OPERATION MOTORSPORT

OPMO 22 PIT STOP

There is a point late in summer when a season stops looking like a calendar and starts looking like a collection of moments. A first weekend with a new team. A familiar face returning to the paddock. A challenge coin changing hands. A photograph that catches what everyone else nearly missed.

None of those moments was scheduled as the headline. Together, they became the story.



The work remains straightforward even when the route is not: create an environment where service members and veterans can reconnect with a team, rebuild identity through meaningful responsibility and rediscover purpose. We do it One At A Time.

– Diezel



The quickest way to understand Motorsport Immersion is to watch what happens after the introductions. A radio finds its way onto a belt. Someone points out the timing stand, the pit box, the tools and the routine. Within a few minutes, the newcomer is no longer standing outside the circle. There is work to do, and the team has made room.

That was Frankie’s Road America weekend with Archangel Motorsports. He joined the team as a last-minute fill-in during the GT World Challenge America event, but the opportunity carried more weight than that phrase suggests.

Frankie is from South Sacramento, California. He joined the United States Air Force in 2015 and served as an electrician until 2021, supporting missions connected to the 27th Special Operations Wing, the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing and the 51st Fighter Wing. After service, he built a new creative path as a freelance photojournalist and later as a videographer and editor.



Electrical work, military service, photography, video and motorsport may look unrelated on paper. In practice, they all reward awareness, adaptability and the ability to contribute without needing the spotlight. Those are useful skills in a race paddock – and exactly the kinds of strengths partner teams learn to recognize when they host an OpMo beneficiary.

Road America also brought JT back into view with longtime partner Random Vandals Racing. His return was a reminder that immersion is not a single photograph or one good weekend. Relationships deepen through repetition – showing up again, earning more trust and knowing there are people in the paddock who are genuinely glad to see you.



Then came one of the weekend’s smallest moments: a challenge coin presentation for the newest member of the OpMo family. In a sport built around results, the coin marked a different achievement – the moment someone stopped being a visitor and became part of the team.

A Little Something Special at VIR

At VIR, Operation Motorsport beneficiary @ Pratt Miller Motorsports Mike Vancour had something meaningful make the trip with him. The social post offered only a glimpse, which may be exactly right. Not every symbol needs to be explained to everyone to matter deeply to the people carrying it.

Motorsport is full of objects that hold more meaning than their size suggests: a patch, a name on a car, a photograph tucked into a case, a coin passed from one hand to another. They connect the person doing today’s work with the people, places and commitments that helped bring them there.

Mike’s weekend at VIR was another example of remembrance living alongside forward motion. The cars still roll. The crew still focuses on the next task. The schedule still demands attention. But meaning comes along for the ride, carried quietly and respectfully inside the work.

Thanks to U.S. Navy veteran & Rep. John McGuire, of the 5th District of Virginia, for stopping by VIRginia International Raceway to hear more about our programming for veterans.



Congressman John McGuire

The easiest photograph at a race weekend is often the loudest one: the car at speed, the celebration, the crowded grid. The photographs that explain Operation Motorsport usually happen somewhere else. A beneficiary listening while a crew member points toward the car. Two people comparing notes. A headset being adjusted. A moment of concentration before a task begins.

Eric’s behind-the-scenes work keeps returning to those quieter places. His images do more than document where the program has been. They show how it works. The mission is visible in posture and proximity—in the way a team closes the gap around a new person, and in the way that person gradually begins to move with the confidence of someone who belongs there.

Photography also gives the rest of the OpMo community access to moments they could not witness in person. Donors can see what their support enables. Future host teams can understand that immersion means active participation, not a tour. Prospective beneficiaries can see people doing real work in a demanding environment and picture a place for themselves.

This issue includes only a selection. The larger story is still being captured, frame by frame, as the season continues.

The nickname “OpMom” says a great deal in very little space. It reflects care, certainly, but also the thousand practical details that turn a good intention into a working program: the calls returned, the schedules untangled, the people checked on, the forms completed, the partners thanked and the next opportunity kept moving.

As co-founder and Executive Director, Tiffany has helped build the structure behind the moments featured throughout this newsletter.

The public sees a beneficiary welcomed into a team. Behind that moment is coordination, trust and an insistence that the experience be useful, respectful and centered on the person taking part.

Her birthday was a welcome chance to pause and recognize the person behind so much of that work. Happy birthday, OpMom, and thank you for helping the rest of us keep the mission pointed in the right direction.

Operation Motorsport may deliver its mission in race paddocks, but the relationships that make those opportunities possible are often strengthened well beyond the racetrack.

Executive Director Tiffany Lodder and Partnerships & Development Manager Nicole Moore recently represented Operation Motorsport at CrowdStrike’s annual Fal.Con conference in Las Vegas. Their time at the event created an opportunity to reconnect with the people behind one of OpMo’s most important partnerships, share the impact being created for beneficiaries, and keep the conversation focused on what comes next.



Long-term partnerships do not sustain themselves. They require presence, honest conversation, accountability and a clear connection between support provided and lives affected. Tiffany and Nicole carried that message to fal.con – and brought the beneficiary stories behind the partnership with them.

Justin Noel put it on pole, led every one of the twenty laps, set the fastest lap of the race, and won by eleven seconds. Not just his class the whole field. A Pro-Beneficiary driver beat every Pro driver on the grid at the hardest circuit we run all year.

It was his third win in a row. He has now taken fastest lap in each of those three races, and he leads the Pro-Beneficiary championship on 97 points.

Behind him, Nolan Yuke made it a Pro-Beneficiary one-two overall, finishing second on the road. Camen Lackney came from eleventh on the grid to fifth overall and third in class — three months ago he was racing in the Beneficiary class, and he is now second in the championship above it.



Justin Bessette took the Pro class win from third on the grid and extended his championship lead to ten points.

Coming through the field

Spa rewarded anyone willing to work for it, and the biggest drives of the night came from the back half of the grid.

Bryan Rodriguez started thirty-third second to last and finished twentieth. Thirteen positions, and fourth in the Beneficiary class.

Devyn Anderson started dead last, thirty-fourth, after taking a qualifying ban for a car change. He finished fourth in the Open class, having passed ten cars.



Casey Soble went from twenty-ninth to nineteenth and third in class. Nick Batista made up twelve places to finish eighth overall. Evan Kerr started eighteenth and won the Open class outright, with the class fastest lap to go with it.

The Beneficiary class

Richard Davenport won the class from twenty-fourth on the grid, with Jason McSparron second. Both are league administrators who race the full season without scoring points, so neither appears in the standings but the drives were there.



Behind them, Sean Bramer holds the class championship lead on 56 points from Chandler Baker on 54 and Garrett Wickham on 50. Three drivers covered by six points with four rounds to go.

Attrition

Spa took its toll. Four drivers failed to reach the flag, and not one driver in the entire thirty-four-car field finished with a clean incident record the first time that has happened this season.

Louis Rios was the hardest loss. He had finished on the Pro-Beneficiary podium in all three previous rounds and did not complete a lap here.

An endurance race is built around motion. Drivers cycle through stints. Crews watch fuel, tires, weather and time. Problems are solved quickly because the clock does not care. Then, during the Veterans Race of Remembrance, the event stops.

The Remembrance Service is not an interruption to the race. It is the reason the race exists. Teams, beneficiaries, families, volunteers and partners gather trackside to recognize service and sacrifice, to remember those who are absent, and to place the competition inside a larger purpose.

Planning is underway with Hargrave Military Academy to help give this year’s service its voice and form. A vocalist, Color Guard, piper and chaplain are being prepared as part of the ceremony. Each role carries a different element—music, movement, tradition and reflection—but together they create a shared moment that reaches well beyond any one team or entry.

Hargrave’s involvement also brings generations together. Young people step into a ceremony shaped by history. Veterans and service members see familiar customs carried forward with care. Race teams encounter remembrance not as an abstract idea, but as something present in the paddock and connected to the people working beside them.

When engines restart, the competition will continue. But it will continue differently. For a few minutes, every class and every team will have stood in the same place, facing the same purpose. That shared pause is one of the defining traditions of the weekend—and one of the clearest expressions of why Operation Motorsport brings the military and motorsport communities together.

For the sixth consecutive year, Operation Motorsport is inviting families, friends, veterans and supporters to Carry Their Legacy through the Honoring Heroes Hood Campaign.



A $22 donation reserves a place for the name of a military hero on one of four Operation Motorsport race cars competing in the 2026 CrowdStrike Veterans Race of Remembrance Powered by AWS. The goal is ambitious: 250 names on each hood and 1,000 stories carried into competition at Virginia International Raceway this November.

The tribute is visible on the cars, but its impact reaches directly into the paddock. Campaign support helps Operation Motorsport place beneficiaries inside the V-RoR teams, where they will prepare cars, work in technical and operational roles, support media and hospitality, and contribute alongside people who depend on one another.



Every name honours a story of courage, service and sacrifice. Every donation helps another veteran reconnect with Team, Identity and Purpose. The people whose names ride on the hoods become part of a living tribute – and part of the recovery journeys unfolding behind those hoods.

Link to participate from the U.S.:

opmoheroes.fundraiser.support

Link to participate from Canada:

honouring-heroes-campaign–2026

With 21 teams now registered, the weekend is moving from planning documents to a real paddock full of people, cars and purpose. The grid is taking shape, but there is still room for teams that want to be part of a proper endurance race built around service, remembrance and recovery through motorsport.

The 2026 Veterans Race of Remembrance returns to VIR with a Friday open test, the Super GP Americas program and Sunday’s eight-hour multi-class endurance race. The Open Grid, Heroes Dinner and trackside Remembrance Service will again bring racing, community and remembrance onto the same ground.

This issue began as a collection of end-of-summer randomness. It ends with a pattern. Someone makes room. Someone else steps in. A useful task becomes a relationship. A relationship becomes belonging. Belonging creates the conditions for purpose.

Thank you to every beneficiary, family member, volunteer, partner, team and supporter who helped create these moments. We will carry them into November – and into every opportunity

that follows.