Attendance grew each year as import fever swept across the country.
For Chris, though, cars remained just a hobby. He spent his days working as a graphic designer for a bumper manufacturer. Then he got fired for “abuse of company internet.”
Chris, who also owned one of the biggest online forums for EF-chassis Hondas, was spending a tad too much time moderating his baby. He still vividly remembers being walked into the HR office, where he was shown a bar graph of how long he spent on various websites while on the clock. He saw lots of short bars for company websites, but towering over them–representing a full 50 percent of his browsing time–was the bar for ef-honda.com.
At that point, Chris had a choice to make: Ditch the corporate world and do something he loved, or take his firing as a wake-up call and double down on his professional life. He chose the latter, resigning himself to rush-hour traffic and working lunches. Cars would have to wait until after business hours.
Chris was still a passionate enthusiast, though. He kept playing with Hondas, going to meets, and making friends in the hobby. Eventually he even had his own team. They called themselves 075, a reference to the address of their shared college residence. The 075 crew is still around today, Chris is quick to point out, and he’s still a very active member in the Honda scene.
What pushes an enthusiast to move from the parking lot to the race track? In Chris’s case, the Integra Type R Expo came to town. The Honda halo car was way too expensive for him and his crew, but the event gave them a new concept to take back to 075: road racing. The expo showcased a bunch of Hondas with parts better suited to the track than the parking lot, and shortly thereafter Chris found himself running track days with organizations like the BMW CCA and Porsche Club of America. Chris loved driving on track, but he struggled to love the events: He was into cars in large part because of the community, but his kitted-out Honda stuck out like a sore thumb at track days full of BMW M3s. He felt shunned by the “real” track enthusiasts and intimidated by the drivers meetings, instructors and other cars. He wanted to find his place in road racing, but he just couldn’t make it click.
That is, until he got the right driving coach. During a CGI Motorsports track day at GingerMan Raceway, he was paired with a female instructor named Ray who drove an Acura NSX. This combination–great coach, familiar car–is what kept Chris on the road to #Gridlife. As he continued down the rabbit hole of track days, his driving skills progressed noticeably. He also started building Hondas with an eye toward real track performance.
Meanwhile, Chris was still organizing his annual Honda Meet. He was planning the fourth event when he had a revelation: Anybody–not just four-letter sanctioning bodies–can rent a race track. All it takes is a check. So Chris and his friends scrounged up $2500 to reserve GingerMan on a Monday–the least expensive day for track rentals–for Honda Meet 4.
How’d it go? In Chris’s words, “It was sloppy. We hired a few track staff to do the hard stuff, and we had a few semi-experienced instructors, but we learned a lot about how not to run a track day that first year.”
Overall, though? Honda Meet 4 was awesome, and a group of enthusiasts who’d always dreamed of driving on track finally got their taste.
Chris hosted Honda Meet 5 there a year later, again on a Monday–the Fourth of July. The response was massive: Over 1000 spectators came to GingerMan.
At this point in the story, you’re probably expecting Chris to quit his day job and work full time on organizing events he’s passionate about. Nope! Instead, he continued diligently rising through the ranks in the advertising world. He transitioned from designer to art director and “fell in love with strategic thinking and the art of manipulation.”
Chris was learning more about marketing every day at work, but he managed to restrain himself from pouring those skills into his hobby. If anything, he took a step back from cars: He got married, moved to Chicago, and had two kids. He even parked his CRX for a full three years as he explored his new home on moped and fixie.
Ever the hipster (he prefers the term “connoisseur of subcultures”), Chris soon found himself in the center of a cultural renaissance in Chicago. By then he’d become pretty good at marketing (his resumé lists high-level clients like Harley-Davidson, Craftsman, Sears and HP Global), and he happily applied his talents to album launches and event promotion for up-and-coming EDM artists like Flosstradamus and Willy Joy.
This didn’t stop Honda Meet from being an annual event, though. Chris describes it as the “steadfast, sturdy rock of the Midwest’s track community.” Honda Meets 6, 7, 8 and 9 mostly organized themselves, and the 075 crew–along with some new additions from Chicago–worked together smoothly. Their process was ridiculously simple: Rent a track, sell some tickets, cover the expenses, have some fun, then go back home.
Tickets always sold out moments after launch, but Chris didn’t raise prices or pick a bigger track. He simply set up odd loopholes in the ticket-buying process so folks in the community would be guaranteed entry.
Then, Chris’s career climbed another rung: He was promoted to creative director. He was 32 years old, married almost a decade, and had two young kids at home. From this vantage point, the path ahead was clear: Hustle through the ad world, pitch bigger and more innovative campaigns, and jump agencies and clients every two years in the pursuit of higher ladders.
But was that really his end game? Chris had been running side hustles for years–apps, agencies, products and even Honda Meet–but he’d never jumped in with both feet, always careful to meet the demands of the advertising world. Now, though, he wondered if the right side hustle could ultimately move to center stage.
Chris dismissed the obvious answer–expand Honda Meet–almost immediately. It was already too big in his eyes, no longer just a relaxing hangout with friends. Plus, with a name like that, the event would struggle to grow beyond a small part of the car world.
Chris looked at his portfolio full of clever marketing initiatives and decided to treat himself like a client. “How do I overdeliver and disrupt for the automotive world?” he asked himself
After some brainstorming, he articulated the thing he wanted to disrupt: Automotive culture was already a niche thing, yet it seemed like every car event was dedicated to cutting the pie into even smaller slices. Road racers didn’t talk to drifters, who didn’t talk to autocrossers, who didn’t talk to street crews, who didn’t talk to daily drivers, who didn’t talk to stance enthusiasts.
Then came the idea: Create an event where every facet of car culture unites because, in his words, “it’s all so rad!” Music, he reasoned, would be the glue that held the event together, filling in the cracks between the scenes.
There’d be camping, too, emulating the modern music festival format that Chris had watched take shape. He picked a name, too, hoping that #Gridlife would travel across social media the way advertisements wouldn’t.
He was convinced he had a winning format, and in 2014 he decided to pull the trigger. He called GingerMan Raceway, the birthplace of Honda Meet: “Hey, it’s Chris from Honda Meet. I’d like to rent the track for this festival I’m holding, and I’m going to bring all of these different disciplines into the track for the weekend. Oh, and there’s going to be music, too.”
GingerMan was in, but the hoped-for audience wasn’t on board. Same with the insurers, and every other gatekeeper Chris encountered in the planning process. As he recalls, the reactions were a bit blunt: “You are fucking crazy, it won’t work, and there’s no way those stance guys and track guys are going to come together.”
Eventually, though, they opened their minds to the #Gridlife concept, and Chris managed to launch his dream festival in June 2014. He’d booked everything himself, made every arrangement, and hired zero staff.
But then the sun set. At 10 p.m. the paddock and campground emptied out. People filled the space in front of the stage. Flosstradamus and Willy Joy played to a packed house, and just like that, Chris knew he’d stumbled onto something big. As he says, “The world walked into #Gridlife thinking, ‘This will be a total shit show,’ but they left saying, ‘I can’t believe how much fun I had.’”
Chris was committed at this point, and he knew what he needed to do: Convince more people to come to his event. And rather than focus on spectators, he set out to woo influencers.
Like it or not, this 21st century marketing strategy works, so Chris hit the 2014 SEMA Show to share the #Gridlife concept with anyone who would listen. He pitched Hoonigan, Ken Block and everyone else his friends in the industry could introduce him to, but no one would bite. “Nobody got it at all after year one,” Chris recalls, “but that was okay. I didn’t have any expectations for the event at that point.”
Eventually, Chris did find one influencer who would spread the #Gridlife gospel: professional drifter Ryan Tuerck. Chris sent Ryan’s Facebook page a message explaining what #Gridlife was. Somehow the stars aligned, and the message made it to Ryan. He agreed to attend, named his price, and became #Gridlife’s first major get. Ryan is the reason professional drifting came to #Gridlife.
Chris doubled down on the music, too, firing off emails to every booking agency he could think of. His pitch was simple: “This is my event, this is how much money I have to spend, and who can I get to come play?” Chris managed to book RJ D2, a big enough artist that the concert alone started to be one of #Gridlife’s draws. With these big names came bigger production budgets, and Chris drastically upgraded the stage, sound and lighting. In his words, it was “the difference between throwing a house party and throwing a festival.”
Chris was no longer doing all this alone, either. Adam Jabaay, a friend from 075 and Honda Meet, has been Chris’s on-track guy since 2003. Chris also poached Hollie Heiser, GingerMan’s track services manager, to become his “right-hand solutions engineer.” For every big idea or wild dream Chris had, Hollie helped make it a reality–a role she played during the first festival while working at the track.
With Adam and Hollie onboard, Chris went into #Gridlife 2015 feeling more confident than ever. He announced Ryan Tuerck’s appearance, then the music lineup, then the ticket prices, and just like that, the festival had pre-sold 3000 tickets. That was nearly double the total attendance of the first #Gridlife.
All signs were pointing to the best event yet, and tickets continued to sell well at the gate on Friday. Then the weather tanked: Overnight, it went from warm and sunny to 43 degrees and rainy, and hypothermia became a legitimate threat.
Mindful of a safety fasco, the #Gridlife team called the event “sold out” and refused to admit anybody on Saturday, the festival’s biggest day. They assumed that those already present would pack up and leave, but instead they got a #Gridlife miracle: Everybody stayed, the party continued and, as Chris tells it, “the vibe was so strong!” Despite the worst weather this side of a hurricane, #Gridlife 2015 ended a success. (Only one spectator got hypothermia.)
More doors opened when their friendship with Ryan Tuerck connected them with folks from Donut Media. Suddenly, people like Jarod DeAnda, the voice of Formula Drift, and Matt Farah, aka @TheSmokingTire, were coming to #Gridlife. Video gamers noticed a new logo on Ryan Tuerck’s car in “Forza Motorsport 6,” too: #Gridlife had officially made it onto the Xbox. A few months later, #Gridlife made similarly tall waves at the PRI Trade Show. Chris calls 2015 the year of momentum.
A second festival wasn’t even written down on their whiteboard, as #Gridlife still struggled to afford hosting one of them. Chris’s young company hadn’t made a single dollar from any of its events, and that needed to change if it was going to stay in business.
Then one afternoon, the phone rang. On the other end of the line was Road Atlanta and, as Chris recalls, they had a simple pitch: “We saw the videos of #Gridlife, it looks pretty cool, and we think you should come down and visit our track.”
Chris hung up the phone, and he and the #Gridlife crew started giggling like children. “Oh my god,” he said, “Road Atlanta called us. Us! They called us!” The team put together a pitch and few down to Braselton.
Road Atlanta is owned by the International Speedway Corporation, the same company that owns NASCAR, Daytona International Speedway and so many other famous tracks. But despite that, they welcomed #Gridlife with open arms.
“They liked us,” Chris remembers. “They were into our concept, and they liked where our head was at.” Chris even convinced the track to allow full-course drifting, one thing that separates #Gridlife from other drift events. All that came at a price, though: If GingerMan is an economy rental car, Road Atlanta is that new Mercedes-Benz parked in the dealer’s lobby. They wrote #Gridlife a track rental quote, slid it across the table, and said goodbye. It was the biggest number Chris had ever seen.
Back in Chicago, Chris faced a choice: Roll the dice on an expensive track in an unfamiliar part of the country, or thank Road Atlanta for the experience and focus on his current events.
Chris was realistic. “Anybody who knows anything about business is saying, ‘No, don’t do it,’” he recalls. But he couldn’t shake a more intrusive thought: “This is the chance to lock in my concept. If we can pull it off, it establishes that we own the motorsports music festival concept and can lock it down.”
Chris was right: With only one major festival per year in one area of the country, #Gridlife was just a fledgling regional brand. And the format wasn’t that hard to copy: With the right Rolodex and a few hundred thousand dollars, anybody could start their own #Paddocklife or #Tracklife or #Driftlife. Chris saw it as a race: The first company to establish a national brand and a reputation for merging music festivals and motorsports would emerge the winner.
Chris called back Road Atlanta, and then both entities made a public announcement: #Gridlife South, #Gridlife’s newest festival, was coming to Road Atlanta in 2016.
The
They added another event to the calendar–an HPDE-only spring shakedown–and developed an instructor training program with the help of Ross Bentley. The #Gridlife calendar gained two additional standalone track days, along with a three-round time attack series that would culminate in a championship contest at #Gridlife South.
Meanwhile, the original #Gridlife was rebranded as #Gridlife Midwest, and track driving tickets sold out in 12 minutes. They lined up bigger artists and even better music production, then reorganized the Midwest festival’s layout to improve the experience for the 6000 spectators and drivers.
The event was attracting better cars and better drivers, too. The same professional drifters Chris had once begged to attend were now asking him to find them room in the #Gridlife Midwest paddock. Media outlets started showing up left and right, and builders were announcing that their latest cars would be unveiled at the festival.
Chris and team quickly shifted their focus from growing the Midwest event to optimizng it. They began implementing safeties and controls so they wouldn’t, as Chris puts it, “let the party overcome the event.” The 2016 #Gridlife Midwest was so successful that Chris finally quit his day job a few months later.
But things weren’t so rosy in Atlanta. While the other events were oversubscribed, drivers weren’t signing up for #Gridlife South, spectators weren’t buying tickets, and every payment toward this second festival cut a little deeper.
Everyone the organizers asked for advice–the track, other event promoters, us–said that Road Atlanta is a walk-up market, meaning spectators prefer to buy their tickets at the gate, waiting until the last minute to decide if they’re going to attend.
That wasn’t reassuring: Summer in Georgia means frequent rain and sweltering temperatures, both of which reliably convince walk-up customers to stay home. Adding to the challenge was Road Atlanta’s sheer size. Pack 6000 people into GingerMan, and there’s barely room to walk around. In contrast, Drift Atlanta draws 40,000 spectators to Road Atlanta, and that’s not even the facility’s biggest event. To recoup the cost of renting Road Atlanta (take GingerMan’s weekend rate and multiply it by eight or so), #Gridlife South needed to fill the infield with spectators.
The team solved that first problem–the lack of drivers–by calling in a few favors. They asked the community that drove in #Gridlife Midwest–the one that started in a parking lot for the West Michigan Honda Meet–if they’d be willing to drive to Atlanta.
The Midwest drivers agreed, but that was only half the battle. Three weeks before #Gridlife South, the money was almost gone and the event hadn’t sold nearly enough spectator tickets. Chris and team sat down to make a decision: Should they refund every pre-sold ticket, cancel the event, and destroy #Gridlife’s reputation–its only real asset, and the one thing that set it apart? No, they decided, they would do whatever it took to make #Gridlife South happen. They doubled down on marketing.
Ticket pre-sales increased, but not enough, so Chris faced another tough decision. With no investors or stakeholders besides himself, he didn’t have anybody to ask for money, and there was no way any bank would fund a festival without some collateral in return. That’s how Chris found himself at the bank, signing the documents to take out a massive loan on his home.
A few days later, Chris finally caught a break: Three days before the event, the weather forecast looked good, and ticket pre-sales finally started coming in. When Chris paid the track to open the gates to #Gridlife South, the predictions bore out: Walk-up sales were strong.
We were among them, and wrote a review of the event titled “#Gridlife: Automotive Sensory Overload.” It was our first time attending a #Gridlife event, but we came away convinced: “The entire event had a positive atmosphere that we haven’t seen anywhere else,” our article reads. “#Gridlife makes the things on the internet touchable,” we overheard someone say.
The festival was awesome, but was it proftable?“#Gridlife South was emotionally, financially and physically burdensome,” Chris admits, “but it locked down the concept and did everything it needed to do.”
We’re not sure if Chris always had this goal in mind or if he stumbled into it organically, but it’s clever: #Gridlife’s unique format means that it attracts every stage of enthusiast, from the kid with a silly shift knob on his Honda to the professional-level road racer, along with everything in between.
Plus, every single part of #Gridlife is tailored toward younger enthusiasts, from the website’s colors to the placement of the porta-potties in the camping areas. So #Gridlife is the perfect mechanism for bringing a bunch of young, open-minded car enthusiasts together, keeping them there for a few days straight, and teaching them about new things.
Chris says he’s careful when choosing sponsors, making sure to always put the spectator’s experience first. Today #Gridlife boasts a healthy list of industry partners, like Rockstar Energy Drink, Falken Tire and AEM, and Chris says that more opportunities come up every day.
2017 marked the year that #Gridlife officially made it: The lineup included five track events and two festivals, and it finally, just barely, broke even. Even #Gridlife South–nearly killed forever–went well on its second go, with healthy ticket sales and a much bigger crowd than its first year. The #Gridlife team even rented an office, finally freeing up Chris’s basement.
What’s next for #Gridlife? Chris sees his young series building more bridges. “It’s really all about growing motorsports as a whole,” he explains, mentioning fairly impressive plans for improving instructor training and certification, further legitimizing time trials racing, quantifying track records set during wet conditions, expanding the car show component of the festivals, and adding more races and festivals to the series calendar.
If that sounds like a lot, it is, but Chris has a plan for that, too. His primary goal is “slow, controlled growth and maintaining community.” Chris still hosts Honda Meet every year, too. Despite moving from organizing the local Honda scene to organizing one of the fastest-growing series in the country, Chris still puts community first.
We should disclose that #Gridlife is a customer of GRM. And we really like their crew.
This article is from a past issue of the magazine. Like stories like this? You’ll see every article as soon as it's published, and get access to our full digital archive, by subscribing to Grassroots Motorsports. Subscribe now.
Such a great vibe at #Gridlife.
I met Adam in late 2015 when I was looking for unobtainium parts for my CRX.
Have been buddies every since.
The festival vibe is awesome, but the vibe Adam creates for everyone who goes on track is why Midwest festival sells out in seconds.
Listen to the Speed Secrets Podcast episode #111 where Ross Bently interviews Adam and he talks about it.
Adam kills himself to make sure everyone has a great time.
They really have done a great job with this. Props to Chris for seeing it through! Great write-up.
Nice write-up. If gridlife is the Coachella of car shows, why not make the 2k challenge the Burning Man of car shows?
In reply to CrustyRedXpress :
All that's missing is another 1000 people. The big thing about Gridlife is that once the track day is done you're in the middle of a giant party with all your buddies. It kind of makes a normal track day seem lame. Here in Texas the NASA group has a fantastic BBQ on the Saturday of every event. You come off track and eat and hang out and it's really cool. Once you get used to that, normal track weekends where people just go back home/to the hotel after the last session seem very boring. Gridlife takes that to the next level.
I don't want to be the guy to say this but I had the same idea around the same time but I was still in college but the idea of a rock concert and motorsport event at a track made perfect sense to me. Kind of feel like the other guy who invented the pet rock kind of thing.
Still have yet to visit one of these events (not out of spite) just haven't gotten around to it but it is bucket list.
worst part is, I'm "local" to the origin too.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
"The big thing about Gridlife is that once the track day is done you're in the middle of a giant party with all your buddies."
I hope GRM takes the challenge in this direction in the future...but more like BM and less like Coachella. The culture of Burning Man is a do-ocracy...the participants serve the beer, build the stage, create the art, sing the songs, put on the entertainment, etc. It's very much a DIY event as opposed to Coachella where you're just paying money to see a performer.
I've heard a lot about these events but have yet to go to one. All the tickets are sold super quickly, and without knowing what the big deal is I don't wait around to make sure to get one. They do look really fun though, and this story is really great. Kudos on an awesome article!
Having said that I've seen a few videos where the on track behavior is... immature. I'm a relative novice to tracking and I'm prob a bit older than the general demographic there, but when I'm on track I err on the side of safety if there are other cars around. I'm not sure that's the general MO at Gridlife. Not saying they're not putting forth the right rules or not enforcing them, but the crowd is young, and I'm sure we remember the stupid crap we all did when we thought we were invincible. But now that I'm older, and have seen accidents on track, I'm more careful about who I share the track with, and I'm not sure I'm ready to go to one of those events yet and put myself out there on track.
I just did their west coast event and it was really cool. No music or anything other than some hpde groups and a track battle time attack
Not sure if it was due to a new course or what but there was too much down time but that was my only real complaint. The track battle seemed a bit hokey and gimmicky but turned out to be super fun.
Highly recommend to participate if it happens to occur near you
Great article! I love the #GirdLife story and it just keeps writing new chapters every year. Stay tuned :-)
In reply to bcp2011 :
There have been some intense videos of some mistakes but I bet you've never seen that from our beginner (/novice) program! We've revamped it especially last year with a new method that has proven to be the safest, most fun, most engaging, and most beneficial to students. But safety is absolutely our goal. If you want the best experience come out under the beginner group for an incredible time in the most controlled and predictable run group of the weekend. The pace may be slower overall but you build speed at your pace and are not forced to get into situations you are uncomfortable with. Hopefully we can change your mind!
-Ryan (Lead Instructor - #gridlife)
Gridlife Atlanta is this weekend. Anyone else going?
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