What To Expect At The 2023 Drivers Festival
When we started what has become the drivers festival last year, we knew we wanted to accomplish a few things. First, we wanted to raise money to support the Atlanta Children’s Shelter, one of our favorite charities. Second, we wanted to bring together people who love to do with their cars. Of course, there is a certain irony in the fact that we’ve chosen a brewery parking lot to celebrate doing with our cars. Still, we wanted to capture the best part of every event – the community. Having a beer or talking cars with your fellow enthusiasts. Last, we wanted to help people learn and connect to do more with their cars.
With that, the Drivers Festival was born. This year we’ve added a formal car show, but don’t expect this to be like a typical gathering of cars or car show. This is about having a beer, talking cars and trading war stories. It’s also the perfect opportunity to try something new – try a track day, give endurance or sprint racing a try, do a car control clinic or try offroading.
Drivers Festival Details
When: Saturday, July 15th 2023 11am-3pm
Where: Pontoon Brewing, Sandy Springs
Cost: Free to attend/spectate, $25 donation to enter the car show or park in the display area
More info: Drivers Festival
Social: Facebook Event or Discussion Group
Who Attends The Drivers Festival
We get people from all parts of the car scene, and everyone is welcome. But make no mistake, we target track and racing enthusiasts. In fact, we go out of our way to invite track and endurance cars. We get and welcome any kind of enthusiast vehicle, but what really draws attention is the race cars. Seeing roll cages, fire suppression systems, harnesses. These standout. So do the drivers. The conversations are war stories, about which series they run, what tire they run, how they like a particular seat or harness.
We also get a lot of cool, not necessarily track dedicated cars too. Exotics including Ferraris, McLarens, Lamborghini’s are certainly drivers cars. We also have seen a huge amount of interest from our Overlanding partners. In fact, some of our favorite vehicles you’ll see at the drivers festival are the blurred line vehicles – Cayenne Turbo lifted for overlanding. The idea that kind of performance SUV also is perfectly suited for overlanding is what we’re about. The reality is what binds us together is we all want to be behind the wheel.
One of our supporters, Skottles and Bottles founder knows ShiftAtlanta’s founders because he used to be a drag racer and attended our Import Showdown event. We’ve found driving enthusiasts are a vein diagram, we all have a primary love but we also have been or want to try other things.
Of course, we work to make the event family friendly. We have a kids area with activities, music, a DJ, vendors, food trucks and even an ice cream truck.
We couldn’t be more excited for 2023. We’re a week away from the event and we’ve already have double the cars registered over last year. Based on the number of pre-registered cars, we’re expecting hundreds of attendees again.
How The Car Show Works
The car show is new for 2023 but we couldn’t be more excited. First, this has offered us a new opportunity to get cars involved in a really fun way. Second, it lets us show a little bit of our personality. You see, this isn’t your typical judged car show and we’re not giving away your typical $30 car show trophy from the trophy shop down the street.
The car show kicks off with voting opening at 11:30. Each car will get space, car and box number, which will all match. Attendees of the show will be given voting tickets to drop in the boxes of the cars they want to vote for. At 2:30 we will count all of the tickets for each car.
You can get “votes” by doing any or all of the following. Also, unlike other car shows because we are raising money for kids we highly encourage you to CHEAT CHEAT CHEAT.
- Donate to the children shelter – 1 vote for every $5 donated
- Buy raffle tickets – 1 vote for every $5
- Visit sponsors – our sponsors will have vote tickets, so stop by and talk to them so you can get votes
- Buy a beer – support our brewery sponsor and get votes for having beers (no getting drunk on votes if you are driving)
The Car Show Trophies
Updated: Here is the actual trophy
We should have pictures of the finished trophies to update here soon, but here is the mockup for the trophy design. As you can see, these aren’t your typical trophies. Tracktrophies.com, long with generous donations from Shift Brokers and the Klein family means we’re giving away trophies that would retail for nearly $300 a piece for each of the 5 classes.
Car Show Classes
For 2023 the car show classes will be
- People’s Choice – Best overall vehicle in the show
- Best Endurance Alley Car – For best endurance or fully track/race prepped car
- Best Track Car – for the best street legal (has a tag) track/drift/drag car
- Best Exotic/Supercar – for the best exotic/supercar
- Best Open/Show – best street, show or overland
Registration
Registration for display parking and car show entry is done via pre-registration via the Drivers Festival page. If we do not sell out we may have a few limited day of registration spots available. Registration is $25, 100% of which (minus CC fees) goes directly to the Atlanta Children’s Shelter.
What’s Registered So Far?
- Endurance Racecars
- Dedicated Track Cars
- Porsches (from classics to GT4RS to offroad prepped Cayenne’s)
- Ferraris
- Lamborghini’s
- Corvettes
- McLaren’s
- BMW Ms
- Mustangs
- Jeeps
- 4Runners
- Volkswagens
- Hyundai’s
- Miatas
- and more
Charity Raffle
The way we raise most of the money from this event is through the charity raffle. Simply donate to the Atlanta Children’s Shelter and you’ll get raffle tickets for every $1. Drop the raffle tickets in the boxes for the items you are interested in. At the end of the event we’ll randomly pull a ticket from each box for the prize. Feel free to buy lots of tickets and spread them around across any of the prizes you want to win.
We’ll have even more day off, but here is a partial list of prizes we’ll be raffling off:
Here is a partial list of what is up for auction as a part of our charity raffle.
- Taste Of Atlanta Motorsports Park Half Day Member Experience With Instruction
- Atlanta Driving Society Track Day With Point By Photography Ltd Co. photo package (multiple)
- Lucky Dog Racing League team entry (full team entry)
- Jzilla Track Days Track Day Entry
- Lucky Dog Racing League toolbox
- Savoy Automobile Museum ticket package
- Atlanta Motorsports Park Full Day Karting School
- Detailers Products & Services gift certificates
- Pontoon Brewing gift cards and swag
- Wine carrier with bottle of wine
- Track emergency tool pack with a tire pressure gauge and a pack of 10x 10mm sockets
- Books and book reading light
What’s The Future Of The Event
If you know anything about the team that started ShiftAtlanta, we really look to the community to help us drive the future of the event. We have ideas ourselves, and have heard some good ones from you already. While you are out at the event, but be afraid to stop by and talk to us with your input. We’ve heard everything from small tweaks to how the car show works to more teaching/learning sessions to adding full on track activities. In the future we’d like to make this feel like Epcot, but for drivers where you can find and connect with different groups, events and operators across nearly any kind of driving passion.
Tell us what you’d like to see and how you think we can continue to raise money and attract other track and racing enthusiasts.
About Our Target Charity: Atlanta Children’s Shelter
The Atlanta’s Children Shelter has long been one of our favorite charities. ACS helps families transition out of homelessness. While the mental image we often have in our heads of homelessness is tents by the freeway, this represents just 10% of people who would be classified as homeless. The reality is most “homeless” are working poor. Atlanta Children’s Shelter provides child care, career support and ultimately, assistance with housing to help parents and families build better lives. The thing we love most about ACS is they are not flash – they are boots on the ground making a difference in our city and communities.
The Drivers Festival truly gives 100% of all car show registrations and raffle entry dollars to the Atlanta Children’s Shelter. Our generous title sponsor even matches up to another $5,000. That’s right, 100%. Not 100% of “profits” or “proceeds”. Other than credit card fees, every dollar collected is given to the Children’s Shelter.
It’s one of the reasons we, unlike most charity shows, aren’t afraid to tell you how much money we raise. Because we raise a lot! And we love it.
Last year we raised over $8,000 and with the event doubling in size, we hope to smash that this year.
Huge Thank You To Our Sponsors
Our sponsors generous donate their time and resources to make this event happen. I highly encourage you to stop by and talk to them, patronize their business and encourage them to continue to support community events like this.
Diamond Sponsor
Platinum Sponsors
Sponsors
Supporters
