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100:13
Term
limp mode
Limp mode is what a car does when it senses a problem. It intentionally reduces power so you can limp back to safety instead of risking more damage.
Car
Nissan 300ZX non-turbo
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.
Term
chicane
A chicane is a twisty section made of quick left-right (or right-left) turns. It’s used to slow cars down and make that part of the track safer.
Concept
reset the leaderboard
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.
Concept
fastest lap
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.
Car
Chevrolet Beretta
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.
Concept
Trans Am
Trans Am is a famous American racing series. It has rules that let race teams build cars that look like certain models, but they’re designed to race.
Term
splayed valve cylinder head
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.
Term
adding weight
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.
Term
carburetor
A carburetor is how an older-style engine mixes fuel with air. Getting that mix right helps the engine run smoothly and respond well.
Concept
wooden weight in braking
He means the car felt heavy and slow to stop. When a car is lighter, it usually brakes more sharply and feels easier to control.
Term
brake marker
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.
Term
BBS
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.
Term
NASCAR
NASCAR is a famous American racing series. In this conversation it’s just a comparison for how the car looks, not a claim about NASCAR parts.
Term
dragster
A dragster is a race car built for drag racing—going fast in a straight line. Here it’s used to describe the rear shape and attitude of the car.
Term
livery
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.
Term
IMSA GTU
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.
Company
Cars and Concepts
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.
Company
Roush
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.
Concept
after package
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.
Car
Honda Civic Si
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.
Topic
race recap
They switch back to talking about the race itself and how they did. It’s basically a recap of the on-track outcome.
Term
pace to P2
P2 just means second place. “Pace to P2” means they were driving well enough that they expected to be in second.
Term
green flag
The green flag is the signal that the race is officially on and everyone can drive flat-out. When it “drops,” that’s when the real competition starts.
Term
cleared the codes
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.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette C8
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.
Brand
TC Klein Corvette
“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.
Term
GM
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.
Term
track car
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.
Topic
Coda
Coda is a race track where they saw the car. Tracks can affect how cars are built and tuned for driving hard.
Brand
Cadillac
Cadillac is a GM brand. They’re saying the car has a steering wheel that looks like it came from a Cadillac, which is unusual for racing.
Term
round steering wheel
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.
Term
square wheel
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.
Term
limited on power
“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.
Term
GP1
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.
Concept
throttle limiter
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.
Term
red line
The red line is the top safe engine speed (RPM). You can rev near it, but if the throttle is limited, the engine may not get there as quickly.
Term
kink
A kink is a tricky, quick bend on a race track. It’s the kind of corner where carrying speed through matters a lot.
Term
BOP
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.
Term
ELSD
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.
Term
breaking
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.
Term
tire wall
A tire wall is a safety barrier at a race track made of stacked tires. It’s meant to slow and cushion a car during a crash.
Term
fiberglass disintegrates on contact
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.
Term
wastegate
A wastegate is a valve that helps control turbo boost. It keeps the turbo from making too much pressure, which protects the engine.
Term
boost
Boost is the extra pressure the turbo adds to push more air into the engine. More boost can mean more power, but it has to be controlled.
Term
PSI
PSI is a way to measure pressure. In turbo talk, it usually means how much extra pressure the turbo is making.
Brand
BMW motorsport turbo
A “BMW motorsport turbo” is a turbo meant for racing. Racing parts are usually designed to handle harder driving and keep boost under control.
Concept
fueling stops
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.
Term
traction control
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.
Concept
pit outs
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.
Concept
pit in, out
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.
Concept
driver change
In longer races, teams often switch drivers partway through. The goal is to keep the driving sharp and safe when one person gets tired.
Term
fuel reset button
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.
Term
fuel counter
A fuel counter is the car’s way of tracking fuel used. In a race, that helps the team decide when to pit so you don’t run out.
Term
crew chiefs
The crew chief is basically the team’s lead strategist. They talk to the driver on the radio and tell them what to do during the race.
Concept
keep track of time
In racing, the team constantly watches the clock and lap timing. If one display isn’t working, time helps them still manage the race plan.
Concept
pit lane procedure
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.
Car
Challenger Hellcat
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.
Car
Hellcat Durango
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.
Term
DOT three brake fluid
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.
Term
brakes boiled
“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.
Concept
pit entry speed rules
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.
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.
Term
track day
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.
Term
speedo
The speedo is just the speed gauge on the dashboard. Here it’s used to confirm whether the car is slowing down enough at the right time.
Concept
break point
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.
Term
in-lapse
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.
Term
out-lapse
An out-lap is the lap right after you’ve changed tires or restarted. The driver is trying to get back to good grip quickly so the car can go fast.
Term
cold tires
Cold tires are tires that aren’t warmed up yet. They don’t grip as well, so the car can feel slippery until the tires heat up.
Term
tire blanket
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.
Term
MPH Industries Speed Gun Pro KA band
“KA band” is the radio frequency that the speed gun uses. This MPH Industries device uses radar waves to estimate how fast a car is moving.
Term
radar detector
A radar detector is a device that tries to “hear” radar from speed enforcement. It alerts the driver so they can slow down before getting caught.
Term
jammer
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.
Brand
Contis
“Contis” means Continental tires. In racing, the tires wear out and lose grip, so teams have to plan when to change them.
Concept
pit stop
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.
Car
Mustangs
“Mustangs” means Ford Mustang race cars. They’re saying those cars weren’t changing tires as often as the front runners.
Concept
endurance racing
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.
Concept
practice race
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.
Term
counter-steering
Counter-steering means you steer the wheel the opposite way of the slide. It helps the car stop spinning out and get back under control.
Term
rain line
A “rain line” is the best track path to drive on when it’s wet. It’s usually where the tires can grip the most and where water isn’t pooling.
Term
grip
Grip is how well the tires can stick to the road. More grip means better braking and cornering; less grip means the car slides or locks up sooner.
Term
pace laps
Pace laps are slower laps where you’re not racing yet. You use them to learn how the car and tires are behaving so you can drive faster safely.
Term
locks
“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.
Term
offline braking
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.
Term
dead pedal
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.
Concept
driver seating consistency
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.
Term
seat bolstering
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.
Car
Ford Ranchero
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.
Car
911 Porsche Gt3
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.
Concept
semi-race ready
“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.
Term
street tire
A street tire is made for everyday driving. It usually doesn’t grip as hard or handle track heat as well as tires designed specifically for racing.
Term
left pedal
On a race car, the left pedal is usually the brake. They’re talking about how to brake correctly.
LIVE
What up everybody, welcome to the Smoking Tire podcast.
Today's episode is brought to you as always
by Off the Record.
We love Off the Record here at the Smoking Tire
because they're looking out for us
just like they're looking out for all of you.
And how do I know they're looking out for all of you?
Because not a week goes by that I don't hear
from two or three of you folks
that Off the Record saved your bums.
What does that mean?
It means you didn't plead guilty,
you got Off the Record at offtherecord.com slash TST.
They fought the ticket for you and they won.
And everyone else out there, you can do it too.
If you get a moving violation, don't plead guilty,
get Off the Record, that's offtherecord.com slash TST.
They will fight that ticket for you
in the vast majority of times, they will win.
And then you'll be emailing me that screenshot
of the dismissal that we are all looking for.
One more time, offtherecord.com slash TST.
All right, on this episode, it's the Race Recap Show.
Two weeks ago, Zach and I went racing with our friends
at Road America in the WRL series.
And today, those friends, Mateo Siderman
and the legend himself, Tommy Kendall,
are in studio to recap the good, the bad, the stories,
everything in between, the boys are in town.
It's the Smoking Tire podcast.
Let's go.
Two things, and then all of a sudden,
every one of Tommy Kendall's stories, he's like,
and then he found his other option that nobody saw.
And that's why you're the best.
That's why your career has peaked with racing
with a kid and a loser.
All good.
Yeah, 10 or 11 days removed from Race Car.
We find ourselves in the studio doing the Racing Wrap Up
Show, which we didn't do last time.
It's been just long enough to forget everything important
and interesting that happened over the week.
Exactly, exactly.
I was doing a little mental inventory before.
Yeah, exactly.
What happened?
There were, I mean, the highlights were mostly...
Hold it, I'm just preparing.
Okay, I'm preparing.
Are we starting already?
Well, sometimes he rolls right in.
Oh, okay, guys.
Yeah, I do, that's my strategy.
All right, I love that.
It's fantastic.
But usually, Zach gives me the fucking what-have-used,
and he hasn't yet.
Why is that?
It's just taking longer than usual, but it's very weird.
It's going.
It gets unsettling, but now we're left, okay.
Are you sure?
Yes.
Speeding.
Exactly.
All right, we're good.
Yeah, when you're hanging out,
I have to film all my own stuff on these press launches,
so I'm standing around a bunch of other people
just going, slate, what?
You know, like, fuck is this guy doing,
but it makes Zach's life a lot easier.
That's great.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to the show.
Not, never mind.
We got Tommy Kendall in studio.
We got Tato Sider in studio,
and along with now Fast Zach over here.
Fast Zach.
Fastest out of five drivers, what'd we say?
There was like 10 people that weekend,
so exactly top five, that's all there is.
You didn't stuff the car into the inside wall of the kink
on lap two of practice.
Did not, did not.
So you were definitely not,
not the worst driver of the weekend.
Someone else did that.
I think he listens to the podcast.
He did a great job.
Sorry, man.
No, Zach was awesome.
Zach was awesome.
No, tough luck for the guy who left too.
Teammate.
I broke the news of that,
because it was our other, our team's other car.
They come back and be like,
hey, you guys noticed someone's missing?
Shit, there was a fucking.
Two men enter one building.
There's a yard sale on the back street.
But yeah, first, you know, Tato,
you and your Sergio, your old man,
I mean, it's a real treat for us
to get to go racing with you.
And in exchange, we come back
and tell everybody how fast you are.
Which we don't have to lie about.
Exactly.
Go look at the time sheets, bro.
Like, they're legit.
But thank you for taking us racing with you.
Thank you guys for coming, man.
It's always, it's always such a treat
having you guys at the track
and trying to share a little bit of speed
and trying to learn a little bit
from Tommy every weekend is, it's awesome.
We're only there because of WRL limits drivers
to three hours max per race.
Otherwise, he would come in for a sip of water
and fucking be like, all right, see you guys in two more,
two more takes of gas.
Yeah, it's a real treat to have you guys.
And I think that the team really loves it.
The series really loves it.
And, you know, bringing everybody together
and having fun on a race track
is the best thing you could do, right?
Well, and for me, being out of it for a long time,
this is a really nice way to come back.
Not just with you, but also,
I've been really impressed with WRL.
The way RJ and his group operates things.
There's a lot of elegance to some of the simplicity.
They treat you like adults, but they're also firm.
And so, which is preferable to them,
bark it at you and then never pulling the trigger
with the penalties.
And that just leads to chaos.
So what they're doing is works pretty well.
You don't always maybe agree with the rulings and so forth,
but were we penalty free this year?
We were penalty free.
We were penalty free.
Yeah, no penalties.
We were penalized by BMW.
Yeah.
We were a little unlucky.
But not by the racing series.
Yeah, we didn't even have a warning.
Oh, we did.
For the car being in limp mode and the Mustang,
remember when I went out
and I had to talk to the race control?
That was the dumbest shit.
Yeah, that was really interesting.
You were a broken car.
Yeah, I was maximum speed of 35.
The Mustang was like, he's off the pace.
Yeah, I know.
Yes.
Thank you, Slash.
Helpful.
Helpful.
You know, I'm just missing my turn and that's why
I'm off the pace.
It has nothing to do with the car being broken.
You know, Road America is so long that there are
like actually sometimes needed exit roads
in the middle of the track.
So we became very familiar with the turn five.
When I looked at our lap times and we can talk about later
because I found the whole export CSV file,
but I was like, what happened here?
I'm like, oh, limp mode.
You know, the lap would go from 238 to like four minutes.
Yeah.
Four mile track.
Yeah.
Man, what a crazy place to race a car in general.
It's one of those, it's like it's narrow.
It's long.
It's hilly.
It's very fast.
How far back do you go there, TK?
Well, the first time I went there was as a spectator
with my camera.
I was I think 14 or 15 years old watching my dad race there.
And then my first time driving would have been age 18
in a showroom stock, which is kind of what WRL is,
but these cars can drive hard on the brakes.
These, the cars back then it was a 300ZX non-turbo
and there was about a lap and a half of hard braking.
Like Z31s, the squared off.
The squared off.
Yes, squared off.
Yeah, Z31s.
That was the first car I drove there
and then the turbo car in Firehawk and so forth.
So that goes back to mid, so 40 years.
I've been going there as a driver for 40 years.
And what's cool about Elkart,
wrote America, I always call it Elkart
because that's the town,
is it's one of the few tracks that continues to race
in its original configuration.
I was just gonna ask how, if the configuration has changed.
Unchanged.
So Lime Rock, you can still run its original configuration.
They don't, because they run that chicane,
but Laguna Sec is different, the Glen's different.
They're all, you know.
So you have to reset the leaderboard
when they change the configuration.
That's right.
Or if you have a record, it lasts forever,
at least on that one.
And remind me, because you told us at dinner
and I was shocked, what was your fastest lap there ever?
At Lime Rock, it was the, the fastest lap at Lime Rock
was a 44.
Which is, look up any lap at Lime Rock.
A 44 is faster than that by a lot.
By a lot.
And now that I'm home, it's faster than you should go.
What was your fastest lap at Road America, if you remember?
I don't, it was in the GTP car, same car.
It had to have been in the 40, minute 40 something.
Which is like, you know, almost a minute faster
than we were going, which is crazy.
Was your first big win in 1990,
you won with a Chevy Beretta?
That was my first Trans Am win.
Wow, the Beretta, Beretta.
But the Beretta was like a NASCAR underneath a Beretta box.
But yeah.
Bob Riley, he was the second gen Bob Riley Trans Am car.
We ran a V6, the Elkhart Lake race was an interesting one
because we had a splayed valve cylinder head V6,
four and a half liter.
The Oldsmobile's also ran the same 4.5 liter V6.
But as we, they started adding weight to us
before we even won a race.
Because the car, you know, had shown us potentially
we hadn't won yet.
And they started adding weight.
By the time we got to Road America,
we weighed exactly the same as the V8 Roush cars.
And they just kept stacking on, tied to that cylinder head.
And we had brought in R.K. Smith, who
was a Formula Ford guy that founded Swift Engineering.
And for a third car, he was running the 18 degree
with a carburetor.
And he wasn't familiar with the heavy cars.
And I got in the car in practice.
He said, just get in this thing, make sure it feels right.
And I got in it.
And it was 175 pounds lighter and ran the carburetor.
And it showed up.
That was wooden weight in braking.
Really, the light went on for me.
And I came in and I told my crew chief, I said,
I'm racing this car.
And so they put R.K. in the other one.
And it was one of the easier wins I had.
Going down into turn five, it had about the same straightaway
speed.
And then at the brake, at the other end,
it just wasn't even funny.
I'd just look at the guy next to me and say,
I don't even need to check the brake marker.
Wherever you brake, I'll just go a little further.
And so that was that.
And I actually own that exact chassis.
I have that Beretta.
Seriously?
That's awesome.
I got it in my next Chevrolet deal.
And I've had it ever since.
I've never driven it while I've owned it.
So it's in mothballs and needs to get going again.
It would need anything.
That is definitely like every other Beretta I have seen.
Looks just like the road car.
That is so cool.
That doesn't even, they don't even
try to make that shit look like a Beretta.
That looks like a fucking NASCAR.
We ourselves fully convinced that look just like a Beretta.
From the front, one of the cool things
was the Raleigh cars.
You sat just off the center line of the car.
So you weren't quite in the middle like a McLaren,
but you were closer to the center of the car.
So yeah, those BBS.
Just for comparison, can we have a photo of a 1990
Chevrolet Beretta road car?
Because it's really uncanny the resemblance
between especially the dish in the rear wheels.
Yeah, the dash, the dash stretch, I mean it really is.
This thing is like a NASCAR in the front
and a dragster in the back.
Wild looking.
And the exact same, virtually the exact same livery
as the Williams of the year.
ICI was a sponsor on the Williams back then
and also all of that.
Yeah, I mean, that's the race car, right?
They just painted a different color for that race car.
I mean, if I squint, you can't tell the difference.
You should do suspension, you're there.
Little white seat belts.
That's actually the Zoomie one.
What model is that?
There was a, I think they did a GTZ.
There was a GTU.
Oh my gosh, you get that for $4,000?
Which was tied to the prior program.
I gotta say the wheels look dope.
We debuted it in IMSA GTU.
So, 88, I drove the Beretta GTU.
Team was owned by Cars and Concepts,
which was the company that was like a Roush or a ASC
that did the retro fitting or the after fitting
of the package, the graphics, body kit, wheels,
I didn't realize that was like a full-on after package.
That's funny.
It was a significant program.
You saw Bradwood once in a while killing it.
Yes, yes.
I saw one bring a trailer because I always,
because I have two of those Berettas as well,
and I kept thinking it would be cool to have the road,
but one sold on bring a trailer for some ungotten,
it was a $12,000 to $14,000 car
and one sold recently for $30,000.
I mean, that's fucking just good.
Cocaine.
I know.
Because this is, that's very problematic.
I can kind of see the like $45,000 Civic SI
for the perfect one, but I don't know about the Beretta.
I don't know.
But it's okay, let's go back to the actual race at hand.
We had success with the first place trophy
the last time we got in this car,
and it actually looked pretty good.
First race, we were on a pace to P2,
car breaks P4.
Yeah.
Pretty good.
We should talk about that.
A little bit, because we qualified sixth,
that's where we stacked up piecewise,
and Teo did what Mateo does when the green flag drops,
he went forward and passed the quicker cars
and we were settled into second,
and we're looking for,
and then we started having a couple minor,
we had two limp mode situations.
Did you have one?
I had one.
You had a limp mode and then it was laying down
on me at the end, it wasn't full limp mode,
but it felt like it was off, pulling power.
Yeah, I had to pit for 10 minutes,
and they cleared the codes and all that stuff.
That's how we got to third, and then that was enough.
Yeah.
So still finished fourth, which we were thinking,
okay, we get rid of those little problems,
but that's not exactly how it went.
I really wanted to set that Corvette though.
Oh, we were so close.
The car that ultimately passed us for the podium
was that C8 Corvette,
which I forget if we talked about on the show.
The TC Klein Corvette.
Did we talk about it here?
I don't think so.
That car was so impressive.
Like some of these guys,
they're all sort of related to GM somehow,
bought a shitty C8, like a beater,
as shitty as any C8 would be,
and turned it into a track car.
And we talked about it because we saw the car at Coda,
where it had a round Cadillac steering wheel on it.
And I was very excited, because at like A,
I knew that would work, and it was better.
By the way, they're racing with that steering wheel still.
Which is hilarious, because you'd think that even in racing,
where it's really just here to here,
that the square wheel technically might be better,
but like, no, round is still better, that's funny.
But this thing is really limited on power,
because of the balance of power rules for GP1.
I was shocked when it was in our cars.
And then, so I guess they're running
a two thirds throttle limiter.
So even if they floor it,
it only ever gives two thirds throttle.
So it can go to red line, it's just like...
It takes a long time.
It's just caught perennially coasting, is what it's doing.
Oh my goodness, that's why it was so fast through the kink,
because it already had the speed going through,
and it just went back to that three quarter throttle.
And then it's like, yeah, you could probably not lift.
You could probably just take that shit flat.
I mean, it had the giant ZR1 wing.
It had a huge wing.
It had a big wing, it had lightweight wheels,
it had huge brakes, and good tires.
And it's a fucking C8.
So it's like, it was gonna be good.
It just didn't have the power,
so I wanted to beat that car.
Yeah, me too.
The shitty thing is, are we allowed to cause on here?
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
The shitty thing is that, I think they won day two.
Did they?
I think they got first or second.
Once they figure out how to win,
they're gonna keep winning.
It's hard to BOP that, because it will show the performance,
but it's just, it's probably gonna fall off less,
and so forth and so on.
Because it's just much more modern.
Imagine limiting a fucking LT1 motor
to two-thirds throttle.
You do 24 hours just with a foot on the foreboard like that.
And it's got the traction systems,
and it's got an ELSD.
Like, it's got all this really good technology
that helps all those tiny things a little bit.
Yeah.
It probably should be in the higher class,
if I'm honest with you.
Like, it's very, very fast.
Yeah.
But I'm not sure why they wouldn't wanna be in there.
I don't know, maybe they wanted to.
We raced against that same team in Kota,
and it was the exact same color,
exact same BMW that we had.
Yeah.
Which is a real fancy-looking one
and way back there in the field.
And so I think that the idea with Corvette was,
hey, let's get ourselves a real good car,
start winning some of these races,
and then start thinking about other things.
But they're in the process of winning the races right now,
feeling good.
And then once they kind of get in trouble
for winning too many,
then I think they'll move up,
because that car is, it's so capable.
Like, it for sure can be breaking
near that three marker at turn five,
and it can for sure be breaking very minimally for turn one,
but they didn't have the,
it seemed like they didn't have the drivers in it
that wanted to push the car.
And at the start, when I was kind of close to them,
going into turn three,
they completely backed off of the corner.
They really didn't wanna scratch the car.
So they're really in that kind of early phases
of building this thing,
and they're already getting double podium weekends
on the first weekend of the thing being in action.
I'm a little more cynical than that.
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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.
Guys, one more break from the show
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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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I don't think so.
There will be now, there will be, there will be now.
At least it's just us talking.
The 2026 Rags are gonna come out updated.
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,
get access to collabs and things that we make here,
along with partners, and you get the satisfaction
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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.
Aston Martin Lagonda
BMW 335
BMW 3 Series
Chevrolet Beretta
Chevrolet Corvette
Dodge Challenger
Dodge Durango
Ferrari F40
Ford Cougar
Ford Mustang
Ford Ranchero
Gordon Murray Automotive T.50
Honda Civic
Mazda MX-5 / Miata
Mazda RX-7
Mercedes-Benz 190 SL
Nissan 300 ZX
Nissan Z
Porsche 911
Porsche 917
Porsche Boxster
Porsche Cayman
Saab 900
Toyota Supra
Volkswagen Golf
Original notes
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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The Smoking Tire
Zack Klapman, Matt Farah
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