Gunnar Jeannette – From Racing Phenom to Porsche Team Principal

Welcome to the Porsche Club Insider, your one stop for all things Porsche and PCA.

Here's your host, Vue Gwynne and the Insider crew.

Welcome everyone.

We are in Monterey, California.

I don't know.

Have we recorded a podcast outside before?

This is pretty liberating.

I think we have.

I don't think we've ever recorded one without your sheet of paper on a phone.

I of course didn't bring my laptop because I put it in a safe space in the hotel safe

and then I forgot to bring it with me here.

So we're here at Monterey Pines Golf Course.

If you haven't guessed, we are preparing for a works reunion, which happens tomorrow.

It's the Thursday before works reunion and knock on faux wood, I guess, knock on

tracks that things are going along swimmingly.

In the middle of all this, why not record a podcast?

Usually you'll see our guest at the track and I'll introduce him in a moment.

I want to make sure we thank Pirelli, our presenting sponsor, Pirelli Tires, to achieve

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and garage.

And I glad that you did not mention that this event is sponsored by another tire

manufacturer.

It's okay.

It's car week.

They can all co-exist.

I was hoping the background wasn't going to pick up the entire manufacturer.

No, it's just fine.

We co-exist.

Warx Reunion and what Manny is talking about is Warx Reunion is actually Moneray is presented

by Michelin.

Amelia Allen is Pirelli.

Exactly.

So we have Damon's at the controls.

He's off camera.

You're not going to be able to see him.

Of course, Manny always to the right here.

And our special guest, I'm going to let Manny introduce him.

Well, I mean, he's the dad of the probably the most famous dinosaur race car there is.

I told people around here, I said, Gunner Junet's coming.

And they looked at me for some like, you know, Rexie, and they're like, oh, oh yeah.

I said, AO Racing's team principal.

And so much more.

I remember Gunner when he was racing.

He was one of the youngest racers around and Kevin Junet's son.

It was just this whole all in the family Porsche family and seeing him coming up and racing and

being so good at racing.

It was a blast when I went to go to races and he was in one of the cars.

Maybe it wasn't a Porsche, but the fact that, you know, you were like rooting

for him to do well.

Was you mind giving us growing up Junet?

Yeah.

So, so yeah, first and foremost, my father, Kevin Junet, you know, he's from California

originally moved to Florida in the early 80s just before I was born to work for Jerry

Sutterfield and Miles Collier.

And so, you know, with that, at that time, he was restoring cars for Jerry and Miles

and actually through Jerry, the Porsche factory.

But then he was also running race teams with Preston Hen and the Wittington brothers and

and yeah, exactly.

And so I grew up in in Southern Florida with my dad having a shop where he restored cars.

But then also not consistently, but race teams where he would work for Busby or, you know,

work for, like I said, Preston Hen, a lot of the 935 teams, Bayside.

The Bruce Levin, that kind of thing.

So then I'm going to the, you know, professional racetrack as a kid, at least the Florida ones

and the Florida ones are pretty big ones, right?

Daytona 24 hours, Sebring 12 hours.

At that time, they had the West Palm Beach Grand Prix, which we're from West Palm.

So it was pretty cool to have a street race right there.

And you know, I'm three years old, going to the racetrack, five years old, always

on the fence outside like, man, when can I get into the hot pits and whenever

the car would come out, you know, my job is, I'm the guy that sweeps and cleans the car,

right?

So, so that was, was my life growing up sort of around that.

And then at the shop, I think when I was like five or six, he got me a little five

horsepower Briggs and Stratton go kart.

And so in the summertime, like close the gate at the shop and make a little course

and yeah, go one direction and when you got tired of going that direction, go the

other way.

And when you got tired of that, like get out the hose and like wet down part of it and

then go do that.

And naturally, it wasn't like your dad was grooming you to be a car groomer.

Yeah, that's what I wanted.

No, and that, and that was the thing, right?

He was so busy with, with the restorations and the professional, you know, managing

a race team that I mean, he didn't have time to be like, oh yeah, let's get

you a go karting.

And this was very much pre-Max Verstappen race car grooming.

And so I never even thought of racing.

I was just, oh yeah, I'm at the shop.

So I'm going to go, you know, hop in the go kart and just go have fun or go into

the what we call museum at our place at Gunner Racing.

And in there were customers, you know, factory 962C Shell Dunlop car, 917s,

908s, coupe, long tail, like all of it, like literally everything.

Do you just like, did you like hop into these cars?

Yeah, I would just, I'd literally just go in the museum as, you know, anywhere

from call it five years old to 12 years old and just sit in a car and just be

at home sitting in Onstooks car or Derek Bell's car or Vic Elford or, you

know, Joe Sipper and that kind of thing.

And it's pretty cool because now for, yeah.

The last 10 plus years I've been driving for the Revs Institute, which is Miles

Collier and that collection.

And there's so many photos of me as a little kid, like in the 917 PA with

Joe Sipper's helmet on and like that kind of thing.

So it's just really, really cool, you know, sort of full circle in life

thing that I'm able to do that for the Revs guys.

And yeah, I mean, I pinch myself.

And what age were you when?

Because there's a lot of kids that hop in go-karts.

There's a lot of kids that, you know, enjoy it.

But at what point did someone notice, hey, maybe the blood line is strong

and there's talent there?

So we always had this thing where generally every year we would have

a fun day at what was Moroso then PBIR and now is, was going to be a

Walmart parking lot kind of thing.

And with that, like a majority of the cars would get brought out.

And, you know, it was essentially, my dad always said, big boy rules,

like people can drive them, but if you drive it and crash it or break it,

like you're on the hook for fixing it type of deal.

And and we did a lot with Champion Porsche at the time.

And so they let us take a Boxster out.

This would have been probably 1998.

And and so, yeah, I was 15.

I had just gotten my learner's permit.

And and my dad had a driving instructor there.

And I got to basically a Boxster.

Yeah, flog, flog a box for a day.

Boxster, do Boxster.

And and at the end of the day, we had a 904.

Yeah, 904 six there with two seats.

And and my dad said, hey, you want to go for a ride in the 904?

I said, no, why don't you ride with me in the Boxster?

And he was like, OK, fine.

And so I drove him around for a couple laps.

And at the end of it, he was like, oh, shit,

I think he's actually has some talent.

So so that your dad raised at any point.

No, no, he he raised go karts as a kid in Southern California.

And and he would drive the cars and do

shakedowns and that kind of stuff at Moroso.

But no aspiration to become pro or no, no, no.

But yeah, I mean, just back to that sort of childhood,

then like at historic events or shakedowns or stuff,

it was always the, hey, do you want to hop in

a nine sixty two or a nine thirty five?

And there's no seats.

So a lot of times you just grow a car cover.

And like, I remember it being so cool

any time that I got to, you know, hop in

and basically just wedge myself in.

And I couldn't even see over the dash,

but being in like an air cooled nine sixty two

and just hearing the engine noise

and the word of the fan and the waste gates

and all that stuff is just like, you know,

for me, one of those core childhood memories that, you know,

I'll never forget that.

That's a bit different. How? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's pretty awesome.

Now hearing this, you'd be surprised that he wasn't going to go into motorsports.

You know, it's yeah, but it's funny,

because even when I was in high school,

like I wanted to be an engineer, I got good grades.

Even as I started driving,

like I was going to to do mechanical engineering

and it just got to the point where I was like,

it's kind of hard to focus on like first couple of years of college

and being gone all the time racing.

And so so, yeah.

Did you find that helped you

because engineering and racing, obviously, to go hand in hand?

Yeah, for sure.

Understanding driving dynamics and the dynamics of handling

and that helped you out with developing cars.

I think, you know, I have a real sort of analytical

just sort of methodology and how I work and how my brain works.

I never got super deep into the, you know, the maths,

maths and physics and that kind of stuff from the the college perspective.

But yeah, in general, yes, I'm extremely detail oriented

and in that kind of manner.

But but yeah, you know, made the decision sort of early on that, OK,

I think I'm talented enough and going to put all the chips

into being a race car driver and was able to make that,

you know, successful for 25 years before shifting aspirations

into other parts of the business.

So all those years, obviously observing your father

and being around all of it and then starting to drive on your own.

Are you are you then finding your own style?

Or does dad give you pointers?

How does how does that all work?

So he was very hands off on the driving stuff.

And and so, you know, for for big races that

I was driving for a team that he wasn't involved in,

like he wouldn't even be there. Oh, really? Yeah.

And and, you know, I think that that's from actually being in motor sports.

You never want the driver with overbearing dad or, oh, hey, yeah,

I'm new to the team and your mind if I bring my five,

you know, family members along and that kind of stuff.

And and I can definitely appreciate that now as I'm running a team.

So like, you know, I'm 19 years old.

I'm going over to the Lamar test, like I don't even have a ride yet.

And it's basically like, OK, get on a plane, kid.

Here's a calling card.

Like it was it was even pre cell phone for us.

So it's like, get into the paddock at Lamar,

start going and making introductions, like trying to find anybody

that has an open seat, because, you know, things were way different

back in the early 2000s.

Just how Lamar worked and the fact that the test day was a month

before the race.

So like, you didn't have to have everything sorted immediately.

So OK, so you can't just gloss over Lamar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you started the.

Was it vintage racing?

That's how you get your 15 or 16.

So I did my first vintage race.

Yeah, I would have either still been 16 or have just turned 17.

And and yeah, vintage racing because of my dad restoring cars

and then running them for customers.

Yeah, it was the easiest way for me to get in it, right?

Like we're we're in the auto industry, but not like a wealthy family

that can just go and pay for rides and that kind of stuff.

So it's the, you know, hey, Joe, you mind if, you know,

I put my kid Gunnar in the car for a 90 minute Enduro.

I'll give you a good discount on your bill kind of thing.

And if he crashes it, I'll fix it for free.

Sounds like a good deal.

Yeah. So yeah.

So my my very first race was at Road Atlanta.

And I was driving two cars that weekend.

One was a two liter 911.

And the other one was a Interscope K3 935.

And the Danyongaia's car.

Yep. Danyongaia's car.

The number zero.

Yeah. And that's what that was sort of just the upbringing, right?

Like the next historic race I did was in an air cooled 962, right?

Like, and and so incredible.

But that was, you know, I had a certain level of maturity to not

treat it like an idiot because I knew if I did treat it like an idiot,

it was all going to go away.

Right. Right.

So that that was kind of, you know, then shifting from the historic

racing into the professional racing, kind of the the hard thing for me to

kind of figure out on my own is like, OK, well, figuring out the limit.

Right. My so this this all happened in a very short span.

So the first Daytona 24 hours I did was in 2000.

And at the time I was the youngest driver to do it.

I remember it was a lot of height before the race.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I was a co-driver.

Yeah. So I was 17 and my co-driver was one Paul Newman,

who is a family friend through racing stuff.

BLN. Yeah. And he was 75.

So I was the youngest driver ever in the race and he was the oldest driver

ever in the race.

I was so blue. I said, I remember that was a pretty big deal.

Yeah. Yeah. And then we, you know, continued to race at Daytona

for a couple of years after with Paul.

And, yeah, I always enjoyed being around and

yeah, seeing him operate at such a high level at his age.

I mean, he would be, you know, we're so the next year,

that year we raced a Porsche GT3R, the first 996 Porsche GT3R.

And the following year we were in the GT1, the ex champion GT1 Evo

and the GTS class.

And like Paul was maybe two seconds off the pace.

That's incredible.

And like beating himself up.

Yeah. Oh, really?

Like normally I'm not this, you know, I'm not this far off,

but these turbo cars, you know, I'm used to the Corvette GT1s

and, you know, the Roushmustangs and that kind of stuff.

I was like, Paul, if I can drive a car when I'm 76,

like I'm going to be pretty happy, let alone be two seconds off the pace.

So in hindsight, do you think cutting your teeth on like the vintage cars

sort of gave you gave you a better sort of prep or appreciation

before you really got into the more technical cars?

Yeah. Yeah.

And and definitely like I started racing professionally

when you still had to have some mechanical sympathy for the car.

Like the the first cars for at least four or five years,

it was still an age pattern.

Yeah. Like you still in the Porsche show, you had to use a clutch

before the sequential came out and that kind of stuff and just in terms

of how you treat them sort of over curbing and racing with competitors.

It was still some aspect of endurance racing.

That's pretty much gone now.

Like it is a sprint race, don't act like an idiot,

but generally the car can take what you throw at it at a Daytona or a Le Mans.

Sebring is still kind of sebring.

But I remember 2000.

And I tell my friends who haven't gone to Daytona, I said,

you should be able to walk for the garages at around a 12 hour mark.

Yeah. And there would be some serious work being done.

Yeah. Third car is back there.

Replacing heads and stuff.

I said, now I went last time like three years ago.

It was one car, right?

It was every and like you said, everyone else is running like

qualifying laps, 12 hours into it. It's insane.

Yeah. And and I, I don't know.

I feel like I probably would have had more success

as a driver being in a different age

or or era, like if I could pick any era to race in,

it would be sort of, you know, call it start in the early 70s

and finish. I knew you were going to go there.

I knew you were going to go there for sure.

In like GTP Group C kind of an era, right?

Pre data acquisition, when the drivers actually had to set up the car

and know what you're talking about,

when you had to be able to drive fast,

but not screw anything up, not miss a shift, not.

And there didn't seem to be a BOP back then, right?

Oh, don't.

Can we just not talk about BOP right now?

Because what I mean, that's my hand.

Man, he's known to trigger people.

Well, I don't know if anything do came out,

but I do know that it seems to be a time

when the best engineer prepared cars would win.

Just flat out. Yeah.

And that definitely didn't necessarily lead

to the most exciting actual racing product.

But the cars were cool.

They sound cool.

They look cool.

The engineering and stuff that came out of it became iconic.

Where we are right now with sports car racing

and IMSA and WEC, like, yeah,

we're probably in one of these golden ages of manufacturer

involvement and just the product

and the racing is so good.

But man, BOP is painful.

Yeah, it's got to be heartbreak into a point

because you prepare the car for people.

Don't know what that is.

It's balance of performance

where they're trying to even up the playing field.

So and to the credit, especially IMSA,

maybe more so than WEC,

the cars on the final lap are still fighting.

And it's like several teams that can win the race

and Daytona 24 has proven that the past couple of years.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like you said before, it'd be like the last two hours.

There's just a gimmie because there was so much of a lead.

But now you're listed years.

Daytona, I was on the edge of my seat to the end

watching to see that they would actually cross the finish line first.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's painful being a team

that really puts a lot of effort into the preparation

and equipment and the drivers that you have

and that kind of thing, because then all of that,

just when you get a 3% power reduction, it's like, well,

yeah, but we can go back onto the original topic.

Well, since you talked about equipment, I'm going to pause real quick

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So just to hear him read the text for it.

All right, with that same enthusiasm.

Hey, that's why he gave me the big bucks.

And the thing is his wish will probably come true and I'm going to have to make it happen.

Yeah, like a Ricky Bobby.

Yeah, exactly what he says all the time.

And for the listeners, we are literally in the flight path of the Monterey Airport,

which is probably going to show you never pay attention.

But on set up day, all these people that are bidding millions of dollars

on these cars this week, they're the ones you see coming and going.

Yes, exactly.

And speaking of coming and going, while you guys were talking,

a CGT just came by, the one that's going to be next to the stage tomorrow.

So all sorts of stuff coming through for Works Reunion tomorrow.

But back to Le Mans, like how did that happen?

When that happened?

And what was it like once again?

Your age, your age, yeah.

Yeah, so that that year, yeah, first time I did it was 2000.

So I had just barely turned 18.

And and, yeah, the guy that we had done Daytona with and,

and, you know, similar sort of thing, like customer, my dad's running historic cars.

And I just was lucky enough to sort of ride on the coattails and be able to do that.

But what car was it?

Also a GT3R.

OK, GT3R.

And and, yeah, so I was the quickest guy in the car.

And and so I did the qualifying and then I started the race.

Did they expect that or a surprise?

No, I don't know.

I didn't really ask, nor did I really care.

We were the home of the every team.

Firstly, when you had the drivers, they're paying their way.

Right. They had the pro, if you will.

And I'm like, well, this guy's going to get us qualified and then we'll drive.

So, yeah, I'm sure they were probably expecting that you'd be the one to.

Yeah, I mean, so.

Just to really let everybody know how much experience I had at that point.

I think I worked it out.

Le Mans was my eighth ever car race.

What? God.

So I did that.

I did the I did the nerves of steel.

I did the Atlanta Historic.

I did Daytona Historic.

I did a Grand Am Cup race, which I had to do in order to get my FIA license.

Then Daytona, 24 hours.

They driven in night at least.

Yes, like the race at night.

Yeah. Yeah. Daytona, 24 hours.

Sebring, 12 hours.

A Charlotte, Alamass race.

And then Le Mans.

And at that time, there was no sim for you to like.

Oh, no, no, no.

You used to where to turn right, where to turn left.

No, no, that was very, very much pre iracing or anything like that.

There was a Le Mans video game, and I did that some and watched the Duke videos

that had like a little clip of an onboard on it.

And that's how I prepared.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, one of the coolest moments of my life being on the grid as

we're about to start, I'm strapped in the car and like fully having

the heartbeat Steve McQueen, you know, movie moment.

And and so we started the race in about

four laps in or something.

One of the Cadillac LMP cars caught on fire.

And so they go safety car and only under safety car.

Now, when you're going slowly, can you like look and take in the fact

that there's 300,000 people around this track and like just trying

to then process all of that was, yeah, it was with something.

And so as your first lap, second lap, third lap, when do you feel like

at ease, like, OK, I can do this?

Yeah, I mean, it once the race actually started.

I mean, you just you just click into race mode.

Yeah, you're just thinking about racing at that point.

That's incredible.

And and yeah, I mean, since I was the youngest and the fastest,

like I want to say I probably did about 11 hours of that race. Wow.

And yeah, and it's just, you know, it's little memories now of,

like, you know, my I did a double stint and at that point,

a double stint in those cars, like those cars could go for about an hour

and a half on a tank of gas and the sun's coming up.

And this was before they changed the the the Dunlop section.

So it was still you'd go underneath the Dunlop bridge and go

straight down before the S's and that Rouge and the the carnival

and fair used to be on the left hand side.

And as it's getting into morning, I've been in the car almost three hours

and I'm smelling all of the breakfast that's being cooked there.

The bacon and pancakes and sorry, French toast.

Just toast there, sir.

Just toast. Yeah.

And and just every time going through that section,

I'm just frickin starving.

And so it's just, you know, little things like that.

So what if you think back, what was the most challenging part of driving all that?

Besides the hunger? Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, I wouldn't pick out any

single challenge from that year.

The following year, we finished second in class

and and I actually crashed the car in practice and almost tub the thing.

And it was a it was a German team and

overcoming that to then be able to perform in the race.

Like that was a big challenge.

Like I would imagine a lot of that's mental.

Oh, yeah. Everything's mental. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, yeah, we're lucky to be in a day and age

where you can have some pretty big crashes.

And the likelihood is you're not going to break something or kill yourself.

But, yeah, there's definitely some scarring

and PTSD that comes with any time you have a big mistake.

Good taste of that with that Michael Fassbender series.

Oh, gosh, that Porsche did.

Because same thing happened to him and all the drivers,

the factory drivers trying to console him, right?

But nothing. He's almost a controllable because he knows it was his fault.

Right. And how do you get back out there?

And they're trying to tell him, no, just you got to get back there.

Yeah. And people don't realize how hard it is to drive like an RSR on Michelin,

particularly the Michelin confidential tires at that time in a car with no ABS.

Or like some of his shunts were in mixed conditions.

Like any armchair quarterback out there.

Sure. Go hop in a race car with no driver aids or ESC or nannies.

Try to just keep the damn thing on the road, let alone go race with some.

Right. For hours on end.

In one of the lower classes.

Yeah. You're not the prototype where you're passing everyone.

Yeah. And then you have traffic and LMP1 cars that are going 50 miles an hour faster around you.

Who expect you to probably move out of the way, right?

Yeah, not move out of the way. They expect it to just be aware.

Yeah, be aware.

But yeah, that series and anybody that hasn't seen it, I encourage you to watch it.

I mean, there's there's some painful things to watch,

but they do a great job of showing what endurance racing is like.

Yeah, they add to the fact they had a camera right there documenting his breakdown.

You know, I felt bad for the guy.

It was like, I can't imagine the pressure.

And while it's not his his livelihood, it's still something he wants to excel at.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're committed a lot of time.

Yeah, you're putting a lot of effort into it.

Yeah. And at this point, I'm not even sure you're legally allowed

to have a beer yet. In France, I was. You were.

Not in the state.

But you're you're you're you're running at Le Mans, you're 20, 21 years old.

But it was 17 when you were the youngest driver to finish Le Mans.

Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, just 18.

So in in that race, we actually we had a.

We had a cylinder go down.

I forget what the issue was.

We actually went in the garage for about an hour and a half,

maybe two hours and there like you have to to complete a certain percentage

of the race to actually be classified as a finisher.

So like we worked out, OK, how long can we sit in here?

We actually took the spark plug out of the bad engine or sorry, out of the bad cylinder.

That's only and then finished on five cylinders.

Really? Yeah.

And so, yeah, it was it was a lot of effort just to finish.

And I mean, unfortunately, you know, we didn't finish as well as we could have,

not having the issue, but it was still, yeah, pretty awesome to become

the youngest finisher, which has since been beaten,

but records are meant to be beaten or whatever.

So you said you are you're quite mature for your age and you're doing all this

before you're 20. What's at that time?

What was the long term goal?

Yeah. What's next? Yeah.

How do you drive Le Mans?

I'm going to do something else afterwards.

Yeah. So yeah, at that point,

the rest of that first year was just kind of hopping in rides here and there

that kind of came up at that time.

There was both Grand Am and the American Le Mans series.

They hadn't merged together yet.

So it was kind of just doing a hodgepodge of.

And still the family business is still going during all this, right?

So, yeah.

And and then, yeah, for the next year, we were able to put

that deal together to run the GT1 at Daytona,

which didn't end so well.

We got an oil leak very early on in the race and had to retire

because we couldn't fix it.

So that was unfortunate.

But then like there was rumblings of this, you know, Porsche,

wanting an American junior driver.

And so through our family friend, Alwyn Springer.

Yes, Alwyn was still very much Porsche Motorsport North America at that point.

And and so Alwyn is kind of helping pull some strings to,

oh, you should go do this.

Oh, you should go do that.

Like you should hop in a cup car.

Like we'll arrange a test for you at BISOC to then do Super Cup Race at Indianapolis.

And so, OK, well, now I'm 19 and I get to go to BISOC and test.

And and then sort of at the end of that year, sort of doing, you know,

a mix of other things.

And I was still doing a lot of historic driving.

And at that point, I had linked up with somebody that had some real big

GTP cars, so like the Intrepid GTP car of Lola Judd,

like all sorts of like really, really fast stuff.

And and so I ultimately was going where I got an invite to go

to the Porsche Junior training camp that they were having.

And and at the same time, Paul Newman had been working on talking to Don Panos

because he had a relationship with Panos, who, you know, if you're not familiar,

like was a race team, had his own car, but also own the American Le Mans series.

And and yeah, a number of things.

But but so Paul had driven for him also.

And Panos was saying they wanted an American driver.

And wouldn't you know the test for both of those things?

We're on the same day, the same damn day.

The Porsche thing was an extended, you know, it was a junior training camp.

So you would go over and do like physical fitness stuff, which then would be

four or five days and would culminate in a two day Carrera Cup test

around Misano and, yeah, two day test at Rhode Atlanta

in the Panos LMP one car on the same day.

So like first existential crisis of my entire life, I'm 19 and I'm going.

Well, like I've always been a Porsche guy. Yeah.

And there's going to be a lot of juniors there

that have been doing lots of Carrera Cup and other stuff.

Right. Like I'm not a Carrera Cup guy.

Like I've been driving GT3Rs and stuff in endurance racing.

But like I haven't been doing single make

sprint race kind of stuff.

And I didn't think that I had as good of a chance

to be successful in that, you know, sort of environment there.

Whereas the Panos thing, like we know they wanted an American

and we had a pretty good in and the pool was quite small.

Yeah. Now I say this, like I'm 19.

I've been racing for two years and like going up to LMP one is, you know,

this this massive thing. Right.

And but yeah, ultimately, like decided to go do the Panos thing

and went and tested had an awesome two days there.

And I got a contract to be a Panos factory driver. Wow.

And so that that first year with Panos was as sort of the endurance

and and reserve driver.

But I got to drive at all of the tests and, you know,

pal around with Jan Magnuson and David Brabham,

who are two of the coolest human beings that I've ever met

and got to call sort of mentors.

And then I drove with with David Donahue

and and Bill Oberlin and Brian Hertha

kind of across the board and yeah.

And and then sort of through that, then, you know,

it was just kind of bad timing because Audi had come out with this

R8 LMP one car that sort of, you know, destroyed everybody.

Yeah. Yeah.

So most of the time we had no chance.

But but yeah.

So then, you know, two years at Le Mans in a Porsche GT three

are and the next year is as a factory

driver in a Panos LMP one. Yeah.

And and in 2002, that first year, we had mechanical issues.

And then in 2003, in the next year, I finished fifth overall

first non Audi or Bentley.

Yeah. And and that was Panos's highest finished at Le Mans.

And how different is the driving experience in an LMP one car?

Yeah. I mean, it's amazing.

The Panos especially is different because it was a front engine car.

So like the driver is sitting just in front of the rear axle, the rear tire.

And so it feels very, very different.

And in terms of visibility, you know, you're sat low.

You've got this long hood.

Different. Yeah. Yeah.

Hood and and, you know, engine and and forward chassis

and all of that stuff.

But but yeah, it was it was super cool times.

And then when Panos got out of the the P one car

and went into the GT car stuff, then I continued on with that program

for, you know, a number of other years

then before transitioning into doing stuff with Multimatic.

So Multimatic, which makes the Penske 963.

Yes. Among other things.

Yeah, lots of other things.

But yeah, through through the Panos stuff, I met Larry Holt of Multimatic

and he really became almost like a second father to me.

And I ended up spending, yeah, lots of time with Larry and his family.

And then, yeah, I got to be involved in lots of cool projects with Multimatic.

It's really cool. Yeah.

So yeah, as a driver, like at that sort of singular moment,

took me away from Porsche and and competing directly against Porsche

then in the GT class and which happened to a lot of drivers.

Yeah. And that's just what I was going to say is that, you know,

I think in your career, you have to just understand that

it's very rare that you're going to have a affiliation

with a single manufacturer through that whole whole career.

Yeah, that whole career. Yeah.

And so, you know, I've driven plenty of other manufacturers' cars,

but it's it's really cool to be in the place that I am now

that with our entity AO, with what we're creating,

we're creating that with Porsche that then brings me full circle

and to even make it more full circle.

Like when we decided that we were going to to do AO

and we wanted it to be a Porsche, they had just announced the the 992 GT3R.

And like just getting an allocation for this was going to be difficult,

especially for a team that really didn't exist.

Like it was just like, yep, we got three guys.

We're making a racing team.

And did you get the allocation from the Porsche Motorsports North America?

Take that or that in Germany?

No, that was a North America thing.

And I, you know, knew Volcker a little bit,

but it was Alwin Springer.

I was going to say, yes.

It was Alwin.

It was Alwin. Here's what we're doing.

Alwin knew PJ. PJ had had he got the 935.

PJ had had just got the the Andyle 935,

the swap shop car that that one day tona.

And and Alwin went to bat for us to to Alwin's everywhere.

In fact, he'll be here tomorrow.

And and that was really the start of of AO.

But but yeah, to to then have that relationship with with Porsche,

with all the success that we've had in our short amount of time

is really, really cool for our listeners to understand.

You run that in GTT Pro.

Yeah. So it is two car.

But they run two class of the same car.

It's really the drivers.

But with being the, I think,

and I'm sure you're the only Porsche right in GTT Pro.

Yeah, at the moment.

The WC, I know the iron dames on.

Yeah. In the WC,

Mantae runs both cars here.

How how much influence does Porsche have

on the team versus the GTT car,

like right motor sports and the other ones that are just running GTT,

not pro. Yeah.

So with with us, we I mean, it's all still customer racing.

So anybody that can get a car

allocation can enter and go race in GTT Pro or GTV

as long as they get an actual entry from IMSA.

We are we get a certain level of support in terms of,

you know, parts, packages and that kind of stuff.

And we can get drivers.

So, yeah, our drivers are our Porsche selected drivers.

I think only the guys that officially race for Penske

are factory drivers.

But for all essential purposes, they're Porsche factory drivers.

Because I would imagine motor sports comes over during the race

to check when you guys are to see how things are going.

They're watching all the time.

Yeah. I mean, in modern racing,

with the telemetry and and all that stuff,

like they're they're getting our telemetry live on what's happening on the car.

They have our radio stuff.

We have a live chat thing.

So they're always in communication.

And and, yeah, we have a great relationship with the people from PM&A.

And it's it's pretty neat because there there's some other people involved

in the project over at PAG, like Andy Singer,

who is the son of Norbert Singer.

Well, and so so that that's just it's just back to the the cool sort of family

thing, like growing up. Sure.

Not knowing Norbert personally, but very much knowing who he was.

And now it's like I get to work for the son, Andy.

It's just sure. Yeah.

So for our listeners, we always love to give them the inside track or the inside story.

Can you share with us how AO, what is AO, how did it come about?

And of course, maybe talk a little bit about Rexie.

Yeah. So my partner and co-founder of AO is PJ Hyatt.

PJ has always been a car guy,

went out to Silicon Valley, formed a very successful

tech business, was able to sell it at an early age

and be able to sort of do whatever he wants for the rest of his life.

Nice.

Which is exactly what I would do if I had that money.

Yeah, exactly.

So he first started doing a car collection

and mostly street car stuff, then started sort of expanding into some race

car stuff and started driving them naturally as you're going to.

But the car collection is called Autumn Oaks.

So that that's the name.

And originally, we were going to be Autumn Oaks racing, but Autumn Oaks racing

just an awful. Yeah.

So in the end, we just shortened it to AO and kind of came up with a cool logo.

And I would never guess everybody.

So that's why you listen to the inside or you get the inside stories.

OK. Yeah.

So that that was sort of how AO came about.

Rexie is definitely that's family and kids.

Well, yes.

So so PJ being, you know, relatively new, sort of much like me, Daytona,

24 hours was his first professional race and and sort of an all of the lead up.

And actually, sorry, no, it wasn't his first professional race.

We had done the Bahrain WEC race actually in an RSR before that

and finished on the podium, but PJ still had a carbon helmet.

He didn't have a helmet with like paint on it with the design.

And so in the lead up, it looked like a driver's

that PJ man, he got to do something here.

And so we found a really, really good

and creative helmet painter, Mike Savage,

who does a lot for the professional paddock.

And and him and PJ came up with this cool theme

to do for his kids where, well, to reverse even more,

he couldn't really figure out what he wanted.

So one night, he just asked his kids, what should I have on my helmet?

And his son said a T-Rex and his daughter said a unicorn.

So perfect.

His first helmet and most helmets after have a T-Rex on one side

and a unicorn on the other.

And they look really, really cool.

And especially in the P2 car, because where your helmet is,

he's got a T-Rex right there.

And so our first race in in 2023 is AO

with the Swap Shop 935.

It was the 40 year anniversary of the Swap Shop 935's win.

And we thought what a cooler thing to do

to do a tribute throwback livery and have both cars be there.

So Daytona 23.

We did the Swap Shop GT3R and the T-Bird livery

with the Andiol on it and all that.

And we getting back to BOP, we didn't have the best BOP.

In fact, it was so bad.

All of the portions were basically in a Carrera cup class.

And but we finished the race

and we're sitting in the RV a little bit delirious

and maybe having had a couple of whiskeys.

And I said, well, we can't run this livery more

like it was a one off thing.

So what the heck are we going to do with the car?

We kind of went back and forth about a couple of things

and PJ's helmet is sitting right there.

And he looked at it and jokingly said,

oh, we can make the car a T-Rex.

I was like, we can.

Some of the best decisions with a whiskey.

Yeah. It's like, we can make the car a T-Rex.

And and, you know, that was sort of it.

And then we leave and I'm going, OK, well, yeah,

I think we can really do this.

And I reached out to a friend of mine

whose father was the BF Goodrich tire rep

when my dad was racing nine sixty twos.

Oh, the iconic red and blue and white.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And and he was a graphic designer

and he had just sort of stayed in touch and said,

hey, if there's any livery stuff that I can ever do for you guys,

like I would love to be involved in, like, creating a race car.

And he told you that, but he was not expecting you to call.

No, no, exactly. How about with the T-Rex?

And that was the thing, man.

I was like, I called him and I said, T.J.,

I know you've been saying this

and this is going to be one of, like,

the most difficult things to bring to life.

And he was like, all right, let's let's see if I can do it.

And so he and another guy, you know, worked on it for a couple of weeks.

And I remember being at our pre-sebring test in February

and I got the first rendering of the car.

And I mean, it wasn't completed yet.

But I was just like, oh, my God, this is going to be so good.

And I got so excited about it and I left and I went home

and I showed it to my wife and she was like, oh, my God, really?

Like that. I don't think that looks good at all.

I was like, I was just so shattered.

I was like, no, no, no, no, no, this is this is going to be it.

It's going to be amazing.

You just show it to a kid.

Well, yeah.

And and so we kept working on it.

And then to see the car actually come to life

when it got wrapped and photographed.

And you're always nervous that people aren't going to

to respond as well to it as, you know, we are.

Yeah. But I mean, what a more perfect place

to launch something like that than Seabream.

I mean, Seabream has, you know, some of the craziest, most

enthusiastic fans and the people just went nuts for it.

And how sort of I, but my family and my dad operates is

you always need to sort of

take it to another level or or get people to engage with it.

And so, you know, showing up with a car that looks like a T-rex

like that's not enough.

Right. You need you need to get people involved and enthused.

So at Seabream, then we had, like, you know, the Jurassic Park

palm trees and we had other inflatable dinosaurs like hanging

from the thing and then the actual people in the in, you know,

the rexie suits, then around during the autograph session.

And that kind of is that like crew members or is that the fans?

No, no, that that was crew members.

Yeah. And you find out what somebody's really like real

quick. If you say, hey, you got to hop in a rexie, you know, inflatable

T-rex suit and go interact with the fans.

But but yeah, and the weekend was just a hit and and then,

you know, sort of continue to grow from there.

And then we were running the WEC at that time in the RSR.

And and so then it was like, OK, well, we can take rexie

to Le Mans. And so then we made the RSR into rexie for the

23 Le Mans, 24 hours.

And it went crazy over there as well.

And I remember during the parade, I think, or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The crew members dressed as the rexies.

Yeah, I was wondering if the French had ever seen that.

Could we see that here in the U.S.? Right.

But I thought that must have been pretty wild.

Yeah. Yeah. And and so it, yeah, it really exploded.

And then to create the other characters,

Roxy, the pink dinosaur, which was pretty easy to do.

But then when we expanded into the LMP2 program, man,

I don't know how much time you guys have looked at an LMP2 car,

but trying to take that body shape and and well, they're all the same car.

Right. Well, the LMP2 right right now.

Yeah, everybody's running an orica because that was the best manufacturer.

But but yeah, creating Spike was was way more difficult.

But what a way to differentiate yourself from cars that all look the same.

Right. You have one that stands out.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, sports car racing is

it's a great place to get feedback from fans

because we have autograph sessions every race weekend.

And so the amount of people that come up and give you direct feedback of,

oh, you know, thank you so much because now my kids actually want to come to a race

or my wife and and I can bond with my kids or even the parents that say,

you know, I wasn't really planning on coming here,

but my kids knew that Roxy or Roxy was going to be here and we're here

because of that and and that's really, really been been fun to see.

And and and then, you know, we keep sort of

evolving our presence and show

and and yeah, doing things non-traditional

are our autograph sessions, not all of them because of how involved it is.

But we do these autograph extravaganza's now,

which are actually sort of parties and we have sort of smoke machines

and some pyrotechnics and bubble guns and like all sorts of stuff.

Because we've we've created such a phenomenon

that people line up and we'll wait like for an hour

before the autograph session even starts. Absolutely.

So I'm going, OK, well, you know,

I want to to give everybody that is so enthusiastic

something to do while they're in this line for an hour, right?

So like, let's let's do something and put on a show to

you know, make people want to be here and be involved and engaged.

And and pressure on the other teams up their game, you know,

PJ and I sort of talk about it pretty often that like

we figured other people would have kind of jumped on the bandwagon

at this point and seen what we do.

But I just I don't think people are interested.

You know, most of the race teams, they have,

you know, either a gentleman driver or a manufacturer or something

that is ultimately paying and allowing and funding the program to happen.

And they have to want to do that to give back to the fans and the people.

And I think everybody is just focused on themselves.

Well, and also it's it's not easy to do.

I mean, it's it's easy for us to watch from this side

and look at all the fun and look at all the entertainment.

But now as a team principal and you're managing these expectations,

looking at those lines and how can you make that experience better?

Like that takes effort.

And some people might say, well, that's taking away effort

that I might be using into something else.

So it has to have you have to have that dedication that you want to do this.

Yeah. And and that, you know, I think

when people first saw the T-Rex thing, it was the, well, you know,

that team's not serious because we've got a T-Rex livery.

But you know what?

You can be serious about racing and be serious about, you know,

having fun and giving back and making memories at the same time.

And that's, you know, ultimately what we as a team are about is first and foremost,

like is always performance.

We're not going to be out there if we can't do well and have a chance to win.

But yeah, to your point, there is a lot of other effort that goes into

into our listeners know that we always give a race report

like every other podcast of how M-SENWC is doing.

And I mentioned Rexty quite a bit as podium.

So it's not just the looks.

It's actually your drivers are phenomenal.

Yeah. In fact, for the L and P2, we talked about switching drivers,

drivers switching teams and whatnot.

You actually got Dane Cameron, who was the American 9-6-3 driver.

Right. And he was very successful and won the championship.

Yeah, won the championship.

And then, yeah, I'm not going to say what went on in the background,

but was essentially asked not to continue with the program.

So we're very happy to have Dane and Dane is helping us to lead the points

in both the IMSA L and P2 championship at the moment

and also the European championship.

So Dane has been a very, very good addition to our program.

That's great. Yeah.

Well, time is certainly fine,

but we do want to try to get in one more topic and go ahead.

Yeah, I'm happy to continue for as long as you guys want to.

Yeah, so this will be an article that's going to come out in panorama.

We always hear Sunder once and we know all the all the guys

over at Sunder watching the stuff they do.

So it's always interesting to hear they always say,

you dream it, we'll make it happen. Right.

And so and I thought to myself,

this guy is so busy running this team and whatnot.

How did the whole making a Sunder once,

if you will, version of Rexie come into being?

Yeah, so we're

on the racing side, we are able to get

allocations through Porsche Motorsports North America.

And so I was able to get one of our teams allocation from 2024.

And and through dealership partner

and a good friend of mine, Rodrigo Salas,

sort of put me in touch with the right people to talk to,

which ended up being Mason Doren at the Atlanta office.

And I told him what I wanted to do.

And at that point, like it was still early in Rexie being a GTD pro car

and sort of through the timing of things like

the dates just kept getting pushed back further and further and further.

I said, you know, I wanted to do a tribute,

like here are all of the items that I would like to do.

And then as the date sort of kept getting pushed

and then we were sort of evolving through the race season,

like the final build date was then the day after Petit Le Mans.

And now we're leading the championship.

And so I'm thinking, OK, well, if we win the championship,

like I want to get GTD pro champion and we're going to have all of the

the race tracks that the car won at sort of on the dashboard.

And and I really, really wanted the Rexie character that we have

embossed in the headrest.

And and all of these things, you know,

the door sill stuff was pretty easy,

although we do multiple colors in that.

So that was a little bit of a challenge.

The dashboard stuff was not too big of an ask,

but the embossing a T Rex character on the headrest and coming up

with the die for that was definitely push their team.

And and we went back and forth on it a good bit.

And then they finally said, OK, like we understand.

And it was also interesting because again, at the beginning,

you could tell, you know, priority level wasn't super high for him.

But then they started to to see and understand like, oh, well,

yeah, it's it's Rexie.

Like we get it now and the cars leading the championship.

And we've won three races.

Would you call the guys at MotorSport?

Yeah. And so then like everybody over there in Germany

got more invested in the program.

They're like, oh, yeah, we're pretty sure we can make it happen.

And I remember seeing the photo of the embossed Rexie sort of

after they did the first test piece and was just like, oh, my gosh,

this is so awesome. So cool.

And and so explain to our members.

So I know you watch on reality TV, these bill shows,

and they do all this custom stuff and you're probably thinking yourself

of why does Porsche do something like that? Right.

But for them, they have to make the stuff last.

They have to do all these testing before they put their blessing on it.

So something that's seemingly as easy as maybe putting a logo

because they think if you can put it on the head,

why can't you put it on the head rest? Right.

It's not that easy.

Yeah, everything's got to work with the the material and whatnot.

So, yeah, it's a big ask.

Yeah, it is a big ask.

And and, yeah, the I actually just received the car

right before our Road America race.

So from, you know, getting the allocation in late 2023

to delivery, I mean, was a better part of a year and a half.

And and, yeah, to to see what they were able to create

with it was just absolutely amazing.

Is the color, Rexie's color a Porsche color?

Is it a car color? No, so that that's actually a funny story.

So that was probably the hardest thing was figuring out which green to use.

And it was only once I got the car allocation and I started doing this.

I was like, man, what an idiot.

Like, I had the opportunity to create

Rexie with a Porsche color and we didn't.

We just used the final color that looks good because so we

we based ourselves at Porsche Motorsport, North America,

which is in in the PEC in LA, sort of for the West Coast

when we do Long Beach and Laguna and that.

So our teams, their racing and the cars there.

So when I was there, then I went over on into the the paint to sample.

Grabbed all the frogs off the road.

I grabbed all the greens and put them on the car.

And I was like, oh, man, which one am I going to choose here?

Ultimately, I went with Viper Green because that's

sort of it goes back to the original

seventy three RS with the green and that kind of stuff.

So it's not identical, but we just did.

We did an on track photo shoot with the two cars together.

And and yeah, I mean, it it still looks great.

So you go all the way out and he's any Rexie fans

and pay tribute to Viper Green.

Yeah, but I will say, please do not put a T.

Rex, Rexie, livery knockoff on your Porsche.

We have many people that do those.

Really? Our livery is copyrighted and trademarked

because we don't want people to have a knockoff livery

and leave a cars and coffee, crash into a bus or, you know,

all of that stuff.

So yeah, one of one of the the difficult things with having

cars and characters that people are so into

are then the knockoff products that come with that.

But we're very fortunate to have created something

that so many people want to be a part of.

Is there an official one 18 scale?

Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we have put that on exactly models.

Yeah. Yeah.

One eighteenth, you can get the RSRs from Spark

and the any of the the GT three R's are TSM.

Which is the official IMSA partner.

Very cool. All right.

Well, let me just remind folks that the PCA Open House

is September 13th.

We're sold out.

So if you didn't sign up, we'll catch you next year.

Treffen at C 2025, our 70th anniversary cruise,

Saturday, August 30th to September 6th.

Also sold out.

We'll see you on the next treffen at C.

Treffen at C sold out.

It's sold out. Yeah.

I was coming to it.

I was coming to that as well.

The high seas.

We talked about some racing earlier.

So if you want to check out PCA's version of some racing,

PCA SimRacing.com looking for PCA Insider swag.

You can go to our PCA Web Store.

Check out the merchandise we have there from bottles, mugs,

shirts and such.

You can send your address to podcast at PCA.org.

And we'll send you some PCA Insider decals as well.

And, man, I know we could go for at least another several hours.

We're going to have to have you come back.

You're going to have to give us an update.

Well, we'll remind listeners.

And I'm sure the first video will be out by the time you listen to this.

Damon's. He worked his butt off yesterday.

Yes, he did.

We went to three auctions and we just have to look pretty on camera.

But he does all the behind the scenes and all the hard work.

And we'll have several films or videos, I think,

from from the lots of lots of content.

We gathered just from the few hours that we were here yesterday.

And I hope you enjoy them.

And I want to thank everyone.

Thank you for joining us.

I know this was somewhat last minute because we didn't know

what your schedule was going to be like.

But you came over here and we had such a great time.

We got to do this again.

So everyone, I hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you for listening.

Be sure to like, comment and subscribe.

Consider sharing our show with fellow Porsche enthusiasts.

Until next time, stay safe.

And we'll catch you down the road.

Can I say one last thing?

Absolutely. Sure.

When do we think this is going to air?

This one is going to air.

He has a date for it.

It's two weeks from now.

Two weeks from now.

OK, so we'll drop something to any PCA members

that are in Chicago regions.

We are going to be doing an AO Block Party

open house event at our shop in early September.

September 1st it drops.

Oh, OK.

So it's going to be pretty close

because the event's going to be September 6th.

So this is for hardcore Chicago PCA people

that watch this religiously.

We are at our shop going to be having multiple cars out.

We're going to actually have a stage

where I'm going to talk about cars history.

We're going to have maybe an RSR that will fire up

and make some great noises.

So if you're in the Chicago area,

you're welcome to come by.

Man, we're going to make sure when this goes out,

we have to say, listen to the end.

You don't want to miss that out in the end.

This isn't your second notice because we'll

make sure next week's podcast we put in a bit about it.

This is like the Marvel Easter egg, right?

You got to stay for the end.

Exactly, you did it very, very good.

Thank you so much.

And have a great rest of the weekend.

Great.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Damon.

Gunnar Jeannette – From Racing Phenom to Porsche Team Principal

About this episode

Porsche 917

Porsche Boxster

Porsche 904

Toyota A90

Porsche 911

935 K3 935

911 Porsche Gt3R

Chevrolet Corvette

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