HyperFest at 20: How a Wild Idea Became America’s Ultimate Automotive Festival

Chris Cobetto - Hyperfest Founder for National Auto Sport Association (NASA)

Chris Cobetto leads the NASA Mid-Atlantic Region, and founded Hyperfest - the Automotive Amusement Park!

Contact: Chris Cobetto at chris@nasaracing.net | N/A | Visit Online!

            

This episode of Break/Fix podcast features Chris Cobetto, founder of HyperFest, and Matt Rocholl, social media and marketing director for HyperFest. They discuss the inception and evolution of HyperFest, a premier automotive lifestyle event now in its 20th year, initiated as part of the National Autosport Association’s (NASA) growth on the East Coast. The discussion covers the event’s multi-faceted activities including road racing, drifting, off-roading, rallying, and unique contests like the Power Wheels downhill race. They reflect on operational lessons, challenges faced, and the festival’s impact on the automotive community. Looking forward, they anticipate the continuous growth and potential expansion of HyperFest, emphasizing the importance of family and community in motorsport culture.

• Hyperfest celebrated its 20th anniversary this season, but let’s talk about how it all got started? Why? How?
• What is Hyperfest all about? Is it a festival? What kinds of “events” go on during the course of the weekend. Let’s talk about a few?
  • Drifting (ridealongs, bash, games, demonstrations)
  • Tire Rack Ultimate Track Car Challenge
  • Time Attack / Time Trials
  • Koni Power Wheels Attack by Red Line Oil
  • Hagerty Car Show presented by SpeedTrendSociety
  • National Auto Sport Association Road Racing
  • Off-Road Experience presented by Chaos Fab Shop (obstacle courses, trail runs, ridealongs)
  • X-Force Exhaust Burnout Contest & Sound Off
  • Hawk Performance HyperDrives (where you can drive your own car on track with an instructor)
  • Motul Rally Experience featuring Exedy Rally Rides, RallySprint, and RallyCross
  • Kaizen Autosport Racecar Ridealongs
  • Club HyperFest
  • Helicopter Rides
  • HPDE: High Performance Driving Event
  • Off-Road Rides
  • Models
  • Karting
  • Vendor Midway
  • Kid Zone
  • PRS Air Guitar and Shred Contests
  • Spectator Games
  • Camping (tent, car, trackside, family, RV)
• Where was Hyperfest held this year? How can you run so many events in one place?
• For someone that has never been to a Hyperfest event before, what should they expect? What does it cost?
• Where will Hyperfest be next year? What does the next couple of years look like? What does the next 20 years look like?

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. I wanted to give you a heads up before we head into this episode that we did have some technical issues with the audio. We’ve done our best to make corrections so that it’s easier to listen to. But unfortunately, you know, there’s always challenges with internet connection, the different systems that people are using, the audio quality itself.

So please by all means, sit back and enjoy this episode. The content in it is amazing, but our apologies for the quality right up front with activities taking place on [00:01:00] asphalt, dirt, mud, grass, and even in the air. From camping with your friends and family, riding with world-class professional drifters, or enjoying music from a variety of artists.

Hyper Fest is the destination for those who want to be immersed in one of the premier automotive lifestyle events and offers numerous activities to enjoy both on and off the track over the course of an entire weekend. With us tonight on Break Fixx to talk about the 20 year evolution of Hyper Fest is founder Chris Coto, who you might also recognize as a lead from the National Autosport Association, also known as nasa.

And joining us in the conversation tonight along with Chris is Matt Rockel, social media and marketing director for Hyper Fest. So welcome to Break Fix, Chris and Matt. Hey, how are you doing, man? Good to be here. Just celebrated its 20th anniversary here at the end of the 2021 season. But before we get into that, why don’t we talk about [00:02:00] how it all got started.

Why, where did the idea come from and where was the very first hyper fest?

Chris Cobetto: I was scared is really what it came down to. I had started the NASA Mid-Atlantic region. It was actually called NASA Virginia at the time. At that time, the National Autosport Association pretty much existed just in Northern California and Southern California.

When we started the East Coast, we were the only region. There are now 13 regions. We technically made NASA national and for what it cost to run a track out, I was really just trying to figure out a way to get a lot of the tuner guys on the track. At the time I had, I had another job. I was, I was working in the medical industry when we started nasa.

In my travels, I would find these guys, you know, in the Hondas and in the, the two 40 sxs and that sort of thing, and. They revealed his road racing types of cars. I would talk to ’em and say, Hey, you know, you guys know that you can take your car to the racetrack and put that thing on a real racetrack, right?

And they’d be like, really? At the time I was, I’d be in Northern Virginia. And some points about hour, hour, 20 minutes from. Depending how you are, they had no idea that [00:03:00] you go and take your own car in the track, and certainly one of those guys to come out and put butts in seats basically on the track. It got me thinking about how I could do a car show or something along with the regular NAS event.

Oddly enough, I get a phone call outta the blue from a guy named Mike De Ford who was working with Carlisle at the time, and Carlisle car shows in Pennsylvania. He was a NASA guy. From California to Carle, Pennsylvania to take over the Al Sport Compact Show at the time. Made it a pretty big success.

Called me. ’cause he was just trying to get people to, uh, he had some extra slots for vendors and like nasa and said, Hey, you’re the local guy. I wanna come up. So I went up there and I displayed and, you know, talked to people and he and I just became friends and, I don’t know, one night, probably after a glass of vino and a and played a pasta, we were talking about, Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to do a Carlisle type of event, like the car show and everything else, but do it at a red course and introduced.

More people. And really that’s how the idea of Hyper Fest got born. And the main idea really was just, Hey, let’s do a car show. And then he sent me [00:04:00] a video and he said, do some drifting. I’m like, what the heck is drifting? And he sent me a videotape. This is 2001. So he sent me a video tape. I couldn’t understand a word because all the Japanese, but it was smoky and it was cool.

I said, we have to have this set hyper fist, and that sort of started the whole circus. Let’s do everything that we would think would be cool as kind of dorky car guys and put it all in one spot. That’s really how it started. But you know, like I said, I was scared and the reason I was scared is because I have a lot of money that I had to pay the tracks if I didn’t get participating in NASA events.

I was just trying to fill the top of the funnel with new people and get them involved, what we were doing and, and I loved the sport. I mean, I loved road racing. Yeah. It took me a long time to find club racing. You know, I always wanted to race, but my exposure was always MSA stuff, and that was just very expensive.

And I didn’t realize there was this whole club level type of thing out there till a good friend of mine took me and his dad was racing at Summit Point, and I went, oh my gosh. It opened my eyes and realized that it’s actually [00:05:00] within most people’s grasp is to go take a car on track. As Matt will tell you, when I get ahold of something that I like, I’m hard to get to be quiet about it.

Shut up. The high is really sort of an extension of my own voice.

Crew Chief Eric: Here we are at Circa 2001 Summit Point Raceway High Fest is born at about the same time as the E 46 was debuted, right? So we’re gonna put it in perspective for our petrolhead of a certain age. But what did the first hyper fest look like?

How many cars showed up? How did it go? Did you feel that you had succeeded in achieving what you wanted and And you went to Hyper Fest too, or was it Yes. Yeah, we could have done better. Let’s try again.

Chris Cobetto: I think if I would’ve had no expectations, it would’ve probably been a wonderful thing. But you know, our expectation really was to have 10,000 people out there, and I think the first year we had 800.

And so I went into it really with the expectation that. We would have the crowds like we do now, you know, back then. So that was a little disappointing. However, in terms of proof of concept, and honestly the smiles that got generated by [00:06:00] everybody that was out there, it was enough to say, Hey, let’s try this again.

And actually we did two of them. The first year we did one at Summit Point, we did the other one on the R down at Charlotte. One was in, I think, July, which was very hot. The other one was September at Charlotte, which is also hot. And, um, you know, it just sort of went from there. I don’t, I don’t know that I would say that it was exactly how I’d en envisioned it, because to a certain extent, you know, you’re trying to find content that is going to appeal to car guys and still be able to manage that in a new event for the most part.

Yeah, I mean, we got the first one done, so from an operational side, it was great. We had the bands there, we had. Bikini contest has turned into the Daisy Dukes contest later on, which we don’t do that anymore at at BIR. You know, we had the drifting that took place. If you gotta to Summit Point and you run the main track through the carousel, basically down five the whole way through nine, you talk to any of the Drifters, it’s one of the best tracks that they can run on.

It’s great for spectators too. Y Vaughn Gitten [00:07:00] Jr. Was the winner of the very first US Drift nationals, which had this genesis that I professed. We claim and, and believe this is correct, that we were the very first pro drifting ev in the country. And they were terrible. All of ’em were there. Yeah. I mean, they were entertaining, but from a completely different, Vaughn was actually the least terrible out of them all.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s generally how you

Chris Cobetto: win, right?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. That’s right. It’s the least worst.

Chris Cobetto: The

Crew Chief Eric: least worst.

Chris Cobetto: Uh, he obviously has gotten much better. He’s just a great guys. And then we had think the next year, the year after that we had Forsberg win it and uh, we’ve had a lot of guys come through that are out pro kind of stuff.

But anyway, to the original concept, yeah, it was exactly what we had sort of thought about and it was nothing like what we had sort of thought about. It was definitely in the end, I saw a lot of guys like me or just goofy car guys, petrol heads, gearhead, and they had never seen anything like it. And when you see that on somebody’s face that you feel a brotherhood with, you know you want to keep doing it.

Crew Chief Eric: So like any [00:08:00] project right at the beginning, everybody’s bright-eyed and bushy tailed and excited to get things off the ground. And then there’s a bunch of lessons learned. The more you do it, obviously you did it twice in the first. Season and then I profess, let’s say, I guess three and then four, and then so on, on the line.

If you count them in in sequential order, right? What did you learn in those first couple of years? How did you get to year five, right? Because that’s always a big milestone for a lot of projects. And then you get to like the seven year itch. Like, do we continue? What do we do? How do we change? We can’t keep repeating the same thing and over, over again.

And once you cross that hurdle. The next 13. It’s like, how did you get there? Right? So walk us through the evolution process of Hyper Fest.

Chris Cobetto: We just really wanted to put a good show on, you know, I mean we did a tour in 2003, uh, in which we did Pittsburgh, Charlotte, summit Point and Cal Speedway. And then the following year we.

Let’s see. We did Charlotte Summit Point and Sonoma. We only did three that year. You know what I learned really from that was that the market wasn’t ready for the event. We were too far ahead, really, [00:09:00] of the market. That sound bad to say that I don’t, I don’t mean it to sound like I’m some master sooth there.

Reality is the vision we had was not yet understood. It was way too subtle for the market at the time, which was, you know, a bunch of clear taillights and bad, really large exhausts. On Honda Civics, the higher performance side of kind of what this event represented was just loss on the aftermarket. You know, you get to seem, uh, it seemed like 90% of the, and this is not right, but it seemed like 90% of the, the people that were just filet were like the clear taillights and stickers and things like that.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s okay, Chris. 27% of all statistics are made up anyway, so it’s all good. What we learned really was,

Chris Cobetto: I think on the operational side, what people liked, what got people. Interested. Certainly I learned a lot about marketing to that group of individuals, but I would say really the biggest thing was sort of the operational side and what pieces and how to place them.

I learned that there are a lot of people who [00:10:00] will say they’ll do something but don’t. I’ve learned that when you find somebody who really, you know, knows what they’re doing and does a good job for you, that you do whatever you possibly can. Make sure that they stick around. It’s just critical because this thing is such a detailed monster.

You have got to have some really excellent people in each one of the categories. Yeah. Don’t, and learning how to manage my own expectations.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. I mean, a, a lot of what you’re talking about is like managing any large business or, you know, group of people. I mean, there’s all that, you know, HR. Side of things, but also don’t take this the wrong way.

It sounds like a logistical nightmare because there’s so many events going on within the larger umbrella of high professor. We’ll dig into that a little bit more as we go on. Let me ask you this two goals here, because the original goal was bring, as we call them, the stance bros, right? And tutor crowd into the de world to help foster nasa.

So A, was that successful? B. What was the biggest flop in maybe those first five years where you’re like, man, we [00:11:00] should have never done that?

Chris Cobetto: There are two NASA national champions that got their start Hyperdrive Hyper Fest. A typical Dasa HPD is a two day event. At the time it was about $250 a weekend.

It’s now doubled that inflation, but. We were trying to get people on the track. I’m like, man, if I can get somebody on the track, I gotcha. And so that particular car that you see behind me, the license plate says Track dealer. I just need to get ’em on the track. So we did these things called Hyperdrive, which is a 20 minute session on a track.

With an As instructor, you start to go through all the classroom. So after to go through all the tech, it basically, it becomes a taste test. That was the way that I wanted to introduce them to the road racing side. And sure enough, you know, we have two national champions. A lot of people podium actually at NASA Nationals, their first event ever was a hyper driver.

We have a guy in Honda Challenge right now. He was in the car show and he had spent oodles of money on the show car, said, Hey, I’m gonna go do this cyber drive thing. I went home from Hyper Fest, started ripping the car apart and turning it into a race car. So I would say I would consider that a success.

I mean, I think [00:12:00] that, you know, to introduce people to NASA and keep sort of filling the top of the funnel with enthusiasts. I think that that was a very good. In terms of something, being a, a flop, really, I don’t know that we’ve had anything that’s really major as a flop because you know, we’ve just always been just so methodical about the things that we added and every time we added it, being sure that there was some sort of demand for it, and then also coming up with the logistics to make sure that it happened correctly.

I’ll tell you a funny story regards to music. We have an excellent partner who’s been with us forever. Paul Reed Smith Guitars. They’re based outta Stevensville, Maryland, and they provide. Guitars for a lot of people. I mean, know for Santana and for Navarro, and you know, mayor, the list goes on. They had a relationship with Theory of a Deadman.

It was a bro deal, basically. It’s been long enough now. I’ll tell you what it was. It was $10,000 that, you know, we were gonna pay those guys to play. Had a great stage, all the rest of that kind of stuff. And it was in July. It was in July, and it’s tend to be thunderstorms in the Mid-Atlantic area. [00:13:00] Well, there were a lot of storm that were coming through and we’re getting phone calls from the airplane ’cause the air of a dead man was still in an airplane doing loops around BWI.

If I could call anything of fail, they couldn’t get out there in time for us to hit the sound curfew that Summit Point had with their neighbor. So I had to stroke a check for $10,000 for fear of a dead man in play.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man.

Chris Cobetto: I guess maybe that was a flop.

Crew Chief Eric: If it’s you win some, you lose some, right? They’re all lessons learned.

The program continues to evolve as a result of it, right? You take other precautions, you change measures, et cetera. But as I look over the 20 year history of Hyper Fest, I wonder though if it gave way to programs like Grid Life, which started in 2013. I wonder if they found their inspiration through Hyper Fest.

Of course they did.

Chris Cobetto: Chris is a good guy. You’re great to show up there. I think they’re very fortunate in the fact that they had their idea at the time the market was ready to accept it, because that was about the time we started seeing interest, you know, in Hyper [00:14:00] Fest from the marketplace that was out there, and that when I say that, I’m talking about the manufacturer’s sponsorship and things like that.

People that you would typically see it seem, and now it’s gangbusters. I mean, this type of lifestyle event is really the way to go because it’s multifaceted. It used to be, if you go back in the sixties, seventies, eighties, really into the nineties, you know, the race itself was the show. You know, with the advent.

Of internet and phones and and everything else that’s gonna take your attention away. You really have to come up with something that’s going to be multifaceted in order to keep people going. But I know that there was an event called GT Live, like Grand T Live. Those guys were outta California and I knew the guys that ran that.

They came out to Cal Speedway when we were out there, Cal Speedway, and they saw that and they decided to put a, a Los Angeles spin on it and do some traveling. They didn’t end up lasting. I don’t exactly know why they folded. That was one that was definitely a copycat. There’s some others that have sort of come around, takes a lot of work.

I don’t think people realize exactly the dedication that goes into putting one of these things on. So it sounds like a real sexy idea until [00:15:00] you deal with a logistical monster that it really is.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, we’ve been talking a lot about the origin and the history of Hyper Fest, but for those that are tuning in and listening to the story for the first time, we haven’t gotten around to explaining what Hyper Fest really is.

Let’s talk about that. Is it a festival? Is it a track event? What kinds of events go on during the course of the weekend and let’s expand upon some of those.

Chris Cobetto: Oh man. I mean that’s the greatest thing about Hyper Fest is all of this stuff is going on and most difficult thing about Iker Fest is all this stuff that’s going.

The idea is that really, I’ve had Jeeps, I’ve had go-karts, I’ve had four wheelers, side Byside, race cars, motorcycles, everything that is on wheels. My kids bought power Wheels when, you know, when they were young. They play with power wheels. And so I’m a card dork, you know? And so we just, I’m like, all right, well we have some space over there.

How can we fill that up? There’s some space over over there, so how can we fill that up? And so the idea is that if you’re a petrolhead, you may have your particular [00:16:00] discipline. You may like road racing, or you may love drifting, or you may be an off-road guy, whatever it happens to be. You can appreciate all the other things.

Even though your main goal, you may be a road racer, I’m still kind of looking over there going, that’s pretty cool. 30 fives on that Jeep. Or Hey, you know, that’s, how do you get the angle on that drift cart? Whatever it happens to be. There’s a natural tendency to sort of blend, you know, and fold into, into all the different types of disciplines.

But anyway, it’s centered around road racing, so really it’s centered around road racing and drifting for the most part. And we started this at Summit. VIR has got a phenomenal off-road set of trails, a couple off-road optical courses. And so if you want here side by side or you have your four by four truck, Jeep, whatever it happens to be, and you wanna come out and you wanna play in the dirt, you can do that.

NASA sanctions rally as a, as a showcase for everything NASA does. Rallies part of those things. And you know what? There’s a rally course. There’s a rally course at Summit Point. There’s a rally course at BIR.

Crew Chief Eric: I gotta ask for everybody that’s listening. That’s been to BIR, [00:17:00] myself included. I’ve been there like a hundred times.

Where is all this offroad stuff at the I Rx? I’ve never seen it.

Chris Cobetto: Well, it’s hidden and that’s one of the challenge honestly, that we’ve run into. When you come in, before you make the left to go down the hill, go across the bridge. If you just keep going straight and go over to the where the go-kart track is, if you know where that is.

Yep. If you’re standing in the go-kart track parking lot and the go-kart track is actually behind you. Directly to your left is the rally course straight ahead. It’s actually a, um, geet shooting range, but we turn that into a rally slash off-road course, and if you kind of go up on top of the hill and it’s back in the woods, there’s a really, really good optical course.

The trails are the whole way along the Dan River. And so basically the, if you’re going down the front, straight of the main track of the full chorus, BIR, over onto the left hand side is the river. Between the trees and the river, there’s a trail, and so that trail goes the whole way, wraps around. Turn 17 goes the whole way down the back street [00:18:00] and all through the hills and everything back there.

It’s an amazing facility that’s 1300 acres. We do our best to try to use up every inch of it.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m having one of those eighties NBC moments. Now it’s like do like the more you know, right. Like I would’ve never known that. Now that I know I’m gonna be looking for it though. Hey, don’t feel bad,

Chris Cobetto: man. I didn’t know it was there either.

For the longest time. That’s really cool.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know, and jokingly, we played around with Za messing around with the infield of VIR and created a rally cross track. Yeah. That’s as close as we ever got, uh, to doing that. And now I’m like, next time I go down to VIRI gotta check this out. This is pretty cool.

It’s.

Matt Rocholl: The greatest thing about Hyper Fest is you can walk around, you can see something for 15 seconds and decide you wanna go see something else. There’s never nothing going. So like with every other event, there’s typically only one thing to do and that’s, you could have multiple stages and you have different acts, but that’s the only variation of experience that it with Hyper Fest, it’s so.

[00:19:00] So broad and all encompassing that you can see three, four things at a time. Chris has said this a lot in conversations that I’ve had with the average road course driver was like 40 to 60. One of the main reasons that I was brought in first place was to try to bridge that gap and really make them realize that it’s not as.

Much out of reach as you make the fact that there is so much going on with my generation and below, everything is soin. Even to show someone a post is difficult challenge, having so much to do and look at is great as you can get those people to pay attention, if that makes sense. I mean, that’s just something that I’ve noticed that’s very unique, the powerful asset for us to have so many things going on for the whole team.

It can be very stressful when you see it all come together and you’re just either. Riding your pit bike around or your golf cart or whatever it is, which is the fact that you’re not only immersed in motor sports, but most of the people that are riding [00:20:00] around are riding around and that’s not something you see at any other festival.

You try to drive a moped through the middle of a crowd at a electric daisy carnival or some kind of music festival, you know, you probably get tack. It’s welcome. It’s like, bring your toys and literally have as much fun as you want. You know, as long as you’re being safe. And that’s another thing, it’s like constantly seeing like negative publicity about festivals and injury.

Stuff like that. And here we are with one of the highest potentials for injury, but we don’t have, because it’s like Chris has done an amazing job curating some very positive vibe. You see it most in the NASA pad. Whenever I’m around nasa, Mid-Atlantic. It feels like your family, you know, as cliche as that might sound like Chris doesn’t market.

It just does it. He makes you feel polluted. I think that’s why at the core of it so strong.

Chris Cobetto: I’m the last of six kids. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas because it was bonkers. You know, we had tons of people, you know, it’s [00:21:00] just even more fun when you have 15,000 people out there.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’m not trying to date you, Chris, but it feels like Woodstock for car guys, right?

I mean, it’s kind of like one of those deals

Chris Cobetto: we actually thought about using that as, as a tagline. Oddly enough, I don’t know if you know the history of BIR, but basically it started in 1956, I think, or 57. It got shut down in 1974 by the farmer that they had the land in. Then they reopened again in 2000, whatever.

They’re getting the permits and stuff from the county. They were talking about the use of the facility for things that were other than basically road racing stuff. They said, no Woodstocks. We figured Automotive Park could probably a better tagline.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s, it’s a close second, that’s for sure. It would be kind of cool to use that tagline if you did historics though, right?

Some cars from the period. It’d be kind of neat. A themed hyper fest. I guess I’m full of ideas of here all week. Try the veal. On this list, if you go on the website, hyper fest.com, tons of events on there from drifting to the track events, time trials, you’ve got the car shows, road [00:22:00] race offered experiences.

You talk about you got the exhaust burnout, all this kind of stuff, and then there’s one that sticks out. We’ve actually talked about this event on several of our drive through news episodes because they are just so common gold every time they surfaced, which is the. Coordinate Power wheels attack by Redline oil.

Let’s unpack. Going down a racetrack in a power wheels. I want talk about the wrinkles. I wanna talk about the limpets. I want to know all about where this came from ’cause it’s awesome.

Chris Cobetto: I’ll give you the history. Chief Operating Officer of VIR, Dave’s Kerrigan Smith. He was just an awesome, awesome guy. Lot of fun.

Brian Egger, who is sort of a compadre in this, who is a, he’s actually a Formula D judge. We’re doing a. We’re thinking about, Hey, let’s take these Barbie cars, call ’em Barbie cars, Barbie Jeeps, and let’s do one of these crazy things down on the backside down through the woods. And we looked at the hill that was there.

Let’s. Would be awesome, but we’re probably gonna hurt somebody. So we sort of tabled the [00:23:00] idea. Well, it never really left Kegan’s mind. And one day he’s out there with his 6-year-old daughter and had talked about doing it on the rollercoaster, which is from turn 14 down through 17. His daughter who has a ton of guns, man, I, I wanna do that, I wanna do that.

And so Kegan apparently convinced his wife, this would be just fine. Got her at the top of the rollercoaster in the pickup truck behind her, with his wife in the passenger seat, and she started going down. He is following her in the pickup truck, and he started 20 miles an hour, 25 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour, 35 miles an hour as Carrigan puts five miles.

His daughter, she got started getting the depth wall in the steering, and my wife’s going, wh what? I can’t believe you let her do this. To her credit, she bailed out, driver’s ready to hit the grass, and it was, it was all done. That’s where we got the idea. You know, I’d love to say that I came up with it. I just propped.

Kerrigan was the genesis of it. The first year we did it, I think we had about 20, like 28 people that participated in it. The rules are simple. You got a power wheels car, [00:24:00] can’t modify the wheels, so you can’t put rubber anything on the wheel through the plastic wheels. You have to pull the motor, pull the battery out, the red deck, soapbox derby, you know, I mean, you have free wheel down this.

We’ve had Andy Laley, pro road racer came in second. He was in a firetruck. James Clay has run the thing. He’s been our show twice now. Just wanted to point that out. James is great. Like, oh, that’s so much fun. The cameras went down. He is like, woo. Those things are a handful.

Matt Rocholl: Noah said, uh, fielding shredder ran it this year.

Chris Cobetto: That’s right. Fielding shredder ran it. But I mean, the main thing is, is that it’s a goof. I mean, you win a hundred bucks, we don’t wanna make it worth cheating or spending a lot of money on, although I’m apparently certain it might be a little something that’s not exactly stock on some of these vehicles.

So border

Crew Chief Eric: balancing, maybe just to get a other stick.

Chris Cobetto: That’s right. It’s, it’s about fun. You know, this year we decided to introduce some elements from Mario Kart, and we built some jumps that have the, the lit arrows on them. You’ll see that some of the videos that, that are coming out and people dress up, what it’s turning into is it, do you ever see the, uh, I think it’s the [00:25:00] Fluen Toin Fluen to Flu talks from Red Bulls, right?

Yeah, the, exactly the. It’s a lot like that, you know, in that people are showing up and dressing as Batman and they’re running their Batman power wheels. You know, we have somebody dressed up as Luke Skywalker. They had the, a speeder car, had one guy dressed up as, oh, what’s her name from Frozen beard and everything, and like a frilly dressed in a frozen sleigh.

That’s a power wheels thing.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s great. So what, so what you’re saying is miniature lemons race is what it really is. Kind of Anybody Mel upside down yet?

Chris Cobetto: I haven’t seen that yet, but. If somebody watches this video, I’m sure it’s coming next year.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot going on, you know, between the vendors and cart racing.

Obviously VIR has available. You’ve got kid zones, you’ve got contests, you’ve got concerts. I mean, that sounds like a lot of stuff going on. In what, two and a half days? Does anybody actually sleep at Hydrox? Not there

Chris Cobetto: near the patriot circuit. Depends on who you ask. That’s exactly right. There are people who do get a chance to sleep, and there’s some [00:26:00] people that basically between the gallery and patriot circuit, that’s where the stump championships happen.

It’s not official types of DJing happens, but it’s thumping pretty good up there. I might maybe once or twice have visited that group on a Saturday night. I do enjoy. I do enjoy me some stump. Do you have any idea what, do you know

Crew Chief Eric: what stump is? I can only imagine. Now please enlighten me.

Chris Cobetto: This is a Gabe.

So basically what it is, is you get a huge stump and literally a wooden stump. Oh, and this is

Crew Chief Eric: not what I was thinking. Okay?

Chris Cobetto: Oh no. This is the Gabe. You know, you stand around, everybody gets a nail. You tap your nail in a circle right around the ridge of the ridge of the stu. You tap your, your nail in, and you have to have it in there enough that it’ll stand up and then you get a hammer.

Everybody has a hammer. Everybody stands in a circle. Everybody has a goal, is. Hammer everybody else’s nail in. So you’re the one that has your nails still sticking out, even if it’s just a little bit. So the rules are if you take the hammer and you flip it up in front [00:27:00] of you and you grab it, you get one hit.

Now, the thing is, is that once you grab the hammer, you can’t adjust it. So however you grab it, that’s how you have to hit it. Let’s see. If you throw it under one leg, you lift a leg, you throw it up under one leg and grab it, that’s two hits. Okay? Again, you can’t adjust it. If you adjust the hammer, you lose.

You gotta pass it along. If you toss it behind your back and you catch it like this, you get three hits only in the way that you caught it. It just kind of goes around the circle and you try to nail everybody else’s nail. And if you’re the last one standing, you win. And I gotta tell you, Brian Edgar from us Drift, and the guy who runs with stuff, and also Formula Judge, he is just like stupid good at this,

Crew Chief Eric: again, hidden talents of people, right?

But then again, I don’t know. How to even react to this, but my mind is still processing what you just explained. I, I guess that leads me to, I gotta come to the next Hyper Fest. Come check this out, because it’s one of those believable, when you see it type of moments, talking about expectations for somebody who’s going to Hyper Fest for the [00:28:00] first time.

Obviously hyper profess moved around a lot over the years. It was at Summit Point. Quite a bit. Now it’s at VIR, it’s found a new hall. So if I’m going to BIR for hyper for the first time, what should I expect? Like how does it work? Am I presented a schedule? Like if I’m going to the INSA race of VIR, I mean, how do you figure out what to do and where to go and, and where does it cost and.

What are some of the rules for all these different events, especially the events where people can bring their cars?

Chris Cobetto: Depends upon what you’re doing, right? You know, if you’re doing a hyperdrive, it’s basically nasa, HPDE rules is really what it comes down to. You need to have a helmet. We do have some loaners for the Hyperdrive people.

If you’re HPDE during the entire weekend, you’ll bring your own helmet with. What I would say is that, you know, you take a look at the schedule and take a look at the map ’cause it’s a really big facility and really take a look at what you wanna see, take a look at what time those things take place. We do our best to try to not put things on top of each other.

Sometimes they over they, they will overlap just because that’s, there’s so much going on. We do our best really to, to buy them. My suggestion would be if I were [00:29:00] coming, if you don’t have a golf cart or some sort of a paddock vehicle. You plan on renting one there, or you plan on bringing something along with you, because once you’re parked, that’s pretty much it.

There is so much going on that if you like to camp, there’s a lot of space. It’s a beautiful facility. It’s just gorgeous. So I would say if you can get on. And find a camping. People really like the track side camping. That gets sold out very quickly, but they really like that a lot. Really pick what it is that you want them to do because in terms of the cost, we try to keep it as reasonable as we possibly can, but there’s a lot going on.

We are less than some of the other events out there. Do that on purpose, because I really do want to have people to come and have fun, and once they come through the gate, that’s a limited number of drifting ridealongs. It’s a limited number of rally ridealongs, offroad, that sort of thing. You know, we charge for those things.

So you have a ticket to get in. I mean, literally if you get on right now, it’s what? $60? I think 60 bucks is an early bird. We have a limited number of those. Those are gonna run out here pretty soon. 25 left. There are 25 left of those. [00:30:00] Okay. $75 will be the next ticket. That’ll be the main ticket. Price.

Once you get to the event, it’ll go to 90. So it behooves people to try to get their tickets early. Camping’s pretty inexpensive to camp for the the weekend and car camping. 60 bucks. If you’re there for three days, you buy it. Right now you have three days of fun. Plus you’re camping for $120. That’s less expensive than just about any other type of festival like this that I know.

Plus, you can

Matt Rocholl: divide your camping spot up.

Chris Cobetto: Right.

Crew Chief Eric: What does that, let’s say, general admission ticket get you access to, you mentioned that the ride-alongs are a separate cost and there’s a limited number of those. Camping is a separate cost, that’s an add-on. What else does that general admission get you access to?

Just kind of roaming around and seeing the other events. If you wanna be in like, let’s say the power wheels of that, do you have to pay for that separately? Obviously the de has its own cost, so what is included in general admission and what is a rider?

Chris Cobetto: So in general, admission, you know, you obviously get to spectate with everything.

If you wanna participate in games like the blind [00:31:00] driver, golf cart, Alan, we basically have a golf cart out there. The driver has a blindfold on the passenger, is the one that is telling him where to go. Two carts that compete against each other through. Of course, whoever makes it back to the start finish line, first wins that doesn’t cost anything and can win some, some significant prizes there.

PRS, if you like to play guitar and you play guitar, we have a shred contest, which you can win a seven to $800 ball. Reach guitar if you think you to know how to perform, but really don’t play guitar. There’s the PRS Air guitar contest and so you can jump in there and if you’re really, really good at an air guitar contest, you get the prize of it real.

PRS Guitar, Paul Reid Smith guitar, you can participate in, uh, the Power Wheels downhill simulators. And, and that doesn’t cost you anything. It doesn’t cost you anything for the burnout contest. Doesn’t cost you anything for the, the sound off. And all these things have prizes associated with them. Either, either chake kind of stuff or cash or gift cards, you know, that, that sort of thing.

The kid zone doesn’t cost anything. You go in there, we have bouncy houses and things get a huge soccer ball that they moved around. And then there are a [00:32:00] lot of the vendors have. Activation as part of their marketing packages where you know, you might be able to get a ride with Bon getting JR because you love Monster.

You might be able to get a ride with that MLZ, that sort of thing. And all that stuff is free. There’s really a lot of stuff to do and see with your entry.

Crew Chief Eric: For the folks that want to come down to do the HBDE part, obviously there’s also gonna be coaches. And if they’re running a standard HPB weekend, maybe a club race mixed in there in a time trial, as is the NASA formula.

Do those folks get to enjoy and experience other parts of hyper profess? Is there enough time? Is it more of a limited or not maybe as many run session de as we’d expect? I mean, how does that time get divvied up? Or is it just everything’s so busy? Everybody’s hyperfocused on their different parts of hyper fast.

I

Chris Cobetto: think if you come out and you run the racing and the HPDE side, you’re probably both focused on what you are doing on track. But the reality is that we don’t shorten any sessions and we don’t skimp on any sessions. For the HP, it is a regular NASA week and that [00:33:00] we just overlay this circus on top of those individuals that are participating in the HPDs, the racing.

They’ll have time to get out and see some things. We tend to wait. The entertainment stuff on Saturday toward the afternoon and into the evening. So, you know, we’ll finish track operations at five 30 to six 30. You know, we have a lot of racers that they take their racing suit off. You know, they put their Batman suit on, grab their Power Wheels car, and they can make the power wheels thing.

And then they’ve got somebody meet ’em up at the burnout contest with their car and they go out there and do the burnout contest. So there is time, and we do that on purpose because we want the people that are our regular NASA people or anybody that’s doing the HPDs to still be able to enjoy the festival portion of this.

Crew Chief Eric: Obviously if you’re participating in the different motor sports disciplines that are going on, they’re gonna follow the rules and regulations of the different disciplines within nasa. So if it’s rallied, it’ll follow that in HPDE club racing, et cetera. So all the standard tech, everything that goes on with those events that you’re used [00:34:00] to doing on a regular weekend still apply in the case of hyper fast.

Okay. And that’s the easy part. Getting everybody organized in tech for the power wheels downhill. That’s a challenge. One question that always comes to mind when you’re talking about Des or any motor sport events in general, does track insurance cover hyper fest? You’re talking about if you’re a de person, is it considered because it’s a festival and part of something larger?

Is track insurance still available for an event like High Fest?

Chris Cobetto: Oh, sure. Oh yeah. I mean, if you go to Haggerty. Haggerty will write it because like I said, it’s, it’s a regular NASA event and we tend to separate out the NASA paddock. Not so much that we’re trying to be exclusive, it’s just that we have 525 registered drivers that are participating just in the regular NASA stuff.

The time trial, ultimate Track car challenge, you know, that we put on for grassroots motor sports, the racing and the the HPD stuff. If you take a look at the number of drivers that we actually have participating, whether it’s drifting or off-road, [00:35:00] rally, whatever it is, you start to creep into the 900 participants.

You start adding in riders and everything else, it goes well beyond a thousand for somebody who is actually physically doing something in a car or in, you know, something on wheel.

Crew Chief Eric: So what’s attendance like in the last couple of years at Hyper Fund? What are the numbers looking like in terms of people being there?

Chris Cobetto: 2019, we were just about 11,000. For 2020 we didn’t have it. And for 2021, you know, it’s interesting, we were just about the same as numbers. Slightly lower by like I know 80 people or something like that for 2021. And I think this particular year, if you take a look at the way the ticket sales were, you know, we opened up ticket sales.

I wanna say that it was in May. We broke the internet. I mean, that’s how many people were trying to get on to buy the things. I think we were expecting 200 to 250 people to hit the site at one time. We were having 1200, 1500 people hitting the site at one time. We, we weren’t prepared honestly for that. We are now, our tickets were 300% higher than same [00:36:00] time prior to in 2019.

And then the Delta variant started creeping into things and you could actually watch as the scare and concern, you know, with the Delta variant happened. You could actually see the ticket sales sort of start to drop. And we did. We had people that were like, Hey, you know, we love this event. We had people that saw some of the videos that we put out day of.

We got messages going, ah, that should have come from our perspective, given COVID and all the goofy stuff that happened, it was still a good year. We certainly expect that to grow pretty substantially from me.

Crew Chief Eric: So are tickets available through hyper fest.com or do you get ’em through Motorsport Reg, where we, you know, sign up for all our other Motorsport events in this area?

How does that process work?

Chris Cobetto: We don’t use Motorsport Ridge as ticketing. We actually talked to them about doing the ticketing, but again, it goes back to all the stuff that’s going on. Motorsport Ridge does, I think a great job for regular events, but it’s something like this. They just couldn’t handle it.

They couldn’t handle the ticketing and, and all the different nuances are there with Piper Fist. So we’re using a customized [00:37:00] system, but either way, that’s the backend side of it. Yes, if you wanna get tickets, you go to Hyper Fest, do hit the Get tickets button, and you get tickets. Go from there.

Crew Chief Eric: I noticed as I was looking through that there’s a bit of a kind of bundle package, the grassroots experience package.

Do we wanna expand upon that a little bit? Tell people what it’s all about. Is that a all in one? All you can eat sort of a deal

Chris Cobetto: in a way. We haven’t confirmed what those s are going to be like this year. It wasn’t an all you can eat type of a thing. It’s very difficult to do an all you can eat type of thing because if you do, that gets pretty costly pretty quickly.

Yeah, I don’t know. I still have to actually, the conversation with GRM in terms of what packages that we’re considering, likely what’ll happen is it’ll get in some third parking, camping and some access sort of VIP type of access to places.

Crew Chief Eric: What we were just talking about is a great segue into the future of hyper fast.

So big question. Is hyper profess gonna be a DIR next year, or is it moving? Are there gonna be multiple ones beyond 22? [00:38:00] What do the next couple of years look like? And let’s put our thinking caps on. Let’s talk about the future, the distant future. What’s the next 20 years of hyper profess look like?

Chris Cobetto: Good Lord.

I’m still alive. If one just about killed me this past year, we’re going back to VIR. It’s a wonderful facility. Every time we do one of these things, I wonder if they’re gonna want us back, but, uh, but VIR is phenomenal, you know, you know, one of the owners there, you know, Connie Ome is just, she’s awesome.

You know, she gets it. She loves everything from the emphasis stuff to the crazy lawnmower racing, you know, and, and power wheels down. She loves it all. As a matter of fact, I was riding around in a golf cart with her a couple years ago and we’re sitting there and she brought it up. We’re trying to figure out where we’re gonna put a, a demolition derby, her idea.

Just a second. Yeah, no, we’ll be back there in May and there’s no plans to move at any place. You know, number one, that facility is gorgeous. Number two, as a multi-use facility, there really is not another facility out there where we could duplicate this. Completely on the same facility. Are we thinking about some other [00:39:00] venues?

Yeah. Summit Point actually still is a good place maybe, but that would be an augmentation. It wouldn’t be a substation, you know? It would be an augmentation to the thing. There’s a pretty well known circle track where the raid course. Conversation with today. There’s another track actually that’s on the East Coast.

The facilities are, are pretty good. So if we expanded, you know, we thought about going to California, you know, we’re, we’re open to just about any place. And the cool thing about Hyper Fest is that we can expand it to pretty much any road course across the country. I don’t necessarily have to run the road racing of the HPDE side of it.

I have NASA regions all over the place, so I can call Northern California and say, Hey, we wanna run a hyper fest in Sonoma. Jerry Kunz wind’s the guy who started all of NASA a million years ago and he still runs the Northern California chapter, and he’d be like, yeah, man, let’s figure out how to do it.

His answer, just like mine, it’s always yes, unless the logistics say no or make you say no. Yeah. Where we go in the next couple of years, you know, we’d like to maybe expand it out to one or two more events. I think that [00:40:00] we’re probably gonna keep it somewhat close to home on the East Coast, just because that’s where our assets are, but we’ve done it in California before.

Know what it takes to put one on out there. So we may do that too, as a matter of trying to find the facility. It’s in a good enough spot geographically that is willing to work with us. Preferably, uh, an independently owned track. ’cause some of the ones that are owned by the corporations tend to be little more strict guidelines with what you’re allowed to do.

Crew Chief Eric: So it dawned on me the one event I didn’t see on the list, and I’m wondering if maybe this is in the future and I could see it happening at VIR. Have you guys thought about bringing in the Auto Cross? Guys?

Chris Cobetto: We talked about it a lot actually. There really isn’t a spot. It’s very difficult to do it if the skid padd was extended and there was some talk about may make the skid pad a little bigger, but that’s still a pretty small pass for.

A typical autocross. There was actually an autocross. They ran up in the south paddock and that was run by, and it was, it was an employee, I can’t remember exactly who it was at BIR, but they wanted to do it. I’m like, yeah, sure man, whatever go have at it. [00:41:00] And that lot was just so small it, it really wasn’t that much fun.

And I love autocross and I wish there was a big enough spot out there to make one That’s. One of the challenges that we have, even if we did what do on the Skid pad, is where do you stage the cars? Because there just is no space right there. Can’t put ’em on the main road if you put ’em in the grass and it’s wet.

I mean, it’s just, it’s a logistical problem, not a content. Wish we had it kind of a problem.

Matt Rocholl: The way that I would answer the Where do you see hyper? What would be our focus rather, A lot of attention has already started to go into it. We’d like to see more so of developing it from just a festival or once a year into a household lifestyle brain.

A lot of that happens when we do more events, so we definitely see some kind traveling circuit. Sort like they would still carry the core of Hyper Fest, but where I could see it going is that each one would vary in its own way, depending on location, bring [00:42:00] in different cultural styles. Stylistic element that might retain better to that area of the country.

Something to add. We had our first international attendee, somebody flew from England. Come to Hyper Fest

Chris Cobetto: International baby.

Matt Rocholl: Yeah, we’re getting the, we’re getting the word out. Um, I think a lot of hyper fest marketing for years was done solely by word of mouth stuff. We’re moving into the digital age, getting word out there, and that’s something that.

I would love to see grow year after year and it seems to be working. Our demographic is shifting a little bit. We’re seeing a lot more younger crowd start to get interested in anticipating. That’s great to see as we know that the future of the festival is secure

Crew Chief Eric: actually. All very good points. And leads me to a question I generally reserve for our fit teams.

Which is, how do you see that, what we call the [00:43:00] E revolution or the evolution? Impacting future of Hyper Fest and or how is your team embracing the change in the automotive landscape as more and more EVs are coming on the scene?

Chris Cobetto: Well, I mean, aside from wanting him to drop a Prius from a helicopter at some point, it’s just.

I like ev stuff, right? I love new technology. I sometimes don’t really appreciate the optimism of EV vehicles being a panacea. However, I think that, you know, Elon Musk did a great job of, of making ’em sexy and fast. And the styling can be, obviously, you know, beauty is a the beholder, but a plaid is a fast, fast vehicle and you cannot deny that.

So if you’re a performance guy. I like anything fast. I mean, I just like fast stuff. You know, when you drive one of those things, you can’t help it to be impressed. They come with some limitations with regards to track time and, and racing. A lot of the tracks are slow to embrace it because if you don’t have chargers, you do a 20 minute session and a pla that a [00:44:00] 25 minute session and pla.

You’re done. You have to charge the thing up, which takes a while. You have to have the chargers that are, that are available. The only track that I know of, you know, I haven’t traveled to them all, certainly, but the ones that we’re associated with is Summit Point. I think they have three or four chargers at Summit Point.

That’s it. As it continues to grow, you’re gonna see more and more of these cars. But really the limiting factor is going to be how do they get charged. Our schedule is such that we’ve got enough time in between races, time in between HPD sessions. Somebody could plug in. And you know, on a supercharger and getting enough juice to continue, you know, throughout the day.

From an EV perspective, and when I say ev, I don’t mean an electric vehicle, I’m talking about emergency services perspective. You know, there are some logistical things you have to make sure that the fire guys are aware of and most of the tracks. Knowing that whether it’s a hybrid car, high performance, hybrid cars that have the electric side of it, register full electric, they already know the safety crews from the tracks already really know how to handle that stuff.

It’s four wheels and a motor man. I mean, you know, four patches, rubber on the track. You know, we’re all efficiency [00:45:00] experts, right? We’re trying to get around the track in the fastest amount possible. It doesn’t matter to me what power plant is. Help it to love the rip of normally aspirated Ferrari V eight or V 12 an A line six from BMW an S 52 or an S 54 Uncorked is just beautiful.

That’s the only thing I could, that that just bugs me, man. About the sound, I mean, the electric things don’t make any sound. They’re a performance, but I’m old school man. That power is, is I want something loud, I want something to rip. But either way, we’re all brothers in speed, as far as I’m concerned.

Whatever weapon you bring to the table is what you think that you can wield. Best way, and let’s go have fun on some wheels.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, guys, this has been a lot of fun learning about the circus that is hyper fast. So, you know, I use that term lovingly because it really does feel like maybe the American version of Goodwood, the festivals of speed and the revival kind of combined into one event in that flare that we [00:46:00] have here stateside.

So. To Chris’s point, we are all brothers and sisters in speed and in motorsport, and this is a great way to pay homage to that, get us all together a few times a year and celebrate our petrol inspired and petrol fueled enthusiasm at a festival like this. With that being said, presented by Grassroots Motor Sports Hyper Fest is the largest automotive event on the East Coast, touted as the automotive amusement park and 2021 marked the 20th anniversary of Hyper Fest and we’re looking forward to Hyper Fest 2022 and we bet you are too.

So for more details on Hyper Fest, visit www.hyperfest.com and follow them on Facebook at Hyper Fest One. Or on Instagram at Hyper. So congratulations to Chris and his team on 20 successful years of Hyper Fest and many, many more to come.[00:47:00]

That’s right, listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon. Follow on pitstop Mini, so check that out on www.patreon.com/gt motorsports and get access to all sorts of behind the scenes content from this episode and more.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org.

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Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one [00:48:00] at no charge.

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Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Technical Issues Disclaimer
• 00:52 HyperFest Overview
• 01:25 Meet the Guests: Chris Cobetto and Matt Rocholl
• 01:57 The Birth of HyperFest; Early Challenges and Successes
• 05:24 First HyperFest Event
• 08:05 Lessons Learned and Evolution
• 13:34 HyperFest’s Influence and Market Readiness
• 15:02 What is HyperFest?
• 16:38 Off-Road Adventures at VIR
• 21:50 Unique Events at HyperFest
• 24:15 Introduction to HyperFest 24:45 Fun and Games at HyperFest
• 27:51 Logistics and Planning for Attendees
• 29:49 Ticketing and Costs
• 30:54 Activities and Events
• 37:46 Future of HyperFest
• 43:13 Embracing the EV Revolution
• 45:41 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Presented by Grassroots Motorsports … Hyperfest is the largest automotive event on the East Coast touted as “the automotive amusement park” and 2021 marked the 20th anniversary of HyperFEST. We’re looking forward to Hyperfest 2022, and we bet you are to, so for more details on Hyperfest visit https://www.hyper-fest.com/ and follow them on facebook @hyperfest1 and instagram @hyperfest 

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