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Netflix Hyperdrive sensation Fielding Shredder Returns
Netflix Hyperdrive sensation Fielding Shredder Returns
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About this episode
Fielding Shredder returns to discuss his experiences since appearing on Netflix's Hyperdrive, including his travels to Japan and France, and his involvement in various drifting and racing events. He shares insights on the differences in car culture, food, and track experiences between the U.S. and Europe. Fielding also talks about his transition to working with Continental Tires and the challenges of being a professional driver in a post-pandemic world. The episode highlights his upcoming Drift Week giveaway, offering listeners a chance to win a fully prepped drift car.
Topics:
netflix hyperdrive
drifting experiences
travel stories
continental tires
car culture differences
food experiences
drift week giveaway
racing events
sponsorship challenges
ep184
**EPISODE SPOILER: MAJOR CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT FROM FIELDING SHREDDER**
Our favorite drift and motorsports athlete Fielding Shredder of Shredder Racing returns for the first time since 2020. Find out what has changed in his life, what new opportunities he has moving forward.
What are the differences in drift courses between United States, France, and Japan? What are the food and cultural differences? What is the breaking news contest announcement?
All that and more in this episode with Fielding.
Contact Fielding:
https://www.fieldingshredder.com/
https://www.instagram.com/shredderracing/
https://www.youtube.com/c/FieldingShredder
Contact Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning:
email: [email protected]
www.Hardparkingpod.com
Join the Patreon (lots of exclusive episodes and bonus guest audio): www.patreon.com/hardparkingpodcast/
Instagram: instagram.com/jhaepfenning/
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Acura TSX
"... their attention. And I'm sorry my friends, Acura TSX is not going to get the same attention as a class..."
Car
BMW X5
"...uation. They've got their hands they've got their X5, they've got whatever that are pulling a little l..."
Car
Lotus Excel
"...d also smooth correction on that man cuz you know excel. Thank you. Thank you Excel."
Car
Toyota Supra
"... But I was actually drifting the brand new Mark 5 Supra for all the ride, along with four or five other d..."
Select text to request an explanation
This is Hard Parking, sponsored by Wright Hunt and Wright Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ. This is your first time joining
the show. I'm your host, Jay Finning.
It's been maybe six months since I teased the return of fielding and time Timing didn't work out. He's done a lot of traveling.
Coming up on today's episode, finally caught fielding Shredder doing a lot more than just drifting.
He kind of rose to fame outside of his own circle because of the Netflix hyperdrive show. If you guys haven't seen that
show, it's a few years old now. I think it came out in 2019, But
that is an awesome show. And it's even more awesome when
you know one of the competitors. But from that we got kind of
removed from 2019 or obviously 2020, which I reference a lot because that was a big time in people's lives.
Everybody was affected in some way, shape or form.
And if you weren't personally infected, somebody in your circle was that's, I'm not going to call that an opinion.
I'm just going to go ahead and say that's a fact.
But I wanted to try to, you know, we recapped his visit to France and Japan and I got some of the dates and timelines kind of screwed up what you corrected me on.
But you know what, what were his experiences over there?
And so that's when I take the car stuff and spin it into the non car stuff. So that, you know, everybody
listening to this podcast probably has those same questions. How's the food?
How's the liquor? What are the small differences?
Where are the similarities? And that's something that I have
a lot of fun doing. These podcast listens go up,
they go down. But the key is, am I making this
informative and entertaining enough?
Not only for you guys, but am I learning something about my guests along the way? Also, I finally got the Road
America video up on YouTube. I just posted it on July 30th in
the morning. You guys listen to the last
episode and you wanted to actually see what I did.
It's worth your time. It's a fun and I think it's a
little funny YouTube video. It's a vlog, but it's almost an
hour. But I take you through the
weekend just as I did the podcast and I tried not to make it the same boring vlog I find in YouTube videos.
You have one of two different videos.
As long as we're talking entertainment, the key to YouTube is really informing people things or entertaining people. And so this vlog would be on
kind of like right down the middle.
But you get the vloggers and the Youtubers that have a million, 2,000,000 followers and they have hundreds of thousands of views. And we'll take Strad, man, I
don't even know how many followers he has.
I would guess two or three million.
And I watched one of his videos and he's very high energy.
A lot of quick cuts. A lot of guys look at this.
This is all good and it's it's 1000 miles an hour.
I'm an old guy I'm. I'm a little slower but I still
try to make it interesting for you guys.
So if you have a chance, check it out.
Go to the YouTube page Hard Parking Media.
You can probably find it under hard parking podcast and you'll see it. You'll know it when you see the
thumbnail. It's very rare Ferrari on the
thumb. I should have used my friend's
car. I thought about that.
I did use that on the as a thumbnail for the podcast upload, but YouTube's all about the thumbnails and you know, grabbing their attention. And I'm sorry my friends, Acura
TSX is not going to get the same attention as a classic vintage badass Ferrari. Anyway, after this word from 4
Wheel Online building Shredder is back.
Jay Finning here, and I want to tell you guys about Four Wheel Online. For over a decade, 4 Wheel
Online has been bringing the best truck accessories and truck parts to enhance the appearance and performance of all trucks and Suv's. They are dedicated to providing
an extensive range of upgrades that will match any maker model on the road. The truck products cover
everything you need to give your truck a custom look and added functionality. And if you need a tire wheel
package, head over and use the configuration tool.
They carry all the major brands of wheels and tires, so we'll get out for today. So visit them online at 4 Wheel
Online or call them in 813-769-2451.
Again, that's Four Wheel Online, the number 4 wheel Online building shredder. Welcome back to Welcome back to
Hard Parking Man. Yeah.
Thanks then. Appreciate you having me back.
It's been a minute, yeah. So you've been traveling a lot.
And I was looking at our I went back to review our episode before and almost three years ago.
It was that episode dropped in August of 2020.
Oh, OK. OK.
It has been a minute. Yeah.
I wasn't sure exactly how long. Yeah, dude, it's it's, I looked
at it because it's not like we haven't talked to each other since then. You know, you came into town for
Barry Jackson. We'll talk about that and just
kind of back and forth a little bit on social media following your travels, man. Things have changed a lot.
So I'm kind of glad it's been so long because you know, the other episode, it's ranked number seven all time on my list, by the way, for downloads. Yeah, it's not bad.
You know what? It is appropriate.
In fact, I was going to put the camera on all that kind of stuff and wear the seven shirt. But it's it's funny that you
ranked #7. I didn't even put that together
until you just said what you just said.
Things like it. It works out like, though more
often than that. Yeah, which is totally bizarre.
So glad you made the time. I know you've been super busy.
I kind of wanted to step back a little bit in reviewing that episode from three years ago. I have questions for you, man.
I'm ready. At the time, probably 70% of
that conversation was all about hyperdrive Netflix, because you were just coming off of the 2019, right?
I've wondered, the further away you get from that experience are people, do people still approach you just as much as they used to, or do you? Can you kind of stand off and go
back to kind of the grassroots fame and fielding Shredder, the guy who races trucks, you know, for Continental or the guy who's still doing the drifts, or you still get the people that come out and say, oh, I watched you on hyperdrive all those years ago? Yeah, you know, it's about 5050.
What I think is cool is some people will have known to me from hyperdrive and come up excited about that and remembering that from, you know, a few years ago.
And then some people will just say like I just saw you on this recent thing, whether it was the Stadium Super Trucks with Continental or doing some Drift week with Lone Star Drift.
You know, they saw me one way or another through social media and or and or a live event where we do ride alongs and we do you know meet and greets and all that sort of thing.
And yeah, I think it it's it's cool to meet all kinds of different fans. Sometimes they're from
hyperdrive and have followed me throughout and sometimes they're they're new fans and both of them are like excited in their own way. And they usually tell me, you
know, they're not just like, oh, I know you.
They're like, tell me. How they know me like, oh, I saw
you jumping those Stadium Super Trucks, like in front of the crowd at Bristol, you know, with cleaning some cars.
And I was like, dude, that was the craziest thing I've done in a long time. Or they'll say like, oh, I saw
you on Drift Week. I came to one of the public
days. I took it right along with you
and it was amazing. And it's a totally different,
you know, environment, but still a really memorable experience to talk about and relate to. And I think that's what's.
You know something? Great to connect with fans.
How'd you get into the trucks? So that was a deal with
Continental, you know, after 2020 came to and I decided just to part ways and you know, we had a great relationship for many, many years and they were always an amazing supporter and sponsor of my program and in 2020 with COVID.
They were moving factories. They told me like like we we
can't support you, we can't sponsor anyone.
We have to take a step back while we figure things out logistically with our company. And I said I totally understand
you guys have been great. Like we're all in great terms,
but it just didn't make any financial sense to support any drivers at the time. So I moved on and found an
opportunity with Continental Tires, a great, you know, option to get into the market with more.
You know, upscale OEM style car and truck tires that are like OEM, Porsche and Audi and BMW and Mercedes, that sort of thing, which is different from my drifting, you know, audience, which is more of the Chinese tire or the tires that are pretty inexpensive because we're burning a bunch of them up.
Or you know, in the pro segment, there's not even Continental or Bridgestone or Michelin. They they stick with more of the
American and Japanese styles. And brands, well, that's
interesting. Yeah.
So like we talked about, like, OK, how am I going to shift the audience and how am I going to make things interesting and relatable to Continental? And they offered me the Stadium
Super Truck event and which has always been a dream of mine, like, literally ever since I saw a Stadium Super Truck go off a jump and land with 15 other cars behind or trucks behind them.
Coolest thing ever. If you haven't seen it before,
you should Google it like. It is the shit and something
that excites me. The same, if not more than
drifting, which is rare because I love drifting.
And so we we came up with a plan to, you know, do some more Rd.
racing and more grip driving and more stadium Super Truck as an example. A different kind of events that
will highlight the brand and make it relatable to my fans and and new fans that are in that kind of demographic.
And that's what we're doing. Take me back to the deal with
the kind of the tires, because 20/20 was a shitty year for everyone. And it was.
I remember a lot of stuff that was planned and a lot of stuff got cancelled and we weren't quite sure what the future was going to hold, not only for you, but for pretty much anyone.
So then you lose the tire deal and you know you understand, but it's still got to, like, really suck.
No, for sure. It always sucks to lose a
sponsor, but at the same time, it made sense.
No bad blood. We just, it didn't make any
sense and we have to evolve, of course.
Yeah. Was there any like, what was the
real level of doubt about getting back on track?
You know, because again, coming off of kind of the pinnacle for your life at that time, the TV deal and everything else and all the plans that all got cancelled was like, I'm going to keep doing this until I can't do it anymore.
But damn, like is am I ever going to get back to that?
Yeah, so I think something that's taking me quite a bit of time to learn, but remember I've been in the game for 10 plus years now At this point is that like the river will keep flowing. You will find a way to continue
in a manner that suits your personal lifestyle and dreams and goals and aspirations. And I don't know if Kenda just
dissolved at the right time and it made sense and it was OK and then Continental came right back into the picture Just by happenstance. I mean you guys know as a
profession I have multiple different jobs.
I'm a driving instructor so I can teach for a rally, I can teach for drifting and also for Rd. racing at Circuit of the
Americas. I also do camera car work with
my my buddy Max, first with the Wolfpack Agency.
So anytime there's a commercial or some sort of driving gig where I'm driving into the camera car or the hero car, I'm going to be behind the wheel doing that.
And it just happened that I we were shooting a commercial for a company that was building these offroad Thunderbird trucks and the Continental Rep was there. I met him and I just happened to
be talking about the type of tires that were on the camera car, which were. Tires that they had just put on
for the event and I was just talking to Max.
I wasn't even talking to the Continental guys who I didn't know was there. I was just talking about the
characteristics of the tire and how they had a very clean breakaway from traction to slip angle And like it was very predictable and you know, nice to be able to get up to the edge without worrying about when it goes over in unpredictable.
And the Continental Rep actually overheard me and he kind of walked over. And his name's Marco, good
friend of mine at this point. But he was like, what did you
just say about those tires? And I was like, and I didn't
know who this guy was. Right?
And I'm just like, well, I kind of just repeated what I said because it was true. I said, well, the
characteristics are such and such.
And he looked at me really like. Confidently and said, wow, I
can't believe I'm saying this, but we have developed those tires to have exactly those characteristics.
And I'm actually the, the engineer for this tire.
I'm the first person who has articulated the characteristics of it properly from testing. And I was just like, Oh well,
cool man, nice to meet you. My name's Fielding, yada yada.
And we kind of. Yes, for a minute and talked
about the tires and talked about what we do and what not.
And it was a cool just kind of organic meeting of this Continental guy and he asked me if I worked with any tire companies. And at the time I said, yeah, I
work with Kenda. I'm very proud to be represented
by them. We have a great partnership and
I'm not looking for anything, but you know, thank you for being interested. And he said, Okay, you know, if
you ever have any openings in the future, let me know and we can talk. And that was that.
Good things happen to good people, man.
Cuz Continental. That's a big time name.
I have a friend who is a big time Continental guy.
Have you ever met Ryan Eversley? Do you know who that is?
I. Don't know if I have actually.
That name sounds familiar. I'm not sure if I've met him
though. Yeah, so he used to, or I guess
he's still, well, he still races.
I'm sorry, Ryan, if you ever actually listen to this, but he's joined us on one drink Wednesday too, a few times.
And he also races the the trucks for Continental at times and I think they sponsor his podcast that's dinner was racers so okay giving him a shout out there but that's a really cool guy to to kind of become friends with too. Cuz like you, he's just full of
life and and you guys are are super awesome and I think it's awesome that you got that opportunity cuz you know opportunity comes knocking sometimes when shit looks like it's you know, closing up on you.
Yeah, I mean dude, when it's developed into the stadium super truck opportunity like I was over the moon, that is really one of the coolest things you can do behind the wheel.
They are unbelievable jumping those jumps at the speeds that they're going and just landing, breaking like Oh my God, it's amazing. It is so much fun.
They're ridiculously fast and they pick up the wheel on the inside if you are accelerating properly.
Like, they are really difficult to drive at the limit.
They all are run a spec Continental tire and so they're all spec trucks, they're all LS7, they're Dr. Sump, they
weigh the same, they are set up the same, same tire pressures and everything. The only thing you do is
driving. So it's a really solid racing
and like the top guys who have been in this seat for a long time are really good, like they're pretty much unbeatable.
But the back half of the pack is like all the noobs and all the youtubers and all the fresh meat.
And dude, it is so much fun to dice it up with them like you are just having a blast trying not to crash and going up these jumps at brickneck speeds. It's ridiculous, man.
That sounds amazing. Axel Francois, you guys became
sounds like or looks like you guys came really good friends.
After you guys experience on TV together, you've turned into quite the worldly traveler. How did that whole thing come
about? Because I swear you were over
there for like a month and then it's like you were there for a few weeks and then you went to Japan and then you went back there before you came here. So, so I started my travel to
Japan and I was in Japan for about 12 days and then I came back to Texas for about a week and then I went to France and I was there for seven weeks. Wow.
Yeah, and it was the most fun ever.
Like XL and I are the exact same person on different continents, and we have the same mentality and the same like passion and drive for drifting. We just want to drive as many
fun laps with as many fun drivers as possible.
He set up the very first Drift Week Europe, which was such a great experience. We, you know, took all the
things. That we've learned from Lone
Star Drifts Drift Week in USA, and they're not affiliated.
Alex Excel is doing his own thing.
It's not tied with the US Drift Week from Aaron Losi and Lone Star Drift, but you know, it's an homage to the experience of getting all your friends together and driving as many track days as you can and as many cool tracks.
Now in Europe it's a little different, like.
There is no possible way to St. drive your car on the road
between race tracks. It's just not a thing.
And basically, out of 20 or 25 entries that get into driftwood gear up, only maybe 10 will make it to the first stop because the rest will be impounded by the cops.
So yeah, everyone's on like a. Truck and trailer situation.
They've got their hands they've got their X5, they've got whatever that are pulling a little lightweight aluminum open trailer and it works. Drift BMW is everywhere And also
smooth correction on that man cuz you know excel.
Thank you. Thank you Excel.
Yeah, yeah. It's pronounced a little
different than we would say in US, But yeah, they say excel and. Yeah, he's just like, such a
good friend of mine. Super cool dude.
Like I said, we think exactly the same.
We want the same thing. All of our dreams, desires,
goals, thought, process. It's it's so ridiculously
identical that his wife is always laughing.
She's like, whatever you want, he wants, whatever you think he's thinking, y'all are the same person.
We're just like, I guess that's true.
Relationships are important, man.
And when you have like, that's like a natural.
That's not a business relationship.
That's just a natural like this is my brother, you know, that's it. Yeah, that's awesome, man.
My brother from another mother, it's amazing.
And so he was very gracious and kind, Best host ever.
He let me stay in his guest room and we just hung out every day.
We did car stuff, we did offroad stuff, we did French stuff, we did buggies. I got to experience the local
cuisine. We went to barbecues and
parties. We drifted a shit load.
We went all over the country and then even into Spain and then Dora. Like it was such an unbelievable
experience. I never wanted to come home and
that's why I stayed for seven weeks.
Tell me some differences I got. I have, I have differences.
Questions for you. One is track related, one isn't.
So we'll get the track stuff out of the way.
One of the biggest differences from our tracks here in the States versus Japan and over in Excel and they hold the rest of the planet over there that you're.
At OK, so you know in USA we have the track typically is going to be like a one lap wonder kind of thing where you stop at the start line, you wait in line and then you go whenever it's your turn. Now there are some events that
have mitigated that by using a hot lap layout like Lone Star Drift. Most of the time is a hot lap
set up and other events throughout the country are, but some and most are not. Still there's still A1 lap
layout where you wait in line and then you go do your 30 second run and then you wait again for 30 to 45 minutes or whatever it is. It sucks Europe at least.
On this particular European drift week it was very similar to the US drift week where every track is a hot lap layout.
We only have so many drivers. And all of the drivers are, you
know, at least like a level 5 out of 10, but they know what they're doing. They know not to get in the way.
They know to check their mirrors and like keep the momentum throughout the track even if they're not drifting.
And it flows well. Now Japan, same thing, only more
so. I feel like most Japanese tracks
are hot lap. And the difference there is they
have really no regulation like. There's no track workers,
there's no flaggers. And I'm speaking strictly on
Ebisu, like maybe at Nikko or Mayhan they have flaggers and track workers, but at Ebisu, there's nobody there.
There might be a volunteer that's working the lights at North Course, but like otherwise you're just Sol, keep your eyes up and don't hit anybody. So that's one of the the
differences. And then in Europe.
We first went to Andorra, no, sorry.
We started in France and we went to a togate event and that was super, super fun because. It was a proper togate, yeah,
like up a French Alps mountain. And the way that they were able
to talk the city into this, because it's a proper public Rd.
you know, two lane Rd. up a mountain.
And there's businesses and residents and everything up this mountain is we have to close it for 15 minutes at a time.
And then we open it and let the cross traffic through.
OK. So like we we've let a couple
cars at the baseline, we stop it, stop traffic, same at the top. And then we send the cars, all
of them. There's about 30 race cars that
go up them so gay and hopefully don't crash or cause a problem.
And we send them about, you know, if they want to go in groups, we let them go in groups.
And if not, then they're maybe 15 seconds apart, which is fine.
So. We do that and we have a blast
right zipping up and down this mountain.
You go up the mountain and then if there's time, you go back down and then you pause, let the traffic through, and then another 15 minutes you get to block it off.
You go up the mountain, all 30 cars, and then back down the mountain, all 30 cars. And we had an amazing time doing
that. No one crashed except for at the
very end. One guy slammed into the
mountain on the Cliff face. Luckily for him, yeah.
And it was hilarious because he was like one of the newer drivers in the French circuit, but he was going on Driftway and we were leaving the next day to go to the first track in Spain.
And so literally like 10 French dudes get on a trailer, we all zip up to half the mountain, pull him off the embankment where he had smashed into the rock face that was the inside corner. We get a spare on the car, we
drag it down the mountain. And then we put it on his
trailer and then everyone goes to his shop and just like fixes the car. So he makes Trick week.
So cool. It's awesome, man.
I thought I saw maybe some elevation changes on some of the tracks too. Yeah, yeah.
So the next track we went to was in Spain.
It was called Maranda de Abor and it was literally one of the top 3 tracks I have ever been to in my life.
It was unbelievable, this track. It had a rally inspired theme.
So basically the the track designer really loved rally but he knew he had to make a tarmac racetrack to pay the bills and bring in that demographic of driver like motorcycles, bikes, cars, race cars, drift cars, everything.
So he builds this track, but he inspires it by Rally and Do.
On this track there are three. Jumps that initiate you into the
drift around like a long corner. It is fucking crazy.
And then on the outside of the track on like the outer perimeter is a rally course. That's a gravel course that just
traces the outside of the road course on the inside so you can run a rally race or a drift race or a Tom rack race.
For a motorcycle race and there's three jumps on each lap, so per lap you do 3 jumps. That sounds pretty badass now
was Did you guys ever have two things going at once or that was against the rules? Oh no.
We would run as many tandem as we wanted.
Like, well, I mean like people, people on the, you know, you're, you're on the actual main course, but then somebody's on a dirt bike shadowing you on the other course.
So. So yeah, it was just meant for
drift week when the days we were there because we rent the track.
So it was, it was on the calendar and it was communicated that this is drift week's time these two days.
So it's mostly just drift cars now.
We put some gravel tires on one of the drift cars and we got to go out in the gravel on the rally track a little bit and that was hilarious. And then also if you like make a
mistake and go off track, you end up on the rally track and you just like recover, stay on the gas.
You're rally into the gravel and then you pop back on to the time I can keep going. That sounds pretty cool, man.
Hold it, hold it. Kicking up gravel before you get
back on there. So let's talk about the culture,
dude. Like the food.
Like what are some of the big differences in the culture?
Seven weeks? Because I I don't know.
I can't travel for too long before I'm ready to come home and and I could come home and reload, go somewhere else.
But I feel like after a week or two, I'm just.
I just want a Starbucks. I just want to come home and get
like a regular burger. What was the food like for you?
What are some of the cultural differences not only in the food, but just period? I know it's kind of a loaded
question, so let's start with your favorite.
Yeah, it's good. It's good.
So the coffee in France is so good that I never even thought about Starbucks. Even the like coffee you make at
home, they have these little single serve pod that'll pop out on espresso. And they're so good.
They have the crema on top and you know, the foam.
They taste like a proper cappuccino or espresso, and they are cheap and easy to make. So that right there was
resolved. They have the best bakeries ever
in the whole world and they're called blue lingerie and that means French Bakery and you go in every morning.
Yeah, some words I remember because that one is so good.
Is magic. Yes, you go in.
I always bought every morning a croissant.
And a croissant is like 60-5 cents.
Yeah, whereas A croissant and USA is like a couple bucks.
There's $0.65. I would buy a loaf of bread, so
a French baguette for the warm 80 or 90 cents.
Yeah. Typically it was fresh, warm and
then I would. Try and buy at least one or
maybe two different kind of pastries or something sweet.
Sometimes they have punch chakala, which is like a Poisson with chocolate inside. Sometimes I would get some sort
of fruit or custard dessert or an eclair.
Everything was so working good, dude.
I'm like every morning I did not even flinch it, spending $10 in the boulangerie and. Excel and all the other French
guys were like, you are ridiculous.
How are you not fat? I'm just wondering that myself.
Like, how much weight did you gain?
Or did you sweat it all off in the cars?
Yeah. No, I don't.
I don't think I gained any. I don't know my body's type.
Type is. I just.
I can't gain weight no matter what I oh, you wait.
It'll gain. Yeah, I've heard that.
Yeah. Yeah.
It might eventually give me, but so far so good.
And yeah, I just every morning I would do that and then.
And the food is fairly cheap if you know what you're doing.
Like I would get some sort of lunch meat and it would typically be like an Italian salami or like a sausage or some sort of Italian meat. And then I would get some sort
of cheese that I had never tried before.
And I would try and get like a papanad, which is, you know, spread for the bread. And I would get the bread
baguette and I would just make sandwiches and eat that corner kind of thing each day. While we were working on the
cars and and wrenching and stuff.
And then at night his wife would cook, Exhale's wife would cook dinner. And yeah, I was very, very, very
happy with the food. It was delicious.
It was not expensive. Do you go out to eat?
It is expensive. Like when you go to McDonald's,
it's like 12 to 15 bucks for a combo.
So if you want to get like a Big Mac combo, it's almost $15.
Which is a lot more than USA. I think USA is maybe 8 or 9
bucks for a dude. It's it's getting up there.
Isn't that combo? Yeah, but it was still
significantly more where you just kind of were encouraged to eat at home or get some groceries and do your thing.
And it was better anyway. Of course.
Yeah. If you have someone cooking for
you, like a host or something, you know, why not?
Yeah, you know, just eat there. I don't wanna ask you about the
sandwich meat and the cheese, OK?
Because is it like ours? And I asked this because my wife
and I went to Italy, I don't know, almost 10 years ago or 10 years ago. And when we would get a
sandwich, it'd be this giant piece of bread, like one slice of cured Italian meat and maybe like one slice of cheese.
And I'm holding this thing because I just want like a roast beef. You know how we Americans, we
get the big thick sandwiches. Where's the sandwich meat?
Like there. Well, because I was in control
of it, I could make it American style.
Yeah, least fair. You know, I would just, I would
just buy like a whole last thing of lunch meat, you know, a package of it. And I would buy a package of
cheese and it would be a different cheese each day.
Sometimes goat cheese, sometimes French cheese, sometimes Italian. I would just try something new
basically every day. So the meat wasn't overly cured
because that's what we were coming across.
I'm like every single one of these.
All this lunch meat. It's like way.
It's like hard. I'd eat it.
Would I need some salami and crackers?
I just want to have a fucking sandwich.
They do have that. I think they they like that
better. So if you're at a restaurant,
they're going to serve you that because it's not fancy, but we like the softer, like fattier cut.
That's right. And that was what I was able to
pick, like I just picked normal ham or normal, you know, salami and it was great. It was delicious.
I was very, very happy. And you know what's what else is
interesting is like, they don't have the same rules for us.
They don't. None of their shit is allowed to
have like yellow 5 or red 40 or whatever.
Those dyes are. So it's much healthier,
noncancerous, and they are not allowed to have like heavy nitrates or preservatives or any of that stuff.
So everything is fresh. It does go bad in like a couple,
you know, maybe five days to, but at the same time like just eat it. Don't waste it, just eat it and
just get it done. Like if you buy a loaf of bread,
eat the loaf of bread before you buy another loaf.
You know, sure. Beer.
Wine. Liquor.
Yeah, well that stuff never goes bad.
How is it you see like Budweiser and like the brands we don't even drink here over there or? You know what's so funny is
we're on Drake's Week and you know, there's all the French guys that are getting booze and and beers and whatnot and they offer me a beer and I'm like, yeah, I'll take a beer.
They give me a Budweiser and I'm like, what the hell?
I I came all the way across the country to eat, to drink delicious beer. You send me a Budweiser, like,
all right. And they're like, you thought
you'd feel at home. And I'm like, fuck this thing,
give me a good beer, you told them.
Like, look, guys, no one back home drinks this.
Like there's not a lot of people who actually drink Budweiser.
We can get this for like a dollar, which is like $0.80 in
euros, you know, like we don't, I don't.
I don't care about those. I want something I can't get.
And they understood after like the first night.
Yeah, lots of good beers. I enjoyed it.
Good wine, you know, I I like wine too.
And red wine especially. And red wine is fantastic.
And yeah, I mean, look, I was there just as like X L's guest and everyone was super, super cool like the Drift.
Community. We don't even speak the same
language. But it doesn't matter.
They were all there to have a good time.
Everyone's bringing out the booze and the snacks and the whatnot, and everyone's like a great friend no matter what.
There was no animosity, There was no cliques.
There was no, you know, drama or anything like that.
I taught them how to shoot dice and gamble, which was hilarious because it was a language barrier.
I'm speaking in English and not you know, only. 10% of them
understand me and then excels, having to translate.
And the whole time they're like, are you just stealing my money?
No. We're we're shooting dice.
It was hilarious. So much fun.
But yeah, like the community is fantastic and just like in US and basically everywhere I've gone, the Drift community because it is so difficult and so much effort to get to that point, like to have a running car.
To have a running truck and or trailer, to have tires, to have fuel, to have time off, to have money to spend and you know like a relationship developed or sacrificed in order to take this trip and go on drift week. It is so much effort and focus
that everyone on the trip is like, wow, we are the Elite 20 that made it like we're amazing. And it's like it's such a
bonding experience and the camaraderie is just 10 out of 10. You know, you just brought up
something and and watching you on social media is like I commented when I could and it looked like you were having a blast but you just said something that took me back to our conversation a few years ago, money to spend at the time, you know your your operation was and this is the case for a lot of people. It was so sponsor dependent.
You know, when the sponsors dry up because of the pandemic or whatever, it limits a lot of the stuff and you have to sell some of your own memorabilia. We've pick up more and more
gigs. Is the stuff you're involved in
now making you a little less sponsor dependent?
And that's not to say that you don't obviously want or need sponsors, because who wouldn't want or need to sponsor?
Have you been able to recover in a much better place to have a more enjoyable time without sweating every bullet?
You know, it's it's honestly still just kind of like a average low of sometimes I get lucky or sometimes I have an asset that I sold. Or you know, maybe I've had a
good string of luck and my cars haven't been broken for the last whatever, but it's it's still a hustle.
I still have to be very mindful of budget and you know expectations of sponsors and friends and just keep keep that ball going. Not easy.
And no, it's still a lot of work.
To be honest. I I there's a lot of days where
I'm just in the shop. With of that, my buddy Chris and
we were wrenching and fixing and massaging all the different broken race cars that are stuffed under that roof.
And some are customer cars and some are my cars and some are future cars for sale. And you know, it's it's a whole
whole last process, man that is never ending it seems.
But I think it's still kind of better than having a real boss and having a. Typical 9:00 to 5:00.
So I'm still sticking it up. No, that sounds good.
I was just kind of curious, you know, it's one of those things I was super worried about before. Like, man, this guy's got all
this talent. He's got this great personality,
You know, I hope he just keeps grinding, grinding, like you said you've been doing a long time.
So you you understand the ebbs and flows and kind of riding that roller coaster. But it looked, it's great to
watch you having so much fun out there.
You know, what's next for fielding?
Like, what's as far as drifting or driving?
And by the way, I did notice the other day I'm like, wait, this guy's actually racing somebody? He's not drifting.
You're actually racing. So you've been doing a lot more
Rd. racing as well? Yeah, thanks man.
I've been having fun with it. Yeah, that was part of the
Continental obligations that they want me to go Rd. racing.
So I did some WRL racing last year.
I raced in three different races.
We did Sebring, we did Daytona and we did Coda Circular.
The Americas, sure, That was in East 36BMW and M3.
Super fun. Great team.
We had a good time. We did well.
You know that that class is quite broad and a lot of people and teams spend a lot more money and so we didn't win anything.
But like we did great and everyone ran good times.
It was solid, great camaraderie on the team.
And I also did some Champ Car and still have done some Champ Car, just did one about two weeks ago actually and that's an Inse Niata and we've actually had a great.
Campaign with that as well. We've been running the
Continental Extreme Contact Force, which is their 200 treadware tire and we just you know have a consistent lap time.
The team is is solid and the car is solid.
So we've done well to finish the race and we honestly like because it's a endurance race, you know, it's 7 or 8 hours racing, so each driver does a 2 hour stint or as close to that as we can sometimes. We have to kind of play some
strategy with the yellow flags and the purple track cautions and what whatnot we have to pay attention to.
We have to do like calculations and sometimes, like for example, the last race we were in, I was out for about an hour and a half and my my stint was about an hour 45, which is how long the fuel lasts. Then we got a yellow flag.
So they told me just come in, I was running good times and I was consistent and they told me to come in, We're going to splash fuel. Get about 45 more minutes out of
this stint and then I'll come in and trade with the next driver.
And so I was like, all right, cool, more racing for me.
Like, can you guys put some ice in the cool shirt?
And they were like, yeah, no problem.
And so we we came into the pits and we added fuel.
We put some cool shirt ice in there and rock'n'roll.
And I went out and did another 40 minutes or 50 minutes.
So I ended up running two hours and 40 minutes straight.
And that was gnarly, but we ended up finishing second place overall, which was unbelievable because, yeah, thank you, We're we're in the middle class of racing where there's faster cars with more open modifications with the engine and the arrow and whatnot. And yeah, we had a great time
and finished second, didn't have any mistakes in our pit stops.
We didn't have any major accidents or any problems, mechanically or otherwise. Yeah, it was sick.
Filling out two more questions for you.
Would you do Barrett again? Yeah, Barrett Jackson was
awesome. I was there like kind of in
secret. I know that I talked to you
about it, right, because you're in the area, but I was working for Toyota and they have a very strict policy where you're not allowed to post online or on social what you're doing.
But I was actually drifting the brand new Mark 5 Supra for all the ride, along with four or five other drivers at the Bear Jackson auction, which is so cool.
And I can talk about it now because it's already over, but I ended up doing almost 2000 laps. 10 days.
Holy shit it was insane. So our job was to do as many
laps as we could. Well, not destroying the tires
too much, but still entertaining the crowd and getting people excited to ride along. So we were having a we had a lap
counter and I was able to do between 120 and 160 laps on a pair of tires, which is unreal. Now granted we weren't drifting,
Is like maximum angle or maximum speed short.
We're going to get a thrill ride.
We were, yeah, short course, second gear, sometimes, third if I was feeling spicy. And yeah, like taking that many
people for passenger lapses is fun but also exhausting.
So it's kind of like endurance drifting.
And we were there for 10 days straight, no days off.
It was a grueling event, but we got paid well and Toyota took care of us and it was a lot of fun.
I I really enjoyed that event and I would totally do it again.
That's awesome. Finally, I asked people this
question. Those who listen to this podcast
know it's coming. What is people's perception of
what's going on with Fielding Shredder?
And what is the reality of what's going on with Fielding Shredder? So my perception is you're
living the life, you're doing whatever you want and everything's good. And you know, there's not a
worry in the world as an example.
So what are some of the perceptions that you think are out there that you get on social media versus the reality of the grind? I probably told you answers
right there, but you know, you can.
You can work with it, yeah. I mean, I've always been a very
honest and upfront person with both podcasts, YouTube videos and just people in in real life. You know, there's there's a
glamorous side to this lifestyle and there's a very regimented, hard working, sweaty, miserable side as well.
So that's just the nature of the beast.
You know, I'm in the shop a lot. I'm working.
There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that I'm doing that sucks and is annoying, like emails and invoices and you know, follow up and ordering parts and researching things and trying to figure out why my shit doesn't work and then why when I fixed it, did it still not work? And oh, I I didn't realize that
you had to do this. And the typical woes of being a
garage mechanic that is kind of figuring out as you go and that's just how it is. So you know, there's a lot of
things I know very well from experience.
I have been doing it a long time, but there's a lot of things that are new and fresh and I'm learning for the first time and it sucks to learn the hard way.
And sometimes that's how it goes, you know, that's that's just the reality of it. I don't post that stuff because
I don't think it's interesting and I have been encouraged to like, oh, share your entire life.
And people love the highs and lows and people love to see the nitty gritty. But at the same time, I'm like,
you know what? In my opinion, social media is
for like the fun, the entertaining, the exciting parts of your life. It's not for the mundane or
boring or you know, the drawn out parts of your life.
And so I'm not going to post that because here how it wants to watch that. I don't want to watch that.
I don't want to relive that. Like I just got to get the shit
done and get it over with and then when exciting crescendo to whatever I'm building or doing, I'm available to film.
Then yeah, post that. You know, I think you do.
OK. Example, you blow out the axle,
you're like, okay guys, this is what we're working on today.
We blow out the axle. Now we got to get it fixed.
So at least that's the grounded part.
Because, you know, the perception might be fielding shredders out there with a team of five work horses while you just sit back and get in the car when it's ready.
I wish. Oh, yeah, I'm sure you do.
I have. I have friends that.
They don't wrench on cars, but they race them all day.
And so if you ask them a technical question about their car, they're not. They don't know shit.
No, that's something that I think some people respect about me, that you know, I'm involved in every aspect of my car, even the stuff that I'm not capable of doing, like tuning.
I still ask questions, I still watch the tuner.
My my good friend Ethan has been tuning my cars forever and I still try and be educated on the subject.
So at least kind of half assed know what's going on.
If something's going wrong, I'm like, oh, I think I might do this. But yeah, I built my car through
and through every bit of it. I mean, I didn't paint the car,
but I prepped it for paint and I only didn't paint it because it was cheaper to have someone do it with a professional setup and it less mess too. But yeah, like there's no team
of five or whatever people. It's just me.
If I'm lucky, I can talk a friend or two and they're coming to help out for the weekend. And recently my buddy Chris has
come up to the shop and helped a lot more and we've been able to get some more work done. Yeah, it's it's not a turnkey
operation and it's definitely still a lot of blood, sweat and tears going into it. Anything on the horizon?
Any events that people can track?
Yeah. So I'm really excited about the
Drift Week gear up that we just got back from.
So I'm going to go to the next one next year.
It's going to be about the same time of year, springtime and we've got Drift Week 8 coming up and actually this is a good opportunity to announce something that's really exciting about cooking up. So you know Drift Week has been
a huge part of my drifting life and career and excitement for the last three years and you guys aren't familiar.
Drift Week is where we take our race cars, our drift cars, we St. drive them on the normal Rd. between race tracks.
So we try and go to five to seven different race tracks throughout the course of about 10 days and we get to drift on them and have a great time and then St. drive to the next drift
track. So you have to be, you know, a
good driver. You have to fix your car.
It has to be a reliable car, but you still want it to be good and capable of drifting on a road course.
And for the next one, Drift Week 8, which is coming up in November, I'm actually going to be doing a giveaway.
So I haven't announced it yet. You guys are hearing it here
first. Here it is.
OK, breaking news. I'm going to insert that sound
bite. OK, Yeah, I'm offering a Drift
Week experience for Drift Week 8 for one lucky winner and what we're going to do. I've got a perfectly prepped
350Z. It's got suspension, it's got
angle, it's got air conditioning, it's got seat and harnesses, A roll cage, everything that you would want on the Drift Week car. And I'm going to include tons of
spares with it. Spare wheels, spare Jack and
tools. Spare sensors for the engines,
spare alternators, spare, you know, power steering, pump, whatever spares you needs for axles, spare wheel bearings, everything ready to go on like a properly prepped Drift week car.
And then one lucky winner will win the car.
You fly out to me in Austin and I'm going to put you in the driver's seat and you're going to drive with me to the start line of Drift Week 8 and you get to go on Drift Week with me drifting throughout each course. I'm going to cover all of your
Airbnb's. I'm going to cover a stack of
tires for you. You're going to have the most
fun ever in a reliable, sorted prep drift car.
And if you survive, which hopefully you do, and you drive well, at the very end of Drift Week 8, that's your car.
You get to drive home in your brand new or slightly used Drift Week 8350Z and you win the car. That's awesome.
So how do people get involved with that?
So I'm going to start a YouTube series where I talk about the car, talk about those, the sweepstakes and exactly what's going on with it. And basically you're going to
enter for a chance on my website feelingshredder.com.
I'll have in the sales or the storefront.
There's going to be a drift Week 8 giveaway and maybe you're going to buy a sticker or something, I don't know.
But the the difference in my giveaway and most other people's is with mine. You know the odds.
So I'm going to do 350 tickets and it's going to be 100 bucks a ticket. So when you buy the ticket you
get entered to win. You can buy as many or as few
tickets as you won. And yeah, it's 100 bucks a
ticket, so you might only buy one or two or a couple of them or a few, but you have a much higher odds.
It's one in 350 chance to win this prize.
Whereas when you do other giveaways where you're every 5 bucks buys a ticket and you're buying merch and stickers and T-shirts and hoodies and whatnot, it could be one in 5000 that you're going to win this thing right?
Whereas mine is the odds are exactly one in 350 and one person's going to win that prize and get the car at the end and everything. So should be pretty awesome and
I'm really excited to get you announce it and give away this car and have a great time for one lucky winner.
That sounds like it's going to be a great deal.
Fielding, thanks so much for for making the time.
Yeah, for sure. I'm excited.
I hope that was as good for you guys as it was for me.
Had some audio issue a little bit, think he was chilling on some air pods laying on a sofa or something, but I tried to make it salvageable and hopefully it wasn't too distracting. I'm an audio file, so those
things I pick up on them as soon as I'm talking to someone.
Ask the question, what are you doing?
Where are you sitting right now? Describe your surroundings.
So at least he was in a dampened room.
But air pods are, they're just not good to do interviews in.
And I blame TVI, blame TV, because you look at these interviews and you'll have usually someone famous and they'll have the air pods in or people just don't care because it's all about the content. So then it doesn't have to sound
perfect, but as long as the content is good and that's what we try to bring to you guys all the time.
And Fielding is always a great conversation.
He's always a good. He always has good content.
Sounds like he'll be rolling out that contest pretty soon.
It's like for $3600. Is that the math?
They say $100 a ticket, $100 a ticket.
I don't know. For some reason my head was
saying you're giving someone a car for 3600.
Why not just buy all the tickets If you want a car, if you want a drift car and you want a drift car and A and a weekend experience with Fielding Shredder.
At a drift event and in the end you get to take the car home, just fucking buy all the tickets.
It's kind of cheating, but you want to win.
What will you do? What are you willing to do to
win? You know a I is all over the
place. I edited a friend's podcast his
guest was on sound like she was on air pods.
She was in a hollow room and I ran that filter through Adobe has. It's called Adobe Podcast and
it's an A I It's. In beta right now so you can
upload the audio. So I uploaded the audio for her.
My friend, this is Wes I'm talking about.
I always edit his on the side because I edit his like I edit mine. But his guests, I usually don't
edit them that deeply because all I care about is making sure Wes sounds good unless there's a lot of weird noise in the background that I'm forced to kind of go through and edit his guests line by line. But this thing cleaned it up so
well. Guys, check out the Shaping
Success with W Angersley podcast with his guest.
This week she's a nutritionist, dietician, and she sounds good.
And she sounds good because I uploaded and had her audio fixed in that Adobe online thing. It's amazing.
Blown away. It's going to make people like
me who try to edit audio for a side hustle gone non essential.
They made me wonder, all these tools because a I isn't just hey, build me this thing or show me what this looks like.
There are online contests on taking a basic picture and using a I to fill in the photo and they look so good.
There are creatives that spend hours, days perfecting an image and a I can do it in 10 seconds. And if you're the consumer, you
don't really care unless you just want to buy that specific artwork. I was having a music
conversation when I was at Rd. America with Colin.
Not calling Comer what the real time calling because he D J's and he does things and we're talking about music because I used to play with music and the D J's the purist would say, well you're not any good unless you spend vinyl.
And my thought about that was that's a skill and I have friends that have those skills. I never had those skills.
I didn't really invest in the vinyl tables.
The tech does the techniques, technique.
I don't remember anymore, but they were the ones to get if you're going to do it. So I did C D's.
I went from C D's to MP threes and and wave.
And the thought is the purists don't like you.
The people who are existing in the industry don't like you.
But the crowd that's dancing, all they want is good music.
The person that's driving, listening to the music, all they want is something that they love hearing.
They don't care how you did it. It makes them feel good, makes
them feel better if it's not a complete train wreck between song to song transition. And it gets them on their
groove. They don't care how it's done.
And I think that's a lot of the customers now and that's what a I is going to do. How many jobs is it going to
eliminate? And I want to have that
conversation coming up. So if you're listening to this
and you want to have that conversation with me, let's do it. I do have a bunch of people that
would be willing to probably have that conversation, but I'm giving this offer to you guys right now.
I had a friend send me a text message and asked me about hey.
I have an idea for a podcast episode.
We need to talk about this, this, and this.
But how do you do your podcast? Do you ever do them live?
Do you take customer questions? Do you do this?
You do that? And my thought is always
Obviously you've never listened to my podcast.
And if you have, you've only listened to like one episode.
Because #1, the subject matter that you want to talk about is not for you guys. My crowd, my audience, the
people who are still listening to me right now, that would.
Or you guys to death, because this isn't that type of podcast.
It's two car technical. And then the other part, no,
this isn't a live radio show. No one calls in in the middle of
this podcast. It'd be nice to be to that
level, maybe. Anyway, we'll try to make
something like that happen, but I'm more willing to take suggestions and feedback from people who actually listen to the podcast, or who listen to the podcast and then, even if it's your first or second time, and then decide to get into it.
I have another good friend who said who asked me how the podcast was going and I was like yeah, it's going good and he goes, I'm a bad friend, I should be supporting it more.
I only listened to your first two or three episodes and that was it. I'm like, dude, that was three
freaking years ago. Those are terrible.
You need to listen to the latest episode.
So he said okay, I will anyway. One of the right Honda and right
Toyota 4 wheel online.com Social Wireless Services, Patreon
Business supporter, Cuy Automotive out of Werner Garden, Florida, Pell Construction of Calgary, Michigan, Big House Small Home Design, Ashburn, VA, Traverse City, MI.
Shipping success with W Tankersley out of Boise ID Special thanks to Mark Stollman Catherine Cox, Eddie Ramos, Richard Gray's Byron Jones boat Junk Else commina Andrew Bunkley. Can't forget David Garner.
I call you David Garner. That's what you go by publicly.
You want some show swag Which I never sell any show swag.
No one ever orders any show swag Park Parking pot.com Go to the
store Following on Instagram at J Finning Join the Hard Parking Violations Facebook group. Thank you for everybody who has
joined the group lately. Want to e-mail the show Hard
parking [email protected] I can't grow.
Like, seriously, I cannot grow without you telling them how great this show is. So leave me in review.
Let's do this. Let's put this thing together
and I'll talk to you all next week.
Shut up now. It's stripping time.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
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