LS Fest East 2025: A Gearhead's Dream Brought To Life

Picture this: over 46,000 automotive enthusiasts gathered at Beech Bend Raceway Park for a weekend of horsepower, smoke, and undeniable speed, and you have LS Fest East 2025. From unique car shows and insane machines competing in Burnout Wars to tandem drifting and edge-of-your-seat drag racing, this event isn’t just a weekend… it’s a full-blown celebration of everything that LS and LT builds bring to the track.

LS Fest East 2025 is where anyone and everyone comes to put their name on the map and hopefully make a name for themselves in the process. Each year, the event draws some of the best in the business, all battling for a shot at the LS Fest Champion title in their respective division.

This was Burnout Wars’ LS Fest debut, and it was a ground-shaking event for the books. The competition drew both locals and international travelers alike, including several drivers from Australia. The Burnout Wars team did a spectacular job of encouraging insane crowd involvement while hyping up the competitors as it was their turn to burn the tires down. Burnout Wars confirmed that they are interested in adding more U.S dates and may eventually expand to a broader event format in the future. Right now, the simple format is fire: lightning-fast clocks, sky-high stakes, and nowhere to duck.

Of all the machines in the Burnout Wars competition, none turned heads quite like Frosty. So, we had to catch up with its driver, Seth Cavanaugh, and ask the obvious question: why Frosty? “I saw this thing laying in a field and I just thought ice cream truck when I saw it, and I knew it would completely stand out,” he explained.

Seth originally built Frosty in just two months, starting with a big block, before deciding to shake things up with an LS swap. Something unique about this wicked ice cream truck is the way the engine and driver compartments are laid out. The seats are angled slightly outward because the engine sits inside the driver’s compartment, just inches from your legs. When asked about any pre-race rituals, Seth put it best, “I like to sit in the A/C and cool off before a run, before I have to suit up in a seven-layer fire suit and melt for a couple hours.”

Burnout Wars

Position	Driver
1	Kyle Douglas
2	Ricky Bass
3	Craig Bailey, Seth Ritter, Kevin Smith (tie)

The 2025 Drift Challenge was no different. Watching tandem drifting is like witnessing the most electrifying dance, where one wrong step could spell disaster. The cars glide across the pavement as if they were floating just above it, perfectly in sync with a rhythm of horsepower, torque, and unmatched skill. This event brought out the absolute best to see who would become predator… and who would become prey. When you throw that many sharks into one tank, one emerges victorious and the rest go home to lick their wounds.

Taylor Hull not only brought a head-turning Dale Earnhardt tribute G-body drift car, but he also delivered an equally impressive performance on the track. This was his first time back at LS Fest since 2019, when he defended his back-to-back title from 2018. Hull reclaimed the Drift Challenge Championship title against a stacked field of more than 50 competitors, proving once again that he is, in fact, the apex predator, dominating the track with relentless drive and precision while everyone else fell prey to his skill.

We caught up with Taylor Hull after his big victory. When asked what he wished more people knew about the sport, he explained, “It’s nothing like dirt racing. When you’re competing, you’re looking for the absolute maximum grip you can get while still spinning tires. The cars aren’t set up super loose, they’re actually very gripped up.”

While Hull doesn’t have any pre-race rituals, he gears up in a very specific order every time he straps in: buckle up, put on his helmet, then perform a radio check, gauge check, and get into that kill-mode mindset.

Hull said the best part of LS Fest East 2025 is “the crowd. Everyone is so into it, there’s a huge number of people, and they all seem to love the Earnhardt tribute,” a fact verified every time he pulled onto the track and the crowd erupted with excitement. This was one of Hull’s biggest wins of his career, thanks to the elite level of competition that showed up.

He expressed immense gratitude to his sponsors: Comp Cams, Edelbrock Performance, Konig Wheels USA, Drive Kenda USA, Advanced Clutch, Fuel Tech, OMP Racing, Radium Engineering, Antigravity Batteries, Outlaw Garage GA, and NOPI Motorsports.

Drift Top 3

Position	Driver	Car
1	Taylor Hull	Dale Earnhardt G Body
2	Brian Hoplamazian	Nissan S13 240SX
3	Dirk Stratton	Corvette

Tyler Baber with Team 269 Motorsports Performance Products became a five-time LS Fest Drag and Drive champion this weekend in his Mustang, The Notch, with his quickest pass for the weekend being 7.337 seconds! Last season he was shooting for 7.6’s with added boost on the top end. This year, he made the 7.3 pass look effortless.

Drag & Drive

Position	Driver	Car
1	Tyler Baber	“The Notch” Mustang- 5x Champion
2	Herbert Casner	Camaro
3	Lee Stuph	Nova

Tim Kish was tired of sitting on the sidelines with a car that didn’t fit the rules of any existing class, so he did what any racer would do, he created one. The new class, sponsored by JEGS, brought together the 16 quickest machines on the property to battle it out in a category designed not for doored cars, but for true race cars. This marked the fourth year the class has run at LS Fest, with Kish claiming victory in the first three.

When asked what inspired him to build his 1,200-horsepower, alcohol-fed, Scott Performance Wire 32 Bantam Altered powered by a Magnuson-supercharged Chevy LS engine, his answer was simple: “I wanted to be able to work on it, have it be different, and have it be fun to drive. It’s a bracket car that’s fast but low maintenance.”

JEGS Quick 16

Position	Driver	Car
1	Rodney Payne	1968 Camaro
2	Joe Davis	1998 S10

Autocross Shootout

Position	Driver	Car
1	Danny Popp	2025 Corvette E-Ray
2	Rob Unser	Cobra Kit Car
3	Garry Walsh	2004 Corvette Z06
4	Christopher Jensen	LS Swapped ‘86 Mazda RX7
5	Ryan Mathews	2006 Corvette