f you did a double take when you saw the cover of this issue of Racer X Illustrated, it’s understandable. After more than 20 years with our original magazine cover design, we felt the time was right to give our magazine art director, David Langran, a chance to update our look. The new cover features a Simon Cudby shot of Team Honda HRC’s Ken Roczen, shown at sunset at the Honda SX practice track below Corona, California. Looking at the new cover side-by-side with our very first, which was designed by Marc Blanchard and featured a Jeremy McGrath shot by Chris Hultner from that year’s Bercy Supercross, there’s quite a contrast—as well as some similarities, even with 237 issues of Racer X Illustrated in between them.

For instance, both were shot at night, both riders were wearing Fox Racing gear with white boots, and both were doing look-away whips. But Jeremy was an American doing a race in Europe, while Roczen is a European now racing in America. McGrath is riding a two-stroke, Roczen a four-stroke. Roczen is wearing a signature Red Bull helmet; energy drinks barely existed in 1998, so McGrath’s big sponsor was 1-800-COLLECT.

Social media didn’t exist back in ’98, which was right around the height of Jeremy’s popularity as an active racer, but it’s a part of pretty much everyone’s life now. That helps explain why the all-time King of Supercross “only” has 525,000 Instagram followers—less than half of Roczen’s direct audience.

Speaking of media, a lot has changed in that regard as well. The first cover shot was a chrome slide from a 35mm camera, while the latest is a digital image from Simon’s Nikon D5, as most shooters made the switch from film to digital about a dozen years ago. And back then, as we were just getting started, there were a bunch of other magazines already in the space, including Dirt Rider, Motocross Journal, MX Racer, and Cycle News, soon to be joined by Transworld Motocross. Of all those, unfortunately, only Cycle News is still a periodical—but only in digital form.

Racer X Illustrated has changed a lot, too, which should come as no surprise—change is the only constant when it comes to the rapidly evolving world of media. We’ve expanded our website, our social media reach, our presence at the races, even the look and feel of the book itself, all in hopes of staying relevant to an audience that would just as easily prefer to see and read our stuff on a tablet than on the printed page.

With that in mind, we’re proud to introduce our revolutionary digital edition. We finally have the perfect engine to drive all of our compelling stories home on your digital devices. The new edition is specifically designed to give readers a true magazine-reading experience, only digitally, making the clunky pinch-and-zoom days a thing of the past.

With all of the change around us, the one thing that hasn’t changed is our love and passion for motorcycle racing and the moto life. Sure, we’re headed toward 250 issues of this magazine within a year, but every single one of them has felt like a brand-new adventure for us. We’ve got a bunch of great stories and feature ideas on the drawing board that you will soon see come to fruition in these pages—printed or digital—as we continue this journey. We don’t really know where it’s all going next, but we’ll be there to tell you all about it in the pages of Racer X Illustrated. Thanks for coming along for the ride!