• Pit+Paddock was an online magazine and division of Turn 14 Distribution that leveraged innovative storytelling and long-standing industry relationships to unite enthusiasts across sub-genres.
• It also managed Dai Yoshihara’s motorsport career post-Formula DRIFT, opening new doors for him as a brand ambassador and professional driver in TC America and IMSA.
• We became known for helping launch products, crafting meticulous builds with our partners, and creating event activations that would further support brand awareness for our customers.
• The totality of this imaginative, forward-thinking wheelhouse will live on under the Turn 14 Distribution moniker to create a more united vision for 2025 and beyond.

Nature is cyclical; it’s a living and breathing entity that ebbs and flows through its rhythms. As variable as those rhythms seem, nature tends to settle into a predictable set of four: the seasons, the phases of the moon, and the portions of the daily rhythm (morning, midday, afternoon, and night). These periods have helped shape the world as we know it: when we go to work, sleep, or eat, when we set aside time to spend time with friends and family, and when we enjoy our hobbies.

Although the end of this cycle isn’t exactly natural, the sunset looming over Pit+Paddock—the online magazine of Turn 14 Distribution—arrives with the close of the 2024 calendar year. Before I go any further, I don’t want this to feel like an end to all of you who’ve helped make Pit+Paddock an industry destination over the last four years. The reality is essentially the opposite: everything you know and love about the brand will live on under the Turn 14 Distribution moniker in 2025. More on this later.

PIT+PADDOCK REWIND

To get a sense of the impact that Pit+Paddock has made in the industry during its four years, we have to go back to the start: 2018. Yes, for all you mathematicians out there, I realize that’s a few more years than you number sleuths anticipated. But that’s because the origin story of Pit+Paddock started with another name—Front Street Media. It, too, was intended to be the online magazine arm of Turn 14 Distribution. And it was a hit—especially with a catchy, albeit hyper-localized name that gave an affectionate nod to drag racing shenanigans in the 90s and early naughts.

To bring the magazine into the real world, Front Street started hosting Cars+Coffee events at (you guessed it) Turn 14 Distribution. The buzz was palpable among local enthusiasts who would look forward to this event time and again. There was obvious potential to build on this momentum, but it needed a catalyst and a name that would help widen the magazine’s appeal to a nationwide—or even global—audience.

That name was Pit+Paddock—intentionally referencing the intersection between the world of motorsport and the aftermarket car culture that surrounded it. It didn’t end with the strikingly bold branding; Pit+Paddock would bring in some help from the industry: Sam Du, former editor-in-chief of Super Street, and me, who’d lived and breathed digital media, storytelling, and design work in the aftermarket for over a decade. The first official Pit+Paddock announcement would add a few dashes of pepper and salt to Front Street’s Cars+Coffee recipe, and the new flavor attracted over 400 cars and hundreds more curious enthusiasts who wanted to know what the buzz was all about. I was one of them, logging 1,600 miles on my E90 M3 from Chicago just to be a part of the fanfare. We were just getting started.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NEXT?

Over the next few years, we’d often get this question. It wasn’t because we were shrouding everything in a veil of mystery; on the contrary, it was our commitment to actualizing “what ifs”—the exercise of moving pie-in-the-sky ideas from the ethereal to real oxygen-rich space—that helped make us feel different, a bit unpredictable, and fresh in a sea of stale marketing. Save for what’d become our calling card, these Cars+Coffees, it was rare that we did too many things more than two or three times. And even if we did, we’d find ways to create entirely different experiences within an existing framework.

The Driver’s Project was a good example. Road trips in highly modified cars or trucks to log hot laps at Laguna Seca, sample the best driving roads on the East Coast, host a chef-prepared oasis in the middle of a rigorous off-road excursion, and end the journey on the doorstep of Rennsport Reunion? If it was on one of our bucket lists, it became an agenda item for this series—if it was exciting for us, surely it was something that others would enjoy, too. Ultimately, it was. And it was equally as rewarding to see people who’d been in the industry for ages, peers who have been there and done that, rediscover the ear-to-ear grins that’d brought them into the car realm in the first place.

The Grid Icons car show is another. Prioritizing focus and quality over volume was a shift that the industry needed. Our reinterpretation of what “car show” meant throughout 2023 and 2024 helped deliver that message loud and clear for specific and enthusiastic audiences: GT-Rs, VW and Audi owners, BMW, Porsche, and Mustang.

IF YOU BUILD IT…

Naturally, our “what ifs” exercise propelled a deeper curiosity: car builds. The question wasn’t just about what parts we could bolt onto a car. Instead, we asked, “What machines could we bring to life that didn’t already exist?” A trail-runner style, VR-swapped Frontier, the DAI33 (a “400R for the masses”) GT-R project, the Bilstein-supported, S65-powered E91 GTS Tribute, and a JTCC-inspired Integra were the results of that nuanced introspection.

RIDE OR DAI

Dai Yoshihara had been a part of the Turn 14 Distribution ecosystem for years already via Formula DRIFT, and we chose to interpret his retirement from that series as an opportunity to diversify his career. He’d still shred plenty of tires—thanks to the Ride with Dai ridealong experience we created with FD—but he tangentially became an instrumental figure in most of the builds mentioned above and a brand ambassador for ENEOS and Yokohama.

Still, the bigger pivot for Dai was yet to come. He entered the professional road racing realm as a driver in TC America and, only a year later, in the premier motorsport series this side of the Atlantic: IMSA. Despite a relative experience deficit, Dai was able to prove he belonged among the best, logging pole positions, podiums, and race wins in both seats.

ON THE PULSE

Claiming to be at the forefront of the industry and practicing it are two different things. We aimed to do both and kept our fingers on the pulse to understand the stories we needed to tell. NASCAR’s Next-Gen car—and the series’ decision to green-light a first-ever street circuit in the middle of Chicago—was a perfect example. More than a race, it was an acknowledgment that the relationship between business, racing, and entertainment is much more closely intertwined than we ever thought before. That was an important win in widening the appeal of the machines we know and love. Our effort to capitalize on F1’s newest races in Miami and Las Vegas—and our ability to create customer and vendor hospitality experiences within those spaces—was just as substantial.

On the opposite end of these multi-million dollar endeavors was a grassroots effort that deserved highlighting all the same: Drift Appalachia. The event was a protected secret among a small group of old friends, but for good reason: it wanted to take drifting back to its roots on public mountain roads. I get it. Thousands of unvetted spectators wouldn’t make this ultra-ambitious undertaking any easier, so we felt honored to share the earnest spirit of drifting with our readers—for the first chapter and every single one since.

INDUSTRY LAUNCHPAD

Despite everything we aspired (and did) above and beyond our online magazine, our core flourished. Our publishing volume went way up year after year, and our vendors saw us as a trusted destination to launch new products, unveil new company rebrands, and publish buyer’s guides, product breakdowns, how-tos, and tech news that drew the right eyeballs toward their brands.

ALL PART OF THE PLAN

All that said, this decision to sunset Pit+Paddock wasn’t because we weren’t doing enough. After four years, we just recognized that we should be using all of this firepower in direct support of our mothership: Turn 14 Distribution. Keen eyes probably noticed the transition coming—especially at SEMA, where our transitional branding was intentionally showcased.

But for anyone who worries about the future of our beloved news outlet, remember that our iconic bracket “P” was always propped up by Turn 14 Distribution. We’ve always been an integral part of Turn 14 Distribution’s world; we’re simply making muddy waters clearer. Indeed, underneath all of the flash and pizzazz that Pit+Paddock came to be was a company that “got it” and supported our efforts all along. Now, it’s Turn 14 Distribution’s name that will shine in the industry—even brighter than it already has.

LASTING MEMORIES

Looking back at the totality of our work has been incredible. We pushed our limits, defined new ones, found incredible happiness, and grew into more complete people in the process. Thank you to everyone who believed in what Pit+Paddock was created to do; it’s been an immense honor to have helped build this brand over the last four years and nourish the long-standing relationships that help make this industry special. In the end, the sunset of Pit+Paddock will welcome a sunrise in 2025—one with a more pointed focus on Turn 14 Distribution and its goals. We can only be proud to know that our entire portfolio has helped lay a strong foundation for Turn 14 Distribution’s future at the forefront of the industry.

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