This Is What I Want to Be Doing.

The engine’s ticking. That hot metal cooling sound. There's a fresh zip tie holding the bumper on, a temporary fix for a permanent memory. My hands still have a tremor from the moment it all went wrong. My ears are ringing. Not from the engine, but from the quiet. The sickening quiet after you go off-stage and the world stops moving. The quiet that’s the exact opposite of the one I chase inside my helmet, where the world is a blur of trees at 90 miles an hour.

That quiet follows you. It followed me all the way from Ohio.

The ghost of that off on Stage 5 is still riding shotgun. It's a bitter pill to swallow. One minute you're on it, feeling the flow, and the next you’re sitting in the woods wondering how the hell you’re gonna get the car back to service. You DNF. The weekend is a wash. And you have to stand there, in Parc Exposé, leaning against a wounded car, and face it.

My gut instinct is to hide. Disappear. I’m an introvert, man. Through and through. Facing people after a failure like that… it’s a lot. But you put on the team shirt, lean against the fender, and you breathe. You own it.

And that's where the shift happens. That’s where the reason I do this smacks me right in the face.

A quiet competitor comes over, shakes my hand. “Tough break in there. You guys were on a hell of a run.” A fan walks up, points to the QR code on the livery for our mental health resources. “Hey,” he says, making eye contact. “Keep doing this. What you’re doing matters.”

That’s when I think about last year. 2024. The year me and my crew—my band of misfit friends who somehow saw a champion in me when I just saw a guy trying not to screw up—did the impossible. We became National Champions. We held that trophy. We felt that high. It was real.

That feeling doesn't live in a trophy case. It lives in those moments of connection. It's in the nod from a fellow driver who gets the risks we take. It's in the quiet "thank you" from a fan who understands our real mission. It's for the friends I've lost, the reason we carry that QR code on our livery in the first place.

And standing there, next to my broken car after a weekend that went to hell, I felt it more than ever. The frustration wasn't a sign to quit. It was a confirmation. The anger at the mistake, the deep, burning disappointment… you only feel that when you care. When you love something this much.

That DNF at Southern Ohio didn't break my spirit. It cemented it in steel. It drew a line in the sand. This isn't a hobby I pour my heart into anymore. This isn't just a passion. This is what I want my whole reality to be.

The logistics are a beast. The money is a monster. But the fire that failure lit in my gut is bigger than both. It’s time to push forward. It’s time to build this, to fight for it, and to make the roar of that engine my everyday life. That off on Stage 5 wasn't the end of the story. It was the start of the next chapter.

This is what I want to be doing.