I think the thing that amuses me about airshows over sportscar races is the carnival nature of it. Sportscar races generally happen at a purpose-built facility where there is a designated place for concessions, hospitality, and viewing areas. Most airshows happen in a field or on tarmac directly adjacent to a runway that for the other 360-some-odd days of the year is off limits to most. Food trucks go… vaguely gestures …over there, because …

I watched everything fall apart at this racetrack, twice in a matter of weeks. A year later, it was a place of rejuvenation for me that led to where I am today. And it was at this racetrack that the words which saved my career in motorsports were spoken to me: “if you can’t handle disappointment, you shouldn’t be in motorsports”.

It was the combination of those words and the people I’ve found myself around at any given race lately that kept my head above water this past weekend.

… because this past weekend absolutely sucked. I spent most of it pondering…

“If it wasn’t for that raccoon, I would have never quit my engineering job”.

-me, about 5min ago, inspired by a different nonsensical equestrian quote.

I can trace sitting here in the WGI Photographer’s Room typing this today ahead of the Six Hours weekend back to…

Are we still doing “Throwback Thursday”??? Cuz I wanna throw it back to some humble beginnings…

Against what I thought at the time was my better judgment, I took a Friday off of work in the middle of October 2019 to drive to Mid-Ohio and shoot a grassroots race…

I think being on the inside looking out is actually harder than being on the outside looking in.

When you’re looking in from the outside, there’s usually the optimism that you’ll one day be inside. Once you’re in, where do you go from there? Maybe the inside wasn’t what you were expecting and…

I’ve spent most of this weekend watching grass grow…

Driven is an excellent racing movie…

“Now New York you know I love you
because you made me who I am
…which is not that good of a person
I need to feel something again” …..

I’ve been in a weird place since Daytona. I wanted to bring oh so much more home with me… but I really can’t be too upset with what I have. It’s all progress.

The part that has annoyed me the most is that I’m still at a loss of words. Not like in a bad way or anything… just… yeah….

There’s no place like this. There is no other track on the North American sportscar calendar that we spend nearly 10 consecutive days at. Before the Rolex even begins, you’re already borderline sick of the place… but as soon as the green drops on the 24, everything goes out the window. It’s like being at a completely different racetrack. You will lose track of time and manage to somehow leave the track without getting everything on your ideal shot list over that 24hr period. This place wears you down both physically and mentally, yet when you finally get to rest Sunday evening after the Rolex, you’re already thinking about next year….

All I needed was the last thing I wanted… but that wasn’t to be alone in a room because I had done too much of that already. If anything, that was the problem.

Spending most of my days alone never bothered me before, that used to be how I liked it. It still rather is? But this time…

Yeah, I’ve ghosted. I tend to do that, especially when others come too close.

But the thing is, I don’t even have that excuse this time…

I always wanted a place on the ocean. Water calls me in the same way the sky does. I think it has something to do with the infinite horizon; endless possibilities within the unknown or something. And blue has always been my favorite colour, its only other competition being black. I digress.

I concluded my 2024 travels with a rather selfish trip…

It’s weird. I’ve been in a bit of a writer’s block since the seasons ended; both in the literal sense, and when it comes to creatively for processing my own photos. Even this past week as I’ve really started to reignite the flame and push myself, there’s just been a hollowness to it. Everything feels the same…

If Road America marks the jumping point for my new life, VIR was the propeller of the turbulent plane I had just jumped out of and nicked on the way out. VIR severed parts of me that needed to be shed, but it was less than surgical about it. I came home bleeding out from the laceration VIR left me with…

The sun had just set over the Appalachians and we still had another 7hrs in the car together when he launched into his plea for me to reconsider. I couldn’t blame him - I had just given him a small taste of something that was otherwise out of reach to most and he knew it was slipping away from him because of my actions….

The nukes, launched the night before, hit. The fireball grew with each word.

“I’m here because I’m lucky. We’re all here because of luck”, he retorted to me about half way through the spat. As this pivoted the exchange, that may have been the deathblow for me…

I gulped the remainder of my cocktail and made a non-verbal “another, please” gesture to our waitress as she passed by. One of my companions shot me a judgy side eye then returned the conversation about some other topic I deemed juvenile. A moment passed. I re-zoned out as I sloshed the ice in the empty tumbler and took a sip of the no longer existent cocktail. And then it hit me:

“I’m at the kids table”.

The worst part? I put myself there…

I had a bad habit of rushing into a room, not realizing that if you don’t clear the room, if you go into a room too fast, the room eats you. It’s a large chunk of the reason that my career in motorsports hit the snag it did last season. Rushing into rooms got me where it did in an expedited fashion, so I figured there was no harm in maintaining that habit. That was until my otherwise critical self rushed into one too many rooms ignoring the doors and corners and had the room eat me alive. I deserved it. I had it coming…

“Please stop making sense of this
A god in the machine
I can’t take the artifice”