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Episode 219: Sports Extremist & Racer Torsten Gross
Episode 219: Sports Extremist & Racer Torsten Gross
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About this episode
Torsten Gross shares his inspiring journey from a diving accident that left him a quadriplegic to becoming a race car driver and advocate for others with disabilities. He discusses the transformative experience of racing Porsches, the launch of his docuseries 'Just Hands for the Love of Racing' on Amazon Prime, and the creation of the Just Hands Foundation, which helps individuals with disabilities experience motorsports. Gross emphasizes resilience, motivation, and the importance of community support in overcoming challenges and pursuing passions.
Topics:
inspiration
motorsports
disability advocacy
just hands foundation
resilience
racing journey
community support
personal growth
porsche racing
docuseries
Sports Extremist & Racer Torsten Gross
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Chevrolet C6
"...e feet deep pushed my head into my neck, broke my C6, which is my sixth vertebrae, and I became a quad..."
Car
Audi A6
"...d very spongy brakes. It was a non-track prepared Audi A6. And, you know, we, it was a,"
Car
Mazda MX-5 / Miata
"and the car goes fast. A Miata can destroy a Ferrari if the driver is good in th..."
Car
Holden Caprice
"...y. And there are people out there with 1984 Chevy Caprices, right? And old school Volvos, they're having jus..."
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BMW 328
"... other people. So I bought a really cheap, crappy 328 BMW that was so old and was breaking down all the..."
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The automobile is one of the most important inventions that revolutionize the modern world.
In America, the rich history of car culture runs deep.
This technology continues to shape the future of the industry.
Jason Stein is here to share the stories of people passionate about cars,
from industry leaders and innovators to car-obsessed celebrities.
Buckle up as Jason takes you inside the boardroom, onto the track, and around the bend,
on Cars and Culture on SiriusXM Business Radio.
Welcome to Cars and Culture on SiriusXM Business Channel 132.
I'm your host, Jason Stein.
Great to have you along for the ride again this week.
Today's guest is a racer, motivator, and the subject of an inspiring new docuseries.
Torsion Gross never set out to become a race car driver.
In fact, he wasn't even really a car guy, but a single track day at Lime Rock Park changed everything.
Just a few years later, he's behind the wheel of a Porsche competing across America
and sharing his journey in Just Hands for the love of racing, which debuted on Amazon Prime.
His story is about resilience, purpose, and proving doubters wrong.
After a diving accident left him a quadriplegic at 15,
he turned what he calls his wheelchair into fuel for motivation.
Racing Porsches launching the Just Hands Foundation to help others with disabilities get on track
and partnering with brands like Pensoil and Volkswagen to create real change.
This is a story today about speed, courage, and a relentless drive to live life fully.
Coming up, it's Torsion Gross on Cars and Culture.
Hi, I'm Torsion Gross. This is Cars and Culture with Jason Stein.
It's a pleasure to have my next guest on the program.
He's doing remarkable things, and now everybody gets the chance to see it.
July 31st, Amazon Prime released Just Hands for the love of racing.
Pleasure to have you on the program, Torsion.
Thanks so much for having me, Jason. I appreciate it.
Well, I guess it's obvious, but now that it's out,
can you believe where you are in terms of the world knowing your story?
And I say obvious because it's obviously a situation that you could have never dreamed of, I'm guessing.
And you told me three years ago that I would have a show on Prime,
and you told me four years ago that it would be racing Porsches.
We would have had a good chuckle together. We definitely would have laughed hard.
So did your phone just ring nonstop?
Were you getting blown up all over the place with people going,
my God, it's out? Did you have a big release party?
We had a great release party. We had one here in Canaan, Connecticut,
which is right outside Lime Rock Park, the track in the Northeast,
which is my home track. And it was pouring rain,
and we had Standing Rumoli. So it was amazing.
The outpouring of, not even support, just the outpouring of love has been,
humbling has been, I wish I could tell you a word, Jason.
I don't have a word, but it's been surreal in the best way possible.
What's the journey been like to get here for you?
How far back do you want me to go?
Let's go back to being a teenager. Let's tell your story.
The dramatic turn that took place.
Yeah, so when I was 15, kind of normal childhood growing up right outside of New York City,
and as we were moving to Germany, my father had already moved over there.
My mother and I did a trip to the Bahamas,
and I decided we were only on the island for an hour and a half.
I took a dive into shallow water, which was only three feet deep.
I thought I was around seven feet deep because in the Bahamas,
the clear water gets magnified by the sun, so it looks a whole lot deeper.
And I dove in the ocean like I did thousands of times before,
but this time three feet deep pushed my head into my neck,
broke my C6, which is my sixth vertebrae, and I became a quadriplegic.
I was dead for two and a half, clinically dead for two and a half minutes,
and broke my neck into 36 pieces.
And that's, believe it or not, you know, I see your reaction.
I get that all the time.
One of the best days of my life, and I know that surprises most people,
that that is the follow-up to that comment,
but one of the best days of my life.
Didn't know it at the time, but it definitely is.
One of the best days of your life.
Yeah.
Why?
How?
You know, I could be specific and say, you know,
because I was able to do this, this, and this,
but the reality, I feel like everybody's got a wheelchair.
And what I mean by that is if you have depression,
if you have PTSD, if you've lost a child,
if you had a bad upbringing or breakup, if you have Tourette's,
whatever it is, we all have that thing that holds us back.
And so mine is visible, right?
My thing is visible, but depression is not visible.
Tourette's is not visible, right?
All that.
We all have that thing.
So I tend to get the head cock and the awe, right?
Because I have a day that changed my life,
but everybody's got their wheelchair, right?
And so mine allowed me, I wasn't the best kid growing up.
I wasn't the easiest to rear, and I wasn't, I wasn't great.
And so it, I don't want to say it shaped me up,
but it gave me purpose.
And it's not a purpose that I knew about from the beginning.
It's something that I kind of like lived into, grew into,
but I have a great life, Jason.
I've an insanely amazing wife.
I have, you know, life work wise has been, you know,
I couldn't ask for anything more.
And now I get to raise Porsches in an Amazon Prime show.
I mean, if anyone right now is crying after that story,
I'm going to ask you to reevaluate your priorities.
I can't walk up steps.
I have people to help me up them.
Yeah, there are certain things that challenge me,
but at the end of the day, I've got great friends,
great partners, great, great life.
I wouldn't change it.
The event, the event itself that you talked about,
I would venture to say that listening to you,
it ignited a relentless drive in you.
Is that right?
So my wife came up with this insight,
and it's actually fascinating from birth on,
I'm somebody who wants to rebel.
And that sounds obvious as a, as a youth, right?
In your youth where I grew up in Greenwich and in Bronxville,
like not rich, but well to do, you know,
I did okay.
I was expected to be good.
I was expected to get good grades.
I was expected to go to a good school,
expected is the word here, right?
And I rebelled against that.
I think I would even go as far as say,
I tried to get bad grades.
I tried to do bad, right?
But that's, that's youth.
But then when I have my accident as a quadriplegic,
quads will never be paraplegics, right?
Well, we don't have finger function, right?
They have finger function.
And the joke I always say is dead people want to be quadriplegic,
want to be paraplegic, paraplegic, want to walk,
walking, people want to be Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to be God, right?
Like there's always that level above you that, that, that you have.
And so my, my, I'm going to say rebellious attitude was more,
you're going to tell me I can't live alone.
You're going to tell me I'm a quadriplegic.
You're going to tell me I can't do much.
Well, all right.
Watch me.
Watch me, right?
And the same thing, even,
even if I fast forward now to racing, right?
Like there, there have been groups that have said,
I can't race with them.
All right, fine.
Like watch me.
Want me to destroy you?
I will.
And you're going to feel really bad about yourself.
So I use that as fuel too.
You tell me I can't do it.
I'm going to try and find a way to do it better.
Yeah, amazing.
The, the passion for vehicles.
And you've, you've talked a couple of times here now
about, about cars and speed.
Was it always there for you?
That's the funny part about this, Jason.
You're not really a car guy, are you?
I found out two years ago what a radiator is.
And everybody laughs about that.
But I never had a dad that loved cars.
I never had friends that turned wrenches, right?
So I never really knew about cars.
However, because of my relationship with certain brands,
I'm not going to tell you how many times I've been pulled over,
but just think of that number and then multiply by four.
You know, I've been pulled over a lot.
And so I, I've always had a pension for speed.
But I never really, race car driving really wasn't my thing,
especially in a wheelchair, because if you can't see it,
you can't be it.
And Robbie just, you know, Robbie Wiccans,
the pro driver, the instant driver, he's new to the scene,
right?
In airports.
I've been in the chair 31 years.
He wasn't a thing.
Right.
As I was growing up, I never knew I could be this.
So you can't, it's, it's destructive.
I think it can be destructive to dream something that you know,
you just can't ever be no matter how much you try, right?
And cars was never really my thing.
I then had other things.
So I love them.
I love owning them.
I've got some nice cars, but I just never thought I'd be a
race car driver.
And your wonderful wife, you just referenced,
she does something for you back five, four years ago,
almost five years ago.
She says it was on your anniversary.
Is that right?
Indeed it was.
Yeah.
She takes you out to the track that's nearby.
Limerock.
We've had Dickie Regal on the program.
Yeah.
Yes.
And, and what happened at Limerock in 2021?
Well, we were out to dinner and she hands me a,
a gift certificate and says,
I got you a track day at Limerock Park and small side note,
Jason in return, I handed her motorcycle lessons.
Right.
So, so we were very on the same page.
And I think after that it was,
is our life insurance policy up to date?
Cause we both are doing something stupid.
Either that or do we want to kill each other?
But, but the,
she had said, look, we had just moved.
We had, this has a weekend house up here near Limerock.
We were Manhattan nights, you know, for 20 plus years.
And then when we moved here full time,
we then started uncovering this, this thing called Limerock.
And I never even thought about it when my wife was like,
well, look, if you're going to drive that fast,
let's make this legal.
Shall we?
And she got me a track day.
And I will tell you from that day on,
I blame this addiction on her.
Without her having done this,
we, you know,
I would not be spending this amount of money to,
to continue race car driving.
So it's kind of her fault, right?
That's, I think it's her fault.
But, you know, it is,
but on lap 16 of that day,
you had brake failure going into a turn, right?
I had very spongy brakes.
It was a non-track prepared Audi A6.
And, you know, we, it was a,
it was an interesting moment going through,
through turn one and two.
But we made it.
And Don, the instructor always knew that we would make it, right?
Like in your first time out,
they don't let you go full send.
Right.
So, so we were never really in a,
in a super dangerous position, right?
Cause now as an instructor,
I would never let somebody get into that position either.
But as somebody knew when that happens, you know,
and you get spongy brakes, things get scary.
And I think Don thought that I was going to get into the paddock
and go, I'm never doing this again.
But I took off my helmet and I looked at him
and I said, I need to buy a race car.
Yeah.
Then you knew, you knew, you knew it was on at that point.
So what, what happens next?
I mean, now all of a sudden you're doing
sub one minute lap times at Lime Rock on street tires.
And you know, I mean, you were,
you were getting good at that point.
You spent the last few years getting good, right?
The, the, the passion was there.
The passion was there because the,
the moment that I came into that paddock with Don with,
with the instructor after that happened, you know,
his question was why you,
you thought we were about to have,
have a little bit of an incident.
You know, why, why do you say you need a race car?
And I was like, well, it's the only time,
the only sport on the planet that makes me feel
equal to able-bodied people.
So, so no one on the track knew that I was in a wheelchair.
The car didn't care that I was in a wheelchair.
That's a profound moment.
And I needed to keep that going.
I needed to feel that.
So I went home and I said, baby, we're buying a race car.
And she just kind of smiled and was like, oh, okay.
And that's how the adventure began.
I think I've spent in my first year over 40 days at Lime Rock,
which, which is a lot, you know,
if anyone drives track driving,
you'll know that that is a very high number.
I think it was 40 days in the first year.
That's how, how much I needed to do it.
And you're getting good.
I, I, you know, good is good is so contextual to the people
you're on track with, right?
Who are your competitors?
It's always that.
And I get humbled so quickly, you know, on, I go, I'm good.
And then I go, oh, Jesus, that guy's, that's good.
Like that's not me.
That's good.
I think I'm, I'll say this.
I think I'm doing better than the average bear that's only been
doing this for three and a half to four years.
Um, I'm very fortunate to get good at it.
Your, your passion cut the attention of Amazon and all of a
sudden there was a film crew that was capturing your path on
this series.
How did that all come about?
Yeah.
So I was chatting with Penn's oil who I'm a brand ambassador for
and who I had done some commercials with and who I'd
worked with.
And I'd said the car world is, is a very machismo world.
It's very, you know, you got to know everything about
cars and I'm not that guy.
Right.
You know, as I said, I just found out what a radiator is.
And there's a big group of people like me that exists and we
should be talking to them.
And, uh, and that was kind of a conversation, you know, back
and forth with them.
And I'd said, by the way, I'm starting racing.
And do you want to capture that?
And why I thought it was an interesting moment to capture
is you have a lot of stories, a lot of docu series about
part racers that got hurt.
And now have a comeback story.
Like Robbie Wiccans or Sam Schmidt.
Right.
Um, or you've got docu series about guys that are ready either
at the top of their game or, you know, the best in the world,
docu series.
Great.
But I don't know the docu series that exists that shows
somebody who was in his early forties that started, you
know, having been carting since I was seven years old
or, you know, racing since I was 13 that just wanted to
that now wants to start racing.
And there's no idea what he's doing.
I said, well, wouldn't that be interesting?
Cause I want to, I want to motivate people that not just
look like me in wheelchairs, but just in general want to
get into the car world and are so intimidated by it.
I'm willing to look like a jackass and go, I don't know
anything about this.
I need help and all that because it's funny.
When you're racing, Jason feels like a singular sport.
Yeah.
Until you realize how many people are involved in that
single driver's experience.
And once you admit, well, in my case, I don't know what
a radiator is.
Once you admit, I don't know X, Y, Z.
I need help.
The amount of people that come to help and support you
and lift you up is so beautiful.
Yeah, such a community, isn't it?
It's such a community, right?
Yeah.
Very warm, very welcome, very intrusive.
Yeah.
Yeah, they just, they'll push their way in to help you
and go, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do that.
Yeah.
And it was that love that, that I felt really fast
where I went, all right, well, let's document this.
And that's how we got here, which again, wow, weird,
but wow.
That's amazing story.
And episode one, you're behind the wheel of that
adapted Porsche taking on Watkins Glen.
Episode two is at VIR, Virginia International Raceway.
And then you're Florida in the 24 hours at Daytona
in episode three.
And then finally, Circuit of Americas.
What have you learned to two different questions?
What have you learned about racing?
What have you learned about yourself during all this?
I'm going to start with the racing question first.
That's easier.
The racing part of things is, oh, there are so many things
going in my mind.
Let me, I'll just give you one.
And that is cars look similar, but from the outside,
but from the inside, if a driver were to get into my car
or if I were to get in their car, how vastly different cars
actually are based on the driver's preferences.
And you can't just say, I've got a great car
and the car goes fast.
A Miata can destroy a Ferrari if the driver is good in the Miata.
And how you set up the car, I didn't understand
how preferential cars are, how different cars are.
So that would be a huge learning for me
about what your preferences are and how different they are,
even though they look the same.
I think I've always had this to a degree,
but it's definitely amplified here.
And that is how, well, you asked the question,
I don't mean to be arrogant about it,
but I've learned how good I am at failure and accepting failure.
And I think we as a society, we villainize failure.
And you see that by if somebody wins, they're like, I won, period.
If they lose, they give you an hour dissertation
about why they lost, right?
And that's because we're so nervous about failure.
We're so embarrassed by failure.
And I'm really good at going, you know what, I failed.
Great, let's move on.
Let's use it as a learning moment.
I found that out very quickly about myself
and I'm proud that I get to say that.
And what have you learned about inspiring others?
Because that's the path here.
That's exactly what you want to do as you said earlier.
And just go back to the launch of the show
and the packed room and everything.
I mean, you clearly along the way have discovered
that you can be an inspiration for so many, I'm sure.
Yeah, interestingly enough, I like to spin the word to motivation
because inspiration has an interesting connotation
which I can take you through if you're interested.
So to me, in the disabled community,
the word inspiration comes up a lot.
And it's always one of those things where if I go to work,
I've been told that I'm inspirational.
And that becomes a little bit, I guess, annoying
because it means that if you and I both get to the same level,
I'm still inspirational because society puts me lower than you
to begin with.
So I've overcome more things and therefore I'm inspirational.
I don't want to be seen as less than, right?
No matter what I do.
But motivational.
Motivational is great, right?
Because motivation means go do the thing you want to do.
I don't care if it's with cars.
I don't care if it's with bikes.
I don't care if it's with reading.
I want to motivate somebody to go,
I didn't think I could do that.
I want to now go do that.
And so I try really hard to find the thing that people love to do
and see how do we make that happen?
How do we make it better?
How do we make you excited to go do it?
The thing that you dreamed of doing that you keep saying no about.
Stop saying no and let's figure it out.
And to me, one of the biggest things I always say is let's set
failure as an objective.
Because if you fail, you will always succeed when you try the
thing.
And I say that because the anticipation of the thing in air quotes
is always way worse than the thing itself, right?
You're always up until three in the morning worried about the
thing and then you get there and you're like, no, it's easy.
But boy, were you worried, right?
I have a bracelet that says courage over confidence.
And this is by a sports psychologist named Mitch.
And Mitch, when I met him and he gave this to me, I love that he
simplified it because to me I'd always said courage or confidence
comes on the other side of trying.
How can you be confident about something if you haven't tried it?
So I'm like, are you confident about it?
No, good.
But do you have courage to go do it?
Yes.
If you set failures your goal, you will have done it.
And that will give you the confidence to do it again.
So I try really hard to say to people, if you make failure
your goal, failure your goal, you will succeed.
And then you will find out how easy that actually was.
And then does that make sense?
Yeah, it does.
Yeah, it's a great philosophy on life.
Yeah.
Especially car racing because, again, there's this and even
track driving, not just car racing, anything having to do with
cars because you can take your own personal car and do a track
for an HPD day, a high performance driver education day.
And there are people out there with 1984 Chevy Caprices, right?
And old school Volvos, they're having just as much fun as
everybody else.
They have the courage to go do that.
And I love seeing that, man, do I give them high fives
because you don't need to have a fast car.
You don't need to have a race car.
You don't need to have a track car.
Just go try it.
Yeah.
Motivational.
After the break, I'll continue my conversation with the inspirational
Torsten Gross.
To see the interview with Torsten, visit the Cars & Culture
YouTube channel.
Subscribe, comment, check out hundreds of conversations with
creators, collectors and culture makers who are driving
the industry forward.
The automobile is one of the most important inventions that
revolutionized the modern world.
In America, the rich history of car culture runs deep as
technology continues to shape the future of the industry.
Jason Stein is here to share the stories of people passionate
about cars from industry leaders and innovators to car
obsessed celebrities.
Buckle up as Jason takes you inside the boardroom, onto the
track and around the bend on Cars & Culture on SiriusXM
Business Radio.
Welcome back to Cars & Culture here on Business Channel 132.
I'm your host, Jason Stein.
Now the continuation of my interview with the inspirational
Torsten Gross.
To see the interview with Torsten, visit the Cars &
Culture YouTube channel.
Subscribe, comment and check out hundreds of conversations
with the creators, collectors and culture makers who are
driving the industry forward.
There's a moment in the series where you broke your femur
and punctured a lung in a crash at the track.
Some might have stopped the cameras from rolling.
You insisted the cameras stay on all the way up to the
operating room because you wanted the journey to be real.
Right?
Tell us about that.
When they were rolling into the ER, I said, wait, wait,
somebody's got to give me my phone.
And they were like, what are you doing?
I'm like, this, but this is real.
Right.
So I filmed all the way in because look, there are two
types of race car drivers, ones that have crashed and
ones that will.
And I'm now one that have crashed, but it's a real
story.
If you sign up for a docu-series, if you sign up for
something that's about you, why hide that from people?
Right.
That's so criminal, you know, to hide reality.
And unfortunately, sometimes to my wife, I'm too public
and too honest publicly.
But if you open yourself up publicly, then it's amazing
how many people come out of the woodworks and they
want to talk to you and you get to motivate them.
I showed that.
Look, we were training for my first race a week later and
I was going, I was practicing going three wide into
Big Bend.
I didn't realize how dirty it was on the outside and
100% my fault.
And I paid the consequences for that.
You know, it's, it has its moments, but as my wife
has said before, you know, that it could have been
way worse and, and it wasn't.
And so I wanted to be back in the car right away.
I actually had all my calendar, the date that my leg
would heal, the date that my lung would heal and the
date that my ribs would heal.
And I'd count down just so I can get back in the car
again.
But you were in the ER and after the crash, you
said, I'll stop racing.
And she stopped you.
Didn't she?
She did.
I said, baby, I promise I won't do this again.
Sorry for doing stupid stuff.
And she actually said, and I'm paraphrasing, she was like,
no, no, no, hold on.
First off, I'm hopped up on adrenaline.
So she's like, you're not making the right decisions
period anyway at this moment.
So let's talk about it.
She brought it up the next day.
And she said, again, this, I'm, I'm condensing
a longer conversation, right?
But her response was, you love doing this.
You're good at doing this.
It would be criminal for you not to do this anymore.
Why stop?
Yeah.
You know, and I'll say we are, she is everything to
me.
I hope that I'm everything to her, but we are very
supportive of each other's, let's say addictions,
you know, because we all do stupid stuff when I
was doing the diving stuff and the marathon stuff.
So I'm the world's on quadriplegic.
That's a rescue scuba diver.
I did 12 marathons in 12 months.
Like every time I take on a stupid project like that,
you know, she just rolls her eyes.
But I have to say she does the same thing, right?
She does her own projects like that too.
And we're just very supportive for to be in the
emergency room.
She stuck by me, Jason, the whole time they had
to kick her out of the room a couple of times.
She was next to me the whole time.
And she was supportive.
She had said, whatever you need to do, go to keep
doing it.
And I think if you find a partner like me to her as
well, when you see something you love when you're
passionate about it, you need to support that in
the other person.
Yeah.
What a gift.
What a gift.
Yeah.
Let's talk about the just hands foundation.
Tell me a little bit about it.
What does it do?
And why is it important to you?
Why is it vital?
So it's vital because a passion isn't something you
should just do yourself, but you're obliged to
share it with others.
And only three months after I started track driving,
I went home and I said, baby, we're buying another
track car.
She said, no.
And I said, baby, this one's not for me to drive
it's for others.
And she was like, well, then definitely no.
And but it, I have been so fortunate Jason
that in my life I've had foundations and people
helped me get into race, wheelchair racing or
marathoning or skiing or diving, whatever it is.
They've been there to help.
I am humbled.
I am grateful.
I am all the words that I get to be in a position
now where I get to help other people.
And I wanted other people to feel what I get to
feel.
And before I talk about the foundation, there's
something that I've termed the disability tax.
And what that is, is if you want to go do a marathon,
you buy $80 shoes, you walk out your front door,
you start training.
We have to buy a $3,000 marathon chair.
If you want to go skiing, $120 season rental,
you go and then you start go skiing.
We buy a $4,000 mono ski, right?
Everything for us, you want to play basketball,
you buy $80 basketball, go to a public court,
go play, we buy a $4,000 basketball chair.
There's a disability tax to get into our sports.
It's always a little bit bigger in that that just multiplies
itself inside motor sports.
So I felt the need to say, well, I need to offer this
to other people.
So I bought a really cheap, crappy 328 BMW that was so
old and was breaking down all the time.
And I started Just Hands Foundation.
And luckily, we've moved on from that car.
But the Just Hands Foundation gets people who are in chairs
behind the wheel of track cars.
And whether that is for people who can't do it,
ride alongs with me to Autocross,
which is learning your car, balancing your car,
learning the limits of your car in a non-risk environment,
all the way to HPDE, which is high performance driver
education, which is getting you on a big track
with an instructor, all using our cars.
Not your own.
And that is what we started with Just Hands Foundation.
Amazing.
You talked about Pennzoil earlier.
And I know you've been overwhelmed with the way that
they've allowed you to be you in a lot of ways.
And also, I know maybe done things a little more
unconventionally.
In other words, they've not only championed the project,
but they see you as a race car driver who wants to do all of
the things that you've just said.
Tell me about Pennzoil and Pennzoil's support of you.
First of all, I love that you picked up on that.
It means a lot that you picked up on what you just said,
because not everyone sees that and hears that and knows that.
And for the audience, I'll elaborate on what you picked up on.
And that is disability tends to be a token at time.
It's always a little kid in the wheelchair being pushed by their
mom in the back of a commercial.
I'll check box, right?
We were now about disability.
Great.
But there's a difference between, at least for me,
being a race car driver that's in a wheelchair versus a guy in a
wheelchair that's a race car driver.
The nuance of that is so small.
But it's actually huge in execution.
They never used me as a token guy in a wheelchair.
They always treated me as a race car driver that uses his hands to
drive.
And that is part of my story.
Let's lean into that.
I think it's great.
We should highlight that.
But if it becomes this pity, sad sack type of creative type of
message, I don't like that, right?
They never treated me that way, right?
It has always been a race car driver that loves to drive,
that is a passion for driving.
And let's communicate about that.
So we've done cool things like, you know,
Joey is also, Joey Logano is also a Penn's Oil, obviously.
And I got to teach him how to use hand controls.
How to drive that was a ton of fun.
They are a huge supporter of the foundation so much so that
our colors started off as orange and white and black.
Nope.
We are now black and yellow because of them.
You know, my car, black and yellow because of them.
That's how much it means to me.
And they have always, sound so corny, but always treated me
as a friend, never a marketing gimmick.
And that's, as somebody who's been in the marketing world
and left the marketing world, I can tell you that doesn't
happen very often.
No, I know you're right.
You just mentioned the marketing world.
You have to have a certain mindset to be in the corporate
world, to be in corporate life and you've been a CMO.
How does your motorsports mindset differ or how is it similar
to what you do in a corporate world?
You know, this is on business radio, Business Channel 132.
Yeah.
Look, at the end of the day, I'll say this from a charity
perspective.
So there's just hands motorsports, which is me.
I don't take any money from the foundation.
Then there's just hands foundation, right?
So we'll split the two.
But the way I see it is if anybody gives us anything,
they need to get something in return, even if it's a donation.
And I need to love it.
I need to love them.
I need to love their mission.
And if you see the world as what can you do for me
authentically, then I can create content.
I can work with them.
I can help them, right?
And it's this back and forth partnership.
So people donate money to the foundation.
I'll go, thank you.
You're about to get XYZ.
I want to give this back to you, right?
Whether it's content, whether it's experiences, whatever,
we always give back in return too.
And I see this is business.
It's an expensive sport.
And I want to be able to highlight the great players.
You know, Penzo being one Volkswagen,
that I'm brand ambassador is another one,
the Vigil and mobility innovations,
which do hand controls as another.
It's not just about taking.
It's about giving back to them as well.
And I'll do anything I can to give back to these guys.
Volkswagen's driver access program
echoes many of your missions.
The ethos behind what you do.
How does your story help spark change
beyond the track through Volkswagen?
That's a very astute and very good question, Jason.
A lot of brands, and I'll give Penzo all this credit to,
are scared to bring somebody in a wheelchair on.
Because it's this, it's this taboo topic in our society
in lawsuits and blah, blah, blah.
Like it's just a, it's a weird territory.
And so brands tend to be very reticent to take on
disability, to have somebody that looks like me,
in their stable of ambassadors or part of their business.
For Volkswagen specifically,
I'm now part of their innovation committee.
Wow. Does that mean that next year I'm going to be,
there's going to be accessibility everywhere?
Probably not, right?
Because things take a lot of time.
But let's give them credit for at least starting and trying.
Because I'm going to tell you a lot of brands do not.
And they didn't do it because they were sued.
They didn't do it because of XYZ Reason.
They did it because it's the right thing to do.
Let's talk about Lime Rock Park.
And you said you had Dickie on the show.
Dickie is one of the owners of Lime Rock and the CEO of Lime Rock.
Well, I get a text from Dickie one winter.
And it's a picture of the concession stand that was torn apart.
And I think the caption wrote something like, you did this.
And I'm going, oh no, I did what?
And he's like, we're making this accessible.
And it's just because I was there.
Now Jason, there was a lawsuit.
I didn't ask for it.
And at the end of the day, are they going to make their money back
on the amount of people in wheelchairs that service,
that concession stand for the construction?
Let's be honest, probably not.
But Dickie didn't care.
It's the right thing to do.
And not just Dickie.
Everybody at Lime Rock didn't care.
It's the right thing to do.
Volkswagen.
I don't know of any of any litigiousness.
I'm sure there is probably somewhere because that's just what
what people do, unfortunately in this world.
But that's why it was not why I was approached.
That's not why I was asked to be on the innovation team.
Right.
To give my perspective there.
It's because it's the right thing to do.
And because the more people that could seem like me,
like Robbie, like, you know, Natalie,
like Drew Ewing, the more they realize we're not there
because we don't want to be there.
We're not there because we don't know we can be.
And by bringing people like us to change the world,
the ADA had a really cool saying, I think.
And I think it was the ADA that said,
not for us without us.
Don't create innovation for us without us being present.
Right.
Because we have a certain perspective.
Well, Dickey didn't know about accessibility before I was there.
Really, he knew obviously,
but I didn't know what to do with it until I was there.
Volkswagen, you know, I'm now there.
Penzole, like I'm moving the needle in such a cool way
because they're inviting me in.
And it's not me.
It takes them to ask to invite me in.
And everyone gives me the credit.
Let's stop giving me the credit.
I'm not the guy that deserves the credit.
I'm the guy that happened to be there at the right time.
Right.
They are the ones that deserve the credit
because they had the guts to bring me in.
That needs to be celebrated.
Yeah, well said.
Just a few more things.
Yeah.
Is there a piece of advice that you wish you knew
maybe at the beginning of this journey?
The wheelchair journey or the racing journey?
Let's do both.
Damn it.
I shouldn't have asked you that.
I saw good, good response.
Anything I knew.
Oh, this comes off so trite, Jason,
but happiness isn't easy, right?
Like nothing good is easy.
Yeah.
And if you can do it on day one,
then it's not worth doing.
Exactly.
Stop doing it.
And again, it sounds trite.
Don't challenge yourself though.
Challenge yourself.
If it's not worth trying, it's not worth doing it.
I'm certainly not the first,
certainly not the last to say that,
but look, I've had certain things that came easy to me.
Right.
I've done a couple of things in my life
that were fairly simple.
I don't do them anymore.
I mean, I still do them to a degree,
but like they don't bring me happiness
because they don't challenge me.
Things that challenge your ethos scare you.
Things that challenge your experiences scare you
because you don't know what the other side looks like.
Again, a failure.
We're all scared to fail.
But if it's so easy, stop, right?
Or you're not trying hard enough.
And I don't think I do that all the time.
I haven't done that all the time in my life.
And I wish I said to myself,
both when I was growing up in a chair,
growing up period, you know, even before a chair,
and now race car driving, I certainly say this to myself.
I'm not good at it, but I can be if I try.
So that's the advice I'd give myself.
With the docu-series out, the foundation's now building momentum.
What's next for Torsten Gross?
Besides the podium.
What's next?
I mean, look, I, I'll be realistic,
but also, you know, challenge myself to say
I'm doing things like IMSA or TCR or horses sprint challenge.
Those are levels up from where I am.
I race international GT, HSR and World Racing League,
those types of leagues.
And they're great.
They're wonderful leagues.
But there's something about IMSA.
There's something about TCR and horses sprint challenge,
those leagues, which are just to level up.
And I want to get my butt handed to me by those drivers.
I want to get schooled and go, you know what, forget podium.
Like I'm very fortunate to podium a lot.
I want to get destroyed.
And, and my motto is, is always I want NFL.
And which is, are we allowed to curse here?
Sure.
It's satellite radio.
All right, good.
That's true.
NFL, not fucking last, right?
Like that is, that's my goal.
NFL, not fucking last.
Even if that means the number one driver crashes out.
I'm not last in their last of the leaderboard than NFL.
And that to me is my prior, my, my, how I judge what I go do.
So even if I go to horses sprint challenge,
if I go to IMSA, I'm certainly not going to podium.
I'm not going to podium in the beginning, but that's okay.
Because it's an experience and it's learning and I want to learn.
And that's how I judge other people.
You're not listening.
And I don't want to be part of that, that journey with you.
I want to be part of a journey where other people are learning,
other people are listening, and we all accept each other's failures.
And hopefully that means IMSA or Porsche, Porsche sprint challenge.
You said something before you said, I don't want to be equal.
I want to be first.
Yes.
Yeah.
Those are powerful words.
What, what do you tell people watching, listening, who feel sidelined?
Look, we, right now in our, in our society, it's all about fighting for equality.
And I get that.
And there's definitely a place, but in car racing, the way we also have a T-shirt
that says we're all equal on the starting line, which that's what I want.
I want equality on the starting line.
I want to be seen as equal, but then I want to destroy you.
Right.
And so when I, when I see what other people have hesitation,
when I see that they are trying to fight for something,
I just say, don't stop fighting because if it's easy, you don't deserve it.
Right.
Then, then you haven't tried only things you try for you should really, you deserve.
And, and that sounds really harsh.
I don't, I don't mean that to come off as angry as that might sound,
but you need to push yourself.
So I would look at everybody and say, try confidence over courage,
the courage over confidence.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Just exactly what's on your wrist.
Yep.
It's called just hands for the love of racing on Amazon prime.
And you can also visit the just hands foundation to get involved.
That is just hands.org.
Right.
Torsten just hands.org to learn more about the foundation.
And there is, there are plenty of lessons to learn from all of it,
including listening to you talk about this.
So thank you so much for being on the program.
Thanks for being motivational and thanks for not being NFL.
I appreciate that in the time as well.
And, uh, uh, yeah, it means a lot to be able to share my story.
And hopefully, uh, hopefully I no longer part of the season,
but other people are because I was able to motivate them to do it.
Amen.
Torsten, thank you for being on the program.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks again to my guest today, Torsten Gross.
Appreciate him sharing his journey to see the full interview with him.
Visit the cars and culture YouTube channel.
Like, subscribe and dive into our growing library of more than 200 episodes
where the road always leads to the people who shape the ride.
That's episode 219.
I'm Jason Stein.
We'll see you down the road.
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