{"id":8450,"date":"2025-07-29T13:39:58","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T17:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=8450"},"modified":"2025-07-30T13:43:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T17:43:16","slug":"gridlife-summer-apex-turns-up-the-heat-at-road-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/29\/gridlife-summer-apex-turns-up-the-heat-at-road-america\/","title":{"rendered":"GRIDLIFE Summer Apex Turns Up the Heat at Road America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Festival weekend sees 30% growth in attendance, sold-out camping and record-breaking laps<\/em><\/p>\n

\nELKHART LAKE, WI (29\u00a0July 2025)-<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>The only thing hotter than the corn sweats in Wisconsin last weekend was GRIDLIFE Summer Apex, which scorched its way into the record books at Road America with its signature mashup of high-octane motorsports and beat-dropping music.<\/p>\n

Back for its second year at the legendary facility, the festival drew thousands of fans for a weekend that was equal parts racing, car show and music festival. Attendance jumped 30% over 2024, camping sold out before the gates even opened and the paddock was packed with more than 300 drivers across multiple racing and drifting classes, an all-time record for the series.<\/p>\n

<\/a>With a growing range of brands looking to connect with the GRIDLIFE community, another 200 cars were on display as part of the GRIDLIFE Motoring Meet presented by FCP Euro, the Subimods Corral, Hyundai N Corral and Lowend Garage corrals.<\/p>\n

Fans arrived early and stayed late, flooding the 640-acre grounds for more than 50 hours of on-track action split between Road America\u2019s iconic 4-mile road course and the adjacent Briggs & Stratton Motorplex karting facility. Twelve official lap records were shattered across nine classes, reinforcing Road America\u2019s status as the National Park of Speed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only the second time the full GRIDLIFE Festival has touched down at Road America,\u00a0\u00a0but last year\u2019s debut already felt like a generational shift. GRIDLIFE made history in 2024 as the first to bring full-course drifting to the historic road course and 2025 doubled down on the momentum.<\/p>\n

<\/a>This level of car culture and competition rivals the world\u2019s biggest racing series and Road America knows it.<\/p>\n

The circuit is no stranger to the upper echelons of motorsport with INDYCAR, NASCAR and IMSA on the calendar. But GRIDLIFE brings something those series are hungry for: a younger, more participatory crowd that all motorsport brands are desperate to reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like GRIDLIFE a lot. It brings a lot of new and younger fans to Road America,\u201d said Road America Communications Director John Ewert. \u201cThe car culture is far and wide and it\u2019s really neat to see today\u2019s younger fans getting into import cars, technology and understanding the performance characteristics of various cars that are affordable within their price range.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a storied track like Road America, the growth of the GRIDLIFE event reflects another diverse and dynamic demographic to get to experience the track now, and in the future.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/strong>\u201cWe\u2019ve been around 70 years, racing\u2019s been around longer than that,\u201d Ewert continued. \u201cThe [GRIDLIFE] car culture is vast so it\u2019s really cool to see a different generation accepting cars and doing different things with them from Time Attack to drifting to road course racing. It\u2019s just really nice to see that car culture isn\u2019t fading away, that there\u2019s a resurgence and a revival and GRIDLIFE is adding different forms of entertainment to it and different aspects to it. It\u2019s great. This event is something that is all encompassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

74% of GRIDLIFE\u2019s core audience and driver base\u00a0\u00a0is between the ages of 18 and 34. They don\u2019t just show up. They wrench. They camp. They build. They drift. They race. They share. It\u2019s a crowd that lives the culture instead of just consuming it.<\/p>\n

\u201cGRIDLIFE bringing drifting to Road America is incredibly positive,\u201d Ewert added. \u201cIt\u2019s great that drifting is still alive and well in the United States. It\u2019s new and exciting. When people see it for the first time their minds are kind of blown. Full course drifting is awesome. It\u2019s amazing what these drivers can do with their cars and it\u2019s just a different form of motorsport entertainment to watch. It offers a different flavor to the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>With music pulsing from three festival stages, including the NOS Energy Main Stage, arcade battles and sponsor activations buzzing across the paddock, GRIDLIFE Summer Apex once again proved it\u2019s one of the most immersive weekends in American motorsports.<\/p>\n

With Summer Apex in the books and GRIDLIFE Circuit Legends (Aug. 15-17), Chicagoland (Sept. 12-14), Laguna Festival (Sept. 26-28) and PITT Race (Oct. 17-19) still ahead, the second half of 2025 is shaping up to be the most electric yet both on the track and in the scene.<\/p>\n

For more information and upcoming event dates, visit\u00a0www.grid.life<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Watch GRIDLIFE Summer Apex\u00a0 live stream race replay<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Festival weekend sees 30% growth in attendance, sold-out camping and record-breaking laps ELKHART LAKE, WI (29\u00a0July 2025)-\u00a0The only thing hotter than the corn sweats in Wisconsin [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-gridlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8452,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8450\/revisions\/8452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}