Back in 2018 I was lucky enough to fly out to Atlanta for Gridlife South - a three day celebration of drifting, time attack, and music. Along with Radwood and a few other side-events at the track that weekend, I felt like I had experienced a once-in-a-lifetime intensity of automotive wonders. I didn’t realize that in a few short years I’d have the opportunity to experience that wonder all over again, and only a couple miles from my house.
Thanks to my good friend Meng and Team Riaction, I was able to secure a media pass to Gridlife Laguna and I made sure to make the most of my time trackside. The gallery below is huge, but it’s worth the scroll.
After tech and setting up the garage Thursday night, we were treated to a crisp morning on Friday (before it became hot and not a single cloud dared to cross the horizon). I challenged myself to get to many more corners of the track this year, after I stuck around the Corkscrew almost all weekend last year, and it paid off huge.
Meng and his blue hatch ran well all weekend, even into an extremely foggy Sunday morning before packing up to leave. A couple days later he’d turn right around and run hot laps at a 100°+ day at Chuckwalla. That’s true Honda reliability!
I was also able to bring to life an idea I first had a couple years ago, showing Meng following a racing line in a sort of sequence/multiple-exposure setup. I’m incredibly happy with the final result, but I know it can be even better - I’m looking forward to trying at least one of these at every track day I shoot going forward.
The rest of Team Riaction did great as well, even though one of the cars went down with mechanical issues on day one. The spread of cars and drivers across the different driving classes had me shooting all day, with each one getting different (but good) results.
My friends over at Jackson Racing had a rough time with the cars they brought out for GLTC, but I was able to grab a couple photos of their new widebody debuts - fingers crossed they can get the mechanicals worked out for their next events.
Goofing around is essential when shooting trackside - not in a safety sense but in a how-slow-can-I-go-with-the-shutter kinda way. Turns out, around 1/20th of a second is about as slow as I can still turn out semi-reliable wide pans of cars leaving the Corkscrew. I’d be lying if seeing these load into Lightroom wasn’t a huge hit of dopamine.
Drifting means smoke, and smoke means fun opportunities to play with light that normal racing doesn’t really provide. The trackside trees made for a heavenly showing of beams, enough so that I felt black and white might do them more justice.
Moving down one turn and from the outside of the track to the inside yielded completely different (yet still very cool) results. This time, in color. I still can’t get over how that drift Porsche Cayenne moved, it felt like watching a video game in real life.
And finally, we’ve reached the cars I shot just because they looked cool and felt like capturing them for myself. The sights and sounds of the Unlimited class are hard to beat, doubly so as they scrape aero on the bottom of the Corkscrew. Also a huge shout out to Ford GT owner for absolutely driving it’s wheels off on the way to a production car lap record.
I’ll leave you with a wish to meet you right back here in 2025 with another year at Laguna Seca. So long until then!
