2018 Motorsports: My Grateful Year in Review

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From Daytona Beach in January to Kansas City in October, my year in racing crisscrossed the country from my home in Indianapolis, and all but the trip to Daytona was done by driving. By the time of the ARCA Racing Series annual awards banquet in Indianapolis earlier this month, I had racked up some serious miles on my Honda Civic Si coupe and catalogued more than 50,000 images in the process. Indycar, ARCA, CRA, USAC Silver Crown, IMSA WeatherTech sports cars - these were series I was lucky enough to cover this year. Next year promises to be even better with more travel and some surprises I hope to be announcing by the end January.

Danica Patrick raced into retirement this season

During the course of this racing season, as always the Good, the Bad and the Ugly sometimes reared its head. The Good was in evidence at each of the 10 ARCA races I covered as we endured 2 rainouts yet everyone came back each time ready to put on a show. The Bad was losing one of racing's seniors when ARCA team owner James Harvey Hilton lost his life in a tragic highway accident going home from the Talladega race in May. The Ugly occurred at Salem in September when two of the ARCA youngsters got caught up in some retaliation, but thankfully only race cars were torn up. Along the way, I got to see Scott Pruett race his final sports car race and Fernando Alonso get experience in the same event at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. I photographed Danica Patrick running in her last race during May at the Indianapolis 500. Will Power got the 200th win for Team Penske in Indycar at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and then followed that up with his first Indy 500 win at the end of May. So many memories and yet the time seems to have just sailed by since I boarded that Southwest Airlines flight to Daytona last January.

Indianapolis from the roof

Dirt track racing, small ovals, superspeedways, a road course and medium ovals were all on my schedule this year and I got to do and see some amazing sights that I tried to memorialize with my cameras. Shooting the start of the Indy 500 from the roof of the penthouse seats overlooking Turn 1 is always a thrill, and if I do have to fight off a little vertigo. Standing in the flagstand at places like Talladega Superspeedway and Kansas Speedway shooting the start of ARCA events is equally thrilling and offers unique perspectives that very few people ever get to experience. At the dirt tracks of Springfield and DuQuoin, there's no way to get any closer to the action than I do there while hugging the guardrail as the USAC Silver Crown or ARCA machines roar by literally inches away from me. Then there's Indianapolis, where everything takes on more epic proportions due to the history at the famed oval. I live for that rush of adrenaline standing at the drop gate in Turn 1 as Indycars exit the turn and head right for me at 225 miles per hour. There's nothing else quite like that, and the common thread of all these experiences is that racing photography is a totally visceral and all encompassing experience with sound, motion, vibration and potential mayhem unfolding in front of me on every lap.

Daytona in January is always a blast

Then there's the weather: there might be "moisture", there will definitely be heat and humidity, and there might even be snow and frigid temperatures. Regardless of the conditions, I might walk 20,000 steps during an 18 hour day at the racetrack and then get up early and drive home the next day, totally satisfied yet hungry for more. I have to pinch myself sometimes to be sure I'm not dreaming as I often can't believe my good fortune in being able to do some of the things I get the opportunity to do. I have worked hard and been blessed with some fantastic opportunities over the last decade. My life has totally changed since I decided to change careers and allow more time to pursue my passion for photography and I have a lot of people to thank for the chances I have had. I've said it before but I must give credit to people like Keith Pritchard, Larry Coles, Steve Snoddy and Dave Martin who are no longer with us but gave me great inspiration, support and taught me so much about photography. As a self taught photographer, I needed their help and I continue to try to learn from everyone I can.

Love the view from the flagstand

I also have to thank my friends at ARCA like Mark Gundrum, Tom Legeman, Doc Hunter and others for their faith in what I try to do to support the series. I can't forget my French friends Pascal Saivet and others at MPS Agency who allowed me to represent them internationally at Indianapolis last May. I am also grateful for the continuing opportunities to work for AP staffers like John Raoux at Daytona and Brynn Anderson or John Bazemore at Talladega. As this year comes to a close, I know I will have left someone off of this gratitude list and I apologize for that. I will try to make it up to you in the new year. Until I see you all again, be safe and enjoy the holidays. See you at a racetrack somewhere soon. Let's make some freaking pictures.

Turn 1 at Indy

Stock cars on dirt: a ground shaking thrill every lap when you are up against the rail

Kids like this one are the future of racing

USAC Silver Crown cars dance on dirt like skaters on ice

I chase the best light at every race and follow a "10 laps and move" strategy to cover it all

Sunrise

Sunset

Off to Phoenix for Indycar: Normal Is New

Mom loved racing too

This post is already surreal and I've hardly written anything. I had been sitting in the Indianapolis airport waiting to board a flight to Chicago when I started this and now I am at O'Hare waiting for my next flight. This afternoon, I had been following the Indycar qualifying from Phoenix on Twitter and through text updates from my brother, who is in Tucson and who I will meet in Phoenix tomorrow to go to the race together. Now it's evening and my layover here in Chicago is only a couple of hours so I am excited to get on another plane and head to Phoenix where I will arrive late tonight.  Then we get to spend all day tomorrow at the racetrack, Phoenix International Raceway, to watch the Indy Lights and Indycar races. My brother and I have been talking about doing this race weekend ever since the event was announced late last year. I never had any idea that it would end up being my first race of 2016, or that I would end up making a banzai trip out of it, as I will be back late Sunday night and into work Monday morning to help with orientation for our new students.

Mom didn't mind the infield either and loved Turn 3 at Indy

But the surreal part is not that I am in Indy one day and Phoenix the next: it's that I can't stop thinking about my Mom. This trip is also quite bittersweet, as I am posting on April 1st, a day that most people associate with April Fool's Day, but in our family, that has been my Mom's birthday. She would have been 81 today had she made it this far but God had other plans for her last July 5th so we are doing our best to try to celebrate her memory today with her spirit present. My brother, sister and I participated in a conference call earlier this afternoon and I know Mom was listening in as she would be glad that Steve and I were going to get together at a race this weekend. It's a shame my schedule is so tight or I'm sure our sister would have gone west too, but we will do our best to uphold the family honor at Phoenix International Raceway for the Indycar festivities. We tried to do this race together back in 2002, but Mom got sick and couldn't go, but I have her event shirt from that race with me and will wear it tomorrow at the track in her memory.

Mom loved her life in Akron

While my blog has historically been about racing, it has morphed into something else this past year with the travel and Mom's health issues becoming ever present on my mind. We are supposed to close on the sale of her home in Ohio next week and that will mark another transition in our grieving process, as that was a place Mom made her own for 25 years and we won't be going back there for anymore birthdays or Christmases, or to help get the house ready for the winter as I used to do every year. Or a million other reasons I used to come up with just to talk and see how she was doing.

Mom's in Victory Lane now

Even with all of that, it occurred to me that this race weekend in Phoenix is a nod to normalcy (whatever that is) in our lives. Next week I will take another step in that direction after a final trip to Ohio to handle the closing on her house and my week will end with a road trip by car to Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway to begin my 2016 photo work for the ARCA Racing Series.

And so we begin. Mom was a big race fan and one of our biggest supporters so it is still extremely difficult to know she isn't around to talk to while I am on the road, or having trouble with a student, or to plan for the Indy 500 weekend when she used to come home almost every year. Not many women her age were still going to the Speedway each May, and she loved to say "Not bad for a little white haired old lady." Not bad indeed Mom. Here's to you. Godspeed and safe travels to us all.

42 Day Photo Challenge: Completed

When I started this challenge back in November, my intention was to provide some structure for a daily discipline with a creative activity. With no races to shoot, I decided I needed a project to work on over a longer period of time, using photos from my archives which would be framed by weekly themes. I hope you enjoyed the daily updates over the last six weeks. Today I have compiled the entire set of photos from my personal challenge into a single slideshow to wrap up that project.

Daily Photo Challenge: Week 2 Means Water

Even Lone Star JR raced in the rain - at Elkhart Lake in 1986

The poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Coleridge included the famous lines,  "Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink." Shooting motorsports is like that sometimes too, especially for road racing events. Needless to say, water and camera electronics are not a good combination but sometimes preparation will get you through a downpour. Sometimes you just get lucky. And sometimes you just get drenched.

The theme for the first week theme of my personal 42 Day Daily Photo Challenge on Twitter was "fire". For the second week, I chose "water" as my theme and you will see from the photos I posted that there was plenty of the wet stuff to go around. The story behind each photo follows, but the overriding lesson is don't forget your rain gear!

Water: Day 8

On this day in June 2008 I was shooting for the defunct American Motor Journal (AMJ) at Mid Ohio Sports Car Course, and I just got lucky rather than soaking wet. I had my rain gear since it always seems to rain on races at this road course, and I had just crossed the Honda bridge to the outside of the track to a location at the bottom of the hill after the esses. A downpour had hit the area and there was standing water everywhere. Luckily, that area of Mid Ohio is shrouded in trees so I was able to shoot under cover for awhile until the downpour passed. I stayed relatively dry and my cameras did too. This time.

Water: Day 9

While I don't normally shoot the two wheel crowd, the MotoGP event at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was a fairly new thing in 2009 so I had to go check it out. I didn't have credentials for the event but the IMS road course offers plenty of locations to get clear shots without any catch fencing in the way. This shot of multi-time MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi was taken during practice for the event and I only took one camera body and one lens to make sure I could shoot and deal with the elements with minimal risk of damage to my equipment. I am still amazed that these riders do what they do under any circumstances, let alone on a green racetrack which is thoroughly soaked.

Water: Day 10

This photo of Michael Andretti (3) and poppa Mario (6) racing into the esses at Mid Ohio is from 1990 and was shot on film, most likely Fujicolor. I had gone to the race with my stepson and a friend and his son and got this shot from the spectator fencing along the track as the cars begin to head uphill in the esses. My first race at Mid Ohio was in 1982 so going there for the Indycar weekend has been a long standing tradition. With its mid-summer weekend schedule slot, it could be 85 degrees with 90 percent humidity one minute and then pouring down rain the next. On more than one occasion, this race has been wet, dry, wet, dry and wet again so shooting here is always an adventure in the summer.

Water: Day 11

The inaugural Grand Prix of Indianapolis in 2014 saw Indycars running in the rain at IMS for the first time ever as far as I know. I was shooting for motorsport.com, working the pit lane during practice and qualifying when a brief but heavy rain shower hit. The old song says "it don't rain in Indianapolis" but we all know that's not true! I escaped the downpour under the Pagoda overhang where the yard of bricks runs through the building and within a few minutes, the rain had stopped but the track was soaked. Shooting the cars going north on the wet front stretch yielded some nice photos with large rooster tails of spray being thrown into the air. Unfortunately for Ryan Hunter-Reay, not long after I took this photo, he hydroplaned through a puddle coming onto the front stretch and cracked the wall while going for the pole. It has been awhile at Indy since I've heard the sound of anyone hitting concrete rather than the SAFER barriers, so that was a memorable day for a lot of reasons.

Water: Day 12

My photographer friends will never let me forget the American LeMans series race at Mid Ohio in 2011. The ribbing that weekend was endless and continues even now, with witty comments such as "Don't you know when to come in out of the rain?" Apparently, I didn't. I was determined to get photos in the wet conditions, but I underestimated how wet it would become. I had been shooting in the carousel as the skies darkened, the field was running slowly under yellow and there was less than 30 minutes left in the timed race. I decided to cut through the paddock as the rain started falling more heavily to get to the exit of Turn 1 past the infield bridge, as I thought the restart might be dicey with the conditions worsening. As I arrived at Turn 1, it seemed like a monsoon hit. I got this picture - which is one of my favorite rain photos - but I paid the piper for sticking it out. More on that with my Day 14 photo...

Water: Day 13

There have been periods of time the last few years where it seemed like every race I shot was hit by rain or a rain delay. So now when I am not at a race and it rains, I like to post comments on Twitter or Facebook that "it's not my fault" and my photographer friends are all in on the joke. At Mid Ohio in 2008, both the Rolex Grand Am and Indycar weekends were effected by rain and this shot was taken in the carousel after a downpour during the Indy Lights race. One of the great things about shooting racing in the rain is seeing the different lines the drivers take compared to what would be normal on a dry track. This shot is a good example as this section of Mid Ohio leaving the carousel is usually only one groove but Ana Beatriz makes her own middle groove while chasing two other competitors.

Water: Day 14

Continuing the story of my near drowning at Mid Ohio during the ALMS race in 2011, this shot shows the depth of water after the monsoon hit as the Rahal BMW driven by Joey Hand splashes through Turn 1. Everyone was just creeping through this turn by then and the race was red-flagged shortly after this so I headed to the pit lane to shoot the winners exiting their cars and the victory lane celebrations. I was completely soaked by this time with water running down my arms and straight onto my cameras. The towels I carry for such times were soaked too and I threw them away on my walk to the pits. Even having my gear covered with plastic bags provided no relief as there was just too much water to keep anything dry. 

Then the nightmare really began. First the view screen on my 40D went blank. Then my 7D started acting up. The 40D quit working completely and I don't think I ever did get any victory lane photos. That night at the hotel I took everything apart and hoped to God my cameras would dry out since the Indycar race was the next day and I was still supposed to shoot that. Sunday dawned clear and sunny thankfully, so upon arriving at the media center in the Tower that day, I took everything apart again and laid both cameras on a ledge by the window hoping the morning sun would cook the moisture out of them. Both cameras came back to life as the day wore on and I still use them today. I know the Canon techs got a good laugh out it the next May at Indianapolis when I took both cameras in to get cleaned and checked at IMS. I think I've earned my reputation as the "regenmeister", so if we go to shoot a race together, you better prepare for rain. I know I will get some photos!