THE INSTAGRAM CHANNEL FOR SPORTSCAR FANS

By day Tim Fullbrook works on DriveTribe, the automotive platform from Clarkson, Hammond and May. But when he’s not managing a global automotive audience, the passionate petrolhead runs The Racing Blog, an Instagram feed that’s dedicated to the world of sportscar racing.

I started it in 2017 under a different name (originally it was called Real Race Talk) while I was at university. I was just testing the water, really. Back then I was covering a lot of different motorsport series and spreading myself a bit too thinly. Then The Racing Blog, in the format you see today, started in January 2020. Now the focus is primarily on sportscar racing, from WEC, Le Mans and IMSA, with DTM and other GT events lower down the list. So it’s very niche.

We’re on the threshold of a new era in sportscar racing, especially with the introduction of the new hypercar category. It would be amazing to feel like I've got into this emerging scene early, and that as more and more people want to find out more about it, the content they come across will be mine.

When you look at Formula One, you’ll find thousands of pages dedicated to it, yet sportscar and Le Mans is something that doesn’t have that same level of coverage. My channel, when I covered F1 as well, didn't really gain that much attention because the launch of it coincided with WTF1, which was really taking off. There was also a handful of other F1 pages, and I hadn't really found my particular niche. Last year I decided to stop covering F1 and concentrate on sportscars, which are my particular passion anyway. Since then, the channel has doubled in size and is projected to double again by the middle of this year. It’s really gathering momentum. It just needs time to build recognition and grow. This is something I’m doing off my own back and making mistakes along the way and developing from those. Of course, I would love it to be my full-time job if it was successful.

It’s Instagram-only at the moment. It’s difficult to balance it all as I’m a one-man-band and have a full-time job. It’s still a passion project but I’d like to expand it in the future with a website. We’ve started up a Twitter page now, and YouTube’s been going a couple of months. I had great success towards the end of 2020 doing Instagram live streams. I’d have 1000s of questions every week to answer and I could only manage to wrap through about 50 on the live stream, so it’s good to see there is an appetite there. A lot of people seem to want to learn more. I also really enjoyed creating our first podcast episode (for our podcast called TRB In-Lap Podcast available on Spotify and YouTube) with a friend of mine in response to the 24 Hours of Daytona. We’re planning to cover Sebring in this way soon, and more events as the year progresses.

I really enjoy Le Mans. For me, it’s the best race in the world. I've been three times. Obviously, in 2020 I couldn’t be there, but I enjoyed keeping the fans up to date. My 7000 followers isn’t a lot, in the grand scheme of things. But to be beating established publications to news stories and race updates at Le Mans was a big success for me.

Motul is a name I’ve always seen and associated with sportscar racing. At Le Mans, you see the huge Motul branding on the grandstand and I remember my friends and I looking out across all the tents and seeing it. So, my memory of Motul is not just of racing but also my more personal memories of being trackside. Also, for me, Motul is one of those brands that supports the more leftfield adventures into sportcar racing such as the Nissan GTR. Which people obviously love.