Rookie Season

There are hierarchies to racing. At the top, there is Formula 1. At the bottom are the local stock car events. Somewhere in between are the races put on by the International Motor Sports Association, and that's where Rebel Rock Racing find itself as it enters its inaugural season in the Grand Sport's division of IMSA's SportsCar Challenge.

"It's not fun in the car," Robin Lidell, the team's manager/driver, explains. He may be talking specifically about driving in the rain, but he speaks to a deeper reality. It's physically grueling, every surface is blazing hot, the crowds are sparse, the money mostly at the vanity-driven whim of team owners, and the sound of a race-ready Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R is not a deep, throaty roar. Instead, it's like tossing several jars of angry bees around. But what sporting doc Rookie Season presents is the emotionally complicated relationship drivers have with their addiction to the rush. "I know I can't replace motor racing in my life," he adds.

There's a specific infuriation in Lidell's life, and that's team owner Frank Depew - which would be fine if he wasn't also a driver. In the very first race of the season, the four-hour Daytona Beach, Depew screws up, and there's a definite sense of resignation, and a search for an upside, in the soft-spoken Scot's analysis, one that he has to rely upon as Depew time and again fails to rise to the challenge, and then the crew fails in the pit. Honestly, it's hard to see what keeps Lidell from ripping off his flame retardant suit, toss his helmet in the trash, and walking away - a sentiment that he admits has gone through his head as his conversations become narration for Adrian Bonvento's documentary.

Rookie Season feels like it started off as a standard fluff piece about a sports team with a little bit of money to burn, and it's undoubtedly race fans who'll get the most out of its personal depiction of life behind the wheel. But what it really delivers, hidden under the hood of a very stock story of a season, is much more driven by Lidell's story. He races because he's good - not great, but good - at it and it gives him some purpose. The quiet fear that ripples through his conversations with Bonvento is not that he'll crash, but that he'll have to leave. It's reminiscent of the emotions in Time Trial, the 2018 SXSW selection following disgraced cyclist David Millar's efforts to get back into the Tour de France. Both are about the quest for the elation of achievement, rather than a simple quest for victory. Indeed, just as I'm still waiting for a narrative adaptation of Millar's story, with Benedict Cumberbatch as an alarming doppelgänger, someone needs to get this film, and its subtle depiction of a man redefining what winning means, in front of Domhnall Gleeson right away.

Rookie Season is available on VOD now.