This racetrack has seen a storm or two, but here it stands, strong and proud in 2026, hosting its first of what I hope will be many, many NHRA Southern Nationals. South Georgia Motorsports Park knows how to weather a storm, that’s for sure. That thought woke me up at 3 a.m. and set me thinking when I would so much rather have been sleeping.

Yesterday, the clouds burst and dampened spirits, and yes, the consequent mood was starkly flat after the electric surge of a momentous Friday. It’s a forced recalibration, managing the volley of high to low, and how we manage that is probably pretty telling. I think a lot of us struggle with it because, by nature of this sport, we’re constantly exposed to complete sensory overload. It isn’t even an overload anymore; heightened adrenaline and lungs full of nitro or burnout smoke have become the baseline. Downtime is part of the season-long storm of chasing a championship, something that must be managed, intermittent periods where who we are without the noise becomes the loudest thing in the room.

In the center of a stormy period, it feels like the reward is getting to the other side…. but I think the real reward, the one that matters when you look back, is what you found in those forced periods of quiet between the thunder claps of a thrilling day, season, life. That’s what woke me up in the early morning hours: who are you when you’re waiting, when you don’t have control, when things don’t go as planned.

It’s complicated, though, because I also think the ones who come through the best are those with a sturdy foundation, those with the ability to let the rain pelt them in the face and the winds whip them about, the ones that may flinch at the flash of lightening but can still stand their ground, waiting for the storm to pass but also reveling in the commotion. How much can you take, not just of the storms we chase, but also of the storms that settle around us at the least convenient times.

If you know, you know: SGMP has had a wild, stormy history, and some may say that this racetrack shouldn’t have made it this far. It’s sort of unfathomable, really, that we’re here racing an NHRA national event after all that this place has been through. But South Georgia knows how to weather a storm and, ever-so-gratefully, there were people who saw potential and pushed right into pandemonium, seeking the next level of greatness and, it would seem, finding it. Though she be small, this little racetrack in the South is fierce and mighty, and it knows how to weather a storm. And now, the sun is shining.

I like how that works, don’t you?