The Nissan 300ZX is a well-known sports car from the Z lineup. Here they’re talking about the non-turbo version, meaning it makes power without a turbocharger’s boost.
If the track layout changes, old lap times don’t mean the same thing anymore. So they reset the leaderboard so new records are based on the current course.
A fastest lap is the quickest one full lap a driver completes. It’s a simple way to compare speed, but conditions and track layout can change the result.
The Chevy Beretta is a regular street car model. In Trans Am racing, teams could race cars that looked like a Beretta but were heavily modified for competition.
This is an engine head design where the valves are set at an angle. Changing valve angles can help the engine move air and fuel more effectively, which matters for speed.
In racing, officials sometimes make a fast team carry extra weight to slow it down. Here, they’re saying the car was given extra weight even before it had proven itself with a win.
A brake marker is a spot on the track where you start slowing down for a turn. If you don’t have to “check” it, it usually means the car is braking more predictably.
Term
mothballs
“Mothballs” just means the car has been sitting unused in storage for a while. When you bring it back, you typically have to check it carefully before driving.
BBS is a company that makes performance wheels. In this context, the speaker is saying the car has BBS wheels, which are a common upgrade for track and enthusiast builds.
Livery is the car’s “look”—its paint colors and sponsor stickers/graphics. The hosts are saying the race car had a very similar design to another famous car’s scheme.
IMSA is a major North American racing organization. “GTU” is the category/class that tells you what kind of race car it is and what rules it has to follow.
They’re talking about a company that worked on cars for a specific program. The host compares it to other shops that do special upgrades and styling packages.
Roush is a well-known car shop/brand that does performance and upgrade packages. The speaker uses it as a reference to explain what kind of company Cars and Concepts is.
They’re saying the car got a complete set of add-ons after it was originally made. Think of it like a coordinated makeover with styling and parts, not just one random upgrade.
They mention the Honda Civic Si as a trim people often want. The idea is that the “right” version can be worth more money when you find the perfect one.
Modern cars store error messages when something goes wrong. “Clearing the codes” means wiping those messages so the car can try again after the issue is handled.
The Chevrolet Corvette C8 is a Corvette where the engine is placed closer to the middle of the car. That makes it handle differently than older Corvettes and makes it popular for track builds.
“TC Klein Corvette” is the name people use for a particular Corvette build. The point here is that it’s a specific C8 track car, not just any Corvette.
GM is General Motors, the parent company behind multiple brands, including Chevrolet. The hosts are pointing out that many of the people/builds they’re seeing are connected to GM through the Corvette platform.
A “track car” is a car prepared mainly for racing on a track. It’s typically set up to handle lots of hard driving repeatedly, not just normal commuting.
A round steering wheel is the normal circular kind you’d see in most cars. The hosts are debating why a round one might still work well even when racers sometimes use square-ish wheels.
A “square wheel” is a steering wheel shape with flatter edges instead of being fully round. Some racers like that style, but the hosts say the round wheel is still working fine.
“Limited on power” means the car doesn’t have as much engine strength as you’d want. On a track, that can make the car rely more on handling and grip than on raw speed.
GP1 is a race category with rules that control things like how much power the cars are allowed to use. Those rules can force cars to behave differently than they normally would.
A throttle limiter is a computer limit that prevents the car from using 100% throttle. So even if you press the pedal all the way, the engine only gets a smaller, fixed amount.
BOP is how racing organizers try to make different cars compete more evenly. They adjust things on purpose so one car isn’t automatically faster just because of its design.
Term
LT1 motor
“LT1” is a name for a Chevrolet V8 engine. When people talk about limiting an LT1 in racing, they mean restricting that engine’s power to fit the rules.
Concept
two-thirds throttle
It means the engine is being restricted so the driver can’t access full power. In a race, that can affect speed and how the car feels for hours.
An ELSD is a differential that can “help” the car put power down when traction changes. It’s like a smarter limited-slip setup that can react to what the tires are doing.
They’re talking about braking—how late and how strongly the driver slows down before turning. It’s a key part of going fast through corners.
Concept
backed off of the corner
They mean the driver eased up instead of going for the aggressive racing line. It sounds like they were being careful to avoid scratching or damaging the car.
Fiberglass is a strong but brittle material used in some car body parts. The speaker is asking how it behaves in a crash—whether it breaks into pieces right away.
During a race, cars sometimes have to stop to add fuel. For safety, the car may need to be turned off while refueling, then restarted before you can drive hard again.
Traction control helps keep the tires from spinning when you accelerate. If it turns back on at the wrong time, it can slow you down because it limits how hard you can apply power.
A pit out is when the car comes out of the pits and gets back onto the race track. It’s a tricky moment because you have to get up to speed fast while also following track rules and dealing with systems that may limit acceleration.
In many races, teams pull the car into the pit lane for service. Then they drive back out and continue the race, which can change who’s leading based on timing.
A “fuel reset button” is a cockpit control used to reset the car’s fuel-related counter or display (like a trip/consumption counter) so the team can track usage accurately. If it doesn’t work, the driver can’t reliably confirm fuel data during the stint.
In racing, the pit lane procedure is the planned checklist for how you enter the pits, what you do during the stop, and when you’re allowed to leave. It’s about doing everything in the right order and at the right time to avoid penalties and wasted seconds.
The Challenger is a muscle car from Dodge. Muscle cars are built to be very powerful, especially for quick acceleration. The podcast brings it up in the context of high-performance Dodge vehicles.
The Hellcat Durango is a powerful Dodge Durango with a big supercharged engine. Here they’re talking about brakes overheating during repeated stops, and how the brake fluid might be part of why it happened.
DOT 3 is a type of brake fluid. Under repeated hard braking, it can overheat and boil, which makes the brakes feel weak or sketchy because the fluid can’t transfer force as well.
“Brakes boiled” means the brake fluid got so hot it started boiling. That can make the brakes feel less responsive or unsafe during repeated stops.
Term
sketchy brakes
“Sketchy brakes” means the brakes didn’t feel trustworthy—like they might not stop the car as expected or felt inconsistent. That’s especially risky in a race because you need predictable braking every lap.
Topic
pit-lane pacing vs racing pace
They’re talking about when you should slow down as you approach the pits. They compare how it works in real racing versus practice events.
Races often require you to slow down for the pit lane, but the rules usually say exactly when you’re allowed to start slowing. In this story, the driver says the correct timing was later than what people do on track days.
A track day is when regular drivers go to a race track to practice. The rules are usually less strict than in an actual race, so you may be told to slow down earlier.
A “break point” is the exact spot where you have to start braking so you reach the right speed by a certain place. If you wait too long, you won’t slow down enough.
An in-lap is the lap where the driver is getting the car ready for fast driving—especially getting the tires working. It’s basically the “warm-up” lap before the car is at its best.
A tire blanket is a heater that warms the race tires before you drive. It helps the tires grip sooner instead of needing a few laps to heat up.
Term
hot stuff
“Hot stuff” means the tires are already very warm when you go back out. Warm tires can grip well right away, but too much heat can make them less predictable.
A jammer is meant to mess with the radar so it can’t get a clear speed reading. Instead of warning you, it tries to block or confuse the radar.
Concept
radar speed enforcement on track
They’re talking about whether speed-enforcement tech (like radar) even matters during a race, and whether devices that interfere with it are allowed. In racing, the rules can be stricter than what’s technically possible.
A pit stop is when the car pulls into the pits during the race for service. Often that means changing tires, and doing it more often costs more and changes the strategy.
Endurance racing is about going for a long time, not just one quick sprint. Since it’s so long, the car has to stay reliable, and things can go wrong even when everyone does their best.
In some racing formats, a “practice race” is an on-track session that’s run like a race to simulate race conditions while still serving as preparation. It’s often used to shake down the car, learn traffic and pace, and set up for the actual competition.
Concept
rain driving
When it rains, the tires grip the road less. That means you usually have to be gentler with steering, braking, and throttle so you don’t slide.
“Locks” means the wheels stop turning while you’re braking and start sliding. On wet roads, that can happen much more easily, so it tells you how slippery the surface is.
Offline braking means braking when you’re not on the “best” path of the track. On a wet track, that can be much less grippy, so braking can feel worse depending on where you are.
A dead pedal is a stationary footrest for your left foot. It helps you brace yourself so you don’t slide around when the car is turning or braking hard.
This is about staying in the same position while driving. If the seat holds you well, you slide less and can steer and brake more the same way every time.
Seat bolstering is the extra side support on a performance seat. It helps keep you from sliding around when you’re cornering hard, so you can drive more consistently.
The Ford Ranchero is a classic American car with a pickup-bed style. Here it’s being used to show how the seat shape affects how you have to hold yourself while driving hard.
The Porsche GT3 RS is a special Porsche made for track driving. Here, they say it looked and behaved like a race car, but it still had street tires and a normal license plate, so it wasn’t fully set up like a dedicated race car.
“Semi-race ready” means the car is prepared for track use but not fully converted into a dedicated race car. Common examples include keeping street-legal items (like a license plate) and using street tires, while still adding track-oriented setup elements.
A five-point harness is a multi-strap safety belt used in racing. It holds you in place with straps over your shoulders, around your hips, and between your legs.
“Aero” means the car’s aerodynamic parts, like wings and body shapes that affect airflow. The right aero can help the car grip the road better and go faster.
A center-exit exhaust routes exhaust gases out through the middle of the car rather than the sides. This layout is often used for styling and packaging, and it can also change how the exhaust sound projects around the cabin and track.
“Timing” is about when the engine does things like spark or fuel injection. If that timing is changed, the engine can burn fuel differently, which can affect the exhaust and emissions equipment.
Term
foul it up
“Foul it up” here means the catalytic converter gets contaminated—often by unburned fuel or oil—so it can’t do its job effectively. That can show up as reduced emissions performance and, in some cases, overheating or permanent damage.
A BMW 335 is a BMW 3 Series variant. The hosts are debating whether it was diesel or not, and that’s important because diesel and gas engines behave differently in the exhaust.
Diesel is a type of engine that runs differently than gasoline. It often sounds and behaves a bit differently, so they’re trying to figure out what kind of engine note they’re hearing.
A big wing is a spoiler on the back of the car that helps it stay planted at high speed. It’s usually used for better grip on track, but it can also make the car slower in a straight line because it adds drag.
The BMW E92 is a specific generation/body style of BMW 3 Series coupe. Here it’s being talked about like a fast, track-prepped car—more about how it looks and goes than about everyday commuting.
They’re describing how the car feels in the turns: it doesn’t feel nimble, and it tends to slip instead of gripping the road. That makes it harder to drive consistently lap after lap.
Concept
no arrow
They’re implying the car didn’t have enough aerodynamic “push” to keep it planted. Without that grip, the car slides around more in the corners.
“Qualified super well” means the car set a strong qualifying result, which determines starting position for the race. Better grid position can reduce traffic risk and make it easier to stay in contention early.
“Full course yellows” means the whole race is under caution. Everyone has to slow down, and the cars get packed together again, which can hurt or help different teams.
It means the cars that were spaced out end up closer together. That can make racing more chaotic because you’re dealing with traffic and fewer clear passing lanes.
The pace car is an official car that leads the race cars during a caution. It controls the speed so everyone stays together safely until racing can resume.
The rear view camera shows what’s behind the car. During a race restart/caution when cars are close together, it can be hard to track everyone, so the camera view gets very busy.
A yellow flag restart is the procedure for returning to racing after a caution period. Different series use different rules for when passing is allowed and how drivers accelerate back to racing speed, which is why the hosts are debating how to interpret the “80% pace” instruction.
“80% pace” is a rule that tells drivers to go at a reduced speed during the caution—like 80% of the normal pace. The tricky part is figuring out what exact speed you’re supposed to base that percentage on.
Car
AMG GT
The AMG GT is a Mercedes performance sports car. In racing, it’s the kind of car that can be very quick and confident when the track gets fast and technical.
“Turn one” is the first corner of a race lap, typically where the field is most bunched up and incidents are most likely. Drivers often plan their positioning here because small mistakes can lead to contact.
In racing, cars are grouped into classes so they compete under similar rules. The speaker is saying the GTO class cars are very quick and pull away early in the lap.
Track limits are the rules about staying within the marked racing area. If you go outside the boundary—like cutting a corner too much—you can get a warning or have your lap counted as invalid.
Balancing throttle means modulating the accelerator to manage the car’s grip and rotation through a corner. The goal is to keep the tires loaded enough to turn without spinning or pushing wide, especially when the car’s preferred turning point is “predetermined.”
A “cut” means you drive a shorter route through a turn instead of staying farther out. It can help you go faster because you cover less distance, but you have to be careful not to run off the ideal path.
The racing line is the best “path” through a corner that helps you keep speed up. Different drivers may pick slightly different lines, and that can affect how fast they go.
A curb is the raised edge along the inside of a corner that drivers may use to tighten their line. Hitting curbs can be beneficial for shortening the path, but it can also unsettle the suspension and tires—especially if the curb is harsh or the car bottoms out.
In racing talk, a “pucker moment” means you suddenly feel really nervous because you’re right on the edge of something going wrong. Here, it’s when the car is very close to danger at speed.
This means you start pressing the gas sooner while you’re still in the cornering phase. It can make you faster, but if the tires don’t have grip yet, it can also make the car slide.
“Carry more speed” means you go through the turn faster without having to slow down as much. It’s about keeping the car under control while staying quick.
It means that when traction is low, you run out of “safe room” faster—either in distance or in tire grip. So you have to be ready to react sooner because the car will start to slide quickly.
“Risk reward” means deciding whether something is worth the danger. Here, the point is that if nobody is helping you by scouting, it’s not worth taking big chances.
They’re describing a mentoring-style setup in racing. A newer driver learns by being paired with a more experienced driver who can demonstrate what the car can do.
In a single-make race series, everyone drives the same model of car. That helps show who’s the better driver and team, because the cars are much more equal.
The Saab 900 is an older model of car made by Saab. In the podcast, it’s mentioned because of a funny video where someone uses the “900” name in a skateboard trick. It’s more of a lighthearted reference than a driving or performance topic.
NISMO Z is a Nissan Z that’s been tuned by Nissan’s performance team (NISMO). It’s built to feel more “track-ready,” so it’s easier to drive fast and stay stable in corners.
Lead-follow is when an instructor drives first and you copy what they do. You’re learning where to brake and how to take the turns by following their example.
“Unweight” is when the car’s weight shifts so a tire has less pressure on the road. Racers use that moment to help the car rotate or stay stable through the turn.
Concept
90 degree corner
A “90 degree corner” is basically a square-ish turn. The best driving line and timing are different than for corners that are closer to a half-turn.
Concept
180
A “180” is a turn where you’re basically going back the other way. The host is saying that in that kind of corner, what you do at the start matters less than how the car is set up and rotates through the whole turn.
Term
90 degree left hand corner
That’s a very tight turn—almost like turning a corner in a parking lot. In a race, it usually means you have to brake hard and then accelerate again as soon as you can.
These are parts of the track where you have to slow down really aggressively for the next turn. Doing it wrong can make the car feel unstable and slow you down.
It’s about keeping the car’s speed smooth through the turn. Instead of slowing down a lot and then waiting, you try to stay moving so you can accelerate again quickly.
It means easing off the gas while you’re steering through a turn. Drivers do this to keep the car stable and controllable as they set up for the next part of the corner.
The transmission is the part that changes gears and sends power from the engine to the wheels. If it breaks during a race, the car can’t drive normally and the team has to stop.
When they say the car gets “looser on entry,” they mean it feels less planted right as you turn into the corner. That usually happens when the tires aren’t gripping as well at that point.
“Fourth gear” is just one of the car’s gear ratios. Drivers pick gears to keep the engine in the right range, and worn tires can make one gear feel wrong for how the car grips.
“Running in the dark” means racing at night. With less visibility, it’s harder to judge distances and braking points, so drivers lean more on feel and track references.
They’re saying the car’s vibrations and bumps can “tell” you what’s coming. Even if you can’t see perfectly, the seat and chassis feedback helps you drive more consistently.
Passing on a wet track is harder because the tires don’t grip as well. The driver has to be extra careful with braking and steering so the car doesn’t lose control while going for the overtake.
“Planned passes” means you don’t just try to pass randomly. You pick the exact spot and timing to make the move work, based on the track and how the other car is driving.
Racecraft is how drivers actually race each other. It includes things like where to drive, when to brake, and how to set up a pass. It’s about outsmarting other cars, not just going fast.
The Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 is a high-end supercar. It’s designed to be very fast and fun to drive, with an emphasis on keeping the car light. The podcast mentions it because it’s one of the cars people would pick for an exciting drive.
They’re describing a pattern of driving where you keep adjusting—speed up a bit, slow down, then speed up again—especially in tight track sections. The idea is to control the car’s balance and timing instead of just letting off and coasting.
Coasting is when you lift off the gas and just let the car roll. They’re saying that in a simulator it can feel faster, but on track you often need to manage throttle and braking more actively to be quickest.
“Eye work” means you train your eyes to look where you’re trying to drive, not just at what’s right in front of you. They’re saying that better vision and focus can make you brake and steer more smoothly and quickly.
On some race tracks, there’s a section people call a “bus stop” because it’s like a tight, slow-ish pinch point. You have to slow down, then get back on the gas quickly so you can carry speed into the next part.
Momentum is basically how much “go” the car already has. In racing, you try not to slow down too much in the corners so you can keep that speed and accelerate smoothly out.
The Aston Martin Lagonda is a luxury car made by Aston Martin. The podcast mentions a “million mile” example, meaning someone drove one for an extremely long distance. They bring it up to show that the car can last a long time with proper ownership.
The Porsche 917 is a famous race car from Porsche. The podcast mentions a specific 917 example and talks about safety, which is important in racing. It’s discussed because it’s a major part of racing history.
Group B was a rally racing class (especially famous in the early-to-mid 1980s) known for extremely powerful cars and minimal restrictions. It’s worth explaining because Group B is remembered for both spectacular performance and serious safety concerns, which is why the discussion frames it around wanting an open area to avoid trees and “die.”
The Mercedes-Benz 190 Evo II was a special race-focused version of the 190 made for Group B rallying. Even though it’s not described as super powerful, it’s known for being a great-handling car that you have to drive precisely.
GTP is a type of race category for prototype sports cars, used in endurance racing. It’s basically a “top-level race car” class, not a normal production-car category.
Monaco Historic is a race event at the Circuit de Monaco for older cars. Monaco is a very tight, unforgiving track, so crashes can be especially serious—even with vintage race cars.
Goodwood is a famous UK motorsport venue that hosts lots of historic racing events. The hosts are using it as an example of how intense vintage racing can be.
Water-cooled brake calipers are brakes with extra cooling built in. Instead of relying only on airflow, they use water to keep the brakes from overheating during repeated hard braking.
A brake cooling circuit is the system that carries cooling fluid through the brake area. It usually means extra parts to move and cool the fluid, which can be more complicated than normal brakes.
Term
Jim Russell series
The Jim Russell series is a racing program where drivers start out and gain experience. The hosts mention it because it helped launch their careers.
The Mazda RX-7 is a race car that’s special because it uses a rotary engine, not the usual piston engine. That rotary design helped it become a popular choice in racing series like IMSA.
The Ford Cougar is a car model that shows up in the podcast as part of an older era of performance cars. The discussion is mainly about what kinds of cars were popular around the same time. It’s mentioned alongside other performance models to set the scene.
The Ferrari F40 is one of the most famous Ferraris ever made. In this conversation, they’re saying someone drove an F40 as a race car back in that time period.
A transaxle is basically the transmission and the final drive packaged together. Race teams use it to help the car’s balance and drivetrain layout work better.
Term
hybrid tube frame
A hybrid tube frame is a race-car-style chassis made from metal tubes, but built in combination with other materials or methods. The goal is usually to make the car strong and stiff without adding too much weight.
Bonded carbon panels are carbon-fiber parts glued onto the car’s structure. Using carbon and adhesive can make the car lighter and stiffer than using traditional metal panels.
A carbon rib is a stiffening piece made from carbon fiber. In this case, it’s placed under the driver to help strengthen the structure where the driver sits.
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car model from Porsche. The podcast is talking about “Cup” race versions of the 911 and how they’re built for racing. They’re discussing where the engine is placed because that can change how the car handles.
Term
GT4 architecture
GT4 architecture means the basic engineering “starting point” used for GT4 race cars. The question here is whether the 911 race car was built using that same kind of race-car design foundation.
Term
GT3 engine position
In GT3 racing, the engine’s location matters for how the car handles. They’re talking about whether these “cup cars” have the same engine placement as GT3 cars, and how changing the rear axle position can change the balance.
The Porsche 911 GT4 is a race-bred version of the 911 made for track use. Here, they’re saying the next GT4 is going to be based on the 911 platform, not the Cayman, and it’ll have aero and body changes to fit the rules.
The Porsche Cayman is Porsche’s mid-engine sports car. They’re saying the GT4 program is moving away from the Cayman and toward a 911-based car, and they also mention the gas Cayman being discontinued temporarily.
Spec racing is when the rules keep race cars similar, so nobody can just outspend everyone to go faster. That usually makes the racing closer and helps control costs.
A “spec Boxster” is a Porsche Boxster that’s modified under strict rules so most cars are similar. That makes racing more about the driver and less about who spent the most money.
The Mazda MX-5 Miata is a small two-seat sports car. “Spec Miata” means the cars are raced with limited changes, so the competition is more about setup and driving. The podcast mentions it because it’s a popular format for racing these cars.
Legends cars are race cars built to be very similar to each other, so the driver matters more than the budget. They’re usually raced in regional series, so the level of competition depends on your local scene.
A sequential gearbox is a transmission where you shift one gear at a time in order. It’s popular in racing because it can make shifting quicker and more repeatable.
“One-to-one steering” means turning the steering wheel translates almost directly into turning the front wheels. The upside is responsiveness, and the downside is it can feel twitchy because it reacts quickly to small inputs.
In driving talk, “twitchy” describes a car that responds too quickly or too sensitively to steering/throttle/brake inputs. It often shows up when steering ratio is quick, tires are grippy, or the chassis is set up to be very responsive.
A “spec series” is a racing class where the rules keep the cars similar. Because fewer parts are allowed to be different, the racing depends more on skill and fine-tuning within the rules.
“Tri-Motor Hybrid” means the car uses three electric motors along with a gas engine. The electric motors help the car accelerate strongly and smoothly.
Horsepower is a way to measure how strong the engine is. More horsepower usually helps the car go faster, but it’s not the only factor.
Term
Minimo-ero
“Minimo-ero” sounds like a nickname for the car’s aero setup. Since they’re talking right after about a big wing, it probably means how the car is shaped to stick to the track.
Slicks are race tires with no tread. They grip the track really well when the pavement is dry, but they don’t work well in the rain and wear out faster.
GTD is a racing class designation (commonly used in IMSA-style sports car racing) for production-based race cars. The hosts compare lap-time pace within the GTD field, including who was fastest in testing.
The Golf is a compact car model. In the podcast, they’re talking about “GTD” race versions and that they’re using 19-inch wheels. Wheel size can change how the car rides and grips on track.
The Corkscrew is a well-known corner at Laguna Seca. It’s tricky because the track changes height and direction quickly, so it tests how well the car stays stable and grips the road.
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Yeah, I know TC clients is a serious operation,
so I'm guessing they're finessing things
and just building slowly.
I mean, seeing what breaks,
they did have some kind of issue.
Yeah, and try not to, you know, get further restricted.
Yeah, so work up to it.
Yeah, they have a small gas tank.
It's not, they're running the regular tank for now.
Did they run out of gas going into the pits
and that's why they stopped in the pit road
or did it break there?
I think so.
Because when it ran out of gas,
it then locked it into gear.
No.
They couldn't get it out of gear
to like drag it back in, so I don't know.
If you, excuse me, if you need a tow during a WRL race,
can you then get back in and get a podium?
You can.
Yeah, you're real lucky.
You're not DQ'd if you get a flatbed.
Okay.
But that car's fiberglass too,
so I imagine they don't want to bend it
because it's not bending it.
It's like ripping the panel.
Although, I have to say,
back from my Sherm Stock days,
I guess it would be the C4 Corvette's absolute tanks.
I mean, they would be in these hellacious crashes
in these 24-hour races.
And next thing you know, it's running again,
no back window, and the body still, I mean, they...
Looks all right.
Oh, it didn't look great,
but it was still in place and so forth.
I mean, you drag it down a tire wall.
You literally, it seemed you could not kill one.
Okay, yeah.
Maybe I need to learn more
about how fiberglass disintegrates on contact.
And I thought it would like sort of shred.
Yeah, I think those cars didn't.
Somebody hit my C5 Corvette when I was a youngster.
And just like yours.
And the front quarter panel shredded.
Shredded.
Absolutely shredded.
But like, you know, maybe they make a matter of...
Maybe from C4 or C5, they're like,
maybe this is overbuilt.
Yeah, I guess it's possible.
Someone said about the C4 Corvette.
This car is too well built.
For perhaps the first and only time ever, yeah.
So, speaking of well built,
you know, I put on Instagram as no secret.
We had a rough day on day two.
The car basically didn't run.
I got, you know, I got a DM on Instagram
from the technician who ultimately fixed it.
Not on the race.
Later, they sent the car.
And it's real.
The guy sent me photos of the car.
Like it's...
And what was it?
Here we go.
And I printed out the fucking screenshot
and I apologize.
I forgot to print out the homie's name.
So if you're listening...
It's been landed?
Maybe.
I don't know.
I'm sorry.
Did you recognize this icon from their Instagram profile?
No, I do not.
Okay, well, I'm sorry I forgot your name.
It's not written here, but you know who you are.
And thank you for the email.
The wastegate coin on the turbo was worn out.
The linkage from the wastegate actuator
to the actual coin flapper had play in it.
So the wastegate actuator thought it was fully closed
but could get blown open by the boost.
That's why it would only make three PSI
and go into limp mode.
The turbo looked relatively new.
So it must have been something that happened
pretty quickly and prematurely.
It has a proper BMW motorsport turbo on it now.
So I said, was that...
That wasn't something that they were gonna actually fix
during the race, right?
And he said, oh, hell no.
Definitely not during a race.
There's no way they could have fixed it.
So don't...
They said, don't fault the team, they did their best.
They wouldn't have been able to fix that.
That tracks with...
When I was saying it felt like it was pulling power.
So it just was...
But it was intermittent.
It wasn't consistent.
Sometimes it was making boost.
Sometimes it was just a little bit off.
Yeah, so...
Bomber.
My takeaway was you need a BMW expert diagnostic person
if you're gonna race that era BMW road car,
I think we learned.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because they were also...
I mean, they had a tablet.
They were looking at the codes,
but it wasn't showing that.
Correct.
You know, there's no code, I guess.
There were times it wouldn't even show a code.
Yeah.
And it would limp.
And that's fun.
And even when it was working during Coda,
when you'd pull...
Every time we would change driver or fuel,
you'd have to turn the car off to fuel it.
That's a rule.
So you fucking turn the car back on
and you have to do the same traction control bullshit dance
you do in a road car.
You have to do in this car,
except you're wearing gloves,
you're fucking visors fogged
because it's been closed.
Very foggy.
And you're trying to pull out and merge into a race quickly
and you would do it,
and then you'd floor it.
You know, as soon as you passed the cone gate
to go onto the track,
and the traction control would come back on
and you have to now do it again
while you're driving fast.
So like, that was a little...
That's part of why my pit outs were so slow.
What are you about to say?
I was just gonna ask Zach,
what was it like there was a lot going on?
What was that like for you
that has so little experience doing all this?
Well, it was challenging
because there was just added things.
You know what I mean?
In lemons, we do pit in, out,
we do driver change and still like you get in
and it's like, oh my God, so much adrenaline
and you gotta pay attention.
Tightening the belts, mirrors, all that stuff.
But then in this car,
when you get in you gotta hit the fuel reset button
to reset the fuel counter,
which I did and it didn't work.
It didn't reset it.
And so I'm sitting there hitting this button
and Zach, our crew chiefs on the radio,
he's like, hey man, hit the button.
I'm like, I'm hitting the right button
and it's just not changing the numbers.
And so finally he goes, okay, that's fine,
just go out, we'll keep track of time.
So I'm worried about that.
And then I also, in my brain fart of stress,
forgot that you can just adjust traction control
on the fly.
So I thought I was trying to do it
while they were fueling and I was stopped.
But basically I was just killing time in pits.
So after day one, Zach comes up to me,
he's like, the only thing I need you to do
is leave pit when I tell you it's okay to leave pit.
He's like, your times are fine,
but you're burning like 30 to 40 seconds.
And I totally was,
because I was just trying to process all this new stuff.
I regret in hindsight not sitting in the car longer
and going through everything.
I did do it once, but I thought I'd committed it.
But just going through it over and again
until it's just muscle memory and asking those questions,
like can I hit these buttons on the fly
or do I have to do it while sitting there?
I think that because we were so limited
with our practice time on Friday,
we didn't get to do those things.
We were supposed to do a bunch of driver change practice.
We were supposed to do kind of the pit lane procedure
a couple of times.
We were supposed to switch drivers at the pit lane
and practice like it's a real race.
But it seems like the problem was happening to everybody.
Did you have the lit mode in practice?
No.
You only had like two laps, right?
Well, I didn't need to do much.
I mean, you know me,
I can figure out the car pretty quickly,
whatever the car is.
And I had driven it before.
So it was just a matter of, you know,
how does it feel on this track?
And I can register that pretty fast.
And so I wanted to give the time to the people
that it would benefit more.
And I had a Hellcat Durango, which by the way,
shout out to the homie that used to work
on the SRT experience who told me
they fill those with DOT three brake fluid, by the way.
So if the brakes boiled after two stops,
like that's definitely why.
I was like, yup, yup.
Yeah, it was sketchy.
There were some sketchy brakes.
So yeah, I mean, the problem didn't happen to me.
But I did experience it, you know, at the very end
when I was asked to go test it.
And I was like, oh, this is fucking stupid.
Yeah, sorry again about that.
That was just, I was getting in and out so many times.
No, no, no, I didn't mind doing it,
but like that's what it was and it was dumb.
But the outside of, you know, that issue,
Zach, I thought, did really well.
I learned, you know, at Coda, I learned a similar thing.
I got the, don't fucking slow down
until you're like at the gate for the pit.
Like you're still racing even in the,
and I was like, oh yeah.
Cause like on a regular like track day or at fucking,
you know, a slower series,
they would slow you down much, much further.
Totally.
Yeah.
I mean, and I did that during the race,
and you know, I'm coming up that,
you coming out of the last turn,
going up the hill to the pit,
and then I don't know, 82 miles per hour,
like slamming on the brakes.
And I was like, oh, I'll have plenty of time to stop.
And then I just watched the speedo going down
and like the gate getting closer.
I was like, oh, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking.
And it was like, I got to like 35 and a half miles per hour.
And for people listening to speed limits 35,
like as I crossed the gate, I went, oh, all right.
The uphill doesn't compress as much as I thought.
That's a breaking point you have to work out.
And you see it in Formula One, you see it everywhere.
The in-lapse and the out-lapse are often,
and so someone either has a better one worked out,
and in any car, it's leaving on new cold tires,
and IMSA as well.
Formula One has the tire blanket,
so they're leaving on hot stuff.
But that's the riskiest, and that's often
where it's just the races are decided
when everyone's rehearsed and the cars
are running so equally.
But you probably didn't even think about it
until the race, about where is the break point
to get to 35 by that car.
Yeah, very, very true.
They'll put breaking boards there.
There's no breaking board there, and we can practice it.
And during practice, I was coming in gentle,
just trying to think of all the other things.
And then I remembered what you guys had all said.
So I just came in hot and got it down to speed.
But then leaving, leaving pit, I was like going 31, not 34.9.
And just stuff like that, like trying to be careful
and not get a penalty, but just a little too careful.
Now, if we were studying it a little harder,
they don't do like the big series do,
where they have timelines embedded,
and they're doing average speed at everything.
They've got guys with guns.
So I did look to see if there's a guy with a gun
at the start.
So the reality is, I mean, you're rolling the dice,
but if there's no guy with a gun at the start,
you don't have to be at 35 at the cone.
You need to be at 35 when they hit you with the first gun.
This is Tommy Kendall's car.
Well, I saw two guys with me.
I saw two guys with radar guns.
Tommy Kendall's third door here is completely accurate,
because I was going to say it's not a laser beam there.
It's a guy.
And so if you're slowing and you cross the beam at 46,
but you get to 35 by the time he turns around, you're golden.
That's a good point, yeah.
The fact that our pit stall was the very first pit stall
came in extremely handy in that regard as well.
That's a pretty money pull in that case.
Yeah, I remember them saying, like, if you drive past our pit,
I'm going to yell at you because it's the first one.
I was like, that's a great point.
Yeah, fair.
It was down to the far end.
Dakota was hard to find, actually.
Yeah.
What band, radar gun is that?
Do we know?
What brand?
What band?
Oh, I don't know.
We should put a V1 in the car next time.
That's got to be probably K, I think.
A handheld is probably going to be K.
But I don't know.
I don't know if they'll let you buy a KA.
Well, it's the MPH Industries Speed Gun Pro KA band,
handheld stationary radar gun.
Oh, yeah?
Is that it?
I would tell a lot of brands, but.
If I saw a photo of it for sure.
This is a different looking one, but, you know,
I bet they all just put in a different package.
We need to know.
We need to know the response time, the accuracy percentage.
Yeah, Tom is not like a scientist.
He wants to know if we can put a radar detector in the race car.
And a jammer that will send a signal of 35 or 35 by 9.
Putting jammers in the race car is the pro's move, right?
Yeah, they'll never suspect us.
Yeah, they're not looking for that on track.
What the fuck is this?
Is there a rule it says in the book, no jammers.
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Guys, taking a break from the action
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And you're always asking me what I'm listening to
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And right now, it's this,
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That's it.
This is why you raced with Tommy Kendall.
I know by the way, he's also fast as it turns out.
Yeah, when I was looking at the spreadsheet,
I was like, oh, I got really consistent here.
And then I looked back up and I saw the driver change.
It's like, oh, that's Tommy.
I was like, wow, I started clicking off.
36 is like, no, no.
I mean, yeah, so, what was your best lap?
Do you remember?
33 flat.
That's fucking crazy.
Zach was like a middle 37?
My best time was a 37, seven.
Okay, I was a 37, one.
And then you were 30, huh?
Were you?
What, why?
That's what I thought I saw.
I thought it's 37, four, but I could be wrong.
Oh, maybe.
I was looking at the screen in the car
and haven't looked back since.
So if there was, if it was four, okay, whatever.
And Tommy's was a 36, three point.
A preface though is yeah, Tommy's on the same tire
after eight hours and I get the freshies.
Which, by the way, pretty good on that tire.
Yeah, man.
And that's like, yeah, pretty.
Impressive.
Pretty impressive, yeah.
We should.
Yeah, those Contis are solid.
What are the Contis?
Everyone runs them, right?
Everyone in the GP classes, yes.
I don't know what the model they run in,
the GTO classes and GTU, but it's,
they use a lot of tires.
They're using every pit stop, they use tire.
And those classes, they're doing tire changes
every pit stop.
So that's kind of a big budget jump.
I didn't realize that at all, I guess,
because I'm not watching their pit stops.
But I didn't think about that.
I saw some tire changes, I didn't know
they were doing them every stop.
The Mercedes was every stop, the BMW was every stop.
So the cars that were in the front, it was every stop.
The Mustangs that were not really in the front.
Every other stop, maybe.
Maybe just, you know, front-lefts, maybe.
Oh my God, that poor team that had to do
fucking bump starts every pit stop for a whole day.
Yeah.
Fucking every two hours are doing bump, hill, bump.
It wasn't great.
That's a bum, I felt like going out and helping,
but like, oh, that's a tough look today.
The feeling went away, didn't it?
Yes, and then I didn't.
Yeah, I should help.
Now, they had a big race trailer.
Maybe a coffee, I don't know.
Yeah, that was a lot of...
Yeah, that weekend was a lot of showing of endurance
with the cars, and at Coda we got really lucky.
Same, exact same times of racing, but much,
much, ah, it was colder in Texas, right?
In the morning, the very first half hour,
and then it got real hot.
So it was very similar conditions,
but you know, we had zero problems with the car,
and then the car went to Barber with me and the team,
and three other pretty fast drivers,
and we won the second race at Barber,
and it was real hot, and then we come to Wisconsin,
and we got pretty unlucky there
with the Wastegate Release valve, was it?
Yeah, whatever, but...
So I mean, that's endurance racing, right?
Like, things go wrong randomly,
and this was our one off weekend,
and the team is, they worked their cheeks off,
they put the car together,
they had a rough weekend starting off,
and I really hoped that we were gonna get
that first race podium, but the idea was,
the first race is our practice race.
We didn't even get enough practice for everybody, so...
That was the idea, right?
And so fourth place is amazing for a practice race.
Okay, that was the idea.
At dinner, we're like, all right,
we didn't get a lot of practice today
because the car broke basically the whole day of practice,
then it rained, da-da-da-da.
So everyone's like, all right.
You'd be great in the rain, by the way.
Just didn't crash in the rain.
No, you was fantastic.
I don't give a fuck what, I'm not looking at the clock,
I'm just like, whoa, whoa, it was counter-steering.
How fun is that thing?
It's a motor America rain line, though.
It's legit, right?
Thank God we had talked about that on a whim.
I was like, yeah, how does the rain line work?
And you guys explained it, and that helped everything.
I ran the rain line in the Durango
with fucking traction control fully off,
and it was good.
The rain line was sticky.
Awesome, that was fine.
That's awesome.
It was okay.
In general, you're kind of doing that everywhere you go.
I do it on pace laps, is I try to plot the grip
with the brake pedal on the pace laps.
And so you search around and you see how quickly it locks.
And like it wrote America, it's dramatic
between rain line and not.
And so you don't get a perfect plot,
but you start seeing, okay, wow,
offline braking quite good, online really bad,
and then some of these other things,
and you have to criss-cross over that.
Outside of the carousel, quite good.
Quite good, until the line joins.
And then you get a tiptoe, tiptoe slide of death.
If you're dyslexic, rain line is perfect,
because it's just you and the opposite of what you're doing.
You're taking it as you're on the opposite, yeah.
Yeah.
I want to say what was very funny is we all were like,
all right, first race day is gonna be practice,
we're gonna go for the win on Sunday.
You go out, Tato starts cooking,
and Matt walks out to me, he goes,
I think we're racing.
And I was like, fuck.
He's like, yep, I think we're racing.
Okay, that's what we're doing.
Yeah, no, it's practice unless you're looking at a podium.
Exactly. Then you're racing.
Yeah, you need to hedge your excitement,
but also be ready to fucking go racing.
Can we talk about that seat and the hip?
Oh, I was fucked up for a couple days.
Same, same.
This seat was a little small for TK and myself.
And then I thought it was small, the same one it coated.
It didn't end me up the same way,
but something, the pad underneath,
the ramp that's supposed to support your legs underneath
had come undone, velcroed,
and it was slid all the way forward,
it was pushing against my calves.
And so I was wrecked.
Well, you already, I mean, because of your injury,
the way that you drive is fucking crazy.
Yeah, it's pretty nuts.
To hover your foot effectively in the air for an hour
plus stint is a wild feat of athletic endurance,
even in a comfortable seat.
It's good, good isometric.
Now, if I was super fit, it'd be one thing,
but I mean, I'm...
Even if you are super fit, that's a fucking wild feat.
Yeah, it's a whole lot of...
Try to do that, try to sit in a chair
and hold your foot up for five minutes, it's impossible.
Or listening, because I have no,
my right ankle doesn't bend at all.
And so the more you bend your knees,
the more your toe is tipped forward.
And so most people just plant their heel
and then articulate at the ankle to work the throttle.
I can't do that because my foot to be on the floor,
the toe is, or the heel would be way far back.
So I have to hold it in the air.
I build a little ramp usually if I can get that in a car
so I can slide it.
In this car, I didn't have it.
And so I'm literally just hovering it in the air.
So if you have your ramp in an act,
is it made of aluminum or something or whatever?
Okay, do you then, because driving shoes
typically have a grippy ball on the bottom
because people roll, do you then put a gaffer tape
to like lube up the ball to move easier?
No, it's sloped.
I've never had an issue with that.
Have I just innovated for you?
Yeah, maybe.
We call this the ramp.
You might gain a couple of times.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then the problem you have of it sliding,
if it gets too low, if you make a track, yeah.
Yeah, like a V type channel.
But like when you told me you did that,
I was like, I'm sorry, what?
Cause like normal driving is exhausting in a race.
Like that's crazy.
But I think we could put the race,
cause you have done it in cars you shared
with standard drivers and it's not a thing
that comes into play if you have regular mobility
in your right foot, right?
True.
So let's put the ramp in this thing.
Let's go.
There's gotta be one that like,
we basically take a BMW floor mat, right?
And that's your bottom shape.
And you build, you mold the ramp on that
and then you can just like plop it in
and it'll just like stay.
Yeah.
I've done it with it when it was just under my throttle foot,
but there's no reason it couldn't be a false floor
all the way across so that it feels normal
to you guys with your, you know,
I don't think you would even notice it.
And you left foot brake then?
I, it depends.
If the seat supports me long enough,
I left foot brake in this car because of the seat.
I was, I was right foot.
You were doing right foot just for the braking, yeah.
Oh yeah, you must have been fucked up.
And the seat, I don't know why it was worse for me
this time than last time,
maybe just because of the arrangement of cushions,
but like my hips were bruised for a couple of days.
So Tommy, you've raced,
you've done endurance races with a wide variety of people.
So this is probably an ongoing challenge for any team.
You know, you're a very tall person.
You race for the short person
or whatever the size differences are.
Is, is the secret to this stuff
where you just, everyone gets their seat mold done
or you know, how do you find that compromise?
The secret is to drive with people that are similar size.
The compromise is, you know, you work through all that stuff
and they're still compromises.
It's why I've always liked it because of my size
and the special needs of the feet.
You know, in TransAm, I love that so much
because the seat was so perfectly tailored to me
and I didn't have to make any compromises.
That was super comfortable.
But yeah, that's what you do is you end up,
you know, having inserts.
This seat moved, which I didn't remember that it moved.
So I think I drove too close also on my stint.
So it was kind of a perfect storm the wrong way.
I'm so used to the seats not sliding.
I drove a little, I got in the car a little too close
and I moved it back during the race
and then had to tighten it up.
Talking about the terrifying.
It's also hard, if you do that, you go back too far
and then you can't go forward
because the belts won't let you go far enough forward.
Hit the brakes and then hold that lever.
You don't want to have to fuck with shit while you're racing.
Well, if the seat goes on and the seat moves up,
we can have a second injury like the one that, right?
This would be a good time to talk about it.
Oh, Tato's balls.
I want to get into that because that's a more interesting,
we've sliced up a pretty uninteresting race a lot so far.
Speaking of injuries that might limit
how you drive a car.
Speaking of sliced up.
Same tune for that.
Just sitting in position is something
I don't think a lot of drivers, as you're getting into it,
you really should work on it.
I learned it halfway through my career
when I drove that GTP car,
how much I was moving around,
how much I was energy I was using
to brace myself with a dead pedal and with my hand.
And so if you get someone that knows seating
and works with you,
you can really reduce the amount of energy you spend.
And it also makes you more consistent
because you're not moving around in the seat.
So that's one thing Matt and I complain about with road cars.
If it's a sports car, a super car,
and the seat bolstering's not there.
Now I'm holding myself with my arms or my leg.
The first time I drove this Ranchero and Lemons,
the seat, we have a wide variety of people on the team,
and it was like an unpadded, quirky seat, it was very open.
So I was holding myself with my arms
and also my left leg against the door,
but I did six hours of driving.
My whole IT band, the whole next two weeks, was on fire.
I was like, what did I do?
I went, oh, I held my body weight
with the hip extension, whatever, so it was terrible.
Well, which is a segue to Matteo,
the thing we've kind of been tiptoeing around,
Matteo had an injury.
I talked about it on the race broadcast
when I went up to the booth,
but a week before, was it two weeks before?
No, the Friday right before.
The Friday before we drove, he was right seating.
Do you want to tell it?
Do you want me to tell it?
Yeah, I can tell the story.
So I'm driving at, or no, sorry, I'm coaching at a...
Morning, this is fucking gruesome.
They're not going to see the video though, so.
No, but like just even hearing about it, this is normally...
It wasn't great.
Fair warning.
We're still reeling from the injury.
No, so I was coaching at a driving club
at Homestead Miami Speedway.
Two, or one Friday right before the qualifying.
So, get there like eight in the morning
and it's some guy's birthday
and it's like they rented out the whole track
and so it's me and like five other coaches
and we're just there to show them a good time.
They rented out a two race cars,
one was a semi-race ready Porsche GT3 RS.
It had kind of everything you need
except it was on the street tire
and there was a license plate in the back.
So it might have not been a race car,
but it looked like a race car and it acted like a race car.
And then the other one was the exact same car
we use at Open Throttle, is the M235 IR.
And they show up in the morning
and the guy who's running the thing's like,
hey, who was experiencing this thing?
And I was like, I just came back from Alabama.
I won the race and I did three hours of driving, I know.
And it was only one seat and I was like, this is great.
I'm just gonna tell them how to drive it.
They're gonna drive it and then that'll be my whole day.
And then the birthday group shows up and, sorry.
The birthday group shows up
and the first thing they do is they put us into a big van
and I'm the one who's standing in the van
kind of pointing out what's going on in the track.
And I thought that was gonna be the most
of my adventures of the day,
other than doing the shakedown of the BMW to start with.
But then the people, they go over
and they see the car as only one seat.
And the dad said, hey, this is unacceptable,
like we need a coach in the car.
And I was like, I mean, you don't really need a coach
in the car, like there's data, I can bring my computer,
we can actually learn how to race.
And he was like, no, it's not as fun.
So they called in the mechanic shop or whatever,
they brought a seat down and then 30 minutes later,
they're putting in the seat.
Long story short, the seat doesn't fit me all too well,
but I was just doing the first couple laps
to show this random guy kind of how the track is supposed
to go.
I didn't go fast, I just kind of emphasized
what we're supposed to do in the brake zones
and how to exit the brake properly.
And that was kind of the whole thing,
two laps, show them what's right and left,
show them how to use the left pedal.
And-
Did this person have race experience?
None of them had race experience.
So that was it.
Just drive very smoothly, very slowly,
all we wanna learn today is the brake.
And we wanna master the brake.
We switched seats and I get into the seat
and I'm like, man, this is not fitting right.
Like the pedal, sorry, the pedal box is too far away,
my legs don't reach.
The seat belt, the actual clipping belt
was pressed right on my family jewels
and it was a six point harness.
So it was on both sides on the lap.
And then, no, it was five point harness, I guess.
Yeah, five point harness.
It was five, so 11 summary.
Yeah, one little belt buckle guy
and then two straps on the right and left side of the hips.
And those were real tight.
So I was like, you know what?
I'm super secure.
If anything happens, it'll feel like a punch
right in the gonads, but I'm not sure
that we're gonna be able to get anything
crazy happening here.
First two laps, amazing, we go slow.
The most that we feel is like,
oh, traction control kicks in when you try
to get into the gas too early, leaving turn six.
Great.
Then I'm giving him a high five, great job.
Cool down lap, we're gonna go around one more time.
Not getting into the brakes too much,
not getting into the gas.
Just wanna cool everything down.
And we'll talk again when we park up.
And he's like, okay, cool.
And then, second we cross start finish line,
he slams on the gas.
And I'm like, whoa, what's going on?
And then we go into turn one,
there's a very big change of the track
from the banked NASCAR track to the infield.
And so we take that full speed, huge bump,
and I'm like, oh my gosh, we're going into this full speed.
So I reach over to grab the wheel
while screaming break, break, break, none of that worked.
And we ended up getting a little bit of a yaw.
And while I grabbed the wheel to try and counter steer,
he slammed on the gas.
It was a lot of new inputs that weren't expected.
But long story short,
we ended up in the inside wall, it turned two.
And the initial impact, I was like, man,
that really felt like a punch right in the gonads.
And the corner worker comes over and we see the red truck
and he's like, what do I do?
And I turn the car off and I'm like, it's all good.
Like everything's okay, everybody's safe.
I think people make mistakes,
but that was a cool downlap.
So let's just relax and we'll talk to the corner workers
when they get here.
That's way too nice.
Way too nice.
And so the corner workers get out of the truck
and they're like, hey guys, are you guys okay?
And I was like, yeah, I just got hit in the nuts really hard.
And I'm still going like, ah,
like the stomach thing still hurts.
And so they're like, okay, just jump out of the car,
we'll check you out.
And I was like, all right.
So I reached down to unbutton the belt and I unbuttoned.
I'm like, man, that was such a relief.
And I looked down, it's like a little speck of blood
on my khaki pants.
I'm like, oh man, that's, that's weird.
It's probably from like my belly button or something.
Like something got caught with the sea belt.
And then I stand up and I'm like, oh my gosh,
that is a fair amount all on like my pants.
And so I said, hey, I got to make sure everything's still there.
Like jokingly, right?
And then I turn around and looking at the wall and I'm like,
I'm just gonna make sure everything's still good.
Move my underwear over.
And my right nut was hanging out of my sack.
And it was like a hole the size of like a big ping pong ball.
I've already heard this one before.
It doesn't get better.
It's getting shrimp cocktail right now.
Dude.
And so I'm looking at it.
I'm like, oh my gosh.
And I still have my gloves on, still have my helmet on.
And I like turn around my pants off
and I'm now looking at the driver
and like the corner workers.
I'm like, guys, what do I do?
And they're like, oh my gosh.
They're gonna put it back in.
Yeah, there is no flag for that.
The meatball flag means something else.
Oh my God.
Yeah, so I look at him like, I don't know what to do.
And they're like, you gotta put it back in.
I was like, I don't know how to do that.
I have gloves on.
I don't know what to do.
I have my helmet on.
And they were like, you just gotta put it back in
and close it.
And I was like, okay.
So I threw my gloves off and I like pushed it back in
and then pinched the hole together.
And then right after.
Drove himself to the hospital.
Well, the EMS guy showed up and he was like,
hey, is everything okay?
And then looked down and he's like, oh, no.
And then we get into the EMS truck and I'm like,
man, so are you guys gonna fix it?
What's going on here?
Like, oh, we can't do anything.
We could drive you to the hospital that one.
I was like, okay, let's go.
And then he says, oh, we gotta drop this guy off
and we need your wallet.
We gotta find out where you are.
I was like, okay.
So we park up right at the garages.
He's like, okay, go grab your wallet.
And I was like, really?
Like I'm holding my nuts together
and like I'm bleeding everywhere.
He was like, yeah, you're right.
I could probably go get it.
I was like, no, that's fine.
Let me see.
So I stand up and I had so much,
I got shocked and adrenaline
that I didn't even feel any pain.
It was like, oh, the hole is closed.
All good.
So I went over, grabbed my wallet
and while I'm walking back to him,
I was like, you know what?
You guys can look at it,
but I'm just gonna drive myself.
It's five minutes away.
I got my car here.
I got a flight tonight at seven.
So drove myself and I show up to the hospital
and never had faster service in my life.
I'm writing my name down
and then immediately the nurse that comes out is like,
hey, are you okay?
And then, oh my gosh, runs away,
gets three nurses with like a wheelchair
and then sitting down before Matteo was written.
And then, I get into this room.
There's a lesson in this.
If you want good service at a hospital.
You rip your nuts in half.
That's what you do.
Yeah, and then I went into this hospital room with.
12 doctors, 16 nurses, an entire grad.
40 people.
It was wall to wall.
I couldn't see a single wall.
It was just facing.
Guys, is the stadium room open?
The call went out over the radio.
You gotta see this.
We gotta see this.
You won't believe this.
You won't believe this.
Code house.
They stitch you up and all as well
other than you tested two days later.
Yeah, so I ended up not going on the flight that night.
They said I wasn't gonna make it.
So I get 11 stitches.
That hurt a lot.
That was the most painful part of the whole thing.
Because they didn't put me to sleep.
They gave me oxy something,
but apparently not the good oxy.
And.
You need to get the good.
You need the light, it came.
I need that.
I need it.
I said, when can I ask for morphine after stitch five?
And he was like, oh, you could have asked at the start.
I was like, my gosh.
What horrible.
The medical care you had.
I mean, they got you in there quickly.
The EMS, people were like, yeah, hold your arm in place.
Go grab your own wallet, let's lock you.
No, this was.
Homestead Miami.
Yeah.
Oh man, that's like.
Explained to you.
It's not Miami.
It's Bhuni's Miami.
Homestead Miami, Miami.
So he was driving when he was talking
about getting it out of the car.
I mean, pretty extensive care.
That was seven days earlier.
And so the seat for practice was amazing.
Zach and I use the same little cushion seat.
But then for the race, I get there a little bit earlier
than they do since I start the race.
And we're looking for the seat and it's not there.
And so Zach had put it behind his helmet
because like, of course it's his thing.
Well, there's like four cars.
Right.
And like we don't want someone else to take them.
Exactly.
There's lots of phone service.
I was like, let's keep these for us.
But I didn't tell you.
Yeah, it's all my bad though.
And so I'm at the car and I'm like, man, where's the,
like it's empty down there.
I'm not going to be able to see.
And I'm like, OK, let's grab a thing, a cushion.
And so we had Dylan, I think it was, grab two cushions.
And they were rather small cushions.
And the other one was the exact same thickness.
And it was big.
It was filled out the whole seat.
These two were like backpats that we
put on the bottom of the seat.
So the seat belt was like going through the hole in the seat.
And then the butt pads had like two inches of where they're
actually lifting my butt up.
And then it was just like a flat hole.
And that flat hole had like a lot of leeway.
And so whenever I hit the brakes, I'd slap onto the front.
And then whenever I hit a bump, I'd slap onto both.
It was a painful.
Dude, the kink was not easy.
Well, it could be a kink at this point.
With these fucking, getting your fucking nuts
slapped in the back of the seat.
So that's why I ended up not using a whole lot of the kink.
And while we were looking at video that night,
I was like, so we want to use this much.
And Zach was like, why aren't you using it?
I was like, it hurt a lot.
I didn't want to.
But he was altering his line for comfort.
Yeah, he's all stay off the road.
So really, they're fine.
I don't know.
Depends.
I just impressed.
You were so unbothered.
Like the tech thread is like, hey, guys, you know,
here's a video, by the way, of what the balls look like.
But no, we're going to test.
We'll be at the race.
Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's all good.
It's all good.
I mean, we were fast.
Like everybody drove amazing that weekend.
Like if we didn't have very unlucky situations with the car,
I think we'd walk away with, you know, second place.
Maybe we fight for first in day two,
because the Grace Ginger racing car,
they had some big problems.
They were out of the race for 10 years.
Did that car they won on day one not finish day two?
They finished on the podium.
Oh, they did.
But not, I don't think they won.
That's why I think TC clown cars.
The car was very, very fast.
Very fast.
Yeah.
According to them, they had less horsepower than us.
But then I saw them straight away.
No, with more aero, they were still pulling.
That car was pulling on the straightaway.
Yeah, I mean, maybe they, I don't know,
maybe the car was way lighter than ours or something.
But like according to the very fast
E46 with like full aero.
Yep.
It was a fasty.
Yeah.
And they were.
And they drove well too.
They drove really well.
No, I don't.
I mean, qualified great.
I respect.
Well, like, I don't believe that we're making it up
all up in the corners.
Make it up a bit in the streets too.
No.
The world's most suspiciously quiet Corvette,
yes, was making it up in the corners.
Yes.
But still sounded really good, that Corvette.
It sounded OK.
I thought they.
Compared to everything else there.
It could have been louder.
True.
They told me that they took the cats off it.
But then they have this like center exit exhaust thing.
And I was like, you probably just like leave the cats.
I mean, you're running two thirds throttle.
Like, why even bother taking the cats off?
And it seems like that could like cause more problems
than it would solve.
Because you don't need more power.
Right.
Well, I think they also said they were limiting the timing.
So I wonder if that would send a bunch of fuel to the cat
and eventually foul it up or something.
And then maybe load.
They probably know what they're doing.
Yeah.
Bunch of GM guys.
Yeah.
It was very quiet.
It was.
It was weird.
It was probably like a diesel.
Yeah.
Wasn't there a diesel?
I think there was a BMW 335.
No, I talked to that guy.
He had the D badge.
But I was like, is this a diesel?
And he started laughing.
He's like, everybody in the accent.
But I forget what it was.
He's like, everybody asked that.
It's definitely not a diesel.
But I just put it on there because it fucks with everybody.
It was like it was a fast 335.
And it had a really loud and unique kind of sounding exhaust.
And I was like, it doesn't quite sound like a diesel,
but it also doesn't quite sound like a normal BMW.
So I was like, yeah, maybe.
I don't know.
I wasn't really paying that close of attention.
I just thought it was interesting.
Yeah.
It was fast on the streets, but it didn't have the big wing.
That was an interesting choice being out there.
And there are teams that had big power.
Yeah.
That winged E92.
Either way, the E92.
Oh my gosh.
It passed me like I was staying at steel.
All power.
You reached 160 on the straight.
Dude, that's faster than some of the GTO cars.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I drove that E92 at Kota for the practice day.
Oh, Paul, yes.
That went like 15 miles an hour quicker on the straight
than we went in our car.
But it was also a real handful in the corners.
Yeah.
It was heavy and slidey.
With no arrow, that thing is not easy to handle.
And it's really hard to keep that thing in contention
and start of the race.
I mean, they qualified super well.
I don't know what was going on in qualifying.
And then in race two, they ended up getting down to a 32
also, so I was like, did they really?
They figured something out.
But the thing I was really hoping for
was coming out of turn three.
I really wish they would have caught ginger racing
and been able to hold them up a little bit,
because then we would have been fighting for the lead
at the start.
But they went for the smart choice on the brakes in turn five.
And then right after that, it was not easy for them.
We got hosed a couple of times in that first race
by full course yellows that bunched up the field
after we had made a pretty solid gap on everyone behind us.
I did a lot of.
When I was looking at my stuff, I was like, you know,
the number of laps I did versus the time.
But I realized I had a lot of full course yellow laps.
Zach also had a real pants shitting moment
where he was the fucking car behind the pace car
and the entire field and bunched up behind him.
I was like, oh, he's going to have fun with this.
The rear view camera gets very busy.
And then a lot of cars just pass.
How does a yellow flag restart?
What?
How does the yellow flag restart?
I mean, I'm sitting there going,
I should have read the rulebook four times.
I forget.
And then the two cars in front of me go,
but the radio, they're still saying,
hold on for a second.
But then there's like the, you're
allowed to drive 80% pace in the full yellow.
It's like, well, which car is 80%?
Are we judging this on?
Some of these cars are passing the other.
And everyone just takes off down the straight and I'm full.
And then I, but I knew where I was and what was coming.
So I just stayed left and I watched, you know,
AMG GT go by on the right, three Supras go by on the right.
All the GTO class cars just haul ass
and just carry through turn one and they're gone.
And just try not to touch anybody.
Because everything, that was a big thing.
Everything around me is expensive, you know?
So I was just really aware where my edges were.
No, it was fun.
I love the traffic.
It's exciting.
It's so much fun.
It's intimidating, but it's also, it's the best.
It's really cool.
It keeps you right on your toes.
Especially not being, you know,
it's fun to be in a fast car and weave through slow cars,
but it's also interesting to be trying to go fast
in a slow car and have people like just humming by you.
People passing in the kink after the driver's meeting
is like, don't pass in the kink.
I also saw everybody cutting across the front straight
into the pit lane, exiting fucking.
Oh yeah.
Don't cut across and cut back.
Like 95% of people did that exact thing.
And Track Limits Tommy found a new way through 14, very nice.
Unlike Kota, they were, there was no mention of Track Limits.
And so, I used more curb than I've ever used in turn 14.
And this car really didn't like to go in too deep in turn.
So you had to turn it.
It was kind of predetermined where the car wanted to turn.
And so you either needed to wait a long time
or balance throttle to get around it,
or turn it and go back to throttle
and then left sides barely on the pavement,
everything else through the grass.
And I just kept doing a little bit more.
I kept waiting for the call on the radio.
There's an L-Cat in line.
Here we go.
I did the same thing.
I mean, God, you know, Sunday, when we're not racing,
the only thing that saved my mental state was,
God bless the Honda Grom.
The Honda Grom is the most wonderful invention
in the history of trackside inventions,
especially at a place like Road America that's huge.
And so I rode that goddamn thing around all day long.
And I watched the race from a variety of different angles
and stuff.
And I realized that my line through turn seven
is a big ol' cut compared to what everybody else.
You know, there's like the curb,
and then that concrete.
My right tires are like to the right of that concrete,
of that light concrete,
and everybody else isn't even getting on the curb.
And I didn't realize that until I got out of the car.
I thought that was just the way.
But no, apparently it's not.
Apparently that's a big cut
that no one really cared about doing.
But fun times in front of the line.
Whatever works, whatever works.
It didn't make me as fast as you,
but we were working there.
We're trying.
I mean, close, you know.
So, not embarrassing.
Road America, it's four miles.
Generally the gap is close to double.
Like so if you cut that in half on a two mile,
on a normal track, it's right there.
It's such a long place.
And like every little thing has such a exaggerated
consequence as a result of it.
Yeah, that's what, I haven't been to Road America
since I think it was, 12 was the last time I was there.
But it drives the same, you know.
And so, and it's amazing the difference that makes
just with muscle memory and the rhythm and so forth.
But now there's so much more on the exit curbs.
Yeah.
It goes with the planter blocks?
Oh yeah, everything.
The planter blocks.
The turn one is now like a parking lot out there.
And it's awesome.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry.
No.
And actually that, I don't know what the stuff is
that the grass grows through.
It's on the outside of the curb.
Yeah, they called it, they called it something
and I liked grass creed.
They called it grass creed.
Okay.
Which is not, it's not catchy.
I liked long creed because it sounds more like concrete.
And it does have long growth.
We ultimately settled on calling it the planter box.
It's essentially.
It's that right there.
Yeah.
Typical traffic.
It's that, the traffic one.
It's called fucking grass creed.
That's the, oh it's a brand?
Oh shit, it really is.
It's like imagine you turn cinder blocks on their side
so the holes are facing up.
And then plant grass in them.
And so you've got a surface that's like 50% concrete
and 50% grass.
And the idea is it's got half the grip.
So it's, you have the vibrating curb
and then on the outside of that, like yeah, you can use it
and you're not gonna get caught in the grass
and get sucked into the wall,
but you also don't have full grip there.
Interesting stuff.
Yeah.
You can use it.
You can use it.
I've, like at the kink is where it came into play
and I've been in the grass in the kink at speed
and not crashed.
And so that is a serious pucker moment.
That's the scariest throw.
You don't wanna do that.
You're so close to the wall.
And so close.
But so this, it took me a while to have confidence.
I only did it a few times,
but to pick up the throttle earlier,
carry more speed,
knowing that you had that extra margin on the outside.
Now, because it's only half grip,
you use the ground up twice as fast.
So if you think, I'm only going six inches over,
no, you're going foot over.
You're going foot over, you're going two feet.
And so that took some confidence.
Cause again, at this point,
there's no one scouting for a pro ride
and so the risk reward, just don't crash the car.
I didn't have balls to use it there.
I used it on the exit of 14 on the front straight a lot.
Deep into it.
Every time.
Super wide.
Oh my gosh.
That was like luxury corner exit.
But like without, you know, Tato to say,
this car is capable of doing this and this and this.
There's no way I would have not used brakes
at all before the kink.
No way.
I would have just come up with that.
There's no way I would go flat up over,
what do you fucking call it?
Billing Mitchell.
No way.
And there's no way I would have done
at least one other thing without him going,
oh no, you could do this.
Using all that extra, using all the extra road.
Yeah.
So thanks buddy.
Yeah man.
With the fast.
Well, it helps kind of, that's the idea
with like all the program series.
Like in Super Chefeo too, the whole point of,
even if you're like a younger pro and a pro pro pairing,
you want to get that experience pro driver to show you,
hey, this is what you're capable of
and this is what this car is capable of.
And that's, it's really nice to be kind of
on a bigger team that you have
so many different pro drivers
that we have three right now on TR3.
We have Dennis Lind who is a, you know,
super experienced DXD driver from the WC.
Elias Dillatory who's, I think,
third year in Super Chefeo.
Also single make Carrera Cup,
I think he did a year and a half.
So he's really experienced than me.
So we all get to see like, hey,
this is what's possible here, this is what's possible here.
And then if someone has like an incident,
this is what's not possible here.
You find out without doing it yourself.
Someone has an incident.
Yeah, it's kind of human nature,
whether you're snow skiing,
now you see it in extreme sports.
Until Travis Petrona did the backflip,
it was not possible.
Yep.
She's on right under two hour fucking marathon last weekend.
Really?
A guy did a 159 something marathon.
Oh man.
Isn't that crazy?
You just fall over and die right after?
159.30.
What is the average, what does that work out to?
Mile average.
It's got a stonestance.
It's insane.
24 miles, right?
26 miles.
26.2, I think, Katie.
It's like seven minutes a mile.
13 miles an hour, that's a fast clip.
Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
And then I just saw a video of like a nine year old kid
landing three 900s in a row on a skateboard.
And it took Tony Hawk 20 years to figure out how to do that.
Right, crazy.
So I was running four minute, 35 second miles.
Wow.
What after that?
25, 26 miles.
And there was a time, oh my gosh.
Like the four minute mile was thought to be impossible.
You had to sprint and do it once.
But like, all the sports progress because,
especially like the younger people see
what the older people do, especially with extreme sports.
And they're like, oh, I wanna try that.
And now you've got, I saw a great video of Tony Hawk
skating with like a 15 year old.
And Tony Hawk says, how long did it take you
to learn the 900?
And the 15 year old's like two hours?
And Tony's like, it took me like 10 years.
But he had to figure it out and show that it was possible.
And then you get a kid who has no fear of dying
and is super fast and mobile and they just go for it.
What were you gonna say before?
No, I mean, that's kind of how human nature works, you know?
But like on the physical and the mental,
like that's a pure physical, that's not pure physical.
I mean, that's a huge physical barrier.
I was gonna say, for those race fans,
if you remember Bob Varsha, who's an announcer,
Bob Varsha was a collegiate marathoner.
I wanna say Bob Varsha has run a like a 220 marathon.
Seriously?
Bob Varsha back in the day.
No way, wow.
With all that, with that.
Go Bob Varsha.
Little random trivia.
He probably put it up, you know what I mean?
Yes.
That's amazing.
I was really grateful to have you guys, you know,
I mean, Tato, we did two sessions of sim,
which was essential.
Like I, you know, I would have been far more lost than Matt
because I haven't been to Road America in 10 years.
So that was like the theory of where I could break and stuff
and just trying to get it right was enough.
But then I feel like I learned a lot here,
kind of having the faith to have,
let the car do what you said it could do.
You all guys, you all say, do this speed through here
and this speed through here.
And like I was letting the car move
and kind of bounce over stuff more than I ever have,
but knowing that it's just gonna keep the trajectory
it's on.
And that was a huge educational experience.
If you'd been turned loose on your own without Sims or anything,
you could have spent probably a couple days driving
and you would have figured some of it out,
but some of it you wouldn't have figured out
even in a couple of days.
Definitely.
Yeah, very true.
There's stuff I wouldn't figure out ever.
Yeah.
I was at Sonoma yesterday on the NISMO Z launch,
the manual and I can't talk about how it drives yet,
but honestly you can fucking guess.
But they had some, you know, some instructors there
and they were mainly doing lead follow
and Nissan was kind enough to not force me
into the lead follow, but I did on the warm-up lap,
I did do a lead follow and the guy over four,
up over the hill and into the carousel,
he went way to the left, whereas I traditionally had
brought it back to the right to turn it downhill
and I had him explain to me, and after that,
I was like, oh shit, this guy is fucking right
and so now I'm changed, now I'm doing this right.
Into the carousel, into the carousel,
tighter from the left instead of going,
moving back to the right at the top of the hill
and coming down, you get a better exit up the hill,
I think, I think this guy was right.
Yeah, I mean, you definitely don't want to arc it in,
you want to be in tight relatively soon.
If you can get back to the right and straighten it up,
you could theoretically carry a little more speed
over that unweight, but you want to be heading
for the inside shortly after that.
It's like left middle, it's like the left third,
it's not all the way left side.
If you're carrying enough speed through the right,
you're not going to be able to get all the way back.
That's what he was saying and I was like,
I think I put too much emphasis on getting back right
to the detriment of the pace.
If that was a 90 degree corner, you would want to do that.
Because it's a 180, no matter what you do on the entry,
it gets canceled out by halfway around the corner.
Totally, yeah, neat stuff.
Should we go to the people?
Do we have some things?
We can talk to the people, of course,
patreon.com slash the smoking tire podcast.
It's where you ask questions for the live show,
watch the live show, get the show.
The same day it was recorded, get the show without ads,
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Let's keep it mainly to things that are racing related
and bullshit car advice stuff can stay for the next show.
Ted Theologian says, favorite corner at Road America.
Do you have a favorite corner?
You know, I mean, the carousel kink is a great combo,
but the challenge of being quicker
than everybody getting into turn five.
I love psyching yourself up,
because the road bends a little bit as you approach,
there's a crown to the road,
there's a bunch of little nuance to that corner
that I think it's a lot more complicated
than just going to this point.
So I love turn five.
Like Road Atlanta also has a downhill
breaking into a 90 degree left hand corner,
but it's not nearly as interesting
as the one at Road America.
I like the really hard brake zones, you know,
and if you get, so that's something
that Road America has several of, you know,
Canada corner is also that way.
And also not, you know, it's just,
it's a flow track, it's got really hard braking,
but you know, if you're not careful
and you're so focused on braking,
you can over slow in a lot of places.
So there's just so much flow to it.
I mean, the whole place is awesome,
but if I had to pick my favorite,
I love racing people into turn five.
Tatum, do you have a favorite corner?
For sure, Canada corner.
Like it's just all about floating speed.
And the more you can keep it smooth
and the faster you can get back to the throttle,
the happier the car is going to be.
And it's interesting because there was a baby wreck
turned Canada corner on lap one.
And so it kind of made that whole left side
of the exit curb just unusable
because there was debris on it the whole time.
Oh yeah, there was a bunch of trash over there.
Yeah, yeah, that was some guy's car.
Yeah, yes I know.
So yeah, it kind of limited us to not using all of it,
but with this car, the BMW,
it was happy to not use all of it.
Like you just want to use a little bit of it.
The more you use, the worse the exit is.
But with the Lambo, it's completely opposite.
Like if you don't use all of it,
you're just completely over slowed to the entire corner.
And then Billy Mitchell Ben becomes
an interesting lifting and turning
because in the Lambo, you really have to use the brake there.
Otherwise you're just going to fly away.
Yeah, it's scary.
In the BMW, you can send the exit of that corner
extremely wide and it's quite luxurious even.
Oh yeah.
Queer shift in gears.
At the Mid Ohio Lemons Race,
my teammate blew our transmission at the start of day two
and got us stuck in fourth gear,
ended up running faster for all drivers.
Any similar experiences
where you improved in a weird situation?
Well, it's funny.
Like sometimes if you, exactly that,
or if you have to save fuel or if you have to save brakes,
you find out, again, they were probably over slowing
in a lot of places.
And we dealt with this in practice
where if you're between gears,
the lower gear always feels faster,
but oftentimes it's you're over slowing
and it's holding you back on your exit.
And so it's worth playing around.
I told Matt explicitly, I said it will feel slower
in some of these places.
Both you and Tato were like,
no, gear higher in Canada corner,
gear higher in...
Turn eight was a scary one.
Gear higher in eight.
Which usually ran.
It worked in the beginning of the race
with the fresh tire,
but then with the older tires,
it would start to get looser on entry.
And so for Tommy's,
it was almost impossible to run in fourth gear,
but you were in like kind of the mid stages
of where it started to feel.
I was in between where sometimes it worked
and sometimes it didn't.
Yep, yeah, yeah.
That was just a tire degree.
But it did feel slower.
A thing like that is whenever you do a 24 hour race,
I've always found that you learn certain bits
about the track running in the dark.
And then when it gets light,
it's so easy to go fast without pushing the car.
It's almost like your eyes are just confirming.
The seat tells you, if I clip this,
there's a bump here,
and I know I'm gonna have six inches on the exit.
And then your eyes are like, yep, six inches on the exit.
You really learn.
It turns up all the other senses.
Yeah, neat.
Just Jay, what would you point to
as your proudest, most exhilarating on track single moment?
A ballsy, successful pass.
You know, there's a pass that's been brought up recently
in the 95 Road Atlanta Trans Am Race.
It was wet.
It was drying out.
I was quicker than the two fellows in Jamie Gallis.
And I had to talk myself into it
because the place it was gonna happen
was on the outside of the kink
before it turns 10A and 10B were in offline
in the wetter part of the track.
And I just said, I don't wanna do that.
I don't wanna do that.
As the race went on, I'm like, if it's gonna happen,
it's gonna have to happen exactly there.
And so I talked myself up to it
and then I passed both of them on the outside in the wet.
Amazing.
Through the dip.
And so that one was just massive pucker
and in hindsight, massively satisfying.
Tato.
I think that the send at the start of race two
for Texas was pretty awesome.
That was from seventh to third
and that was right behind the ginger racing guy.
But I think the most exciting,
exhilarating, proudest moment
was winning the third race in a row in Italy.
That was the first time I'd actually,
like by just pure pace, beat the championship leader.
He's been ahead of us all year
and they had the pace on us all year.
And then we go into Indy
and they get pretty unlucky in race one.
Car shuts off in race two
and then we go into World Finals
and they're like, oh, the car's finally gonna work.
Let's see how you do with them.
And then I passed the first driver
and then we do the pit stop.
And then I have a single driver lineup
so I have a three second longer pit stop.
Then they get right back in front of me
and then I come back out and I pass the second driver.
And then I won by like, I think 15 seconds.
And that was really impressive for me.
You went for failure in Italy
and you won three races in a row.
That was the third win in a row.
Oh, they're, wow.
Wow.
He doubled Indy.
Chasing him down, that's amazing.
That's a pivotal moment in a career as a young driver
because there's the thinking I can win
and knowing I can win
and the confidence boost that comes from knowing
head to head, listen, I can handle this guy.
You're gonna deal with that at each step along the way.
Would you move up now?
I've found a new guide of you, Jason.
Yes, you've got some new guys to choose.
It's the same number and the exact same car,
but it's now a new pro in the car.
And he has won, I think, six pro-pro championships,
three World Finals titles.
He is one of the best Super Gifero drivers to ever do it.
And you know, I think the bar is perfectly set
because right now we're sitting fourth in the championship,
but if we can find out how to beat this guy,
all the eyes are, they're looking that way.
You know, it's the exact competition we need.
Danny from Offer, those of you guys following along.
So you're going to school every time you're behind him
and saying, oh, wow, okay, and so he's doing this
a little bit here, so good for you.
That's exciting, that's fun.
Thank you.
My most exciting moment is not that exciting,
but using your line at Coda to pass like multiple people
on multiple occasions when nobody else seemed to know
to put their car there was an incredibly helpful
bit of racecraft that resulted in like multiple planned passes.
That's awesome.
Like when someone like me like sets up planned passes
that work out the way that I envision them,
like that's like, oh, shit, that actually works, like, wow.
Real life chess.
Yeah, that could have been, yeah.
Don't break for the kink says if you have the opportunity
to take any road legal car around Road America
for the afternoon, what would it be?
T-50.
Ooh, T-50?
Yeah.
Good choice.
Hard to beat that, hard to beat that.
I mean, a ZR-1 would be pretty, you know,
pretty extraordinary in that regard.
I could chip my pants in a ZR-1 at Road America.
Me too.
I think it's so fast to chip our pants.
Yeah, you'd be going like 160 every straight away.
I think I-
If not more.
Yeah, I think I'd want to do probably the Z06, the new one.
The one, the Z-51 track package.
Oh, you heard that.
It's just like the Superture Fail.
And if it's anywhere close, I'm down.
That's a good call too.
Ferrari sounds, but more of that dynamics.
Exactly.
Johnny E.V.
Gierberman says Tato and Tommy is an ever faster
to go throttle, break, throttle, break
through bus stops or chicanes rather than doing the coast.
On the sim, I feel like the more I master coasting,
the faster I get, but it seems counterintuitive.
I think what you're dealing with here, this is eye work.
This is, you know, his eyes aren't moving.
And so if your eyes aren't moving ahead
and looking through it, you're going to want to break
until you move your eyes.
And so if you get your eyes going through there,
I mean, there's no absolutes.
Depending, you could theoretically have a bus stop
that was designed where it was fast enough through the middle
that you would have to dab the brakes for the second part.
But the ones that I know of generally,
you're rolling so much through,
it's basically like one long corner.
It's not a chicane and a straight and a chicane usually.
Yeah, with the sim especially,
I think that the brake, throttle, break, throttle, break
and the kind of coasting happens both ways.
You know, like for Watkins Glen at the bus stop,
you do need a big break, then you lift
and then sometimes I even do a second little break
just to tuck that nose after that first jump.
And then it's straight back to throttle.
But then for tracks like Kota,
I was barely touching any type of brake
or any type of gas going through the Ss.
But the thing is, it's just trying to keep
that minimum speed up.
Like it's all about carrying the momentum
through those corners and not trying to make any momentum.
It's just surviving with that speed you brought in
and surviving with it all the way out.
Sounds like he answers his own question.
Yeah, I mean, he's more comfortable with it
the faster he gets.
Matt Farah's million mile Lagonda.
If you could try every race car
from a certain series of any era,
which would you choose
and which would you be the most excited to try?
Well, I mean, those are probably the same thing.
With guaranteed safety.
I would drive, you know, the Sonoco 91730 maybe.
Can't aim cars.
Can't aim cars.
I would try all the Group B cars
if I could have an open area
to not get any trees and die.
Big open stage rally, open desert type stuff.
Was I blocking that camera?
I've been shuffling right.
What was that, DTM Mercedes?
It was like the 190s?
Yes, that car.
That's funny.
I rode in the most extreme,
the later generation DTM Mercedes.
And they're awesome, but they don't have a lot of power.
Well, the 190 Evo IIs are like slow.
They're actually, they're great chassis and stuff,
but they're like 225 horsepower.
Which is why they attack the curbs
the way you see those old videos
of Klaus Ludwig and Burns Schneider.
Just, you know, just eating as much curve as they can.
Sparks flying.
So, you know, Group B, GTP, the era I drove.
I'm really stoked that I got to drive that era car.
I mean, F1 stuff also.
Safety, though, with any of the old stuff is just,
it's so sketchy.
Dude, Pat Long talks to me about the vintage F1 races
he drives and he says they are so dangerous.
He can't believe how shady the cars are.
Yeah, I mean, they just had the historic Monaco.
And Adrian Fernandez is driving and the Euros,
when they have a vintage race, you see the Goodwood,
they go hard.
Lacey had a huge crash at the Monaco Historic.
So, yeah, that's, I mean.
I could, those guys were tearing ass at Goodwood, man.
Yeah, you're rolling the dice.
So, but I mean, hey, if you're scared, get a dog,
as they say, right?
I don't know if we have an answer to this one,
but Tommy commentates on F1.
So, recently, Italy has launched a tax evasion investigation
against the entire 2020 to 2024 F1 series for tax evasion.
As people who have raced internationally,
is this a case of F1 teams dodging taxes intentionally
or Italy having tax laws to apply to foreign workers?
Do you have any idea about this?
I haven't seen any of it.
I mean, I'm guessing the argument is similar.
I've seen F1 drivers.
Oh, see, okay.
This is what they do in the major leagues now,
where states, all the athletes live in, you know,
Florida in the off season, in Nevada.
And so, I think Pennsylvania was the first one that says,
we want, if you play two out of, you know, whatever,
we want 5% of your salary withheld for our tax.
So, the pro ball players have to file tax returns
in almost every state.
And yet some guys saying,
I'm gonna have a sore hammy that game.
And, you know, so I'm guessing this is...
There's a great documentary that I think is called Broke.
It's about athletes who make a huge amount of money
and go broke very fast.
Right.
And one of the stars of the documentary is an athlete
who earned tons of money and went broke.
And now he's a financial advisor for athletes.
And he was talking about, yeah,
you gotta be filing tax returns in every state.
You play in.
Otherwise, like a lot of these guys
will get some crazy tax bill later.
In race, there's a way around this.
If they get, if they go after these guys,
what'll happen is they'll break it into two contracts
and you'll have the contract for driving the race car,
which will be significantly lower.
And then the contract for doing personal appearances
or testing or commercial shoots will be through the roof.
So, they'll adjust if they get too aggressive on that.
Breaking Benjamin's lab record says,
growing up, what were the race cars
that really caught your eye?
Ooh, what a great shout that's Z32.
That is such a pretty car.
James says Z32, that was a very pretty car.
Is that the Clayton Cunningham, the Twin Turbo?
Yeah, those were, I raced against those cars.
Those were big cars.
Those cars carry a lot of weight, had huge power.
Clayton Cunningham designed water-cooled brake calipers.
Oh, wow.
They were a water-cooled and a brake caliper in that car.
Was there actually like a water pump and a radiator?
Holy shit, that's nuts.
Yeah.
That seems like more trouble than it's worth,
but I have no idea.
Yeah, that is a pretty car.
Look at the front.
Steve Millan and Johnny O'Connell.
Yeah.
Shout out to Steve Millan, we love him.
Steve Millan and Johnny, I started racing
in the Jim Russell series with Johnny O'Connell.
We both went on to do stuff.
So in 93, I ran the Mustang, Roush Mustang,
against those cars and came on up top.
Nice, JPL, nice, UTS.
So, but yeah, I mean, and I drove for Clayton Cunningham,
the RX-7 that I drove at the very start of my IMSA career
was what Clayton got his start in
before he took over the factory.
I mean, that's that whole era of car.
You had the Roush Cougars, you had the Audi's,
the Mustangs, what else?
There was an F40 that John O'Lacy drove during that era.
The F40 race car was sick.
You gotta say that not only does the Beretta
not look like a Beretta, this does not look like a Mustang.
No, it's not, not.
This Mustang race car was yours from the 93.
The 80s Fox, the wheels, you were racing.
So, and then partway through this season,
we developed a car that actually had a transaxle.
It had a hybrid tube frame,
but it had bonded carbon panels to the tube frame
to stiffen it up.
Oh, wow.
And they even had a stiffener,
because of my legs were so bent,
they actually ran a carbon kind of rib
under my legs that tied the bottom together
to make it extra stiff, yes, so.
That car, I don't know of anyone that knows
where the whereabouts of that exact chassis is.
That's on my list to try to run down.
That's a fine ed bullion.
The pretty one.
Needs a challenge, that's where you.
The C5R, oh yeah, the C5R.
The C5R, the DeLar and R car.
The R car.
I want a yellow Corvette, just because the.
There was a guy back in the day,
in my neighborhood in New York,
that had a yellow C5Z06,
and did the full livery, bless his heart.
It wasn't as bad as it really is it could have been.
American hero.
Two in the ruby, one in the star says,
I heard that the 911 cup cars are actually mid-engine
for better performance,
but they wanted to keep the 911 body
versus using a Cayman body.
Is it true they actually moved the engine position forward,
or they used GT4 architecture for the 911 race cars?
No, they moved the engine position.
It's a different thing.
Well, but not in the cup cars.
The cup cars are the same as the GT3 engine position?
I believe so.
They had, they ran that one RSR in GTS,
where it was actually true mid-engine, where they flipped it,
but I think all the ones now are back to.
Yeah, I think they just moved the rear axle further back
to get it more mid-engine,
but it's not actually mid-engine.
It's rear-engine.
Yes.
Yeah, no, it's not GT4 architecture.
Although the next, I've been told the next 911 GT4,
the GT4 car is a 911 now, the new one.
It's not going to be a Cayman.
It's going to be a 911 GT4, with a narrower body,
then a smaller wing, and stuff like that.
Yeah, because they don't have a,
they've discontinued the gas Cayman for the time being.
Oh wow.
And I think we've covered that one.
You had me at Holodis.
That's very good.
What would everyone's pick be
for the best spec racing series to pursue?
You guys have both raced in spec races,
and I've not raced in any.
So, you've raced in spec Boxster.
And spec Miata.
And spec Miata.
And Supersurfeo.
I'm a big fan of, you know, of spec Miata
as an entry-level way to get as much seat time
and as many reps for as cost-effectively as possible.
Spec Boxster looks good, but there's something
about the sheer numbers of spec Miata's
where you have big, big fields and so forth.
I mean, Supersurfeo is as sexy as it gets,
for a one make.
I mean, those things.
And if you're like a dude that's R-Sci or a gal,
or whatever that's R-Sci's Tommy,
like spec E46 is a much more comfortable race car
for a larger driver, and they're fun as shit to drive.
They're very fun.
They're a good time.
I mean, basically you want even competition
and cost per mile in terms of best.
You know, if you're looking for thrill,
then obviously for our challenge or Supersurfeo.
For our challenge is great if you wanna hang a photo
on your office wall that's you in your red suit with your...
Actually, I'll throw out, this'll make people mad,
but IndyCar is a great spec series.
It is.
We know it is.
They're the same.
Yeah, NASCAR.
A little bit of tangent, but it's getting a lot of talk.
With the new F1 rules being such a dud,
IndyCar is working on a new package.
There's a lot of people saying,
listen, scrap what you are working on,
and steal F1's thunder and do a ripping V10
with no hybrid and just all the people that missed that.
Make it sound good.
This is what we do.
It's a good idea to do.
I'm going to the 500 this year.
You're gonna have it for the first time.
That'll be awesome.
That'll be super cool.
Incredible.
And oh, by the way, I can't believe
that I hadn't thought of this.
Legends, legends cars.
You buy a brand new legends car, $25,000.
It's some of the most competitive racing there is
as long as it's in your region.
Have you driven one on a road course?
I drove one on a short oval.
No, we just did.
We did.
We drove it at 10 tenths.
Oh, wow.
It fucking ripped, dude.
It was wild.
I was wiped at the end of my hour.
Well, on the right scale track,
which sounds like you were on,
motorcycle engine, fan in the gears,
sequential gearbox would be a thrill.
Road America would be the wrong place.
The streets of Willow, 10 tenths,
a lot of these club type tracks,
thermal are unbelievable in a car like that.
It has like go-kart, one-to-one steering.
That shit is mad twitchy.
Great fun.
And NASA has a pretty good field
with the E30 spec series.
Oh, yeah.
Isn't there a new spec E30 series as well?
I'm not sure.
There's like a new E30 series that just got started
that has kind of like a catchy name.
It seemed, I just read about it somewhere.
It seemed cool.
Did anything come up very rapidly when I?
I mean, NASA's spec E30's there.
It had a catchy name.
Shit, if you know what I'm talking about,
get in the comments.
If not, spec E30, yeah.
Those are general car advice.
We'll save those for later.
TK, Tato, thank you.
Thank you.
Fun way you podiumed last weekend
in fucking Laguna and Super Trefeo.
So congratulations.
Thank you.
That is awesome.
We had a little bit of unlucky misfortune there
at race two, but.
What is a fast lap in a Super Trefeo at Laguna?
So the fastest lap I was able to get down to
was a 24-3.
Nice.
The teammate Dennis Lind, who's just first time ever
at Laguna Seca, 22-8, I think.
Wow.
First time ever there.
First time ever there.
Lap record for Super Trefeo.
What?
Yup.
It's a quick study.
Yeah, he's really good.
22-8, that's what Zinger did with the 21-C
full down first.
That is unbelievable.
Do they have fans attached to that car?
Not, no fans, but Tri-Motor Hybrid.
Yeah, unbelievable.
13-ohr horsepower and a lot of wang.
Big wang.
Yeah, we got Minimo-ero.
Yeah, no that's, I mean, to be running that kind of number
in a rear-wheel drive Lamborghini,
albeit on slicks, is fucking.
Which is faster than, what was the GTD?
So the GTDs are running 19s.
Oh, they are.
Yeah.
They're real good ones are.
I mean, in testing, Dennis was faster
than all of the other GTD cars there.
That's crazy.
And in testing, I actually passed the,
what was the black and yellow?
It's the, not sobbing the thing,
it's the Corvette, it's the privateered Corvette.
Oh, DX, is it DX?
They were pink and green this weekend.
But I passed that guy going into the Corkscrew.
Amazing.
Oh, wow.
That was so cool.
Sick.
It was fun.
I was up there as part of the Rooting Contingent
for Super Trofeo.
And it's a fun, Sergio ran into this big Airbnb.
It's like six or seven bedrooms.
And so the camaraderie, which was what was so fun
about going to Road America,
hanging out in the same house with everyone
and the dinners and the stories and so forth and so on.
So, and everyone from Matteo's grandmother,
Merta, who, and if you see the butterflies on his suit,
she is a, I think a four-time cancer,
five-time cancer survivor.
So the butterflies are Team Butterfly for Merta.
That's on Matteo's suit.
And so you've got all these generations
that are coming out to root on the boy.
Yeah, amazing.
Yeah, it takes a village, man.
And sponsorship is still open.
If anybody would like to jump on board,
we're a family here.
We'd love to welcome you.
Tato, thank you very much for coming down.
Yep, thank you.
And TK, of course.
Thank you for joining us today.
Let's do it again soon, huh?
Yeah.
And hey, go get a notice watch.
They're real comfortable.
Oh, notice driver.
Sponsored by Donuts.
How about that?
Which one is that?
This is the deep, but...
Oh, the sector deep.
Exactly.
But I'm gonna be getting a canyon pretty soon.
The pink canyon.
Exactly.
You need to be wearing that.
Sounds good.
You can't have anyone, someone else's fucking notice watch.
That's shameful in these parts.
There are a few of those left out there.
We are going to be...
They didn't get totally wiped out by the Patreon,
which is totally fine.
So I think we've got like 25 of them
that are gonna go to the public sale
and I'll announce it when that's left.
We're doing 100 of them.
Awesome.
So, limited edition.
All right, that's our show.
Thank you to our patrons for such good questions today.
Thank you for Tato for braving traffic
and TK for coming down as well.
And of course, Sergio for fucking hooking it up
and inviting Zach and I down and being part of the family.
And, well, Charity Car Show.
Charity Car Show.
Charity Car Show at the fucking Riff Raff garage in Agora.
It's gonna be on June 7th.
Yeah, June 7th.
It's in Barrett Automotive.
Oh, it's in Barrett.
It's on the road.
It's at Barrett.
It shares space with Rick Roll's podcast studio.
So, and it's benefiting autism,
some interesting classes that if you wanna enter,
we've got best everyday driver.
I'm into that.
I got my C5 in there.
I've got a super car and Radwood, Radwood cars.
Oh, yours is gone in.
I will be there.
You'll be there.
Others, other friends of ours will be there.
I'll put the link in my,
they just sent me the fucking invite this morning.
So, I'll put the link in the Instagram.
So, if you're in LA on June 7th,
come out and hang for a good cause.
Thank you everybody.
We'll see you next time.
Goodbye.
About this episode
Tommy Kendall and Mateo Siderman join the hosts for a long race recap that starts at Road America in WRL and keeps circling back to the realities of endurance racing: limp mode, wastegate problems, pit stops, tire strategy, and how track layout changes affect driving. Along the way they dig into old Trans Am and IMSA machinery, compare BMWs, Corvettes, and Z-cars, and swap stories about braking feel, seat fit, and wet-weather lines. The episode closes with sponsor reads and a charity car show plug.
Matt Farah and Zack Klapman went racing and lived to tell the tale! It's a race recap with our teammates, Tommy Kendall (multi-time Trans-Am champ and overall legend) and Mateo Siderman (Super Trofeo pro with many podiums. Watch this space).
We recap the ups and downs of our weekend; talk about our speed vs the competition; the importance of seats; Mateo's hospital visit; what it's like joining a team of this caliber; our "oh sh*t" moments; learn WHAT caused our mysterious engine problem; and more.
Patreon questions include:
Proudest racing moment
You can take ANY road legal car on the track...
Which series would you want to race, of any time period?
Favorite corner?
Why did we go faster when our car broke?
Race cars that caught your childhood eye
Is the new Porsche 911 race car mid-engine?
What's happening with F1 drivers and taxes
Recorded May 7, 2026
Show Notes
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