A “Lemons” race is a low-budget kind of racing where people compete in cheap, imperfect cars. The goal is usually to finish and have fun with the challenge of making a junky car work.
Wheel-to-wheel racing is when cars race very close to each other on the track. It’s more intense than driving alone because you’re constantly dealing with other cars right next to you.
“Breaking points” are the spots on the track where you start braking for a turn. The right spot helps you slow down enough without ruining your corner entry.
A “station” is a specific spot on the track where signals or warnings can show up. In the simulator, watching them helps you react correctly when you drive for real.
“Yellow” means caution on the track. You have to slow down and be ready for something unexpected, and you generally can’t pass like normal.
Term
queue
“Queue” here means the order of things you see as you drive—like warnings or signals. The simulator helped them get used to that order.
Term
two doors
They’re clarifying that the letter designation they’re talking about corresponds to a “two-door” body style. That’s important because different body styles use different parts and layouts.
This is about getting the car ready for a race. Even if it’s already set up for racing, you still double-check that everything is right for that event.
“Racer lingo” is the special shorthand language that track people use. The point here is that the instructor explained things in plain words instead of confusing acronyms.
Here “compress” means the suspension squats or moves down as the car loads up. That helps the tires stay planted, which can make the car feel more stable and grippy.
A “track walk” is when you walk the race track before driving it. You look at how the corners are laid out and where the car will feel different, so you’re less surprised when you’re actually driving.
Foam pads are protective coverings used on roll cages to reduce the chance of injury if a driver’s body contacts the cage. They’re commonly required or strongly encouraged by racing rulebooks as part of the car’s safety setup.
“Teched” means the race officials checked the car to make sure it follows the rules. It usually happens before the car can go on track.
Term
V class
“V class” refers to a specific competition category used by the event to group cars by rules (often performance, modifications, or vehicle type). Finishing “first in their V class” means they won their category, even if overall winners were different.
A “checker” is the checkered flag you see at the end of a race or session. In this context, they’re talking about which driver gets to finish their stint and experience that moment. It’s about race timing and roles.
The apex is the spot in a turn where you aim to get closest to the inside of the track. Hitting it helps the car turn better and set up for a faster exit. It’s basically the “best path” through the corner.
“Grippy” means the tires can grab the road well. If the track is grippy, the car can turn and slow down more confidently. If it’s not grippy, the tires slide more easily.
All-wheel drive means power goes to all four wheels. That usually helps the car stick better to the track, especially when it’s slippery. It can change how the car feels when turning and accelerating.
They’re tires meant to work in more than one season, but they’re still better at gripping when it’s warm. On a track day, the big question is whether they stay grippy and predictable as they heat up.
The Honda Civic is a small, everyday car that many people choose because it’s easy to live with. In the podcast, it’s mentioned as a comparison to another car’s track performance. That means they’re using it as a familiar yardstick for how the cars felt and handled.
Flat spots are when a tire gets a worn area that’s not perfectly round anymore. That can make the car shake and feel less grippy, especially when you’re driving hard on a track.
AVS is a suspension feature that can automatically adjust how the shocks behave. The idea is to make the car feel better and more controlled depending on whether you’re cruising or driving hard.
The GR86 is a Toyota sports car meant for handling. Here, the instructor is driving one while teaching how to read the track and carry more speed through corners.
In track driving, a “ballard” here is a fixed reference marker near the racing line used to time your turn-in point. Using it correctly helps you hit the right line early enough to take curb/edge geometry and carry more speed through the corner.
Curbing is the raised edge along the track. Drivers use it to help guide the car through the turn and keep speed up, as long as they do it at the right time.
Racecraft is how drivers use smart tactics to get past or line up next to other cars. It’s not just speed—it’s timing your moves so you can be alongside before the tricky part of the track.
An S-bend is a part of the track where you turn one way, then back the other way. Because it’s downhill, it’s easier to go too fast or lose grip, so timing matters when you’re trying to pass or line up next to another car.
Full throttle means the driver is giving the engine as much power as possible by fully pressing the gas pedal. Racers use it at the right moments to go faster and build speed for the next part of the track.
“Drift” here means the car is sliding a bit sideways while turning. Drivers do it to keep the car moving fast through the corner instead of slowing down too much.
Racers use a “line,” which is the path they take through a turn. They also use “marks,” which are reference points (like where to start braking) so they can repeat the same turn the same way every time.
“Hard right handers” are strong right turns where the car leans and loads the tires a lot. Those turns can wear one side of the tires faster—here, the left side.
The “outer shoulder” is the outer edge of the tire tread. When you’re turning hard, that edge takes a lot of the stress, so it’s where you look for wear.
A side-to-side tire swap means moving tires from the left side of the car to the right side (or vice versa). It helps balance tire wear so one side doesn’t get ruined first.
Term
raised cars on race day
They’re talking about working on the car while it’s lifted up for service. On race day you’re doing it quickly and safely, not like a relaxed garage job.
Camber is how much your wheel tilts in or out. Racers adjust it so the tire stays flat on the road when the car leans in a turn. If they “maxed out” the factory camber, it means the stock adjustment wasn’t enough for their needs.
A BMW X5 is a popular BMW SUV that a lot of shops work on. In this conversation it’s mentioned as an example of the kind of normal customer cars a mechanic might work on.
Directional tires are tires that are meant to spin one specific way. If you mount or swap them incorrectly, they may not handle water as well. They’re saying they tried the swap only because they didn’t think it would rain.
Paint pens are just markers. In racing, people mark bolts so they can quickly see if a bolt has moved or loosened after driving. It saves time during a race.
Torque is the “tightening force” you put on a bolt. Using the right torque helps keep the bolt secure without stripping it or leaving it too loose. They’re saying to mark the bolt after tightening so you can tell if it moved later.
Rumble strips are the bumpy strips on the road. When you drive over them, they shake the car. They’re saying that kind of shaking can loosen bolts if they weren’t tightened correctly.
“Overtorquing” means you tightened the bolts too much. That can stretch or damage the wheel studs/threads, which can cause problems later and isn’t safe.
They’re different units for the same thing: how tight you’re tightening. If someone uses inch-pounds when the spec is in foot-pounds (or vice versa), the bolt can end up way too tight or not tight enough.
“Hot pits” is the pit lane area that’s actively in use during a session, meaning cars are coming in and out and the environment is live and time-critical. It’s typically where you need to be extra aware of traffic and signals.
“Corner one” is the first turn on the track. It’s usually a big deal because you have to brake and turn in correctly, and other cars can affect what you can see.
The instrument cluster is the dashboard screen and gauges. Here they’re talking about the clock/display part of it breaking, which can take away useful information while driving.
A black flag is an official warning from race officials. It usually means something is wrong or you broke a rule, and you have to go to the pits right away.
Tire temperature is how hot the tire gets while you’re driving. Tires usually work best in a certain heat range—too cold or too hot can make them grip worse.
The “sweet spot” means the tires are in their best working condition. It’s usually a balance of pressure and heat where the car feels grippy and predictable.
A stint is how long a driver stays in the car during a race segment. Longer stints can change tire wear and how the car feels as the tires heat up or cool down.
A wheel bearing is what helps a wheel spin freely. If it fails, the wheel can start wobbling or grinding, and the car may need to stop so it can be fixed.
A “dive bomb” is when someone brakes really late and turns in hard to try to pass. It’s dramatic and can be dangerous because it forces other cars to react quickly.
“Turn entries” means the part of the lap where you’re getting ready to turn into a corner. If multiple cars are fighting for space right there, it’s easy for things to go wrong.
The Porsche Boxster is a Porsche sports car with the engine mounted near the middle. Here it’s mentioned because the speaker and the Boxster were going back and forth passing each other, showing how close the racing was.
Strategy is the overall plan for how you drive over the whole race, not just one corner. In this story, it’s about using the slower car ahead to help keep the other driver from getting back around.
“Box him in” means you try to trap the other driver so they can’t get around you. It’s usually done by controlling the lanes, but it can be seen as unfair if it gets too aggressive.
Race tracks have specific painted lines for where you’re allowed to enter the pit lane. If you cross that line at the wrong time, officials can treat it as a rules violation.
Term
tailspone
This sounds like they meant “tailspin,” which is when the back of the car loses grip and swings around. It’s the kind of slide that can quickly turn into a crash.
The BMW E30 is a well-known older BMW 3 Series. Here, the speaker is describing another BMW that got into trouble and spun out, causing a near-miss situation.
Turn one is the first corner on the track. Because it’s described as blind, you can’t see everything coming, so it’s easier for cars to surprise each other.
An oil pan baffle is like a small divider inside the oil pan. It helps keep the engine’s oil in the right place when the car is being pushed hard, so the engine doesn’t briefly lose oil pressure.
Second gear is a lower gear that helps you get moving out of slow corners. It gives you more control and easier acceleration than staying in a higher gear.
In racing, the outside lane is the position on the outer edge of the track when approaching a corner or passing. It’s often used to set up an overtake while keeping the inside line available for later, and it can help both cars stay on throttle through the maneuver.
“On throttle” just means you’re pressing the gas to keep the car moving fast. The speaker wants both cars to keep accelerating instead of slowing down.
Gas nozzles are the tips on fuel containers that control how the fuel flows. If the opening is wider, fuel can go in faster, which matters during a pit stop. The host is saying they should use a nozzle design that pours more efficiently.
Term
pop-routing gas cans
This is about modifying fuel cans so the fuel can be poured faster and more easily during a pit stop. The idea is to add tubing and a better outlet so you can “dump and go” more quickly. The host mentions using common hardware-store parts to do it.
A transponder is a small electronic device that helps the track time your car. It’s like a unique ID that the timing system reads, so you have to make sure you return the right one.
Concept
white boards
In track paddocks, teams often use white boards to organize logistics—like car assignments, transponder locations, and schedule reminders. The host is describing how their team’s board made operations easier by giving everyone a clear structure.
Concept
top 40%
“Top 40%” means you were faster or higher ranked than most of the other cars—roughly better than four out of every ten competitors. It’s a relative placement metric.
A fastest lap is the quickest one full lap a driver can do. It’s like the best “one lap” time from the whole weekend, and it shows how fast the car and driver were together.
Lap time is how long it takes to drive around the track one time. Faster lap times mean the driver (and car) are going quicker and usually handling better.
Tracks have turns numbered so drivers can talk about the exact spot they mean. Here, corner 4 is described as a downhill right turn right after a straight, so it’s easy to mess up and lose time.
Corner 11 is described as especially tough because it’s uphill. If you get it wrong, you come out slower and then you’re also trying to drive uphill, which makes the loss of time bigger.
That’s the tire on the front-left wheel. If you drive in a way that makes that corner of the car work harder—like braking while turning—it can wear out faster than the other tires.
Braking is slowing the car down. In racing, you usually want to slow down before you’re fully committed to the turn—if you brake while turning, the tires can get dragged and wear out faster.
Term
corner number three or four
“Corner number three or four” refers to specific numbered turns on the track, which helps drivers compare where they’re losing time or causing tire wear. Different corners load the tires differently, so the same driving mistake can show up as wear at one particular turn.
Term
HBDEs
“HBDEs” sounds like a practice event or session type. The main idea is: do these sessions so you can learn how to drive fast without overheating or wearing out your tires too quickly.
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From the great halls of their house, there are assembled three 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 Scribchuk.
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 and training podcast.
I'm going to be the host of this episode.
My name is Bill who wants to host it.
I'm Vicky.
That's right.
Vicky, we got guests.
We do.
Since you know them, well, I know one of them.
You can do the intro.
Mm hmm.
We went to go visit.
Well, we, as in me, went to go ride in a car with the team apex anti heroes with our friend,
Bradley and Anthony Hittle and Cyrus Palmer, Siri Palmer.
Palmer.
Yes.
And oh, my gosh, what fun.
We went to high planes, Bill.
Well, perhaps you should introduce them and not the content.
I Brad.
I just did.
Bradley say.
We everybody and new to the podcast, Anthony.
Oh, all right.
Anthony, you're you're very local to high planes.
I hear.
Yeah, I've never been there before.
Well, I mean, especially now.
Oh, yeah.
Now, now, I mean, it was a blast.
Yeah.
I'd never had a race car on a track.
I've never had any car on a race track before that weekend.
Oh, awesome.
Awesome.
Brad, you're you're dumb enough to have done this before and you continue to keep doing it.
So so what's the story there?
Oh, long road to home.
But you guys got me going in this and it's like, yeah, I'm moving to Denver
and I'm not really willing to let go of that experience.
It is definitely unique.
And yeah, and it's funny because Anthony and I when we when I first started working
at the same place as him, I was just like subtly planting the seed of like,
ah, this is my dream.
I want to get a car bill.
I want to go do a lemons race.
And he was he was pretty in line.
And I mean, you can speak to maybe you can speak to that better.
It's it's been like four years since we had that conversation, Anthony.
But yeah, we just loosely planted the seed.
And can I just ask Anthony one question before that, Anthony?
I am 100 percent sure I know the answer to this.
Was he really subtle?
Actually, actually, yes.
But what?
I'm a very direct guy.
He was subtle.
I think he was just kind of planting the seed with everybody.
I always knew I wanted to do lemons always.
I've always thought it was really, really interesting.
And then when he's when he said it, because I was, you know, it's a big overtaking.
When he said that, I was like, I'll do it.
All right.
So so skipping a little bit to the end, you always wanted to do lemons.
It sounds like you knew a little bit about it.
Was it everything you thought it would be or was it.
Different.
No, I mean.
I mean, yeah, it was it was basically because I, you know, I never I only heard of the concept of lemons and then read about lemons on lemons website.
I've never really seen any of the racing and never really saw any of the shenanigans, you know, as far as like the themes and all that goes.
So I really didn't have a huge clue what I was getting into as far as that goes.
As far as that goes, but I mean, like they spell it out pretty well for you, you know, they're not hiding anything at all.
So it was it was everything I wanted.
Plus some, I would say it was great.
It was a really, really experience.
Awesome. Awesome.
So, so Brad, you've you've raced with us twice.
Right.
Yes, kind of.
I did a test and tune day in the race truck at New Hampshire.
And then we went to Pittsburgh together.
Well, we didn't get another one.
Okay. All right.
Well, we did.
We did a driver's ed new jersey.
HPD.
Yes, right.
Yes.
Okay.
So, so let's think about this, Brad.
What was the original plan for you?
What were you going to be doing before this race?
What, what, what, what, what brilliant idea did you come up with that you were going to be doing at your first race with your first car of your own?
What, what was your proceeding weekend supposed to be?
Yeah.
So, you know, as any spring chicken might have some ambitious ideas in their heads, I thought it would be a super baller move to.
Be as aggressive as we could be on getting the car ready for the race.
We literally got the car and got to work on it right away, pretty much.
And I'm like, you know what, we're starting out of the gates hot here.
I don't want to be chasing our ass.
The last few days right before the race.
So with this mindset in place, we'll have ample time.
I know there is NJMP that was running the weekend before.
And how, how dope would it be to just fly out to New Jersey, race with you guys, have the week off to do whatever little things that we needed to do, fly back, do whatever little tinkering on the car and then run a race the very consecutive weekend.
And a wise birdie told me, you know, that's your first race, maybe, maybe you don't do that.
Maybe you just focus on your car.
And then your first response was, no, no, no, we got this, right?
Was it?
I happen to not remember that detail so well.
If you want to, I haven't recorded that.
You play it for me.
It's OK.
That's OK.
So looking back, what do you think?
What do you think?
Racing in New Jersey the week before?
That was a great idea.
Considering the 100 plus hours per week for the last two weeks, Anthony and I were in that same building.
We were running like, he was there, he'd be there at like 6 a.m.
I feel like I would get in at work at 7, do our work day, and then we'd work on the car for six hours immediately after finishing the work day, every day for two weeks.
And we were still tying things together at Test & Tune on Friday after we got to the track.
And I'm like, OK.
Yeah.
Nope, lesson learned.
OK.
So it looks like we have another guest.
Welcome to the park.
This is Cyrus.
Hi, Cyrus.
Hello.
Sorry, I'm the new guys.
I had a little, really shoot a deal this morning.
No worries.
No worries.
We've had worse ideas for people not being on time for the park.
I guess.
So don't worry.
You can't count the number of people we've gotten time zones wrong with.
It's amazing.
So at least you have a legitimate excuse.
So I had a pretty good excuse.
I had two friendly officers come swing by.
You had a drive on.
No, I.
I was dealing with some stuff last night and I overslept and my kid's mom called
the police for a wellness check because I missed her calls and they were freaking out.
So I had to speak to those two gentlemen.
We're good now.
Everything's OK.
OK.
OK.
So it'll help you.
They're welcome on the podcast, too.
I bet they are.
But I feel they're a little busy with their own job.
Well, I mean, we're looking to help our guests in any way we can.
So, you know, proper introduction both ways here.
Cyrus, meet Bill.
Yep.
You know, Vicki, you put up with her for a weekend.
Yeah, I wouldn't say put up with her.
She was great.
Well, we'll get that as a review of her.
Performance.
Yes.
I was going to say things.
They put me in the bathtub for tonight.
So I tried to self edit.
It didn't come out quickly and smoothly.
All right.
So let's see.
Miss Vicki, you flew out a couple of days early trying to get things right.
Oh, wait, we can go.
We can go back even further.
Brad, I suggested that a friend of ours, mutual come by and give you
a a once over as a pre flight check.
How did that?
Yes.
Uh, Pat, on the back to Anthony here, one of the first things he looked at was the
roll occasion.
He's like, wow, these are some nice wells.
Nice.
Nice.
You're doing your well to make sure you give them a heads up.
They're doing a good job.
That's awesome.
And Chris does not say that to most.
No, Chris, Chris also, the guy we sent out, he is also a judge at some of the events.
So that, that was pretty good.
That was a worthwhile visit for sure.
I appreciate you coordinating that.
And, uh, so we had that at about the beginning of him looking at the car.
And then he looked at us not having a kill switch in a fire suppression system in,
uh, a whole bunch of other things that needed to come together to pass tech.
And he's like, Oh boy, you.
Don't have a lot of time, but you got a lot of work to do.
He did mention that to me.
He said, you guys were doing a great job, but there was still much to do.
Yeah.
I believe, I believe the quote was, if I were them, I'd be worried and I'd have to take
the week off to finish it.
And he's very quick.
So you had two weeks of work to do.
But they did.
We got there.
We got there.
Not that he didn't.
Great job.
That's off to Anthony.
He, he pulled some heavy weight on that.
Yeah, he did.
So, so Miss Vicki arrived early.
She did some prepping stuff.
What, what was the story there, Miss Vicki?
So I flew out two days early.
Actually, I left on a Tuesday.
I woke up on a Wednesday and I stayed with our great friends, uh, Chrissy Matura and Chris Abbott.
And I had, um, went in as a team organizer and as the Paddock Queen this time around.
So we, I, I completely structured their sleeping arrangements.
We went in and we prepared all the food.
Um, and Chrissy and I just, we killed it.
We just spent one entire day, one entire day.
Gentlemen, how was the, how was the food?
Phenomenal.
It was great.
Yep.
Was it, was it over, overdone Miss Vicki or was it kind of normal or how did it?
It's normal.
Okay.
It was, it was, it was a normal feasting.
We could do better.
Compared to what we were going to bring on our own, it was incredible.
It was a feast.
Yeah, it was normal.
They were properly nourished and they were properly watered down, um, with fluids.
So that is, you know, all we can hope for is to keep them, you know, energy full and moving
forward.
So that, that was it.
The trailer was, was great.
I think everybody kind of, uh, did their thing in there, which was awesome.
It was fully stocked with whatever we needed.
Yeah, it was pretty great.
Awesome.
So Cyrus, uh, we didn't, we didn't cover it in the beginning because you were having so much fun.
Uh, first time on track, first time with lemons.
What was the, what were your thoughts?
It was not my first time on a track.
I did the HDPE events about a month and a half prior to this lemons events.
It's a good plan.
I got, I want to say roughly 60 minutes of seed time.
Okay.
Without events and then a month and a half later, we did the lemons event.
So I'd say I was as new as you can possibly get.
What were your thoughts going in versus what you saw?
Um, for me personally, I mean, being on a track is stressful and it's not really all
that stressful for the HDPE events and wheel to wheel racing.
When everyone's flying your, from your left to right, behind in front of you, you know,
it's, it's a bit of an experience.
A little nerve-wracking for me when I first started, but after my first session,
I was, I was feeling pretty, pretty good about it.
Okay.
Excellent.
Yeah.
Lemons is not an HDPE.
No.
So I do have a question, Anthony, what is your background with, with, um, any kind of track
time because you were killing it.
You are not walking in there inexperienced.
I, so I'd never been in a, a car on a track, but I've been into go-karts,
but I never did anything like competitive go-karting.
Like, you know, you go to the go-karting track and you got like your mom and then you have
your birthday party and everybody goes around the track.
I've done a lot of that.
That is actually all of my experience.
Brad made me download core, um, a set of Corsa and I have like a little practice wheel and I
probably have, I have good 10 hours into that, maybe 20 hours into that.
Because he was nervous for me.
He kept saying that he's like, it's a lot, man.
Maybe, maybe you should practice.
I'm like, I'm not a timid guy, but you know, maybe a little practice is probably a good idea.
So I went and got that little simulator and so that's it.
That's all that.
And then the paddock next to us showed up with a simulator.
Yeah.
That was huge, by the way.
That was right next to us.
And these guys both part, you know, had, had a little party with that.
That was cool.
That was super awesome.
They're like, Oh, you've never been on this track before.
I got the track downloaded on this simulator and I'm like, cool.
I think, I felt like I was only in there for 10 minutes.
I think Bradley was saying I was in there for like an hour.
An hour.
An hour, buddy.
It felt like 10 minutes.
It was a good long while.
And it had the VR also, the VR mask with it.
Well, that was very helpful because they did that.
Was it Friday night or Saturday night?
Friday night, I think.
They did that Friday night before they even got on the track,
which was actually chef's kiss for these guys getting ready to go out.
Did the SimTime help you for a track?
Or do you think you, you know, a little bit a lot?
What are you thinking?
Honestly, the SimTime, I think it's, I think it is beneficial.
It has its own benefits.
I don't think you're going to get breaking points and turn in and,
you know, kill the lap time.
But I think understanding, hey, I got a right turn coming up
and a left turn coming up, that can be beneficial.
And what's really cool about that simulator tool was it had every single station
that has your, you know, caution light or whatever light that might come up.
So I was in there, I was paying attention because everybody kept saying,
oh, you're going to get a black flag.
You got to pay attention to these stations.
You've passed under yellow, all these other, there's a lot of rules, right?
I mean, it's not just complete chaos.
Although it is, but so I did get in the habit of looking at each station
as I came around the corner, which did help, I think that queue, you know,
that queue to just take a glance and then raise.
Yeah. Cyrus said to help you out at all.
Or did you get a chance?
I did get a chance to try the simulator and everyone else made the simulator.
It looked like it was really, really easy and I couldn't get a whole lap without crashing.
So it was helpful for me to see the track in the simulator and kind of remember
where everything was at.
But as far as like driving, I couldn't, I couldn't quite figure out the simulator
and the 25, 30 minutes I was using it, but.
Sounds like you and I need to go to an HPD.
We can have a good time.
We'll figure it out.
Those are phenomenal instructor.
That's just because perhaps I'm ahead of anybody else who's really good.
I mean, that's also true.
You are the only person I've sat in the car with.
It works out the same.
All right.
So we beat around the bush.
Where were we?
Did we say that yet?
High planes raceway.
Yes.
Okay.
And where's that at?
Oh, I don't know.
Middle of nowhere.
Colorado.
Yes.
East of Denver, I believe, right?
Yes.
So weather expectations for that race vary, I believe, at this time of year?
Yeah.
We leading up to it.
I was expecting for the whole week leading up, it said it was going to be raining on Sunday,
which was going to make things interesting.
And then we ended up getting super lucky and it was just dry.
Dry and cool on Sunday, hot at hell on Friday, somewhere in between on Saturday.
That's not terrible.
I mean, there's some advantages having wet track time.
I love wet track time.
I'm not sure it's what I want for my first time.
And depending on the track, I might not want it at all.
But yeah, the weather started out on, like leading up to it was, it was pretty toasty.
Friday was pretty warm and I got a little bit worried about it.
But then it gradually got cooler for Saturday.
And then Sunday, we just woke up with overcast.
And just the weather was beautiful.
It wasn't glaring.
It did it did brighten up towards, I believe, towards the end of the day.
But but I mean, the weather was was perfect.
I mean, you couldn't ask for a better day.
The weather didn't stress us out whatsoever.
OK.
All right.
So we've got an E46 330 I. Is that what we have?
The I.
All right.
Oh.
D I.
C.
It's just means to two doors.
Yeah.
No worries.
OK.
All right.
Because I was I was concerned.
I couldn't remember if it was an I.R.
and I.X.
So I didn't think it was an X.
All right.
Very well.
So I guess preparing for the race, what needed to be done to the car?
Because it was a fully outfitted race car when you picked it up, right?
We bought it like that with the bow on top.
Everything was great.
We just showed up.
It was awesome.
Nothing but the right.
Nothing but the nothing but the.
There was no time for the.
But but we we kind of made it work and we apologized for not having a theme.
And they did.
They did kind of say, where's your theme?
And we were like, we were lucky to have the car here on time.
I said they were work.
They were working until late last night to get that last of that in.
Well, let's let's let's make sure that we get the full comprehension of what you say.
We were lucky to have the car there on time.
Were you on time?
Ah, yeah.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, we got a little minor things, but no, no.
Were you planning on doing the the practice day?
We were on time in a.
We made the tech inspection time and the driver's meeting time.
But we were supposed to be there a couple hours earlier if I'm not mistaken.
Oh, yeah.
And when we actually got there, if we wanted to do, you know, if we had it our way.
So but we did technically make it on time, but not the time that we were supposed to.
Okay.
Is that because I was going to say, Brad, when did it dawn on you that Vicki went to the track Thursday?
And you were going to get to the track sometime midday on Friday.
When did you think there was a hole in that plan?
I thought, you know, Vicki just being in her typical very prepared fashion.
She wanted to be there to get the RV in place, make sure everything was situated.
And then she was just kind of camping out.
And yeah, I signed up for the second half of Friday for Test and Tune.
And I'm like, yeah, we just got to be out there.
They're doing Test and Tune all day.
So we'll just show up and we'll do our thing and that'll be that.
It was very ambitious decision he was making.
So we had a plan to leave by 11 to get there by 12, I think.
And Vicki texted us saying, no, we were going to leave by 12 so we could get up there.
And then Vicki texted us saying, hey, you're required to be here at 12.
And I'm like, oh, shit.
Because yeah, we just, I never get to see the value.
That was the luxury of being a sidekick there with you guys of what happens on Thursday was
getting there and having everything prepared.
And then you test and tune all day on Friday.
And I just, I never really took note of that.
And well, in all fairness, is that he was looking at lemons.
He didn't realize that the Test and Tune was for the track.
And that was a separate link that took you off.
So when he did sign up for that, he thought it was just like one whole thing.
So the timing exactly wasn't there.
So he didn't make that connection.
But I had mentioned to Chrissy that they, you know, because he was like, yo, on Thursday night,
where's your team?
And I'm like, I don't know.
Oh yeah, definitely.
I had some questions because Vicki texted Thursday night and she was like, when's your ETA?
And I'm like, why is she asking what our ETA is?
That doesn't make sense to me.
And I was like, I got a whole trailer here for you guys.
But they didn't realize that Friday, like all day Friday was work.
Yeah.
They didn't take that in practice.
But that's when all the tech goes.
That's when, you know, the meetings happen for the track.
Because the track is run separate from lemons.
So they didn't realize that there was actual like,
checking for that and the preparation for it.
And that was just completely separate because they were looking at the lemons.
Lemons schedule.
Yeah.
And they were like, we're on for Tech It 2.
So we just got to be there by one.
Right.
And we'll be good.
Right.
Even that.
It was a lesson learned.
But you know, the thing is, is like on Fridays and lemons,
your work, and this goes for all newbies out there.
You want to be there Thursday night because stuff starts happening Friday morning.
There's a lot of things that go into place.
There's last minute car preps.
There is there is a lot of teching.
And if you can get done teching early, there's lines you got to get through.
So.
Well, lemons, that could schedule.
If you want to get on the track to do practice, that's a separate tech usually.
Right.
And it starts like eight o'clock.
Right.
But then you really can't guarantee that your car is,
I mean, you can prep your car as much as you can.
And and sometimes when you get to the track,
there's things that you still have to do.
They're setting up, there's prepping.
There's, you know, just organizing your whole area.
It takes time.
So.
Yeah.
But it was it was a lesson learned and and they you know what they made it and they squeaked in.
But we did have problems with with teching.
For the actual track day.
And what was that, Brad?
Did we have it?
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
So Anthony is a.
Legendary BMW technician.
So.
I had gotten the heads up like, hey, if we are, if any of us are going to go out and do practice,
we have to sign up through the track.
And then we were optimistic.
And this is the ignorance is bliss right here, but we were optimistic that like if one of us
had the registration, all of us could drive the car.
And then we showed up in the track office to get our wristbands for testing tune.
And we were going to try to do a handoff after we learned you can it's it's one driver per sign up.
And I was going to try to.
It was like $150 right?
It was 170 bucks.
Yeah.
170 bucks per driver.
For driver, which was like, yeah.
We thought it was per car.
It's never had.
I had read it was per driver, which is why I gave the guys the heads up.
But still like that some things may be in writing and may not be so once you're actually there.
So we tried to do like a driver switch and Glenn, the track owner was like,
you guys got to figure this out way earlier than 10 minutes before the driver meeting.
And I'm like, yeah, you're not wrong.
I yeah, I agree.
We're new.
Yep.
Won't happen again.
So.
They shot us down on having our legendary technician take the car out for testing tune
to bed the brakes and just make sure everything felt solid.
And yeah, that did not work out.
So I was the only one that took it out.
I think I look for laughs on the car that day too.
So so let's go back in time.
Okay.
We're sitting at Watkins Glen.
Oh no.
Why do you have to bring this up?
Let's first HPD so rock solid.
So ready to go.
So many problems getting to the track gets to the track.
Brad, no joke.
We we struggled the boat.
The struggle was real.
We got the car there.
Life was good.
And then what was missing?
My name wasn't on the list.
Why Brad?
Why?
Biddle is because you need to complete the registration.
There it is.
So let's see.
Let's fast forward now.
Hey.
Perhaps you should read the registration.
I mean, I did the registration.
Okay.
Like I went all the way through it.
We got out on track.
That was done.
We raised that.
We was done.
He's just dragging on you now, Brad.
He's just dragging.
Oh, yeah.
That's fair.
That's fair.
It's been a while since you've seen me.
Is it we got on track or you got on track?
Well, okay.
Brad did take that run and that's fine.
But we did make up for it.
It was a little messy, but we thought that the best person
who should go into the car first was Anthony because he was lead mechanic
and he would understand the car if there was anything going on with it.
So and the only reason why we allowed that to happen was because it was like a two-point
one, two-point-two mile track with only like 84 cars on it.
So we just figured like if it was like a hundred and 20 like we normally have,
I would not have done that.
But you know, we put Anthony out.
I coached him and told him what to do.
For first session on Saturday.
Correct.
Yeah, for first session.
It's not recommended that we do that, but I was thinking of the safety
of the car first.
Can I ask one question of Anthony and Cyrus just particularly?
Vicki's referring to this as there's only 80 cars out on the track.
Now granted, she's used to it.
Is the word only 80 cars on track?
Is that word only applicable to you too?
Or was that a little bit of a sticker shock, shall we say?
You understand.
Right.
Well, listen, when we did this too,
I made sure Anthony was the last one or one of the last ones going out,
because that way everybody was already ahead of him.
And he could get a little bit of chance to kind of work the track out.
Yeah, I will admit.
Yeah, only 82 cars.
I mean, I have no frame of reference.
It sounds like a lot of cars, but you know, you get out there and you know,
it's kind of weird, you know, they put you all out there.
You drive around in a circle for X amount of time, and then all of a sudden they
give you the green flag and you go and race.
Right.
And so that actually, I think was beneficial for me too, because again,
I'd never been on a track in a car.
I've never been on that track in the car.
I played the SimRacer, you know, and that was it.
But being out in the car and having those first few laps, no stress,
just follow the car in front of you.
That's pretty beneficial.
Yeah.
There was a strategy because of the situation we were in.
So we made the best of it.
Okay.
It worked out.
All right.
Was there a track walk this weekend?
Yes.
Did we take?
We did that on Friday night.
Oh, that's even better.
And mental took Cyrus under his wing and Anthony and Brad.
Brad wasn't there.
Nope.
I passed out.
Yeah.
Anthony was with Chris.
Oh, excellent.
And he, both of them, they took a deep dive with Anthony and Cyrus, which was awesome.
Oh, yeah.
Was that helpful for you guys?
Actually, you know what?
I think I lied.
Chris did on Friday take me around the track for probably...
That's right.
I forgot.
Yeah.
I forgot about that.
When I said I'd never been in a race car around a track, I'd never been driving in a race car
around a track.
Chris took me one time, not just one time, but he took me probably seven laps, I would say.
Probably good seven laps around the track.
You know, and I just sat there and watched, obviously, right?
And he kind of pointed, you know, after he took a few laps, then he kind of started explaining
what was going on, which was really nice.
That was hugely beneficial, by the way.
I thought when Anthony came in that he was going to throw up just by the look on his face.
But that's not what he was doing.
That man, his brain just became a computer and he was downloading.
He downloaded everything Chris did.
And like, I was just watching him compute at that point.
It was crazy.
But I mistook him thinking he was going to get sick with him just digesting.
So, Cyrus, you got to walk around the track with mental.
Are your ears still ringing?
No, but he was fantastic.
He was able to answer my questions and explain things in a way that I understand without the
high pace I'm already on the track trying to explain it to me, which helped.
I was able to remember a little bit from my last event that I did and kind of tweak what I was
doing before.
And he was able to explain it in such an easy way to understand.
And he didn't just explain it like, this is the line.
You're going to drive this and you're going to be good.
He's like, this is how you drive it fast.
This is where I'm turning.
This is what I follow.
This is how I'm doing it, which helped so much.
The last instructor I had, he was great, but he's trying to explain things with my first time on the
track. And I couldn't think fast enough to hear him out what he was trying to explain while he's
in the car with me compared to walking slowly on the track and being able to.
I was able to remember all of those turn in points where I should be putting my car and
how to hit some of these turns as fast as these guys are hitting them.
And what's really nice is that mental didn't use like Racer lingo.
He didn't use acronyms.
He didn't use the alphabet of whatever.
He really broke it down into like a layman's for him.
And he made it really fun.
Like I was walking with Cyrus and we were answering the questions.
And when we were doing this, they had them actively walking the line as you should on where your car is supposed to be.
And had them turn around and say, look at the elevation.
This is what your car is going to do.
So don't be afraid.
You can actually hit this hill at this speed because your car is going to compress and it's going to stick to the track.
So they were actually breaking all that down, which was, you know, in a way that wasn't, you know,
to Racer lingo.
So it was pretty great.
Any surprises or big takeaways from the track walk?
For me, being able to see the elevation and like how the track will, like, is angled towards you or towards a turn.
I didn't pick that up when I was on the track the first time.
Right.
Oh, I was just trying to understand what I was doing, but walking on the track and seeing kind of how the track is designed.
I was able to be a lot more confident around some of these big turns because I'm like, well, the car is just going to grab it.
Grab it and go.
Whereas before, I was just trying to figure out how the car felt.
So it's very, very helpful on being able to actually see the track and the elevation and how the turns look from a track walk perspective compared to just being on the car.
What about you Anthony?
Anything?
Oh, I think that if you're, if you are competitive and you're not doing a track walk,
I think that you are missing out.
There's a lot of little subtle details you can pick up walking.
And then again, I mean, you're going slow around these corners or walking pace.
So you have plenty of time to think about exactly what's going on in that corner.
I mean, you can go around the track without doing the track walk.
But I think if you're serious about it and you're competitive, you're missing out completely without doing that.
Completely without doing that.
Yeah, I think one of my mentors for racing was, you know, the F1 drivers walk the track.
They've been there before, you know, they're decent drivers.
You know, they got some things under their, and they go walk the track because I'm like, okay, I'm going to get my shoes.
That's fair enough.
All right. So Saturday, we got, oh wait, we got to go through tech.
Tech, how did tech go?
Tech went really well for us.
We were kind of scrambling to get some of our foam pads put on our roll cage.
Some of the guys, I mean, everyone was looking at our really shiny car and they wanted to come and see and poke a little bit of fun.
But we essentially got teched in our paddock.
Yes.
Which was awesome because we were already running late, we were running behind.
So they basically teched us in our paddock.
And then when we actually went through tech, we really just did the check for theme and we had no theme, obviously.
But it, we did our best.
We call it our car raw meat because our team was basically raw meat.
It's shown.
I take credit for the adding the prop of freshly cut grass and
the front grill.
Yep.
Nice.
All right. So speaking of themes, you guys, you guys didn't have time because, you know,
Brad was busy going to New Jersey racing.
And so any themes stand out? We'll do that part now. Any themes for the weekend?
Bowser was cool.
Bowser was awesome.
Bowser was a blazer.
They were awesome really, really fast.
I think they got first in their V class.
Nice.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was it was pretty funny.
And they were dressed up like the Mario Brothers and they had their kids with little shell backs,
you know, the little Bowser shells on their backs.
Pretty cool. That was that was kind of cool.
And they had these little little bottles of fireball liquor and
Mario would come around and do the little whoo-hoo and he would throw little fireball whiskies at people.
Better than bananas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember there was one that was a Hawaiian and they had like palm trees and they were all dressed as sharks.
I saw that.
What else did I see that was pretty clever?
Oh, Chris and Chrissy did not at the Roxbury.
I think it was from the SNL.
So they just the whole weekend they did that their car really wasn't themed though.
They just look at their neck the entire weekend.
Yes, they literally literally when they got home because I was still staying with them,
they they had to take aspirin and they had like these like things to kind of remove the knots
in their shoulders because they kept doing that with their neck.
Try and think about what other themes that I'd seen.
We were so busy that we really didn't get a chance to see that.
I think one was birthday cake.
11 car had like little painted sprinkles all over it.
So when they were coming in from the checker,
the guy was just like, thank you for coming to my birthday and it kept hanging up.
Handing out these little gift bags like party bags.
Everybody he just kept chucking them in the car.
Thanks for coming to my birthday.
I think there was two sprinkled cars actually.
I think one was a donut when they were doing a donut theme.
But yeah, they did have themes go through, but they didn't they didn't really carry their themes
through the weekend.
Like say, for instance, the Bowser car did and what Chris and Chrissy did.
Okay. All right.
So let's get the third to racing.
We'll talk a little racing today.
Why not?
How did Saturday start off?
I think it was Anthony, right?
I mean, the first few laps were just running cars and then, you know,
and then they they green flag it.
And, you know, I was so paranoid I was going to miss the station.
That's I think that's the that's the biggest thing that happens when you first start racing.
You really don't super care.
You know, you don't care about hitting the corners perfectly right away.
Anyway, obviously you got a long week in the head of you.
You're trying to get the car felt out, especially us because we didn't have barely any time out there.
And so I was worried I was going to miss a station or do something wrong.
I was afraid I was going to do something wrong.
I mean, that was the biggest thing.
So took about three laps of me just getting in the habit of being able to go the whole
track with looking at every single station, not going off the road, obviously.
And then and then I started, you know, trying to put some lap time down.
And then and then, you know, by that time, I mean, that's probably eight laps in because you
you run in the circle for five laps and then you go about three laps in full race, you know,
race mode, I should say.
Everybody's probably kind of just getting in to, you know, so after about three laps.
Yeah. I mean, that's about how much you got to warm up.
And then you just get in the habit.
I think that was the biggest thing that Chris said, too.
And what a great guy, by the way.
And, you know, he was kind enough to take me around on the track and he said the, you know,
one of the very important things, many but a very important thing is to
make sure that you the second you can look at the next corner station, always look at the next
corner. So it's the moment that is available to see you should be looking at it immediately.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. All right. So who went next?
I drove after him.
And how to go?
Things were pretty great. I mean, it didn't feel like there was as many cars out there as there was.
I mean, I was driving an hour and some change after the race started.
So everyone was pretty well spaced out.
So I was able to kind of just hop on there and drive like normal.
Like the traffic was very minimal my first session.
We had him in for 45 minutes.
And I think I don't know how long we had Anthony in.
We hit about an hour.
Yeah, we started them out that way so they can acclimate to the track.
Yeah. And then, of course, that Cyrus and I shared a Hans and then Anthony and Brad shared a Hans.
So, you know, I happened to have extra helmet pins for Cyrus.
So you guys alternated in that order?
Yeah. Well, yeah.
As well as we could.
Yeah. But it worked out well. I don't think we really had any hiccups.
All right. Cool.
So who got in next?
I think I did because we were trying to push Brad to the end
or Anthony to the end, I think, is what we were trying to do because we wanted
one of them to experience a checker.
So I went in for two hours.
Yeah, the standard.
How'd you like the track?
I love the track.
You know, the track is built really well to where it flows easy if you hit it just right.
I was really surprised. I would compare it a little.
It's smoothness and with some of its elevation granted is not as big of elevations, but to pit
the way that pit forms and runs and the smoothness of it, I would compare it to that.
And it was freshly paved. So that was freaking awesome.
But yeah, once you kind of got how the apexes are supposed to turn and how everything is
supposed to work out, oh my gosh, it was so much fun.
So Cyrus, when you went to the HPD, was it same paving?
No, that was before they had repaved it. So it was definitely not nearly as grippy as it was
for our lemons event. It was a bit more slick.
Like trying to compare from a month and a half ago, like it wasn't that crazy
different. So I was also driving an all-wheel drive car. Same chassis, just all-wheel drive.
What did you have for tires on that?
That's the key right there.
Some like all season summer tires. I did nothing to prep the car for that except for like fluids.
I just wanted to get on the track. So I did the bare minimum and showed up.
Awesome. All right. So Brad, you got in next. How'd it go?
It was good, man.
I think you did it an hour and a half.
I did an hour and 45 and I was toasted by the end of the hour 45. But
definitely just that's the first time I've been in a car
driving this year. So it was shaking off a little bit of rust.
But no, like traffic management, like a lot of props to the car because the car just puts
power down decently well. That's odd.
How was it relative to the Civic because that was the last car you drove on track, right?
Honestly, I really loved the Civic. The Civic was so fun too. It was just like such a light,
car that had so much grip. The vibration on the straights from the tires was
not my favorite part about the Civic, but we could leave that there.
And hit flat spots.
Yeah, I was going to say. I knew exactly what it was. I just wanted to say it.
I wasn't going to say it.
I am a power AVS, baby.
Yeah, they had AVS on their car.
Yeah, I used that AVS a couple of times too.
It's good to have it when you need it.
Yeah, definitely. And definitely having experienced flat spots on tires that was
of relief to have. But yeah, just like round is good.
What's really cool is so I was working on instructor training back in April and it was
a really interesting thing, which I don't know how this typically works,
but they throw you in the car with an instructor and then they role play a novice student.
But like you have some timeouts, you have at least in my session, we had some timeouts where
like he would just resume driving normally, which he guy's name was Austin. He was a phenomenal
driver in a GR86. And what was cool is we got to a point where like, hey, at a higher level,
here's the fine details of the track to pay attention to and try to get your student to
focus on to just optimize what they can get out of the car. And it was really cool,
even though I have no seat time this year, was taking some of those lessons from
the passenger seat and applying them to just like a couple of different turns. Like the
there's like a sweeping turn, a left, right, left, it goes on to the start, finish straight.
And one thing I took away from his lesson is you see the ballard, you turn, you're not even
going to see the curbing yet, but you're going to turn. And if you time that right with the
ballard that's sticking up, like you'll take all of the curbing on that and you'll carry a ton
of speed through the turn, which I'm like, damn, okay, I wasn't driving to track like this last
year when I came out here. So that was awesome. And I knew there was like an experience level
difference that kind of put me on my back foot. But going up turn 11, which is this,
you come in kind of hot, you break hard, you turn right, and it's a tighter uphill,
right hander. And I just remember him pointing out like, you kind of bring it in, you kind of
bring it in until you see this slight defect on the inside line. And that's where you want to kiss,
like have the tires kiss that line. And you can come out of that full throttle. And what was
super awesome was just, oh, I never noticed that defect when I was out here before.
And then genuinely, it was super awesome, just like
incorporating racecraft into this, because I would have a car in front of me and it's like,
how do I get the speed on them to get alongside them before we go into that S-Bend downhill?
And it would be super awesome because that like the car I'd be following would be like
in the middle of the track. And I would be watching for that, that one spot of the paint.
And then I would kiss the car there full throttle and I would be like on the inside. And the car
would just drift to the outside of the track. So like, I know I look super busy in their mirror,
but I could also carry so much speed up the hill. It was cool just to like
re-familiarize myself with like the right lines and the right marks. But then also to get familiar
with the car too, that car is, oh, that car is so awesome. It just feels so good.
It was a great first session. It is the easy button. All right, so Brad gets out, I think,
who finishes the day? I was hit on Cyrus.
Anthony got in before, after Brad, and then I finished the day with the last 40.
Yep, he took the checker. Cyrus took the checker first day.
We talk in Saturday. No, I believe that.
Yeah, on Saturday he did. Because I've finished Saturday.
No, no. No.
No, you have to have an air seat.
Yeah, we got, I think, was it Brad? Somebody poured water in his helmet.
Well, I was trying to pour water down his neck and he did this with his shoulders,
so I had to dump it into his face mask. You know, I'm sorry. That's how it is.
The Cyrus, was that me?
The sacrifices were winning.
That was Cyrus and you.
Nice.
So how's taking the checker there, big guy?
Um, I was very tired going into that session and I didn't realize until after I started.
So when that checkered finally came, I was very happy. It was nice. I was able to,
it was just cool to see being able to come out and see what everyone does,
because I didn't even see the checkered until I saw I got to the end near the front straight.
Everyone was lining up and like, oh, I guess we're done. So I didn't catch it until
I just jumped in line to get off the track, but it was really cool to see everyone line up and
cheer and scream and yell as everyone's coming off after the first session or the first day.
Yep. We threw water at his car. I5 going through. Everybody's cheering.
So made it through tech, the first day, the weekends of win.
Also, I give everybody on the team props because three Pelomapha so politely next to us was betting
on if we would make it an hour, hour and a half, two hours or three hours before we got our first
black flag and we went all day with no black flags. True. All day, Saturday.
All Saturday. No black flags. All right. Very well. I'll let this one slide. All right.
So I get a call from Brad Saturday night. I'm guessing before the potluck
and Brad's ready to just kick back and relax. And I'm like, Brad, that's not it.
Yep. Yeah, no. And it's definitely something that I take your point because I look around
and all the other teams, they're like jacking up the cars, they're moving tires around,
they're checking brakes, like they're underneath the cars. And it's like,
I feel like yes, we should be doing that. And I think that's when we took a peek at the front
tires and a lot of hard right handers. So the left, the outer shoulder of the left tire
was taking some abuse. So we just did a side to side swap on the front. Rears were looking pretty
good. And then I got together with Anthony and like, hey, man, like, here's what everybody
else is doing. I have Bill's barking at me here a little bit. You take the lead from here.
Just just being safe. Yes. And yeah, you are. So Anthony, how how how upset were you with the
person you've never met that's telling you what you have to do? Oh, not at all. No, absolutely.
Look here, I have a lot of experience working on cars. I'm a very good technician. That's fine.
But I don't have any experience working on raised cars on race day doing race stuff. Like,
you know, I knew I needed to put camber in the front. I maxed out the factory camber.
It's not enough, by the way. So I'll be changing that. So there's just a lot of things that,
you know, as a regular service mechanic working on, you know, mom and dads,
you know, BMW X5, I don't see. And so I was very appreciative. And then, you know, we kind of came
up with a plan to swap side to side, even though those are directional tires. It looks like we
weren't going to plan on hitting any rain. In the rain, switching a directional tire can be
right, you know, risky. But with no rain, what's the point? Who cares? And we swapped
them side to side and it worked out great. Right. So did Brad tell you my my tip that will
hopefully save you time at the next race? No, paint pens or maybe he did. I don't remember.
Paint pens are your friends. Oh, paint. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Oh, to mark the bolts that
you tightened them. Mark the bolts. Just torque them to whatever spec you need. Mark the bolt and
then, you know, you don't have to torque everything the next time. Well, I do think that marking it
after you torque it is beneficial. Yes. Yes. Just to know that you did torque it. Yes, both.
That is that is extremely a thing in racing. Everybody does it. Yes. Yeah, because it's so
much easier to just look and see, oh, the bolt moved. Oh, we've got to do something. The bolt
didn't move. Oh, we're probably okay. I did fight back on that. I did fight back on that. That's
okay. The bolt moving, the bolt moving now and now to be fair, to be completely fair, and I
actually will agree with this 100 percent. When you're putting aftermarket parts on your car,
some of these parts are tried and true and tested and some of them are not.
When you're starting to use hardware and parts that aren't necessarily made to be in the same
place at the same time, absolutely they will move. And I 100 percent agree with you. But
that car was 100 percent factory minus the roll cage, obviously. Right. Those bolts,
they don't move. They move if you don't tighten them. Well, I tell you that. The bolts don't move
when you don't do to them what you're doing to them on a racetrack. So you hit enough
rumble strips, you hit enough high-heat cars. That car is going under a whole lot of stress.
So it's like a belt and suspenders thing, you know? That's fair. That's fair. Plus it makes
life a lot easier Saturday night when you just have to crawl in there, look at some lines and
say, oh, we're good. Yeah. We did see a car lose a wheel on the track. So usually, usually they
know where it is. They just don't have it with them. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, they were stuck
in the car while their wheel was rolling down the hill. So yeah. Yeah. Those wheels are fast
without a car, though. I'll tell you, they just whoosh. So yeah, that's not what you want to do,
especially your first race. So. Oh, we had no concerns about the lugs. We,
those puppies were torqued. No, that is a concern. Overtorking is also bad.
Yes. One aga-duga, not two aga-dugas, right? Yeah. One and a half aga-dugas each. Let's not go
five, okay? Yeah. I have snapped the bolt. I mean, Ms. Vicky got an inch pounds and foot pounds
mixed up on a bolt one time. That was fun. Maybe you've heard this thing, maybe not, but
somewhere along the way, a piece of wisdom that was shared with me was if it's worth
stealing, it's worth overdoing. That's where it's a live by, buddy. I don't know who said that.
That's a great person, whoever said that. Somebody wise and dazzlingly good looking.
So Saturday night, you got prepped for the weekend finish on Sunday. You woke up Sunday
morning. You had tons of energy. Rare in the go. Nothing happened Saturday night. Everything was fine.
You guys were like a fine-tuned athletic machine for what I hear.
Anthony discovered what Malort is.
Somebody had you. He got Malorted.
Oh, man.
And a beer chaser with the hole in the can.
It's not often I get to cut loose, all right? I got a family, wife and kids, and
they ended up going to Thailand ahead of me. So it was just me and my own devices.
I was at a race night. I had a little bit of fun. It was fun. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun.
And the next morning was interesting too. You know how it works.
We tried to make him last in car because we saw him for Saturday night. We're like,
oh, Anthony's not going to be first in car. No, no, no.
Because I was, I think I was third in car, which was good. I think I hit the track right around
noon. That was a good amount of time. Yeah. There's certain things that you do on a Saturday night
at Lemons, which shall remain, you know, what happens in Lemons, days in Lemons.
But then there's other things you need to fear. Now, Tim Burr would. Yeah, that guy.
Oh, corruptible.
Easily. He is a funny guy.
Yes, he is. But I, rumor has it he has a hollow leg. That's all I'm saying.
Damn.
They had such a party going on in their in their paddock. Actually, they had an entire, obviously,
potluck. But their potluck was different than the potlucks on the east because it were used to.
Because normally we would go ahead and take over like an entire garage when they have
carports. So what they did was that they just moved tables out in front of their carport at the end
of their cars. And each station would have something. So you would go from station to station
for whatever they were hosting. A lot of meat at this one. So it's like a trunk or tree.
Yeah, it was almost like, yeah, that's what it kind of felt like. And then just across from them,
a couple of people also set up tables. I think one of them had like an entire taco table,
like a soft taco table. They put tacos all over the table and they would just put stuff,
you know, soft, soft shells and they would just put stuff in each of them. You just walk by and
you grab a fold one up and you just walked away. I think there was a hot dog cart. There was a hot
dog station. There was a guy making pizza at the end. There was a spaghetti dough fountain.
Somebody had a spaghetti who fell. And I think they had like little hot dogs or something that
you put in it or something. I forget, like little wieners or whatever. There was a group,
a little group of kids. And I don't think any of them were over maybe the age of 10.
And they had a lemonade stand and they raised like $250 for lemons of love,
which was amazing. And they had that sitting out front. But yeah, you would just go from
station to station. It was pretty awesome. And of course, our station contribution between the two
of us was a massive cooler of Coors Beer and dessert. We brought dessert. Got to keep the people happy.
Yep. If only he knew somebody at Coors. That would be helpful. Yeah. Chrissy works for Coors.
Yeah. There's a lot of people in there. All right. So how long has Chrissy worked? Oh, sorry.
What's that? About six months, I think. Chrissy's worked for Coors for about six months now?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They've moved here less than a year ago. So.
So, Potluck, up to your standards, guys? Did you get enough food? Did you refresh yourself?
I got spoiled. We were working on the tire swap and I asked my
dear better half to focus on gathering. And she just like kept running out, grabbing something,
coming over. She had food and then she'd take off and she'd come back with something different.
So, I got spoiled Saturday night for sure. Awesome. Anthony, did you get enough to counteract some
of Tim Burr's machinations? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. No. I mean, you go out there.
Didn't see food was not an issue. Food wasn't a problem at all. A lot of people very,
you know, it was very, very good people, right? Yep. Everybody's bringing in a bunch of food.
Everybody's having a great time. It was a really good culture. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Food was good, by the way. Good way to put it. Sorry, I was up to your standards.
Oh, absolutely. It was. The food was great. The people were even better. Everyone was so excited
to give you their food and say hi and ask you how you're doing. Well, it's nice because what I hear
you're in the middle of nowhere. So, it's not like you're driving around the corner to the McDonald's
or something. Yeah, the food definitely beat McDonald's. Very well. So, some of you woke up on
the morning of Sunday. One of you maybe not, but you know, whatever, it's fine. How did Sunday start
off? I started, okay. Yep. So, I finished Saturday and I got to start Sunday and kind of the same
experience as what Anthony got. We started a couple of laps before everyone started going crazy.
And I was able to experience a lot heavier traffic starting the day out on Sunday compared to my
Saturday session. Right. Did you feel any better in the car after sleeping some of the night?
That was my best track session out of all three sessions I did. And I pushed the car a lot harder.
I felt a lot more comfortable going around turns and passing people and dealing with all the traffic.
Excellent. All right. Cool. Who got in next? Was that Brad?
Vicki. I think I did. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Did the two hours. We tried to really balance things out.
I looked at the schedule because it was a short day. I think we started at nine or ten.
I forget. But we only got done, yeah, but we got done at three. So, it is a short day. So,
we really tried to balance things out. And I think we had a whole radio thing problem. We didn't
have radio. So, we actually, that was a whole other story about how we kind of worked around that.
But Cyrus going out, we tried to push Cyrus to an hour to see how comfortable he would be
just to kind of balance things out. And then I went in for two. And then we talked to Anthony,
yeah, on Sunday. There's only five. And then we tried to figure out how long Anthony could go
and then having Brad finish up. So, it was all a timing thing and trying to balance it out. Yeah.
Anthony, no throwing up in your helmet, right? Mission accomplished? No, no. We're good. We're
good. No, very good. Held it all down. All right. Good. Good. It's not any better the second time.
Just letting you know. Fair enough. Yeah. How was the second time in the car?
Good. I felt very comfortable going in. Nice. The day before, because each of us did
two sessions the day before. I think Cyrus and I each went out an hour the first time. We were
supposed to only go 45 minutes, of course, but we were still trying to work out
seeing when our number was coming up in the paddock. Yeah, the hot pits. Because we're having
trouble seeing. It's not that you couldn't see. It's that you had to look at the last second
before you're breaking for corner one before you could see. We were new drivers and I was not used to,
I was already trying just to get the stations and make sure I wasn't making any stupid
choices down. But then near the end, we did finally see where we could see the sign,
where we could see our number and when we could pit. So, yeah, Cyrus and I over did our first
session by 15 minutes the first time. Did you have a clutch in the car?
No, I know. We did have a... We did.
It stopped working. There's an instrument cluster clock and they're prone to breaking.
And you have to, you know, when you turn the button, there's a little clip
that it pushes on and they're known for breaking. The left side was already broken.
It broke the right side. So, the instrument cluster was done anyway.
Okay. So, then I think we... Anyway, long story short, so I think we each went out an hour the
first time, then we went out an hour and a half the second time or I think I went out an hour 45
the second time. I tried to put my Apple Watch in there and try to zip-tie it in there. But then
I think by the time Bra got in, the vibrations were creating an issue and the phone was reading
vibration and sending up messages about that. But it worked pretty well for me. So, I knew exactly...
You know, it took the stress out of when you can actually see your time because until then you
have no idea when you're coming in because you lose track out there. You just think you know. So,
you're either looking over at the pit or you're just like going... I remember was it with Cyrus or was
it Anthony that we actually had to have them black flagged? So, yeah, because he had lost complete
track of you know his time in the car and we kept trying to flag him down but he didn't see that.
So, we actually had to have them black flag him in so he would do the... He would do the
reputation. That was me. Yeah, that was you. That was you. I thought I was like, oh great.
Wonder what I did. Yep. No worries. Yeah. We don't count that as a black flag. However...
I would say we probably did half hot pits because it was the first time out for the car
and we had already made a decision that we were just going to drive our best but we weren't competing.
We were learning. So, if there was anything that was going on with the car, you know, even Chris
recommended, bring it in, double check things, check your tires. And it's a good thing we did
because one of our tires were like super low on that day. It was like 24 pounds. PSI, yeah.
Yeah. It was at 19 PSI for the front left tire, yeah. Right. So, that's the one you want to be.
19 PSI too. Yeah. So... Yeah, but it was after running it.
For... After Cyrus came in, the second day was at 19 PSI. Yeah. So, they were learning about tire
temperatures and what it does to the heat tires. So, we were adjusting them to try to get
the sweet spot before. So, we would know for next race. So, we end up doing that. Like I said,
about half the time until we got assorted out. Wait a sec. Sounds good. Ms. Vicki, how was your
black... I mean, how was your stint? My stint was going really, really well. Really, really well.
Yeah. Well, I think like on the first day, I voluntarily came in because I didn't have a radio
and knew I wasn't competing, but I had accidentally, before the S's on the straight,
I had absolutely squeezed a car off. And it was because I went in a little too hot and I didn't,
but I just drove in and I went... I went and the guy's like, so why are you here? And I said,
the guy behind me is not his fault. I squeezed it off. He goes, did you make contact? And I said,
no. I said, but I'm also not competing today. So, he said, thank you for your contrition. Go ahead on
back out. And I said, and also tell him I'm really sorry. So, I found out later that he said, apology
accepted. And that, you know, we all went back out. But that was a voluntary. But the second one,
the second one, I don't know how that could have been read because it was me, I think,
car 94, which was also, I think, like a SUV and Chrissy. And the three of us were all kind of going
back and forth a lot. And Chrissy had decided because we were coming up really fast. And
obviously our car is faster, but theirs is quicker in the turns. Like, they can get you
in the turns and everything, but we can get them just by sheer power.
That's the drivers.
That's the drivers. Yes. But Chrissy was in and she saw the three of us were all kind of knotted up.
So, at right around, I think it was turn eight, which was the dog leg, not on the back side before
you hit the launch, but the second one that comes around. Eight, when we were going in,
there was no black flag. I mean, no yellows. And then Chrissy right on the bend did a point by,
for me and the SUV. So, the SUV went first and I came back in right in front of her. And as soon
as I made that turn, we saw the yellow flag. But we were at that point side by side and she
backed off and I kind of went in and just sorting it out. And then I got called in for a black flag
and I'm like, oh, Chrissy, that was diabolical. Diabolical, right? So, I went in and Chrissy
at that. Evil Chrissy. So, Chrissy had radioed in and she goes, I think I screwed Vicki. And she
says it wasn't her fault. She goes, it was us. And she explained there was no yellow flag on
seven, but as soon as you went on eight and whatever those two flag stations are, as soon as they came
around, the yellow flag was there. And that's what I told him. I said, as soon as we saw the yellow,
we all started sorting ourselves out. So, we sent us out, but I don't know if we officially got the
yellow flag or the black flag because of it. We did officially. Yeah, but, you know, at that point,
and she said there was nothing on the one and then on that bend, but at the same time, when
somebody was doing a point by, you're concentrating on trying to make that turn, that's where the
focus is, is so you can get past them safely. And then, yeah. So, you got a black flag. I got a
black flag for that. All right. So, let's look at the conniving Miss Matora here.
Diabolical, I told her. She finished with her partners in crime 28th in the race. You guys
finished 32nd in the race. You know what? You're roughly seven or eight minutes behind them on track.
Suspicious, very suspicious. What takes seven to eight minutes?
A black flag. Yeah. She was jumping up and down. She goes, I am so sorry. sorry
that she's so sorry that she beat you. You know, whatever. Well, to be fair,
they also have to say that was well played. Go ahead, Anthony. Well, I was going to say,
to be fair, they also had a wheel bearing failure, which took probably a good 20 minutes to fix.
Yeah. In the middle of the race, too. Yeah. That's part of racing conniving to commit your friend
a black flag is not part of racing. I was like, oh, Chrissy, she got out. She goes,
I am so sorry. She's not sorry enough to give you the places though. Anyway.
All right. So, Brad, you finished the day? Yeah. It was awesome. It was a rodeo of a session.
There were some things happened in that session. Finish of the day gets a little frisky.
Yeah. There were a couple instances of just blockades of cars. And I had a really interesting
conversation with one of the guys Saturday night about like, yeah, when you get those,
like that's where the fun is at. And I saw some shenanigans. There was one instance,
I am side by side with a car following two cars that are also side by side, followed by two cars
that are side by side. And I think we had three cars total behind us. And going into
the S's before start and finish, one car behind us said, hell with it, I'm going to dive bomb
through the middle of Brad and his competitor and the pair of cars in front of them,
which we're literally at turn entries. So those cars are coming together tighter as this guy is
trying to wedge his way in. And I was like, oh my God, we're looking at a multi car pile up on this.
And so like me and the guy next to me, we just kind of backed off and gave space because it's
like, I don't know what's going to happen with that. I just don't want to be tied up in it.
And that took about five laps to navigate. There was another cluster of cars that was probably
77 total I had come up on. And somehow some way I can't remember the details of it, but
I had just taken the outside. Yeah, it was like,
I just picked the right line, I guess, and nobody decided to like move in my way and like box me out.
So I just got by everybody nice, clean and easy. I had, there was a Porsche Boxster that was out there
that we were kind of running the same times. He had passed me, I had passed him, he had passed me
again, and we were going down, starting to finish straight. And I got a great run on him
and was trying to implement some race, racecraft and strategy here of actually just like leaving
him behind me and being able to create some distance. Slower car in front of him, I had speed on him.
So I took the inside lane and maybe that's a dick move, maybe that's racing, but my thought was,
I'm just going to box him in behind the slower car, which he's going to lose his speed. I'm going to
create distance here. So I literally bumper to bumper even and he's like, nope, I'm not slowing
down and he's still just like swerved left to make the pass while I am right next to him. And
I'm like, oh my God. And I was really certain I was going to get a black flag and get banned from
the track because it effectively pushed me directly over the pit lane entry line, which is
a law. You don't break at that track, I guess. You don't break that. Yes.
Yeah. So that was a very reactive kind of thing. And I tried to piece it all together after the
fact too. And I think the only other option I had to not straddle that line was to hit the brakes.
But if he still went for it, then I would have tailspone him out and he would have gone into
the wall for pit road. So I think I made the right decision there, but definitely
I had some things to think about and was watching for black flags for the next two laps and
never got it. So that worked out okay. And then coming down that same straight,
it's somewhat of a blind left hand turn with turn one. And there was a BMW pickup truck.
It was like an E30 they turned into a pickup that had just spun out and was kind of rolling
to the outside of the track or the inside of the track, I should say. And that was also kind of a
precarious situation of, I mean, I just came around the turn, I just see it there. I have two
tenths of a second to do something. And I just swerved out, dodged him, kept on going. We got
real door to door. And like a lot of things from Saturday, it really started to just like click
in how to manage cars, space, traffic, how to push the car harder.
That's one thing I was really excited about with Sunday is we were taking it easy ish on the car
for Saturday, because we have no oil pan baffle. And we were just trying to protect the engine.
So we were limiting RPMs to 5000 and being able to actually drop down to second gear coming out
of tighter turns and being able to rev it out the ends and end of straights like
R goes. And again, yes, I accept that it's the easy button.
But yeah, like fantastic, just genuinely fantastic last session for me.
But also let's let's let's also point out there was a lot of easy button cars there
that you will be competing against. There were quite a bunch of BMWs already there
that were bumping up against. There was a lot of A cars. So like 35 of them or something like that.
Yes, they were kind of dragging on you because it's a BMW and is an easy button. But there's
they like I said, you you had competition with other BMWs.
Yeah, I'm not going to lie. In my opinion, I was not the same caliber as some of those other E46s.
Maybe they had a different setup. But I mean, I'm willing to give it to the driver before the car.
Well, they were also very ballsy in some of the moves they were making because they were
very experienced. They knew what their car could do. Yeah. And you guys are just starting to understand
what that is. So yeah, I saw them pop up in my mirror and I would just like take an outside lane,
give them a point by and be like, just get by me so we can just both get on throttle.
So was this your first checker flight, Brent? Yeah. And oh, it was super cool. It was
I mean, it was it was a whole bunch of things at once because like
we survived the weekend. And I had talked to Cyrus and Anthony from the very beginning on this is like,
hey, we're rookies. We don't know what the hell we're doing. Our whole goal is to just cross
the finish line on Sunday, keep the car in one piece, try to not get penalized and genuinely as
a team, Vicki as well. Like we really we did just that. And that was super cool to bring it home.
It's like, hey, like check mission accomplished. We did it. I remember like staying in that line
in hot pits was a little bit stressful because it's like, don't touch the brakes. Don't ride the
brakes. Don't hold the brakes. What do I do? Because I'm just trying to protect every aspect of it.
And that was a mildly anxiety inducing, but I barely have any anxiety remaining after an hour
and a half out there. But no, like it's super cool to go through, have the whole crowd lined up
to also get a nice clear shower from Dear Anthony here. And Vicki. And then somebody
threw a chorus in my hand before I even stopped the car. So that was also nice.
It was cool. It was exciting. It was, yeah, it was a bomb.
So we're three now dumb enough to do this again.
Oh, we're already making it.
September race.
That's a true 24. That's a whole other beast.
It is a whole other beast. And it would be great to have two very experienced drivers
on the team for that.
I got to talk to my cruise director.
Do you know how we might be able to contact them?
Well, I don't know. I'm pretty sure you might have their number, Brad.
No, genuinely, like with your guys' experience, I know you gave me the
stipulation about nighttime driving, which there's a lot of daytime driving we're going to have for
that whole weekend. So there's still a place for you, especially with your skill set.
I have a question. How did the board work out?
Personally, I thought it was awesome. I definitely don't understand who's next, what's going on.
Because, I mean, we're running around on the top and bottom of the track to watch the race,
as well as watch track times, but to just see who's next, how long. It added some structure
that definitely helped eliminate some unneeded stress.
So what was on the board for got to be done next race?
It was an organization. So I just basically listed who's going to do fire suppression,
who's going to do the next session of driving, who's going to be the...
Right. So it just put a place for everybody who's all suited up in the hot pits, basically.
Oh, no, no, no. I meant, what do you guys have to do coming out of the race?
At the bottom of the board was a whole checklist.
Oh, right. I haven't seen it. I've tucked the race car away and I said,
I'm going to deal with that at a later time. I had the whole thing out of there.
Yeah. I think, need later. Mostly, they had everything that they... I mean, as for the car,
the car went really well. I mean, they would definitely need to do something about
allowing suspension for, to create more...
Camber.
Camber. Yeah. So they would have to do something like that. That was not on the board.
But every time that we borrowed something, I put it on the list because that is something
that you will always have to borrow. So I made sure that it would just be things that they can
build up and they were just like small things. Rays or blades, you know.
Right. Rays or blades, digital clock for the car for sure.
For this race. I sent one to Brad on the text message.
For this race, this particular track, they are going to have to have some kind of flag or something
that's elevated so they can get plenty of a chance to see when they're coming down the pit.
So they know when to hot pit when they're coming down the track.
Or a clock.
Yeah. Or a clock. Yeah. But still, to let them know that they're ready because they didn't
really have radios in the car at this point. We talked about wider gas nozzles because their
gas nozzles were very thin. And if they had the wider tops on them, which you can go ahead and
figure out how to do that, you might be able to adjust the ones that you have.
In the car or the gas cans? In the gas cans.
Gas cans. Yeah. And if that's the case.
Look up pop-routing gas cans. Yes. And you might be able... And I actually,
you know, when we reach back out, people build their own. I mean, they go out and get the tubing
right from, you know, Home Depot and caps and things like that. So you can figure out how to do
that. But that just will speed up your hot pits by so much. You can just dump and then go. And if
you notice when you walk around, you'll see stuff like that. But yeah, I'll send this back out to
you guys anyway. But the other thing they had to do was they had to remove the carpet from part of
the carpet that was still inside the car. And they let them slide this time. But they said,
but for the next race, they just, they want to see that all removed. And I think that was,
you know, in the driver's side. It wasn't in the passenger side.
Can you actually run a car with carpeting? Or are you not allowed to?
Not allowed to. Nope.
Okay. Okay.
No. Anything that could potentially catch fire and create more flame, they want removed.
It's just something else to burn.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, but I mean, they had pretty much their basics, but, you know,
you know, just to make things a little bit more functional, you know, they'll need to have tables
so they can actually get their stuff up off the floor because all their equipment was on the
floor and kind of spread out a little bit. And this will kind of organize it a little bit.
Yeah.
But they did, oh, and the, the one thing you have to do is as soon as you borrow a transponder,
you put that on the board. And so you'll know to return it because people do forget
when you're in the end and you're exhausted. So we put that on the board too.
Or put a, a post-it or some type of reminder on the seat of your car. So when you're getting in to
leave the tow vehicle on your truck, whatever, however you got there, put something on that seat
and return transponder. Yeah. Otherwise you're going to mail it. That kind of sucks.
Yeah. We, we had gone out to a track and because we were, you know, pants on fire constantly and,
and when, I think it was like our second race, we were walking around the paddock and we saw,
started seeing some of the white boards and I'm like, oh, and then Bill's constructed the one that
we had and it did make stuff super easy. It really did. Just gave structure a foundation.
Yep. So let's see. Let's look at the videotape. The videotape says you came in 32nd out of 82nd,
top 40%. Overall, what were we in A? 11 and 17.
Top 11. 11. That's not bad. First time out guys.
And surprisingly considering the tenure of your team, you came in 32nd overall and you came in
31st overall in terms of fastest lap time. Anthony was killing it. Anthony Hiddle.
Anthony was killing it. Mr. Coming in with a birthday go-kart experience and sets the
fucking fastest lap for the weekend. He had like a 219.
So much. 15 or 16. Yeah. Yeah, no. Yeah. There's still more to be done though guys.
I mean, there's so much to, yeah. I will actually do it.
While I've got you here in the spotlight, where do you feel like you were pulling
like some great time out of the track and out of the car? Like what do you feel was
you were excelling in that got your lap time so low other than being a crazy son of a bitch?
I mean, yeah, honestly. I think that when I was doing well, when I actually, ironically the 216,
I remember that lap time because I had a 218 and a 216 right next to each other. And I thought
that the 218 was the faster lap. I was a lot more aggressive on the 218. I started losing a little
bit of brakes on the 216. And I think ironically that probably led to the faster lap because I had
to slow a little bit sooner and think about the corner a little bit more before I could turn in.
Or maybe not slow as much. Or maybe, yeah. Yeah, maybe. But I think that when I was hitting fast
lap times, there were, there's a few corners that if you do them wrong can punish you a lot.
And I think that corner number, I'm trying to think about it for a second. Hold on.
Corner number four, which is that downhill right turn. Yeah. Isn't it right after the straight?
Yeah. Three is right after the straight. And then there's a left and then, you know, you switch
over to the left and then there's a, you take it wide, and then you
cut in at the last second. If you don't take that, oh, is that six? Okay. If you don't take that right,
it punishes you. And then you come up seven. And then for eight, if you don't take eight right,
that will also punish you. And then corner number 11 is probably one of the harder ones to get, in
my opinion, correct. And if you don't take it right, it's an uphill too. So if you don't take it right,
it double punishes you. Because not only coming out of it slow, but then you're also trying to
fight an uphill. And so, man, you can knock some seconds off of that. I think number 11 will really,
it'll really let you know that you messed up. I mean, yeah, all the corners are tough.
I mean, I don't have any of the corners down to be honest with you. I'm just, you know,
there's a difference between messing them up at an amateur level and then just completely bombing it,
I think. Well, it looks like even Anthony's got some time left because I looked at some of the
other cars that are similar. And it's hard to tell because like, you know, what did they do to the
car? Who knows? But I'd say there's a good three to five seconds left out there. Oh, yeah. Well,
I think that not only that, but we were chewing up our front left tire a lot and Chris made a good
point, you know, because what I was doing was coming into the corner and then apparently while
you're in the corner, you shouldn't also be braking. I was doing that a lot. So I was chewing up that
front left tire quite a bit, especially off of the straight on the high speed
corner number three or four. Well, the other thing that you guys got to think about, and I'm
going to recommend for all of you, my prescription would be go do some HBDEs because there's, let's
just say it's 215 on this track is what you guys could do. And let's just say that there's the
difference between getting to 215 and being nice to your car and tire and then there's 215
and you're killing your car and your tires. So, you know, you want to be the ladder is much more
important for an endurance race. Like getting one lap is fairly easy to be much faster. But
you also have friends that you want to give the car to at the end of the stint that they would
like to have brakes and tires. So it's true. Let's off with that. We've come to wrapping up
point. Ms. Vicki has her favorite question to end the day. Ms. Vicki. What went right?
What went wrong? And what could you do better?
And this is a question you should ask yourself as a team after every single race
as you grow. I have a couple. Go ahead. Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to take it. Well, I think I think
the number one thing we did the best is and this most goes out to Brad and myself,
Cyrus too. But each of us have a strength and we played our strengths because Brad, I mean,
he's a great guy, but he's not super mechanically involved. Like he doesn't know how to weld,
he doesn't know how to fabricate and things like that. I can do those things. And so when it came
to building the car, I was in charge of building the car. When it came into the logistics of things,
honestly, I really don't like logistics and I'm not a people person. So Brad actually took over
on that front made sure we all had our registry. There's a lot involved with this stuff too, right?
You know, it's a full time job. We all had a registration. We all had all the, you know,
boxes checked and everything. I think Brad killed it when it came to the logistics. I mean, we did
run down to the time on things, but had we both been trying to tackle these things at the same
time, never would have made it. Never would have made it. So thanks, Lynn. But also on the other
side of the coin, we would have no chance of being here without fabrication and intensive
mechanical knuckle. So we're back at you now. And you know what Cyrus added, you know, he is like
the unspoken backup. Like he's so quiet in what he does. Yeah, we call him in for emergencies.
Oh my gosh. But I tell you what, he was, you know, he was the sous chef, but he held like,
he was like the underline. But I do have to say that these guys work so well together.
You know, I mean, I got to say, that's what I kept telling Brad. I'm like, you know, this is your
core. This is your core team. I mean, you guys are seamless. I'm sorry, go ahead and interject.
I just want to, you know, champion little Cyrus there because, you know, he might be quiet, but
you know, he pulled his weight without anybody really, you know, quietly pulled his weight.
Well, Cyrus has his strengths too. And I didn't say that's what I mean.
But when it comes to Cyrus, what's nice about Cyrus is number one, you tell him to do something
and he will do exactly what you tell him to do. Like I'm not trying to like dog on him,
by any means, but it's like, Hey man, go out there, don't break the car, don't get a black flag.
And he went out there, he didn't break the car and he didn't have a black flag. I mean, one more
not only that, but also like little things too. It's like we were running behind on Monday. We
kind of realized the mountain of stuff we had to get through, right? And so we were putting
fuelers out there and Cyrus was like, okay, well, you know, I'll take care of X, Y and Z. And Cyrus
the guy that when he says he's going to do it, he 100% is going to do it. And he's just the guy
that you can always count on. If he says he's going to happen, it's going to happen. And it does
every time. So absolutely phenomenal. Something I want to add as far as what went really well
for our team specifically is honestly, how well we all work together. Yeah, to be honest, just,
I mean, we work together, we're all great friends, and everything went smoothly, even when it wasn't
right. So everyone was able to really like, we can rely on each other. There's no doubt
with any of us that we can do the things we need to do. And it made it more fun because like there's
nothing, there's no contention, there's no issues between any of us. So we can just figure anything
out, which was really great. And I think that helped us out the most with everything from start
to finish is being able to just pick up whatever needs to get done. I agree.
All right, what do you got to do better though? No, we didn't do what went wrong.
Okay, oh yeah, I mean, I thought we were going to skip that one.
What went wrong is we trusted Chrissy, but
I'm not going to put that on her. That's a diabolical.
We didn't give ourselves enough time to properly test the car. I wish I could have,
I mean, there's always like a thousand things you can, you know, want to change in the car,
but there were definitely a few things that were important to test out. And I think number one was
alignment. And we didn't, I put a very basic, I would say a sporty daily driver alignment on it.
That didn't go very well for the track. Now, not on top of that, I was also beaten up the tires,
so I'm sure we all were a little bit, but, and then there are a few bigger items I would
like to get done as far as safety of the engine, right? So baffles and the oil pan on that, I would
have loved to get that in. We didn't have a chance, so we were trying to take it easy. So just overall
preparation and time, I think we should have given ourselves a lot more time and a little, and a lot
more testing. Do you have the second fuel pump in there too? That is the original fuel pump.
No, sorry. Because it's got a subtle gas can. Do you have gas tank? Do you have two pumps in there?
We only have one pump. And we were experiencing fuel cut out of a third of a tank. If you push
the car out about a third of a tank, it'll fuel cut. Well, things to learn, things to learn from.
Oh yeah, plenty. You never walked away from a race having like, oh yeah, I killed it.
You're always in training. Always. Let's see, what are you going to do better next time?
I mean, if you're doing a 24-hour race, you're going to need more drivers, you know.
You got to, if you're going in for the 24, it's going to be crazy.
It's a great, great point. You guys bring up.
That's a hint from you, by the way.
I think we have a couple drivers that are highly likely going to come for the 24. We're still down
an official whole driver. We don't have technically. So yeah, we definitely need more drivers. I think
we need a couple more pit crew. We can't have poor Blake cart and fuel all 24 hours on Saturday
and Sunday, no way. So we need a couple more. And a shout out to Blake. Oh yeah, what a one
animal. Did he wear his shirt? He did. He did wear his shirt. Nice. Actually, he flirted with it
in a sense, physically flirted with it when I got my black flag. Do we really get a black flag?
As he's like squeezing his chest together, turning around, turning around. Are you sure? Then he
would show the back of the shirt and kind of wiggle a little bit. I mean, when he got it, flaunt it,
you know, work with what you got. Exactly. Yeah, but that race is going to be coming up.
You're going to need more drivers. I think you can go up as far as six for that one.
You can go further. as far as you want. Yeah, you can do six. But you know,
it's going to be dark. So you're going to need lighting. You know, I don't know if they have
track lights. I don't know. They don't have lights there. Yeah. So I know that people that are out
there, they physically wired in lights to their car. So, you know, there might be have to do
something with that. That's not going to drain the battery if they're, I mean, I don't know anything
about electrical about anything, but they, yeah, they've kind of wired their cars with, lined them
with lights and they put stuff on them. And I think the actual, the lights themselves were
lighted up on their numbers. So, you know, that's something you got to figure out. There's car prep,
for sure. Oh yeah, yeah. It's going to be another week or so of me installing lights this time. And
I do have still a couple things I'd like to take and care of on just the basic mechanics of the car.
I'm definitely going to put a lot more camber in it. I'd like a front and rear stabilizer bar,
you know, all the little things, right? It's a lot of work.
Absolutely. And theme, Brad, what are you going to do?
In theme. Now you've got time. Brad has to theme this time. Yeah.
You got, you got time. There's no welding in themes. Well, there doesn't have to be
welding in themes. How about that? No, there can be. You can fabricate your car.
They love when you put stuff on it. They love when you put stuff on it.
Bigger is better. You know. Yep. That is in the works. Yeah. So my car,
we actually have drill holes all through the roof, but we also wrap our car. So the wrap
covers the holes so we don't really have to worry about leakage or anything like that.
So that's also an option that if you just want to get a strip of black to put over the top,
should you do any welding or not welding, but screwing things down and stuff like that,
there's always something. But, you know, again, if you decide to do any kind of wrapping, just
remember is 20 feet, 20 miles an hour. You just learned after that, you just learned how to wrap.
It's all about the beat and the enunciation. Yep.
I've got some contacts that may be able to help out in the wrapping department as well.
Yeah. It doesn't have to be perfect. So if you guys just do it yourself, you know, you just learn.
It doesn't have to be perfect. I have a minimum. I think he would be able to help us with
the printouts, printouts and cuts. There's a plan. All right. Before we go,
your first away race, your first non-grosh heroes in training race. What do you think?
I was tired going out there and I was thinking, am I overdoing this?
But I got there. Yeah. But I got there. And I'm glad I went early because I got a chance to
go around and understand how the landscape of Denver works and all its mercenities. And I was
able to go out and collect some things for the team that they, I knew that they would need.
And it was great hanging out with Chrissy and Chris and their kitties. And I was very comfortable.
They have chickens. So I was really enjoying hanging out with the chickens. They had an egg
the other day. Oh, I knew they were going to have an egg. I knew. I knew which chicken it was too.
And then, but going to the race and experiencing this was, it was a great track. It was great people.
The team works so well together. And like they said, we might have been under fire for time,
but it was all managed very calmly. Very calmly. And at times we were just sitting around just
waiting. Didn't really have much to do. But that's usually what happens at your first race.
So don't get too comfortable. Things happen. You guys truly haven't been tested yet.
Fair. Yeah. But yeah, I would certainly do it again. I would. I enjoy the traveling.
My next, my next trip is going to be at Gingerman.
And there's your chance. My next trip is going to be at Gingerman. And I'll be going up there with
the Italian job and taking a seat in their car sometime in December. And I'm excited.
Hello. You're not going to race in Gingerman in December. How about September?
No, I said, thought I said September. I'm sorry. So I'm excited. There's something very
relaxing about showing up and taking on a different responsibility. And some of that work is off me
because normally I'm in the garage and I'm usually doing a lot of garage stuff.
And it's usually late nights and stuff like that in the in the paddocks and stuff. Jennifer
usually, my sister does the job that I was doing for you guys. So I was kind of doing Bill's and
Jennifer's job. But it was it was refreshing. It, you know, I felt relaxed and not constantly
under pressure. So that was really nice. I would do it again. Brad, Brad, nice. Yeah.
So what is it you're racing in September? I'm not sure when the Gingerman races.
September 4th weekend. Okay. Yeah. Oh, so definitely. I would say that that that'd be a good
conversation between the two of you. I mean, travel could be great. Vicki could come out.
That's true. She's done it too in a row already. Now, I, I, we did have some opportunity to kind
like you got to experience this. I would love to share the experience with Bill. Hell, I'd
love to to share the experience with both of you guys out here. If we can make that happen.
We'll see. We'll see. It's up to the the cruise director. Yeah, Bill and I will talk. We'll
check out this. Which is, which is Codeper. She's going to tell me what the answer is. No, we have to.
I don't make it. I don't, I don't commit until I see the calendar and see what else is happening
that's going on around it. You know, so. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it does sound like you guys had a
great weekend. It sounds like your first weekend went really well. Don't plan on them all going
this smoothly. I know. I know. When they say 24 hours, sometimes you're working 24 hours into the
night. So yeah, I think as a first experience, though, we all got exactly what we needed to
prep for all future races, which is all what we're hoping for. I've heard of first race weekends that
have gone a ton worse than that. So you guys did well. Did very, very well. Well, we had a lot of,
a lot of advice, which helped out quite a bit to be honest with you. I see you.
Yeah. That that is also what, what Chris and Chrissy did was what we call ambassadoring.
So they do the camp share. And in that process, besides just, you know, taking part in camp share
is educating you on what the paddock is, how's that supposed to run, and possible meals that you
need to sustain yourself and how easy that could be. So as that happens, you know, as we go further
and into your racing, we can, you know, send that information out to you and send possible,
simple recipes as in like, I think one of our dishes that everybody really liked was simply just,
just two rotisseries and some really great quality. And barbecue sauce. And barbecue sauce put into a
crock pot with a liner. You never have to wash the crock pot and it just cooks. It just cooks and
there's racing stuff too besides food. Yes, there is. I mean, to be fair, this is the
underspoken hero of every race events, the food, but it's true. But, but also not only that, but
it's, you know, even all the stuff leading up to we had a huge amount of help with interpreting
some of the rules for lemons, which can be kind of, you know, confusing. So for me, the guy who's
building the car, I had a lot of questions about some of the caveats to some of the, you know,
minor details on our particular build. And we had, well, obviously we had Vicki help us out as much
as she could to and then Chris also came out and helped because we were worried about one of the
positions on the roll cage and things like that. So we had a lot of help. We had a lot of help
from start to finish, not just with the weekend, not just with, you know, the race, but also with
the building of the car, which was a huge advantage to be honest with you. And those resources are
always available. Yeah, that was, that was a good one. So without that, it would attack, honestly.
You know, so, so Brad, how is it being team captain?
Uh-huh. I mean, it's the responsibility of just making sure we check all the boxes that
have to be checked. Making sure everybody clicks the complete registration button, which coming
from personal experience, there's a lot of value in that failure in the past. And I don't want these
guys to have to go through that. But I mean, it's not like, like, yeah, like somebody's got to
complete the registration there for them team captain, but it's,
either captain or nothing, if you ain't got a team and these guys, like Vicki coming out too with
everything that she did, like it's, it's just pure raw team work. No pressure, right? Delegate,
delegate, delegate. Yeah. That's what's going to save your team. Yeah. So well done guys. You
did well. Well done. You guys killed it. You can keep bothering us with questions too. No problem.
Oh, we'll have them. I'm sure. Keep bothering us with questions. Oh, I know. Oh, I know how it goes.
And I will. Don't worry. Yeah. And let's not go too much longer because I think it's two o'clock
in the AM local time for one of us here. So Oh Jesus. Oh, no, it's only one AM guys. We're
going to go for another hour. I see schedules completely destroyed at this point. I got I was
going to take me a week to fix it. And then you got to come back once you get it settled.
And then fix it all over again. Yep.
No, thank you guys again. It's 12 hours away. It's, it's, there's no good way. Like everybody's
like, Oh, when you go east, it's easy. When you go west, it's hard. When you go west, it's hard.
When you go east, it's easy. It's like when you go 12 hours, it sucks both times. Yeah, you're halfway
around the world. Yeah, there's no good way. There's two ways to do it. You can either stay up
until you pass out at the right time or you sleep an entire day. And I like to stay up as much as
possible. That's like, that's the fastest. You want to get that first day, then, you know, after
about two days, you're good. There we go. All right. Well, people don't listen to that guy.
Well done, guys. Thanks for taking care of my beautiful bride. Hopefully,
she helped you with a couple of tips and tricks out there. And well done.
Yeah. Thanks for letting me raise with you. I appreciate it. With her safety.
Yeah. She wouldn't have got any car if it wasn't safe, so that's fine.
Thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.
Absolutely, guys. Thank you for this, too. Have a great day or evening or morning or whatever
you're going to call this, Anthony. Thanks again. I highly appreciate it. Thanks for all the
experience and the advice you guys sent our way. It was very well used and it was in
a lot of need. So that really helped out quite a bit. Be honest with you.
Anytime. Thanks, everybody. Have a good night. We're done. Have a good one.
Before we part, happy Father's Day, y'all. Oh, happy Father's Day. That's right.
Yeah. I'm just thinking he's giving us the finger. Only it's the good one this time.
All right, guys. I'll see y'all. All right. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.
Today, we're talking about how you don't have to earn more when you can save more.
So you brought me this stat. T-Mobile customers had the lowest wireless bills versus Verizon and
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About this episode
High Plains Raceway becomes a crash course in getting an Apex Anti Heroes car ready for Lemons: first-track nerves, simulator practice, and last-minute safety fixes for tech. The crew navigates driver-by-driver wristbands, board checklists, and paddock teched-in procedures, then leans on track-walk coaching and fresh pavement grip. On race days, they track tire PSI, torque habits, and traffic-friendly racecraft—finishing without black flags on Saturday, while Sunday brings instrument issues, fuel-cut quirks, and a black-flag timing dispute.
GHiT 0763: Apex Anti Heroes (With Vicki) Raced at High Plains
Brady is back and with his own team racing at High Plains for their first ever race. Vicki flew out to help prepare and hopefully celebrate the small wins. How did their first race go? What did they do well? More importantly what did this first time racing team learn from their first event? Lots of great ideas and items covered in this one, especially if you are looking to race for the first time or a recently started racing team.
A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/HighPlains2026
We hope you enjoy this episode!
If you would like to help grow our podcast and high-performance driving and racing:
You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, YouTube, etc.
Also, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating, that we would appreciate very much. Even better, a podcast review would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving and we would appreciate it.
Best regards,
Vicki, Jennifer, Ben, Alan, Jeremy, and Bill
Hosts of the Garage Heroes in Training Podcast and Garage Heroes in Training racing team drivers
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