“On the Road” with Chris Rosales

In this episode of JC Whitney’s “On the Road,” Angel Sala-Belen chats with automotive journalist Chris Rosales about his incredible journey from delivering pizzas to landing a gig at Motor1.com. Chris opens up about how his love for cars sparked with video games like Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed and quickly snowballed from there. With a drive to turn that passion into a career, he dove into car photography and writing, paving his way into the auto journalism world.

Angel Sala-Belen: Hello, and welcome to JC Whitney’s “On the Road”. I’m your host, Angel Sala-Belen, and today we are joined by Chris Rosales. From what I understand, you started from humble beginnings, and now you’re racing around a track, writing stories for Motor1.com, and living your best life at 26 years old.

Chris Rosales: Something like that. I don’t know if it’s as humble as it can be—I used to deliver pizzas. Then, one day, I started writing about cars.

Angel Sala-Belen: I’d like to know how you got started covering cars. From delivering pizzas, where was that transition?

Chris Rosales: Weirdly, it was around the time I was working at an Italian restaurant. I just wanted to be involved with cars somehow, some way. So, I had a camera at home, a Rebel XTi or whatever, and I figured out that I lived 15 minutes from Willow Springs. At the time, there were drift events there called Just Drift—long gone now. I would just show up every weekend that they were there, take photos of the drift cars, post them on Facebook, try to share them around, maybe write an article or two about it, and try to make friends in that community.

The goal at the time was to shoot Formula Drift. It took about three years, but I finally ran into my friend Tommy, who used to shoot for Mad Mike. I just put it out there, like, “I want to shoot FD,” and he made it happen the next year at Long Beach—2016. That was the first year I shot FD, and I quickly learned that it doesn’t make money. I needed to make money, so I kind of put it down for a bit.

I decided, “Okay, let’s go to school, let’s figure this out.” Then I figured out again that school wasn’t for me. Doing the normal job thing wasn’t for me either. I was working with my dad at the time, and I just quit. I was like, “You know what? We’re going to figure this out now.” I started writing articles and doing freelance work on Kinja. You remember Opposite Lock on Jalopnik?

Within about a month, Andrew Collins, a former boss of mine and a good friend, tweeted a job posting. He said, “I’m looking for a writer who has mechanical experience but not a lot of writing experience. Someone who knows how to work on cars and can talk about it.” I put in my submission, and about two weeks later, he replied with an email. He said, “Hey, Chris, I liked some of your stuff,” which is really funny. Three interviews later, and here I am.

Angel Sala-Belen: Were there any newfound appreciations when you started getting into this world?

Chris Rosales: Getting into writing, the appreciation was sort of… “weaponizing” might be the wrong word, but using something I used to do as a passion and making it work. It’s about not agonizing over the words but delivering. Learning how to spend time with the car and with the words, turning it into something people will read and enjoy, not just a product for myself, was very interesting.

Once I started moving past just news posts and started doing reviews, I really began enjoying the time I spent with the cars. That was very special to me. Press trips I can take or leave, honestly. Getting flown around the world sounds amazing, but what I really love is sitting down with the car for a week, getting to know it, and delivering some precise details about the car and how it drives.

Angel Sala-Belen: What are your personal aspirations moving forward as an automotive journalist?

Chris Rosales: Oh, video—1000% video. I love writing, and writing is such an art form that I haven’t mastered. I’m an okay writer, but I don’t think I’ll ever be like Sam Smith, someone who’s the very best at his game. What always inspired me was video. I grew up watching video; I never grew up reading magazines. Apparently, that’s weird from everybody I’ve talked to in the business—everyone grew up reading, and I was just watching videos.

I think that visual and audio art form speaks my language. I guess it’s because I’m Gen Z. I want to see the cars dance and move on screen. In my case, I want a British dude telling me why it’s cool or why it’s not, and drifting it around. I think that’s where I want to go and how I want to communicate my romance with cars.

Angel Sala-Belen: Right, because, I mean, as a car enthusiast, it really is a romanticized idea.

Chris Rosales: Oh, yeah, we’re just down bad for cars.

Angel Sala-Belen: Down bad for cars, exactly! Do you have anything new in the works that we should be on the lookout for?

Chris Rosales: Yeah, well, there are a couple of things. At Motor1.com, we’ve got a brand-new, amazing staff, with a lot of people from Road & Track, headed up by Travis Okulski. The talent on staff is incredible. Writing-wise, we’re going to be doing a lot more features and reviews, focusing on the love of cars and talking about them on a high level.

We already have my colleagues Chris Perkins and Victoria Scott talking technical every week—there’s a column every week about one specific thing on a new car or some automotive technology. Peter Holderith, our associate editor, is writing about batteries—he’s really an expert on EVs and hybrids. That’s not even counting the rest of the staff. There’s just such a breadth of talent that I’m lucky to be around. I’m learning so much from everyone else, and readers should come check us out because what we’re delivering is top-notch. We really have world-class people on staff.

That’s just the writing. YouTube is coming as well. I’m working with my video producer, Kyle Freudenberg—good dude—and we’re scripting out road tests, technical reviews, anything I can think of to put on video. I want to talk about the passion I mentioned earlier and put that on screen, doing it from a place of romance and love for the car. Instead of standing up and saying, “Hey, this is the car, the door opens,” I want to say, “Hey, this is the car; this is how it drifts.” That’s kind of where I’m at.

Angel Sala-Belen: Yeah, so you were talking about YouTube. You guys are going to be setting up the YouTube channel, and you’re talking to your editor?

Chris Rosales: Yeah, well, video producer Kyle and I are working together here in LA. Pretty much everyone else on staff is involved on some level, and we’re all going to be doing video for YouTube and Instagram. Instagram is something I’m super excited about. Even though it’s not conventional, I love short-form content. I think it’s hilarious what you can do with short form, really honing in on what you can achieve in 60 seconds on a reel. We’ll see what comes of that. I’m curious because, for me, it’s all new. This is the first time I’ve done video in a serious capacity. I did a few videos at my previous gig, but this time it’s pretty serious—next level. It’s a little stressful, actually. I’m like, “I have resources; what do I do with resources?”

Angel Sala-Belen: Yeah, resources and responsibility. Someone’s looking at you for something to be produced. So now I have to ask you—I ask everybody—do you have a defining moment in a car that you can point back to and say, “This is that moment where my appreciation for cars really started”?

Chris Rosales: I feel like I have one of those moments every time I’m in a press car—I always love that. But I think the moment that started it all is going to sound so corny. It all comes back to my love for games, and that’s been a throughline in my articles as well—video games as a vector for loving cars. That’s how I figured it out. I actually didn’t play Gran Turismo until I was like 10 years old or whatever. What I did play was Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, and the nerds in the crowd will know that the cover car was a 911 Turbo 996.

I think I was about 6 years old, and me and my family were in the back of my mom’s 4Runner. We were somewhere in Mid City LA, and I saw this Speed Yellow 996 Turbo. Just that image of the car seared into my brain—the fact that it wasn’t just like a blocky pixel thing, but this alive, breathing machine I could interact with. One day, I would actually drive and see it come to life. That was it. That was when I realized, “Oh, okay, I love cars.”

My family isn’t into cars—nobody in sight that likes cars in my family. It just worked out for me. I liked Hot Wheels, I liked all that stuff, and I guess it all sort of came to this point where now my dream life is driving a different car every week. That’s what I always love—getting in and learning a new car. So there was that, and then I have a special moment with every single press car. Honestly, I can remember every single one.

Angel Sala-Belen: To me, it sounds like there was a dream, right? Like, there was the dream of the car, and then having the moment of, “This is really here. This is an actual thing.” Taking that transition from the digital world to the real world, like you said, that breathing, alive feeling—making that jump would be huge for me too.

Chris Rosales: Yeah, that was nuts. That’s all I think of.

Angel Sala-Belen: How can people stay in the loop with what Motor1 is doing and what Chris is doing?

Chris Rosales: So, first things first, go to Motor1.com. That’s where you stay in the loop—everything goes through Motor1.com. There are also our socials: @motor1com on Instagram, and @chrishasacamera on Instagram, where you can follow my personal hijinks, of which there are many. I’m something of an idiot on social media. Definitely no illegal activities—zero illegal activities. Yeah, nothing bad happening with any of the press cars, ever.

Angel Sala-Belen: Do you have any new projects, anything that you want to plug in while we have listeners’ ears and eyes?

Chris Rosales: Sure, yeah. I would love for everybody to go watch the YouTube videos we just put out. There’s a Lotus Emira review—something I’m very proud of. We worked very hard on that, honing in on the voice for our first review at Motor1—at least the first new review of this new era of Motor1. We’re going to have a Mustang Dark Horse tech breakdown, and we’re going to have the first episode of my Subaru BRZ project. That’s my personal car, and we went to the track with it. It’s exciting. There was a goal, there was pain, there was crying—almost. I spun, you know, all kinds of fun stuff. So you should go watch that.