Writing for Motorsport Week, I started May at Brands Hatch for Round 2 of the British Touring Car Championship season, ended it at my personal home circuit of Snetterton, and spent June's first weekend at Oulton Park in Cheshire.
The first immediate challenge was the obvious. I was not at the virtual Brands Hatch I had regularly raced around on games when I was younger, I was at the real track - expected to work like a real journalist.
Although I had previously interviewed some of IndyCar's biggest names through the series' Zoom press conferences, being face-to-face with the BTCC's drivers demanded that I push aside any nerves and do my job to the best of my ability. The result was a quartet of exclusives from my first weekend, including an insightful piece with Adam Morgan on driver safety.
Aside from that, the demands of the experience has given me a great insight into day-to-day life as a journalist. My days involved quote pieces, session reports, quotes again, sessions again, and quotes again. I've always considered myself someone able to work quickly, which helped massively in turning things around under constraint.
When not sitting at my laptop, the openness of the paddock was eye-opening. The amount of casual chats I had with drivers, team bosses, and other members of media was entirely unexpected. Additionally, it led to me picking up freelance work for TouringCars.net - covering session reports at Snetterton.
All the credit for this opportunity has to go to the team at Motorsport Week, particularly Jack Oliver Smith and James Phillips. James took me on as a very fresh writer on his own motorsport news site in 2025, and then brought me with him to Motorsport Week as it dissolved. The pair have given me incredible faith with our new BTCC coverage, allowing me to set the editorial agenda and self-edit and publish my pieces. It's given me a significant sense of satisfaction to see this pay off, with our recent coverage at Oulton Park regularly outperforming legacy competitors. For a site who has not covered BTCC before to already be out-indexing standard-bearers like Autosport is a massive step for us, and a clear sign of the potential of our coverage.
The series now heads into a summer break, where I'll be looking to continue our coverage by sourcing exclusives and writing creative features while the typical race-based news cycle ceases. I'm certainly looking forward to the future, and hoping for plenty more opportunities to learn and improve as I go along.