Hi, I'm Clare. You might know me as JDMClare.

I started PITSTOP.Social five years ago, and I'll be honest about how: it began as an events brand with a simple plan - to get car people in the same place, because I knew first-hand that standing next to someone's build, talking nonsense about cars, was one of the only times my head went quiet.

Then life did what life does. My own mental health derailed me. A run of genuinely hard stuff hit at once, and the events brand I'd built slowed right down while I tried to keep myself going. For a long time, I felt like I was failing the thing I'd started.

I've since come to see it differently. PITSTOP.Social didn't fail - it bent around exactly the thing it exists to talk about. I was living the message while trying to run the brand built on it. More recently I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I'm waiting on an autism assessment too. A lot of things about my whole life suddenly made more sense - including why the car scene always felt like the first place I was truly accepted whilst being myself.

That's why PITSTOP.Social is what it is now. The drive that empties an overloaded head. The build that becomes hyperfocus. The detailing that resets you. The meet where you can be side-by-side with people instead of forced face-to-face. For a neurodivergent brain, car culture isn't a hobby - it's regulation. It's how some of us cope, and I don't think we say that out loud enough.

So this isn't a brand that read about mental health and decided to sell hoodies. It's mine. It's built out of how my own brain actually works, and out of so many years of learning - sometimes the hard way - what helps and what doesn't.

My ambition is small and huge at the same time: to make the car community a place where this stuff is normal to talk about. Where "I'm not doing great" is as ordinary at a meet as "what's it running?" Where neurodivergent people recognise themselves and feel like they belong, much like myself. And where every bit of it quietly points people toward real support when they need it - which is why we fundraise for SHOUT 85258.

PITSTOP is five this year. It looks different to how it started, and so do I. That's kind of the point.

Stop. Refuel. Carry on. 🏁💚
#DONOTOVERINFLATE