The Final Race Day

Thanks for everything.

With Elana Scherr at the AutoConduct Hot Hatches show in May 2021.

THE TRUTH IS, I had no idea how long Race Day was going to last. When I launched this newsletter two years ago, I would have given equal odds to it ending after three or four entries, or continuing until the end of time. What I told myself was that I was going to follow the lead of the news. If there wasn’t much to talk about, and there wasn’t much interest, I would let it die out. If, however, there was a lot to talk about and people actually liked it, I would follow its lead. I told myself this wasn’t about me. It was about documenting this moment in car culture.

So that’s what I did. I followed its lead. And this newsletter led me down some truly extraordinary paths. It gave me an in to events, and opened the door to talk with amazing people. It got people to pick up the phone, and respond to emails and to simply say “Yes” in general. I took what I saw, and what they told me, and passed it on to you. And the amazing part was you kept coming back every week. Once in awhile I even got to throw my own events – and you showed up for those. I was a bit player. I just got to enjoy the process.

But here was the biggest blessing of all: I launched the book Slow Car Fast in 2019 behind the assumption that car culture was about to reach a fever pitch, fueled by a more welcoming and enthusiastic generation armed with the Internet at their fingertips. They were ushering in a new age of automotive passion, so I thought. Race Day was always meant to cover that movement as a running addendum to Slow Car Fast – a living, breathing epilogue that people could check in with when they needed a contemporary fix that a book on a shelf can’t provide.

To my surprise, that actually worked. I got to document the exact wave that I had seen coming way off on the horizon. I got to talk about the YouTube feeds that were shaping car culture, and through the Ask A Millennial! section I got to hear first-person perspective on the movement as it happened. I got to launch the rollout of my second title, the classic Stainless Steel Carrot, and meet with the incredible Sylvia Wilkinson and John Morton in the process, bringing you guys along for the ride with me all the way. And the memes. So, so many memes.

But Race Day took its toll. In order to produce the format I wanted, at the level of quality I wanted and the frequency I wanted, it became a constant endeavor that demanded routine. If anything got in the way of that routine, it became exponentially harder to get it out. And of course, this was during a pandemic. Often there were lapses. Eventually I restructured Race Day to make it easier on myself, which I would now qualify as quasi-successful. It made Race Day 20-percent easier. But the reality is that everything since March 2020 is now 50-percent harder.

I kept waiting for things to get easier, or for bursts of inspiration that would spur me to fits of creativity and productivity yet unseen. And the stupid thing is, I would often get them. A great interview, a packed event, a hot news story that I knew people would enjoy – these spurred me to write when I would have rather slept in. I thought hard about turning this into a paid subscription. But the reality is I was teaching myself to fight through increasing difficulty. And on days when that creativity and inspiration didn’t hit, all that was left was the difficulty.

I still felt hungry to be at events. So I would go to Design & Drip at Oilstain Lab, or to a Brekkie show or an AutoConduct show or most recently to Radwood, and feel all the things I needed to feel. It filled me with such joy to see people enjoying themselves and encouraging each other and making new connections. But I realized I didn’t want to write about it, or even post about it. I didn’t want to cover it; I wanted to find my place in it. To be fully present and follow my friends and not the story. And since that moment I’ve been working toward shutting down Race Day.

I am so thrilled at the current state of car culture. We have more ways to enjoy cars than ever, from a more diverse pool of people than ever. In the wake of a shrinking traditional media landscape we have up-and-comer publishers blazing their own path. We have people who aren’t afraid to dive in. We met a lot of them here first: Ezekiel Wheeler has built AutoConduct into a thriving culture hub; Victoria Scott now has a running column at The Drive; Natasha Adams was recently featured in Car And Driver; Syd Cummings has a wildly-popular design shop.

In the end, Race Day was a publication for a specific time: the brief moment when Online Car Culture began to realize its real-world power, and the overwhelming momentum that would carry it through a pandemic to emerge as the dominant voice of automotive enthusiasm post-lockdown. We also threw the biggest social justice movement in 50 years in there, too, and its effects are clearly seen reverberating through the car world as we speak. None of these things are isolated. Race Day showed how they were intertwined in real time.

At Radwood NorCal in July 2021. Photo: Russell Conroy.

Looking back, there was one thing about Race Day that I got completely wrong. I thought this newsletter was about the news. But it was always about me. It was about what I found interesting or cool or funny, and who I had the chance to speak with, and when I had the time to do it. It took me a while to recognize that, but now that I know, I’ll cherish it for a long time. I had the freedom to cover what I wanted, how I wanted, when I wanted. The freedom to say goodbye. Race Day was always personal. And now it’s time for me to thank you. Personally.