Dropping the Hammer: Good Night, and Good Luck

I put off writing this column for a while.

Sitting down to write what could be the last NASCAR-focused content I ever produce is daunting, to say the least.

Maybe scary is the more honest word. And the future can be a scary thing.

For all intents and purposes — barring something unexpected — my career of covering NASCAR professionally is over.

Thankfully, I’m making that decision on my own terms.

It could have ended five years ago, when I was laid off by NBC Sports in October 2020. Instead, I found safe harbor with other outlets, including here at Frontstretch, Speed Sport and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

For the last five years, I was able to broaden my journalism horizons and experience things I never would have had a chance to at my old job.

I’m indebted to Frontstretch owner Tom Bowles. Because of him, I got to produce some of the best NASCAR material my career. Some of which I considered vital, like my multi-part series covering the one-year anniversary of NASCAR’s ban of the Confederate flag and the new fans who were drawn to sport because of it.

Some of it was goofy. Like the time I depicted Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s “interview” to be a JR Motorsports crew chief.

They can’t all be winners.

There was the column that called NASCAR’s counter lawsuit against 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports weird. That resulted in a rather unprofessional email from a member of NASCAR’s comms department criticizing it.

Months later that lawsuit was dismissed by a judge.

Oh, well.

I got to cover races in places that would have broken my mind had I known they would happen when I started down this path in 2014.

The streets of Chicago? The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum? Freaking North Wilkesboro Speedway?! The return of the once dead track was one of the most surreal weekends of my life.

Over the last five years I got to do pretty much everything I ever dreamed of doing as a NASCAR journalist. For three of those years, I did it while working my full-time job at the Democrat-Gazette, which for one year allowed me to do a weekly NASCAR podcast.

But the yin and yang of being two things at once, year after year, can take its toll. It can start to hurt your motivation. It got harder to keep doing something I love.

And 2025 seemed like a good year to cap it all off with. When I started in 2014, it was the first year of the elimination playoff format. Now, as a bookend, that format is reportedly dead.

It’s now 2026 and we still don’t know what’s going to replace it. When the new (or old?) format is finally announced, part of me wants to be around to give my hot take on whatever it is. It’ll be the first of many moments of FOMO I’ll undoubtedly have this year and in the years to come.

But it’s time.

Back in 2014, when I was still an intern at Sporting News, a veteran reporter tried to predict my future. He told me, with a degree of irritating certainty, that my first real job would be covering high school sports for some small newspaper.

Thankfully, I proved him wrong. I covered the Coca-Cola 600, the Cotton Bowl and an IndyCar race that lasted multiple months long before I had to enter a high school press box.

NASCAR has been a nearly constant presence in my life since March 2014.

And like I wrote back on Dec. 1, I’m ready to miss NASCAR.

I’ll be like most of you, watching and tweeting on Feb. 15 when the Daytona 500 christens a new chapter for the sport, whatever it may look like.

But afterward?

I don’t know. And I kind of like that.

Anyway, in case I don’t see you: good afternoon, good evening and good night.

And good luck.