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LS Fest West 2022: Complete Coverage From Las Vegas Motor Speedway

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Bryan McTaggart

04/28/2022

5 min read

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LS Fest West 2022: Complete Coverage From Las Vegas Motor Speedway

LS Fest West 2022: Complete Coverage From Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Bryan McTaggart

04/28/2022

5 min read

With screaming jets overhead, the glittering lights of the Las Vegas strip to the south in view, and the whole of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway waiting, it must be that time...LS Fest West 2022 has kicked off! Holley is on the ground at LVMS for three days' worth of racing and action that makes LS Fest so special to so many. LS Fest West offers participants and fans to enjoy the broadest range of events at an LS Fest, including:

The MotorLife Grand Champion competition, which is broken up into three classes: the Rekudo Vintage class, the Three Pedals Late Model class, and the Holley Classic Trucks Truck class.
The Boost District Superchargers/LSX Magazine Drag Racing competition
The QA1/Lateral-G Autocross
The Baer Brakes/Pro-Touring.com 3S Challenge
The Auto Revolution Road Course Track-X
The MotoIQ Drift Challenge
The Blueprint Engines/Cleetus And Cars Burnout Contest
The Sac Speed Shop Donut Pit
The ADS Racing Shocks/Flowmaster Dirt Destruction
The Hooker BlackHeart/LS1Tech.com Car Show
The HP Tuners/BANGShift.com Dyno Challenge

We will be sharing content from LS Fest West throughout the event and afterwards on MotorLife. To check out individual events, be sure to click on a link below.

Drag Racing

There's a lot to be said about the LS engine but if they didn't churn out max power with minimal effort, they would have never garnered the cult following they have. Here at Holley LS Fest, 2022 the Las Vegas Motor Speedway drag strip is hot and it's put up or shut up in both lanes. Blowers, turbos, nitrous, and big cubic inches are all accounted for and racers are pushing their mills to the limit. Racing action will be happening all weekend so check back often for a collection of killer photos and race results.

Autocross

The cones are out and a sea of LS-Swapped rides are warming their tires around the LS Fest West 2022 Autocross course. Autocross, puts all competitors through a highly technical, high-speed, hair-pin-loaded, hard-braking labyrinth that pushes traction, lateral grip, and driver skill to the razor’s edge. While some are dodging cones in the hunt for the coveted Autocross and Grand Champion awards, others are simply pushing to hone their skills behind the wheel and have a grand ol' time doing it. Follow along with all the autocross action below:

Donut Pit

The racing action on the road course, the autocross course, and the drag strip are great at LS Fest West 2022, but let's be completely honest: there has always been a bit of a deviant side to hot rodding, from the earliest days to today. Accelerating is fun, don't get us wrong, but that delinquent side has to come out sooner or later, and that's where the Sac Speed Shop Donut Pit at LS Fest comes into play. Between the Cleetus and Cars Burnout Contest and the Up In Smoke Show, there was a distinct aroma hanging in the air...fried rubber. Check out the insane photo batch below where racers sent their tires to the moon, all in the name of putting one heckuva good show for cheering fans.

Dirt Destruction

The hallmark of LS Fest West, and the event that has separated it from LS Fest East in Kentucky, is the Dirt Destruction off-roading section. With desert racers, pre-runners, Baja builds and plenty of other dirt-biased builds ready to play, why not let them? Las Vegas Motor Speedway's half-mile oval dirt track is the perfect playground and features banked turns, jumps, rises and dips that will let drivers showcase what their builds are capable of handling. Did we say "sweet jumps" yet? Well, just in case...there are sweet jumps. Plenty of them!

Show-n-Shine

The show-n-shine field at LS Fest West 2022 brings vehicles from the Southwest and beyond to the wide asphalt expanse of Las Vegas Motor Speedway. With a frosting of snow on the mountains in the distance adding to the beauty of the Mojave Desert, owners polished up their prize rides for spectators to check out and for the judges to inspect. Compared to other action at LS Fest, the show-n-shine field might be relatively calm by comparison, but taking a breather and looking at some beautiful builds isn't such a bad thing, now is it?

Feature: Marcus Fry's Datsun 510

Marcus Fry’s wild 1970 Datsun 510 started turning heads at LS Fest a few years ago, and it’s only gotten more potent in the time since. “The engine that was previously in this car was there basically to prove the chassis,” he explains. “It was sort of placeholder for the stroker LS2 that I was building. That engine finally got finished a few months ago, and after my clutch disc failed, I thought it was time to swap that in. And I figured it would also be a good opportunity to, you know, rebuild the whole car!”

Twelve Fast Fords

While the Modular platform and Ford’s assortment of pushrod V8s are all worthwhile powerplants in their own right, even the Blue Oval guys have come to accept the fact that LS power tends to solve a lot of problems. The latest evidence is on full display at LS Fest West this year, with a number of Fox-body Mustangs, Rangers, F-Series pickups, and even a few Mercury Capris out here showcasing the virtues of GM’s modern small-block. Take a pass through the below gallery which showcases the best of the "Ford makes it, Chevy shakes it" ideology.