I’ve always loved watching movies. My parents gave birth to and fed that love—sometimes watching movies together at home, other times dropping me off at the theatre on Saturdays. I still remember seeing everything from Claudine to Sounder, Star Wars to E.T., Terms of Endearment to Die Hard, and one of my all-time favorites, The Color Purple, in the theatre when they first premiered.
This tradition sparked my interest in screenwriting and filmmaking, which led me to create a five-minute short film for a Sundance Collab class. That love and, in particular, that project serve as my entry point into this story and my closest personal analogy to endurance racing (unless you count the pressure of navigating I-285). What I discovered after yelling “cut” on the final scene was that filmmaking demanded strategy, planning, patience, quick thinking, and, yes, endurance—hours of work for every single minute of film.
However, I learned something invaluable: filmmaking is an art form built on collaboration and teamwork. So, it made perfect sense for me to watch F1: The Movie with Brad Pitt and Damson Idris as part of my preparation for my exchange with Ryan Hardwick, whose love for racing was also fed by his parents and began at home.
Hardwick is the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship LMGT3 Drivers’ Champion and 24 Hours of Le Mans winner. Tennessee-born and now an Atlanta transplant, Hardwick grew up racing dirt bikes and later jet skis. As he once referenced in an IG post, his family is deeply rooted in car racing: his maternal grandfather built race cars and owned a round-track team; his mother earned a National Championship; and his father raced cars and trucks alongside her for years.
When he’s not behind the wheel of a Porsche 911 GT3 R, home for Hardwick is Buckhead, where he and his family live just a short drive (depending upon traffic) from his “day job” running Mountain Motorsports, a thriving business he and his co-owner expanded from East Tennessee to Alabama and into the greater Atlanta market.
When relaxing, you might spot him at The Chastain, Lion’s Head, or one of my favorite sushi spots, Umi. For all the excitement of the racetrack and the bustle of business, Hardwick’s favorite place remains simple: at home, surrounded by his family, his favorite people. In that tradition, he has built a life that balances the intensity and competitiveness of global racing with the quiet solitude of family and community.
Ryan, congratulations on your recent wins at Le Mans and the FIA World Endurance Championship in Bahrain, in a comeback victory in what The Buckhead Paper described as the “Super Bowl” of endurance car racing. In preparation, I looked at a lot of your videos and then watched F1: The Movie. Could you share with my readers what endurance car racing is and what it takes to win it, and if you feel the F1 film captures the sport realistically?
Endurance racing is the ultimate team sport, and the drivers are just one aspect of the process. To be successful, it takes a team of people consisting of mechanics, engineers, designers, fabricators and data analysts. The cars, the crew and the drivers are pushed to the limits for races that last up to 24 hours straight, and any mistake during the course of the race can drastically change the outcome. To win at this level takes consistency, discipline, focus and meticulous attention to an abundance of details. The FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) is considered the ultimate level of endurance racing worldwide, with the manufacturers, teams and drivers competing for the title truly being the best in the world. In fact, many Formula 1 drivers, both current and previous, compete in the WEC.
As it relates to the movie, I thought F1 was great and did a really good job of depicting what it’s actually like to drive these types of race cars. In fact, the movie’s opening scene takes place at the Rolex 24 in Daytona, and I was racing in that exact event the same year the movie was filmed there. The Porsche team that I raced for previously was used to provide all the pit crew and engineers that you see in the film, and while the writers chose to use a fictional team name for the movie, the actual crew was from Wright Motorsports, which is the real-life team that I won the Rolex 24 with in 2022.
Talk about your journey from entrepreneurship to racing cars and achieving your recent wins? How have these journeys impacted each other, and how do you manage them?
My journey in racing and my journey in business are deeply intertwined, fueling each other, both coming down to teamwork, endurance, and a shared competitive spirit. I’ve always been hooked on competing, and while I initially funded many of my racing endeavors myself, the success of Mountain Motorsports enabled me to attract sponsors and invest my time in more serious levels of racing.
I truly believe that success comes from doing hard things repeatedly and putting in the work day in and day out, a mindset that has carried me through a 24-hour race and helped build Mountain Motorsports into the business it is today. On top of that mindset, though, both also require a strong team. For instance, at Le Mans, I drove nearly eight hours, but the victory was due to what my team achieved, including our engineers, pit crew, and entire support staff.
It’s the same for Mountain Motorsports. Without my co-founder and best friend, Justin Price, and our incredible team of leaders and employees, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
When and how did you fall in love with the sport and realize you wanted to compete professionally?
I grew up riding dirt bikes with my Dad and entered my first motorcycle race at six years old. I raced dirt bikes as an amateur throughout most of my youth, then moved to jet ski racing as a teenager, where I won several amateur titles and a professional world championship. I didn’t start racing cars until 2015, but I’ve always been drawn to competition. There’s just something about people lining up and someone yelling “Go!” that has always lit a fire in me.
You made history as the first Atlantan to win the 24 Hours of LeMans in the LMGT3 class, the largest and most competitive division, to complete the Triple Crown of Racing, and then followed it up by winning the FIA Endurance World Championship. What are some surprising or interesting facts you’ve learned about Atlanta’s connection to endurance racing throughout your journey?
On the racing side, even though I’m usually traveling around the world for events like the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France or the 8 Hours of Bahrain, Atlanta is also home to my favorite race in North America: the Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. While Atlanta has a rich history in NASCAR and other forms of round‑track racing, I was surprised to find out that I was the first person from Atlanta to ever win the Le Mans. It’s a true honor to be the first, and hopefully I won’t be the last Atlantan to win that legendary race.
In looking at endurance racing as an art form, can you discuss the artistry involved in race car driving? What elevates it beyond being just a sport? Are there any parallels between mastering a racetrack and composing music, painting a canvas, or even performing as an actor?
This is a great question. Driving at the physical limit of what a car can do is a true art form. It requires a unique balance of nerves of steel and yet a gentle, precise touch and feel at the same time. You have to be able to process information incredibly quickly and react to it decisively yet calmly. If you get nervous, angry, or try to force something to happen, it usually doesn’t end well. When I’m at my best, my heartbeat slows, the noise and rumble of the engine seems to quiet, and my breathing is calm. That’s how I would describe being in “the zone.” It’s difficult to achieve that level of clarity every time I drive, but when it happens, I feel like I’m almost untouchable.
For more about Hardwick, you can follow him on his personal IG as well as Mountain Motorsports.