The Joy (and agony) of Racing comes to RACER Network

What happens when motorsports and car culture photographer/videographer Larry Chen follows stalwart racer Robb Holland from Pikes Peak to Crandon to the Nürburgring and Laguna Seca? “The Joy of Racing,” making its debut on RACER Network Thursday, Nov. 12. 

The documentary has a slightly longer unofficial title, however: “You Don’t Get The Joy of Racing if the Agony of Racing Doesn’t Exist.” And that’s exactly how it opens, with Holland’s frightening crash in the 2026 edition of the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, where he had won his class the year before. During practice for the race, a rear toe link broke on a particularly bumpy section of the road, sending the KellyMoss-prepared Porsche Cayman GT4 into the side of the mountain and into a giant boulder. The Porsche was destroyed, but Holland was unhurt. His dreams of back-to-back wins on the mountain, however, were done. 

The crash set the scene for what the documentary would become. A redemption arc of sorts, where a diehard racer goes from massive disappointment to try some forms of motorsport that were new, and some that felt like going home again.

“This is really showing kind of everything all in one,” said Holland after attendees at the Specialty Equipment Marketing Association trade show in Las Vegas got a glimpse of the first two episodes. “The whole original story was literally ’the joy of racing.’ This was supposed to be me, Pikes Peak champion, coming back the next year, winning again. And so you go in with that expectation, and then this happens. Then going from that to something like [short course off-road racing at] Crandon, literally the next thing we did, which is completely fish out of water. Crandon was supposed to be the episode where I was flailing around looking like a moron, as opposed to what Pikes Peak became, and so I think it’s a great story of someone who just is passionate about the sport, doesn’t make a difference what it is, and it doesn’t make a difference what you’re going to throw in front of me … I’m always going to go to the next thing.”

From Crandon, Chen followed Holland to the Nürburgring, where Holland lived and worked for six years, to compete in an NLS race on the infamous Nordschleife. Next came racing Rush sports racers at Gridlife at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. 

“With my storytelling, I kind of just let the story play out,” explains Chen. “We’re just outside observers, and what happens happens, and we just have to do our best to tell that story. I absolutely love racing, and for better or worse, we’ve got to show what happened, and obviously, the worst happened. But I feel like we made lemonade out of lemons, and that’s what we like to do. Pikes Peak is without a doubt the most beautiful racetrack in the world, and we just kind of use that to our advantage.”

Indeed the opening episode makes the most of the natural beauty of Pikes Peak, at times looking like a nature show, just with race cars. 

“This project was a dream for sure. Folks that follow my work and also Robb know that Pikes Peak is near and dear to our heart. I’ve always wanted to do something a little deeper, a little more high-end, and I think that’s what this is,” says Chen. 

It would have been easy to call off the project after the crash, for Holland to not want to continue after the massive disappointment at Pikes Peak. But perhaps it makes for a better story. And Holland is grateful for the experience. 

“It’s really tough, and especially something that is that violent. It was just unexpected for me,” he relates. “The fact that I had Larry along with me for the ride, it was actually kind of cathartic being able to talk about it afterwards. I think if I had just gone home and shut the door and not talked to anyone, I’d have been miserable and it would have been in my head forever.”

Instead, Holland continued, to race in front of 65,000 fans at Crandon, to return to Nürburgring, and back to Laguna Seca, extending the story of a racer who will compete in just about anything, anywhere, just for the joy of it.

“The Joy of Racing" premieres Thursday, November 12 at 9:00pm ET on RACER Network and RACER+, with a new episode dropping each week.