104. NitroCross, Cars That FLY, Rallying and Racing w/ Alastair Scully and Patrick Gruszka

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and I'm here with my co-host, Mr. gunnett Garage. Dan, I should stop saying Mr. at the beginning of that. People are gonna get confused.

No, I mean, that's, okay, somebody came up to me at Hay Day this last weekend, and he called me Mr. gunnett Garage, recognized just my voice. He doesn't watch it, he listens to the podcast, and I was just talking to my wife, trying to buy a helmet for my kid. They just wandered up and said, hey, so shout out to you, man. Thanks for listening.

So today we are, is this technically Chicago, or are we outside Chicago?

We're outside Chicago. People in Chicago get really, really Touchy on that? Yeah, hot and bothered about that. It's like, yeah. So we're in Lamont, Illinois.

That's fair. Like in Minneapolis area, we're just like anything within 50 miles.

You just say the cities.

The cities, yeah. I'm from the cities. Yep, it's a nice get out. But today we are down in Illinois, I guess. It's cooler to say Chicago, man.

It is.

But we are down in Illinois. We're hitting a few podcasts down here, and the first up is we're talking to some NitroCross guys, Alastair Scully and then Patrick Gruszka.

Yep.

Did I nail it?

That's perfect. I've heard worse, trust me.

Gruszka is a great one. I love it when people say that.

Yeah.

We're doing the last name thing again.

And you got it right, and we're still doing it.

I know. It's perfect. I know. So you reached out to me a few months ago, Alastair. You said like a cousin of yours or something listens to the podcast and I've known about you for quite some time. And then, just by name.

Well, we've been long time mutual Instagram followers. I've always seen your stuff. I don't know if you've always seen my stuff. I've been following you for years from back in like the Crown Rally days.

Yeah, way back. I remember when we launched from Crown Rally in Chicago for Crown 8. You weren't on that one, but that was my first Crown, so that was kind of when I got involved. But nonetheless, we started to... You asked me like, do you know what NitroCross is? And I'm like, no, just because that's not our world, right? Me and Dan are car enthusiasts, right? Where we do mostly street car stuff, right? We're starting to get more involved with various aspects of the car community, whether that be road course stuff, whether it, for example, like IMSA or whatever, and just a variety of things. But NitroCross and rallying and all that stuff is just so out of our niche that we're used to. So when you brought it up, like, would you even do anything like this? I'm like, yeah, I want to learn everything about this. So this past weekend, I was watching the first weekend, which was down in, was it Richmond?

Richmond, Virginia. Yeah, yeah.

Dude, that was so cool. It's just, what's the handle? Cars that fly? Is that kind of like the main track?

Cars that fly, tracks that thrill, yeah. Yeah.

So you guys, do me a favor, introduce yourselves, introduce what NitroCross is, and we'll kind of go from there.

Ladies first.

Just one for, okay, okay. Yeah, my name is Alastair Scully. I'm driver of the 191 car, NitroCross Next Evo, and 191 in the American Rally Association as well. I drive for a team called Green APU, which is where we are today. We're in the race shop, having a bunch of fun, and super stoked to have these guys here. So yeah, we drive the cars that are behind us.

Which by the way, these cars, and we will get into these cars, like.

We gotta talk tech specs. I'm sure a lot of people want to know.

Before we introduce Patrick, these hatch specs, just, these things are crazy. You were showing us like under the hatch. It's just, it makes no sense. These things make like 550 horsepower. They got like a boost mode. Again, all these little things that I was looking up via Google to learn about this, because it's just, it's deceiving.

Well, they're purpose built for the series. So we kind of have some design say, and some things like that, which really makes it cool. Because you get a bunch of crazy drivers in a room, and all of a sudden, they come up with the wildest ideas for building cars and tracks and things like that.

Well, you guys, so when you have these jumps, right? How big are these jumps? Again, this is, again, street car. I've been airborne in a car before, but not quite like you guys have. And in much scarier ways, actually.

Yes, so Salt Lake City, I think, has the biggest jump for us right now. So we're actually not allowed to hit the gap jumps. I think NitroCross thinks we're a big brand risk right now.

We're working on it.

We're talking about it in Richmond.

We are trying to convince him to hit the big gap jumps, but the jumps right now that we hit are probably 90 foot the biggest, from takeoff to landing. The biggest gap jump that we have right now is in Salt Lake as well, which is 135 feet from takeoff to landing.

That's just, that's basically Dan, every time he goes to the Lowry Hill Tunnel.

And it's every lap too, which is the coolest part. It's not like, oh, you have to do this once. No, we go out there and we'll run a session of six laps. And we will hit it one or more jumps every single lap, which makes it really exciting.

Yeah, and these hatchbacks behind us have to put up with those forces that you impact and take on every single time. So, I mean, it's a testament to what they are, right?

So, you're Alastair's teammate, or you guys are teammates, rather. So, I guess you should introduce yourself as well. Well, we kind of had a little...

Yeah, yeah. So, my name is Patrick Gruszka. I race number 17 for the Green APU team in the next EVO class for NitroCross, as well as the number 243 car for American Rally Association. And yeah, I mean, I'm happy to be this guy's teammate. We're having a blast.

You guys partying a lot, or what?

Do we party a lot? More than we probably should, but...

I agree. I agree with that.

But it's very civil partying because we're always analyzing things. It's a very business casual type of partying, so.

Well, at the end of the day, we're athletes, kind of.

This is casual partying. Dude, we are totally calling that this entire trip to SEMA. We're gonna call it business casual.

I mean, you have to be honest with yourself.

It's socializing, right?

It's socializing.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's networking.

It's really important. There is never a dull moment when you go out and you sort of, with the team, and especially when we go out, right, we do a lot of maybe not stupid s***, but stupid stuff, but things that we shouldn't do. So like last time we played Rock, Paper, Scissors and we ended up in Las Vegas at the NitroCross HQ, but that's a story for later, I guess.

It's better in a room with Dana White for a few hours.

Yeah, and then taking over someone Dana's time and then sitting with him for three hours when it should have been 15 minutes, hello, goodbye. So that's pretty cool as well.

That's usually how it goes.

Are you the youngest guys in this? Are there guys younger than you, same age? Like what's the oldest guy? What's the youngest guy?

No, so there's actually people younger than us. So he's actually pretty old, believe it or not. Okay, I'm old for this, yeah. Jesus' last supper, yeah, was his party. So he was hanging out with the good old boys back then.

No, it was my party when they turned water to wine.

Yeah, so I'm 21, Alastair is 23? 24.

Jesus, you're old.

I need a walker, right?

I know, yeah. So we're probably one of the mid-packers right now. The youngest is probably 16 in the side-by-sides, if not younger. 14, actually, Micah Block was competing as well. So some young competitors out there.

He's been doing it for a year, so he was 13 last year and he was doing the side-by-side. Because the nice thing about Nitro is we have a few different classes. So when you come to a NitroCross weekend...

Well, before you get into that, maybe you should describe what NitroCross is as a whole, right? And then we can get into the individual classes. There's a lot of classes.

Good point.

So first of all, give us when it was created, who it was created by, and then let's just go from there.

So the background of NitroCross is it's the brainchild of Travis Pastrana. And as everybody knows Travis, he's a little bit crazy. We love him, but he's crazy.

First man to jump out of an airplane without a parachute on, just like to mention. So he's designing our tracks that we race on.

And so, yeah, he was rallying and he was doing his motocross stuff, and he decided, you know, let's combine these things and make RallyCross, which isn't really popular in the US. Let's make it crazy. Let's put it on steroids. Let's make 135-foot gap jumps, right? Let's have cars going over and under at the same time, and almost hitting one another, and let's make a spectacle. And that's exactly what NitroCross is. We race basically on motocross tracks. The most that we'll have is 50% asphalt. It's a lot of dirt, a lot of big jumps, a lot of just crazy action packed. And the way that the weekends are set up is more like a motocross weekend rather than a typical racing weekend. You know, if you look at a series like IMSA, there's one race, right? We have heats and we have semi-finals and we have finals, and then you have one on Saturday, one on Sunday.

Lots of action.

Lots of action. There's a bunch of different classes, too. And there's action in every single one of them. There's never a dull moment at these races, which is the coolest part about it. You go there, and I don't know, how would you describe the atmosphere?

I mean, the best way to put it is it's a festival. At the end of the day, we're here to put on a show for the fans. So no matter if you come there by yourself with your family, there's always something to do. There's bands playing at all corners of the field. I mean, you have side-by-sides, Baja Bugs.

Lots of drinking.

Yeah, Baja Bugs. Class 11 is competing. I mean, come on, how cool is that?

The Baja Bugs are awesome.

Aren't those things free?

You have the van free, where they take minivans, strip them out, and have no airbags going over the same jumps that we go in with the groupies and NextEVO. So it's some crazy stuff that you get to see.

So the first question that comes to mind, right, especially as I'm a listener, if somebody is on their way to their day job right now, they're thinking, are you crazy? Is there a level of craziness that you have to have to do something like this?

I mean, if you put yourselves in our shoes, we're strapping ourselves with harnesses, six point harnesses into metal tin cans with a couple of bars protecting us.

And some carbon fiber.

And that's carbon fiber and Kevlar, don't forget the Kevlar part. And we're going 120, 130 miles an hour, maybe not that fast, but definitely in the three digits down around these tracks.

I don't think we've actually, because the cars that you guys see behind us are brand new, and Richmond was the first, we got our ECUs in Richmond, right? So we didn't test them, we didn't do anything like that. I don't know that we have a top end, any data on what the top end is actually like, but I bet it's all of 115, 120.

Yeah, so I know it in kilometers. It's 175 kilometers. I know we're Americans over here, but God damn.

What is that in freedom units? Yeah, what is that in freedom units?

Anybody know? No, I mean, no.

No, but it's definitely, it's at least.

90 range?

Yeah, it's at least 100, I'm pretty sure. I think 185 is 110, so I say 105, 106.

Well, we just lost everybody outside of the US for our listeners, thanks guys.

Yep, yep, sorry folks. I didn't mean to offend anyone, but I know nobody knows what the f*** a kilometer is, and I don't for sure.

We've got some overseas listeners. Really?

Yeah, it's about 20% now.

Well, for those guys, I like my tea in the harbor.

So, explain what these cars are to us, right? Because I'll be honest with you, even after talking to you guys for an hour, I'm still not entirely sure of what they are.

They have Ford engines in them, Harris. They have Ford engines in them. I just want to put that out there.

They do.

They do. They have the new Mustang 2.3 engines in them.

So they're designed in what, Sweden?

They're designed, yeah, so they're actually-

Designed and built in Sweden.

Yeah, they're designed in Sweden, built in Turkey, I'm pretty sure, and sort of there are indeed by the OMSE boys, which are world renowned. I mean, they did the first Jim Connors cars for Ken Block and Ford. They've been doing tons of stuff with Honda, HPD, some crazy cars out of there for supercars, different sort of class back in the day that used to compete in the global rallycross days, if anyone remembers, in America. But they have tons and tons of experience, came out with the supercar lights, which is sort of what these came out of. So pretty much these cars were a kit that was transformed into the beast behind us. And they're all pretty much the same. The frame is just one sort of like a, how do you explain it?

It's a tube frame.

It's a tube frame, yeah.

It's a tube frame.

Yeah, so it's a tube frame that was used in a naturally aspirated car. And then it was sort of transformed into the all wheel drive, turbocharged beast behind us right now. So it's awesome.

Last year when we raced these things, they had what, 300? They made 300, 320. And they were NA 2.4 liter, and they had a sequential still. So it's rear engine, Sadov sequential, all wheel drive, which rear engine and all wheel drive typically, unless you're talking about the 911 turbo, don't really go hand in hand.

The car control and car handling is sort of like really backwards, because you have all this weight in the back, and you sort of have to like come to learn how to power the cars. And now with an extra 150 horsepower, the front end lifts and you can barely steer them. But you know, there's things that you can do to sort of help mitigate that.

Well, it's cool for spectacle. So when you see that front end lift, yeah, yeah, we got a turbo.

So we have ALS.

Yeah.

So it's just all the time, all the right noises for the fans. You know, the top class is electric class. Well, for the fans that like the emotion and the sound of a, you know, just crazy jacked up, you know, high horsepower car, it doesn't really do it for them. Now those cars make up for it in the action that they have on track, because they're always hitting one another and all this. And it's a lot of great tech that's in that car. But for the fans that really love the sound and the smells and the, you know, the emotion, this is the car. Because it's, I mean, there's flames kind of coming out of them all the time. They're just, they're insane. They're super cool.

So can you do some stuff to adjust in the air like they do in motocross, where they, you can hit the brakes and the inertia and the wheels will kind of bring it down and, yeah.

Deuck actually testified to that quite greatly because he did a lot of that at Richmond.

I did. So, you know, me jumping, I'm just fine with it. Fine in the air, the aerial awareness is there, which I thought was going to be a big hurdle when I got into this. And it wasn't. But what is a challenge for me as a driver is any jump where there is a corner after it. And a lot of people will, you know, a lot of drivers will say, oh, I don't struggle with anything. That's a big struggle for me. I'm happy to admit that one. There are plenty of photos of me going, you know, nosedive because there's a corner right after it. And the reason is because I'm like, oh, there's a corner. I spot it in the air. And then I go to lift for that corner or touch a break for that corner. It brings the front end right down. So in Richmond this past weekend, we had a jump with a corner right after it. And we show up to the track of our second day, and they had moved the apex of that corner back towards the jump a good, I don't know, 30, 40 feet. So it was like right there. So that in my head even more made me think, oh, it's right after this jump. Well, first lap out, it was qualifying. And I have the clip. I'll send it to you guys so we can overlay it. We go out for qualifying, and my out lap, I take the jump, and I was thinking in my head from the day before, I go, oh, it's third gear flat. Well, it wasn't third gear flat. It was third gear with a checkup right before it. Take it third gear flat at red line, get in the air, go, oh, I'm gonna land like 10 feet past where I need to land. This one's gonna hurt. Lift off the gas, touch a brake, nose dive. And all I can think is I'm looking straight at the ground in the air. I'm like, oh, this is how you go end over end in a race car. Just, and just, you know, somersault like that. And thankfully we didn't, but we did destroy the entire front end of the car. And I hadn't even done a lap of qualifying yet. So we had to go and I had to qualify with the whole front end torn off. The hood was popped up. I could only see like out of one little corner. And so I'm going to the banks flat out, six gear going, okay, I know the car's not right. I know a tire is rubbing. Hopefully we don't pop it, because that would hurt. And I can't see anything. So we're just going in blind, just cranking this thing flat out on the limiter in six gear. And it was an interesting experience, I'll tell you that much. Not one that I needed to relive.

So how do they score this stuff? Like how are you, so it's still a race, you're qualifying, you're doing all that stuff. Is it timed from start to end, or is your where you land, how you land in the air, all that kind of stuff is all part of how they, well it's a race.

Yeah, so we're door to door.

Yeah, we're door to door. And so we qualify for positioning for the first heat, right, but after the qualifier, it really doesn't mean too much for us. So you qualify, that dictates where you start in the heats, and then it's game on, door to door action all the way to the end. And then we're position based up until the final. Whoever's first across the line wins it.

Which was awesome. You know, so I grew up Mopar, right? So I'm super happy that the hornets are doing something. Even though it's not traditional.

It's cool having Dodge there.

Even though it's not like a traditional, like, oh, we got, you know, Hellcats and, you know, even Vipers, you know, from, you know, the CompCoop days and all that. It's just awesome to see my childhood back in motorsport. Cause like, you know, they pulled out a NASCAR. It's like, just when I started watching, it's like, you know, so.

Well, this is actually really cool to mention because now like we have to sort of explain the whole reason we're in Richmond. So NitroCross and NASCAR have come to an agreement and they're sort of working hand in hand to utilize the NASCAR tracks for the NitroCross venue, which is like really something awesome to see because the NASCAR infrastructure as a whole is awesome. So Richmond for us was the first time ever doing that where we sort of put in the dirt jumps and everything that Travis envisions on a NASCAR track. And I mean, the NASCAR asphalt is like holy turf. You can't touch that. So I can't even imagine if we offended or like sort of went overstepped a little bit, but I mean, it was a cool spectacle to see. I mean, at the end of the day.

Loads of dirt coming in nearby like, oh, what are you doing to our holy Richmond, right?

Yeah. Number one beer drinking sport in the United States. So you guys are trying to be number two, is that?

No, ice fishing has got to be number one.

Tomorrow from the Midwest.

Yeah.

There's only so much ice in the United States. I think about it all the time when I think snowmobiles, like we're only selling them to a handful of states. That's it.

Yeah.

It's just us drunk idiots up here.

Absolutely.

Bar crawl on the sleds. How is that?

Yeah. So it was cool to see NASCAR and NitroCross come to an agreement. It's all thanks to Dana White. So Dana then purchased NitroCross from Thrill One as a whole from Travis Pastrana and company. So it's really cool to see Dana's involvement with this sort of entertainment background with the UFC and slapboxing and everything that really built into truly an empire and now sort of bringing that sort of aspect into NitroCross. So I think it's the next big thing.

When did he acquire it or purchase into it?

I think there was a few years ago. No, it's relatively fresh. I mean, the rumors started coming out a little bit ago. And I think maybe the mid of last season, so mid of twenty three is when it started to come out.

Well, that's the exciting thing, right? Because obviously having seen what he's done with the UFC and then now again with slapboxing, like it's taken off. I think if there's somebody that's going to push an extreme sport, I think it's going to be that guy. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Yes, and I really, we got the opportunity and the privilege to sit down and chat with him for a couple of hours, and he sort of explained his vision for what he sees NitroCross becoming and sort of...

Are you able to share any of that or...?

I don't know. I mean...

All I know is that there's a lot of big things. I can say that. We can say that, you know, NitroCross is...

That's not overstepping the NDAs.

Yeah, I don't want to do anything that will get me in trouble with Dana, right?

NitroCross is the sport to watch. I'll tell you that much. With all the things we have coming, even the changes that have been made from the end of last season to this season, I've just been astonished by. It was great last year. It's even better this year.

Yeah, that's true.

And it's only going to keep getting better. You've got a great team, great promoters behind it, who really are going to stop at nothing to make it a one-of-a-kind fan experience, whether you're watching it live and free on Rumble, or whether you're there in the stands, cheering for your favorite driver. This is the Fertitta brothers and Dana's involvement in motorsports, and they're not going to half-a** this. They don't half-a** a damn thing. And it's something for us as drivers to bet on, right? Like, in racing, if you're going to go be a pro driver, you have to figure out where that's going to be. And you're going to spend a lot of money, work really hard for sponsors, media, everything you need to do as a driver, to go and do that in years of your career. So wherever you go, you need to bet on it, right? And it's easier to make that bet when you have a series like NASCAR that's more established. Well, we're not established, right? Like, we are in the process of becoming an established series.

You're figuring it out as you go, kinda.

Right. And so to have that backing, for us, is, you know, people who are putting in... This is no small endeavor, right? People who put in a lot of time, effort, money, everything into it. You know, it makes us proud and it makes us excited for the future. And we know that this is where we wanna be. So it's what the fans should wanna watch too, cause it's gonna be even better.

So one thing that comes to mind, right, is... And we'll start with you. What makes NitroCross special?

Ah, what makes it special? That's a good question to ask.

That's from a competitor's standpoint and from a spectator's standpoint.

Okay, I think it's easier to answer from a spectator's standpoint, mainly due to the fact that, I mean, I find it really cool. So I don't know how anyone else wouldn't find it really cool. You're pushing cars to a new limit that hasn't really been seen before. I mean, Travis is known, Travis Pashon is known to be a man of firsts, right? So whenever he comes to a track, he's always like, what can we do to make this even cooler, crazier and more b*****? So you're always in for a good show. And like I said before, if you're not there for watching the cars and you're there with your family, you get to engage with the drivers in the paddock because it's really an open format where the pits and the sort of spectator areas are meshed at one end together. So you get to meet all the cool guys like Travis Pastrana, Andreas Bakkerud, Robin Larsen, Leah Block, and all these great names that are really...

Tanner now too.

Tanner Faust. I mean, Tokyo Drift, hello. You know, there's tons and tons of things to do there. I mean, you could probably say more than I can. You have all the friends coming out.

Yeah, well, I like people. So, yeah, I mean, I came into this last year. I did two events last year. So mid-season last year, I came into it. And I'll say that one of the things that I first fell in love with and what sets this apart is just the overall environment. It's just electric. It's like you're surrounded by thousands and thousands of your best friends you've never met yet. Everybody's excited. Everybody's stoked. You know, everybody's having a good time. And I think the other really special aspect about it from a spectator perspective is the immersion that you can get, right? You can go and, like Patrick was saying, meet all of your favorite drivers. And in a lot of high-level motorsports, you have this level of like, oh, I'm a driver. I'm going to go hide away because I need to go out there and perform. I don't want to talk to the fans. I don't. For us, we really care about that. We care about the fan experience as drivers because it's our job to. If the fans don't want to come, then we no longer have a spot to go and do what we do.

And it's not to say that we don't want to be the fastest drivers out there, but we like really value and cherish everyone that does come out there. So we're still trying to win. Don't get me wrong. We'll rub doors and make sure.

Oh, I know you guys rub doors.

Yeah. So we're friends in the paddock. But at the end of the day, when we step that dirt track right there, you know, it's all bets off. I mean, no hard feelings.

Interviews were awesome. I can't remember which interview I was watching, but it was just kind of like, I don't want to say like petty, but kind of like a little bit of smack talk.

There's always smack talk.

I mean, you're putting like 50 drivers that are hyper competitive amongst five different classes or if not more drivers. And like everyone wants to go out to win. Nobody's there to lose, right? If we're there to lose, why even show up? So, I mean, like we're all talking smack the entire time. You know, I get this into this kid's head all the time. It's pretty easy.

You have to be.

Even as teammates, we go back and forth.

Yeah, even, even as.

And as much as I love him.

Yeah, as much as I love him, we talk s*** all the time.

Oh, yeah.

All the time.

It's part of the game.

So how did you guys meet then? How did you guys end up being teammates?

You want to take this one or should I take this one?

No, you can take this one. You're pretty good at telling the story.

So I started my racing career very late. I graduated college. And I got my degree and said, okay, well, now what do I do? I had this moment of what does my life look like? What's my dream? What do I want to do? And I realized that my dream is to wake up every day and drive a race car. That was it. So I came in as a 21-year-old. No, oh, I was older than that, I was 22. 22-year-old with zero experience and said, let's do this, let's chase this dream. And so I started in stage rally, American stage rally, because rallying was always something I wanted.

Why did you choose that over like any other type of?

So one, because I loved it. Ken was a huge inspiration. And I don't know, if you see my car in the back there, I've got the KB Forever on the car, and I'm running the 43i branding, the institute that they started in, in memory of Ken Block, or the foundation, they started in memory of Ken Block. And it's a really, it's a moment of pride for me to be there, because that's what made me a car guy, right? Even back when I was doing like the street car stuff, it was like, oh, I want to do something crazy like Ken did, right? So I always thought it was cool. I thought that I could learn car control faster and better than everybody else. If I was sliding a car out of control on gravel, trying to wrangle it for miles and miles and miles every weekend versus... That checks out. Right? So that was my thought behind it. It was like, okay, everybody else is here. I'm coming into this. I'm old and I'm down here. How do I get there? How do I just absolutely like catch up to those guys? And if my idea was, okay, we'll stage rally maybe. And if I fail, which is a high likelihood I would, at least I did what I wanted. I wasn't answering to anybody else. It was just answering to myself and the type of motorsports that I wanted to be in. So, I was at my second rally ever. It was a rally called the Boone Forest Rally in Kentucky, McKee, Kentucky. It's a little town of like 200 people. And I was with this co-driver at the time. Her name was Allison LaRosa. And she was a great first co-driver for a lot of people. She was a teacher by trade when she wasn't a rally co-driver. So, she had the teacher voice and she could really help people. And so, she did that for me, but she also did that for Patrick when Patrick got into rallying. It was Patrick's first co-driver. So, we're there. Patrick's at this event. I'm at this event. I didn't know who he was. I'd heard stories, but I knew Patrick as the guy who has Jiggy Jiggy as one of his notes. So, you know.

Travis for that one.

Yeah. So, there's a certain moment on stage, you know, if the road does X, Y, or Z, I don't know it because I don't use it. Patrick wants to hear Jiggy Jiggy from his co-driver. So, I knew him as the kid that used Jiggy Jiggy.

It's a good no. Jiggy Jiggy, it's a left and a right between two trees that you can distinctly, yeah, if I show you a Jiggy Jiggy, you'll understand.

That better be a T-shirt.

Jiggy Jiggy, I can't steal that. Travis Pashawana started it in Mount Washington, and I heard him on, when I was a kid, I used to watch his onboards, and I heard that in one of his onboards, talking to his co-driver and being like, oh, just call that Jiggy Jiggy. I'm like, that makes total sense. And ever since then, I've used it.

Does he have a T-shirt for that?

I don't know.

He's got it.

I'll text him. I'll ask him if you don't.

That'd be a misbranding opportunity if it isn't. Yeah, right.

You probably should make that.

So we're down there and we're doing recce, which for people who don't know stage rally is like pre-running in desert racing, where you go and you drive every mile of the race at no more than 35 miles an hour. And your co-driver is sitting there with their book and they write and you are driving and you call out what you see. Okay, this is one, this is a left four and whatever. That's how you write it.

Well, you should probably explain the pace note system as well.

Ah, that's getting too in-depth. We can go back to that.

Never mind.

So middle of recce, we need lunch. Stop at the only restaurant in town is a subway. And who's there? But Mr. Patrick Gruszka in his Jeep Wrangler. I pull in, I go, huh, that car's got Illinois plates on it. So I walk in, I'm like, you're from Illinois, where are you from? And he's like, Chicago. I'm like, yeah, no s***, where?

Immediately offended, immediately offended.

Everybody from Illinois, when they're outside of Illinois, goes, Chicago. Yeah. So I'm like, yeah, no s***, where? And he's like, downtown. I'm like, okay, yeah, no s***, where? Like, give me up, you know, I'm from downtown. Like, give me the, give me the cross streets. That's how you know if someone's from the city. They'll just tell you, oh, I'm on, you know, X and Y cross streets. And eventually we got there. And I was like, dude, I live four blocks away from you. And we didn't know each other. And so we came back from that rally. I had a really disappointing DNF six miles in, broke both axles. Attrition was high at that event. And we came back and started hanging out. I was like, yeah, I really want to get into that NitroCross stuff. Like I've seen it at school. And he's like, all right, you want to run the next event? I'm like, yeah, sure. So I think you went back, you can finish the story of how I got ended up here.

Yeah, so I never intended to own more than one car for NitroCross and now I own three. Don't really know. I woke up one day and I just looked in my garage and now there's three of them. But the first one I bought from OMSC directly. We sort of did a deal where I do a few events and eventually if I liked it, I would buy it. The second car was actually a funny story. It was Bilko's that Reese Millen had in the shop in Los Angeles.

For those who don't know, Reese Millen was the, I believe, stunt coordinator and stunt driver in Tokyo Drift. So a lot of desert racing, they've got Baja titles to their name, a lot of stunt driving, things like that. And even rallycross background as well.

Yep, so then I flew into Los Angeles for six hours. We made a deal for the car. They re-prepped the car as best as they could. And then he showed up in Phoenix with the car and it was good to go. I mean, that's really it.

This is all based off of a verbal agreement from me going, yeah, I kind of want to do that. And sure enough, I get a call from Patrick goes, hey, I have a car for you. And I'm like, cool, we're there. It's a good thing I meant it.

I mean, I take him pretty seriously. If he says he wants to do something, I don't think he's going to back out of it. So I'm like, all right, well, let me get you a car for this so you can run it. And the next thing you know, we have it ready to go.

This was from your second only race.

I'd only done two events. When I did my first NitroCross event, I had only done really two and six miles of a third rally, right? And I think that was one of the cornerstones that, you know, how my career has gone so far has been keeping myself uncomfortable. Always trying to kind of climb to the next rung of the ladder, even if, quite frankly, I don't know that I belong there. And figuring it out, you know, kind of fly by the seat of your pants, figure it out. So I showed up to my first NitroCross event. Yeah, two stage rallies and 197 horsepower front wheel drive Fiesta. Very different from the beasts that are behind us, right?

Very different.

Very different. And that was it. That was all the seat time I had. And it was like, all right, well, we're just going to go do this and learn and learn and learn and learn. And kind of always, you know, keep punching one or two weight classes above, because as far as I thought, you know, if everybody else's, you know, this skill is way exceeding where I'm at, I got to do something to get there, right? And that's not going to happen from just driving comfortably and being in spots that, you know, I know I can go out there and get easy wins. I don't want easy wins, you know. Actually, I don't even have a win to my name yet. I only have second and third places. I don't have a single win in my career yet. And I think part of that is because it's always like, you know, I want to go, I'm chasing after the next guy, the next fastest guy, next fastest guy.

Well, I think that's part of motorsports as well, right? Like when you look at the best, the best of all time, they're always chasing something like if you, I don't know, either of you follow F1 at all or not?

Oh, yeah.

You notice kid Kimi that's coming in next year?

Kimi Antonelli, what a legend.

Dude, crashes his car on lap two or whatever it was.

Yeah, but did you see how close he was to Lewis?

And then there's that, right? So that's one of the things that you have to consider, right?

Yeah, he made one mistake, but damn, that was spot on.

Well, that's what I'm saying is like, when you look at motorsports, right? You have to see potential, right? You can work out all the kinks and all that along the way, but you have to be sending it. A 17 year old is gonna come take your place at any point. So you gotta be absolutely sending it at all times. And sometimes things happen along the way. We've seen this story a million times at this point. So you have to be punching above your weight class because your weight class isn't gonna exist.

Well, and in motorsports too, there's always somebody out there with more skill and more money. And a lot of motorsports, actually, like 98% of motorsports, I don't know if a lot of people realize this, but the way the business of motorsports works is you don't get paid as a driver.

You pay for your seat.

You pay for your seat if you can afford it yourself or you go get sponsors. Well, the only way to go get sponsors is to have at least some sort of background or convincing somebody to give you the backing to do it, but knowing that there's not gonna be a return for them, unless you can really create value for them. So even guys in IndyCar that are doing full seasons of IndyCar, they are going out and fundraising that themselves. Unless you're the top five guys, sponsors aren't coming to you. You gotta go find them.

How do you provide value to sponsors?

So it's different based on the series. With a sport like NitroCross, you don't get the same publicity power that you do in Formula One or NASCAR, or IndyCar, or any of those top series.

With millions and millions and millions of viewers.

So you don't get that publicity that you can't really offer them that. You can offer them a little bit. You can say, hey, your brand awareness is going to increase. People are gonna see your logo. But what I pitch to sponsors is, hey, bring your clients, your potential clients out to these events. Because our team, something that we really focus on and pride ourselves on, is the hospitality. We offer hospitality unlike any other. I mean, there's a tent that comes off of the trailer, 40 feet, and there's a lounge in there and places to work on the car. They get the behind the scenes, full immersive experience, and then they get to see a car with their logo on it flying through the air 100 feet. That has the ability to really see deals through with these big brands. If they're trying to close a client or a potential client or something like that, we say, hey, you can come out to this for free. Okay.

That's a cool Facebook cover photo, by the way. If I was the owner of a company and then I could just put my logo flying through the air, it's cool.

Yeah. Where else are you having cars that jump 100 feet? The other big sell is if you have it, when not everybody does, is the personality. If you can sell your personality too and say, hey, look, I'm a good representative for you. Sure, I may not have the following that some of these other top guys do, but you can put me and my race suit on a billboard or in a commercial. And you see commercials all the time like that. You have no idea who the people in the commercial are, but they say they're a racing driver, they're a racing driver, right? And you can do that. And so to offer good representation is also important. But yeah, there's a ton of good ways to provide value to these people and these sponsors. You just have to get creative with it.

It's a full time job in itself, I'm sure.

Oh, absolutely, to make no money, right? We don't even break even.

And that's basically what motorsport is until a certain point, right?

You're probably doing pretty good if you're breaking even.

Yeah, breaking even is a dream.

Extremely good, extremely good.

It's that age old quote, how do you make a million dollars in motorsport? You start with two, you know, start with a billion.

So you you had a car and you were already running NitroCross. So how do you get into that? You just show up with a car and be like, hey, I want to do this.

So I originally was going to do the first event of the season calendar, which was Jay, Oklahoma, out of Middle America. They actually had a huge event there where they invested a lot of money in the infrastructure and then some stuff went down to the Middle America, so we're not there again.

But I don't know the drama on that one. I can't back you up.

I don't know either, but I just heard rumors, so I'm not going to spiel them, right? But yeah, so I reached out to the OMSE guys because I knew they ran all the cars and they sort of build them and they know what's up. So I reached out to them like, hey, is there any way, please, please, please, two weeks before an event to give me a car for this race? And they're like, absolutely not. But for the next one, we can have something organized for you. And I sort of built that relationship with them. And actually, funny enough, my dad raced with the original car. So the car that we ran. So I think that's body shell number four in the whole history of the car. So it's been 12 years of production. That's shell four, seven, 007, 006. So there's one of the first ones to come out of production. So they've seen a lot of racing throughout the days. So my dad raced one of them, actually tested them in LA for X Games. And we knew the Andreas family or the Ericsson family pretty well. Andreas, who runs the whole show. And they organized a car for us. We talked to, I talked to Travis, actually, at a rally. I'm like, hey, how do I do this? He's like, you know, just reach out to them and we'll make it happen. So I'm so happy I did, because it's honestly some of the funnest rally or racing you can watch nowadays.

Well, and at the time you did, because quite frankly, if you went to go do that right now, it wouldn't be possible. And we're only a year later. Not even a year later. Now it's, there's so many people that want to do it. It's selective. It's really selective now. Back then, when it was first starting, they were like, yeah, we'll take what we can get. If you guys are going to go buy the cars and run them and invest money into this, absolutely we want you. So, you know, that's another thing that goes along with what I was talking about earlier, the betting on it, right? And that one, I think, has paid off for us because we have three spots on the grid with these three cars that, you know, people, a lot of people want. But you can only have so many cars out there, right? It's a hazard to put 30 cars over a jump together.

Yeah, I can see that. So when you say selective, what do you mean by that?

Like if you went to try and go and say, hey, I want to start a NitroCross team, I think it would be a lot more challenging now than it was last year.

Yeah, the cost of entry right now is just like extreme. Well, it's not extremely high, not unattainable. But if you're trying to come out and do, hey, I'm going to do one event, you know, let's have at it. In our classes, it becomes very, very hard. And the side by sides, I don't think you can even do it in the side by sides or class 11, because they're just full.

Yeah, they only have so many of those.

There's the cost of running that event as just a driver is lower than what we're doing, but there's just no spots. You can't.

So year over year, is it probably going to get more expensive to maintain your seats then? Before we get too far into the show, I wanted to take a moment to talk about Razorhood. If your daily driver is having issues, aka your beater you got off Craigslist, Razorhood's telemechanics and AI tools can help you diagnose and solve the issues you may be dealing with for a fraction of the cost. All you have to do is add your car to the Razorhood garage to get started. You can provide the AI tool, also known as GUS, with the specifics of the issues you're having, and it will help you narrow down what the culprit is. It's a great way to bounce ideas off of to figure out what actually might be the problem. You can then select from a variety of solutions to explore the cost and difficulty of doing the repair yourself versus taking it to a shop. If your car doesn't have detailed solutions yet, that's totally fine. Just go ahead and add your car to the garage for free, and that'll let the Razorhood team know what to focus on as they continue to develop and grow. If you want to try out Gus or chat with a Tal Mechanic, go to razorhood.com and add your car to the garage to get started. Use code MINNOXIDEFREE for a one month free subscription or MINNOXIDE20 to save 20% on a 30 minute call with a Tal Mechanic. Let's get back to the show. A lot of you guys know Ratified Motorsport for their RS3, TTRS, 1000 horsepower hairdresser car builds, but they are so much more than that. From basic maintenance on an R35 GTR to, you know, cute little Volkswagen GTIs like mine, they're able to do a little bit of everything. Whether it's your basic maintenance or an intake in a tune or even a full-blown build, be sure to go to ratifiedmotorsport.com to get yourself booked today. And I hope to see you guys at the shop.

Yeah, so I don't think the cost of the seat is actually going to become more expensive. It's just there's so few of them to really give out to the whole field. I mean, I think we're capped around, what, 20? And we're already over half of that.

I didn't think we could do 20.

I don't think, yeah, it becomes much, much harder. The track design of it all becomes much more difficult to sort of make happen. So we're at a really good number right now with 11?

10. If that car runs, 10 cars.

So 10 cars, I mean, at Richmond, it's sort of the layout of the track is a little bit more tight knit. Sure, you have the big bankings and the insides. I mean, you saw, we bunched up on the first corner, I think, eight cars.

Yeah, I mean, everything's narrow, right? These jumps and all the lanes and everything, it's all narrow.

And the reason that question comes to mind is, for example, I feel like a Formula One, right? Again, I'm going to use that as an example until the end of the time, is you look at like Verstappen, right? If he gets 400 points in a season, guess what? His entry cost next season just went way up.

With the whole FIA points system, yeah, I understand that. I don't think that'll ever happen.

Yeah, I was just curious if that's something similar.

No, that's not something that really happens here. Thankfully, we sort of have USAC that sort of runs all the sporting in America where the licensing is much easier to do. The licensing is much easier to do, so I don't think it'll ever become a case of, oh, I won too many events, I have to pay more money, right? Which is nice.

Will they expand, add more races, add more drivers?

There's currently at six, right?

So, five races.

We're doing new classes. Yeah, five rounds, but they're all doubleheader weekend, so it's actually 10 rounds total. But five different locations across the US. So, but they're adding more classes. So, they have the top class electric car, then they have us. Then they have Sierra e-cars. I don't know if you guys have seen the Sierra cars. They're like little single-seater.

Cross-carts. You guys know what cross-carts are?

No?

That's an off-road thing.

Entry-level rallycross. But they're single-seater, like a Can-Am, but single-seater and all electric, and like actually really cool and super powerful. And that's coming in, I believe, next event. They'll have those from then on. And then there's side-by-side, and then the Baja buggies. So we're expanding the amount of classes there are, but at the end of the day, you can only fit so much racing into one weekend.

Right. So what does progression look for you guys? Let's say you, next year to year after that, what does five years from now look like? Do you go up to, what's the top class? Group B. Okay. Is that kind of what you progress towards, or do you just kind of max out this class?

So group B at the end of the day is where all the top drivers really go to race. So you have Leo Bloch, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Faust, all Deegan, Brian Deegan, Victor Vrinks, all the fast drivers.

Connor Martel.

Connor Martel. Yeah. They're all competing. Robin Larson, Bakarud, that we can list them all.

Robin Larson is a two-time NitroCross world champion.

Yeah. He's an extremely quick driver. So yeah, that's really the pinnacle of NitroCross at the moment, right? Who's to say that they won't come up with the next big thing? Maybe they'll have some spaceships that fly around the track or something. I don't know. Possibly, it's not out of the picture. And it's cool to see them putting a clear path of progression for anyone coming into the sport. So you can come in from Baja Bogs, work your way to side by sides. From there, go into the Sierra cars. From the Sierra cars, you can go into the next Evos and then Group E, right? So I think eventually what's going to happen is before you can race a Group E car, you have to race one of the lower classes just to sort of feel out how NitroCross works.

And feel out the jumps. Jumping is a weird thing. And if you haven't done it before, it used to be every day on 94.

Yeah. Yeah, so jumping the cars, a lot of people for the first time come in and sort of like, they're like, oh, they watch it on TV. It's not that big. It's not crazy stuff. I can do that in my sleep. It's huge.

You stand there and we'll have you guys out to one of the races. When you stand there looking at the gap jump, you're like, a car is going off of that?

The first time you do a track walk, I mean, you probably have felt this when you came to the first one you ever did.

My first event, I walked up to Travis and I'm like, yo, Trav, okay, I got a question for you. My Fiesta, my 197 horsepower Fiesta, doesn't leave the ground all that often. What the f*** am I doing here? Said it exactly like that, and he's like, all right, well, you see, it was an 80 foot tabletop in the back. Every lap, 80 foot tabletop. And then down the straight, there was a 20 foot, 25 foot, and a 30 foot tabletop. So four jumps per lap. And I had never done it before. And I knew I had to just go out there and do it, especially because in my first session ever, they stagger the starts for practice. So like you'll have one car, 10 seconds later, you'll have another car. So they're all in different points in the track. So I'm like on the grid, I'm starting last. Obviously my first event, I look up and there's Leah. I see her taking the 80 foot tabletop. And I'm like handbrake, like launch control. And I'm like, I guess I gotta do it. Otherwise I'm going to cut her off and I'm going to feel bad. So that was like, you know, you had the pressure of somebody behind you. But what Travis said was he goes, there was a big banked corner, dirt banked corner. And he goes, it was a hairpin, 180 degree. And I was like, he's like, I think what you're going to do. And he's like, I haven't tested them. Normally he does. He goes, I haven't tested it yet, but I think what you're going to do is you're going to go out of that. You're going to be flat through there. You had a big rotation. You're going to be in second. You're going to bang third on the face of the jump. You're going to keep your foot to the floor and you're going to make it. Sure enough, I go around that corner, handbrake, big rotation, second gear, stay in the throttle. Like on the face of the jump, I'm looking up at sky, smack third, leave my foot to the floor and I cleared it. Greased it actually. And I'm like the ability of that guy to just look at it and go, I think that's exactly what's going to happen. Bearing in mind that he hadn't driven one of those cars in a long time or hit that jump or whatever, he just looked at it and said, that's exactly what you're going to do. He was right.

Well, that guy's been jumping s*** for a long time.

A long time.

I remember the NitroCircus days watching that stuff. Oh my god, I love that.

Yeah. I mean, he's a mad man. Walking legend.

Yeah.

Living legend. It's pretty cool to see him sort of put his heart and soul into all of this at the end of day. And not only making the jumps bigger, badder, but also making them as safe as they can be. Right. So that's really important to him to make sure that at the end of the day, there's enough drivers to want to keep competing.

So this is you, he scoops you up from Subway, buys you a car, takes you to an event, throws you on a dirt track, and just says go. There was no practicing, this was your practice.

That was it, trial by fire. But that's the way I like it.

I told them what to do. To be fair, I didn't just strap them in there. I'm like, all right, good luck, bud. I hope to see you at the finish line.

You gave me some tips and pointers on how the car feels and all that sort of thing. And to be honest, the other part of it was blind faith and ignorance, right? It was like, I can do this, you know? My unwavering confidence is the greatest tool in racing.

It's the Leo in him, right? Is that what it is? Yeah, it's the Leo in him for all the...

It's that over cocky thing.

You can't have doubt. When you're going up for an 80 foot tabletop, you can't have doubt that you're not gonna make it. You have to say, oh, I'm making it over that thing. I'm gonna do what Travis said and make it.

On the way over here, like what, two or three days ago, I'm like, dude, you cannot have a moment of doubt in something like this, because that's what's gonna hurt you even more.

Yeah. That's where things go wrong, is when you start doubting yourself and you start overthinking it, you can't really think about it. You just have to do it. It has to be second nature. And I'll say that my first weekend in that car, I got last and last. Well, not a shame to admit, yeah, I sucked. I was like two seconds off pace per lap, a second and a half per lap off pace.

But how do you come back from that?

Just keep going, unwavering confidence. Right? It's honestly, like I kind of say it joking, but half serious is like, you know, believing in yourself is the greatest thing. And I thought that, okay, if they can do it, I'm looking at the rest of the field, I'm like, if they can do it, I can do it. Sure, I might not have the same, you know, background. I've been doing this for 15 years, but it is possible. It's within my, you know, realm. I can do it. You know, I did some coaching and things like that, not in this car and front wheel drive, you know, Fiesta, things like that. And how hard can it be, right? That was the mindset. How hard can it be? Last and last, okay. Every session that I was out there felt insanely chaotic, but the first session and the last session, last session felt a lot better, a lot less chaotic. I could breathe.

Controlled chaos, controlled chaos.

And then we go to Vegas, which was my next event, and when I hopped in that car, I knew exactly what to expect.

Okay.

And I didn't get last in Vegas. Moved up, I think I knocked off two or three spots. So I was happy about that. We have progression.

What does training look like? Because for example, in any of my like AutoCross or RoadCourse friends, they have all this, I don't know what the hell is that thing called? The Middleton recommended to you again?

Oh, the Garmin Catalyst.

Yeah, like these different things to just kind of track data analytics and all this stuff. Do you guys have all that crazy stuff in your cars?

For what, like your body, your physical health or?

No, no, no, like as in like for like the cars.

The cars, the Gs, the yeah, I mean, it's tracking data.

So these cars run MoTeC ECUs. You can see everything on there. And it shows it as a line. It's a trace.

So you guys pull data after races and stuff?

We pull data and we look at it and you can analyze, you can say, OK, this was the second corner. You know, why does your throttle trace look like here? And then it dips down. Like, why did you lift right there, right? Or, you know, why did you do X, Y, Z? Why is the steering input like this, right? And you can sit there and analyze the whole thing. And that's when you sit down with your engineers and your coaches and you say, you know.

I mean, we'll even compare data. Yeah, we are competitors, but I'm always looking to help out however I can. So if he's struggling with something, or if I'm struggling with something, I'll come to Alastair and say, hey, how do you do this? How do you do that, right?

Well, I think that showed a lot. Like, when I first started in LA was my first event, and that's an all dirt track. And quite frankly, dirt doesn't make as much sense in my mind as asphalt does. And then, so you helped me a lot there. And then we go to Vegas and you're like, man, I'm really struggling with all the asphalt on this track.

Yeah.

And I helped you with that.

Yeah. So I come from rally only, right? An American rally. So the ARA, American Rally Association, that sort of runs all the events here in America, there's zero tarmac events, believe it or not. There's beautiful roads everywhere, but we do not have a tarmac rally.

We have like three tarmac stages in the whole calendar.

Yeah. So that's Mary Hill, Mary Hill, the oldest road, paved road in the state of Oregon. And it's sort of like legendary with downhill long borders or skateboarders. So they like love that road and sacred to them.

Very West Coast. Very West Coast.

Yeah. And like, I don't know where the other ones are. So yeah, Sofer has a few of them and Southern Ohio Forest Rally and Ojibwe has, I think, one. So like, we have very limited tarmac experience where you're not really on a tarmac set up. You're sort of still on a gravel dampers and sort of like putting on some street tires that you bought at a garage or a Jess tires. And you're winging it, right? But here, like you come to Las Vegas where it's a hundred percent tarmac, about 80% tarmac, like there's a few sections. And like I've just don't have the experience. So I'm sort of like, well, I'm braking too early on every single corner cause I just don't trust the car as much as I can be. So, I mean, Alastair has much more experience on tarmac than I ever had. So I'm like, dude, give me a helping hand or something.

A lot of that's actually Lower Wacker taught.

Okay. Yeah. Well, I don't really want to.

I don't condone street racing, but Lower Wacker in Chicago, it's either you're going to figure out how to make it around that corner or you're going to go into the wall.

You're getting locked up.

And there's a lot of Lower Wacker teaching moments there, but yeah, it's, you know, in on dirt and on gravel, you want to slide the car. You want about 30% slide. It's fast, right? You can scrub speed that way. So you don't have to break as hard. You can break later on gravel if you just slide the thing. Asphalt, obviously you don't want to do that. So there is a gap, right? There is a transition between the two. And that's what makes Rallycross a challenge is you're going from dirt and then a hundred feet later, you'll be on asphalt for another corner. And you have to adapt like that. I mean, you just have to think about it and just go.

Well, that's, it adds another element, right? Like it's understanding the asphalt part, the transition and then the gravel part. That's three different parts if you think of it that way, I suppose.

Well, that adds another factor in for tire choice too, right? I mean, you got to have something in that.

We only get one choice.

We only get one choice.

Yeah, it's actually what our, I don't know if the cameras can see it, but there's a laptop stand over there. Yokohama, yeah, it's a special compound that Yokohama makes for us.

Yeah, developed just for this, where it's sort of like, you can drive on both surfaces and it's still manageable, so that's the nice part.

We do have grip. It's actually more gripped up. You'd look at that tire and you'd go, ah, there's nothing on there. You have no tread blocks. It's a slick with a little bit of groove in it. There's more grip than you'd think.

Does Yokohama sponsor the whole NitroCross thing?

Yokohama does. They made a custom tire for the Group E cars, which are a thousand horsepower. So you need something special for that. And now they just developed them even more where they're bead locked. For us, they sort of have like a special compound of like a stock tire that they already have that we use.

I think we're going to need more in the future though, because with Richmond, the way it was, we were, our class was within a second of the race pace for Group E. So you're talking about a 550 horsepower car versus their 1,000 horsepower car. They're 1,000 torque too, those electric ones. We were within a second.

At some moments, you have to clarify. At some moments in the beginning of the weekend, we were just about right there at the same pace. I think actually-

Round two had it too.

Round two as well, yeah.

So the last day competition, there was a gap of one second.

These cars are extremely fast and they keep up with the Group E boys too, so that's cool to see.

Because like while those cars make 1,000 horsepower, 1,000 torque, I gotta put this guy away. They're really heavy. I mean all those batteries and those electric motors, there's a lot of weight there, right? And so these things are a lot lighter but make a lot less power. But still similar performance. There's decently similar, I should clarify, for any Group E drivers, they're gonna go, oh no, we're way faster. I mean a second is significant, don't get me wrong. But we were like, in the last iteration of this car, we were 10, 15 seconds behind their pace.

That's a big jump.

It's a big jump.

But when you use that for comparison, then yeah, that makes sense.

Well, that all has to do, the big part of that too is track layout, distance, all that kind of stuff. So I road race a 4,200 pound, 760 horsepower GT500, and I'm on the same track with 190 horse FRS's, and we're coming in similar times, depending on where you're at. Road America, not so much. We've got a long straight where I can really pick up some pace. So sometimes, having 1,000 horsepower isn't really...

That's the best track in the world, Road America.

Oh, I love it.

That's my home track.

It's my favorite, yeah.

It's great.

It's great. When I bring it up, most people go, oh, Road America.

Yeah.

What about, so you guys mentioned Motec, right? So, for example, we're really familiar with the drag racing side of things, roll racing, where you'll hear a car just absolutely cut power because it's losing traction on the strip or power management, whatever it is, I shouldn't say cut, but is it a similar situation? Are you guys fighting for traction? Do you ever even see traction control flicker on your cars?

We have no traction control. We have no ABS, no traction control.

That's your right foot.

It's you in the car, yeah.

Do you know which Motec systems are in there by any chance or no?

I'd get up and show you if I, is that allowed?

We could pause.

Yeah, go look.

Go read what's on there.

I actually don't know. I mean, we got to use like a day before the event.

Okay, so M150, I think that's what's in the AJ's Calvo car that he's currently selling.

Is it?

I'm pretty sure that's what he has in there, is the M150.

AJ's Garage?

Yeah, yeah.

He's got some cool stuff. He always has.

Yeah, episode 34, check it out. No, actually, nevermind. He was 35, after Ratify.

Yeah, he's got some great stuff.

He always has some cool stuff come through there. He's always offered to find, he says I never give him shout outs. Here's a shout out, AJ. No, and I'm just curious, right? Cause like, again, I like seeing the crossover and it seems like MoTeX just kind of like the holy grail.

Well, the M150 probably has capabilities for traction controls, but it's probably not something you're even using in this.

Yeah, that's lame, I'm sorry.

We're always sliding the cars, right? Cause it'll detect that slip and then cut our power in the middle of the slide, which is where we need it. On the dirt, we need that. Now, granted, on the asphalt, you don't want it as much, but like, you know, sometimes you need to have your slip angle there, right?

Now, you guys said you got your ECUs right in Richmond, right? So how much of this is controlled by NitroCross or whoever is, right? So is it kind of like, what are your limitations that you can do to the car? Basically, you're not allowed to touch your tinker, so they set them up for you, you run them.

ECU, power-wise, every car is the same thing. Now it really matters how you set the car up. So your suspension, your damp, your roll bars, things like that, really come into play, your ride heights, and sort of like really finding the right setup, not only for you, but for the right track at any given moment.

So who's doing that? Like, do you have a, you said you have a team of like, what, 30 between the two of you?

Yeah, so we have probably around 30 individuals that came to Richmond, all from...

How many engineers?

Three.

Yeah, three engineers.

Three engineers, a tuner on standby in case we didn't get the ECUs and had to figure something out, right? But that's a story for another time.

We always have contingency plans too, so that involves a lot of other people that don't necessarily come to the race, but like are waiting with bated breath in case we need them.

Yeah, so we had someone there specifically for suspension, another person for setting up the differentials and checking everything, making sure it's all okay with the car. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of things, because I'm just like...

It's a big sport. There's a lot of things. At the end of the day, you guys are the drivers, right? You're only able to do so much of it yourself.

Yeah, I mean, we just turn the wheel and hope for the best, right? I mean, I think you can attest to that very much, because you just pray, right? Because it's just your mantra, but you know, I think you're doing a great job, as much as I'm saying, right? But you know, it's definitely a tough sport to get into.

What kind of feedback are you providing to your engineers and your team, right? Like how the car feels, like what does that conversation look like for adjustments?

I think it could be different for every driver, but I know for me, like I'll get out of the car and I'll say, okay, when I do this, it's doing this and I don't want it to, I want to do this. So case in point, Richmond, we got those big banks. We went out for our first few laps, our first session on a very baseline setup that's built for any other track, but big bank oval, right? And that was a significant, the big bank was a significant portion of the track. And I'm like, look, this thing's snapping and oversteering on me all the damn time. I need this thing to understeer more. I need to be able to push out to the wall. Like I need to come up, be able to map the throttle, lay into it and have it slide up to the wall and have confidence in that understeer. And you know, our engineer took that and said, okay, like I have the exact changes I'm going to make. You know, it doesn't bother me with it. He just tells me, because I need to go focus on XYZ, looking at any car, looking at my inputs, things and doing my own side of it. But he'll take that information, interpret it and then go set it up the way you want. And then you do another feedback session at the end of the another session and you know, that sort of thing.

Yeah, there's also like very limited time to get that right set up, right? You have to be in that car from the first session. You come into the first practice, quote unquote, and you have to be on it off the rip. So it really takes a lot of planning before the fact of like discussing what the track is going to look like, what the textures are and really make a plan before you go in there with the car set ups to sort of have a baseline, which then you tailor closer and closer. So that's where the team really comes in and plays a big role in that.

Well, and that added an interesting dynamic to Richmond because obviously this is the first time we're in these cars. Last year in the 300 horsepower variant, I was already out of my element, right? Now we just hop in this. Again, the only race cars I've been in, keep in mind, 197 horsepower Fiesta, right? So all of a sudden we hop into this, this monster behind us, and not only am I having to learn the car, but also, and the way it responds to things, but also try and dial in that setup. So it makes it even tougher to say, okay, is this my driving or is this, you know, the car not responding the way I need it to?

How do you distinguish that?

Well, when you're driving, when you're in those sessions on track, the idea is to always be thinking about what the car is doing. You want the driving to be second nature. Driving should always be second nature. But in this case, it wasn't, because I'd never been in this car before. I'd never been in anything like this car before. And all of a sudden, I'm out there on a racetrack trying to push it 100%. It was very hard for me to distinguish, like, because the driving wasn't second nature, I'm focusing on the driving, and then, well, what is actually the car doing? And I found myself coming in and going, I wish I had collected more data in my mind while I was out there. And you don't have the opportunity for that, because you need to dial in these setups like STAT. You gotta have them fast. And so the idea is, as a driver, you go out and make as many mental notes on the way the car is responding and how you want the setup to change as you can. Sometimes you don't get that luxury.

So is there a place, so you get your practice session, you don't know the layouts probably until you get there, right?

Well, things change morning to morning. So we went out for our first day of practice, and then by the end of the weekend, eight things had changed.

Which isn't typical. That was a one-off event. It was the first time we ran Richmond, so they were trying to make the track more driver-friendly, right? But that meant changes on the fly. So from day one, day two, there's a lot of changes.

But at a typical event, you will have a dirt berm, and then the next day, you're going through the same part of track. All of a sudden, you look down, you're like, oh, there's no dirt berm. I was using that as a marker. I can't use that anymore. You have to think about it on the fly.

You have to learn new markers all the time, then.

So is there a place to practice? I mean, do you still, you go to like those indoor motocross parks or anything like that, can you go? So you're basically, those cars are sitting. You can tinker with them, look at them, start them up.

If you guys have a track-

We can test in the parking lot here.

If you have a track that is willing to rent to me, and that's a-

Like a go-kart track.

That is for everyone.

We're looking for one.

We're looking for a track. We're not gonna put big dirt jumps in, but we just need a place where we can test. We just want to run the track.

So if you've got one that's near Chicago, or at least within a few hours of Chicago, let us know.

Do you at least get them out in the country and hit dirt roads or anything like that?

We actually, before Vegas, tested the cars here.

It was not OSHA approved whatsoever. We shut this place down on a Friday, like a few hours early. We had every employee from Green APU on the manufacturing side of things out there with walkie-talkies-

As marshals, yeah. That was an interesting time, and I think we can talk about it now, right?

Yeah, we talked about it in Vegas.

Yeah, so I broke two out of the three cars shaking them down, which is always a great feeling a few days before you leave to the event.

Yeah, right.

I so I still get so worked up when I think about it, because it was nobody's fault, but it's just a s***** thing to go through, because you have three cars that are supposed to be competing in Las Vegas.

And these three cars, right?

Yeah, these three before they got changed into this model.

This is the biggest event of the year, too. It was our season finale.

Biggest event of the year.

We were on the strip in Vegas. Like, it was a wild event, so we were like, we need to make it. There's no other option here.

And 72 hours before our kill time, when the truck had to leave, or 48 hours, something like that, I think it was like...

It was close.

It was really close. It was 48 hours to the kill time, where we had to be on the road, otherwise we'd be late and wouldn't make it. I take the cars out, rip them through here, and there's a little asphalt to dirt sort of transition, but there's like a little divot, which in race car terms means nothing, right? You just go over it, don't even feel it. But for some reason, these cars felt it pretty bad. And like...

I didn't like that.

Two out of the three cars under the compression just like blew up. Like they didn't blow up bad, but they just shut down. They're like, I don't like this. You know, put me back in the garage. But thankfully it was just small minor things, and it got them back up and running. But I went, I was only going to test his car, but then I got in like, I blew his up. I'm like, all right, next one, let's just blow all of them up and just not even go, what's the point of this, right? It's one of those moments where you're like, all right, let's just like figure this out. Scrap it, you know? But thankfully, the guys buckled down and it's a props to them. I mean, they're a great team. So really thank you to the guys.

I think we've got one of the best teams in the world.

Yeah, for sure.

When this place is, you know, during business hours, we have this whole room is packed full of guys and they're all working hard.

We have to tell the audience that it's currently 946 when we're recording this right now. So everyone's gone home and it's after hours at Green APU.

It's like night at the museum, but with race cars.

Yeah, it's more like Five Nights at Freddy's.

Which one do you guys want to sleep in or?

Yeah, we've got a top bunk, you know, opposite sides for feets and things like that.

I'm going to push two of these chairs together and just sleep in them.

I've had it.

So could you take this to like a Ford dealer?

Can I take this to what?

To a Ford dealer?

I don't think they'd know what they're looking at.

Yeah.

I think even if you just took the block to them, they'd be like...

Yeah, because these are actually sent to Montoon out in England, and they do the engine side of things completely, right? So it's not only, it's actually a closed deck engine. So they revamped everything from top to bottom. So it's really cool.

It's modeled after the Ford 23, but it's a Montoon motor, you know.

Okay.

For the folks who know Montoon.

So we know, or I don't know about you, Dan, I know nothing about like suspension and how much these things travel like.

Well, that's really interesting when it comes to this car. So you'd think, oh, you're jumping a car. Excuse me. You're jumping a car 100 feet. You need long travel suspension. I thought that too. And I saw this car for the first time. And I realized it has cantilever suspension. Which is very limited travel. Yeah.

I mean, if you look at the Hyundai and compare it to this, right, you can actually sort of see how it's set up damping wise. It is two different philosophies on how it works, right? This is more of a track style set up, which you would think going over these 90 foot jumps, it'd be like, all right, this is going to extremely hurt. They actually take them pretty well, because the way you set them up and the way you fly the cars, it's just, it's like taking a corner, as Travis once said, right? It's just another corner.

And Travis calls jumps, and this is why I think he's insane. He calls jumps, I believe the quote was 3D corners.

Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. Because it's the same concept. If you take it too fast, you hit a wall. You take it too slow, you know, you're losing time, and it's going to hurt too, a little bit more.

I guess that's fair. It's just on a different...

Yeah.

It's a different plane. You're just going up rather than around.

The math checks out. All physicists, like Neil deGrasse Tyson's punching the air right now, but...

That's what you guys need on this podcast.

Who?

Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Oh, that'd be hilarious. A car is like, okay, whatever.

That'd be interesting to get it to pick his brain on the nitty-gritty of this thing. Like one of these cars behind it.

This thing has no right to be functioning right now. I don't know how it's driving.

You know that one meme? Yeah.

Yeah.

Perfectly describes it. I am turning into a total child. Don't worry about it.

It's the brain route. We've all got it.

Dude, the brain, especially, yeah, like we literally drove down here. What was it? Six hour drive from your place, Dan, to come on down here. We're like, all right, set up the microphones.

Let's go.

I mean, granted, you guys treated us some pizza, which was pretty good. So that was perfect timing.

But good POW conditions, right?

Yeah.

You have to feed prisoners by law.

I've never come to Chicago and not had a deep dish pizza. So thanks for that.

It was a deep dish, but it was a good pizza.

Well, it wasn't even Chicago style. Yeah, it wasn't even Tavern or any Chicago style.

Yeah, we'll probably figure something out.

All right, so we're here right now. I got you guys here. Who's got the best deep dish in town?

I don't eat deep dish. So I'm the wrong person to look at.

I'll take that one. So, and this might get some Chicagoans, if you guys, I don't know if you guys have a lot of Chicago viewers. This might get some Chicagoans.

It's actually a significant percentage.

Really?

Oh, Lord.

Well, bear with me, everyone.

You're gonna get run out of town.

The reason I like this is because what I grew up on. Now, I won't say this is the best, but to me this is, this is, you know, childhood, is Giordano's spinach stuffed deep dish pizza. Kind of calling it an audible there. Yeah. Just because, you know, it's a little different, but it's what I like.

I'm a Luz classic guy.

I mean, Luz has a great pie, too. You can't hate on it, but, you know, the hardcore Chicagoans with the accent, right? They'll tell you that tavern style is the Chicago pizza. I don't know about that, but.

So what's your guys' history, right? Like you kind of touched on years earlier, like how you got into this. How did you initially get into rallying? Where does the passion come from that?

Oh, so I have an interesting story because my, well, interesting, not interesting. My dad started racing practically at the same time as Travis Pastrana, the late Ken Block and a whole lot of other great names. And entry stage left, I guess. Yeah, so he got to start really...

People who aren't watching on YouTube are going to have no idea.

Yeah, they're going to be like, what the hell are you laughing at? It's my dog right now doing some...

Oh, yeah.

Don't worry about casting couch stuff.

Yeah, this is casting couch stuff right here, but he's a good dog. He's been barking a little bit, so I apologize. But I've been handed custodial duties of him today because my girlfriend's got significant other is working at a hospital doing the Lord's duty, so...

She's saving lives and we're out here, you know. She's the s*** talking about race cars. Yeah, right?

Yeah, so sorry, Kelly. He's made it on the pod. But my dad started racing when I was really young, so I really grew up in the atmosphere of rally at the time, which...

I got to interject here. Would you mind sharing with the kind folks at home? Because I think this is a story that everybody needs to hear. What happened in Art's first stage rally? Art, for those who don't know, is Patrick's father. Art Gruszka, he's a legend.

Yeah, so he started rallying at the same time as Travis and Ken. He bought a Subaru, and I hate Subarus. Now I hate Subarus, but at the time, it's like some of the most obtainable cars you can get, because you're growing up in times of the Group A, Group N's going forwards, and the factory Subaru team out in the WRC, so it was like the car to have. So he finally saved up enough money after busting his butt in America for a lot of years.

Driving trucks.

Driving trucks to buy his first rally car. And the first rally he ever did was actually a national rally in Tennessee that was actually Tarmac. And back in the day, you had flip phones that you couldn't silence, I guess, or something. And he stuffed it in his car and it started ringing on the first stage, which threw off his mental and he ended up rolling seven times. Oh, yeah. Total the car absolutely crushed it like a tin can. Saved up money again, bought a second car. I don't remember what his second was, but I think it was actually an Evo 9. I think that's when he switched from Subarus to the good old Evos, because Subarus blow up too much. But that's besides the point. A lot of people are going to hate me for that.

But I mean, checks out. I've heard the story. It checks out.

Right. We have this gentleman who races rally named KJ Miller. And if he touches your car, you can bet your Subaru motor is going to blew up. So shout out KJ.

Unless you pull a KJ, he's getting this. He's got a car, a rally car. He just bought one. He saved up all his money from co-driving, worked his a** off, buys his first rally car. This is a rally car, and I'll send you guys the picture so we can overlay it if you're watching on YouTube. There's a rally car at Ojibwe Forest Rally, which is in Minnesota. If I was running it this year, this is the rally that you guys were going to come to. And there's a section of road that is surrounded by water on two sides. And it's like this S. And it's very thin. You have no room for error there. And this car understeered, went straight off into the water, turned into a submarine. And KJ gets the bright idea that his first rally car ever is going to be this one. And it shows up in Miller's vlog.

This is a really well-built car. You can't put aside the fact that it's not a great prep car, but it was a fish tank for a little bit. So how much can you trust a submarine, right? It's supposed to be on land most of the time. But yeah.

So now he's getting a brand new motor from Vince Bilt.

We sidetracked a little bit, but that's KJ Miller for you in 10 seconds. Anyway, so I saw my dad growing up in rally for those times and sort of hearing all the stories, always being at the events.

How old were you at the time?

I was like four.

So this is like just a few years ago.

I was a few years ago. That's fun. That's a good one. Yeah. Don't let the beard fool you. I'm underaged. That's a lot.

When you said, what'd you say? 21?

Yeah, I'm 21.

I was like, there's no way.

The joke is that Patrick had to shave his beard before his fourth grade basketball tournament.

I did. I had a mustache when I was in fourth grade. My nickname was Trunks actually, believe it or not. Cause I was so hairy. I don't know why, but I-

We're from the same part of the world, man.

So I was born in a hospital as most people were, and I walked myself home, right? And that's just how it worked.

But you're Polish. So you came out of the womb with a lit cigarette and a bottle of vodka.

I mean, some rumors that cannot be confirmed nor denied. But anyways, I always was around events. I got my first four wheeler when I was four years old. I was mowing the lawn ever since I was three years old. I was on a tractor, believe it or not. I have a picture for proof, but eventually worked my way up into the carting scene when I was nine. But I was always too tall to really compete in the cart. That's what I tell myself. I was probably just too bad at it, but I was too tall and way too much. But I loved it with all my heart. I mean, I learned my racing line that way. Got out of that after a short few years, ran a couple of USPKS races, and then managed to compete in rally a few short years later when I got my driver's permit at 16.

That's an interesting thing that people might not know about rally. To be a rally driver, you have to legally be able to drive on the roads. And rally cars have to be road legal, which I always thought was interesting when I got into it. I was like, I didn't know that, because we transit on public roads with traffic.

Between stages.

Between stages. So from the end of one to the beginning of the next, you're like driving around, there's a Corolla in front of you, and you're just like, ah, and a rally car. Full gear and everything.

So you have some achievements as well in rally too then.

Yeah, so when I did my first sort of campaign in rally, I started in what Alastair actually started, slower than Alastair's.

Yeah, you didn't have a turbo.

Yeah, I raced a naturally aspirated Ford Fiesta, and I managed to win the East Regional Championship. So I ran my first ever event, and I was like, all right, second place, not bad. Like, let's see how far we can take this. My second event, I got first place. I'm like, okay, this is lining up pretty cool. And eventually we managed to take that win, and it was a big confidence boost. But in between that, I had the bright idea, me and my team, to go from the slowest class out there, limited two wheel drive, to the fastest class out there, open four wheel drive, with Travis Pashawna, Ken Block, Brandon Semonite, all competing in. And Art actually developed this Mitsubishi Mirage, which I just used in this film that I shot with not too long ago in Kentucky.

Is that the one that we watched before him?

Yes, that car was actually a rally car before I turned it into a stunt car. And we developed that all in house with Green APR, R&D and engineers and all that cool stuff. So it's a proper race car.

The thing is insane, it makes 550.

Right now it makes 550 as it sits, but typically it's around 350 with a 34 mil restrictor on a turbo, a much smaller turbo. So yeah, we managed to pick up a fourth place overall at one of the events. I'm like, this is awesome. I mean, that means I can hang with the Fast Boys. So what's next?

And who were the Fast Boys at the time?

Ken Block, Travis Brashana, Brandon Seminoch. I'm like, sure, I was a couple of minutes behind them.

Right.

And it was like you were fourth place. But I was fourth place.

Out of how many positions?

Out of, I don't know, how many cars started back then? Probably 80 cars.

So you were fastest of the slow guys?

Fastest of the slow guys. Like I'd say, cause.

Or slowest of the fast guys.

Yeah, the way that rally works.

I think you were slowest of the fast guys.

Yeah, yeah, I like that better. So like the way that American Rally is right now is that you have Subaru Motorsports USA and VSC of Vermont Sports Cars that run the factory program for Subaru in America. And they invest tons and tons of money into those cars and they're extremely fast. And as a privateer team, you can't really compete with them unless you throw loads and loads of money at it, which doesn't really make sense because the ROI on the series in general isn't as big as people make it out to be, but it's a great sport. So I wish it was. And yeah, I mean, I love rally with all my heart. It's always my first love, I guess, in a way.

Don't tell Kelly.

Don't tell Kelly. So I went from that class to then what I have right there, the Hyundai RC2 car, which is a sort of European world spec car. It's sort of a class of its own. It's called RC2. And they're pretty much the same thing as this. It's a spec class. All the cars are the same. They're developed by their respective manufacturers. So that one's a Hyundai, there's Toyota now, Skoda, which is a European brand, Citroen, French brand, and what am I missing? I think it's all of them.

I wasn't paying attention.

Yeah, of course. Ford, Ford, of course.

Oh, Ford, yeah.

Ford's the last one. So they're all sort of putting their own sort of R&D money into them. So they have their own patents and different ideas how to make a car work. So they're all a little bit different, but they have the same sort of rule sets they have to adhere to. And in America, we have a couple of competitors that run the car as well, so we can sort of stack up and see how we do. And then that season as well is sort of lined in our favor as well with some top great drivers putting down great times and sort of seeing how we develop into that seat. And we managed to win that championship, the RC2 championship in 2023 as well as second overall, so it's cool.

So how does this differ from, when I say this, how does NitroCross differ from typical rallying? Again, you're talking to two guys who don't really watch either that much yet.

Stage rally I like to compare to the mountain biking, like downhill mountain biking of sort of motorsports. So you have stages, set roads.

Point A to point B.

Point A to point B based on the overall time, not sort of, you don't get a let out at the same time. So there's a minute gap. You're not door to door. Yeah, minute, not door to door, yeah.

Unless you really make up a gap on someone.

Yeah.

Which can happen, you can pass people.

There's typically a minute gap between every car. And you just sort of go out there, set the best time you can. And then at the end of the weekend, which typically holds 16 stages and around a hundred some stage miles, you know, you sort of see who's the fastest out of the bunch.

So I've seen some of that stuff and it looks like a blast. Like I, it sounds amazing. How important is your co-driver?

The more important than the driver.

Really? Yes. That's what always is like, seems insane to me. Like you are relying on them to make sure you're hitting your spots.

Yeah, so his life is in my hands and my life is in his hands at the same time because you really have to find someone to connect with to really understand, like it doesn't matter if you hate each other, if this person could do his job really well and you do your job really well, you know, you guys are going to do great.

So for this past year, when I was competing for the Rally Championship, which unfortunately we fell just short, I had Alex Gelsomino in the front seat with me, who was Ken Block's co-driver for 17 years. And so arguably one of the best in the world. And now he's used to competing at the top level in the world. And somehow I managed to convince him, Alex, if you're watching this, sorry, convince him to take a seat and ride with me for a national season in a 197 horsepower front wheel drive Fiesta. Not at the top of the game. But you know, your co-driver is so important, and to me, if I was really going to go for this championship, I wanted to go with the best. I wanted to kind of no-holds-barred approach and say, all right, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it right and do it once. And you know, there is a difference in co-drivers. Alex is, when I say he's one of the best, it means he knows the rule book front to back. Every single rule, every single loophole, every single, every little detail about it, which is really important.

Expose yourself right there. What loopholes? There's none.

Oh yeah, that's right, there are no loopholes.

Interpretation of the rules.

Interpretation of the rules.

That's the gentleman's way.

Thank you. And so, because you have to make sure you play by them, otherwise you get time penalties, and that's a big thing that you can't afford to do, and that's kind of in their hands. And then you also don't want a co-driver who's going to miss a note. You have a bad call from the co-driver's seat. As a driver, your blind faith commitment to what they're saying. So if they call a right four and it's a left four, something's going to go wrong. Extremely wrong. And in rallying, it's not like we have crash barriers like NASCAR, right? When we were at the NASCAR track in Richmond, I realized, okay, they have these walls and they have foam in between another wall. So it absorbs the impact. Trees don't do that.

We like to call ourselves professional tree huggers.

Yeah.

Hopefully not. You try to avoid those things.

That's the goal.

So it's not like when your wife is like, oh, you should have turned there.

Right. No, if there was a year you should have turned there, you might not make it out.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah. And rally even in Formula One terms, like you have drivers, some of the best drivers in the world. I think Kimi Raikkonen actually said this quote, that rally is the hardest sport in the world. It is really the hardest sport in the world. There's no two corners that are really the same. So I mean-

You have to adapt.

You have to adapt.

You really have to be adaptable.

Thinking on your feet is a must.

That's a different level. Like I've always said that that looks the hardest. Like there's just-

I mean, it's no Isle of Man TT. Like me as a rally driver, and I'm sure Patrick will say the same thing. You know, there's always something else you look at, and you go, those guys are crazy.

MotoGP.

Yeah, MotoGP. Isle of Man TT, like anything like that. I look at those guys and like, you guys are insane. And then, but then again, there we are like racing through the forest. And for what?

In Cannes.

You know, for a champagne spray.

And a pad on the back.

And a pad on the back, right?

Especially when you look at like, you know, the rallying of like the 70s, 80s, yeah.

Oh, like the Audi Group B era, the Michel Mouton, like, yeah.

When they had, you know, tin cans for roll cages, right? Like, before the rules got serious.

Have you heard that story? Have you heard that story? So, Lancia, they, when they were rallying, they needed, everybody was trying to bend the rules there.

Interpret.

Interpret. But they were, I would say they were doing it in a problematic way. Lancia needed their roll cage to be beefed up. And I don't remember the actual reason behind why they did it. I'm sure somebody will tell us in the comments. But they used paper towel roll cardboard and painted it and made it look like it was part of their roll cage.

And I think there's like a YouTube video on it. It's like 20 minutes long, like a documentary style sort of deal.

Yeah. It's an insane story.

Have either of you read Adrian Newey's How to Build a Car Book yet?

No, I'm not.

So he discusses, you know, you know, his, basically his entire career, right? Up until 2020 or whatever it is, talking about like Williams and, you know, the championships he's won with like the one champion. Yeah. Yep. That's gonna be exciting. But he's talking about how the interpretation of the rules is like, how much do you want to put someone's life in danger, right? Like, cause drivers will always want to be the absolute fastest, right? Just anything that takes to win. But then, you know, when you start doing cardboard roll cages, then it's like, all right, what's the problem? So there's a fine line, but then you're leaving.

Well, do you want to win for now, or do you want to win long term? One of those questions.

But here's the other thing, right? It's like, when you do something like that, you're putting, somebody else might do it, and you're leaving valuable tenths or seconds on the table. So, I don't know, it is interesting to see how far motorsport has come in the last 20, 30 years.

As much as we're competing out there inside of the cars, our teams are competing out there for better setup, for, you know, everything like that, right? So, it's a full team competition. I know, like, as drivers, we're the face of it, but everything, there's so much that goes into it, and everybody's competing against the other teams, the other drivers, everything.

It's also really cool to also talk about, it's a different avenue sort of of motorsports, but the sim racing scene recently has exploded. I remember as a kid always running the simulators, seeing like the basic rig setups, and none of like the cool stuff like SimiCube nowadays, and all the really direct drive wheels, and how far that technology has come along.

And it's accessible.

And it's accessible, yeah, exactly.

So we both have rigs, so yeah.

And you don't, I mean, we here have the full motion, everything, right? You don't need it.

You really don't.

I actually find that practicing on that sometimes is worse than practicing on just a regular set.

I've heard that from people before.

Because sometimes it doesn't get the motion right, and it's too jarring, it's way more jarring than it would be in the actual car, and it really throws you off of your game.

And also you don't feel the G forces of it. The G forces of it, so it's like a weird feeling where you have the actions of it, but zero acceleration from it. So it's like you're sort of doing the corners, and you're like, I don't feel this in my stomach, what's going on here, right?

You don't have that opposite shift.

Yeah, it throws your stomach off a little bit, because you feel it everywhere, right? I mean, when Nicky Lott said it in the Formula One movie, that you feel everything in your a**, you really do, right? That's not lying.

You had to have an impactful a** to be a racing driver.

That's for sure. I feel that haptics are better. So I have base shakers on mine. You can feel the rumble strip. You can kind of, I think that helps a lot. If your a** end starts to sly a little bit, it'll shake the rig a little bit.

So I actually tried a motion sim that was on pegs that sort of stand up on their own, and that they shift a little bit, and not a lot. And the compressions, as you said, but I thought that was even worse than the motion sim. I wish it was set up so you can try it.

What I think, what I've heard when we talked to Camille, who's down in this area here, they were working on seatbelt tensioners, which would be kind of a neat deal, right? So as you come into a corner, it'll pull you tight on your seatbelt.

That's the thing is like for the hobbyist, that would make sense for us. If you can breathe, your belts aren't tight enough.

Yeah, right.

Especially in like rally. I mean, we take rally and safety and rally incredibly seriously.

You exhale and then yank on the belt even more. So you're like, you seriously, your belt is holding in.

If you can take a full breath, something is wrong. Like your harnesses are way too loose. Actually, and we're back.

Yeah, no, I mean, just sims have been cool. So have you guys been to a sim racing Chicago yet or no?

No, I haven't had the opportunity, but there's actually a bunch that sort of popped up. I was going to open one, and then I found out there's like seven other guys that did it already.

It's a competitive space, they're starting to be.

It is, it is. So there's actually a few, and I know most of people that sort of own them, so it's cool to see them doing it. And it's like, it's awesome to see, because I just recently got into iRacing. I was a huge hater of iRacing, especially their dirt models, and I still sort of am, but I'm like, all right.

There's room for improvement iRacing if you're watching this.

Yes, yes.

iRacing, watch your podcast.

I don't mean to bash iRacing, but the dirt model sort of sucks a little bit, and everyone has room.

They're actually our main sponsors, so we're going to cut out.

Yeah, but like looking at the iRacing competitive scene and how sort of big it has gotten, like there's actual opportunities for drivers to show what they can do, right? So you jump on your sim, you put down a good time, you do a cool race and you do great or even well, and there's always some eyes on you. So it's really cool.

Case in point here, the guy who won round one of NitroCross in our class, Mitchell DeJong, he took a break from racing in actual cars for last six or seven years. And he went out there his first time back in an actual race car in six or seven years and won the first round. I mean, kicked a** at the first round.

Was that the guy in your class?

What's that?

That was the guy in your class?

Yes, he was in our class. Yeah, he won it. And it was an impressive drive. I mean, credit where credit is due, that kid has honed his skills in the sim and can do it. So for anybody who has a sim rig at home, that is the way to enter into this stuff. You know, get as good as you can on the sim, because people are always asking us like, oh, how do you get into this? Well, get as good as you can on the sim, and then find, scrape together some funding to go into an actual race car once or twice and show what you're made of.

Yeah.

And if you don't have it, maybe you don't have it, but try, right?

That's what I did before.

Because he did it?

Yeah, before I could get into a car as well. I mean, Mitchell's story is much better than mine, but I used to run sims every night that I can. I've like, practically my whole high school career, I was running simulators between freshman and sophomore year.

I have to laugh at this. The dog is making our case. I was like, just want to pack them up and take them home now.

He's like, guys, this is running a little long.

Oh, he's sitting down.

He's literally in the case.

Well, e-sports in general is growing. I mean, it's huge, right? So I think the sim racing is going to be right there with it.

Yeah, 100 percent. 100 percent.

And it's really cool to see. I mean, like the opportunities nowadays are truly endless. And like that story of that movie that sort of came out from Gran Turismo.

Yeah.

That's going to be the next big jump in people ordering stuff, too. Like, I mean, you know, Dan and I, like we got into it. We were talking with Kamil over at PRI last year, which you guys are going to PRI this year, I think, right?

I think so. I think I'll be there this year. Hey, you want to go?

I was there actually in 22.

You guys going to SEMA?

Yeah.

Last year was our first year for SEMA and PRI.

Maybe. I always end up at SEMA on like on a whim. I typically find out the night before that I'm supposed to be there. So hopefully, I always hope so. It's always cool to see your friends out there.

Does NitroCross have a booth there?

They don't know.

PRI actually has a booth for American Rally Association.

I did see that. Isn't Travis doing some sort of opening thing? I got an email about it.

Could be.

Something with his name. But I don't know. It'd be, again, one of those exposure things.

Yeah.

But yeah, I always like one of those things, too. And just seeing what's out there in the tech and how it evolves every year. My dream behind when I built my 911 was for it to go to SEMA. So I'm still working on that dream.

I tried to make that happen.

I know. Maybe one day.

We had a booth last year for Green APU at SEMA, and he was like, I want my car there. And I pulled every string I could of, and he just didn't have his car ready. It was broken for the longest time ever. It was broken in his garage. I actually helped him tow it to his lake house so he could fix it.

Well, it is a Porsche, right?

It is a Porsche. And it's a methanol-injected Porsche, as well.

With a supercharger.

With a supercharger.

Yeah, P1X.

Yeah, a procharger. In case anybody at home is into that. It's a base model. It doesn't even have a backup camera, but it makes 500, so there's that. It's a 3.4 liter. That sounds like a 4 liter.

So what's next for you guys, right? Like, again, I kind of asked this question earlier where it's, you know, one, two, five years out. But again, you have eight races left this season, right, between the four locations. I mean, how do you improve, right? Like, you guys got the first race.

Go out there and win, right?

Like, well, it's not that easy, right? So I'm hoping that after this podcast, we can find a track to test that. So I'm a shout out to everyone that does help us get a track because that'll definitely help us a little bit.

And what kind of track do you need?

Do you know anybody in the motocross world that can get you hooked up?

We don't need the jumps.

See, we don't really want the jumps. We want the asphalt because there's some more asphalt in tarmac this year where like we, I want to get better at the tarmac and right.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

If we can get a cool enough track to get some dirt there too.

So you can't just get these out to like Autobahn or?

You don't want a track with long straights. You need tighter stuff.

I got the perfect track, DCTC.

Well, I got one for you. We'll talk after this.

Okay, so we have a community college up in Minnesota, right? It's on the way up to, what is it, Ojibwe, I think it was? Yeah. It's on the way. So literally, people complain about the track eating through tires just because it's a little bit rougher than most asphalt tracks.

Well, we're normally, the asphalt that we use is generally like parking lot.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's pretty, have you guys looked into like maybe doing like autocross events of some kind?

Oh, we could do that.

We could do that as well.

That'd be a, again, I don't know what the correlation would be, but again, it's like that kind of-

But those guys are crazy, and it would be a hell of a meme in the car community is like, oh yeah, we show up with our stacker and these purpose built race cars just to get spanked by some guy in Miata.

We just went to a place, we rented the whole track out, you get eight hours, you get all to yourself. Ten of us guys were there, they literally unlocked the gate and leave. It's a perfect track for what you want to do. It's a little bit rough. It was very affordable. Like I said, we'll talk.

How far from Chicago?

It's, how far are you from Omaha?

Eight hours.

Eight hours, yeah.

That's it.

But if you could do that in a weekend for practice, yeah, I think Dan could give you that suggestion. Otherwise, come to Minnesota.

This one was great. It was rough on the GT 500, but for what you guys are doing, it's perfect. It is. It's I-29 Speedway.

It's like on the border, right, of Iowa?

Yeah, it's right outside Omaha. Right. It's in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, literally in a corner. It's, you know, where you heard of Ice Cream Cruise or anything? That's where...

Wrong scene.

1320, they throw an event there every year on the drag strip. But they have this lonely little forgotten road course. It's very tight, technical. It's got grass growing through the track.

That's the spot. That is it.

I'm telling you, it's great. It's for exactly what you need to do.

We're supposed to spend a week there.

Might as well, right? So hopefully...

We have three cars, so if we bin one, we just hop in the other one. All right.

Well, that's a long mind...

Knock on wood, we don't.

That's a long mindset to go in.

You know, it's win it or bin it. That's what it has to be. A rallycross, it has to be win it or bin it.

My only stipulation is if you go there, I want to know when you're going there, because I'm going to come watch, and I want to ride, I want to...

One of them has a second seat.

Andrew Coley, our commentator for NitroCross, actually drives rallycross cars as well, so we lent him that car for the day to shoot a bit with it. There's a second seat.

He actually did surprisingly well.

Yeah, there's a silly seat in that one, so yeah, jump in.

A silly seat, is that what you call it?

In rally, that's what they call it. The co-driver sits in the silly seat.

So I want to take a second to talk about Green APU, because a good portion of our listeners even are in the transportation industry, because think about it, if you're in a semi all day, you are literally listening to a podcast. People will go through our entire podcast in weeks. So tell us a little bit about Green APU.

Yeah, so Green APU is an auxiliary power unit for your semi truck. So it's sort of, I mean, everyone who's in the trucking industry knows what an APU is, especially nowadays with diesel cost being so high. And now the focus shifting onto idle hours on units instead of sort of the mileage. So our whole goal is to make sure you keep every dollar in your pocket. And whether that's the idling aspect of it, driver comfort reduction and where in terror, keeping your units on the road. That's extremely important to us. And we're one of the best on the markets. So that's it.

One of, no, you are the best on the market.

No, we are the best on the markets.

And I have to bring that up too, because again, I used to work in the freight industry. So I think there's like, what a million trucks on the road or whatever, workers in the industry.

So it's like, and they could all use APUs.

Well, everybody knows somebody right? That's in the industry. So I just figured I might as well, you know, it's literally on all the cars behind us. It makes sense to give a shout out.

Well, that's what allows us to keep racing. Without APUs, we don't race.

And the funny thing is that racing is in every APU we manufacture. I mean, like, from every component, it's been tested and through and throughout, really, to make sure it can withstand, you know, everyday stipulations.

You have to have high standards on these race cars. You don't need to go out and run them for 150 miles, especially in rally, 150 miles, 200 miles in a weekend, and run them at 100%. So, that kind of philosophy trickles into the manufacturing side of the APUs.

The same engineers that manufacture our cars and develop them, they do the same for APU.

Well, you guys walked us through your facility there. That's not a slouch operation you guys got going on. You're not slapping these together in some dark warehouse either.

That's very impressive. We haven't even made it to our CNC shop, which we take great pride in.

We'll take you guys there after us.

Chattel Haas, they make great machines. So yeah, we really put a lot of time and effort and development into each APU that are on the market.

We also have a race team, which is cool.

Yeah, we have a race team, which is pretty cool.

So if you like racing and you're a trucker, this is the spot for you, right? Watch us race with your APU charging your phone.

Well, especially if you're a trucker, you have that side TV all the time. We know you're watching Netflix in there, boys.

Come on.

So the whole way that green APU came to be is we used to own a truck company, Art Logistics, named after Art. He got so pissed off at every APU on the market. He's like, I'm going to do it myself. So that's how we came to be founded.

If you want something done right, do it yourself.

That's how the best things are made.

So we didn't go national until a couple of years ago. And people have been loving our product ever since. I mean, we're a simple design. You can get all the parts you need to fix it at any Napa, AutoZone, any automotive store. We use automotive components in every APU. We use a single serpentine belt where you have less maintenance. I think now, I don't want to be mistaken, but we're either at 1,000 or 2,000 hours for your first service, which is one of the leading in the markets right now. So yeah, that's the stuff that matters to all the trucking guys. So that's awesome.

So we're kind of getting towards like that back half of the episode here, but is there anything else about the cars that are just, that again, that we didn't see yet, that's just super cool, because obviously, again, this is so different from my Golf GTI. So I just, you know.

I think inherently just being, well, the amount of power they are, but the rarity in a rear mid-engine all wheel drive system with a sequential is so odd.

Anti-lag, paddle shifts, the WRC-style paddle shifts.

We can cut in some clips so the folks at home can see this stuff.

For the highlights, for sure. We'll see about the full episode. We'll see what happens there. Wait for the highlights, you'll see. So, damn it, I had a question. I just lost it. I hate the worst part. It finally happened. Oh, what do you guys run for a sequential in there? Do you have any idea?

Sadov, Sadov, Sadov.

Okay.

Six-speed.

Gotcha.

They're like really funky, long. They have the differential inside of them, so it's like pretty complicated to set up.

This year though, they're electronic, hydraulic controlled. Last year, it was a, you really had to muscle it. But this year, we have one paddle shifter, so you pull in to shift up, and you push down to shift down.

You liking that so far?

It's honestly more intuitive than you'd think. Yeah. When I was thinking about it, I'm like, oh, that's gonna be tough to learn. Every time I've ever had a paddle shifter, it's one and two. But I hopped in the car for the first time, and didn't think about it once. It was just, you know, there. I need to push that to shift down. Although, I did have a struggle and for the folks on YouTube, I'll send you guys the picture. I broke, it's a carbon fiber paddle, and in one of the sessions this week, in one of my first sessions, it snapped off in my hand. Yeah. And so, I was about to pull off, and I'm like, I need this seat time, I need this practice. And so I realized I could just kind of smack the little controller, like that it actually, you know, the toggle switch, and it would work. And so we ended up doing that. Made it around.

It's so weird seeing a car with a sequential that doesn't have a parachute. I'm so, that's what I'm just used to. Because that was my first time in a car with a sequential was a twin turbo viper making 2,000 horse. Like, it's like, and it's got a parachute on the back.

I want one of those.

Oh, who doesn't? Enth Moto Vipers are on top.

So what do you guys, you guys, so you have your Porsche, are you driving some fun stuff on the street though, too, when you're not in here? Are you guys?

No, I find as I get older and some say wiser. Older. As I get older and some say wiser, I tend to prefer driving more civil on the roads. This guy thinks differently, but.

Almost every person that we've met that races competitively, they get much more civil on the road once they get to real racing.

I've noticed that a lot of people do, but I don't know, I must be an outlier. Cause I have a lot of, I have a lot, like my brother, he's also a racing driver. He has gotten much more civil on the road. And to me, it's not that I'm not civil on the road, but racing hasn't ruined being a car guy for me in the street car sense. And I find that a lot of people, they get into racing and all of a sudden, like street cars don't matter to them. I'm like, I still want to drive something that looks sick. Maybe that is a, that sounds cool.

Like maybe that is a Leo thing. Cause I feel like you fall in that camp too.

Well, you and I are outliers in the regard to, we're going around the country. We're talking to every single type of motorsport out there. We had an Off-Road guy last episode. We know, well, I keep saying we. I know nothing about Off-Road. We're talking about Off-Road Cayenne's and old Toyotas.

Those things are sweet.

Yeah. No, I'm really excited to watch this sport grow. Again, it was really fun to watch. Oh, I forgot to say, the footage is awesome. Like you have the crazy, the crazy fast drone just ripping around it. It's really cool. Like it's just, it's different. It's not like, F1's got helicopters, okay. But you guys got these drones that have this like crazy, different, it's different. It's fast.

Well, cause you can get, so for the folks at home, NitroCross, when we stream live and free on Rumble, they pound that slogan into us. Yeah. They stream, we stream off of FPV drones that can fly as fast as the cars can drive. So we have the ability to, in the live stream, have a camera, live action right up on the bumper of a car just above it or just off it.

Coolest thing ever.

And it's awesome. So you feel like when, and this is a high contact sport.

Oh, I know.

When those cars make contact, you feel like you're there. And you're like, I felt that crash through the TV.

I saw a couple of those, like when you get bumper to bumper, I think it was in the, which class are the hornets in again?

In the Group E.

Group E?

Yeah, the electric cars.

I saw them touch. I'm like, oh, that crumple gets close.

This last weekend, which you watched, there was a lot of action in the Group E finals. It was insane. Not a single one of those cars came off track unscathed.

Yeah, I definitely felt, as someone coming from watching Formula One, it was a little confusing at first. I started getting the hang of it.

We were used to one long race, and we're not that way, right? We're six laps. That's our final race, is six laps. But you have four laps of qualifying, four laps of semi-finals, four laps of heats, four laps of, you know.

I wish there was like, and maybe there was, and maybe I just missed it, I wish there was like a up next, or like a schedule of some kind.

Yeah.

I might have missed it, but it was kind of cool.

They do that once at the beginning of the broadcast.

Right, and if you're just somebody like me who's coming in halfway through.

That's good to know, because I'll pass that along to the media team.

Oh dude, you want somebody to tear your sport apart, you're gonna pick a, again, you're trying to market to people who don't know it, right? It's cool for the people that know it, but if you're trying to, like again, I had no idea, well I'm like, oh wait, we're scary.

And you're a car guy, you are our clientele, right?

Right. So I am curious, I will tear it apart next time I watch, we'll see what we got.

Or just come to Salt Lake City and do it in person, right? Buy your tickets now at nitrocrossracing.com.

It was a good crowd, by the way, on what it looked like on Rumble when I was watching it. It was a pretty decent crowd.

Rich Grunz is a big stadium to fill, and we had a lot of people.

That was a good looking crowd.

Yeah, it was cool.

I mean, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and Los Angeles last year sold out at full capacity.

Yeah, Vegas too. They sold out Vegas.

All of them sold out.

Both Knights and Vegas. Vegas was insane. They had everybody packed into these grandstands because Vegas was one of those races, it wasn't like Richmond where there was all the infrastructure there. We were basically in an empty lot where Formula One was. We brought in the bleachers, we brought in all that stuff, and they had people packed onto those stands. I remember coming off of the track and just looking up and be like, it was just this humbling moment. All those people are here to watch this. It was insane.

It's the city of entertainment, man.

It was, yeah. Our finale is there this year again, so.

Yeah, it's cool.

You guys gotta come out to that race. Sweet.

Yeah, well, me and Dan are hoping to come out to the Miami one. We'll talk a little bit about this.

Miami is gonna be killer.

We just, we have a lot of plans for this season, so it's gonna be really cool. But I think it might be time to pop the usual three, Dan.

You think so?

I think so. Unless you got some more questions.

No. I mean, I'm sure there's tons, but yeah.

That's why we do the Minnesota goodbye at the end. Everybody sticks around for Minnesota goodbye. It's like a Marvel movie. You wait till after the credits.

Watch out for deer on the way home.

Is that the same as the Midwest goodbye where everyone just slaps their knees and they're like, all right, guys, time to wrap this up.

But then you talk for another hour afterwards.

Okay.

And then it's, I'll tell your folks I says hi.

Yeah. So what's the longest podcast you guys have done?

Three hours and 20 something minutes.

Guys, we're not even there yet.

Yeah, we're not even there yet.

We put a hard cap of like two hours, unless it's something like really, really, we really need to discuss, but it starts getting a little-

Repetitive.

Not repetitive. It's just, it's so long. And it'd be better to do a round two, right? Yeah. Let's, you know, it's just-

We could do a round two at a race.

I will be here monthly, guys. We'll figure it out.

Then we'll put you in a car.

We come see you in Miami, which is when it's cold up here. We'll do a round two for sure.

We'll pull some time. We can do a podcast episode in the trailer, and then we'll be able to tell you live how an event is going.

Yeah.

That's the best part. Like when we were down at Texas 2K, we only got one episode in, unfortunately, but it's kind of cool seeing that like before, middle and after, depending on which competitors you're talking to.

Yeah.

It's awesome being on site.

Well, in racing, you have high highs, low lows, right?

Oh, yeah. You guys are crazy for doing that. Your dopamine levels just got to be doing this all the time.

Well, I had one of the best laps of my life, and 20 minutes later, I had one of the most heartbreaking laps of my life.

Yeah.

This last weekend, I was about to, I was in the last chance qualifier coming through the last corner. And I'm like, I had a good lead on everybody. The session before had one of the best laps. I found race pace finally, and then I go into the last chance qualifier, and on the last corner, I spun the car. Just spun out, and I lost it. I watched the other two cars that I was racing at sail by, and just go, that's it. That was my weekend. That was Sunday, and it was my last chance to make it into the final. Didn't happen for us, right? So I was at the highest, down to the lowest, just like that. I mean, it was, but that's what makes it cool. There's a good story there. So a live podcast at an event would be really cool.

Dude, that would be awesome if we could set something up. Again, just kind of seeing that overall experience. Hi, pooch. Welcome back.

Well, then everything's fresh, right?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I've had a few days to get over that, but it still irks me when it's, if you'd have interviewed me right after that happened.

We usually try not to interview people right after, because especially at events where there's crashes or cars that don't perform, people aren't very excited to be on a two hour episode, if something's wrong.

See, I would be happy to do that. You call me up, you say, you know, I'll bring a microphone up to your face.

I'm there.

Well, sweet, let's do the usual three, and then we'll do a Minnesota goodbye.

All right, sounds good. All right, so at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. You have to pick a daily driver, a show car, and a track car. You have an unlimited budget. You can swap anything and then whatever you want. What are you picking?

Well, I'm a little slow in the head. Can you, one more time, what are the three?

Yeah, okay. So, daily driver, track car, and a show car.

Daily driver, track car, show car. Got it. You want to go first?

Yeah, I've got them. Okay, so, the daily driver, and keep in mind, folks, I'm a Porsche guy through and through, so, if you couldn't tell by what I'm about to say. The daily driver is a 911. Probably a Turbo S, because they have back seats, GT3s don't. And before everybody in the comments goes, you can't daily drive a 911. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. I have a rear wheel drive 911. It's a seven-speed manual. It's got 70,000 miles on it. And as Jerry Seinfeld once said, he who gets to heaven and has the lowest mileage Porsche loses. So absolutely, I moved into college, and I understand it's a rare scenario. I moved into college in a 911. Everything I needed for my dorm room was in a 911. It fits. It can be a daily driver. So that's the daily. The show car is a RWB, 993 RWB. I've always wanted one. I know they're getting a lot more popular now, and they have in recent years. I've wanted them since I was a kid. Just love them. And then the track car's gotta be a 935.

Is it a 935?

935, yeah.

The new one.

The new one, the one based on the GT2.

Oh, okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

I mean, I'd like the old one, too, because it's just a rad car.

You gotta pick one now.

If it was just to track it, I'd have to have the new one go with the newer technology.

Fair enough.

Yeah, those are the three. All Porsches.

Sweet. All right, you got enough time to figure it out?

Yeah, I think so. I think for the daily driver, I'm gonna be more on the practical side of things.

More practical.

That's perfectly practical.

Put a ski box on a 911.

Good old X3M. I mean, you got the speed, comfort, space. You gotta think this through a little bit, all right? You want to pull some jet skis? X3M, god damn it.

You could do it with a 911.

I'll do ski boxes and jet skis.

No, I'd put a jet ski on the back of my 911.

Get one of those U-Haul hitches. He'll be fine.

Actually, you know, matter of fact, we should do this.

I guess so.

That'd be a great marketing campaign.

Factor cap.

At SEMA, we put a hitch on my 911, bring it out there with jet skis on it.

You just discovered a whole new market.

They only got one leg out there and it's drying up. So that is true. Although we saw snowmobiles at SEMA. They had them like in the back of trucks and stuff there last time.

Yeah. Sports car has to be an Evo 9. My favorite car ever grew up in them. So I absolutely adore the Evo 9s.

Would it be like a rally spec or something?

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.

I was going to do a track spec.

You have a track car option here.

That is your track car.

Oh, that is my track car, yeah.

And then what, my sports car, my show car?

Show car, yeah.

It's got to be Ken Block's Hoonikorn. That car is insane.

So you would have that as a show car and not as a track car?

Yeah, are you kidding me?

Show cars could be used as a track car.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to f*** that one up, right?

I wouldn't want to f*** that one up.

Are you kidding me?

I can't afford that.

Which version?

Which version of the Hoonikorn? Gymkhana 7? Yeah.

Nice.

What about you guys?

No, no, no, we've done this. You go back to our episodes and listen to it.

Yeah, but so now, revamp.

They think they're the hosts now.

Yeah, yeah. I'm taking over. Look at me, my podcast now, okay?

Daily Driver.

Give me something you haven't said before.

I can't. Super Baja, Shelby Super Baja, 6.7, Super Duty. Gotta be that, because I can still pull a race trailer.

You're telling me your track car wouldn't be a NitroCross car?

After seeing them.

I'm a road course guy, man.

Because we haven't gotten you in one of these yet.

Yeah.

When you're a road America, and you're coming 180 miles an hour into that turn one, like, that's pretty good.

You're looking at that access road going, I gotta break.

Yeah. Right before you hit the wall. I don't know, Ford GT, the second gen.

Big Ford guys, huh?

Oh, he's the Ford guy.

You gotta understand, when you told me there was a 2.3 in this, I got real giddy.

I get that. Everybody gives me hate for being a Ford guy. Like trucks, I like an F152, 53, 54.

Well, you like trucks that work. I mean, they just gotta, you know.

See, I don't get that controversial with it, right? I like the way they look. That's it. That does enough for me. All the performance specs on every truck on the market right now, relatively the same. That's gonna piss people off. They just look better. Anyway, go on, Ford guy. I like that.

I don't know. Show car, something old, muscly. Something from Ford. I think I said Trino before.

Give me something new. Some of the folks at home haven't heard it. I didn't know that about you. You go.

They've done 104 episodes.

Yeah, right. Well, I've only been around for half. Shout out to Sean.

You have old, Patrick's got a new show car coming in. Yeah, tell him about that.

Oh, yeah. My Fiat 126P.

We'll put a picture on screen.

Do you guys know what that is? I gotta show you a picture now.

It's Tiffany blue.

Okay.

Yeah.

I just got the interior done.

Doing my bucket here.

To reflect a Maybach. So I told the guys that were doing the car, I want this thing to look incredible. I don't know.

This is a true Minnesota or Wisconsin goodbye, because we just pulled in another story. Patrick goes to Poland, and just out of the blue sends me a photo of this Fiat, and it's on the back of a van that says green APU. And I'm like, no way, you just bought that thing. No way, whose Fiat is he pulling? And he's like, no, that's, I just bought it.

I actually, this is the first car I ever learned how to drive stick on.

That's awesome. Yeah.

Oh, that's cool.

It is tiny.

So we'll send that to you guys.

So have you been to Poland then?

Yeah, I have, yeah.

Now it's coming home. It's coming back here.

I'm bringing it back here. It's coming home. I gotta show the interior, because that's what's really in my heart.

Did you grow up stateside then?

Yeah, I was born and grew up in states.

Gotcha, I was born stateside as well, yeah, because my parents were, yeah, whatever. So yeah, me too. Yeah. That's just me trying to relate, you know, just, yeah.

So this is the interior I picked to complement my-

That's b*****.

My light blue color, yeah. And so this is the first car I bought when I was, well, I didn't buy it, right? But I drove this car, not on the roads, back roads, for 300 US dollars. 300 US dollars, I bought a car like this.

That's awesome.

Now they're collector items, so it's harder and harder to get them, but I had to get one. It's in my heart.

That's like me wanting a Yugo. I'd love nothing more than to have a Yugo.

Yeah?

Oh. No thanks.

For me, it's a Mark II Golf. That's on my bucket list.

Yeah.

They just look so cool. What do you think about the Chiracos?

Oh, I want one.

Yeah, they're sweet. That was my dad's first car.

Yeah, that was my dad's dream car at some point, and he was a kid too, so yeah.

Those things are sweet. I'd love to have a Rally Chiraco.

Yeah, sweet. Well, where can people find you guys? No, hold on.

At NitroCross events, go to nitrocrossracing.com.

Beyond that, say somebody watched this, and they're like, wow, I really like him.

I want to follow him.

Where can we see this video you just posted?

Yeah.

Oh, are we going to talk about this video now?

Yeah, we're talking about the video.

Shoot, today's actually the debut day, the debut of my little film that I made.

It's a few hours old now.

It's a few hours old now. I'm afraid to open my phone and see what the comments are because I have a feeling it's going to be not very well.

Well, the internet's such a loving place.

It is a very loving place. And honestly, I'm not taking it too hard because it's something that I've been wanting to do for a long time. And it was heavily inspired by Mr. Ken Block.

And let me tell you, you killed it.

Well, thank you. It's my first time.

F****** killed it.

I don't nearly have the budget to pull off something that I would blow the socks off people, right? But at the same time, it's something that I put a lot of work in and had a great team to make happen. So I'm trying to tread lightly because the guy who filmed it said not to say too much because he doesn't know what to say yet about it. It's too fresh to sort of read how it's looking.

But it's a great, it's a great video. You guys should go check it out.

Yeah, so you're a little hard on yourself after watching that. It was pretty cool to check it out. What's the YouTube channel name?

Just my first and last names of Patrick Gruszka on YouTube. You can check out all the videos from NitroCross events as well as Rally back in the day and this new film that I just created for myself and for my childhood self. So that meant a lot to me.

No, definitely check it out. That's one of those things where you look to your 10 year old self and be like, I did that. So you should take that with...

I'm gonna be the cool uncle at the cookout who's single and alone in the corner. Be like, yeah, you see that? I made that.

I used to do cool stuff in cars back in the day.

When EVs take over, that's the video you'll show.

Yeah, when we're all getting piloted around in spaceships to everywhere we go and can't control a car anymore, which sadly is looking more and more like it. But there's a few of us still left in the deserts and some metro cities that love gasoline smells and ALS popping in your ear, so I'm happy.

How about you?

You can find me on Instagram, alastair.scully. It's a tough one to spell, so maybe-

Oh, trust me, I have it wrong in my phone.

Everybody does.

You should talk about your middle name.

Yeah, that's even worse. It's Welsh. And they like to put vowels next to vowels. And so yeah, Instagram, alastair.scully.

Where can people find NitroCross to watch?

NitroCross, live and free on Rumble, or nitrocrossracing.com to get your tickets. Come see us, come say hi. NitroCross is an immersive experience, so if you're there, feel free to stop by our paddock. Come say hi.

Better yet, what about the dates and locations as well?

Oh, you're asking a bit much now. I can tell you locations.

I've got that. I've got that on lock. You keep talking.

Yeah, we'll be in Salt Lake City next, and from there, we'll go to Phoenix, Arizona, Miami, Florida, and ending it all off at the season finale in Las Vegas.

The rounds three and four, Salt Lake City, October 5th and 6th of 2024. Rounds five and six are in Phoenix, Arizona, November 15th and 16th of 2024. Miami, round seven and eight, are January 11th and 12th of 2025, and our finale in Vegas, that's the one you don't want to miss, March 1st and 2nd.

He's saying, you want to miss the others.

I don't know if you want to miss the others, but Vegas is-

We gotta work out of your PR, bro.

Yeah.

I am my PR guy, which is a problem. So Vegas is gonna be insane, Miami's gonna be insane. Those are, well, Miami's a new event for us.

Salt Lake's gonna be insane, Phoenix, Arizona's gonna be insane, and if you can't be there, tune in live and free on Rumble.

Yeah, and then, I think it was a good coverage.

Wait, it's this now?

Yeah.

All right.

I tell you folks, I says hi, watch out for deer on your way home.

Yeah.

And then Dan?

You can find us at Gunna Garage. We're gonna try and get more content, but I'm too busy. Sorry. You wanna be bored, go check us out.

He's hanging out with NitroCross drivers.

That's true. I'm doing this.

With two N's.

And then two N's.

And as for me, you guys are just deep into the podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you, Patrick, Alastair, for coming on. I'm glad we finally made this happen.

This has been really fun. We gotta do it again in an event.

Yeah, man, this is awesome. Please be sure to check out NitroCross. This is really fun. I'm gonna look around these cars a little bit more. And for everybody else, be sure to check us out on the next episode.

Where can we find Milo?

Oh, where can we find Milo?

Milo does need an Instagram account.

Yeah, Milo doesn't even know what's going on right now. He's like, guys, this is past my bedtime.

Milo, just like Patrick and I, is working with a few brain cells, trying to rub them together and make fire.

He looks like he just took an edible and is watching Pineapple Express.

Yeah, I'd, yeah.

He looks like he's going through it. Did you sniff too much of the, what's the stuff they use for the fiberglass?

Yeah, we're working with fiberglass and epoxy in here. You might be a little loopy.

That'll do it. And on that note, we will see y'all next time.