Paddock life

Maria Herrera is walking into 2026 as the defending champ, and that changes the temperature of a race weekend before the bike even rolls. I brought up what the first small thing feels like now that she’s the one everyone is chasing. She didn’t talk about trophies or stats. She talked about eyes. “I feel […]

Photo by Nicole Paulich | Road Atlanta – MotoAmerica Stock 1000, Round 1. Threading the kink between Turns 3 and 4 with Jason Waters (#92) and Dylan Yelton (#118)  On paper, it doesn’t look like a MotoAmerica Superbike story. Chris Durbin lives in Taylorsville, Kentucky – a small town about half an hour outside Louisville.

Photos by William Joly – King James as he called it. There are photographers who show up to a race weekend and start figuring things out on Friday morning. Then there are the ones who grew up at the fence, watching the same corner year after year, quietly learning how speed and light move together. French

 2025 – before Cremona’s first WorldWCR race, starting P11 on the grid | Photo by William Joly Emily Bondi — Top 15 world rider, FIM Women’s Circuit Racing World Championship There’s a version of Emily Bondi’s story that reads like a clean, easy climb: title in France, step up to a world championship, a polished

Steve Mandeville’s first race bike: a wrecked 1986 Yamaha FZ600 he turned into a track bike. This is ’89 or ’90, racing his “behind the curve” FZ against the much better ’87 CBR600 Hurricane. Photo is at the exit of the original Turn 11 at Sears Point Raceway. Steve Mandeville posted a story in Track

Photos by Yvette From cold, grey Groningen to 4 am alarms and desert heat, Yvette takes us through a Grand Prix weekend from the marshal’s post, where unseen work, pressure, and camaraderie keep the whole show running safely. TrackDNA note:Yvette works as a marshal at both MotoGP and Formula 1 events. This story is from

Photo by Harlie Raethel Author’s note:Huge thanks to Jason Litton — not just for stepping in and coaching me through that COTA weekend, but also for taking the time to walk back through it with me for this story. The lessons in here are from the saddle and from his eye as a coach. Most

Photo by Jason Farias You can hear it before you see it. Down at Harris Hill, the riders’ meeting is rolling and the track is quiet. Up on the rise at Turn 4, the wind is kicking through the bluebonnets, the paddock sits in the background, and somewhere in that stillness, Jason Farias is already

Photo by David Schwartz There’s a moment a lot of creatives can point to when a hobby quietly crosses the line into something more. For David, one of TrackDNA’s young paddock creatives, that moment didn’t actually happen at the track. It happened later, at home, staring at a batch of NASCAR shots from Circuit of