I wrote a blog back in 2025 documenting what it actually takes to stay in this sport at the karting level with zero outside backing — everything you have to account for, from tires to entry fees to fixing things when they break, because they always do.
It's 2026 now, and I want to talk about how much has changed for me and my brand in just a year. The real shift wasn't the money — the costs never went away. It was my mentality. I had to tell myself something simple if this was going to work: I have to work twice as hard as everyone else here if I want to win.
What Privateer Used to Mean
In 2025, I was just trying to find the money and gather the equipment to get five races under my belt and show up. I didn't do especially well — I knew I just didn't have the knowledge yet to keep up with the drivers around me.
2026 looks completely different. I realized I had to run this like an actual business if I wanted to grow at the rate it would take to compete and win. I started my own LLC, Owen Neisel Motorsports LLC. I built a steady media presence — posts, reels, shorts, YouTube videos, Twitch streams, and more. I started pulling on resources at school to rapidly learn the technical and business side of running a brand at this scale.
The real turning point was a conversation with my best friend's dad, who's run his own business and spent years in the entrepreneurship space, working with people who scaled companies into multimillion-dollar operations. Something in what he said made everything click, and the dominoes started falling from there. I spent hours every week that winter working on the background and technical side of things, getting ready for 2026.
Every Dollar Has Two Jobs
In 2025, I didn't really have a plan for where my limited money went — it just kind of disappeared. In 2026, I started tracking every purchase and building an actual financial plan, figuring out how to spend better and save where I could.
I started putting money into things that could grow more than one part of the operation at once — a data logger to get real numbers on how I was driving and what I could change, better cameras, editing software, sponsorship packages. I started talking to other content creators about how they got into this space and what actually moved the needle for them.
The Garage Is Part of the Brand
I'm still not where I want to be with content — but I don't think any content creator ever really feels like they are. What I did realize is that the garage matters to the brand just as much as anything else does. The bad race weekends, the long nights spent fixing things, matter just as much to tell as the wins do. If I wanted to actually grow as a brand, I needed a story to go with the results — that's one of the biggest things I took from that conversation with my friend's dad.
Some of what that looked like this year: three nights before the Elkhart Grand Prix, basically rebuilding the kart from the ground up to have it ready for the weekend. Nights on the couch and full days in coffee shops writing and building out social posts. Going back through telemetry from a test day or a race to figure out what to change before the next one. Working on my own website with help from one of my sponsors. That's just the tip of what actually goes into building this.
The Proof It's Working
This is the part that really moved things forward. All of that background work — the long nights, the hours in coffee shops — is the reason I've picked up four sponsors and signed on with a race team as a full-time, partnered driver. Honestly, I barely had to chase most of it. My goal for next year is to keep pushing for more sponsors, with the hope of having a full season funded going into 2027.
Treating this brand like a business is why those relationships exist now. Brands started responding to the story, not just the results — and that gave them a real reason to sponsor me.
What the Goal Actually Is
In my 2025 post, I said my hope was to get noticed by a factory team. That's still the goal. And I've realized building a brand is one of the best ways to actually get there — a team isn't just looking at talent and skill, they're looking at a person. They're a business too, and more eyes on their name is always worth something to them.
The costs haven't gone down — if anything, they're higher this year than last. But the work I've put in and the connections I've made have made the return on those costs a lot better. Every race weekend, I'm getting more back — better results, better relationships, more to learn from.
I've still got four races left in the 2026 season, but I'm already planning for 2027. I think it's going to be my biggest season yet. I'm already hunting for new sponsors in my city and region, and I'm starting to build a schedule with bigger, harder races on it. But none of this happened alone. I put it together, but I wasn't the only one who got me here.