I survived both the event and cross country air travel on Thanksgiving weekend.
If that's typical of a press event for car releases and such...are you guys hiring?! I had a blast! Night before, we had what felt like a combo of trackday classroom sessions, Hyundai marketing, and a safety briefing, all rolled into one hour in front of a projector. Plenty engaging. Then had dinner and some vino. Next day, met our instructors and paired up. Each instructor had 5 cars/5 pairs of people. Each pair got a car and took turns doing the same exercise vs riding shotgun in the morning. We did some "vehicle control" type exercises with the Elantra N, then drifting on a wet skidpad in the Ioniq 5 N, finally an Auto-X with the Ioniq 5 N. Stopped for [a very tasty] lunch and for the afternoon then took the Ioniq 5's for some lead-follow laps, then the Elantra N for lead follow laps. During the track driving, you stayed on pitlane if your "co-driver" was on track, which was good. Really liked the guy I was paired with, still wasn't sure I wanted to hot lap with him while I was strapped, helplessly, in the passenger's seat. As it was starting to get towards the end of the day, our last "task" was to pile into some Ioniq 5 N's so the instructors could pilot us around the course. Holy cow, with my driving, I thought the Ioniq felt heavy and on the verge of understeer a lot of the lap, but we ripped off an absolutely killer lap, with 4 adults in the car. Blame it on the locked down settings we drove with vs the totally uncorked settings my German pilot, or (far more likely) blame it on my driving skills vs his, but holy cow. Thing is clearly very capable.
Overall I'd love to do as many events like that as I possibly could, and am super appreciative of the opportunity and hospitality from Hyundai. I seemed to quite possibly be one of the only attendee's who was there purely from signing up expressing interest (a sign-up I completed when I originally read the GRM article on the first iteration of this event). The other attendees seemed to be split between active members in various "N enthusiast" clubs and people who owned or leased a Hyundai (though not necessarily an N-model). I was neither. But I was smiling bigger than a lot of them, in spite of the jetlag.
