HYPERFEST 2025 part 1 - A UNIQUE EVENT YOU WONT FIND ANYWHERE ELSE.
Its almost been a month since Hyperfest has taken place, but I didnt decide to actually start this blog until 9PM two nights ago. Anyway, what is Hyperfest? Hyperfest is a one of a kind event held in conjunction with the National Auto Sport Association Mid-atlantic region at Virginia International Raceway. Over the history of 20 years, Hyperfest has been to many different locations like Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina and Summit Point in West Virginia and was started by a man named Chris Cobetto. Think of it as a Forza Horizon festival but in real life with circuit racing, drifting, rally and offroad activities, a car show, rows of food and merch vendors, live music, and get this, a Powerwheels downhill race that all take place over the span of a 3 day weekend. Tent and RV camping along with onsite logging are available and honestly, VIR is the perfect track for this because of it's unique track layout and sheer size of the property.
2025 marks my 9th year attending Hyperfest and out of that span of time, I have only missed photo coverage of it for two years. There's always something new to see and do every year -- always new pro and amateur drift drivers with all sorts of crazy horsepower cars come out, rally course improvements (depending on weather), and the on-track circuit racing whether it's HPDE, Time Trials, or wheel 2 wheel action. On the quick topic about weather, it always rains at least one day during this event but this year was DIFFERENT.
This year I had the chance to work with Amanda Skelly, who is in charge of all the Offroad and Rally activities during Hyperfest, and I was providing photo coverage for the group. The rally section is an interesting part of the event but it's not always available depending on the weather. This region experiences really wet conditions which can leave a rally or offroad course is a less than ideal situation (depending on who you ask), but because of insurance issues, the track has to make sure the area is safe to use. In years past, VIR has had a dedicated rally course across from the karting track but have decided to abandon it and completely made a new course on the North side of the property....and it's a HUGE piece of property. Because of the rain storms earlier in the week leading up to the event, the course was extremely damp and was in jeopardy of not being able to be used at all. Luckily the VIR grounds team had some solid plans and brought in some equipment to pack in the course and make it somewhat usable.
When I arrived on Friday, I got straight to work. Double-fisting two Canon R7 cameras with some medium to long range lenses, one of which I had never used before but going forward to future events, it'll be in my bag. I had some time to kill before I was scheduled to meet up with the Rally group so I headed straight over to the Patriot Course. The Patriot Course is where a majority of the drifting happens at VIR. It's part of the Grand Course but is separated for most events during the year. As part of a media outlet for Hyperfest, there's places you can and cannot go, depending on the vest. But if you ask me, anyone can get great shots from anywhere at that track. The drifting has multiple groups of cars, from newbies to pro drifters, making sure that no one is in a group with drivers outside of their skill level. Here you will see solo's, tandems, or in this years case (and last year), Larry Chen driving a new body style WRX with a lot of expensive camera equipment on the front of it, chasing a lot of the pro drivers around.
Drivers like Vaughn Gittin Jr, Chelsea DeNofa, T-Pain, and more big names in the drifting community came out. Probably one of the coolest cars was a C8 Corvette driven by Matt Field, a Formula Drift Pro driver, and the only C8 with a manual transmission ever. While T-pain was expected to be onsite until Saturday, his RTR Mustang convertible was out doing demonstration laps Friday. It was still pretty cool to see.
After hanging around the Patriot Course for about and hour or so, I started making my way towards the North paddock but more importantly, wanted to stop by another big drift pad next to the main spectator lot on Vendor Row. This main strip of road is lined with merch and food vendors and tent and RV camping. Over the course of the weekend, I would stop by and hang out with friends and companies, making sure to get as much content as possible. You'll see names like Fortune Auto, Exedy Clutches, Haltech, Monster Energy, RTR Vehicles, etc as well as media outlets like Gears and Gasoline, Grassroots Motorsport, and Larry Chen. The drift pad featured a lot of different activities like drift games, dirt bike stunts, ride-alongs, and offroad buggy jumping.
You can only stand in this area for so long until your face, hands and arms, and camera gear are all covered in race fluids, rubber, and other kinds of debris. Its a great thing that the race paddock was nearby because I wanted to go chill with my buddy Jacob and Honda Challenge friends as well as others. Im glad the staff do a great job trying to keep similar groups in certain areas of the paddock because it makes finding your friends a lot easier, however, in a sea of car haulers and trailers that all look the same, it can still be a challenge locating your homies.
Outside of photography I am a driver as well, but I havent done a NASA event in the last 3 years. I do mostly HPDE's and Time Attack / Time Trials with other organizations but Ive been lucky to have met a few of the guys in the VIR paddock through racing. So naturally, when I show up to shoot these events, they all want some cool photos from me. Because I drive a Honda Civic Si, the Honda Challenge paddock area is the spot I gravitate towards. That group both from the Mid-atlantic and Southeast regions are some of the coolest people, but honestly, a lot of people in grassroots racing are super cool people. Every one wants to see drivers succeed and go fast! My buddy Jake, who manages a performance shop in Concord, brought out his Honda S2000 Time Trials car and was participating in the Friday practice sessions to dial in the car.
I found some other persons of interest like Joshua Garcia, who owns a pair of AE86 corollas, one with a V8 swap and one with an F22C swap. Josh is a super chill dude and one of the nicest people Ive ever met.
2PM Friday rolls around and this is when the rally drivers will be checking in, getting their signage and stickers on the cars, and meeting up across from the car show and stage their cars along the main road to draw attention to this part of Hyperfest. The weather forecast for the weekend definitely scared away some drivers but that didnt stop a great group from showing up and participating. Over the years, Hyperfest rally has been one of the events that I really like photographing. There's a ton of action, its very dramatic seeing a rooster tail of dirt and mud flying out from behind and Evo or STi, and sometimes you're in the crosshairs of that mud and dirt.
The weather yet again decided to get real nasty. The skies surrounding VIR got real dark and then the wind picked up. Im sure everyone around were thinking it was just going to go around the area. No. Straight line winds, potential microbursts, and heavy rain came out of nowhere. It caused localized damage around the track - tents, canopies, merchandise, chairs, even the metal fencing lining the road were thrown and blown around like it was nothing. Tornado sirens started going off which was wild cause we're all out in a very open area. I cant lie though, getting a racecar on track with a tornado in the background would've been one hell of a flex in the motorsports photography community.
After the crazy storms, the rally group went to set up camp near the entrance to Dirt World. My night wasn't great. My air mattress developed a hole somewhere and burrito'd me to the ground where I hadn't picked the greatest tent site that was absolutely level. My tent was set of a slope, smack dab in the middle of the sleeping space. To my better judgement, I still slept on the ground thinking the truck would've been worse....it wasn't, and it was where I ended up sleeping Saturday. Around 5AM Saturday morning, another crazy storm came through the area and cause a lot more damage then the one earlier but I think the treeline where my tent was provided a barrier between the wind and rain and I somehow slept right through the carnage....possibly even another tornado.