The Company You Keep
From the beginning at Ontario Motor Speedway in 1971. The credential was forged by hand — to get inside the sport, and share it. Everything built since began there.
Something arrived this week that Paul Pfanner didn't see coming. Not because he wasn't paying attention. Because he was thinking about the work — and about someone he will miss at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
There is a moment in every career when something happens that you didn't see coming — not because you weren't paying attention, but because you weren't thinking about yourself. You were thinking about the work.
That moment arrived for me this week.
The Society of Professional Motorsports Journalists has named me the 2026 recipient of the Russo-Marvel Founders Award. The award will be presented at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Carb Day — May 22, 2026 — by SPMJ Board President Paul Page, himself a 2012 recipient and the man who gave the Indianapolis 500 its voice for a generation.
I didn't know this was coming. I know what it means.
For Jim
The first thing I want to say is this: I am dedicating this award to Jim Michaelian.
This announcement is being made during the 2026 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach — the first running of that event without Jim, who gave fifty-one years of his life to building what became America's premier street race. Long Beach is where RACER was born. It is where my journey inside this sport found its fullest expression. And it is where I feel Jim's presence most deeply right now, in his absence. I wrote about what Jim meant — to this event, to this sport, and to the people who covered it — [in this tribute published last month].
Jim Michaelian. Fifty-one years. One standard. Never compromised.
Jim Michaelian understood something that not every powerful person in motorsport understands: that the journalists, photographers, broadcasters, and publishers who show up year after year are not just covering the sport — they are part of what makes it worthy of the audience's devotion. He treated the media as partners — not assets to be managed, not obstacles to be navigated, but partners. Every year. For fifty-one years.
The team he built at the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach carried that same ethos. They were consistently kind and supportive — to us at RACER, and to our colleagues across the press corps. That culture didn't happen by accident. It came from the top, and it lasted because Jim meant it.
That conviction — that the sport and the press exist in a relationship of mutual obligation — is precisely what the Russo-Marvel Award recognizes. Jim lived it. Honoring him through this award is the only thing that feels right.
For the Teammates
I was never a frontline reporter. I didn't have that particular gift, or that particular hunger. What I had was the ability to recognize it in others — and the obligation to protect it when the phone rang.
The phone rang often.
Over the decades I ran media operations at the intersection of motorsport and journalism, I took calls and sat across tables from some of the most powerful people in American racing — sanctioning body executives, manufacturer PR chiefs, team owners — who were unhappy with what our reporters were writing. The reporting was accurate. I stood firm every time.
But the real work was never mine. It belonged to the editors and reporters who showed up every day and held the standard.
The editors first: Laurence Foster, David Malsher-Lopez, Mark Glendenning, Andrew Crask, the late Andy Hallbery, Steve Nickless, and John Zimmermann. These are the people who built what RACER was at its best — who made the calls, held the line on copy, and understood that a publication's integrity is earned one story at a time. Andy Hallbery's absence is felt in this list. His stellar contribution to everything we built together is not.
And the reporters: Gordon Kirby, who was there from the beginning — asking the questions that needed asking about CART and the IMS conflict when nobody wanted them asked. The late Ben Blake, who had a gift for illuminating the truth that others preferred to keep hidden, and who heard directly from Bill France Jr. about it. The late Robin Miller, whose IndyCar reporting set a standard of fearlessness and institutional knowledge that the sport may never see again. Marshall Pruett — a 2024 Russo-Marvel recipient in his own right — who continues to do that work with a range and a commitment that defines what this craft can be.
There were many others. Every one of them earned more credit for this award than I did. What I did was answer the phone, hold the line, and make sure they could keep working.
This award belongs to all of them.
For Bob and Bill
Bob Russo built the American Automobile Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association in 1955. He was a charter architect of USAC, a PR man, a promoter, a historian — a man who understood that the sport's story needed to be told with rigor, and who built the professional framework that gave coverage its credibility. He was so important to the sport that two awards bear his name.
Bill Marvel was there at the very first USAC event, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on January 8, 1956. He spent sixty years inside every form of motorsport media imaginable — broadcasting, publishing, public relations, event promotion — and gave generously to the infrastructure that made it all possible. He represented Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Jackie Stewart, and others. He received the Bob Russo Founders Award himself before the award was renamed to honor them both.
Bob Russo and Bill Marvel. They built the framework. Everything that followed was an attempt to live up to it.
I was fortunate enough to witness both of them in action. They set the standard — for professional conduct, for institutional generosity, for understanding that the sport and the people who cover it are bound together in a relationship that serves the audience above all else. Everything that followed, for me, was an attempt to live up to what they showed me.
The SPMJ — founded in 2024 by Paul Page and Michael Knight — carries their mission forward. Not as a memorial to how things used to be. As an active argument for what the sport still requires: men and women who cover it with integrity, authority, and the professional discipline to ask the question no one in the room wants asked.
Paul Page and Michael Knight. Founders of the Society of Professional Motorsports Journalists. They saw what needed doing and did it.
I wrote recently about what happens when that discipline disappears — when the infrastructure around independent journalism thins, and powerful people begin to sense they can restructure their own accountability. [That piece is here.] The Russo-Marvel Award is a restatement of why it matters. The sport is big enough for the people who do this work honestly. It has always been. It needs to stay that way.
For the Room
Past recipients of this award include Paul Page, Mario Andretti, Chris Economaki, Marshall Pruett, Shav Glick, Donald Davidson, Holly Cain, Dr. Jerry Punch, Dan Luginbuhl, Betty Rutherford, Bob Jenkins, Wally Parks, Ron McQueeney, Kevin Diamond, and Mike Harris — men and women who have given their lives to this sport and made it better.
Some of these people voted on this award. I do not take that lightly. I am not sure I deserve to be in this company. I am certain I am going to try to be worthy of it.
The work continues. On Tuesday, April 14, Pfanner Advantage launched The Advantage Journal — timed, in the tradition of RACER's launch in 1992 and its relaunch into the 3.0 era in 2012, to the week of the Long Beach Grand Prix. Long Beach has always been where the next thing starts. Bill Sparks and Bill Long are the co-principals who make Pfanner Advantage what it is — and the Journal is the platform where their voices, and this one, will keep doing the work that this industry still needs done. The same instincts that guided three decades of media decisions guide that work now. The audience still owns the sport. Serving them honestly is still the only standard that matters.
To Paul Page, Michael Knight, and everyone at the SPMJ: thank you for what you are building, and for including me in it.
The presentation will be at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Carb Day, Friday, May 22, 2026. I'll see you there.
Paul Pfanner is the founder of Pfanner Advantage, a strategic advisory platform at the intersection of mobility, motorsport, media, and technology. The Russo-Marvel Founders Award is voted on annually by past recipients of the Society of Professional Motorsports Journalists.
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