We're Back Baby: My Winter At Bradenton

But from an outsider’s perspective, you might expect the environment to feel cliquey or difficult to navigate. It wasn’t. Yes, the competition is intense and everyone is there to win — nobody is holding back — but it’s also one of the healthiest racing environments I’ve ever experienced. You’d see racers walking through the staging lanes getting pulled into conversations with other drivers, crew guys bouncing between cars helping each other, and teams constantly popping into different pits just to check in or talk shop.

Even the media group was incredibly welcoming — funny, supportive, and easy to be around.

It created an atmosphere that was competitive but also incredibly community-driven, and that energy is something that’s hard to replicate. It’s honestly hard to explain too. You leave that environment, come back home to Canada, and someone asks you, “So how was it?” And you just look at them and go, “Dude… it was incredible. I don’t know how to explain why it’s good, but it was good.”

Now going into this winter series, though, I wasn’t exactly walking in feeling like I had everything figured out.

In my previous blog post, I talked about hitting a bit of a plateau. I wasn’t publicly posting my work very much and I was dealing with the thing we all know and love: stress and anxiety. Because of that, heading into the winter series, I was honestly nervous. Nervous about performing, nervous about networking, and nervous about whether I’d walk away from the experience feeling like it was actually worth it.

Because let’s not sugarcoat it. Travelling across the continent, going from three feet of snow to 30-degree weather where you’re getting sunburnt while shooting drag racing three times in less than 90 days… It’s amazing. It’s the dream. But it’s also a massive investment. An investment of time, energy, money, and belief in yourself.

So instead of putting massive pressure on myself, I decided to approach the winter series a little differently. I broke it down into small personal goals for each event.

For Snowbird Nationals in December, my goal was simple: feel comfortable again in the environment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m confident in my photography skills and I trust my abilities behind the lens. But sometimes the hardest part of this industry for me is the personal side of it. Standing in front of someone and essentially selling yourself can be intimidating. I’m not the type of person who walks up and says, “Hi, my name is Becky, I’m cool as shit, really good at what I do, and you should hire me.” I wish I had that level of extroverted confidence, but the reality is I’m a little more reserved than that. I’m awkward and low-key kind of shy until you get to know me. Then I become chaotic, make inappropriate jokes, and can easily hang out with the boys. So during Snowbirds, I focused on enjoying the environment again. Talking to people. Slowly stepping outside my comfort zone so I could start presenting myself in a way that highlights my photography capabilities.

Truthfully, Gary from That Track Channel was a massive support in that. I ran into Gary and he immediately asked, “Who do you want to meet?” Next thing you know, he’s introducing me to Jimmy Taylor and his crew, introducing me to Wes Buck, checking in on me — the amount of support he showed was unbelievable.

And then there’s Nate Sayler. I love that guy. He welcomed me into his pit with open arms. The jokes, the banter, and the whole environment was great.

So I left Snowbird Nationals not only completing my goal, but feeling so happy that I actually wanted to show off my work again. Which led to January.