122. Racing NASA, American Iron Extreme, Porsche Cup Cars w/ Nick Plocienik

Ozarks is not an easy track, but it is by far the coolest track that I've been on. I was told that these 1LEs are just something else, and to go drive one or go in somebody's car who has one, and I did, and I said, holy crap, this is a serious machine.

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 Ford loving co-host, Dan, Mr. Gun and Garage.

Yeah, you always bring that up when we're in the presence of Chevys.

I know for once it's, well, hold on. He's a Ford guy.

Yeah, there's a lot of really nice, there's probably more expensive money where the Ford's sitting out front than is going on here.

And today we are here with Nick Plocienik. Some of you may recognize the name, Alex Sajadi, who we had on many, many moons ago, who you guys were working together at the time. Are you guys still working together on stuff?

We're, yeah, kind of. Okay. More as driving and co-driver.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah, so I kind of got to meet you through him last year. And quite frankly, you're my biggest rival when it comes to iRacing.

Oh no, oh no.

I'm gonna kick it off right with that. Just kidding. But so Nick, you are a, well, was it a NASA driver with the Camaro? And then also with the GT3, the Cup car that you got earlier this year, you're gonna be doing some races and stuff going forward. So why don't you go and tell us a little bit about who you are, what is it you're doing, and what are some upcoming things for you? We'll just kind of go from there.

All right. So Nick Plocienik, I'm a contractor. Obviously I work, my company's Redline Contracting, right out of Hamel over here. I got into driving motorcycles back in the day. That's kind of what got me to the point of fast cars and stuff, but I always loved cars. And fast forward after a crash and a bunch of other cars, I decided I wanted to get back in the racing. And so I went and got a car to build and crash that one, which kind of sucked. But my father-in-law was in that car when all that happened up at BIR. But it's all good. And then I wanted to get to the wheel-to-wheel racing. And I found that NASA was the easiest way to get into it. And I had the Camaro. And we built it to be an American AIX car. So that's American Iron Extreme out of NASA. And I do the Mid-America stuff. So you can do... There's all kinds of different classes and regions for it. But I literally just started last year. And 24 was my first race in April. And I went all the way through. I did pretty well. I had a blown head gasket for the national race, which sucked, but...

Yeah, I was watching that stream.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was like, damn it.

Damn, I know it was so bad, man. I just... I was so pissed. And but it's okay. It's all good. Everything happened for a reason. And we got it all fixed. And my last race in Ozarks, I ended up getting the last day we had a race and I got the first place there and a track record there.

Oh, okay.

Yep. So it's pretty sweet.

Which Ozarks is not an easy track.

Ozarks is not an easy track, but it is by far the coolest track that I've been on.

Really?

I would say that next to Road Atlanta, I haven't driven Road Atlanta yet, but I have driven VIR when I was there with the Skip Barber program in the F4 cars. I went there and that was really cool. But I mean, that's one of the most iconic tracks in the country. I mean, it's-

VIR?

VIR, yeah.

It's such a cool track. And I hope I get to a point to where I can actually drive them in person because it's so much fun on the sim. Like, and I'm sure you're doing a little bit of preparation for an upcoming, is it a wheel to wheel race?

Yep.

So that's going to be taking place at Sebring here in two weeks, which will probably be done by the time this airs, I think. Maybe not.

But yeah, on the 18th, yeah, I'll be down there. We're leaving on the 15th to go down.

OK.

Alex is coming with me.

OK.

So, yeah. And then I ended up doing really well after, you know, throughout the whole entire season, meeting, meeting some cool people, meeting a lot of big names, I guess, in racing. And JDC. Miller is one that I ran into, which is kind of my next venture in the IMSA. So, but yeah, during this time, I bought a Porsche 991.2 Cup Car, and that's what I'm racing next weekend. So I'm really excited about it.

What's that class like? Is it all going to be 991.2 Cup Cars or what is it exactly?

So actually, so I'm ST, so I think it's Sport Touring 1, which is like the higher level, you know, of that, like the faster cars, I guess. I looked the other day and there's, you know, a Radical gonna be in there. MP01, there's two of those in there. Corvette, my buddy Derek, he drives like a 850 horsepower Mustang.

And he just had to look at Dan on that one.

I was excited, I perked up for a minute.

Yeah, no, he's a good driver, he's a good driver. He's actually the one who won first place in the Nationals. Okay. But, and I don't know what else is there, but you know, and this is a NASA event that's down in Sebring. So it's not the PCA stuff that I'm all signed up for because I have a lot of PCA races coming up throughout the year until my IMSA stuff starts probably mid-year, so.

So PCA, that's Porsche Club America?

Yeah, Porsche Club of America Racing.

Okay.

Oopsie. So, yeah, it's cool. They really, it's a little different. I guess they have a lot of, there's a lot of cars on the track. You know, I think that anytime there's about 40 to 45 cars Holy s***. in the big groups, which is really cool. You know, I'm gonna get you in, get you ready for, you know, the big, big step. And so I'm really excited about it. Yeah.

So big step. Okay. So kind of tell us what your goal is with this, right? Cause like when I first met you, I was like, yeah, this guy wants to go for it. You've made, you've never shied away from the conversation of you want to race, you know, at an IMSA level, at a high, at the highest level in motorsports, right? So you got this upcoming race. What, what is, what do you get from that? So do you get more experience? Is it more so getting closer to competition? What exactly is the goal after that?

Yeah. So it's, it's mostly just going to be the wheel to wheel aspect of it. You know, more racing in a car that is built from the factory, right? So you drive a Camaro that's, you know, they're nice, they're fast, they're cool, you know, right?

But you said it, not me.

But it's not a, it's not an actual factory built race car. You know, and there's a huge difference in, in that, you know, being said, it's, I mean, the Porsche is the, it's the best car, you know, I mean, for a race car, hands down, you know, they're so reliable, they're, they're just put together so sound. It's like, it's like a cheat, cheat mode, you know, almost. But, so this race is going to help at the bigger tracks. So I'm more focused on only the tracks we're going to be driving in IMSA. So Sebring, Daytona, VIR, Road Atlanta, Watkins Glen, Mid-Ohio.

The real big names, right?

The real big ones. So that's what I'm doing with the Porsche right now until everything is all set with the IMSA stuff, which we just kind of got some clarification on some things, which is great. So, okay.

So now are you going to still dabble with this one behind you here and still run that stuff too?

It's called a Camaro, Dan. Don't get too confused.

I don't want to say it all out.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

This is going to turn into a Pike's Peak car.

Oh, okay.

So I want to build this thing to be a Pike's Peak contender. The reason for that is because I know I won't have a lot of time to run in NASA, but there's a couple of guys who I really want to make sure that I spend a lot of time with in NASA. But this car means a lot to me, and it is it is fast. It is fun to drive. And so I won't be driving as much, but it's getting built now for the Pike's Peak.

OK, because right now a drivetrain is completely stock, if I remember correctly, is the drivetrain is completely stock.

There's just a bigger pulley, a smaller pulley and a bigger pulley. I don't know how to.

Yeah, you overdrive your crank pulley and then you go down in size on your supercharger.

Yeah, and then it's tuned with the cam.

And of course it is because it's a Chevy.

Yeah, yeah, I bet it has.

It's been a little while. I love it.

He's getting them all out in the beginning.

Because you want to know what, there's a guy, my buddy Dustin is a guy who always beats me. He has a, you know, in NASA, there's always some sort of something. He beats me every time. It's like, it's crazy. I don't know what he has done to his car. I think you have some sort of something, but there's something going on there, but he's a damn good driver and he has a Mustang. One of the.

Have you run with Derek Carter out of Iowa? He's got a like a Maroon GT 500.

That's the one I'm talking about. He's the one who won NASA. He's actually going to be down at Sebring with me. When he got his provisional licenses, when he got done, we were on the track at Ozarks together. So yeah, if you know him, yeah, absolutely.

Oh, I ran into him at PRI this last time. I follow him on Facebook and then I was, I met him at an HPD event we were at on the track together.

Was it Optima that you guys met? No, no, it was.

Nevermind, I know it's not one. He will not be named. Yeah, anyway, it was, he was trying to convince me to drive with both my feet and I tried it for about, I don't know, two turns and I said, nope, not for me. Oh, yeah.

Do you do that?

Absolutely, you're not fast then?

No, first of all, yeah, no.

I mean, you're driving a Ford, it's all good. When my car works right, I don't lose, but yeah, so it's all good.

I don't know that I could ever, I would love to do that if I could go back 20 years, maybe I would do something like that, but I've got four kids and I'm not, I'm too scared to hit a wall and I'm having a blast.

Not three weeks ago, you weren't.

Yeah, well, that was a black ice problem. Anyway, I'm having a great time. I may not be the fastest guy out there, but I'm usually not the slowest, so it's fine. Some of us guys had to be in middle of the pack, so you guys can win, right?

That's true.

Someone's got to be a middle guy. Which, by the way, we're talking a little bit about this off-camera because in your preparation for Sebring, you just did some sort of race yesterday on iRacing. So was that race with the people that will be at Sebring in two weeks as well?

No, that wasn't. It was just a group of guys and we got together, but the funny thing is if I would have rewound that and sent it to you even further back, I actually right before that, they threw the white flag, I actually spun out on that turn.

Okay.

I reversed, I was so far ahead of the dude and I went and I caught up back up to him right at that last minute, went in front of him and I was like.

Yeah, got real tense real quick.

Yeah, I know. I was like, Oh my God.

Yeah. But either way, it's like, out of a private lobby to go from was a 20th to first, like that's pretty legit.

Yeah.

There's always, when you go go-karting, there's always that one guy that tries too hard, you know what I mean? And you're just like, yeah, I'm never catching up to that and you're that guy.

I'm trying. I'm trying. You know what? Honestly, I'm trying to, I want to be somebody in the Midwest where that they go, or even anywhere, that there's kids, there's people who, I'm going to be 40 this year. So to say that dreams can still happen, it's crazy and I'm living proof of it, man. I'm legitimately putting my heart and soul into everything, my business and my family and then racing. And racing has always been, it's my last thing. I wake up, I go to work, come home, husband, father, everybody goes to sleep and I do my two hours of swimming every single night, Monday through Sunday.

Yeah, so that's about 300 hours he got on me while my sim was in storage.

Yeah.

I'm so mad.

Yeah, you were good though. I mean, you probably still are good. I don't think you're probably off.

I think the rust is shaking off. I think now I got a rhythm going again, but I've been doing VIR, because that's why I kept asking you for, give me a time and give me a track. Don't give me 10 tracks. I was like, give me one thing to aim for. Then we can worry about the rest. So I'm doing the 992 GT3 on VIR, and it's like my optimal is still eight tenths behind you. I'm like, but.

Yeah, of the 992?

Yeah. Yeah, which you did 149.7. It's burned into my head right now.

So. I feel like I'm faster in my 991.2.

I think you might be right on that. I think that car is faster.

I think I am 100% because I'm faster in my in Sebring with my 991 and and VIR.

I don't know what it is. I think you're right, though. The 991, like I'm able to set faster times. Maybe it's lighter. I don't know.

I know. I know it's faster. It's like fast in real life. They're faster. But I think the difference is, is that you can the the front tires in the 992 are the same size as the rear tires on my 991.

Okay.

So there's more grip in the front. Right. But.

Oh, that makes sense. I really do enjoy driving those. Like I, when we first started talking, I was talking about how much I hated driving the Porsches.

I remember that. Yeah.

And I think again, you tell me this, cause you drive different cars in real life, right? Like I'm just a keyboard warrior still, right? I feel like if you get variety, you get better. Do you feel like that's the same case for you between the Camaro and the Porsche?

No, I think you get messed up. I think like if you drive a bunch of different cars, like I've noticed and I've talked to a couple of the pros and what happens is that when they go from one car to another, they have to test a little harder and just shake off the old car and get back into whatever it's that they are driving.

Okay.

I guess you get to a point probably, I mean, when you're a, you know, a top tier driver that you get, it's easy. They're all the same. You figure it out.

Right.

But for me, driving this car and getting in my Porsche, I mean, it's, I mean, it's so weird.

Really?

You know, it really is, but.

Does it take you a minute to just kind of retrain?

Three laps.

Yeah.

About three, four laps. But then like even some of my brake inputs still are messed up until about eight laps.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's a long time. You know, that's a long time.

Right. That's like 12 minutes, depending on the track. Right. So what do you do? So you've done a lot of testing at Brainerd then. How do you feel about that track?

Brainerd, you know, I it's it's near and dear to me because I feel like I've spent so much time there.

You've probably put over 100 laps at that track.

Oh, easy. Yeah, easy. Oh, I don't even know how many times I've even been up there in the past year and a half. I mean, I couldn't tell you, honestly. Christy, the owner of the track is she's she's a nice lady and we're working with her right now to try to help it out a little bit, not saying that she really needs help. But I think like from somebody who she is a die hard strip, you know, strip lady.

Oh, drag strip.

Drag strip. So I don't feel like she cares too much about the not that she doesn't care, but it's not dear to her heart.

It's a different challenge. Right.

It's different. So it's like it's always easy to like have something like that and then say, well, this is my baby, but this is part of it. But you know, and I think we're getting to a point where there's so many people who want to road race that she's helped. She's wanting to help other people, right? Make that a better place for them.

Well, it's easier to manage a drag strip too, right? Like, there's a lot less surface to worry about and to maintain and maintenance and all that stuff. So I feel like that might be part of it too. Who knows? That's my guess.

Well, I think that it was Andre we were talking to that kind of put it in perspective for me a little bit because I love road course. I don't know why somebody wouldn't want to race for 8, 10 seconds and then, you know, sit again. I mean, you can go on to a 30-minute session. I preach that all the time. But for people, people like bragging rights as well. Right? A drag strip is it's the same anywhere in the world. It's the same. It's a quarter mile, eighth mile, whatever. You could set up a track time summer where nobody lives. Who gives a s*** like we're around here. We talk about our Road America times things like that, but nobody really there's nothing to put it in perspective as a quarter mile time, right? That's the same no matter where you go.

I remember that conversation.

Yeah, which I think is why it's probably more universal across.

One of the things that I like to think about, and it's kind of a joke to me too, is like fast cars drive straight, but fast drivers drive curves, turns. I like that saying is because you can build all the power in the world. Like my truck up there, I think that's 800 horsepower.

Toon by Shawn, by the way, one of our sponsors.

Yeah, Toon by Shawn, Shawn Christensen, he started everything. I brought it to him to have those guys build everything. I know Patience had their hands on it. Dave Rasmussen had his hands on it. Yeah, a couple other shops here did. Mo's Performance, that's where most of it got done.

We like to get around, don't you?

Yeah, spread the love.

Well, the thing is, that's where it was getting built, was at Mo's, and that's where it started, and that's where it kind of stayed.

Gotcha, it's making sense now.

And then after that, we need to get some stuff done, and at that time, Dave was at Eurocharged, so he helped me, because he's one of the best mechanics on cars. I mean, hands down, he is. I mean, doesn't really, yeah, he's the s***. He knows what he's doing. And then, Shawn, I think my truck, this caliber of a build, was one of Shawn's first, you know? So there was some things that we just had to perfect, and I brought it over to Patience, and they took care of it. And we're still, I just got a transmission sponsorship from Peer.

I saw that.

Yeah.

I saw your merch over there.

Yeah.

You should have been wearing that pink today.

I know, man. I know. But I'm going to put that in there if I keep the truck.

Oh, s***. Okay.

The Peer transmission. So I want a sequential for this, and I want just a...

Who would you go for a sequential, like a Sadev or something, or any idea? Or 6XD is the other one, I think.

6XD, I think. And then there is another one, I forget the name of one, I can't even pronounce it. They're a European company.

Yeah, I was thinking about Sadev, but I don't know if that's the same one. They're like the ones that go on the Nitro Cross Cars and stuff.

No, it starts with an S though, I can't remember.

Send it to Google later.

Yeah, we'll do that later. But at PRI, I ended up chatting with all of them.

With 6XD?

Yeah, 6XD. Nice. We'll see what happens with that, I don't really know. I didn't put a lot of effort into that. I was there to talk to Steelo, and Steelo Helmets, and AP Brakes. I wanted to chat with them, which is, I got some really cool stuff. I'm still waiting on Steelo, but I think I have got some good stuff coming with them.

Well, PRI is one of those where you have your main objective, and then everything else is like, all right, cool. For us, we had to leave here two or three podcasts. My number one goal is to get Apex Turbo on, which we did. Who do we have after that? I'm blanking. We had Ashley, and then we had Andy. So it's like, fly by the seat of your pants sort of deal, but you have your one or two, and then you figure it out, right?

Well, that and the communication, everybody goes home, then it's Christmas, New Year, so even if you're sending emails out, right, as soon as you get back, nobody's paying attention to anything for the next few weeks.

I just got an email back that I sent like three or four weeks ago for like a pretty big podcast we have coming up, and it's like, that whole Christmas holiday thing, like it throws things into a...

It does.

It makes things goofy.

It goes far back on the inbox, you know?

Yeah.

And if you're not one of those guys, I'm one of those guys that I forget to clear things out and I forget to go back three pages, you know, after a weekend or two. But honestly, yeah, Stilo was really good. They actually just emailed me back, you know, so he said he needed another week to put some stuff together. So I'm super excited about that. That was literally my main reason to even go to PRI.

So why Stilo? Why do you like Stilo so much?

I should have brought my helmet. They're the best helmets. I mean, I don't really know what to say other than the comfort, the durability, the way they look. I mean, I have an RI. That's my backup helmet right now. I've tried a bunch of them. I got a big head. So, I mean, this is seven in seven A's, man.

I think we discussed that at PRI. You and I have the same size head. So, yeah.

Oh, we got big heads together. Big head crew.

Well, and then I was going to say that if they come back and the answer is no at the end, we'll edit all this out. So, don't worry about that. All that good s*** you said about them.

We'll try again here once I'm driving with the JDC. So, it's all good.

I always tell people jokingly, like, you get three cuts. So, drop whatever you want. And then it's like, never mind, I shouldn't have said that. I had to edit the Bluetooth thing out of that episode, by the way. It didn't flow well. Because like, it was a weird thing. Unrelated topic. Okay, but I do want to get back to this car, because you're just about to get into what it's going to be to be a time attack car. So, are you working with Twin Cities Performance on that still, or what exactly is your plan to turn it into a full blown time attack car?

I'm working with Patience and Twin Cities Performance. Okay. It's kind of crazy, because I know that Gary over at Patience bounces stuff off of Carl, and vice versa. They do really good welding at Patience, right? So, when things need to be fabbed, it's fabbed over there. I mean, they sponsor me, right? So, but when it comes down to the performance of the vehicle, I mean, Carl, he's an animal. I mean, I couldn't believe, he was talking to me, he's going so fast, and I'm like, bro, I don't even know what you're saying, man.

Like, I don't even know what you're saying.

Like, I don't know anything about building a car. Like, I really don't. I can just drive them. But yeah, so, we're going to lighten this baby up. We're probably going to take, I will get a bigger supercharger for when it goes 100% just time attack. Right now, I don't need all that power on the road course when I'm racing in like NASA or whatever. So, this will be for sure my last season, with NASA, which sucks because the Mid-America people are just amazing.

It's not like you had a blast all year.

Oh my God. I mean, so Donna, Donna is the lady who owns Mid-America, Donna Lane. And she's really just, she's like a big mom, you know? And she's like, I'm going to come to some of your races. Tell me when they are and I'm going to come and I'm like, that's great, that's so cool. But yeah, so we're going to, we're going to pretty much make this thing as, as quick as we can, but as reliable as, as possible, you know, right? So it's kind of weird, right? Tractive suspension, that's what I have on here right now. And their Porsche, Porsche won the past two years with no sway bars on the car. And it's crazy how that suspension is. It's unbelievable. And so I can adjust my suspension as I'm driving if I need to. The yaw, the pitch, the roll, everything. And so if, you know, for an example, the first time I drove it, after you put the new arms and all that stuff on it, it drove like crap. You know, it wasn't set up for Ozarks. It was set up for BIR. BIR is flat and Ozarks up and down and turns everywhere, you know. And I will say, and I do want to give a shout out to JR JR, he's the owner of the track. And I would like to give him a shout out because he's the man. He always said, if you ever need to come back and just run the track, you know, let us know. So he keeps things open for people. But that track is just, it's unbelievable to drive, man. But okay.

It's beautiful looking. I've seen GoPro footage from my friends that have been over there. It's insane. You know, it's just so hilly blind corners and all. It's just, it's crazy.

Yeah. So when it comes to that stuff, though, so you said when it comes to the performance stuff, you're like, this is where you want it to be. You're like, I need to go this fast. You leave that to somebody else. When it comes to how it should handle, is that stuff that you just kind of like picked up along the way or is that you're like, hey, I need it to not roll as much here. I needed to do this and this. Where does any of that experience come from?

So honestly, is somebody coaching too?

Is that part of it?

You're not kind of not really. But so Alex was my coach for a while and he was kind of letting me know like, hey, this is you want it to roll this much or you want it to roll like this, you know, whatever. You want your God to be like this. But Gary over there, I would ask him a lot of questions. I mean, he's such a smart dude. And he's very mechanically inclined, right? So he can adjust things and he can make me understand it. So when I tell him it's doing this and I'm feeling this, he's fixing it.

Okay.

You know, and he's doing it right there on the spot, which is so cool. But if he can't find a way to fix it or he has questions, he will literally call, I don't know who it is.

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But he, some Penske guy, he knows that kind of helped him out a lot with my car getting set up for where it is right now. So, yeah.

It's not what you know, it's who you know sometimes.

That's all it is, man. Cause it ain't me knowing any of this mechanical stuff. I can tell, I'm pretty good now to tell people what I'm feeling, and I'm very sensitive to it now. Cause driving the Porsche, you kind of have to be.

Yeah, it has a touchier car.

It's very touchy, you know, and so.

Would you say it's less forgiving than this car?

Yeah. Okay. Very much so. It's different with the rear engine car. So you're coming in to drive in a full year with this, and then you get into a car that instead of having to slow down or slam on the brakes into a corner, you actually just got to ease onto the brakes and gun it through, you know? Like that's what the Porsche, you have to put the gas on, you know? Otherwise it over, it rotates, because there's so much weight in the back. But yeah, it's cool. It's a learning experience.

Well, I don't want to jump all over the place, but can we go back a little bit here? So you're saying you had a year with this car, you said you raced bikes before, and then you took some time off to build a business, to have a family, do all that kind of stuff, and then you decide to get back in this. What's our get into this part of it? Did you start with, you said you did skip barber. What was the first step when you were like, hey, I want to go race cars on a track?

I wanted to find the car that suited how I drove. So I bought a Mercedes GTS, drove it for a little bit, realized that it was not, it's a street car, it's a luxury car. It wasn't the, let me turn this off, sorry.

Were you doing like high performance driving events with that and stuff?

Yep, so at that time, I had another coach. I had another coach and I was going to Brainerd and I was doing as much as I can coaching with him. And we were doing just like the HPD classes. And I got to a point, then we would do simming at home. So I didn't have the sim I have now. I had like a little cheap one.

Like a Logitech sort of deal.

And so he was helping me with that and helping with my left foot braking. That was kind of where that all went, came from.

Okay.

The left foot braking is key. Yeah, we talked about that. Yeah, we can talk about that. Anyway, and so, yeah. And then next thing you know, like I was told that these 1LEs are just something else and to go drive one or go in somebody's car who has one and let them rip it for you. And I did and I said, holy crap, this is a serious machine. And I pulled the trigger and I said, let me get one of them. And I did. So I got the one that's smashed now, but went through that one. And then that was all HPD stuff. And then at the end of my first year driving all these HPD, which is 23, OK, I got this car. This is, it's got this one, it had like 18 miles on it. And we started cutting it all apart and everything. It was crazy. But then I did my, then after the first year in 23, 24, in March of 24, I was, I went to a Skid Barber and did a three day there at VIR and that was F4 car. And then after that, April, my car was ready with the cage and the seats. And I think the suspension all, brakes were all done at the same time. And then I went to my first, you know, competition class and got it all done. And that was at Ozarks as well. And then, so I started my season. Next thing you know, I mean, 10 races. I don't know how many track days, you know.

Is there any one thing along the way that just kind of made it all clicked? Was the skip barber school like a huge part of it? Or is it just kind of just been clicking away at it along the way here? And it's just every, every time you're probably learning a little bit growing each time as seat time is it?

Seat time is key. And it doesn't matter. Like, you know, there's a lot of people who will say, you know, oh, he's, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll use the word, you know, money. Well, money can't buy you, money can't buy you seat time. Money can't buy you, you know, the experience of driving a fast car. I mean, you can drive it, but you have to learn. And just to be open, take everything in. That at that point, Alex was my coach. And then so he was telling me to do these type of things on the sim. And so I was listening to him and that's all I was doing, working and that. And as much track time as I could. Honestly, yeah, I was just C time, C time, C time.

Yeah, I don't know how money can't really make you a better driver. No, but people think that. I don't know why they think that. First of all, you have to have money to play this game. But other than that, it's not making you better than anybody else.

I think it's just levels, right? You can have a guy that goes to Gridlife, their FRS, I know I want to get a text message about this for sure.

What about the FRS now?

No, but they'll be the best in that class, right? Then you go up to that next level. All right, now you're doing Porsches, and then you get the next level, and the next level. There's levels to this, right? It doesn't mean that one's a better driver than the other. It's just that you're able to play within the field that you're able to play in.

Right. Well, that's a said named person you're probably talking about. I've ridden in the car with them, and I'm driving around in probably a six-figure car, and I've gotten in an FRS with him.

Probably, by the way.

Yeah, it was not anymore. It was when I got it, but anyway, it's-

You mean the previous person. Whatever.

Anyway, he's probably got one-third into the car of his car or whatever, and that guy can wheel. I mean, that just goes to show you there, like money doesn't make any f****** difference in the whole thing.

It doesn't. And it's so weird, like how I get these messages that are just crazy that I get, you know, oh, it must be nice to be able to do. Like, you know what?

It is.

It kind of is.

It is. But at the same time, it's like you can have the money, but I put the damn effort in. Like, I'm going to be driving now at a level where I met my idol driver when I was at Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, just in October, you know? I'm going to be on the same track with these guys at the same time now, you know, coming up. And it's like... Money couldn't have put me there. I had to go through it. I had to learn as quickly as I could to get to there. But there's this kid in... His name is Hayden Maness. He's down in... I think he lives in Missouri or Kansas City or maybe, I don't know, one of the close areas down there. Yeah, he's a... The little dude is unbelievable. He drives a Miata. And I remember the very first time I got on that track with him, he's a way better driver than I was, you know, and he still probably might be a better driver than me. I don't know. This dude was on my butt the whole time, and I was driving this, and he was just driving a Miata, the very first race I was ever out there. And I was like, how is this dude doing this? You know, and then now, like over the course of a year, he's driven a lot, and his dad's a great driver as well, so helping coach them, but he has a ton of seat time. And those Miata drivers are something else.

I thought about doing that just to help learn a little bit, because part of my problem is, is I don't want to crack my car up. Unless you can take some of that fear out of the aspect of it, you're not really going to get to that level. But I was like, man, if I buy a $6,000 Miata, I could just mean that they're capable. I know, I've seen it.

But you can also go to racingjunk.com, to the guys that hooked us up at a booth at a PRI. They got constantly raced cars for sale. I don't know if that's just people's dreams ending or what, but it's like you can get-

Sometimes you can get yourself to a point where you're like, I don't think I can afford this anymore.

Yeah, there's that too, right? Yeah. Dreams ending. But it's like you can get some really cool stuff and get some serious seat time. But yeah, this is definitely not a cheap sport though. You could probably allude to that.

Well, there's a whole wall behind us here of I know not cheap.

Yeah, that's got to be more to my car outside. All these tires.

Not to bring the money back into the aspect.

No, I don't know about that. I mean, there are. I get a lot of scrubs. I still buy a lot of the scrubs, man, from this company in Wisconsin. I'm not going to lie. Some of the scrubs now that I get, I mean, some of these ones that are in these boxes are brand new. I paid 150 bucks for them. Then you have these brand new ones that you pay $3,000 for a set. Honestly, I don't know the difference. I can't see the difference unless I'm in a straight qualifying race and I still haven't had a huge difference, like it's not any different. To me, maybe I'm just not that good of a driver or something. I don't know, but who knows?

But you're well aware that there's still a path ahead of you, right? Like you still have more to learn.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Yeah, you're not ignorant to that fact either.

No, and I sure as hell don't think I'm the best driver. Right. But I love to just put on the helmet and that's all I'm doing.

But you can't even be the guy, sorry, I just did my damn voice. You can't even just be the guy that's like, all right, I'm going to go out there and have fun. You're going out there to win too, right? You can't be like, all right, I'm mediocre and then not compete, you know? So you have to have a little bit of that, like, I'm going to kick some a** today, energy.

Yeah, 100 percent. And like, that is my goal every time when I'm out on the track is to win, you know, and if I'm if I'm not winning that race, then the next race I will try to win, you know, but it's like I'm doing as much as I can. But in NASA, though, also, I'm out there to learn as much as I can while I'm racing too. And I've gotten some help, you know, because I know that it wasn't it's not like up for money. Those those are there's no money there, you know. So my buddy Dustin kind of helped me out on the track. He saw where I wanted to go and where I where I'm going. And he's like, hey, man, I can help you out, you know, with whatever whatever you need. And that's just like this little group of guys, Derek, Derek Carter. Yeah, he's he's one of that. Literally, I'm in a group text with Dustin, Derek and this guy named Cal and another guy named Brian. And like, you know, who drive these cars and so yeah, it's cool.

That's cool. Yeah, I was hoping to get, we might get Derek on here sometime. I talked to him about it at PRI. So I think I did you tell me that owns that shop down there or yeah, he's like, he does like a, he's got a junkyard and towing recovery stuff.

Okay.

He's very close to Eric at Midway Mustang. Down there.

Yeah. He told me so.

Iowa people.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know.

I bought, I bought a couple of cars.

I'm not even convinced Iowa exists yet.

It's just a corn.

It's just corn and a bunch of birds. You have to take the batteries out of the place. I'll tell you what.

The E85 is cheaper down there. And there's car people all over. They're just, they're very spread out.

Oh my God. Gary and I went, we stopped at a gas station down there. And this guy was, it was in the middle of nowhere. This little Casey's and he was like, what do you got in that thing? And I showed him my car and we ended up, Alex made me a couple of really cool, funny shirts. Okay. That I won't wear. But everybody else thinks they're hilarious. And I sold one to the guy. He was like, let me give you some money for it. And I was like, no, it's all good. And I started thinking in my head, I'm like, man, maybe we could start selling some shirts.

Right?

And the guy bought it for $8. That's all he had on it. I called up, I called up Alex's, Alex, how much were those shirts? He was like 23 bucks. I think I was like, oh man, I lost money on a free shirt. I was like, oh s***, you know, but it's kind of funny. It's hilarious, the shirt is. I'll keep you well.

Yeah, it's show me.

I'll send it to you.

Yeah, the merch game is pretty real. I'm trying to figure that one out. I'm trying to, my philosophy is like, I want to make something that's so cool that people want it regardless of the name behind it. So we'll get there one day. I'm not quite there yet, but we'll get there.

Yeah, you're still cool. You're still cool.

Slowly but surely.

No, it's cool.

We'll get there.

That's cool.

Yeah, but so then over the course of the next year, so are you going to be doing a lot more track days with the Porsche, more wheel to wheel with that? Is this your first wheel to wheel with the Porsche?

Yeah. Yeah, Don and Sebring. Yeah, that's why I've been really on Sebring a lot lately.

Yeah, that's a fun track. Again, on the Sim.

Yeah, I'm excited about it. I've heard that the Sim is just like real life there. They said that's probably one of the most real tracks on iRacing.

Because the surface changes quite a bit on that one.

Yeah. And yeah, it's bumpy.

All right, Dan, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you think your wife loves you?

Oh, it's got to be like an 8, solid 8.

So by my math, she should get to this episode by like Valentine's Day, right? I think she should go get you a Haltech ECU for that 2JZ Swap Bronco you're doing.

Yeah, I would agree.

So I think it would be great if she used your credit card to go to tunebyshawn, shawn.com to get you a Haltech ECU for 5% off using carbon monoxide. Is that math out?

Absolutely.

I don't think we tell her about this ad until it runs though. Yeah.

You know, it's bumpy, but you know, watching a lot of the videos and studying some of the guys who are driving the same car as me, it seems like, you know, it's just like another track, you know, but, you know, it's fast and it's flat.

So that's the one that Mike wants to go do. Optima runs there. So we want to go to that one.

Yeah.

It's cool.

It's a pretty cool.

That's the only competition stuff that I do is Optima Streetcar stuff.

Okay.

But he really enjoyed that this year.

It is. It adds a different, like I've done the HPDE stuff and that's still a good time too. When you throw competition into the whole thing, I think it does add a whole other little aspect to it. That's kind of fun.

I don't really know much about it. I just know that there's that one guy who has that really fast, like carbon fiber Corvette that's like breaking all these track records. Isn't that an Optima?

I don't know if he does Optima. He's talking about For Us. Oh.

Yeah.

Yeah. I don't think, you're talking about the guy that's going like around the globe.

Yeah. Is that Optima stuff?

I don't know if he does Optima.

Oh, okay.

Unless you're talking about the Camaro guy.

I've seen that thing. I think it's cool.

Yeah. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah. Like the old school one?

The red one? Yeah. He's at SEMA and PRI all the time. That thing is so cool. I watched like a 40-minute video of him talking about what's done to that car.

Yeah.

Gnarliest thing on the planet.

The guy who owns the car and then there's a guy who drives the car, right?

We might be getting things mixed now.

Maybe not.

There's so many cool things.

That is the thing though. That happens more often than I anticipated.

Even at Texas 2K, a lot of the... I shouldn't say a lot. A decent percentage of those guys are higher drivers.

Yeah.

Because you're talking about manning a 3,000-horsepower car down the track.

Yeah.

Somebody's got to finance the f****** thing, too.

Yeah, and you could be like, I own the fastest this. Yeah. It's kind of a cool thing to say. I can't drive it that fast, but I own it.

Yeah.

I think there's a guy, Jason Hart, I think he's a pro driver. Okay. And I know Alex knew him, and I reached out to him on Instagram. And then next thing you know, we start talking. He called me, and it's like we're talking for 45 minutes as he's driving back from Road Atlanta, or Road America, down to Texas. And I've been watching him, and he was, he sent a picture of him driving that car. So I don't know if it's pretty crazy.

I know it was the only hired driver I ever met was the guy who parked in our pits.

Yeah, the guy that won the Trans Am race that day. Yeah, the race winner of that day, he parked like in our pit, and people weren't happy, because they took our friend's parking spot. And we're like, yeah, he's got to move. He's like, I don't know, I was told to park here. We're like, okay, get out of here. Right, yeah, move, man. And then I told him later, I'm like, hey, you remember that guy you told to f*** off earlier? Yeah, he's on the podium over there. Yes.

I don't give a s***, like, it's on the track. Like, I don't care if you're a hot s*** driver. Like, I'm here to have fun too. Like, I paid my stuff to get in here. This is my pit, get the f*** out of here.

That's what happens when you have four or five different events going on. Which, by the way, at the Optima, we got to watch the Trans Am, the Trans Am 2 races.

I would love that.

What was it? It wasn't Formula 4. It was a similar class or whatever.

Oh, I know, Shawn. It was small cars.

Yeah, yeah. And then there was also, oh, what was the entry-level open wheeler on iRacing? The Vs or whatever?

Yeah, the V like 1100s. Formula Vs. Formula Vs.

Yeah, I think they had those there as well.

And then, Sven, who built my computer, actually, he does that. He does really good. Okay. Really good.

Yeah.

And then you see like those crazy, like prototype level cars, like not prototype, whatever the tier is below that, they just make it. It's such an awesome weekend, like as a spectator.

Yeah. Which is cool. I like that.

Well, it's like NASCAR that can turn. Like, it's sick.

It is.

Yeah. You're talking about like 850 horsepower, like American muscle sounding cars.

Yeah. So the first day, I brought this thing to Brainerd after it was all like dialed in. It was on the big course. And I saw one of my buddies was up there. I had no idea he was bringing his car there, but he has a Trans Am car. And we're kind of going around. But I did a really good lap there. And I'm pretty sure it's a track record for at least for a Camaro or any like American muscle cars like that. But I did a 134 on the big track up in Brainerd. So we're trying to dial that in to see if that is the case, but I'm pretty sure.

Who was that other guy we ran with? I think that was a Patience Camaro too. He had an Activero.

The Corvette, you mean?

Oh, Corvette.

John, yeah. He just got into the Porsche stuff. His Porsche 992 Cup Car.

Oh really?

It should be here. I think it either got here today or yesterday.

Well, that's cool he's getting into that.

Yeah, I told him.

Actually, I think he was a Ford guy too, by the way. Was he? He got that C8, but before that, it was all Shelby's, I think.

Yeah, he had like a Boss Mustang that was just crazy arrow that Patience and them did. And then he got the Corvette and he had a C8, and then he got rid of that and got the C8 06. And I think he's still getting the ZR1 too. But yeah, he just got his Cup Car.

That's cool.

It's at Ryan's place, 311.

So is he going to be doing any competing or is that more just so like a track toy?

It's going to be a track toy. I'm trying to get him to at least do time trials. But you got to do some. But now you have a full race car. You have a cage in it. You have protection. You have it's there's nothing that's going to fault. You get in these Cup Cars and they're absolutely insane to drive.

Just dialed from minute one.

Dialed from the first start. Everything about it is just tight. So it's really cool.

How about improving, right? Like what are you doing to track metrics, right? Because when we went to the Optima, you got your, what was it Dan? What was it called again? The thing that Mustang Guy recommended to you? I'm blanking on a name because I didn't drink enough coffee.

Oh, yeah. I'm using the, so Derek does work with... It's been a long time over the break. The Mustang, Middleton Motorsports. I was talking to Chuck, the owner there, and he recommended I get a Garmin Catalyst.

Oh, sure.

That's what it was, Garmin.

So that's what I'm running. And I think it's like having iRacing in your car. I mean, even after the fact, it'll tell you, like it'll say, hey, it'll show you a visual, a line. But like this, if you follow this line, you can shave this much time off. It was very-

It gives you the optimal-

Yeah, all the optimal. It's ridiculous.

Yeah, I have an AIM in this car, and I have the little cameras that are in there. And then in the Porsche, it comes with a V-Box.

Okay.

So it has all that as well. So you can run all your data on it. It's pretty insane.

Yeah. Sorry about the amateur hour interviewing over here.

I'm an amateur too, so it's all good. It's my first time ever doing this.

We'll come back tomorrow. We'll just rewind.

This is completely normal. Yeah, it's all good.

No. So okay. So then you get your data, you're looking over your V-Box and everything. So I'm sure you have somebody coaching you through that at this point. At this point, are you self-sufficient to where you could look at something and be like, I'm just going to do that?

No. I can definitely feel it though after I'm watching. I can feel when I mess up on the track. I have a pretty good memory, so it's like I can remember a lot of weird little things. One of the things that I do when we run the data is, I see how far away because most of the time, I'm just not over far enough. Or I'm not getting on a gas fast enough. Now it's like use the whole track. When you're going to stop, you use the whole track. You're going to turn right, get all the way over to the left before you can turn. Or most of the time, that's how it is. But with the Porsche, I've been doing a lot of stuff with Ryan Gates at 311RS over in Orono. And so he has helped a lot with running that. But also in this car, Alex was helping. He's actually a really sound dude when it comes to the data stuff. And so, yeah, I'm learning. I'm learning. It's a lot. It's a lot to take in with that stuff.

So is that a matter of you just like plugging in your laptop after a track day? Or what does that look like?

After a session.

Okay.

After each session, you take it out. And with Ryan and his program that he's doing, it's pretty amazing. His track support. They, after each session, they take the wheels off. They make sure everything's good. They look, they do everything, they pull the card out, put it in a computer, and you just go back and look at your lap times and look at what you're doing and what you're not doing. My very first time driving, there's a lot of what I wasn't doing. And then I remember him saying, he goes, holy, I didn't think that you were going to get to this level in the first day driving this thing, you know? But he's an awesome guy. And also I got the car from Airpower Racing out in Utah. That's where it came from. And they're actually going to be my track support. And Sebring. So they have a shop in Sebring, Florida. I think it might be outside of Sebring. I don't know.

Okay. So then are you going to have either the 311RS or the Patients guys come out at all for that one? Or is that going to be you working with Airpower?

I'm going to be working with Airpower. And Alex said he's going to come with, you know, which is cool. Have a familiar, you know, ear or mouth or voice on my ear, you know? So that's, that's cool. Yeah.

Okay. One of the things that I wanted to touch on earlier is it's not just a matter of being a driver, right? Trying to go to where you're trying to go. It's you also got to have the ability to talk to potential sponsors, right? Can you touch on that as well? Because that's the one thing that people forget about being a race car driver is they also have to be the face too, right? You have to bring in the sponsorship dollars. And obviously you've gotten a taste of that this year. What are those conversations look like?

I mean, so yeah, I pulled a couple of sponsors. I do have a couple of really large sponsors, excuse me, helping with the IMSA stuff right now. I don't think I can probably talk about that yet.

That's fine.

We can rewind. But that portion of it is, yeah, it's a lot of meeting with the right people, starting the dialogue weeks before you even talk to them, throwing feelers out there. And then when you do talk to them, just talk to them. You're just talking to people. Perfect examples with race tech seats. I want to do another little business and I got invited at PRI with those guys. And they told me that after meeting them and talking to them, it's like, oh wow, you're a good dude. But it's like you have to be able to present yourself. You have to be able to stand there with those uncomfortable moments and say, I don't know you, but can you help sponsor me? Yeah. It's a hard conversation to bring up. But I feel like every big company, they know what people want. They know that people want to get sponsored by them, however that is. And you put together, I have a whole sponsorship package that I can give to people. And you have to put the time in, get pictures, write about yourself, which is weird.

Like, here's a picture of me in Vegas, sort of doing it.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

The Bellagio, all to die for.

Right?

Something like that, yeah.

But the sponsorship stuff is really hard. And it's, what's the hardest part about it? Getting somebody to even say, hey, what's up? You know, because you send emails, you send Instagram messages, you send Facebook messages, you send snail mail. It doesn't matter what it is. You know, like 90% of the people, I feel like that's all people want from them. They just want something from them. Being a business owner, like I kind of feel like I understand that. I get it. You know, somebody always wants something, you know, and when you can not come off to be wanting, but more or less like, what's the word?

Like a mutual sort of relationship.

Building something, you know? Building a relationship with this person or this team or this company or whatever it is. It starts really slow. You know, you can never expect to all of a sudden, you know, one email and get pissed off that you didn't get the Red Bull sponsorship. You know what I mean? So anyway, yeah.

What does your first hey look like, right? And I haven't really pursued much of anything since like last year, if I'm being completely honest, just because I was way smaller fish than I am now, right? Like I was still pretty much towards the beginning of this journey, right? Now we're kind of, I don't want to say the other end, but like, you know, that's really, you get those no's, right? Like what does that initial contact look like for you? Because this probably comes back to your day job, right? Like you're familiar what it takes to be successful in that. Are you applying some of those skills to him guessing?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I'm a very persistent person, so, and-

I know. I f****** know.

Right, so it's like when I set my mind to something, like I just go and then I manifest it, right? And so in my, I talk to myself a lot, it's kind of weird, you know, but like I do talk to myself, like in my head when I'm driving, I usually barely have the radio on and it's just, Anderson Composite, that was my first sponsorship, a small sponsorship that we got, but I sent him an email three weeks before last PRI and I just said, hey, man, I hear you guys are the best carbon fiber company, you know, and you guys have the coolest looking stuff for these vehicles. And you know, was, I appreciate that, thank you. And then what does a sponsorship look like? You know, like the next conversation or two conversations after. And then it's, oh, okay, well, this is, what do you have? You know, well, let me see your car, you know, send me some pictures. Then all of a sudden you get the sponsorship letter, you know, fill this out. Why should we sponsor you? You know, and then you fill everything out and then you give it to them. You send us some pictures and then you tell them what you want to do. And then they either say yes or no, but they said, you know, hey, we, you know, we'd like to help you out. And they gave me a discount off of all my stuff. So, and yeah, so that's, that was the first, like, hey, you know.

Well, it seems very, a little more formal. I can't imagine all of them were as formal as filled this out.

A lot of them are.

Really? A lot of them are.

A lot of them are. You do have to fill some stuff out. I haven't, I didn't really have to fill much out with a peer. They asked me some questions.

Okay.

And I just kind of broke it down, you know, and I said, this is what I'm trying to do with the car. And next thing you know, they're like, dude, cool, you know.

A lot of them are probably, even though this may be your first time approaching them, they, this is not their first rodeo, right? So they probably know what a sponsorship package looks like to them. And they're probably all going to be different.

Yep. You're going to have those people who are going to give 30% off, they're going to give 60% off. And you're going to get to a point where people are going to give you small things like... And I'll be honest, I don't know if it would technically call a sponsorship, but Essex AP Brakes, they are the ones who I got all my brakes from. And they gave me from PRI this year, they gave me AP Brakes for my Porsche. And it's the first set ever to go on a 991.2 because they just made them, you know.

Hopefully, they work out.

Yeah, I hope they work.

You're just the test mule.

You have the test mule. And they sent them up, they should be here tomorrow, actually. OK. So it's just, I don't know, then you get to a point, I guess, when you start talking to so many people, it's just, I mean, you know, you just talk to everybody. Everybody's a person. Doesn't matter if they're...

You realize that pretty quick, yeah.

Yeah, everybody just, they're just people.

I will admit, it's a little bit of a life hack doing it through the podcast because it's just like I come to just have a conversation. That's it. And it's so much easier to approach. And that's how like this year at PRI, dance on me come out of my shell. Last year, I was pretty nervous to talk to any of these booths. This year, I'm just walking up to people just because it's just a conversation. Right. And then maybe it goes somewhere, maybe it doesn't. In a few weeks here, we'll be hosting our, you're invited by the way, we're going to be hosting kind of like a get together of all previous Minnoxide guests, right?

Cool.

Who knows what kind of conversations people will have? And that's all those trade shows are, just conversations.

Yeah. I'm like, I love it. I love meeting people. I love talking to people. I love when people...

I didn't say I love it. No, I know. Yes, you do.

Yes, you do. But I enjoy it. I enjoy people, you know, and that's kind of where I can open up to people and just have an honest conversation with them. And I think a lot of times as a driver, right, or how would you say, like a consumer, right, we would think that talking to some of these companies is so hard to do, you know, but we do overthink it. And, you know, the Steelo one that's happening, I mean, I overthought it and the guy was so cool, like so cool when I met him. And it's just like, you know, I don't know, but a lot of times people don't have as many consumers like companies, let's say, reaching out to them as we would think, you know, about sponsorships. And I'm kind of finding that out, you know, but other than like Red Bull and like Monster, you know, I've reached out to Red Bull a lot of times and, you know, working with somebody over there is pretty cool, you know, so I'm hoping to get a full on sponsorship by them.

They sponsor the entire world, right?

Well, you might have to jump out of a plane and go skiing with crocodiles for a sponsor, you worry.

You feel about dropping your car out of a cargo ship.

You know, what the funny thing is, is like they, you have to really, really be good at whatever it is that you're asking them to help.

The guy.

You have to be that guy. And I mean, you know, walking in the paddock at the Petite Le Mans, there was, I only saw like one Red Bull, two Red Bull guys. And one of them was a Formula One dude who was there. And the other one was like a ex, like, I don't know, Formula Atlantic driver who drives WEC and stuff like that. And it's like, there's not that many, but I saw a lot of monster, you know?

Right.

Yeah, that's cool.

Was there ever a moment you doubted yourself?

Yeah, absolutely. All this, just last week. Last week, I literally said to my wife, I said, I don't know what the f*** I'm doing, you know? And I'm probably three, $400,000 into this. What am I doing? What am I, you know? And she looked at me and she was like, what? My wife is the biggest supporter, man. She supports me 110%. It's crazy. And I'm very blessed to have that. And I'm not like, I'm kind of wild, like I'm up and down, like anyway. But, and she's like, what are you saying? And I'm like, am I really thinking I'm going to be a professional driver? And then like, what am I doing? I'm 40 years old. Who wants to support a 40 year old? Like no team would do that. Why would you do that? You know, well, we just get out the phone just a couple of days ago and like, you know, so some really great stuff is happening, you know? And it's like, holy s***. Like, no, I threw it out there in the world to have somebody catch it. And as much as we want to doubt ourselves, we just kind of believe in ourselves. I think that's where a lot of it comes in.

I've got one of those too, by the way, a wife like that. And yeah, it's probably a daily conversation where I'm like, all right, you got four kids at home, you got all this stuff, you're running a business, you're doing all this s*** at the same time. And then you're like, oh, by the way, I'm going to go fly to Texas for a week with Harris. And she's like, sure, no problem. But at the same time, you're like, I don't know what the f*** I'm doing.

Yeah, I have to be nice to that one if I want to keep hanging out with my friend.

Yeah, no, and it's great.

Ms. Deckard, can I hang out with Mr. Deckard? You know, anyways.

It's the biggest piece, I think, when you have a family. And when you, if you don't have a supportive wife, or somebody who believes in you, especially whether it's business, being a father, being a husband, being a race car driver, being, you know, a podcast.

I'm single for a reason, brother.

But you know what I mean? You know, I mean, Daniel Morad, he has his podcast, and him and his wife are doing a lot of it, you know. He's a pro driver. It's like, I don't know. Anyway, but I think the support at home is number one is key. Yeah. And there's a lot of people who think that they get support, but they don't really have any idea what real support is. And I have real support.

Does she come to the track? You have kids then too? I have two kids, yeah. Two kids. Do they come to the track? Are they really little or?

They're little. So they're two and four. And now next month, they're both going to be three and five. You know, so they are just getting my little one into karting. Well, my oldest now, she's about to be five years old. I can't even believe that. It's wild to me. So she just came karting for the first time, like three and a half weeks ago, and she loves it. And I'm excited about it. She's done really well. So it's like, holy crap, like, this is my daughter. Where did you learn how to do this? You know, like, how are you literally turning in front of people and like cutting people off? Like, where did this come from? And the crazy thing is she like banged on her steering wheel when she like, she got upset because this guy, this kid like kind of hit her and it slowed her down. She's like, I just couldn't go fast enough and I thought it was so cool. But, um.

Oh God, she's ruined forever.

Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know.

There's a road rage. It's just a natural thing that everybody has.

Yeah. But yeah, the support is key. I don't even remember where we're, I do this. I go off on Tandem.

The weave.

No, that's cool. I like that, I try and involve my kids too. So for my youngest, who by the way is seven, and she, we went to Power Cruise. It was her birthday weekend. So we took the camper, we went out, and she didn't get to go out on the course with me. My 14 year old did this year for the first time. So she's been bit by the bug. She'll actually be racing snowmobiles this year. My 14 year old, so. Yeah, it's some, I think some people like, they have their thing, but if you don't involve them also, then it's going to be miserable for everybody.

Right.

You know?

And that is so like the kids will come down, they'll watch me, you know, they'll watch me sim. They want to sit on my lap and do it. And you know, my son, he's, you know, he's two. And he, so my kids are both bilingual, you know? So when he's starting to talk, it's kind of talks funny, but it's daddy racing, daddy racing. And then, you know, boom, boom, you know, stuff like that. And it's, it's really cool, but I think he's going to get into it as well. You know, Peli is going to be starting carting at Stockholm this year. So I'll have a cart out there already for her.

So did you, I built a separate, just cause I knew they were going to want to mess with mine. I built a separate one just for them. I did like a, like a cheaper rig. And then I did the Logitech 923.

Oh, sure.

And then an Xbox and a TV and all that stuff. So yeah, they, they enjoy that.

I want to do one. I actually just asked somebody today, where did they get theirs for their...

So I just did all mine, just buying the parts online and then putting it together. But I, what's kind of neat is, so if you sign up for, I don't know, if it's Steam or whatever, I have my Xbox also on my gaming PC that runs my Sim, but I can get Forza on there. Then we can actually race together also, even though it's Xbox and that I can get through the Xbox app, we can race together.

I didn't know that was a thing. I'm not a techy person.

Yeah, I did that like four years ago. That was not always the case, by the way. Ten years ago when I was gaming, you had these silos, you had the Xbox people here, the PlayStation people here, and the PC people here. Now you can all just cross-platform, which is crazy.

That's really cool.

One thing Xbox realized that the PC gaming is growing crazy.

It was like a whole Windows thing too. Yeah. Once I found out about that Xbox game app, I'm like, all right, I'll do Forza with people.

You can't do iRacing, obviously.

But it's still a start. My biggest regret in life is sucking at Gran Turismo. I never realized-

Your biggest regret in life? Sucking at Gran Turismo.

He's got a new biggest regret every few minutes.

You got no idea, dude. I had six meltdowns today. I called him today because I was having issues with this one. I'm like, Dan, I'm going to be late. I f***** up, man. I'm like, you know, but no, I realized I was never approaching it correctly, right? I never thought about racing lines and all that. I wish I would have learned a little bit more of that when I was younger. I would have been kicking your a** today, but it's okay.

Yeah, you probably. I mean, dude, I mean, when I was, what was that? You said three months it's been?

Probably three or four months ago.

I mean, yeah. I couldn't even, like, hey, look at this fast time. He's like, look at mine.

I'm like, I'm just saying it's been 50 laps. I haven't caught up yet. So it's been difficult.

My ego out. My I did get down. I had a pretty low optimal on Road to America.

Just noted my first track.

I started the only the only reason why I haven't sent it to you because it wasn't clean. OK, so it's it's under that.

Yeah, that's the thing. It's like if it has that asterisk next to it, it don't count.

It doesn't count.

So you would never give me that forgiveness. I'm not going to give it to you.

And I was like, I'm about to.

No, stay inside the white lines. You know how it goes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I haven't been on Road America in a little while. Yeah, me and Dan have kind of like a background project we're kind of working on once the financial is allowed to do so. But we have a pretty cool couple of cool ideas we may pursue, which may allow us to do more cool stuff like that in real life. But we'll get there. Yeah, I'll tell you a bit off camera.

Yeah, for sure.

I got one, two people's a** to kick, but. Okay, so I'm trying to think because we kind of touched on like the time attack side of things. The Porsche stuff, sort of. I mean, at what point did you realize like, hey, I need to get into something beyond the Camaro? Was that always the game plan or did you just kind of realize you filled that seat in pretty quick in the Camaro?

I'm still learning in the Camaro too. You know, the Camaro is, it's awesome, right? It's a great car, but there's nothing that drives like a Porsche race car. There's nothing. And I mean, I haven't driven like a Ferrari, you know, I haven't driven a Ferrari yet or a Lamborghini or, you know, I can just name some of these higher and...

You don't see them on the track though. I mean, even like in a real world situation, I mean, the SVJ with Mr. What was it? SVO?

STO with Schwartz. Yeah, what about him?

I'm just saying you don't run into them on the racetrack very often. Plenty of Porsches, but that's also my Porsche's design though, right?

Like it goes back to what you were saying earlier, like that is a race car, like all day long. Like they have an entire series. They give out sponsorships to come race for us, you know, like, right? I, that's, it's kind of like, it kind of goes back to like how Ferrari started selling cars because he loved racing so much. That's the reason that we see Ferraris on the road, to fund the racing. Same thing on Porsche. I feel like it has like that race-bred spirit.

Yeah. I mean, Porsche is just, man, those cars are just something else, man.

It's just daddy right now, man. It's running s***.

It really is, man. But the, I mean, the Ferrari 296, the GT3s.

Yeah.

I mean, that's an amazing car.

I know a guy that has one.

Mercedes, GT3, and then GT4. I mean, that's an amazing car, you know? But the Lamborghini, the Super Trofeo, or however they call that thing. Yeah.

I don't see a ton of them.

No, there's a couple of them. A girl group, Danes, what is it called? I forget what their names are. But anyway, it's a woman-ran team, and they're pretty good, and they got the Lamborghini.

Do they? Okay, so that's what I'm saying. I don't see them, you see the Porsches everywhere. That's why I felt like that caliber of cars for a different thing is to sit in a thing like this and come out for cars and coffee, right? I don't want to say it's a flex thing, but I mean, you enjoy the cars, but you don't see them out like you see the other cars. You don't see, you see a lot of these, you see a lot of Porsches, all that kind of stuff, but not.

Yeah, and a lot of Mustangs.

Yeah, yeah. I wasn't even going to bring it up.

Yeah, a lot of Mustangs.

All right.

They are very capable for not much money.

I'm about to ruin your newfound friendship. What are your thoughts on the GTD?

On the new one?

Yeah.

That it's absolutely amazing.

Okay, nevermind.

It is absolutely amazing.

I was expecting a different answer.

No, that Dark Horse R that there is, I'd like that. I made a friend with a guy whose name is Sam Paley. He's a pro driver in IMSA, GT4, and that's what he drives is one of those.

I couldn't tell. I had a Dark Horse on my lift after a buddy of mine got one, and underneath, I couldn't tell the difference between that and my GT500.

Was it the Dark Horse R?

It was not an R, but usually an R is pretty similar.

I saw a video of him when he's driving, he's not moving. He's barely moving, and you watch some of the guys who are driving the Porsches and stuff, they're moving all over the place.

They have to really control the animal.

Yeah, and he just looks like he's just like, just, you know.

Yeah. Well, I did a lot of digging on that, because 657, amazing time, don't get me wrong. Like it's the first American Car Sub-7, and I think the only reason they dropped is because Chevy's kind of nipping at their heels with the ZR1. I bet we'll see if that's even in the same league, even though it's got more power. We'll see what happens.

Yeah, but that doesn't always.

That doesn't always equate to s***. Yeah. Yeah. But my thing is, is like, if you looked at some of the video footage, like you could see like some damp spots on the track. Like it wasn't exactly a dry day, and it's not exactly cheap to send a motor home full of, you know, of a support crew and all that to be in Germany for months on end. Right. Because I know that the day they got the 657 was in August, right? And they were still trying to set a new time in October. Just because like it can start raining like that. It's like Florida, a cloud appears out of nowhere in that area. And it's also what, a 12-mile track? Yeah.

So it could be wet in one area, not in the other.

Yeah, that's what she said. And there go our sponsors.

Damn it.

Yeah, very good. Sponsored by BluChu.

Well, are you noticing that too? So I've noticed, I set my best time at Optima. It was, I think Saturday morning, we were out. We had done an evening session the night before, which was our qualifier. Then we went out for another session in the morning. You got two more chances to set your best time. Right. That morning session, I don't know if it's just like I got a good night's sleep. I woke up, I had a jocco. I will, and we reviewed the footage on the catalyst. And after talking to Harris a little bit, I was like, OK, I'm going to put some of this stuff into place. And then I went out and set the best time. Like I shaved a s*** ton of time off from the day before. I would have been where I was just at the high end of the intermediate group. And then there was like the expert group. I was like right at Wavering. I would have definitely been in the expert group had I done that at qualifying the night before. So I do that. But then the later we went out later that afternoon and it was 40 degrees difference from that morning. Hotter? Hotter.

Was it 40 degrees?

Yeah, I don't know. It was a lot.

It was toaster.

It was a very nice, cool morning.

In your Mustang?

GT500, right. Which is the same kind of supercharger, everything in there. I could not get that time, no matter how much I tried.

You were squirrely, and I think there was four crashes that afternoon, too.

Well, then my car was pulling timing, I'm sure, because it was way hotter than it was.

Oh, yeah. I mean, mine has a worse time with the heat than the Mustangs do. And when it's cooler, your tires, they get warmer slower, but then once they're there, it's all good, right?

Right, they stay there more.

But when your car is so hot, you're fighting it, it pulls timing all the time. When I was in, when we were at the Utah for the championship, I mean, honestly, Carl put my car on the dyno and was watching how every certain amount of heat that was going in, the temperature was spiking and how much power I was losing. I probably raced that race with 300 and some horsepower were all in the car, s***, you know? And then you-

Well, again, what did it make on the dyno? Because it, you know, stock power levels, what was it making at its highest power? It had been like five something, right?

It was like 540 something or 580 something. I don't remember what it was. The first time when it was healthy, and then after the head gasket got all messed up and, you know, it was bad. And then now it's like 640 to the wheels, but it's like consistent.

Is the, what's the elevation at the Utah track? It's higher up, isn't it?

Yeah, they're like, I think it's, I think you said it was 4,000 feet up.

Okay.

So, yeah.

It was up there.

It was up there. I mean, my car was hot. I mean, it was bad.

It's just, everything's just harder at elevation. Doesn't matter.

But I mean, those guys like Derek and this guy Cal, I mean, they had cars that were 200, 300 horsepower more than me, 250. I don't know. They'll say different things. And, you know, but like, I mean, I was a second off of one of them and two seconds off of Derek, you know, maybe three. I don't know. We should probably look that up. He'll probably say some now that he's either.

I don't know if Derek's done anything with the suspension other than going through Middleton and having them set it up for track. But that would say that's one of the biggest things about the GT500 is it comes out the box pretty capable of just doing that.

Yeah. Well, sort of these, that Multimatic or whatever it is, that suspension is pretty good.

Okay. I'm just looking at the car now. It looks very far from stock car, but right out the gate, you're saying.

I mean, right out the gate, my car, I mean, with the suspension on it, I mean, really my car has suspension, a cage, different brakes, and some lighter stuff on it.

Yeah.

I mean, it's not like-

What's the weight?

Have you weighed it at all?

Yeah. So it's with me in it and a full tank, it's our, it'll probably empty tank. Empty, it's like 36, 10.

An empty tank?

Yeah. Well, pretty much, almost like a, probably a quarter of a tank, usually is by the end of the race.

Okay.

It's like 36, 10 or 30, yeah.

It's amazing how much weight you could pull out of a car too though.

Oh my God. Yeah.

You could still take quite a bit off here.

Yeah. There's, I think we can get it down to about 3,000.

Yeah. Well, one of our buddies, I think he also races NASA or whatever, Mirza from Detroit. You remember? So he's got a...

Oh yeah. He doesn't even have his dash in there. Yeah. He literally has like his cages zip tied into the firewall. Yeah.

It's a gen five Camaro.

Okay. How much?

2,900 something pounds.

Yeah.

Yeah.

F****** ridiculous.

There's nothing in it but a seat.

I mean, you take out all the electronics in here. I mean, these things are so messed. I mean, it's crazy what Gary and those guys had to go through. You know, there really isn't that many of these stock ones or a stock car that has been brought down to this level. And you find that you unhook something here and it messes something up somewhere along. I mean, you couldn't even start the car without having to be bypassed without having the charging for your phone in the back. There's like a little charging port like right back here. You had to have that plugged in and they had to find some way to go around that to make it even start once it was taken out.

At what point do you go to like an aftermarket ECU?

I need to.

Something like that. Would you do like a Haltech or something?

No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't know if Shawn can make it work. I mean, maybe that is a conversation I want to have with them. But I do think MoTec would probably be the best, you know, but I mean, it's so expensive. But I mean, I'm doing it because I want to get a sequential, I need to put and shave all that weight. There's like 250 pounds in wire in this car that you can take out, you know, wow. So, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what that's about. And also like, then there comes the whole tuning thing with that tune, and now it's like this is another obstacle to overcome, you know. You're not just learning the car, you're not just building the car, and now you have to tune it. It's more and more every single time.

Well, have you ever seen anybody come back to the track the next year with a car exactly like it was the year before? I mean, it's kind of a thing, right? It's just, you're always doing that.

Yeah.

Progressing as you go.

It is. The next thing for here is right away, taking the windshield out, we're taking out the back glass. We have all that glass.

You have like Lexan or something?

Yeah, it's already at the shop.

Let's see, you or somebody else who told me, be careful of putting like Lexan on the back, because like at speed it might fly out. I think it was somebody else who told me that, because you have open windows when you're racing, right? Yeah, I'm not sure if it's with this car. It might have been like a different car specifically, but basically once they open it, like it would just pop the back window.

I guess it depends on how they're doing it.

Yeah, that too.

Because I think like in mine, you have to have the braces for the front, and I think they put something in the back to really get it in there tight. I don't know anything about that.

Yeah, I'm not to remember whose conversation I had with that.

Maybe it could have just been one person that did not glue it in well enough.

Yeah, it could have been someone like you.

That is probably the gas.

It could have been a dream too, who knows. It's been a loopy two weeks for me, three weeks.

Yeah, this thing eats gas like crazy though.

Oh, I'm sure.

I mean, it's just, it's so bad. I didn't even just watch the gasses.

Where are you? So let's just put it in perspective. So a 30 minute session at Road America, I burn a full tank. You're probably about the same for that thing.

I would have a full tank, yeah, gone almost just about. But we actually run a 40 minute, 40 something. And I like came back with fumes.

I probably could go another 10 minutes. What is I roll off in my gas light? Like that, as then I cool down lap, my gas light comes on. So I probably have another 10 minutes of it in it, but then I'm fumes for sure.

So I did that at Worldwide Technology Gateway in St. Louis.

That's an awesome track.

It's cool. It's a really cool track. And that first turn is just, it's something else, man.

It's a beast, yeah.

Especially for like a big car like this. Like it's really, I remember my gas light came on and I'm like, oh my God. And I'm on my comms going, how many minutes do we have left? And they're like 12 minutes. And I'm thinking to myself, how am I going to even make this race? Like it's already, like that's only, you know, it was a half hour race. That's it. And I'm like, oh my God. And I went around the track, I don't know how many times, I think it was like eight or nine more times, but I think it was cause the banking wall, it just was really messing it up.

Oh yeah. So, Oh, I see what you're saying.

And I was like, oh my God. But the whole fear about being in a race with no gas, that kind of sucks.

It can be really embarrassing.

Just like, hey, putt on over to the side.

I had to happen to be on iRacing once cause I was messing with my fuel settings for whatever. Yeah, that was rough.

Happened to me too. Last lap, I was in first place in Road Atlanta and I remember calling Alex and I was like, dude, you ain't gonna believe this.

It's fun, man. I was about to put up a story. I probably should do it tonight. Just have a bunch of people give me their iRacing accounts. Just, you know, have a private race or something like that. It's just, I don't know what it is, man. Cars just bring people together.

They do.

Whether it's gaming or, you know, real life or the combination of the two in this case, it just seems like everybody's just down to have a good time.

Absolutely.

Except for me, I'm here to destroy.

Did you see his face? Yeah. He is though. He really is.

I like having fun as long as I'm winning.

Nick, you're a good guy, but I f****** hate you. I can't go there.

It's just fun, man. I don't know what it is. Because you're able to talk too, right? It's kind of like I'm able to lock in, but we can have a chill conversation, talk and s***.

Oh, yeah.

You can never do it in real life.

No. I got told I need to get off the radio when I'm driving like the attachment.

You're just the regular old Yuki Sonoda.

Yeah. What do you mean?

This is b*******.

Yeah.

But here's a question because you love wearing Red Bull. Do you think Lawson deserved a seat more than Yuki?

You know, I don't really know much about the new guy. All I know is about Yuki. I feel like he's about himself a lot, but he's kind of a poor sport.

A poor what?

Sport. I think he's kind of a poor sport. And the reason is because when you watch some of the things that he says and how he carries himself, like while he's there, he's very just by himself. But then he like lashes out like like you can't really lash out when you have two thousand people who are working, you know, to have this car moving. You know, you think about, you know, Mercedes. I heard that there's like 2,500 people on the race support team, like through, maybe my numbers are wrong, but...

No, sort of like that, like between the factory and all that stuff.

And so you're telling me that Red Bull being Red Bull and how good their cars are and how good everything is that you can't seem to get the s*** together. Yeah. Like, I mean, I'm sure he'll out drive me. No problem, right? For sure. You know, no question. But at the same time, it's like, why do you complain about all these things? It's like, you complain more than anything. It's like, that's why they took you off the damn road.

I'm so glad you bring up complaining. Let's talk about Lewis Hamilton.

Yeah.

He's had a rough three years.

He has had a rough three years. I can't.

It's going to be fun. I'm a team Ferrari guy, so.

Yeah. I really like those guys. Yeah. Charles.

I'm mad that Sines isn't going to be there anymore.

Really? I don't like that guy too much.

Oh, Sines is my favorite driver.

Really?

Yeah.

I like the guy. I like Pierre Gasly.

Yeah.

It's a bummer that he has a s*** car, but he was consistent.

Yeah.

If you just gave him a car that was 10 percent better, he would have consistently been up there because he was always fourth place.

They should have put him on Red Bull.

They should have.

I was hoping that something miraculous would happen and he'd end up back at Red Bull. But yeah, that's going to be one of those guys that could have been number one, at least once. Those odd ducks that get one championship and then they're done, the Rossbergs of the world.

Who's that kid? I forget that kid's name who got into the Ferrari.

Bearman.

Is that his name?

Oliver Bearman.

Yeah, Oliver.

That kid did good.

Yeah. Where is he at?

He's starting. He's this season.

Oh, is he?

He has a seat at Haas.

Oh, okay.

Poor bastard. But we'll see. Maybe the Americans get their stuff together. Also, there's a me being Bosnian. There's a Bosnian guy that just got into F2. So he's under the Ferrari Academy. So maybe in the next few years, we have one of my people in there.

So let's see what happens.

My wife is Russian, man. So I don't know. Is there any Russian drivers?

There was. Mazepin fell apart. Yeah. I won't talk any s*** about that because I'm gonna feel down on this. Basically when the whole war broke out, however many years ago, this guy's dad was like really well connected to Putin or something like that. And they're like, we're gonna have to access. And they also got rid of the race in Russia too, during the whole war thing. So yeah, long story short, but also the guy was just a dog s*** driver. Just paid forward seats or a deal.

Yeah. Yeah, that was, that's right. Yeah, when all that happened.

Yeah.

S*****.

Yeah, it's okay. That one's lost in the history books. Not the memes, but. Well, have you been to an F1 event, like in person yet or no?

I haven't.

I highly recommend it, it's b*****.

I want to. I want to go to one, but I want it to be like the right one, you know? I like to, Koda would be cool.

Koda's calling my name.

I almost went to the Canada one, the Canadian.

We thought about that, too.

I think that one would be good, because there's a lot of spaces, a lot like a space that you can sit and still see a lot, you know? Like I don't want to just see the car come by it for like, for like this.

For the Vegas, and like it just fits by you for a second.

Yeah, like.

Yeah, just the longest straight in F1 or whatever it is. Like, we were on turn one in Miami the first year. That was pretty cool. I got to watch Mick take out Vettel. It's like he took out his winter, but yeah, I might go check out Koda when we're down for our potential thing that I will not say on camera yet. Maybe I'll go check that out, but we'll see what happens.

That's cool.

It's bucket list.

Okay. Yeah, Koda would be cool. I haven't been there. I heard it's fun. Heard it's really fun.

What's the most valuable lesson you've learned throughout all of this? On the track, off the track.

That's a good question.

I like to ask him every once in a while.

Yeah, that's a really good question. Honestly, I would say the biggest, like in the past year, I would say that if you want to talk about driving, just driving, is make sure that, like I was always told, make sure that you're thinking about everything that's in front of you, and that's it, and move your eyes. So what you're looking at is where you're going, you know? And somebody who is a seasoned driver can see that if you're driving funny, you're not looking further out. So it's pretty much just being told to make sure you look where you want to go, and not exactly where you're going always, you know? Back and forth is fine, but yeah, I don't really... That's kind of a good one, but I don't know.

You don't text me later. I should answer that question different.

I know, I will. I want to think about it, but...

It's crazy what the awareness of where your eyes are.

Yep.

That changes everything. Like if you're just aware of where your eyes are looking.

Have you done any of that eye coaching out at Brainerd?

So, Chong, I know Chong. He was actually my first coach. And so, I have an eye coach as well, which I thought about this earlier and I should have said it, but his name is Nathan Langmo down at Hopkins Eye Clinic. He does the Minnesota Twins.

Is that not the same guy that Chong uses?

No.

No, it's a different guy?

Yeah, no, because everybody's eyes are different, right? Everybody has a different eye, your prescription, what you can see, what you're doing. A curriculum that's given to somebody who is maybe 26 isn't going to have the same curriculum that somebody who's 40, right?

Oh, I just remembered Chong's guy was based out of Edina.

He's out of Edina.

That's right.

And so, when somebody is given something to work on, but then that same person is given it to somebody who's 40, things are different. Your eyes are different. You can't do these things. Your reaction time is different. So, you have to go back to build that reaction time up to get, to give a curriculum to somebody who's 26, 23 years old. My guy is, I mean, he works with the wild twins, some of the best wide receivers in sports. And he builds his clients up differently. If you're a driver, you start here. If you're a wide receiver, you start here. If you're a goalie, you start here. If you're a baseball player, you start here. And then he backs it up and then goes forward with it. But I've seen, in the past year, my contact, I have astigmatism, but my eyes have changed three different prescriptions better and my astigmatism has gotten better.

Really?

Since I started. And it's crazy. You got those glasses that I wear at night, when I'm doing my SIM, close one eye and make this one stronger. Being able to see things differently, like when you're making a right hand turn and all you can see is out of your left eye, gives it stronger to be able to actually see and remember everything that you're seeing.

So you're saying that you went, so natural progression of life is your vision gets more s***. You said you went backwards?

I went backwards.

Really? I'm gonna have to check that out then. So about four years ago, I got clocked in the face by my brother and my glasses have been crooked ever since. If you look closely, you'll see it's very off. So I think one eye has gotten stronger than the other because it's off. So I've always thought about just going to check that out because I felt like after we did the little coaching with What's His Face at Brainerd, I was like, all right, I kind of know how to use my eyes differently for the 10 minute session I had. How often are you seeing your eye coach then?

I was seeing him once a week.

Holy s***, okay.

I was seeing him once a week and then now it's just like sporadically, but now I'm getting back because of where we're going. I just want to make sure that everything that I'm doing is dialed in, especially even like my eating, my exercising, my eye coaching, my SIM, everything. It's all part of it. And so the eye coach is a huge, huge advantage.

So I see them on the side of the car. What does that relationship look like? Is that just, is that a sponsorship thing too then?

You know, I believe in him. I believe what they do and what they can do to people. And I know like, this isn't the pros, you know, with this car, but I wanted to support him because I feel like there's so many people who are drivers who just aren't seen right. They're not able to look in the right spots.

He got mad in traffic one day and that's why he's saying that. He's like, you didn't f****** see where you're going.

But like, it helps, you know, it helps. Yeah. But yeah, it's amazing at what he's done and the stuff, like the homework that he gives me, I like, I have this little, I don't even know, he gave me a metronome and this little piece of paper has a whole bunch of letters on it. And you go back and forth, you know, because like, he was saying some sort of statistic that like, a huge, huge number of people put your arms out this way and you're looking straight and you turn your eyes to one way or the other, you see a blur, you know, and when you're a race car driver, you're looking at a baseball coming at you 100 miles an hour, you can't move, you got to focus on it, right? But you got to also retain everything that you're seeing. Right. Right. So it's, you're looking when you're driving, you're looking at where you're at, where you're going, where you're at, where you're going, and you're looking at that so fast. Well, if a car ahead of you, you know, that is turning and you can't see him because you're looking too fast to where you're going and you're not paying attention, you don't see him hitting his brakes, but like he's coached me to the point where like, I see that. And my reaction times are quick, you know?

So just kind of like open things up.

Why the twins were so much better at catching pop flies when we had the Metrodome because the white ceiling and I remember all the other teams always b****** and moaned because they lose the ball. Maybe. Could be.

Who knows?

I don't know.

There's something to be said about playing on a home turf. Like you know how like the Bills are doing like a $2 billion stadium, but they're not doing a roof? I'm like, yeah, baby, why would they change up their home turf?

Yeah.

Like that's their home turf playing in the snow.

You go there and be cold and they're used to it.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So I mean, I'll ask my guy tomorrow. I'm having a comprehensive vision exam tomorrow because I just had metal removed from mine. So, oh, yeah.

Yeah. He's more like a safety fifty fifth priority.

I didn't even know I wasn't even doing anything like grinding or anything. I was out in the shop. We were doing some metal work.

You're always grinding.

And yeah. And I don't know if I just maybe had stuff on my sleeve. Maybe I wiped my face and so it was just a tiny bit. I didn't even know it was in there for all of a sudden. I woke up one morning and every time the light changed, my eye would fricking hurt and it was rough for a couple of days.

That's the worst pain.

Then I go into the eye doctor and he's like, oh yeah, he pulls a piece of metal out. It had been in there for a couple of days, so it actually rusted.

Oh my God.

So they had to scrape my cornea to get the rust out too.

Thanks Dan, we just lost about 90 percent of the listeners. They're like, f*** that.

Well, we're talking about eyes. I had an eye incident.

Yeah, an ocular incident. That's the professional term, I think. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So yeah, because that was one of the things that they were showing me when I was working with his eye doctor at Brainerd. It's like trying to get your eyes to transition focus quicker from near to far sight. I didn't realize that that was a teachable skill. It's like when you're lifting weights, you get better at being more explosive or whatever it is. So that was pretty cool.

I felt like I got punched in the face.

Yeah. It's straining your eyes.

At the end of each session, you're only an hour, you know? And I would feel like I get punched literally in the face. Like, God, why does my eye hurt?

It's like mentally exhausting, too. Yeah.

It's crazy. And using a sim with those glasses on is wild, man.

Oh, you use glasses on the sim?

When I do a lot of the training, like if I'm messing up a lot on the sim, where I'm either going off track or whatever, yeah, I get back on there and I focus my eyes back a little bit, like, hold on, you're not seeing it right, because you can see it differently after you take them off.

Okay. I want to know anything about going off track. I'm perfect.

You are. I mean, he's pretty good. He does a good lap.

Not every other lap.

Just not fast though and consistent.

Just not fast.

You wait till I get in there with you, then you guys can pull off.

Yeah, I've been hearing this s*** for a year.

I just go in there to talk. I suck.

How was your day?

It's all right. No big deal.

He's a casual Bruce Key and a cup holder type guy.

Yeah. Sometimes you got to have it.

I like having it just for if I was going to go to a track, it'd be nice to know. Even if you suck, you will learn the turns and know where stuff is.

Mentally prepare for it.

You know what's coming up. I've gone into some tracks totally blinded. I'm really nervous ahead of time and it just takes that out of the mix.

It takes a lot for people to be able to retain a track. It's hard. It's a hard thing.

Well, even one with less corners like Road America, which has 12 or 14 corners or something like that. It's not a ton. But we hopped on the sim. You remember before you went there and we were talking about it? It was fun.

I've done so many laps at Road America in my sim. I'm pretty sure I could... I wouldn't be able to go fast, but I might be able to drive Road America with my eyes closed.

Yeah.

It might be bumpy.

It's gonna be bumpy. I'll be up there as turn one.

There's turn one. Oh, there's the sand. Oh, s***.

Yeah.

Just beach it. But no, man, it's really been fun to watch you on this journey, man. There's a certain intensity you bring to the table that is kind of needed, right? Like you can kind of see it, again, when you look through all our guests, right? There's various stages of their lives, and you could see who's really brought the intensity over the years and what they do. And there's a reason why they're at where they're at. So it's been fun to watch.

Appreciate that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. So then, once we pack up here, I'm guessing you're just gonna go hit the sim again, practice some more Sebring.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'll be on the sim for sure tonight.

Yep.

I have to.

Yeah. Well, on that note, Dan, do you want to pop the usual three?

Yeah. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. We need a track car, a daily driver, and a show car. You have an unlimited budget. You can take it to patients, have them cut one car in half, weld it to another one, whatever you want to do.

Your lack of enthusiasm, we're going to have to redo that. No.

I thought it was very efficient. I got it done.

It was efficient, but you're like, you look like you're really thinking about it. You want to...

So a track car?

The ultimate track car. This guy has been grabbing the cars that he wants and going to race them. So this is be an interesting one here.

I would probably say that one track car for sure that I need if there's no money limits is the RSR, the Porsche RSR for sure. I don't think that there's a better track car than that. I mean, it's other than like a formula car, but I don't... A formula car.

Stressful.

Yeah. I mean, an Indy car would be cool too, but like that RSR would be... That's my ultimate goal. I want to drive one of them. The hyper cars are cool, but I mean, I think I'll probably drive one of those shortly, but I won't be driving one of those RSRs ever. So unless I... True. Anyway, one to own.

Same for daily or show?

Daily driver and show car, yeah.

Daily driver, oof. Show car, I would like an all-carbon Pagani. I think that would be sweet.

Or any particular one, like a Utopia or a Huayra?

Yeah, the Huayra.

Huayra?

Yep, the R.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I know. And I think they have, it comes in a lime green color, but it need to be the carbon one. Like they have, I think they have a carbon, like, I don't know, maybe not, whatever.

You might be thinking about the Zonda. Maybe there's a Huayra.

Maybe that's what I'm thinking of, the Zonda.

Like how old are we talking, like old? Like the-

It might not be, maybe, I don't know, whatever it is.

I don't know what any of these cars are.

Yeah, I think they're amazing.

Cause there was the Zonda, the Cinque's or whatever Roadsters. It's like they had the white and then the black and then the single red stripe down the middle. And then there's the lime one. I think it was a Zonda.

I think it might be a Zonda. You might be right.

Yeah, it's okay. I'm gonna prove myself wrong.

So here, I would say it'll be a Zonda. We can go back and edit the other part out. Yeah. Zonda.

Whichever is the right answer. Say both, then I'll cut it.

The lime green Zonda. That's what it is.

Okay. And I'll say lime green. Why? And then we'll cut it in.

So, and then a daily car. Man, that's a tough one.

It is. There's a lot of good options.

It's tough because like, where am I living?

Yeah.

Because if I lived in a place that didn't have snow, I would have a different car for my daily car than I would if I had snow.

So one of these rule switchers.

Would you drive your track car to the track then? I mean, I feel like you got some really nice daily sitting right on front of this job here.

Yeah. No, you know what, honestly, I probably for a daily car. Dang, man.

I don't know.

I can't make up my mind. But it would probably be the, got this guy in my super car too though. I really am getting into those Ferrari SP3 Daytonas. If I could drive that every day, that thing.

There's some winners on that, son of a b****.

Yeah, man.

Did you do that in Europe?

I don't like, I mean, I've seen a couple of them here, and I don't really like the colors that were there and the wheels options on them. But man, that car is amazing. Holy crap.

So you would daily that one?

I would daily this s*** out of that if I could. That'd be cool. Just everywhere you go.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

All right.

So let me ask you this one here. I'm going to try this one out. My dad suggested this one, and you're going to be my guinea pig on this one. Seems that you have two track cars. If you could only drive one car for the rest of your life, what would it be? One car? Now you get one choice, and not only that, but now this is what you have to drive until the day you're done.

Oh, man.

Jesus Christ, I may have a limited time on this show.

You can cut this out if you don't want to.

No, that's a good one though.

It's going to take a half hour to figure out.

It would probably just be one of the Porsche 911 GT3s or GT3 RSs or something. You have to have something like that.

Something that could be street and track at the same time so you get that itch.

Yeah, I would have to be that probably. And it comes with a warranty? Yeah, GT3 RS.

That's actually a pretty good answer.

GT3 RS, yeah.

Sweet. Well, on that note, where can people find you? I know you have your racing page.

Yeah, racing page, Nick Plocienik Racing. That's on Instagram and then just Nick Plocienik. Yeah.

Anybody else you want to shout out or anything as we close up here?

I mean, yeah, I guess. Shout out to all the sponsors. You know, everybody, Patience Metal Fab. You know, those guys are great. 311RS, Ryan over there, Carl at Twin City Performance, Dr. Langmo at Hopkins Eye Clinic, my company, Redline Contracting. If you guys get a hailstorm, please give me a call. There's a and then I'll reach out to or like to shout out Airpower Racing too. Those guys are amazing. So NASA and yeah. I don't really know who else I know. Dan?

You can find us at Gunnett Garage or Two Ends. Really hoping for some Snowmobile content. Me too. We'll see. I need some snow. I might go to the UP here at the end of the month, beginning of February, maybe.

We should talk to our Detroit guys, see when that get together is happening as well, but we can talk about that off camera.

Well, that's happening after we're there. That's what he's going to.

Is that what it is?

Yeah.

So if we're back Saturday, we may have, it's off camera.

It's actually in Utah, it's not in Minnesota like I thought.

We'll figure something out. I'm just inserting myself into problem solving. As for me guys, you guys made it this far into the episode, you know where you're at. Be sure to check out the more bigger shirts if they're still around. They should be by the time this episode drops. Thank you for coming on, Nick.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Dan, thanks for existing and we'll see you all next time.