GHiT 0743: Queers Shifting Gears - Race and Year In Review

Who hope to one day be the world's greatest driving heroes.

Created from the cosmic legends of the universe, comes our team captain, The Vision, Bill Fisher.

And their soon-to-be wonder woman, Vicky Fisher.

And our captain marvel and head flight trainee, Jennifer Scripchuk.

Their mission, to fight injustice, share what is right and wrong to get you out of your house

and come out racing with them and serve all mankind.

They are the Garage Heroes in training team.

Welcome to the Garage Heroes in training podcast. I am your slightly impaired host, Bill.

Who else is hosting?

I'm Vicky.

And I'm Audra.

All right, ladies, we have a guest. And to the happiness of very nearly the entire world,

I'm not going to talk a whole lot because I can't. But who's our guest?

This is Queer's Shifting Gears. And I'd like to introduce Tim, Cliff, Andrew, and hopefully soon Ace.

Yes, hello, hello.

Welcome to the pod.

Thanks for having us.

I think you guys have been on before. I know Tim has because different haircut, same voice.

Cliff, you were on, weren't you?

Yeah, I was on last time.

Okay. And Andrew, you're playing Super Secret Spice Soldier because you don't have a video.

So I'm not sure you've been on.

Correct. Yeah. Yeah, trying to get the video to work.

But yeah, so I'm new to the team. So I'm playing a little bit of catch-up.

So I'm new to the pod also.

All right, excellent.

So if I work from memory, I think we had Tim on when he was delusional and thinking this was a good idea before he even tried.

You are a little bit delusional because I was on the podcast only after our first race.

I was after. Okay, that was where...

No, we met well beforehand when I was like, this is exciting and fun.

And that it turned out to still be exciting and fun.

It's a little bit more challenging.

Not to the answer I was looking for. I remember it was before or after your first race.

Because we had so many text messages back and forth like, how do I tie my shoes? What is breathing?

The basic things.

We took this team under our wing because they were what we were when we first started out.

They had a ton of questions and they had just gotten their new car. Well, their race car.

They're working on their car.

Right. Yeah.

And then they went through the whole process of trying to build a paddock and then what do they need and how to get started.

And we just we helped them for their first race, which was earlier this year.

No, was it this year?

Yep. It was April and pit race.

Yeah.

And we did our first race, everything that could have gone wrong, that we were able to handle went wrong.

Anything more and we wouldn't have been able to handle it.

But we managed to come out successful.

And then we had our second race in October at summit point.

So can we back it up a little bit?

I kind of want to hear what started you on this.

Like, how did you find lemons?

How did this all go out?

Yeah, I first heard about lemons.

Ignore him.

Yeah, it's not hard to ignore him.

Most people do the smart ones do.

I personally heard about lemons through the TV show roadkill.

That was my first exposure to it, but it was still never something I actually tamed of thought of actually doing.

But then I got invited to a race by my friend Chris, who is on the ask me about your purity test score team.

They run an eclipse and he invited me about four years ago.

And I just showed up to pit race and I was like, wow, this is crazy racing.

Cool.

Oh my gosh, race cars.

Like, what are these weird cars?

And then the second year he invited me again.

And this time I was like, how do you guys even do this?

Like, what are you guys even doing?

How do you manage this?

And then the third year I was like, oh my gosh, how do you like, how do you share ownership?

How do you know who brings hearts?

What are the things and like the more logistics.

Really what actually got me into it was I moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has wonderful driving roads, mountains nearby, everything to northern Ohio, which is flat, flat, flat.

And I couldn't get my driving fix and I bought a driving sim still couldn't get the fix.

So I was like, maybe this racing thing might be for me and let's go see and how bad can it be?

If it's not so expensive, but that's where I started at least.

Andrew and Cliff, I think I mentioned it to you.

I don't know if you heard about it before me.

Oh, I had been following lemons for a really long time.

At least 10 years, I'd been watching the race recaps and YouTube kind of wishing and hoping that someday the opportunity would strike me and I'd try to get friends interested, but nothing ever really panned out.

And then so yeah, when you approach me with this like what a year ago, it was kind of like, oh, I kind of have to do this now.

See, I learned about lemons, I think through that same roadkill video where they couldn't even complete one lap.

And then came back a few years later to see if they could get 25 or 24 laps of lemons and since then I've just been following it.

I think hilariously enough, I was trying to get a team together in Texas when you had messaged me and was like, hey, can you talk me out of buying a race car?

And I said, no, but if you do buy it, I'll drive.

And that's how we got here.

Yeah, Cliff was the first person to volunteer to be on my team.

I ended up like telling a bunch of people, I didn't tell any of my close friends in the area that I was buying a race car because I was like, I don't know if I'm actually going to get it yet.

Like, I don't know if the deal is going to go through or anything like, so I don't want people signing up and then disappointing them like who knows what's going to happen.

So I'm like, I'll talk to Cliff.

Like, you know, he's a distant person.

Like he can be good on advice.

He's amazing at advice.

Like there's no way he's going to like feel obligated to join my team because he lives far away.

And he was the first person to be like, I'm in.

I was like, holy shit, really?

I didn't even know what the car was.

You had just said, I'm looking at a race car.

Your direct message was, can you talk me out of buying this?

Yes.

I had all the reasons to buy one.

I had none of the reasons not to.

Well, in the in car world, it means talk me into it because I'm going to do it anyway.

Yeah, I bought it.

And then shortly after I attended, I, you know, joined the Facebook group and everything got to talking.

And then a team invited me out to pit rates for a lucky dog event where just to like shadow them,

be on their crew, help with refueling.

And that's where I met Bill and Vicky.

We shared a garage together and then they just started talking.

And I was just like, Hey, this is where I'm planning on going,

but any advice from anyone.

And I got so much advice that weekend and even more stickers and stickers.

And then we just took them under our wing.

They're like the baby birds.

And we started.

No, there's no better place to be helping them out to get them on their way.

Oh, yeah.

If you remember the reason he got so much advice from us that weekend is because our car was levitating on

Jack stands the entire weekend.

So we have nothing to do besides give them advice.

As our car retended to be the DeLorean without the 88 miles an hour part just sit there.

Yes.

It was it was still working on that BMW.

It was the BMW.

It was a BMW still working the Gremlins on the BMW.

So, you know, that's how that went.

Did any of you have driving experience before this?

And Tim, you said you got a SIM.

This is so you went out there, wheel to wheel racing.

No track, no autocross, no anything.

You just boom right into it.

For me, I had a little bit of track experience through a prior employer,

but it was not like racing or anything.

It was I worked for the self driving car company in Pittsburgh.

And so we got to throw around an 8,000 pound Volvo and anything on a track.

And that was pretty fun.

But it was not racing.

It was like, you know, learning how to get lift off over steer on a nine seater Volvo.

Awesome.

But no, that was pretty much the limit of it.

I had a sports car.

I had multiple sports cars, you know, street driving type stuff.

And then I bought a SIM that was a full motion rig and like that was hugely helpful

and still is hugely helpful.

But that was the limit of my experience.

I did like one or two track days before the event.

The first one was purely just to see does my car work because it's not street legal.

I literally like talking like, Hey, can I just drive around your parking lot at the race track first

and then decide if I want to pay?

And they're like, absolutely.

And it like worked.

And then I was like, okay, I'm going to go out on track and just drive slowly.

And it worked out because only three people showed up to the track day that day.

So it was essentially an empty track for most of the day.

And I was able to like test the car and start to get faster.

But no, just like two track days and then get on on track.

I think Cliff ended up having more experience than me.

Didn't say you did autocross or something or

No, no, no.

This latest the closest I'd ever gotten before getting behind the wheels of that track.

Live in pit race was I had been on a track once on a motorcycle.

Oh, on a motorcycle.

You do the SAE or was that Andrew that did the SAE.

So I had some autocross experience.

I had an old coworker that bet me that his, his new Corolla would be faster than my Mazda 6.

So we had to go settle that bet and started autocrossing.

And then I got the, you know, bit by the bug and went out and bought an old NB Miata.

And then the second NB Miata and then long story short, I now work for Mazda corporate.

So I'm big Mazda guy, but I only had autocross experience.

So no like actual track experience, no track days.

I've always wanted to, but never really got around to it.

So that this was my first time on an actual race track.

Um, actually, well, second time we had done a practice day, like a month or what, two months beforehand.

So other than, yeah, we did a track day and then the race day at some point and that was it.

Yeah.

So, so I just, I just kind of have to bring it around to what track did we end up racing at with you guys, this latest one.

So this latest one, we were at Summit Point Motorsports Park.

That was what at the end of October and we ended up doing that.

And that was fantastic.

We actually didn't know if Cliff was going to be able to join us and know what, like three weeks before the event.

It was finally like, I can do it.

It kind of came in skidding in sideways, didn't he?

It was great because we didn't even know where it was.

And it's like, oh yeah, Baltimore, like, oh yeah, it's going to be near DC.

I can just pop by my parents place in Baltimore.

It's like, I guess you can because I'm worried about like having to drive to the airport like couple hours, pick Cliff up, that sort of thing.

So what was the weather there?

What would you say?

Was it?

It was night.

It was cold as heck at night, but it warmed up pretty nicely during the day, which I appreciate.

Yeah, it was like no rain, no nothing.

It was really clean all weekend, which was a pleasant surprise for me at least.

That were you staying in the van?

Because at the same time that all this was going on, he decided to really go head first into all of it and do a camper van.

He bought a van and he converted it so he can haul his trailer with his van.

So we're not saying he's an overachiever, but he's a little bit of an overachiever.

So did you end up staying in your van or did you end up staying in the trailer?

Oh, I ended up staying in the van all weekend.

It was great.

I had abundance of power after I realized I had disconnected my solar panels while driving out.

So like the first night I was conservative on power and I didn't use my space heater.

But then night two and three, it's like, oh yeah, I had heated blankets, space heater.

I had all the power and electricity.

I was running our quick jacks and charging all of our stuff all weekend.

We had an abundance.

It was easy peasy and all of the tools were in the van as well.

So I could lock up at night.

All of our spare parts were in there.

We brought out the tables, got camp set up pretty nicely.

It was easy.

And then we also had a spare RV for everyone else on the crew because I was not sharing a bed with three other people.

And Andrew needed a place for cooking.

Yeah.

Which he did a phenomenal job.

He really did.

His food was really good.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

So let's see.

What car are you driving?

What car is this car?

So we got the car that was previously with Yuri and the great flops of oil.

And it is a 1996 Nissan Maxima.

Got a V6 five speed manual.

And it is way faster than I ever intended to get a race car.

But it has been wonderful for us.

It has been extremely reliable.

The only issues that we've had with it are issues that I kind of maybe cost.

But like it's like caused, but I just didn't realize.

But no, we were racing that it was perfectly reliable all weekend at some point.

It was flawless all weekend long.

Do you want to talk about the issues that you address and fix before?

I mean, clearly some of you had no problem.

I mean, this was so when I got it from Yuri, he told me all of the things that were like problematic with it,

which was just like the axle was completely destroyed.

CV boot had been torn for like 10 races.

And so it finally like seized up or whatever.

So I was like, okay, cool.

So I ended up replacing both axles discovered that the ball joints were also toast.

So I replaced the control arms, but the control arms are custom that Yuri made.

So I had to find a welding shop that would rebend them or well, I told them, hey, can you cut and weld these?

And they're like, no, we're going to just bend them rather than weld them, which is like great.

And then they welded the old ones.

So got new ball joints, new bearings, had to fix an exhaust, all that sort of thing.

There's lots of little fixes and then small things.

And then three days before summit, oh, it also needed a new steering rack.

And there was a small hole in the block that turns out was just like an intentional thing that breaks when it gets cold.

So it doesn't put a hole in the block.

It's like this gasket or whatever.

Anyways, long story short, I didn't replace the gaskets and the transmission when I replaced the axles and turns out you're supposed to do that.

Wasn't in any of the manuals or videos that I watched people just were popping in and out axles.

So I didn't just realize that the all winter long, the car was just leaking fluids because well, it does.

So it was leaking steering fluid.

It was leaking water from the engine.

It was leaking oil from the oil pan and also turns out was leaking transmission fluid.

I knew about most of them and I got them all fixed, but I didn't know.

I didn't realize the transmission fluid was leaking until like a week before the event.

So then the axle was stuck and we showed up to the race pit race in April with a stuck axle and it wouldn't come out.

And it was a whole thing.

We spent the entire test and tune day getting it out and working it out.

But we were able to run pit race all weekend long without any more mechanical issues from the car, which was fantastic.

And then just like general maintenance stuff between just like changed oil, checked everything over to get out for another test and tune and it was fine.

And then we did some of the points.

I'm just going to interject.

This is going to blow your mind.

How much knowledge did you have about cars before you started?

Theoretical knowledge.

I watched a lot of YouTube, but I had intended.

This is why I love this guy.

I had so my first fun car that I bought was a 1959 MG.

And the goal was to learn how to work on a car while also enjoying a sports car.

And I was like, let me get something simple, minimal electronics, minimal everything.

It's a simple car. I know it's going to break down and there's tons of resources out there.

Most reliable car I've ever owned.

I had it for two and a half years and the only thing that went wrong was the tail light blue.

Thank you.

Literally, it was the most reliable thing I've ever owned, which is unheard of.

But yeah, so this is the car that I've worked the most on and learned how to do everything on.

I tell you, that's pretty awesome.

It blows my mind. It does.

So anyway, how did the race perform for you guys on Saturday?

What was your impressions of the track? How did your car perform?

How about Cliff? How about you guys? What do you think?

That summit point?

Yes. Let's talk about summit point.

Tell us if some of your experiences summit point on Saturday.

It was, it was a fun track.

I had done some sim racing beforehand.

So I kind of knew the layout already and kind of what to expect in terms of some of the blind corners and some of the elevation changes.

But I was not really prepared for how fast that track actually is.

That was like being able to call out corners in like through the radio or getting back out and like talking like, I don't know.

Coming into turn four into five, like we have to do X, Y and Z and having the rest of the team.

I mean, that was a lot of fun.

That was, it was a good track.

I have no complaints about it.

Just way faster than I was expecting.

I think a common thread that we all said was it was easy to learn the track, but hard to master.

Like I think that's what you said.

Yeah, I said it was easy to learn the track. It was a nightmare to master.

Probably the weirdest learning curve of any circuit that I've ever been on since like it requires way more commitment to get a good time, get a good lap time than I think any of us were expecting.

Since like every turn flows so nicely through every other turn and slowing down on accident and one turn means that your speeds to the next five are impacted a lot more than I was expecting them to be.

Which is great learning experience of just what to expect.

Interesting. Andrew, did you have a comment on that?

Yeah. So, well, for me, Saturday, I mean, I was just so overwhelmed to be honest with you, just with that.

I'd never been on a traffic jam with other cars before, especially like I only done one track day.

So my main goal was like, I want to be safe, but I don't want to wreck the car.

I don't want to ruin anybody else's weekend.

So I was just trying to do my best to drive predictably and also just kind of learning what that deep, what that meant at the same time.

And then on my very first lap out on Saturday, that Ford Focus got in a really bad accident and it happened right in front of me on my very first lap.

Oh, no.

Yeah, I was like threading the needle through these like two cars and it was like dust everywhere.

I couldn't see anything. So yeah, I somehow made it through that.

And then after that, I was like, okay, maybe I can, I can do this.

It was kind of a confidence booster to make it through an accident like that and not have any damage.

But then I didn't, I think Sunday is when I really got to actually learn the track.

So I followed Jen around, not to jump ahead, but I followed Jen around for, I don't know, 10, 15 laps.

It was a really long time.

But just doing that repetition of following her and her line, that's really what taught me the track.

And then like later that day, I went out and put out some, I was really happy with my lap times after that, after actually getting to learn the track.

So yeah, it was a fun track, really, really long straight away.

I actually spun to Friday was the practice day.

And one of the first couple laps, I spun on the first corner because I just didn't realize how long that straight is and how much speed you're carrying at the end.

And you need to really get on the brakes early.

Yeah. And it's a short, it's a very, very sharp turn.

I actually spun on that also.

But it is a, I don't think it has a lift to really slow you down or not a whole lot of it to slow you down, like some of the other tracks would.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

And I was still kind of learning the car and the brakes are so different than any kind of street car.

I mean, you really have to stomp on them hard.

So kind of learning the brake limits of the car too.

And that was, we did a track day in Nelson's ledges and that was so invaluable to learn the car, learn the grip levels and the handling limits of it before actually doing a race day.

So I think that that really helped.

But obviously I wasn't quite enough.

You guys did so good this time around.

I really have to say that and, and it's, it's all like a learning process.

The whole thing is a learning process.

I mean, for your second race on a track, that's amazing.

It really is.

Because the thing was, if, if I remember, and if, if, if I remember correctly, Tim, were, were people using you as a person to follow to learn the track?

Cliff.

Yeah, so the reason he's calling me out is we actually had on, it was either Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.

Someone had approached me to ask if we had a list of drivers up on the whiteboard so that they would know when to send out their drivers since we were so easy to spot.

And we're only fast enough or just smooth enough that they wanted to send people out behind us and to follow for others to run the track.

So yeah, I think we were.

You made an impression.

Hard to miss us.

It was a lot of clean driving that weekend that the whole time and I don't feel like anyone was going crazy out there was it was nice.

Yeah.

And I think also, I think, but this particular race is because that there was a race the weekend before.

So I don't think that the track was as packed as a normal race track would be.

Bill, how many, how many are 100 cars that started the weekend?

Wow, that's still a lot.

It didn't feel.

101 cars started the weekend and about, I think, 74 finished.

Okay.

So it was really good racing.

Like everyone was extremely predictable.

I think there was only one car that I was like, you're a moron.

And the rest of the time it was like, okay, you're clearly still learning this track.

But they were also like, I don't know where I'm going.

But as soon as I see that you're behind me, I'm getting over and letting you pass me like that sort of learning the track.

Like I just screwed up this curve.

Oh, no, I didn't expect to suddenly go that way.

Like totally fine.

Which is surprising because there must have been like 30 or 40 rookies at the rookie meeting too.

Yeah.

There was a lot of new drivers that were there.

And the track is narrow.

So huge highlight to have people follow with you to learn the track.

What are the highlights from Saturday?

Saturday, I think one of the biggest highlights is that it was everyone got in the car and laid down clean laps.

We didn't have any issues.

We were able, it was sort of like starting from scratch again.

I think we sort of had our first race was a big reality check.

And also a fragility check.

I think we were, a lot of us were like riding high on like we're invincible.

The car is invincible.

Like we came from really low lows, but then it's still like cars invincible.

And it's like, no, the car is not invincible.

And so we were performing a lot more like a team that like understood of like, we were talking about corners.

Like just that aspect of like I had a printed out track map.

And we were able to talk about corners and be like, hey, you guys are shifting down a second.

No, you don't like what clip was saying of like track was way faster than expected.

I never used second on the entire track.

And for the first day, I'm telling everyone else on the team, you guys need to use second here or there.

Just go faster.

They're like, what are you an idiot?

And at the end of the weekend, they're all using third.

So like, but we're having those conversations.

We were also having conversations about immediately like, Hey, fuel stops.

Here's what we can do better.

We weren't prepared in this way or like, let's like our fuel stops are understanding how they work.

We were also very, very good about being conservative.

That was the biggest win of like, not just conservative with the car and like being gentle on it,

but also conservative in, Hey, everyone does half an hour or so to start.

Like we came in 41st place, I think, even though we were running nonstop all weekend long.

But that's because we were coming into the paddock for every driver change.

We didn't want to feel pressured to do a driver change.

We wanted to be super safe all weekend.

So every, so when we were doing like, we did seven driver changes on Saturday

because nobody did more than 45 minutes that day.

I think if that, like my math is correct, I think Andrew did like 20 minutes the first time

then like half an hour, then 45 minutes.

Cliff, me and Ace all did like 45 minutes and then another 45 minutes or something like that.

But we were still being conservative and like, Hey, we were double checking our driver changes.

Like, okay, we screwed up that thing.

We forgot to start the timer or we forgot this little thing.

And I really liked that we were being so for me, the biggest victory was we were being cautious

and conservative and not at all.

Hey, we're invincible.

It's like, we are so learning and ready to master this just to get competent.

Yeah.

And I think that repetition too, really helped us like the next day to kind of get a little bit quicker at it.

And we still weren't quick Sunday, but just the repetition of doing those driver changes

and making sure everything was safe too.

I think that, I think that kind of helped out a lot later.

And also I feel like teamwork too.

I feel like it really developed a good kind of drive there with working together

and making sure we're all doing our parts to make sure that that next person gets out there safely.

So, yeah.

So, one thing you guys aren't doing yet is hot pit stops.

So, what do you guys feel like you need to do to be able to get out there?

Because that's costing you a lot actually.

But I mean, that's not the point right now.

But it's like the next step in progression that I see that you haven't done yet.

There's a very simple step one for us that would make hot pits way easier.

And that will be our radios.

Our current setup is not conducive whatsoever to being changed with gloves, tans.

And the few times we did do hot pits, that was the, I think the single biggest sticking point was just our radios.

Didn't work quite right when they were just finicky little beasts.

If they worked, they worked great.

But getting the plugs, getting things plugged in, getting that set plugged in with gloves, tans was just not, it was just an exercise in frustration.

Send me some pictures of the radio because that doesn't make sense.

We got it, we got it all sorted out.

We have a solution now.

Yeah, we already tested a new solution and it's amazing and we're all in on it.

But then the other thing, like in addition to the radios was we weren't perfect.

We were still making mistakes.

Every driver swap we did, there was a mistake.

It was either I think one of the ones like forgetting to check the timer or hey, nobody checked.

I always forget to do my stupid helmet strap always.

And like nobody checked that or one time my shoulder strap wasn't over my horns.

I think we had little, it was just all of these little mistakes and it's not just like, yeah, we know we're going to make mistakes.

And that's why we're having people double check.

But it was also like, we had a visible list on the car that we made.

And then that was our agreement to ourselves is like, we're not in a rush here.

We're not here to win.

So like, who cares about what place we're getting.

We get as slow as possible and get through these things and be so overly communicative.

What timer?

We just had like a little kitchen timer in the car or so that like, hey, we come back in when you see 45 minutes on here.

Oh, that's just to let the driver know.

So we don't have to worry about that.

So it was just like starting that timer.

It's like half of our drivers couldn't reach over and start it themselves.

I was lucky enough that I could.

So what would you say?

Overall, you know, for each of you, what would you say that your goals were for the weekend?

Each each one of you might have had one or two.

We went over them at the start of the weekend.

And that was another thing that we did amazing was going over our goals and stuff at the start of the weekend.

I know what mine is.

I'm happy to go first, but I know.

Mine was a big one because our first race at Pitt didn't go as well.

And then also it was, I was just struggling with the anxiety of running race team and like all of the amount of time and money that I've invested in all of this.

I needed this.

My goal was for this race to go better than Pitt race and specifically to find the joy in this event.

I needed to have fun.

I'm not a competitive person.

I don't give a shit about winning anything.

I'm not here to like surmount great challenges.

I'm not one of those people that just suffers for six feeling of satisfaction.

I can get that, but that's not fun.

And I just wanted to have fun and find fun this weekend because I'm investing all of this time and money I would like to enjoy the big race when it finally comes up.

And that was my simple goal and I was able to achieve it.

Good one.

How about you, Cliff?

I think Cliff froze.

Yeah.

Oh, there he is.

Yeah.

Hello.

How about you?

What was your goals?

Mine was mostly to help Tim.

Like this was another one where like we needed a clean race.

We needed to walk out of this going.

This is something we can keep doing.

Personally, I just wanted to get somewhere close to my Sim times, which didn't really happen.

But

It never happens for you.

The reality has been firmly hammered into me now.

But yeah, now this, this, the main goal this race was to a clean, a clean race.

That was, that was my goal, both in pits and on the track.

And

You didn't have it with us because we were down people.

Yes.

Assisting was the secondary goal, but it kind of became one rather than starting as one.

How about you, Andrew?

This was your very first race.

First of all, before we do goals, what did you think of lemons?

Oh, I love lemons so much.

It was everything I hoped it would be and more.

And by the way to, I have to mention your theme of airplane airplane is one of my favorite movies ever.

You guys totally killed it.

I think one of my best favorite moments is during the rookie meeting.

You were doing the whole, the whole bit with the, you know, stewardess and you brought up the barf bags.

And I think it was that moment that judge Eric made you stop because everyone was howling it was so distracting.

So yeah, I need to say I love lemons.

I love the sense of humor, the camaraderie.

It was the whole thing was amazing and fantastic.

So, yeah, so glad to be a part of it.

And I look forward to your future themes.

If I can make a suggestion, Austin Powers, if it hasn't been done yet, I think Austin Powers, you guys could kill that one too.

It is on the list.

Okay.

I have a question for you, Andrew.

Yeah.

What is the blue zone for?

The blue zone.

Oh, gosh, airplane.

Oh, sorry, the loading dock.

Oh, weekend along.

It's a quiz that we ask and people don't know the answer.

I kind of blocked it out from because it was just so constant.

It is so constant.

Okay.

So did you walk in with a goal, Andrew?

Yeah.

So I really, I wanted to obviously stay safe.

I didn't want to stuff the car or ruin our team's weekend or anybody else's weekend.

Because I don't know if you remember, but at pit race, they had a little bit of an incident with a previous team member.

So I really didn't want to be a new guy that stuff the car.

You didn't want to be the red shirt.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And then, you know, just wanted to learn a little bit about racecraft too, which I think I fortunately accomplished all of those things.

So it worked out.

Nice.

It was successful for everyone on every front, like everyone's goals that they came in.

And I know I can speak to Ace of like what their, his goals were for the weekend of like, he was able to succeed on them as well.

Everyone came in with the best set of goals.

It was awesome.

I think you guys did good.

And, you know, Andrew mentioned trying to learn a little bit of racecraft.

The teams that usually get into a lot of trouble or when they try to learn a lot of racecraft in their first race, that's, that usually doesn't go well.

No, my racecraft goal was get comfortable passing people again.

I think also some of the problems that arrive with some teams is that they're arriving to race and win, but they haven't been on a track before.

So that's where some of them get in trouble.

I think where I actually, I saw at least, I think I saw Cliff have the same visceral physical reaction that I did.

When Bill was like, yeah, you guys were, you didn't do any hot pits that cost you a lot that weekend.

And my first response to that was like, no, actually, we gained so much from that.

We didn't cost anything.

We gained so much learning, so much teamwork, so much, all of these things like we were so successful.

Who cares about coming high up in the ranks?

You guys learned a lot.

Well, I think that with the car being so reliable, I mean, I think that's really the key to this.

And, you know, as a newbie, it just seems like if you have a good car that's running right and you're able to stay out there, that's your key to success, right?

Yes.

Slaps, slaps.

I liked to tell my team all the time of like there was a Passat at pit race that had a diesel.

It was a diesel engine and it ran diesel fuel all weekend.

And it won simply because they never refueled.

They just did a hot pit driver stop.

They would drive into town and the evening fuel up on diesel and then come back and they would do the full day Saturday and full day Saturday Sunday.

And they just won purely out of, they only stopped to driver change.

And they were like a slow car.

It's been much faster in our car, but I think we were all kind of babing the car, especially the transmission.

Those are going a little bit on thirds.

So we were babing it.

I was double clutching a lot.

So that slowed me down a little bit.

Were you guys having transmission issues?

Sort of.

Metallic in the fluid.

Yeah.

So I didn't actually, for me, it was like, at our last race, everyone drove the car like a race car.

And they drove the shit out of it, which is like great.

But at the same time, there was like, for me, when I told people, hey, drive it gently.

My definition of drive it gently is different from everyone else's different of drive it gently.

And that was one of the learnings from the last race and something we came in understanding a lot more differently.

And one of those moments was when I did a transmission fluid change after the race.

And I shared the photos with the team and there was metal glitter in it.

Same amount that there was when I drained the transmission previously, but I didn't have those photos or those things.

And like, guys, we really, you're not being gentle enough.

We need to be more gentle like between that and like the other thing that we talked about as a team was like really rain in the RPM limiter of like, don't over rev the car.

And so those were things that like from the previous race of like, we were being a little bit too hard on the car.

And I think there was a moment in our group conversation about the glitter where the team started getting like, oh, how can we solve this problem?

Well, we can do hard and this, we can do transmission swap.

We could, oh, there's these hardened gears things from over here.

And I'm like, in the reality, those things cost more than the car.

We would just do a manual, get a transmission out of a junkyard.

And then somebody responded to that being like, yeah, that makes sense.

But then we would probably have to baby it because it's a junkyard trans.

And my response to that was, we already have a junkyard trans.

We should be babying it.

And I think I saw that click in a lot of people's heads.

And so all weekend long, like, yeah, everyone was being really gentle.

And turns out we had completely shattered motor mounts.

So we were struggling to get into third and second, especially on curves,

which makes sense because the motor was at least an inch.

It could move the transmission side mount, could move two and a half inches,

maybe three inches up and down, left and right for the entire weekend.

So I assume going around corners, it was moving and making it hard to get into third.

Third to fourth.

We had a similar problem.

Yeah.

So and yeah.

But so like everyone was being really gentle on the car, which like cost a lot of time.

I think I did a couple laps in anger on test day to just like, like on test day,

it was like go out, baby, the car, okay, it doesn't work.

Then go out and beat the shit out of the car and make sure it still works.

And like it can handle that, but then everyone was really good all weekend just driving it gently.

And like, yeah, of course we had a few mess ups and stuff.

I don't know.

You had no problem passing me.

The car, the car is quick and it's smooth.

It is.

The car is very quick.

It has a lot of torque and I didn't realize how quick it was.

I think this race and then maybe pit race coming out of the bowl,

being able to pass people on hills was just pretty spectacular.

The amount of grip is amazing too at that thing.

I mean, it has really really, I don't know.

I can't remember how wide the tires are, but yeah.

Yeah.

What tires are you running?

We're running RS for us.

Okay.

I can figure out how wide the tires are.

Yeah.

What do you say that there was a tire thing that was going on with you guys?

Yeah.

I think, I think you guys were talking about like having to stretch your,

were you the one that wanted to stretch the rims or was that somebody else?

No, that's somebody else.

Okay.

No, it was somebody else.

I know who it was.

Sorry.

Well, we did screw up our tires.

After pit race, since we had, we had eaten those tires a little bit.

We decided to do a tire rotation and then Saturday Sunday,

we decided to do another tire rotation and then swap them back to

the exact same way they were at the end of pit race.

Why?

There was a miscommunication of how to rotate the tires.

I don't know what was supposed to be the front left tire at pit race was

supposed to go on the front right and it ended up on the front left again.

And we've been monitoring our tire stuff.

So like it was fine for all of the weekend, but it was fine because

well, not all of the weekend.

So Saturday ran the tires normal and then Sunday,

we did a tire rotation in the morning and where the front left

tire ended up being the one that was burnt the most up on pit race.

Ace went out first.

He's one of our fast drivers.

Totally fine.

Then Cliff and Andrew went out and they're both, they've set some

quick times as well.

But I would say Ace and I are consistently like quick.

Cliff, I think you're like just below us.

And then Andrew was driving gentle.

Also, you got some good lap times too.

I got a tad.

I don't know what you would call it.

I got the curse this week.

That weekend where something happened in my hours behind the

wheel.

I think I only had an hour and a half actually on track.

You got a lot of red flag.

A lot of fires.

Yeah.

There were a lot of fires.

And then I went out and by my third lap,

I immediately knew something was wrong because the car going

around right hand corner corners was just chung chung chung chung chung chung.

I was like, do we have like a chunk out of our tire or something?

Got the car back in.

Nope.

I was like, let's check the pressures, whatever go back out.

And I knew and the tires were just wasted because all weekend

long you could break as hard as you want in that car and not

lock the tires up.

And for the first time, I locked the tires up and they were

warm.

The track was warm.

It was perfect conditions.

And I've never locked the tires on that car.

So I knew something was wrong.

And then after post discussion,

we learned that the wrong tire went on the wrong spot.

And that's fine.

And that was on Saturday.

That was Sunday.

So Sunday afternoon.

So like the last hour and a half of racing,

I had to go a couple of seconds slower.

Oh no, like that's fine.

It's fine, whatever.

But yeah, we're running 255s.

Overall for the weekend,

how do you think overall the entire race event went?

Not just yours, but.

In general.

What did you guys think about the whole summit racing event?

What do you think, Cliff?

Honestly,

I really hope they invite us back because that was such an awesome

track and like.

95% of everything was just like, it's a lemon's event.

We're driving the cheap cars.

We're throwing them around.

We're all inexperienced.

We're going to slide off the tracks.

That's all good.

And then there were the fires.

Yeah.

The car fires.

How many did we have Bill?

Four.

Were there four car fires?

Four car fires and flip.

Yeah. One really bad flip.

One car got back out on track.

One car did get back on track.

And one deer.

Yes.

It was multiple deer by the time it was done.

But yes.

So.

Honestly,

outside of the extreme ends,

like this was a pretty chill race weekend from what I could see.

Like a.

Oh no.

Cliff Rose.

Cliff.

It's quite cold tonight.

There weren't.

Like I was paying attention to just.

My network is starting to have some.

We got you back.

We noticed.

Go ahead.

So we left up at the deer in the overall track and having us

come back.

Yeah.

I think 95% of everything seemed to be incredibly minor.

And like.

That just seemed like a good.

Relatively clean race.

Like.

I don't.

I didn't hear any real complaints.

The track officials I never heard yelling.

So I.

Consider that a good thing.

They were running around on the carts though.

Stay behind the lines.

Stay behind the red line.

Not the white line.

The red.

You gotta.

That would have been an opportunity to rerecord your

audio of the red line is for not parking in.

It was pretty good.

Yeah.

So.

What did you learn from the last race that you applied to

this race mostly.

From from your entire experience at Pitt to your.

Experience here what mass or what I mean you guys.

Seemed like a completely different team.

I just want to say that.

But what did you mostly apply.

I think the biggest thing that our team applied overall.

Was purely learned out of just actually.

Like.

Experiencing the weekend.

Like I came in with more experience because I'd been on a

crew.

And so talking ahead of the weekend we were like okay.

At Pitt race everyone had a role.

You're going to go get fuel.

You're going to be in charge of this.

You're going to be in charge of food.

You're going to be in charge of that.

And everyone was like yeah I can do that.

But I don't think anyone actually understood how much.

That role was going to suck out of them or how much time it

was going to take up like the oh fuel.

I got to do that immediately or else it's going to get

forgotten or like food.

Oh no I have to start cooking way hours ahead.

And I think it's not that we took our roles more

seriously or took them.

Harder.

It was just.

I think we understood what was truly expected.

The amount of work that and just be okay.

Once you take that role.

I've got it.

That's my job.

And I think there was a lot more of that sharing of work.

People like.

Really took on that ownership of that work.

Work a lot better.

Not we better but a lot more strongly.

We had a lot of team chemistry between us and we were

just always looking out for each other to and like.

You know what I mean?

You're like, Hey, did you eat lunch yet?

I didn't see you at lunch.

I'm going to get you some food right now.

You know that.

So I feel like that really went a long way in making sure we

were all kind of taken care of.

That was one we learned from pit race as well.

Yeah.

Two people got in the car without having eaten lunch.

That's a tough day.

We can only make it.

We can't make you eat it.

So.

Okay.

So how about we do the traditional, the highlight, the low

late, the low light and ugly, you know, what went bad?

Your story time.

Or the good bad and the ugly.

The good bad and the ugly.

Okay.

The good.

It was overall the good.

I.

The number of people who's being out in the products with

everyone else, the number of people who stopped by to grab

stickers or just chat, that was spectacular.

Really?

Honestly, the highlight of the event for me was just like

listen, like watching, talking to.

It's felt like every team of just like, yeah, it's cool.

Oh, your represent your representation.

You're shifting gears.

That is awesome.

We need more of this or like the yellow really fast on

track.

We're trying to follow you like that.

That was spectacular.

That was the good.

All right.

That is awesome.

How about you, Andrew?

What was your highlight?

Oh man.

I really enjoyed your theme again.

Sorry, but it just, you guys had me laughing like the

whole time, but I guess it just like in general, just

the mood of the whole event, like everyone was having

such a good time and it was really infectious.

So I think like that.

I guess I underestimated how much fun it was going to

be just with everyone there with their own themes and

there were a lot of good ones too.

Like the French, the Lou Heist guys, like they were

amazing like that.

Yeah.

Everyone did such a good job with the themes and

having a good time.

And so that, that for me was the highlight.

We, that was ours when we first started out and

that's when we said we found our idiots.

Definitely like minded idiots.

How about you, Tim?

Um, so my highlight, uh, I mean, I would have to agree

with Cliff.

I'd have to agree with Andrew.

What we talked about of the, there were so many

highlights this week, that weekend, the chemistry,

everyone working well together.

I think for me it was twofold of the finding the

joy in it and like finding that confidence and

joy and it going well so that I can keep doing this

because I do enjoy doing it, but I don't do enjoy

doing it at the cost.

But the, the thing that got me the most psyched was

actually based on a fear I had coming into the

weekend.

I had seen a video posted on Instagram by the

Lemons organization of a Volkswagen Golf spinning

out in front of a car and then hitting the car

like from the dash cam of this like one car

they see the car in front of them spinning, spinning

like it catches and slams into them aside.

And you just, there's no way to predict what way

physics is going to catch this car because it's

spinning like the whole NASCAR thing.

I had that happen in front of me.

The Red Ford Thunderbird spun out in front of me

and I picked aside and went full throttle.

And I think the following lap I was screaming

nonstop and joy because I'd survived my literal

fear of what happened.

It happened right in front of me to me and I survived

and came out on the other side and we still had

a working car.

That's awesome.

That really is awesome.

So does that get the bad for you too?

No, let me think about the bad thing.

Come back to me on that one.

Okay.

How about you, Cliff?

Was there any low light?

Was there any bad, good, bad, ugly, any bad

things?

Nothing, honestly, not a lot of bad this weekend.

Some annoyances such as not getting as much time

out on a live track as I would like, but like

that's not really bad.

That's just racing.

Yeah, that was a good weekend.

It was a very good weekend.

I mean, there's a few things I was sad about.

So just watching the other cars leave or other

cars having to leave early, but like that's

the name of the game.

So it's like nothing really, nothing bad.

Get any good stories then?

I mean, we had a good story from another team.

Yeah, they had a bad experience that resulted

in a good experience for one of our friends,

Chris, who invited me to join like the

pretty test score.

Their first Airbnb night, they basically

stayed at a cult.

I will not tell you the story because you have

to have these guys on.

But the essence of like is this is somebody

that I'm good friends with and I spend

all my time with outside.

Big dude, strong.

He's down for anything crazy weird.

He's our wonderful weird stuff.

For so to see him be uncomfortable and not

just like, oh, yeah, it was weird.

A crazy story.

It was like.

I don't feel good.

So he stayed in our RV the rest of the weekend.

Was that ace?

No, this is a Chris from another team.

Okay.

About your priority test score.

Well, that's a story.

That's an actual story.

What about you, Andrew?

Oh, man, I really don't have too many complaints.

I guess like the paddock space was like a bit tight.

And in our RV situation wasn't like great.

I guess like we had some issues with our RV,

like not really having a lot of water in it.

Like it's a super minor stuff like inconveniences.

But yeah, other than that, no, I mean, I really

don't didn't have any issues or complaints really.

We had a great time.

Yeah.

We had, we had one thing that was prevented.

Who, who was it?

It was one of y'all three that said we leave the

keys of all of our pit vehicles or all of our

vehicles in the car just in case someone has to

move it.

One of you said that I don't know if that was

Bill or if it was someone else.

But that saved us like big time since I had

parked Ace in and Ace had to go get gas.

Oh, that was like, you know, they had said that

that sounds good. Good idea.

And just threw my keys on the dash and yeah,

it turned out to save that.

Let us run for the rest of the weekend.

Yeah.

Who's going to do your car at a race?

I mean, let's be honest.

You'd have to ask Bill.

I do drive a Subaru.

They might have wanted the engine.

So what did you guys learn this particular

weekend that will carry you forward to the

next one?

Like what are you going to do differently?

What for your next one?

I can tell you it's also our low light that I

think the rest of the team missed was our

radio comms were a pain all weekend long.

We figured out the solution.

Ace got like a professional motorsport grade and

it worked flawlessly and perfectly.

But the rest of us, the solution we were running

before and had kind of worked for us ended up

being a massive pain all weekend long.

Was that the discord?

No.

So we didn't have to resort to discord.

The discord is the backup for us and it worked

great.

We had to use it in a pit race event.

No, it was just, it was a combination of the

company.

We had torn one of the cables that plugs into

our headsets.

And they sent out, I asked for two replacements.

Great.

The replacements that they sent me had like,

around the plug was larger.

So it didn't seat itself all the way in the

plug hole.

So at the start of the weekend, I really had to

carve away all of the plastic down to a

tiny little nub.

And then the plug was like looser or whatever.

So at every driver change, we ended up just

duct taping this bug in.

Just onto the helmet, just a piece of duct

tape onto the head.

Just because it's all it needed.

It would stay in there on its own.

But if you turned your head the wrong way, it

would slide out a little bit.

So we just duct taped it on.

And it was just a pain.

And for some drivers, it picked up a lot of

background noise.

Even though it's like the mic is noise

cancelling.

Not that noise cancelling.

But Ace actually ended up getting a custom

radio harness that worked with our radios.

We just had to unplug a little bit extra

of it flawlessly.

So all we need is the new harness.

And there was no background noise.

It was wild.

So the reason we didn't go with it is because

it's motor spark grade.

It's like, hey, every driver would have to

spend $250 on their own.

And coming into this race, I didn't want

that.

So we went up with a solution that was like

$50 per driver.

And it doesn't work.

But then there was this screw up and that

was like, all right, it's worth the $250.

Let's do it.

That's good.

So will that enable you now to try

hot pitting at the next one?

I think so.

I think we'll probably end up doing some like

maybe on test in tune day, we'll still do

driver changes in the paddock.

But I think I'm still a proponent of like, we

can't have any silly mess ups.

Once we get a few clean driver swaps

and nothing is like safety

related that we screw up.

We can do some hot pints.

But I think also like it being new,

we also like Andrew was there first time

his first time doing driver changes and stuff.

And I think now we're finally,

we found the rhythm.

So I think we'll be able to find and probably do that.

So a couple of new drivers

and we had some stupid

safety issues that happened.

And one person was caught

by the person going, you know,

but they check you when you go out to the track.

So they came right back in and we fixed it.

And the other one realized it and came right

back in and we fixed it.

So, you know, it's not

irrecoverable if you have that happen

in hot pit.

Yeah.

What it reminds me of

is that you're

dealing with so much

information

that it

blasts you like a fire hose.

And

I think that Audra

and myself and Bill have gotten

to that point when a lot of that stuff is

background.

So it's automatic.

But you guys are in like your second race.

So you guys are still getting blasted by the fire hose.

And so it's like

it's not worth the 10 minutes on track

to do a silly mistake.

Like we all came in it. We're not here to win.

We're just here to get experience and like,

and I did the math at the start of the weekend

of like, hey, if we take

10 minutes per driver change in the paddock

this is how much time we get per driver.

And if we get, and the motivation

was to talk about black flags.

And I did the math of like, okay, assuming

best possible scenario

10 minutes per black flag

or 15 minutes per black flag,

this is how it impacts the rest of the team

of how

fewer laps or how fewer time

that you're going to get on the track.

And that's just like one black flag.

Now if we do the math of second black flag,

now we've got a 30 minute penalty

or and that sort of thing.

And here's how it affects everyone.

And like looking at it from that perspective, it was like,

oh my gosh, I'd rather go 10s.

Literally it was the compared to, I think I ended up what,

like three black flags

is equivalent to like

20 seconds a lap slower

per lap or something.

It was comically

slow

what the math ended up being.

It was fascinating how painful it would have been

to drive slower than the

black flag.

That's a very

interesting analysis

that you dove into there.

I don't think we've ever gone that deep on that.

That's a, that's pretty cool.

Actually.

Nobody listens.

Nobody listens. They don't.

Those are fun. Once you start doing them, I mean, Cliff

and I did that math on the drive home

from the first race. We were like, oh my gosh,

what is this equal?

And I was like, no, no, I want to really confirm this data.

What is it actually equal?

Yeah, I remember the conversation now.

It was about what we were estimating.

It was,

you had to drive really slow.

I'll find the number.

The math supports it

tremendously because even if you're doing

round numbers,

I'm two seconds a lot faster,

but you have to take 10

minutes.

It's ridiculous.

You can't make it up.

At pit race,

one black flag for the entire day

equals five seconds a lap slower.

Wow.

Second black flag

equals 20 seconds per lap

slower.

And then third black flag

equals 40 seconds per lap

slower.

Then there's also a flip

side of this is that after your first black flag,

to drive

fast enough

to account for the time you lost,

you are so much more

likely to get your second black flag

and lose everything that it's not even

worth it.

The math is silly.

You have to drive so much faster

to gain two seconds.

It was a fun little math project.

I love nerding out on this.

Indeed.

So, all together,

I think your race weekend went well.

You guys did most of what you were aiming for.

Let's talk about

season and review and go into the next season.

What are you guys

seeing as the next progression

for the team?

RIP pit race.

It would be nice to have that

in the early spring.

First of all, Andrew,

I'm in.

Am I all in?

On the whole

racing now?

Yeah, totally.

100%.

Yeah, I already

broke his microphone.

Andrew, you just broke up.

We got a few

already.

He's using the old radios from the first

part of it.

Yeah, so

I had rented my gear in this last race,

but yeah, now I'm committed.

I'm already trying to acquire everything

that I need for the next one.

So, 100%.

I'm so excited for the next one.

You got a good team, Tim.

You'll be driving the same lineup

for your next races.

Ideally,

I'd love to have

one back again.

It's literally just timing and scheduling.

Also, we have to pick our races.

Oh, you haven't done that yet.

No,

I looked, I narrowed it down

based on drive time.

So, I looked up

every race within eight hours,

at least in lemons.

There are some that we could do

at Mid-Ohio or something else,

but those I think

we might want to get a little bit more under our belt

before entering some other forms of racing

that are a little bit higher level.

How far is Gingerman?

Gingerman is

four hours and 45 minutes.

I highly recommend that.

Yeah, so,

it just looks really narrow.

No, it's fine.

It's a good track, though.

So, it's probably about the same

narrowness that is Nelson's ledges.

Based on the stuff

that I've done on my Sim,

the tracks that are,

so there are six tracks within

time,

eight hours of me,

and the ones that stand out the most

are New Jersey Motorsports Park,

Audubon Country Club,

NCM Motorsports Park,

and Summit Point, which we already did.

Road America

looks terrifying,

and Gingerman was just a little bit narrower

and similar to Audubon Country Club,

just like...

I think your best choice on those

would be Gingerman

Yeah, New Jersey Motorsports

seems really friendly.

Yeah, it would just be Gingerman versus

NCM, because they're two weeks away

from each other. We'd have to pick one.

But also, this is seeing if

any of these are possible

for the team.

Let me be subtle again.

Your choices should be New Jersey or

Gingerman.

Yeah, we also have to pick

how many races we want to do next year.

I think I could max out it

but we'd have to see what the rest

of the team could do.

What about some HPDE

practice time?

Yeah, I mean, I'm a

proponent of anyone coming

to my local track, Nelson's

Ledges.

It's an hour from me, it's super easy

for me to get to. I mean, Ginger already did.

Mid-Ohio is how far?

Mid-Ohio, I think,

is between two and three hours away.

Vic, you'll be there twice this year.

Yeah.

Going up there

to go do some

training events.

Nice.

Yeah, their schedule seemed

pretty sparse

with regards to HPD

and track day type stuff. I was really

struggling to actually find stuff the last time I checked.

It's with NASA Great Lakes.

Okay, yeah.

They're very good.

Also, the other thing that we couldn't do at HPD

is because I don't have a passenger seat.

Could you?

Yeah,

but it cost a fair bit of money.

So it's just a matter of getting

investing extra on that.

So, yeah.

Could you get the amount set up

and somebody who's very pretty and sitting

in front of an Orange Miata that's backwards

could bring a seat for you?

Maybe.

Possibly.

I would have to set up

to probably do a bit of

basically the mounts, the seat and the harness.

Yeah.

So harness wouldn't be too hard.

The seat mounts would be the problem

because the seat rails are weird.

But anyways, that's just the

barrier to that. It wouldn't be horrible.

It would just be like figuring out the cost

and everything.

Where's your fire bottle?

passenger seat.

That's usually the problem.

Yeah, but while the passenger seat

would be the problem.

Yeah.

The thing about though, you got the winter.

Yeah.

I think we're going to stick with

lemons for now and just track

things for now.

Because also Nelson's Leges is

super friendly for us newbies.

What I was going to say was

what's nice about Nelson's Leges is

Tim, when we were there, there were

literally what five or six other people.

So we literally had the entire place

friendly and they really don't give a

shit about anything.

There's just six hours

of open lapping

for 250 bucks.

There's rumor that

could be one of the ones that gets

added.

It can all stay at my house.

We need to make some

facility improvements, I think.

Yes, they do.

I

think you guys did amazing.

And again,

the Facebook blew up on you guys.

Yeah.

A lot of

people

were just like, hey,

I don't know

what you guys did, but

you guys were amazing on track.

So I think it's official.

I think you are

a full on member of

Lemons.

Fully accepted.

And they all love you.

Yeah.

It's nice to have the on track recognition.

It's also nice as Cliff said earlier,

to have the off track recognition, the amount

of people that were coming up.

We had the car rainbow, but we also had

a bunch of pride flags out.

We had the team name plastered across

the windshield, team career shift and gears.

You can't get more

razor flags than what we were.

We had people coming up to us

being like, I love

seeing your visibility. Love seeing that.

That was my original goal of this team.

When I attended my first

race as crew, it was

pretty fucking scary as a queer

person showing up and being like it's the

boys club. And by the end of the weekend,

I found the girls club.

I found people that it were inclusive

and whatever, but it was

still that I wanted to prevent anyone

from having that experience that I did

of hunting down

and being afraid because I almost bailed

after the first night. I almost bailed

on that race weekend.

Just to be the most obvious, hey,

you can come here and exist

and be authentic

and do anything you want

and we are here for you.

Reducing that barrier

to entry even as small as it is,

it still feels

like a giant mountain sometimes

and so we were able to do that

and we actually had a lot of people

message me after the race

as well saying how much they

appreciated our team and loved seeing our car

and that was my original goal

with the team and I

think we accomplished that this race.

I love it.

I just need to figure out how to be even more fabulous

next time. I think we

get more flags to hang off of the van.

We're not

changing the theme on the car.

We can change our theme, but we're not

changing our job.

It's a beautiful car.

We may

do...

I may have figured out how to do a

rainbow glitter flake

over top of it.

They're not expensive so

stuff might happen.

Yeah.

I love it.

I love paticking with you guys.

I think you guys are a hoot.

You guys are fun

and Andrew, your food was amazing

and especially when you brought out the

coffee maker

you had a cold press?

Oh yeah. I have a big Stanley

French press. 64

ounce. Yeah, that was convenient.

Yeah, they brought a French press, Audra.

The guys brought a French press.

The soup was amazing

as well.

And Keith, thank you.

I love cooking for people. I'm Italian

so it's just in my blood.

I understand it.

We can make requests. Don't tease us.

But we appreciate

being there and you guys

were fun.

Andrew is underselling himself.

I would like to make it very

clear. Andrew

complained about his cooking for the weekend

because he wasn't able to bring

anything home baked.

He had spent all of the stuff

that he brought.

He had gotten at a grocery store.

He had spent a week on the road

in New Jersey

before the race. He showed up

with a car packed of stuff

for work and the race.

He had to have everything

pre-done a week ahead of time.

That made it a little bit more challenging

so I'm looking forward to next time

to be able to make things at home

ahead of time in an actual kitchen

and not a tiny little two burner

situation that I had

in my RV.

I'm looking forward to it.

But you guys had a great setup.

It wasn't just me. All the food was amazing

that weekend.

The Blackstone was a great idea.

I've never brought that.

A lot of good food.

Breakfast was amazing.

I don't forget

when

didn't we have a whole tree

for our fire pit?

Didn't somebody roll out a whole tree

of wood?

They had a fire pit

but they needed wood so he went off

and he brought

a downed tree over

and I think he had a chainsaw

and he was cutting it up for the fire pit.

Wow.

That's awesome.

You never know what's in the magic trailer.

It could be anything.

That was the magic trailer.

He has everything.

We really appreciate having you guys on.

We love to ace but we'll catch ace next time.

That's right.

Maybe we won't invite you on

17 times to finally get it done the right way.

Right?

Yeah.

We've scheduled and rescheduled this one

at least two or three times.

It was just

a lot of kerfuffle in a way.

If you're being kind

I think we had to reschedule

like four or five times

and I screwed up the invitation a couple more times

just because I'm an idiot

and I'm in the...

My inbox was quite full.

Oh yeah, wait a minute.

That's this year, not last year.

Not that.

Anyway, sorry.

Life got a little hectic.

Anyway, we pulled it off.

You guys pulled it off.

You did wonderful.

I would just like to say

just imagine how good you'll be

when you stop listening to what we tell you to do

it'll be so much better.

Stop listening to these people. They're terrible.

They're already on the way.

Well on the way.

Exactly.

We do really appreciate all the advice.

That's no problem.

We had to take a frank assessment

of our mentoring skills

when we looked at the score

and it was like I think we were 40.

I think you guys were like 41.

Mark Marzo's team was like 43.

Another team was like 44.

I'm like we got to be better mentors.

These people should be way better than we are.

We stunk this week.

We had so many car problems

but it was the first run for the car

so it was expected.

Yeah, we did the if math

in our head of like if we

had done normal

full two-hour stints

and if we had done hot pits

and we ran a flawless car

we were to,

we had good lap times

and we didn't have any breakdowns.

We would have been up there.

20s and teens, right?

Somewhere in there.

Low teens based on my math.

Based on the math.

I do the math as well.

Theoretically, yeah.

It was like the times we were setting

were not far off of the leaders.

Just to make sure you're aware

when

you do that math

it doesn't math when you do it for real.

It just looks like it does

but it doesn't quite come to fruition

especially the first time you try.

It's like all of a sudden

there's this like black hole of time

that goes whoosh and you're like

oh wait a minute that didn't work at all.

We broke the car because we drove too hard

or something stupid so don't be upset

if it doesn't work out the math way.

You guys did great.

Yeah, we did. It was awesome.

The team did amazing.

I literally could not have asked

for a better weekend out of everyone.

It truly was

exceeded all expectations.

Excellent.

By the way, just to I think I was on mute before

you said that you almost quit after your first day.

You weren't quitting.

We weren't letting you quit.

No, no, no.

This was referring to my first day

at a racetrack as a crew member.

Different.

Everyone,

when you don't know anyone

and everyone's standing around

talking to each other

and it's just a bunch of boys club

which is like fine.

It's hard to break into social circles

but you know

being a kid with nail polish that's weird

and younger than everyone

by about 20 years.

I have a feeling I know where you are.

Anyway,

very well.

Can't wait to see you guys next year.

Yeah.

New Jersey

and Gingerman.

We'll be at New Jersey for sure

and Gingerman maybe.

New Jersey seems amazing.

We'll be out there next year for sure.

Thanks everybody for coming on.

Ladies, thanks for taking over

most of it.

My voice is still terrible

but I made it to the end.

Thanks everybody.

Thank you.

Thanks.

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GHiT 0743: Queers Shifting Gears - Race and Year In Review

Delorean DMC-12

Toyota Corolla

Mazda 6

Mazda MX-5 / Miata

Nissan Maxima

Volkswagen Passat

Volkswagen Golf

Ford Thunderbird

About this episode

Original notes