NASCAR puts on a show. Of that there is no doubt. But it’s easy to forget that there are people behind the visor and behind the sponsor decals.

As I’ve done more work in NASCAR, I’ve really enjoyed getting to “know” the drivers and their personalities. They are just regular people, with regular people problems. They have good days and bad days…just like the rest of us.  You learn who is easy to work with. Who isn’t. But they’re all just people doing a job. Here are some of my favorite people images (and a few action images) from the Bojangles Southern 500 from Darlington SC.

As always, thank you the Getty photographers who are incredibly talented and ALWAYS good for a laugh. And thanks to Bojangles for the awesome food  

Images © Jamey Price/Getty Images. 

Everyone was soaked. From head to toe. No one could escape it. Fans. Horses. Jockeys.  Photographers. Owners. Trainers. Pretty ladies in pretty sundresses. Not even Bob Costas (inside joke). Many pairs of shoes were ruined in the Kentucky grass and mud. But the weather couldn’t stop a great day’s racing.

The minutes leading up to those 20 metal gates at the top of the stretch crashing open are steeped in history. Walking the track you can honestly feel it. With the twin spires as witness, horses like Secretariat. Barbaro. Funny Cide. Fusaichi Pegasus. Affirmed. Seattle Slew and many many others have all put their hoof print on this famous race. Last year’s winner I’ll Have Another was a complete unknown. A long shot who came from no where and ended up winning 2/3 of the Triple Crown but bailed out days before the final 1 and 1/2 mile race at Belmont Park.

But this year, the weather was going to turn it all on it’s head. Horses who might run well in the dry, but hate the muck and slop were going to suffer. And suffer dearly. I can tell you from personal experience from my years as a jockey that galloping behind a group of horses kicking mud and sand at you is not enjoyable for horse or rider. It hurts. It’s like being sand blasted. It gets in your nose, eyes, ears, mouth. It’s not fun. But it’s part of the game. Some horses can deal with it. Others not. Orb loved it. 

When the 19 horse field passed my position on the back stretch at the entrance to turn 3, the #16 horse and pre-race favorite, Orb was still no where close to the front. He was actually well at the back. But was slowly being urged along until he just started passing horses like they were standing still. I’ve ridden races on horses like that. It’s a huge rush. One I can’t really describe actually. You can feel their huge stride lengthening with each foot forward. You just keep pushing. Keep encouraging and eventually….you’re an unstoppable locomotive of muscle. Orb passed them all, then to put a stamp on his domination, jockey Joel Orsario stood up and let the horse quietly gallop across the finish line. Orb went off the favorite even before the weather conditions rolled in. The sloppy track had little effect on his performance. It was impressive to say the least. But now comes the hard part. Four more weeks of continued training, and two more grueling races before he can really put his name in the history books as the first winner of the Triple Crown since Affirmed won it 35 years ago. There have been many who were close. But it will take a special horse, a titanic feat and a lot of luck to be added to that list. But from the bottom of my heart…..GO ORB!

…Watch the race replay….

Endless thanks to the Getty Images team for tons of laughs and the chance to cover my second Kentucky Derby. I am truly humbled for the opportunity to work alongside you all. Also thanks to Alex and Ryan for making it not only bearable, but fun to stand in the cold and rain. We work hard, but we sure have fun.

The eventual winner, "Orb" is on the far left buried in a pack of horses and covered in mud.

All images © Jamey Price/Getty Images

I mean, who doesn’t love a day out with your friends, drinking, partying, tailgating, enjoying the spring weather (for good or for bad) all while watching professional horse racing???? Most people don’t even know that exists in Charlotte! Imagine if you could watch a college or pro football game live from your tailgate spot with all your friend’s by your side!?!?! Dad always says that the Queen’s Cup is a tailgate party where the horses are invited. And it’s true. It’s all happening around you. You don’t have to leave your space if you don’t want to. There’s no 15ft high barbed wire fence separating you from the action like at the Kentucky Derby. You can be inches away from the action if you want, and that is unparalleled in any sport that I know of. It is a special event.

This year, Queen’s Cup celebrated our 18th annual race meet and surpassed over $500,000 raised for local charity over those 18 years. All while partying with thousands of our closest friends. I love it. I’m very proud of mom and dad, and what they have done for the local community, even if the community doesn’t know we do it. And it’s ok that our local paper (the Charlotte Observer) doesn’t mention it in the weeks leading up to, or days following the race. In fact, at this point, we’ve decided that word of mouth is our best friend because if people really knew what was going on out in Mineral Springs NC, we would have an unmanageable 100,000 people and not our quaint 15,000.

So with six professional horse races to enjoy on the day, jack russel terrier racing, pony rides, a flyover, a National Guard tank for kids to climb on, great tailgate spreads, fantastic hats, dapper spring clothing and a kick-ass after party to top it off….I’d say our patrons know where the real party is in Charlotte.

As always, thank you to the hundreds of volunteers who braved the weather. Without you, this event CANNOT happen. Thanks to Purple Heart Homes, this year’s charity for whom we raised $35,000, and to the horsemen who make this the best sporting event in the USA!

See you April 26, 2014! (order your tickets here!) 

All Content (c) Jamey Price / Queen’s Cup Steeplechase 2013

As in any sport, there are athletes who come in and dominate. They win, or have a chance of winning almost every weekend. But there is a new kid in town that seems to have shaken up the old guard. And this kid is INCREDIBLY talented. His name is Marc Marquez. He is a 20 year old rookie in the GP class but has already jumped onto a race winning Honda factory bike.  The minute pitlane opened and the track went hot, fresh faced rookie Marc Marquez was absolutely swinging off his bike. He stuck it to the far more experienced riders from the word go and topped nearly every session.

On Saturday Marquez made history as the youngest ever pole sitter for the GP class bikes. 24 hours later, he was the youngest ever winner of a MotoGP race. His smile said it all. And the looks on his rival’s faces said just as much.

See the entire gallery here.

Special thanks to Rizzo, Scott, Andrew, Jensen, Arrick, Kevin, Kerri, Garrett, Lacey, COTA’s friendly staff, the photo shuttle drivers, MotoGP and DORNA. You made it a fun and successful weekend and made me me feel right at home in the motogp press room.

© Jamey Price 2013. All rights reserved.

Photographer’s note:

I’ll be honest, I absolutely wanted to cover the race as it has always been a dream to cover a MotoGP round. But I was dreading the experience. COTA is a VERY large track. It’s hard to get around with any amount of efficiency. The catch fences are tall and the photo holes to shoot through are few and far between, and never where you need/want them. It severely limits where you can photograph the cars on track. Photographing the small agile bikes on the circuit wasn’t something I was much looking forward to.

Much to my surprise, I was told by my friends in the media center that photographers were not subject to the silly rules that keep us so “safe” during car races. We were happily allowed to shoot between the catch fence and the armco guardrail that separates us from the track. What change of pace. Suddenly, this large and challenging track became 3.4 miles of creative canvas with which we could play with as we liked. No red zones where photographers weren’t allowed, no photo holes, no catch fences. Nothing. Have it and make pretty pictures was pretty much the brief. 

Shooting bikes is like nothing I’ve ever done. Of course I worked with Ducati at Pikes Peak last year, but that was different. These are proper circuit racing bikes. 215mph speeds reached down the long back stretch. The riders lean and list and hang off the bikes. It is an absolute joy to photograph. You can see every thing the rider is doing from the position of their head and shoulders to elbows and knees scraping across the rumble strip. As a photographer, you become intimately connected with the riders as they roar past you, each with a riding style uniquely their own. It took some getting used to as what works for shooting cars doesn’t necessarily work for bikes and what works for bikes doesn’t work for cars. But overall, It was AWESOME. The racing was great. The bikes are fun to watch and the people are easy to work around. You’ll find the riders signing autographs wherever they go and in general, they love the camera. 

I think it’s safe to say that I’m a big fan of photographing bikes after this weekend!

Karting is the perfect test. No power steering. No traction control. No overly complicated cars. It’s more or less a small engine, four tyres and a steering wheel. But karting isn’t just for the kids. The big shots still come back to play too. You can tell watching them that this is racing in it’s most pure form. No big money. No tv audience to impress. No press. Just a bunch of guys thrashing karts for the pure fun in racing them.

Mooresville Motorplex (MMX) is a track I’ve been privileged to be associated with since it’s inception last year. Owner Justin Marks had a dream to make a world class European calibre karting track, and build it in the Carolinas. He designed facilities that would not be rivaled in the United States. It sits 2 miles from Penske Racing and a short 10 miles from 90% of the other NASCAR team home bases in Mooresville and Huntersville NC. Racersites, a website building company designed with the motorsport industry in mind sponsored a karting championship at MMX over the past few weeks and it was a smashing success. Some of the NASCAR and Indycar regulars signed up and competed against other professionals and amateurs alike. Where else can you have the opportunity to race some of your racing heroes?? No where! So what a treat it was when I joined MMX and Racersites for their final championship night.

The four different racing classes (two rental kart divisions and two owner kart divisions) did battle on the purpose built track, and it was electric. I particularly remember watching Bubba Wallace make a diving pass for the lead on the last corner of a lap. I could see in his eyes and how he was bouncing up and down in his kart as he passed me that the excitement was as genuine as if he’d made the same pass on the track for the lead in a NASCAR truck race.

If you live in the Carolinas, keep an eye on the MMX schedule for more of these races and championships, or just go out one afternoon and rent a kart. It is a fantastic facility, and a hell of a lot of fun to drive. Though their rental karts aren’t quite as spectacular as the owner karts, you can still get up to a fairly quick 55mph on the back straight away. It’s plenty exciting.

I’ll stop rambling and let you enjoy some of the action from the Racersites Cup. Scott Speed, Bubba Wallace, Ryan Briscoe, Justin Allgaier Michael McDowell, Kasey Kahne, Nelson Piquet Jr, Tyler Cooke are a few familiar names you’ll see here.

ALL the images from Wednesday’s final round can be purchased HERE. 10% discount with “racersites” code at checkout.

Martinsville dates all the way back to the sport’s earliest races. NASCAR in this region is steeped in history (If you don’t know it, go research it. Fascinating stuff). Some drivers are fantastic at road courses. Others better at the gigantic banked superspeedway restrictor plate races. Others are better at short tracks. Johnson seems to be good at all of them. He took his seventh career win at the “giant paperclip” half mile track on Sunday afternoon. And did so from pole position. Like I said, it’s hard to argue with his dominance.

I spent the weekend working with the Getty Images NASCAR crew. Most of my assignments focused in and around the garage area. But NASCAR is full of color and great spectacle and never short of excitement. It was fun, and a great learning experience working in the tightly packed NASCAR pits. Step lightly is my best advice for future NASCAR photographers!

Thanks to Cliff, Tom, John, Rainier and the rest of the stellar Getty crew as well as NASCAR and Martinsville for a perfectly sunny weekend in VA!

All images (c) Jamey Price / Getty Images.

Together, with my good friend Nick Busato, we were asked to fill in for the normal photographer who covers racing for Mazda in the USA. Our brief included covering the Road to Indy series’ USF2000 and ProMazda. These two championships are primarily made up of teenagers that are past their karting careers and are moving up the ladder toward professional sportscar racing, Indycar and maybe F1. For these drivers of tomorrow, it’s time to get serious. It’s their proving ground against other drivers their age from around the globe. Mazda does a fantastic job of nurturing them into future superstars. They even have media training (thank God for that) to help them know how to work with, amongst and in front of the media and our cameras. Mazda, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is working.

What a pleasure it was to work with this group. Nearly all of them had smiles on their faces, and often it was hard to get a nice candid photo as they were usually making faces for the camera and generally, having a great time. Their young, easy going personalities were a far cry from the drama queens that (generally) fill the upper echelons of car racing. Getting to know them on a personal level made it even more fun to watch them battle it out on the track. And battle they did.

So while I have included a few photos from the feature Indycar race on Sunday afternoon, most of this gallery is of the faces that you may not know of yet, but will certainly know in the future…..

THANK YOU to Al, Dean, Mazda, Sean, James, and Nick, my trusty partner in crime, and of course to all the Mazda drivers for an AWESOME weekend.

 USF2000 and ProMazda Series, St Petersburg GP

Indycar Round 1, St. Petersburg Grand Prix. 

But this year, was the last of an era. Next year, sports car racing in America goes through a rebirth. We don’t know yet how successful it will be. I remain skeptical of the new series, but optimistic that the organizers know what they are doing, because they know what they have riding on failure of this series. (Basically Grand Am [run by NASCAR] is absorbing American Le Mans series and dropping those fantastically fast P1 cars but keeping the cumbersome Daytona Prototypes. The combined series will run at the best of both series’ tracks but lose a few on both sides. The new series’ name? United Sportscar Racing. Like I said…….I’m skeptical)

So, with sweeping changes coming to sports car racing in America next year, the 61st running of the Sebring 12 hour race would be the last time that those gorgeous and nimble P1 cars would run the concrete tarmac in Florida. It was a pleasure to soak up the Florida sun, surrounded by amazing photographers who are also good friends and enjoy this spectacular car race. Can’t think of anywhere else I might want to be on a Saturday.

 Special thanks to L’endurance, Nick, Jack, Al, Trevor, Camden and everyone else who made it a fun weekend in the Florida sun.

All images © Jamey Price / L’endurance 2013

Imagine for a moment, the biggest room you have ever seen in your life. Then multiply it by four. You now have the Palexpo, the location for the 83rd annual Geneva Motor Show in Geneva, Switzerland. Now take those four enormous rooms and fill them from wall to wall with car makers of all shapes and sizes showing all of their most popular, futuristic, expensive, exotic, never before seen, and fan favorite automobiles. Now fill that room again with journalists and photographers from every country on Earth. Now add some gorgeous women sitting on, and mingling around the cars……and you kind of get the idea what the Geneva motor show is like. To put it simply, it is an overwhelming experience. 

I had never been to a proper car show before. Upon walking into the room, my head was spinning. It was so much to take in, I didn’t know where to begin. I say this without fear of judgement, but I might have found myself lost once or twice…..or three times.

My friends at Road and Track had tasked me to cover the coolest cars on the floor from various angles. Basically to find something “different”. Some of the cars were awesome hypercars from the leading manufactures of ridiculous automobiles. Some of them just newsworthy and new from the most well known car makers that we all know and love. It was a mix of everything You could imagine. The ridiculous, to the boring, the futuristic and everything in between.

To be honest, I really don’t care what a car has going on under the hood. I get tingles when I hear an awesome V10 or V12, or a great sounding engine in general, but how it actually works isn’t something I’m that interested in. I AM interested in their looks though. And Geneva was filled to the brim with sexy cars that I have long heard of, but never seen with my own eyes. Many of them, none of us will ever see again. Prototypes, concept cars, cars of such rarity that you have a better chance of searching for big foot….and finding one…..before you see this car in the flesh again.

So without any more writing, here is some car pornography for you to feast your eyes on. The devil is in the details….

Road and Track, Nunez, Kierstein, Sam, Chris, Audi….I can’t thank you all enough for this opportunity. Seriously. 

The cold war mentality is well and truly alive in the Formula One pitlane. Mechanics taking secret photos of rival car’s suspension and aero work. Teams using any and all means to make it “hard” for photographers to capture what parts the car has on it by closing us out of garages with canvas screens, and tactics never seen before, to keep us all from capturing any extended views of the car. It’s madness really. Almost comical. Certainly annoying. But at the same time, it really is interesting.

You can’t make Formula one something it isn’t. It will never be a “stock car” series where everyone gets a kit to use, and you can only push the boundary so far. Instead, F1 has a book of rules, many pages deep, that can be, will be, and always have been interpreted with some amount of “how can we exploit this in a way that takes advantage of a loop hole?” It is what it is. Teams spend insane amounts of money making cars go faster tenth by tenth. Hundredth by hundredth. They add wing parts, curves, and suspension pieces that might make it marginally faster. but that marginally can add up to millions of dollars lost, or earned at the end of the year. On an F1 car, nothing is designed by accident.

Enjoy some of my favorite images from the final Barcelona pre-season tests in 2013.

MANY THANKS to James, Russ, Drew, George, Keith, and the friendly and helpful staff at Circuit de Catalunya. And of course and all the rest of the amazing people in the F1 paddock who I am lucky to call friends, and who always made it an enjoyable day on the job.

All images © Jamey Price/James Moy Photography 2013