WELCOME BACK!
Welcome to 2023 and also welcome back to AutoRacingDigest.com.
Due to both technical and health issues, AutoRacingDigest.com (which we on the staff affectionately call simply "ARD"), was on hiatus for about six weeks. During that time, we endured a double concussion, Covid and Influenza Type A, plus a diagnosis of the Big C (but it's treatable).
Ironically, what happened to ARD couldn't have come at a better time -- if there EVER is a better time -- because all of those maladies and catastrophes all occurred as the racing season was either winding down or was completely over for most of the series ARD covers.
But we're back -- and just in time for the new year, with things like IMSA's Roar Before the 24, the legendary Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona and NASCAR's Busch Clash at the Los Angeles Coliseum coming up in the next few weeks.
Then in February, we have stock car racing's big daddy of them all, the Daytona 500. From there, we also have Formula One, NHRA and IndyCar getting their respective seasons started as well. I'll tell you, I'm VERY excited at what 2023 is shaping up to be.
We want to tell you a bit more about some changes for ARD in 2023:
1) We hope to kick off a weekly podcast by the end of January.
2) We will be airing several video reports each week. Each report will likely go from 90 seconds to five minutes and will be either commentary on hot topics or breaking news of the day. We hope to get the video reports started by mid-January. And in certain cases, we may also have special guests during our segments (which may make them run longer than five minutes, but we're sure you won't mind).
3) In perhaps our biggest change, we will be gravitating from race stories to more of analysis pieces explaining what happened in a particular race and, equally as significant, why it happened (but don't worry, we will continue to include the posting of official race reports, etc.). For those of you who are familiar with and enjoyed Austin Dickey's "Breaking It Down" series throughout the 2022 NASCAR season, that's what we have in mind across the entire site and the various motorsport series we cover.
4) For those of you who know any young, aspiring sports journalists, please let them know ARD will be recruiting several up-and-coming writers to join the site, most notably, aspiring sports writers currently in college (and we would also be open to extremely talented high school sports writers). Because all of our staff are volunteers, we will be very open to giving college and high school writers academic credit for school (they will have to set it up with their respective academic advisors). And in so doing, they will also establish a very strong resume and portfolio of clips that hopefully will put them ahead of other aspiring writers.
5) We also hope to include you, our loyal readers and racing fans, in the mix with a regular feature we're still working on. We're considering things like a weekly notebook, or reader mailbag or maybe a featured fan of the week. We're also still trying to decide whether to do what we have in mind in written form or perhaps in a video or podcast format. We hope to have things figured out by the time Daytona rolls around. We want you all to be much more involved in things rather than just reading what we write and post. We want to get YOUR opinions and thoughts as well!
6) Somewhere down the road, maybe mid-year, we're hoping to produce and offer for sale ARD "merch" (which will also help us to finally start paying our staff). But that's still a ways away as we're trying to figure out what fans would want the most. If you have any suggestions, please drop us a line at AutoRacingDigest@Gmail.com.
For the most part, our team from 2022 is returning. Our staff really came together in such a great form last season that I couldn't have been happier or prouder or more appreciative of their great writing contributions.
Our rookie year in 2022 was a great start for ARD. And while sophomore seasons in motorsports typically have downturns, we fully believe our own sophomore year will be even bigger, better and greater than our rookie effort!
Stay tuned!
Jerry Bonkowski, Publisher/Editor, AutoRacingDigest.com