Watkins 2025

As I’m struggling for words, I keep coming back to a line from a best selling book. It’s not one of the most popular lines and different translations give it different meanings. But the most generalized phrasing of it goes something like this:

“A prophet is never accepted in his hometown”.

I am by no means trying to insinuate that I’m a prophet. I don’t need to be accepted. But there’s just something about that line that indirectly resonates with me as I attempt to convey the struggles I have with my home track, Watkins Glen.

You would think that the track that I’ve frequented the most in my lifetime (with it being just over an hour from my home) would be my favorite track of the season. You would think it’s where I feel the most comfortable. You would be wrong.

If anything, I feel that the familiarness hinders me.

This photo is however an exception to that. It’s simple. It’s from my “newest” favorite shot at the track. It’s executed the way I wanted because of my familiarness with the track. The subject matter is something that I was really proud of to be the smallest part of. Still am, actually.

I came here last year with the best of intentions to turn my misconceptions of my “hometown track” around, but as the fates of the racing gods shifted, I clouded my own head with toxicity. And then the rest of the season seemed to go downhill from there. Because of that, it’s very easy to pinpoint last year’s Six Hours as “the beginning of the end”.

But it wasn’t - it was the beginning of the next chapter. Something better. New growth. And it’s taken me the last year to realize that. This photo encompasses that for me because without the people tied to it and the lessons they taught me, I wouldn’t be here this year, at least not in the same capacity.

So on the eve of this year’s Six Hours, I’m taking a moment to look back in order to see forward. I’m no prophet. I don’t need to be accepted. But this is my hometown track. And I’m looking forward to what it has to teach me this year.