JOURNAL / SEP 7, 2026 / LAGUNA SECA
I LOVE
BEING ALIVE.
I won a race and a championship this weekend. Somehow, that isn't what I keep thinking about.
—
BY J. LEWIS01—
5 MINUTES
TO GRID.
Five minutes before we rolled to grid, I climbed into the car.
Belts tight.
Seat right.
Chillout still broken from Saturday.
All good.
Master switch on. Fire the engine.
I looked right.
No radio.
Power cycle. Nothing.
“Hey fellas, I have no comms.”
For the next few minutes everyone scrambled. Fuses. Connectors. Power. Nothing.
We were out of time.
Let's go without it.
I rolled down pit lane and took my place on the grid.
One minute.
Formation lap.
As I exited pit lane, something else went wrong.
The dash froze.
Speed. Gear. Shift lights. Lap timer. Tire temperatures.
Everything.
The screen was still glowing bright green, but nothing on it was telling me the truth.
NO RADIO.
NO DASH.
02—
DRIVE THE CAR.
I made a decision right there.
Forget the electronics.
Drive the thing like a race car from the seventies.
Listen to the engine. Feel the shifts. Feel the tires. Stop looking for the clock and start feeling the laps.
I missed shifts.
Lots of them.
I bounced the thing off the rev limiter more times than I care to admit.
But I stayed on the bumper.
And when the pass had to happen, I made it.
BLIND.
DEAF.
LET'S RACE.
P1.
🥇 RACE WIN.
🏆 PORSCHE SPRINT CHALLENGE WEST CHAMPION.
Car racing never disappoints.
03—
THE STRANGE PART.
The strange thing is, that's not what I've been thinking about since Sunday.
I've been thinking about the guys who strapped me into the car.
Tuck. Garett. Tim. Connor. Eddie. Pat. Jason. Nick. Reno.
My team. My friends.
The guys who check the belts. The seat. The brakes. The tires. The endless list of things I rarely think about once the engine fires.
My team obsesses over my safety.
And I spend most of the weekend trying to forget about it.
04—
THE EDGE.
I haven't always had a particularly healthy relationship with safety.
If you know me, that probably doesn't surprise you.
To drive these machines—to really search for the edge—doesn't leave much room for self-preservation.
Brake later.
Carry more speed.
Don't lift.
Trust the tire.
Trust the car.
Trust yourself.
There's a voice inside you telling you where safe is.
Racing is the strange practice of hearing it clearly and then trying to go a little farther.
That's the edge.
Not some place on the track.
The place where instinct tells you to stop and you ask yourself for a little more.
And damn, do I love that fight.
I love finding the edge of my own limitations and punching through the other side.
05—
But here’s the dirty truth…
I DEEPLY FEAR DEATH.
AND I DEEPLY LOVE BEING ALIVE.
—
Maybe those two things aren't opposites.
Maybe they're connected.
Maybe I chase the edge because of how much I love being here.
How much I love feeling all of it.
The speed. The fear. The fight. The people. The absurd privilege of getting another lap.
I went to Laguna Seca wanting to win a championship.
I did.
But standing there Sunday, championship won, what I felt wasn't triumph.
It was gratitude.
For Tuck. Garett. Tim. Connor. Eddie. Pat. Jason. Nick. Reno.
For the team who let me chase the edge and work like hell to make sure I come back from it.
For another race.
Another lap.
Another day.
Damn, I love being alive.
