(This might be a bit pretentious lmao)

You’re a little shit in middle school, and congrats you’re now into cars. McLaren this and Porsche that, and suddenly you’ve been persuaded that those 4 wheeled hunks of metal are the coolest things on the planet. And lucky for you, your dad is nuts, takes you on track days in a z28 and eventually teaches you to drive stick in a 993. (complaints addressed to the email).

It’s now high school. You’ve been to car shows, you’ve played the video games, you’ve been to track days. Road racing is being burned into your mind, and those videos of GT3 RS Porsches lead you to videos of GT3 RSR Porsches. RSR > GTE > GTLM > GT1 > Group C. And suddenly, the Porsche 962 and McLaren F1 GTR are your new favorite obsessions. A deep dive into the history, now you’re invested in the lore.

And then suddenly, endurance racing becomes the shit. WEC? IMSA? You’ve got YouTube. Stay up all night to watch, GTLM and LMP1 have you hooked. You’re there to witness Porsche and Audi trade punches, Nissan do the FWD Funny, the Ford GT and BMW m8 join the fun, LMP1 collapse, the 919 evo set the lap record…

College starts, and congrats, you’re gonna suffer and do aerospace engineering. It’s either gonna be rockets or race cars, and you love your aerodynamics. School is in Daytona, you live next to the track. Join the FSAE team, you’ve always wanted to. Classes are rough, but that’s the STEM lyfe. Take a chance, go to the HSR classic, happen to see the last time the Löwenbräu Porsche 962c was raced. A turbo so angry, you could hear it from any part of the track. Historic racing, you really get it now. Nothing comes close, not even to the IMSA races you’ll end up going to.

Endurance racing might just be the place to be.

Start of Junior year, you’re somehow aero lead of FSAE. Misc opportunity comes by that a top level NASCAR team needs an intern. Something about aero and stats, shoot off an email at the start of summer. Isn’t until the start of august that you get a response, then an interview, then another, and suddenly you need to cancel classes and drop your sub team lead positions and move out to Kannapolis.

Months go by, living alone is hard, especially when everyone you know is a 14 hour drive away. But, you’ve made the step. Going from student and part time warehouse cleaner to doing shifts at a wind tunnel and track tests for one of the top NASCAR Cup and Xfinity teams.

Five hard but worth it months go by, and you come back to Daytona. Through luck and connections, you and a friend are guests at the BMW Champions Club, talking to a manufacture higher up about factory race programs, stories, and then an opportunity for the opportunity to get an internship.

The year trudges on, your degree isn’t what you thought it was, your car’s AC fails, your girlfriend is now your ex, and the fog hasn’t been thicker. Somewhere in the mix, your resume and cover letter get sent out with the hope that maybe it’ll be good enough to get an interview with that OEM, meanwhile NASCAR is knocking at the door for round two.

Shit semester to be over with, it’s time to move back to Kannapolis, room with two fiends, and no-life Python until it becomes a second language. Many things happen that summer. Races are watched, a girl catches your eye then you blow up your car, codes are written, cars are tunnel tested, and then that OEM gets back to you. You interview on your balcony, then again, then over a lunch break comes the final one: you got it. Verbally, then via email, the holy grail of internships. Aerodynamics for an auto manufacturer’s factory Motorsports program. You finish that internship by being sent back to school with a laptop and a part time job.

Two semesters drag on, a student work visa for Germany is obtained, Duolingo is downloaded, and some academic recovery is preformed. All the while, more documents are gathered and emailed, more confirmations come, and suddenly, it’s nearing finals week. Late in the evening, you get that email. Almost all in German, the onboarding process has begun. Videos, links, accounts, etc. It’s official, it’s happening, the fog is gone, and that Munich flight is booked.

The last final is taken, and a month later the last goodbye is said. Everyone is behind you, everyone is with you.

You ride the high, from MIA to MUC. A smile you can’t wipe off your face for the next month is as present as is it worrying. Into the office for day one, witnessing a GT3 test. Shit has gotten real.

The city seems huge, the continent new, the language unintelligible. And yet over 6 months and three apartments, it’s a place you learn to call home. Soon after you’ve been here, you’ve got friends, a job, a home, and a date coming up.

Day after day, you do as you know; work your ass off. GTP and GT3 tunnel tests, gobs of data, matlab and Python and motec skills being pushed to the limit of what you know. It’s hard, but fuck this is it. You’re supporting endurance racing at the highest level. All cars, current and future, will use your work, your tools, your studies. The aero team is 5 people, one of them an American intern. In a world of 7 billion, among them TUM and MIT students, it’s you sitting there.

You’ve made good friends, hell you met a girl so lovely you wound up moving in together. Few vacations here and there, a Muria ridden in, a Miata tortured through the alps. Those six months are up, and the last number-crunching night is had. No big party, although cake was given out, just one final push that night. Running numbers, finalizing reports, looking through empty halls and old trophies. The GTP show car’s lines illuminated by the glow of monitors down stairs. Snow piles outside, as your girlfriend takes your final photos outside the building. In a week you’ll be saying a brief goodbye, and it’ll be a good half a day of flying until you’re back home in Florida, dazed by the bombardment of questions and attention.

2023 turns to 2024, most of your friends graduated last year, your girlfriend flies down for a bit, your cars are all tinkered with, and then the semester starts once again, the only true mark of stability it seems. But hey, it’s January, and the Rolex 24 hours is almost here.

So the Roar before the 24 comes around. Your old boss is there, your old friends too. Hours spent at the track, then after a short break, you’re back for the last few minutes of night time action. It’s really cold, and you see the cars you’ve studied, worked with, and gotten to know fly by. Lap after lap, as time ran out, with a crowed that would make certain race day events blush here solely to watch testing, practice, and later qualifying, a feeling grows up until the last sessions ends. Fireworks go off, lighting up the sky and lake below, explosions echoing off the track walls and RV sides, fans cheering, announcer barely legible, the sight of parked car and camp sites fills your view not occupied by the track.

The scale of Daytona Intl. Speedway is humbling, with the track surrounding you on all sides and a grandstand able to hold over 100,000 people. The vendors, the fireworks, the displays soon to be set up, the thousands of spectators, the hundreds of campers and campsites, the jovial staff. Everything around you, everyone around you, is here for those cars, and that sport that you helped to support. Your efforts, your work, your stresses and success, all play into all these people’s intrigue, passion, and lives. They all are here because they love it, and love it as much as you do too.

We all think it’s the coolest shit on the planet. And I, like the rest of us endurance fans, love this sport. It brings happiness. It’s a community. And to be a part of that, to help produce that product, is a surreal type of tear inducing serotonin intoxication that isn’t easily described. How can you?

I hope you all will enjoy the next 10 years of Motorsports. I did my part, and with any amount of luck, I will continue to do so. Thank you, MSIMA reader.