RACER, I Will Miss You
The first issue of RACER and the last, one resting on the other. Today, holding both at once is much harder than I expected.
Paul Pfanner co-founded RACER magazine and launched it at the Long Beach Grand Prix in 1992. In 2012, he and Bill Sparks rejoined the company they founded to lead it forward. Word that RACER issue 341 will be the last print edition reached him this morning, and it hit hard. These are his thoughts as the news came in.
I've learned that issue 341 will be RACER's last in print.
I loved this magazine before it existed. Jeff Zwart and I talked it into being on a January morning in 1978, driving up the coast in his yellow Porsche 914/6, two young guys convinced America deserved a racing magazine as good as the best in Europe and Japan. It took us until 1992 to make it real. We pulled the shroud off the first issue in a small gallery in Long Beach, and my friend Chris Economaki, publisher of National Speed Sport News raised a glass and said there was room in this sport for both of us. I have carried that night with me ever since.
What I keep coming back to is the people who made it, one issue at a time. The writers and field reporters, the illustrators and photographers, the editors and art directors, and the sales, circulation, the digital teams, and the accounting teams who kept it alive year after year. I got to stand next to them and do the work. I'm proud of that.
And the readers, and the advertisers who believed enough to put their name beside ours. We always knew who we worked for. It was you, and it was worth it.
My role in RACER Media & Marketing, Inc. ended on the last day of 2025. I loved building it more than almost anything I've done, and I carry all of it forward now, into work that's already underway with the same belief that started it. Bill Sparks was RACER's founding publisher and led it again through the rebirth years, and he's in it with me now. So is Bill Long, a longtime friend and former client who ran MEMA.
Good night to the magazine I love. Good morning to what comes next.
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