164. Racing in IMSA, A Career in Racing, Reviewing Cars and Coaching w/ Britt Casey Jr.

Those cars, I coach people in them, especially the RSs. You can put a street tire on that, or like a semi slick, drive to the racetrack, drop the tire pressures, haul a** all day, and then drive it home. That was the first IMSA race for the TCR class. First IMSA race for Audi in the TCR class, and we won it. So that was a crazy day.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host Harris AKA Minnoxide, and man of many automotive aspirations. And I'm here with my Ford loving co-host, Dan.

Yep.

Mr. Gunner Garage.

I'm gonna be squinting at you when I look this way until that sun goes away. I have a kind of a cool Ford behind me, so I'm excited.

Oh yeah, this is gonna be a fun one. And today we are here with Britt Casey Jr. And why don't you just go ahead and tell us a little bit about what it is that you do. Obviously we have a number of fun race cars in this garage here, and you have a bit of a pedigree in that regard. So just tell us a little bit about that and we'll go from there.

Yes, for sure. So hi everybody, I'm Britt Casey, junior technically, Chicago born and raised. I'm from the suburbs. However, my parents are truly from the city. And yeah, I love racing, always have. This is where right now we're at the Autobahn Country Club. I like to think this is kind of my home base for motorsport. I grew up here. So first time I came here as eight years old, my dad joined in 2008, which was around the age of 10 for me. By that point, I was already racing dirt bikes, which we can get into the benefits of I think starting on motorcycles is pretty cool for like the racer mindset. We can get into that too. Then I quickly transitioned to go-karts here at the club. I was the first junior sportsman champion in 2009.

That's awesome. Okay.

Yeah. And I was actually racing my younger brother for the championship. And he went on to do different things, different path. He went more lacrosse.

This all kind of begins with what go-karting and motocross then?

Yeah. Well, my dad was already in racing for basically forever. Him and my uncle are total gear heads, and they were building race cars for oval track racing, like short track stuff when my dad is basically in high school. So in their neighborhood in Chicago, they were literally fabricating and prepping short track oval cars for the Artco series. And my dad worked at a truck shop, and they were also running a race car out of there. Pretty much like growing up, my dad and uncle were racing and building. They weren't driving, but they were working on race cars. And then my dad raced jet skis when he was younger in college. And kind of like the whole 1990s scene of stand up jet skis, he was in there, like two stroke Kawasaki stand ups. So racing on Lake Michigan and some other lakes around the area. And they were always running a truck shop, all Fords forever. So since the 70s they've, I talked to my uncle about this actually a couple weeks ago. He's like, yeah, I've bought 37 Fords in my life. So all Fords, he's never bought another brand in his life. Mostly trucks.

Quality is quality, you know.

Yeah, he knows how to work on them. And this is like his total, he just loves to work. And my uncle and dad have owned that shop together for a long time.

Well, somebody's got you beat numbers wise finally.

Yeah, I don't know, I probably own 37 Fords right now.

Actually, yeah, you probably, your numbers are up there.

You want to count all of the rollers and parts cars and things like that, so yeah.

Dan needs to be institutionalized. Yeah, good to put it in.

So kind of going back to the Autobahn, which we're at right now, we're at the Bettenhausen Garage, which is where we've always based our cars out of. The Bettenhausen family owns this garage, but my dad with a short track and NASCAR sort of style racing background, we're really close to the Bettenhausen's here and they've graciously allowed us to have our own sort of corner of the shop where we run all of our race cars out of, well, not all of our race cars, our one race car. We've always had one and then we were running my Spec Miata out of here when I first started in the Spec Miata Championship when I was 13 at this track. So I was kind of on like a provisional little low key because I think lawyers would have a field day if they heard that I was 13 racing cars here.

Can you do that though? I mean, technically you're on a closed course, so like there's, you know.

Yeah, it was under special permission from the coaches here at the track at the time.

Okay.

Yeah, I was already winning. I won the championship in Carts. I was mature for my age and they basically did half a season of me just practicing. And then they were like, okay, you can start racing. So that's what I did. And I was here, I like to say one day a week, typically during the summers, well, during the school year, when the track is open. The Autobahn is open from April 1st to October 31st every year. So that's how it works here. And I was here, I mean, more than any other kid for sure, driving race cars, practicing.

Were you doing any wheel to wheel on the track here at this point, too?

So I did the first half of that age 13, that was my practice time. And then because I loved it so much, it just, you know, added up and I was ready to race, so.

So then, okay, so then you started doing wheel to wheel at 13 years old, Ben?

Yes. Yeah.

Dude, I could just, Dan, I could just see you getting passed by a 13 year old. You would just hang it up.

It was rough. Like my first race, it was on, I believe it was on North track. So, which is the shortest track here, it's about a mile and a half. And my goal was to not get lapped for the first race. And I accomplished that goal. I think I finished like second to last or third to last.

Okay, that's a start. Yep, only up from there.

No contact, no incidents. I've always been a clean driver, kind of known as a guy who doesn't really crash, which is a great reputation to have. That builds really quickly if you have that reputation, which is nice. And I just like to think I was really mature from my age. I think a big separator of the good drivers at a young age and the young, at a young age, who's safe, who's gonna be quick, who has like a lot of headroom to grow. I think it has to do with maturity and if you truly are a race fan. I think if you're watching racing growing up and you know what you're looking at on TV, that's a huge determining factor if you can make it or continue to build the skill set. A lot of people lose interest. They get sort of, not disenfranchised, what's the word, more like, I guess they just get down on the fact that you need to find the funding to build a career. And fortunately, I've been able to, but you can easily mentally check yourself out and just burn out. For sure, this stuff is, it is cutthroat. It's extremely expensive to do. And to find the money to do it is, it's always a challenge. And that is a total name in the game. I would say for the most part.

Okay, so that's right around when you were 13 then. So how does your career progress at this point? When you go from second to last to eventually being a champion in some categories.

Yeah, practice. So I practice, practice, practice at least one day a week. My dad was here, I was here during the time that I was building my skill set here. There weren't really any other kids who were doing it like I was.

They were probably studying.

Yeah, or hanging out with kids. Honestly, probably playing video games, probably. Unfortunately, I'm part of that generation where... I think I have a little bit of a split between the iPad kid generation.

Well, you and I are about the same age, so the next five years is very different. I know we're just young and see you, Dan, we all look the same. But no, there's a distinct difference between the next few years after you and I, because that's when everything just came in.

Yup, yup, I agree. My brother, he's two years younger, and I like to think that his age is kind of the cutoff, where it's just a different vibe, I guess, with the people, how they talk and the work ethic and kind of their perspective on things. I look at this country as total untapped opportunity still. It's super, super young, so as a country.

So you're out, I'm just curious, so did you ever have those conversations like, oh man, your grades are slipping, no racing for you sort of deal, or no?

No, I was smart, I always, I got good grades. I was an honor roll kid, I was in all AP classes in high school.

Oh, I'm sorry.

No, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. Yeah, I think I'm actually, I think that's an advantage as well. I think it helps with writing and speaking skill sets. And I went to Miami of Ohio as a business major, so graduated with a marketing degree. I actually went into finance, so I had to do those crazy, crazy finance exams where the books are like 800 pages each. I did the 63, the series 63, 65 and the seven exams.

And are you doing this all while kind of trying to erase as well on the side or?

So yes, I was, well, during the time that I was studying, it took me over a year to do all that. It was heavy, really serious stuff, like all basically securities law in those exams. If anyone's trying to study for them, I have great notes, you know, great ways to cheat, awesome flashcards. But it gets really in depth, really quick with those things. And I was not racing professionally at that time, I was coaching.

So is this you taking a break from racing to focus on school? And then did you get back into it after you graduated then?

Well, so I was already, I was racing full time in IMSA, all through college. So I was doing full seasons every year. And then I graduated college in 2020. I was in a seat and the whole thing kind of granated just because of like half of close. I mean, I don't know what the metric is now, but at the time it was pretty close to half the staffing of IMSA races was from overseas. For all the manufacturers, this is 19 manufacturers in IMSA right now. It's more than any other series in the world. And that was a big deal. You couldn't close the borders, right? So I went to work here after that weird winter. That whole year of 2020 was strange. And then in 2021, I was working at the Autobahn. So, and then I was full time here, chief instructor. I still hold the title of chief instructor. I handle all like the really high end racing drivers at the club. Like the member racing series here is a big deal. Probably 200 active members are truly getting in race cars and lining up for a start, which is incredible. Yeah, this place for racing, better than any other club in the country. No doubt, no doubt. And it's also the first club. The first, like the business model of a country club racetrack, you're at it right now. This is where it started. Yeah. So we just had our 20 year anniversary at this track, which is great. This place is incredible. It's been incredible to me. And then during COVID, I was working here and still doing some professional racing, like in 2021, the TCR car, one of the Audis with a really close friend team of mine based in Virginia. And then after that, I kind of had to step away to study. Like I couldn't do both. I could not be working here and pretending to work while studying those huge exams. Sure.

How do we make the jump from spec Miata to IMSA? Yeah.

So let's start with that.

Yeah, that's a good question. I got a really lucky break with some really close friends of mine. They were they are photographers for IMSA. And what they do is they basically go to the racetrack, take a bunch of professional photography for the long term endurance, the long races, well, every IMSA race. They work for the manufacturers. And it's a really close friend of mine. I don't know if I should say his name, but he introduced me to Mazda, like at the professional level. And he basically gave them a brain check on me if I'm legit. And they basically introduced me to Mazda Motorsports. And that was a big break for me. I tested with the team when I was 15. I rode Atlanta with Tom Long, who's an incredible mentor for me in my life. And as a driver, I'm a proud alum of Tom Long University, for sure. And a lot of people will laugh if they see that, or if they hear that, but it's true. We won a TCR championship together. And yeah, he made me fast, for sure. And I think, basically, sorry, I'm getting distracted by the dog barking. I tested at Road Atlanta. I did great by the end of day two. I was same pace as the drivers that were on the team. And I did three races that year. What did I do? Road America, Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, and then Road Atlanta. So those were the three. And then in my fourth IMSA race at Laguna Seca, which was Mazda Raceway at the time, we finished one, two. I qualified third. I was 16 at that, yeah, 16 at that time. Maybe 17. I had just turned 17, because my birthday is in March, as we talked about. I think I was 17 and that race is in May. And we did a Freedom Auto Sport one, two, which was incredible. So, and that was like a big, I think that day was a big change for me. I did five races that year. And then the next year, I got a sponsor that was able to cover my seat and really build. And I was still in high school at that point. I was a senior in high school. And like I said, you just need to grow up loving racing. And if you have an opportunity like that, I think I knew how to take advantage of it, but you also need to, you need to do it. You know, you need to really commit yourself to that. And I was also playing lacrosse, varsity lacrosse in high school too. So yeah.

You're just doing everything at this point, right?

Busy, yeah. Busy staying out of trouble for sure. Yeah.

So at this point, I mean, so obviously sims have gotten way bigger nowadays, but where were they at? Like, let's say seven, eight years ago, were you still practicing a lot on a sim back then?

I was, it was different for sure. I had, looking in hindsight, I had an iRacing account and I did have a whole simulator system, but it wasn't, it wasn't substantial like it is today. Now I have like a really nice one.

What system do you have by the way?

Simicube.

Simicube, okay.

Yeah. Love that. The Simicube, whatever, pro, yeah, pro motor. And then I got the pedals in the fall last year, which were like a game changer.

It's like, there's Simicube pedals as well.

Yeah. So nice. You can replicate engine vibration, G-force, threshold breaking as well. Yeah. It's been, that's intense.

Oh yeah.

Oh my gosh. It's a totally different deal now. Very accurate.

Sure.

And I love it. Yeah. Super cool. I don't, I don't use it all the time, but the iRacing stuff now is really, really substantial. And I think it's closer than ever to reality.

Yeah. Okay. So you got to spend a lot of time at this track over the last, what is it? 10, 15 years?

Almost 20 years.

Almost 20 years.

Next year, I think is my 20th anniversary.

Whoa, that's insane.

Can you drive this track with your eyes closed?

Yes. I think it actually, you know, when I was working here full time, I actually noticed that the track does change over the course of a season and it'll change after it rains. Obviously it washes all the rubber away, but yeah, you can see that the track is like alive. It changes over the course of a year for sure. Like the curbs get flattened out. South track turned 11. That was a brand new curb at the beginning of this year and it has been smashed back down to basically level with the pavement. So that's a really common curb to use as an apex curb. So I definitely saw that change. You know, the track is not necessarily... Can you just fill their water or something? Sorry. Yeah, so the... Yeah, I could drive it with my eyes closed. I think a lot of people think I'm like the fast guy out here. I do all the Savage Geese videos, which is like four or five laps with some really fast hardware sometimes. We're gonna be doing some really cool stuff at the end of this year too. But this is all happening at this track. So I think I'm the most reliable in terms of like not crashing. And then also...

Oh, yeah, so the Savage Geese stuff. So how did you end up getting to work with those guys then?

Yeah, so I met them here. I was introduced to them by the track manager, Craig Cunningham. And he thought it'd be great. She's drinking her coffee, by the way. So those guys are actually based pretty close to me. I grew up in the Northwest suburbs, and they're from the Northwest suburbs as well. And a shared passion for cars, and they just happen to have a huge audience. And I'm happy to deliver with what they want me to do. So, from the driving perspective, yeah, I think I can really, really do a lot for them there. I have been for the last four years. And what we do is I'm basically like the public stig for their version of what was top gear. And the Savage Geese stuff is great. Mark and Jack are super funny guys, and we're pretty close buddies. We do a lot of work together. I think I've done at least 50 cars for them.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, it's been a lot of work.

So how long have you guys been working together?

Since the end of 2021. Oh, wow. We've tested everything from like regular GR Corollas to modified GR Corollas, like to the max. And then also like the Supras, most of the BMWs, some Porsche, a lot of Porsches.

Yeah, you guys aren't fans of the BMWs as a whole it seems.

Yeah, I think the steering racks, they gotta go. Like they're so soft with the, they don't really have any feedback in them. And it's just strange. It's a strange feeling with the steering wheel.

Well, from what it sounds like, it just doesn't feel like you're connected to the car. And I've driven like the G80 M3, like it's like, it's great. And then it's like, it just doesn't feel tight.

I agree. Yeah. It's, and they're very heavy, extremely heavy. They, yeah. Then the brake by wire thing with having full electronic brakes, it's probably great for the street. But really the only experience I get with these cars is like put a helmet on, leave the pit lane, do four to five laps, and then kind of bank the feedback and talk about in the video. We don't do many laps at all. I don't do many laps at all. I can get, I can kind of pick up on what the differences are pretty quick, just because I have so much experience here. And yeah, basically, basically the M's like, I think they need to look inward and think about, you know, what they're really trying to do.

Well, that just kind of feels like their whole ideology has changed. Like, don't get me wrong, they're awesome cars. I've got some experience with them cars, but it's like, it just doesn't feel like, it just gets bulkier and fatter, I feel.

Very.

Out of all of the stuff you've driven, who does it right? Like, what's your favorite?

Porsche. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I say Porsche. Like, Porsche, you know, some people give me grief, but...

Oh, whatever. It comes back and forth.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. There's a video of Patrick Long saying, like, the correct pronunciation. I forget who he did it with. I think, I forget, another YouTube channel. He gave the correct explanation for it. But yeah, Porsche, I think those cars, I coach people in them, especially the RSs. Like, you can put a street tire on that or like a semi slick drive to the racetrack, drop the tire pressures, haul a** all day, and then drive it home. And it'll have the same alignment, it'll be the same.

When it comes to coaching people out here, do you ever find yourself coaching people like in Cup cars or anything like that as well?

I have, yeah. You know, I haven't really, Caymans. I've done a lot of Caymans here. Not a lot of GT3 Cup cars. Absolutely have a ton to give them, but I haven't had any customers come my way. So yeah, super familiar with those cars as well. But the Caymans, I get more clients, if you will.

So I have a quick question, if it's going to sidetrack us a little bit, unless you had somewhere to go. Just, I want to go back to like the beginning stuff a little bit. So I have a 15 year old daughter is going to be 16 here in April. We, she does some snowmobile racing, just straight line stuff, but she shows a lot of interest in this. I mean, I've taken her to the track. I do some HPDE stuff. I do the Optima Street Car Challenge. Not at any sort of close to any kind of professional level, but it's just, I really enjoy it. And I think she does too. So if I was going to get her started in something, do I go carts? Do I, she's going to be 16? Do I start with a spec Miata? Like if somebody's advice and wants to get maybe their youth into it, where do they start?

Yeah. So I think I could speak and connect to this club as well. There's a huge carting scene here as well. The cart track, Cart Circuit Autobahn, has a ton of families that run their kids in carts. I think it's a one sentence thing. It's like you start out in carts, but the goal is cars, right? It's not go carts. You can go really far in carting and for what? You know, essentially, you can spend a lot of money going cart racing and not build your skill set in race cars, which is, you know, in go carts, you use a lot less of the brakes. As soon as a car turns sideways, it starts to slow down, which is not like a car necessarily. In race cars, you're on the brakes a lot more. And the ability to modulate brake pressure, depending on the situation, is very important. That's a key aspect of racing cars. And so I think track days or spec Miata. Spec Miata is the way still. Because cars are older, but it teaches the correct fundamentals that translate to really anything faster. It's a 50-50 weight distribution. It's low power, cheap to run.

Out of all of the race car drivers, track people, people that have GT3 RS, I have never heard anybody talk s*** about a Miata when they've driven one around the track. To be honest with you, they're like, man, it's a good time.

Yeah, I think it's an ego thing for most people to not get into them. But you can easily get into something fast and be totally overwhelmed and really not learn much at all. And you're just kind of in survival mode the whole time, like trying to not crash your car. Whereas Miata, it's much more approachable and the racing is close. So like no matter what pace you're at, you will be around other cars, right? You will be around other cars. Slow guys, fast guys, you're going to be learning something about racecraft, which is super important. So that's my opinion. But being on a snowmobile at first, I think also that connects back to what I said about the dirt bikes. That teaches racer grit. You fly off a snowmobile, you fly off a dirt bike, you have to get back on it and race. You could be totally injured. And I actually, I said something to a guy at Indy last week. He's a Marine, super funny crew guy. And I was like, yeah, you know, I was super thankful about starting off in dirt bikes because it doesn't matter if you have a fractured ankle or something, you still need to press the brake. You have to finish the race, you have to figure it out. And that's my opinion. And I think it's been an advantage for me because you run what you brung, you know, you have what you have underneath you. There's no point in complaining on the radio to the team because you're not gonna pit. So like you have to figure out how to drive it to its fastest. I think about like situations like Road America, the curbs are super aggressive there. So like if you're running the curbs out in turn five on the exit and it moves the alignment around, well, when you hit the curb, the apex curb in turn six, generally that could switch it back to normal. So like if it's pulling to the right after the exit curb of turn five, you hit the curbs in six, it'll straighten back out. Like you, that's a way of figuring out how to make the most of what your package is at that time. And that's always very important. It's adapting on the fly. And when people think about having a perfect race, you have to think about it as in like every part of the car. And there's an advantage of understanding the mechanics as well. Like the mechanical parts of the race cars. You have to make the most of the car on that lap. You know, what the track condition is, what the tire conditions are, what the brakes are like, ambient sunlight in certain corners or shade in certain corners. You have to adjust your driving style like that.

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The masters of that would be anyone that races on dirt because the track is constantly changing. So that is those guys, they have it down. And I think dirt bikes as well. Definitely supercross guys. Yeah, they they observe what they're racing on and it changes lap to lap.

OK, did you do any like circle track stuff too?

I wish I want to so bad. I want to so bad. Yeah, I'm a huge NASCAR fan. I love ovals.

But is that something that you would like to get into at some point? Yes, for sure.

I would love to try it. I think it's totally foreign to me. It would take a lot of practice. But those cars, they're just super interesting. I saw your guys' previous episode about how you can commit the car to turning left. That is so important. And I'm so interested in that. And that's the busiest race schedule of the entire world. 36 races a year without testing.

Well, there's a dirt track everywhere. True. You want to think about road course we have to go. So, road America.

You're most are talking about NASCAR, right?

Both.

Or both? But you're talking about the 36 schedule, though, right?

Well, dude, the dirt guys race over 100 times a year. But professional racing, those guys, like World of Outlaws, that's a super busy schedule. But in terms of loading up a giant trailer with multiple cars built for certain types of race tracks, NASCAR has that. It's 36 races a year. Crazy, crazy logistics. And also, with the dirt stuff, those guys fly. They're like raw, super, super gnarly guys. And I have yet to see a dirt race. I watch it all the time on YouTube. I'm waiting for like, I don't know, maybe a cool, significant other that wants to join me, or like a bunch of buddies that know what they're looking at and could appreciate that marvel. I think dirt racing is one of the coolest things ever.

That's one of those things that is just like, it hasn't been within my scope to check it out yet even. Like, it's just, it's insane. Like, every time I go to PRI, I'm like looking at those cars and like, these things are intense.

Yeah, the late models look strange. I think those are, I'm more of like a spring, I'd like to drive spring cars, I think. I think that's faster, you know, more like just all out, all the time. Whereas like the late models, more aero probably, but a lot more weight. Sure. But they do look goofy. They do look super goofy. These new, like, the new body, the new body shapes are like, what is this? It's pretty strange, but clearly it's functional.

So, okay, so if we go through kind of like your early career, so you did the spec Miata, there's the Audi. Was there anything between those two that I'm missing?

Yes, the Freedom Autosport MX-5. So I ran those for five years.

Okay.

So those were a big deal. Yeah. Those were, well, four years, two full seasons. And those cars are like very far removed from what was the NC MX-5, but it was run by a factory Mazda team. Glenn Long was the team manager initially, and then it became Chris Desjardins, and he got out of racing now, but a lot of people know those names. They're from the TriPoint Mazda team. A lot of those guys are from the TriPoint Mazda team, which was in World Challenge for a long time. And those cars were quick. All the drivers were pros. It was, that was cool. Those are the best days. And I was around some incredible mentors at a super young age. And yeah, one of, I mean, a huge life mentor of mine is Liam Dwyer, and he's a staff sergeant, he retired now from the Marine Corps. He is a Marine, he was wounded. And his stories and his life sort of just outlook on life. Incredible to have that in my life at like age 16, 17, 18, 19. And yeah, he's still a super close friend of mine. His whole family is close with me. All those guys from that team are close with me. So yeah, I have so much love for Freedom Autosport. I could like, yeah, just awesome all around.

Are there any more people your age as you're going there? Are you pretty young at this point to be where you are in your race career?

So at that point, I was the youngest driver. Okay. I think there may have been some one-offs, but like I had a sponsor. I was going to college, wasn't like committed to racing only. I had both paths kind of running in parallel. And my parents always made me finish college. That was so important to them. And I'm happy I did it. I did it on time, I took classes full-time. But I basically was like half out of school. Like I was always on the road. And then I was also working for Brad Kettler at the Audi Sport Technical Headquarters for North America. That's why I transferred to Miami of Ohio was to work for him.

Gotcha.

So what are you doing a lot then, not just in the seat, but how involved are you in the building and setting up of the cars then? Like where does all of that come from?

Yeah, so that is probably my dad. I think he's the one who made me turn wrenches. And I was already, before I had a driver's license, I would have other members take me down here to run me in a race. I remember my parents were on like an anniversary trip to Canada. And it's like their 20th wedding anniversary. And I had a member pick me up from my house to take me down for race day because I was 15. So, but I ran the car myself. It's like in that right there. That's where I was running it. And, you know, it's just basic stuff. Like check the brake pads, pump out the fuel, rotate the tires, get your pressures right. I knew all that by that point. So I was very handy. And I wasn't intimidated by working on cars at all. I knew how to tighten bolts down the correct way. And, you know, which is that's right now. They're like, wait, there's a correct way to tighten down bolts. Yeah, there is.

Well, we learned all about that yesterday at AMS.

Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Well, on the Audis, it's like torque to yields. Torque spec plus 90 degrees on a lot of stuff. So, I worked for, that's how I got in with Brad, is I knew how to turn wrenches, but I was already performing at a professional level with IMSA stuff with Freedom Autosport at the time. And then Brad Kettler was running the Audi Sport USA customer racing. So, I was working on everything there. All Audi, Porsche, mostly those two. Okay. Yeah.

So, okay, between like you first stepping into Miata and then obviously in the Freedom stuff, what, how different were the cars at that point? What are you doing? What was that? Did you have a different involvement as you kind of progressed in that?

Yeah. Well, do you mean like between a spec Miata and an MX-5?

Yeah.

Yeah. Very different, very different. Those motors were built by Comtek in California, I believe. I don't know if they're still around, but they were for a very long time, notorious team engine builder. And those cars were pretty tricked out. They had totally different suspension. And the rules at the time were open suspension design, with the control arms you had to keep on. But the shock package was totally up to you.

Really?

OK. Bar rates were totally up to you, the sway bars. And there was spec ride height for sure, but it was stock body. And it was still the two liter NC MX-5 dimensions, but very massaged. So we were racing as Porsche Caymans and winning. I mean, they were gnarly, very, very cool cars. A lot of people thought they were rotary engines because they just had a really cool noise to them. And they were loud, loud, very loud. Those cars were definitely over $100,000 for sure.

Oh, yeah. Like we saw some pretty gnarly Miata's over at the Road America thing. That one kid is really fast. You know who I'm thinking about that brought the two stackers over there?

Oh, yeah. MX5, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Is it one of those new Cup cars with the sequential?

I don't think it was to that level.

No.

Okay. Gotcha. Speaking of sequentials, were any of your cars sequential?

Nope, not until the Audi. Actually, the Audi, we won the championship with an IMSA in 2018. That was a DSG. So that was still a slush box from the street car. And yeah, so I actually I've been running an Audi sequential this year in HSR, which is historic sports car racing. It's owned by IMSA. The team I run with is actually the Kettler shop guys. They were all Kettler apprentices, but I'm the driver and we're on like an 11 race win streak over there. But it's so those sequentials are cool. I like sequentials. Sure. Yeah. And the all the MX5s are sequentials. I've tested a bunch of those as well.

Sure.

What's your preferred? Is your DCT, sequential, H pattern, do you have like something that you're better at or prefer?

I like the variability of H patterns. I think I can still heel toe. I can heel toe like a pro, which I think is a lost art. I've literally seen an F1 driver here at this track testing some old F1 cars with the clutch pedal without not anti-stall clutch. It was an H pattern car. Could not get it going. He's a current F1 driver. So I was like, what is...

I'll keep my comments to myself.

Yeah, I won't name the driver, but I do carry that skill set and I'm super comfortable doing that. That helps me a lot with the Savage Geese videos too. Like I'll turn off all the auto blip systems. I go faster with a regular heel toe. Yeah, computers aren't necessarily the answer all the time.

Are you even able to turn that off? For example, I was going to say it because the beamers, they have the auto matching and all that stuff. Are you able to?

I don't know. I can't remember off the top of my head because I drove a manual M2 last year, I believe. This year we did one with the automatic. But the GR cars and the Supra, maybe the Supra might, because that's a similar drivetrain. I don't remember. But the Camaro 1LE, you could turn it off on that. You could turn it off on the Mustangs as well. The Dark Horse Mustang, I know you can. Yeah, I just, I don't like the Auto Blip all the time, but the Mustang Challenge car that I was racing two weeks ago at Kota, I left it on. I left it on. I was told to leave it on to save the synchros, the stock transmission. So I didn't want to risk it as a new driver in the car, mostly on downshifts, like when you can, obviously, the heel-toe thing is on downshifts, but some people can stress out the brass synchro in there. So, yeah.

How did you end up driving that Mustang, by the way?

I loved it. I thought it was super fun. They're heavy cars, but they're really fun. Like they're super, they make great noises. It's an H pattern. The transmission is really slick. Okay. The brake package is great. They stop really well. I struggled a little bit learning how to control the brake pressure. It's a stock master cylinder, so you give up some when it's like that. In terms of control, like split front to rear, it was just kind of managing overall pressure when you got into the ABS. So that's typical. And those cars are safe, easy to run. They make all the right noises, and we're going 155 miles an hour. So like it's fast. Over 500 horsepower, I think.

Okay.

How many drivers do you know? Because I always think, because I build cars too, right? So I think it helps.

I love that.

Right. So I think when you're on the track to like, just understanding vehicle dynamics a little bit better, I think when you know every nut and bolt, right? So is there, is that common across drivers? No, no, no. I didn't think it was.

No, not at all. I have no, no. And that's a huge advantage.

Getting a regular driver here to explain master cylinders to us is probably not a very, it's not going to happen right off the bat.

That's the Kettler effect. I went to town with Brad Kettler. Like, I wanted to know everything. He's the winningest American engineer at Le Mans. And all overall wins, by the way. And if you count the team involvement, so those are just the race engineer. When counts, I think it's like six, six. I mean, Tom Christensen, Alan McNish, Renee Ross, I think, was one of his drivers in the R18 at one point. All Audi, but previous to that was like the Porsche GT1s when Alan McNish first got into endurance racing out of F1, that was Brad Kettler as his race engineer, which is the guy on the radio first point of communication of the driver in the car. So if you count those, I think he said six, but if you just count being on the team, it's way over 10 overall wins at Le Mans and way more wins at Sebring and Daytona. I mean, those are even more wins and he's literally a legend. He's gonna write a book and it'll be great. So, but he taught me he's a wizard. So like, I was like the apprentice wizard, but I also was driving, racing full time at the time. And I parlayed that into racing for Audi. And yeah, my knowledge gained there. Huge unfair advantage, huge unfair advantage. And I love that term unfair advantage, the book Unfair Advantage. It's all about like kind of how the Penske guys were able to figure out some things and just different stories I think about. It was one of the Porsches. I forget the name off the top. I had it because I'm being put on the spot. But the unfair advantage is a thing. And you're looking for the unfair advantage. And you want to be pulling out of that bag of unfair advantages whenever you need to. You don't want to show it all the time. But you want to have it available and just pull speed out of it when you need to. And having knowledge, like thorough knowledge on what you're looking at in the race car is so important. And it's so overlooked by these guys today.

Yeah, because all you can do is hop out of the car and be like, it's doing this, and then they got to figure it out, right? You can probably be like, hey, I need this turned up or turned down on this side or whatever.

So you can tell them what's failing. Like, I'll give you an example. I mean, the first one I thought of is when we were running the HSR event, the props, whatever, the HSR event at Sebring in first week of December last year, that was the first race of the team. And we had a CV joint fail. So I was in the car and I had never had one of those issues before. And what happened was in the race, the boot, the outer boot on the, yeah, it was the outer boot on the CV joint had opened up and was starting to throw grease inside the wheel and into, I think that was on the exhaust side, the turbo side of the motor. No, it wasn't other side, but it was still hot enough. I was starting to smell a gear oil I thought was gear oil. I was like, yeah, it's weird. I keyed up on the radio and I said, yeah, every car in front of me smells like they're dropping oil. It was actually my car. I just had no idea that I had never experienced that issue before, but the boot just basically took the clamp off the seal on the CV itself and just started throwing grease and it was cooking off, smelling. It smelled like gear oil.

If anybody smelled gear oil, that's a pretty, you know that smell.

Yeah. I guess those cars don't have the smoothest shifting mechanism, so that's what will make CVs fail. We just swapped the axle totally. So we had one on the truck. We just put a new one on. The hardest part was cleaning it all out of there. Right. It happened with five laps to go and I cooked. The axle was blue. The CV was blue by the end. So I was like, yeah, they had no grease. No way. Yeah. But if you know stuff like that, how to bed breaks properly, how to warm up tires properly without ruining them, you could ruin tires in one lap, just warming up in properly. And I won't tell people how, but...

I was about to say, like, oh, what's the plan here?

You just won't get as much out of them performance wise if you start stretching them too hard, too fast. They're made out of biological material. So they do fade and they dry rot over time. You know, rubber is rubber. And when it's on a 3000, 4000 pound race car, it's a lot of stress, a lot of energy. So yeah, you know, things that are commonly overlooked are not thought about. I'm not one of those people who can just overlook things. I want to know it. And it, I think racing really complements that mentality for sure.

Is there any kind of street tires that you see on the track over here that are just like, yikes, you should not have that on this track?

No, I mean, more can, I couldn't name a tire off the top of my head. The fastest tire is a Cup 2R Michelin, and they're crazy expensive, you know, that's just, but they are the fastest. It's basically the IMSA slick, yeah. So yeah, those are what we test on, like the really fast stuff with Savage Geese. The current track record holder is the 992 GT3 RS, and that was on a Cup 2R.

Unsurprisingly.

Yeah, yeah. We'll see what we're gonna do here at the end of the year, but.

No, that's an awesome tire, too. My first experience in those, one of our mutual friends has 1000 horsepower GT 500, that's on those carbon fiber track pack car. And I managed to, we're on a road rally, and literally pinned it at 30 miles an hour, and it just stuck, just goes forward. Have you driven one of those yet?

No, not a GT 500, no.

Those things are a blast.

Yep.

I would like to. You show me how to drive it, and I'll get to drive it.

I will, I will. I'm paid to do that, so I'm ready to roll.

All right.

As long as you don't make him curb a wheel.

Yeah.

Are they carbon wheels? The carbon wheels?

No, I put those, they're in my garage. I took them off right away.

Those are decoration now.

And put on a set of forged wheels, because I knew I was going to do that, right?

Yeah.

I bought, my car is a rebuilt title car, because I knew I was going to track it, right? I didn't want a $120,000 car. I'm going to go beat the s*** out of it. Yeah, fair. My car gets loved very well. She's kind of ragged out right at the moment, but I saw pictures of it.

It looks awesome. I wish you brought it today.

Oh yeah.

I was trying to convince him. I'm like, man, we don't, we didn't have a podcast in between our next podcast at the time, right? So I'm like, damn, we can like schedule a day. He's like, I don't know.

We'll get there. I want to come run this track. There's a track day next week that another, some people I know are doing Blackhawk Farms.

Yup, been there.

Yeah. So, but I've been wanting to do this one for a while now. So we'll make it happen.

This is, I'm just thinking about tracks in the area. You guys should look up the story of Meadowdale Raceway. So it was open for like less than 10 years in the 50s and 60s. It was kind of a rival to Road America. They popped up at the same time. It's around Carpentersville, Illinois. It's a forest preserve now, but the racetrack itself is still there.

Oh, really?

Oh my gosh, cool. Yeah, so cool. They used to have a corner, the last corner that led on to the longest straight, which is like about a mile long, and it went through a valley, came up out of the valley and then into a blind, really fast right-hander where it's like, if you lose the brakes, you're to the trees, man. You are to the trees. And there's a reason it's just so unsafe, but the design of it is old school. And it had a corner called the Monza Wall, and it was the most banked corner in the world at the time. And yeah, it's a forest preserve now. They took the wall down, but the whole track is still there. That's cool. If you get on YouTube, a buddy of mine who my dad used to race with, AJ. Henriksen, they do a lot of Trans Am stuff as a team, AJ does. He went there with another guy who did like a whole documentary on the place, and that is a lost racetrack to time. But you go there and you're like, man, this is cool. Like really cool, you know, days gone by, but I love stuff like that. Racing history, that's, I mean, we're in the Bettenhausen garage right now, like short, we're talking about dirt tracks, like the Bettenhausen family is, oh my gosh, so influential at the time, and they just kind of stopped racing, but the name is huge. It's still huge. You know, Gary Bettenhausen, legend. So, but those guys, you know, I just think about how the culture of motorsport has become more international, but not really. Like, there's still segments of it that are still old school. And I mean, I grew up about 20 minutes from that racetrack, and I didn't find out about it until about five years ago. I go there all the time to run, or I want to get a bike and do the BMX trails there. They have a really great BMX trail system through there, but you can go there and walk the entire layout of the track. It's like under five miles, but, or under four miles, but bad, fast racetracks. It's so cool.

I'll have to check that out.

Meadowdale International Raceway. It was owned by a guy who thought, it was owned and built by a group of investors that they thought the racetrack was gonna be kind of the igniter and caveat to people moving out of the city into the Northwest suburbs, and it did pull a lot of people. It was the, at the time, it was the largest Pepsi Cola promotional event they've ever done. They promoted the first race weekend at the track. Yeah, they did a whole documentary on this. I remember most of it. It's so cool. And they said it was just really dusty because they didn't have all the ground really settled down and grasped out yet. But it was, there were like over 100,000 people that went there for the first race weekend. Yeah. The bridges are still there. You can see where the bridges were. The curbing is still there. Just really cool. I love stuff like that. Lost racetracks are cool. Yeah.

Well, it seems like you got, it's got a lost hotel right down the road here too. Our casino is going to say, why is that all boarded up?

Which one?

The Hollywood Casino. It's like moved now, but it's like there's an old one there.

Yeah. The Blues Brothers also had the, you know, the Blues, whatever the movie was, I still haven't really seen it, but that was filmed at Joliet Prison too. So that's all right down the road.

Yeah.

Yeah. They filmed a bunch of scenes there. Yeah.

That's cool.

Yeah. There's a lot of history in Joliet. You know, there's some rough parts, but we got the racetrack here and yeah, racetracks are racetracks. It's the most American thing you can do in my opinion. Yeah.

Yeah. What are your thoughts on Road America? That's probably the track I had the most laps on and I've only been on a few, but it's one of my favorites, but when you have a car like mine, it's great for that kind of stuff.

Absolutely. Your car is living there. Like that place is built for GT 500. Yes. What's your top speed? Just curious.

I can get, I see 160 before I come into turn one. Yeah. So, but I'm watching and I'm like, please hit 160, please hit 160 and then I'm on the brakes, you know?

Yeah. I love Road America. That is awesome. I think they are the textbook definition of reinvesting in your track, right? Like ever since NASCAR and IndyCar started coming there or returning there with IndyCar, the amount of upgrades and improvements they've made there, it's truly a national park. My whole family loves going there. I know a bunch of families that love going there and the town itself is really cool. Yeah, I was there a couple of times this summer. I've only got, you got me beat. I've gone 157 in a 991 GT3 RS into turn one. So yeah.

I can get almost there. I can get 150, 155 coming into turn five, but that one is because you can't see the turn until you crest that hill. So that one always makes my stuff pucker for a minute before I get there. Okay, there's the turn.

Yeah, the nice part is they paved the runoff into the tires. So you can get yourself slowed down before you crush the car in the tires.

So yeah. But it all comes into, you know, I still need to kind of fully... Because I work on cars, maybe that's also disadvantaged. I know there's mechanical failures, right? I think about it every time I get on a roller coaster, on an airplane too, right? I'm like, I know s*** can go wrong. So it's hard for me sometimes to commit that 160 into a corner, thinking like, if I touch the brakes right now and nothing happens, that's going to be no-no. So yeah, that makes it a little more difficult. Maybe some of the dumb drivers just go, oh, the car works every time I use it.

Yeah, I agree. I think the last statement is also pretty powerful. But my worst crashes I've ever had have been from ABS failures. I had two at Watkins Glen in 2017 in MX5s, which I want to mention that because the broadcasters were like, oh, he'll tow it in correctly. No, I didn't. I had a pure ABS failure going into the laces of the boot, and I hit the wall twice in two days. Well, really three days interval. That messed me up, but I hit it sideways. And that's like the worst way to go in. But ABS failure is kind of, I would say, analogous to brake failure, but hydraulic failure, like truly losing a brake line. That is so scary to me. That's probably the scariest thing you could think about happening to you in a race car, for sure.

Yeah, because you're putting a lot of faith in that. Yeah. I don't, like you were saying before, I don't think people realize how much the brakes are as big as a factor as everything else around the car, because if you're not able to maintain that speed for as long as you can and then hoping to shut it down enough to get back turned and whatever, that makes a big difference.

For moments of time, the brakes, the whole brake system is the hottest thing on the car. It's hotter than the exhaust. In the brake zones like Daytona Turn 1, for the 24-hour layout, those brakes are purple hot, just really stupid hot going in there, and then they'll cool all the way back down. I'm thinking about some other pretty brutal tracks and brakes. This track is pretty rough on brakes, because you don't get a lot of cool down period. Daytona has a lot of cool down period, obviously. I think Lime Rock Park is pretty bad on brakes, because you don't get the cooling. I feel like when we used to race there, that has just minimal air flow through the car, so the car truly gets hotter and hotter as the race goes on, because there's not enough time to get it out of the car. You're not going fast enough to pull it out, and you're just cooking in there. But the brakes are, yeah, I think that is the most impressive thing about motorsport, is the braking.

Although when they do get those track pictures and the rotors are glowing red hot, that looks pretty cool.

Yeah. You usually need the lower, like low lighting for that to really get them to pop. But pretty much all race cars are going to be doing that. If you're a good driver, the race pads and brakes are going to glow. They are going to glow. It's so cool. And the fact that they don't just like explode into a million pieces every time you pedal, is so cool to me. I love that. Yeah, brakes are super awesome. That's the coolest thing about race cars.

If you've been waiting on a standalone ECU solution, Toon by Shawn will be having an awesome Black Friday sale on Haltech Products for the entire month of November. But that's not it. Once the sale is live, you'll be able to stack code Minnoxide for an additional 5% off. So get that affirm ready, cut back on Achilles dinners, I know I have to, and save up to get that plug and play kit you always wanted. Stay tuned. Let's get back to the show. So go back to you being involved in cars then. Are you looking at like data logs yourself as well, like after every session?

Yeah, I actually just started learning Pi because I've been coaching some Porsche guys, so they use Cosworth. That was a little intimidating at first. I'm not the best at like loading in dash configurations or updating the system itself. I'd like to leave that up to the engineer, put the liability on him. But reading data, yeah, for sure. That's like day one stuff. Overlaying it with the video is gonna probably cost the client a little bit more money to get the system to work like that. VBOX, AIM, Smarty Cam, there's a bunch of them. I mean, there's a ton of them. So those are the main ones that I really play with and what the pro cars are with. The VBOX is kind of the bar right now, but that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's priced as premium, as the fine a** guy would say. So yeah.

Have you been to Ozarks yet?

I have not, but I heard it's awesome. The Pesek family owns that place, right? I don't really know them. Actually, one of my old teammates from Freedom Autosport, Chad McComby, co-drove with them, and I knew that was an adventure that they were gonna do. I do wanna get there. It looks like a very cool place. Flat Rock as well, in Tennessee. That looks like a cool place too. Yeah, just big tracks, big elevation change. I like learning new places. I think it's an awesome challenge. And I think what, you know, to any viewers that are listening that are thinking about getting into driving, that's the biggest mountain to climb, is learning the tracks. You gotta know how to drive them well and safely. It's a really hard thing, because they're all different.

You do some sim time before you head out to one, I assume?

Yeah, I like to do it. I've been to most of the tracks in the US now. I got a trophy from Everyim's track, which I think I said earlier in the podcast, but I'm pretty proud of that. But I have a lot of seat time at all of them. And what I tell drivers that I coach is, really the racing line does not change. The timing of the inputs in the cars, depending on what they are, whether it's a Porsche 911, there's a rumor that's been going around forever, and I don't agree with it, like the Porsche line on race tracks. I don't really see that. I think it's what people are trying to describe there is something, but what they're describing is not the line, it's the input timing. So they're able to get the car slowed down quicker because all the mass is behind all four tires, which is all four brakes, right? So when you get into the corner, you can use the rear end of the car because it's more stable with the motor. And if you time the throttle better, you can be on the throttle earlier. But you just got to get you got to drive it to that point. And I think some drivers maybe with less experience are what they're trying to describe is something there, but they're saying it's just the line. It's not the line. It's the inputs.

Sure.

It's the inputs. So I don't know what kind of put us on that tangent, but learning the track, sim racing, yes. Super important.

How long does it take you? How many laps in? So if I put you in something, let's say you brought my GT-R and I had you get in, how many laps before you're like, okay, I got this one down?

Five.

Five?

If I've been to the track before, yeah. But that's a monster car too. So like you're also fighting with those big power cars, you're fighting the tire wear. So like I would unknowingly, and it's happened with the Savage Geese stuff, where we've had to go to a second set because it just burned the tires off the car, driving it too aggressively, where if I backed it off a little bit, the car actually would drive faster. And I've noticed that as a trend with these modern cars is if you let the tool do the work a little bit more, you will go faster. So I think in the process of learning, I'd probably burn your tires off. But like I think it'd get 90% there. I think that's kind of what you shoot for being a professional. If you're going to call yourself a professional driver on your tax return, you gotta really hone in. You gotta be fast like a switch. Well, I thought you had one.

No, no.

We can keep going, man. I'm open book. I love this stuff. Yeah.

Okay, so then we didn't touch too much on the Audi stuff then. So how did you end up getting into IMSA?

Yeah, so well, the IMSA stuff was through Mazda. And I was already in IMSA Racing in what was the ST class of what is now the Michelin Pilot Challenge. And then I went to Audi when I started working for Brad Kettler. And if anyone just does a Google search of Brad Kettler, yeah, you're gonna get it right away. If you guys have seen the articles, he did one with Motor Trend, Hagerty, go way back. Some people also did a YouTube video of like the whole shop campus. It's really like a campus. It's the entire town of College Corner, Indiana. Some of the shops are no longer part of the shop, but it's just really cool. And all the Audi race cars that you ever saw on TV from whenever they started showing up here until 2019, I touched every one of, well, I only touched it for three years, but they were all run through Brad Kettler's shop. They're PDI'd there, pre-delivery inspection, and also engineered there. So like the technical support was through Brad. A lot of the technical documents for the original R8 Ultra LMS GT3 car, when those first came out, that was all prepped at the shop. Like all those R8s for that first Rolex 24 were prepped at the shop, and they ended up winning. He's just a freaking legend. And I was like totally willing to, it's such a big deal working for him. He's a total legend in the sport. The guy who initially got me into IMSA, the photographer, he's like, dude, you gotta drop everything and work for him. Doesn't matter. So like, he's like, if he tells you to jump off a cliff, you're gonna do it. Like, he's that kind of guy. And he's seen everything in racing, in professional racing, especially Le Mans, which is, that's my passion, endurance racing. I love it, all my heart. I know I said I like spring car racing too, but I'm mostly just super intrigued by it. And like, those guys are just raw. But the Le Mans stuff, I think, is a true testament. And it's a true form of racing, they see everything. So rain, shine, traffic, lower cars, all the pit stops situations you could think of, having to save tires, having to save fuel, like all this stuff happens at Le Mans. And really like the IMSA slash WEC genre of motorsport is, I think, the ultimate. So Brad is a master of that craft, and he's been around the paddock for over 30 years. I mean, his entire career, he's one of the true people in racing who has made a career in professional racing, which is so rare to do, like start to finish young to old. He's not old, but he's, I mean, my dad's age, but he's truly been in racing the entire time. You know, as a truck driver for Porsche all over the world, to, you know, running the Le Mans program for champion racing. Huge deal. Very cool stuff. And yeah, just he's like, he's like my uncle. He's literally like family to me. So his son is one of the mechanics on the team in HSR. We run the cars out of the shop still. I'm kind of going on a tangent, but that's how I got in with Audi. He got me an inside scoop on a car that was available. We had the sponsorship in place for 2018. My mentor in racing, Tom Long, was my co-driver, and ended up getting all, culminating into the first TCR win in North America at Daytona. That was the first IMSA race for the TCR class. First IMSA race for Audi in the TCR class, and we won it. So that was a crazy day. That was a crazy day.

So what does it take to have a full career in racing? We talked a little bit about what's it cost, all that kind of stuff. How hard is it to get sponsors? Like if you really want to have it as a career, what do you got to do?

Yeah, I mean, I don't really even know. I can't really even say. I think it's so ambiguous as an industry. I am in the green, coaching and doing what I do in racing. Basically, I do more of like consulting right now with motorsport. I have a lot to offer in terms of in the seat, but you can monetize it as well. And there's a demand for it. You just got to know the right people. It's all a reputation-based and performance-based, yes. But mostly if you're a nice guy, you hang out with people at the racetrack, you know a lot of information, you bring the right stuff to the table, you're going to find coaching stuff. Now the high-end coaching is where it gets very more specialized. I would say Tom Long is the best coach, period, in terms of what he brings to a race weekend as a second driver. I mean, he's busy all the time. He's a true driver coach. Ross Bentley as well drives a lot of good stuff. He has a ton of advice that I've listened to. He has a great podcast called Speed Secrets and writes books. I think those two have a lot of information to give and a lot of performance to show to a client who is the driver. I told you I'm a graduate and alum of Tom Long University. I still am Tom Long University's student. That guy and his whole family is super close with me. His brother Chris Long is my spotter for every IMSA race. Yeah, we go to dinner at every race weekend. These guys are the s***, man. They're so good. Yeah, I love hanging out with people like that. If you can be buddies with a... You got to keep your circle pretty small. Getting involved in racing and then making a career out of it, I think it's one of the most difficult things possible. I think it is... You just find your way here. I really don't really have a way of explaining how I did it. It just kind of compounds.

Well, it all starts with the first thing, right? It's like getting to karting.

Yeah.

Step one, right?

The fundamentals. Yeah, that's a core fundamental aspect of it, yeah. And then you got to be okay getting kicked in the nuts. Like literally, I mean, mentally just getting your s*** kicked in, but it gets bad. It's tight and you're not making a lot of money doing this stuff. You're not going to...

What if you make money at all?

Right.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, 100%. People lose money. People never... I know drivers have never had to worry about paying a bill in their life because their dads carry... It's all them, which is crazy to think about. Must be a lot of taxable income that needs to be gotten rid of. You know what I mean? So, there's a huge part of that in racing as well, but talent is talent. Passion is passion. Skills are skills, and the results sheet shows. If you're not fast, you're not fast. And if you're not friendly, you're not friendly. And if you don't have a good reputation, carry yourself well, show up clean and prepared at the racetrack. You know, maybe there's something else that's more passionate for you. If that doesn't intrigue you, and never being home... I know people in the IMSA world, they're home, they're on the road 200 days a year. So, if you're not okay with that lifestyle sometimes, well, racing is definitely not for you, for sure. If you like your home body, and you don't like hotels and go to new places, I love seeing new places. I think it's the coolest thing ever. Like, beautiful country here in the United States of America. Love to see it. And there's cool things around every corner here. The culture's changed as you go across the nation. There are truly different pockets of America.

So, you were spending... Were you spending 200 days on the road a year? What was the most you've been on the road? You're probably going to need to ship your car soon, or know somebody that will. And as someone who used to work in freight logistics, I understand the difficulties of finding reliable transport, especially when trying to make it to rallies, racetracks or the warehouse to hide your Corvette, because you're going through a messy divorce and when she says everything, she means everything. Anywho, Nick Shearer is the proud owner of SureThing Logistics. Having traveled much of the country with every type of vehicle you can imagine, he's got the experience and reliability that you want to ensure a safe journey for your pride and joy. If you want to find out what it takes to ship your vehicle, go to surethinglogistics.net, fill out the intake form, and be sure to let him know I sent you. Let's get back to the show.

I don't know. I've never counted it. I mean, I was like two and a half weeks straight this summer for sure. I was at Watkins Glen for two weeks as well, which is that's gorgeous. If you ever get up to Watkins Glen, the state parks are on there. Crazy. Just absolutely crazy. And it's really old school there. There's an old town, Catherintown, that was an old Native American settlement. And John Sullivan's, yeah, John Sullivan's trail that was basically the first expedition in unknown territory, it went right through there. So I followed the whole thing. And on one of those roads, Montour Falls, I think is the name of it, that road has 13 waterfalls on it, just like within like a five mile distance. And it's all coming off the hillside of what is the racetrack. So it's really cool. Like so cool there. Yeah. Upstate New York is something to behold for sure. It's at the base of Lake Seneca as well. So huge lake.

So how much downtime do you have then if you're out doing some of this? If you were there for a couple of weeks, you have enough time to go out and see some of that stuff then?

Yeah, I did. I went home to basically like do my laundry and I already had my flight scheduled, so I had to do that. And then I came back for the IMSA weekend to coach a driver in a TCR car. Christina Lam is her name, so she's a female driver. Really cool. She has a really cool day job during the week as well. I'll let her talk about herself, but that's who I've been coaching. She's really nice. She's from the DC area, University of Maryland, graduated electrical engineer. So yeah, shout out to Christina Lam. So I was helping her at Watkins Glen. I was spotting for her at Indy and not coaching, but basically Watkins Glen is like this whole ancient cliffside, and it's the same mountain range as Scotland. It just got split across the ocean over time, which is super crazy to think about. That's crazy. It's called the Watkins Range. It's the same mountains in Scotland as well. So I was there, I had like a day and a half, and it's all pretty close there. I like to, if I can, like get a day to just kind of see the things around there in general. So that's really cool. The IMSA tracks are in, I think, 15 of the top 20 markets from the US. It's really, really interesting, beautiful places, yep.

What are your favorite tracks? Like let's say top three right now.

Yeah, MoSport, I love MoSport. Walkins, Glen is number two, and three is either VIR or Road Atlanta.

Okay, you get to choose between those two. Like who's three, who's four?

Yeah, I think, so VIR has more to it than Road Atlanta, but Road Atlanta is like, it has a lot of grip and it's really all high speed. I was driving a IMSA lights prototype there in the spring this year, and that place in a prototype is crazy.

That's gotta be insane.

So fast, yeah. It was like over 120 through turn one, I think.

That was my favorite track as a kid on Gran Turismo. Like I didn't even know what the name was when I got back into like sim racing 20 years later almost, but I'm like, this is an awesome track.

I think Road Atlanta has a better rhythm to it than VIR. VIR is like the first third of that lap is real tight and more slow speed. Then you go in the uphill, it's all high speed. But Road Atlanta is like all medium high speed, big grip. That's a tough braking track as well. Going back to what we said earlier, because you get one straight away really to cool it off and then not a ton of cool off time. It's that big deep brake zone in turn 10A, which is like, I mean, in a prototype, it's like 180, but I was only going, not in my car. I was doing like 140. We had a small motor and we had a lot of downforce on it that weekend, so it kind of hit a real wall. You hit six gear and it's just like, we're not really going here, darn. I think if we trimmed it out a little bit, it would have been better.

Is there a track that comes to mind? What's the toughest one to get a handle on? It's like not five laps, but it's like, oh my gosh, cannot get this track.

VIR, I would say VIR is very difficult. You know, obviously like the Nurburgring, Norse life is hard, but VIR.

Have you been to the Ring?

No, I wish. I want to go there so bad. So bad. I've been offered a bunch of times when that photographer friend of mine was doing annual trips there. Sure. Like it was like four days on the Ring and three days at Spa or something like that. And he doesn't do those anymore, unfortunately. But if he ever did that again, I'd like to go because I think my schedule is a lot more free now. Now that I'm out of college and school in general. That's a dream.

You gotta get used to the Ring.

Yeah, man.

Get you in a rental rocket. No, it's on the bucket list.

What tracks have you guys been to?

Probably mostly just Road America, right?

Yeah, well, if you want to count Pike's Peak International Raceway, which is mostly oval.

Oh yeah, I forgot I've rented tracks. Yeah, so Atlanta Motorsports Park as well.

Yeah, AMP was a good one. I liked that one. And then Road America and then the...

Brainerd?

Yeah, Donnie Brook, the Brainerd.

Never been there. Of course, yeah. I've never been to AMP, never been to Brainerd. I liked AMP.

It was cool.

Yeah, it looks really cool there.

It's a shorter one, but it's got, it's good technicals.

The elevations are pretty sweet there.

I like it. Yeah. I heard the car track is like awesome.

I didn't get a chance to try that when we were out there.

Yeah, I've seen it on YouTube. Wow, super cool. Very cool, very cool car track.

The only problem I have with them is they have a decibel limit. So I got black flagged several times.

It was three strikes and you're out.

Yeah, so I basically last lap, I was like, all right, I'm giving her all right now because they were making me short shift. And I'm like, what? Yeah, right. So I'm like, that's not full potential of what the car can do. So I got some flyers in there, but then I get kicked off the track and yeah.

Yeah, that's crazy. I think it's crazy to put a racetrack out there and then have someone else decades later show up with residential things.

They show up, this is mine now. Yeah.

Well, it's true because the local township is like, well, they're way more revenue than you guys, like having property taxes and things like that. And that's the leverage. It's just like, it's not fair. It's not fair. There's this seniority thing there.

The second you have a racetrack and a Starbucks or a Caribou pops up, it's like, oh, there goes the racetrack.

Yeah, it's all downhill.

I live a mile from a rod and gun club. Doesn't bother me. If I lived half a mile from a racetrack, I would just be sitting on my deck drinking beer, just screaming America in the air.

Yeah, it's the most American. It's so American. All this stuff is American. Like this place, Autobahn, it had to do with privateers with a lot of individual freedom that love racing and they pursued their passion to a point where they went on an entrepreneurial adventure to the max. They invented country club racing, built the track themselves.

And you need privateers for that too.

All privateer, all of it. Yeah, the list of founding members is in the clubhouse and it's a full wall. That's what it took.

Well, you're kind of seeing that right now at the IHRA. I'm not sure how much you pay attention to that world, but I believe it's a privateer just basically shaking up the entire world of drag racing right now. It's a big conversation.

In a good way or bad way?

That's TBD. And I don't say that like me personally, I'm saying like that's just the conversations online. From what I've been seeing, it's like some people are like, oh, this is amazing. It's kind of getting a shot of adrenaline in the arm. Other people are like, well, hold on, you're kind of stepping on history and all these things that have been evaluated in the past. But nonetheless, I feel like you do kind of need that privateer energy in some cases.

No doubt.

I'm willing to, if anybody wants to build a track, I got 1500 bucks, I'll toss in on it.

Yeah, as long as there's a measured return at the end, like somewhere down the line. I don't even need a date.

I just want a single car garage somewhere. Yeah.

If I can make 500 bucks with inflation calculated into it, that's fine. That's my gas money in tires. Well, maybe not. You can't even afford tires for that much anymore, but yeah. Especially for the GT500. How much are tires for that thing?

Well, it's hard because they're 20s. So like they don't make it. And the street car thing that I run in is 200 treadwear up. So it's, I can go down to slicks or cup two hours, things like that. That's easier.

It would be easier if it wasn't 200, right?

Yeah, 200 treadwear kind of makes it harder. And then you got your 19s all day long. The 20s, it gets difficult. But when you have 15 and a half inch rotors, it's hard to get.

Yeah, the brakes are a ton of money now too.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I think the privateer thing is truly what backs racing, passion. I don't think it's going anywhere either. I think all this Netflix drive to survive stuff with Formula One is there's a lot of trickle down.

Sure. In a good way, you think? Yeah. Because there's some people that drive to survive haters and I'm like, shut up.

I'm one of them. Well, okay, I'm not like one of them. Just like I question the validity of these conversations because, and there's a lot of people that they think they now know racing because they watched that.

It's very dramatized, right?

Very.

There's two types of people from drive to survive, right? So like, for example, my dad used to watch F1 during the Schumacher era, the Senna era, right?

Yup.

And then he just stopped watching because he got busy with life, kids, all that fun stuff. But what got him back into it is like, he's like, oh, there's this Netflix show. And then I started watching it, right? And it's like, oh, now that every Sunday we watch Formula One, like we actually care about it. And then there's the other side where it's just like, I saw the Netflix thing, I know everything now. Like, so I get where the haters come from because now you get into forums and now everybody's got an opinion on this 10-second clip, you know?

Yeah. I mean, when I was growing up, like no one understood what I was doing. Right. They were like, oh, you're going to the, you know, do you race electric carts? I remember being told that in middle school. I'm like, dude, you have no idea. Like, you have no idea. And like him and his three buddies, it was just him that said it. And his two buddies were like, no, Britt actually is like really racing, and like hollering a**, like basically, you just sound stupid right now. But he, so yeah, I showed that guy up easily. He has no problem. But it paid off, but I was like really on an island with that stuff. Like I didn't really get bullied. I was nice to everyone, but they gave me a lot of s*** for racing. And really, 100%. Yeah. And it's a strange, strange thing to happen. And now-

Weird flex, bro.

Like, yeah.

I know, yeah.

I'm like sorry.

Yeah.

And I wasn't even bragging about it. I just-

Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's just that was what I was doing, right? I was also doing regular sports too. Like I had a normal friend group, like the lacrosse team was- they're my boys. So-

Sure.

There still are a lot of them from the same team in high school, which is pretty funny. But then I think the Netflix thing, Drive to Survive has changed that where now people are like, oh, wow. So- and now I think, well, if I was in middle school now or high school-

Or you'd be a rock star.

Well, no, I think I, yeah, maybe. I think yes, I would to a lot of people, but the new comeback would be, well, you're going F1? No. And then if you're not going F1, well, you must not be good. It's like, no, you need to be like a world-class-

That is a hump to get over mentally.

World-class wealthy family to do that now. I mean, that's the reality of it. Or a huge, huge, one in a million, one in a billion, one in nine billion chance of having that type of money.

The tough part about that is, though, is that F1 is so televised. It is everywhere, so it's the easiest to consume, right? Like, I have to put in, unfortunately, in this day and age, I had to put in a lot of effort to find whether it's an IMSA race or any, like, just, it's more effort than just, you know, click it's on ESPN, you know?

Yep.

Is it the only one that's truly-

It's a powerful statement right there, by the way.

Is the only one that's truly, like, global?

No, there's plenty of global stuff, I think, right? I mean, well, IMSA is only state-side, right?

I'm not sure. It's on Peacock, and they have some races on-

No, I mean, but like, it's only an American series.

Yes.

Yeah, right? And then WEC is worldwide, if I remember correctly, right?

They race in Canada, too, but, you know, IMSA races in Canada.

Oh, America.

Yeah, North America.

Soon to be America. The 51st state. Okay, I have to address this. A lot of people forget this is North America. There's two other countries in North America. But no, I get what, that's the thing, like living in America, you know what people say, like what they mean when they say America.

Yeah.

But yeah, no, so yeah, Canada included. But then like, but that's what comes down to for me, like the easier it is to find something, like, for example, I have friends that will be like drag racing around the country. It's like, I want to go this. Okay, I have to go through this, this. Is there a stream? Like, you know, the less steps there are to watching, your viewership will explode.

Right.

Especially if it's like, like right now, I don't know how much you're, do you watch F1 a lot? Yeah, sure.

I mean, not all the races, like Monaco. I won't even watch that race.

This season is not one to watch every race. It's kind of, I mean, right now, it's getting exciting because Verstappen is actually like going forward.

Yeah, I do. I think Max Verstappen is a sight to behold for sure. I think he's epic.

Who is your driver, by the way? Who's your favorite driver?

Max Verstappen. Is it? Yeah, he doesn't play around, man. He's all business.

All business. That's all he says.

Yeah. I'm in a race.

Do you think he's gonna win this season? I don't know.

I'm not sure.

It's gonna be close.

Yeah. He's got the grit, man. He's got the grit. That's what his deal is.

Yeah, but nonetheless, it's like, you know, everybody knows that. Same thing with NASCAR, right? Like it's also, I mean, I know enough to know that it's been struggling in recent years. I'm not a fan. I don't pay attention. Yeah.

I mean, the metrics say that. Sure. The problem that you gotta think about the lurking variable there, which is there are so many different ways to tune in.

So there's that. Correct.

You know, some of the, and it's, it actually, I think is better if you factor that in. Sure. I've read some stuff about that. At the tracks, they're packed. I mean, that front grandstand at Talladega, that's a mile long, and it's filled with quarter million people every single time.

I think that Cletus, Garrett Mitchell, I think is gonna, that's helping a lot, too.

Yeah, people like Cletus, that's the market, dude. The way he's promoting everything while doing this stuff, he's fueled by passion. And he knows how to talk racing. He knows what he's looking at. Clearly a race fan. I mean, clearly a race fan. Okay. And I think those guys have a lot of power now. I think they do.

Do you think it's just a matter of, again, like, I know nothing of what's going on in that world. I haven't gotten down that rabbit hole yet. It's soon to come, I'm sure. Do you think it's just kind of like passing the torch to the next generation? Like the media side of things?

Yeah, I think there's a passing the torch tradition as well. Like, this is very Americana. When you go to a NASCAR race, it's very Americana tradition. Flows deep there. And, you know, everyone's invited to the NASCAR race. Racing is racing. I never run into people with opinions like that at the racetrack. No one even cares at the racetrack. Like, nobody cares. It's racing. Like, everyone here is racing, watching racing. We're all race fans. Everyone's invited. Yeah. And there's the markets are opening up from NASCAR. And the fact that people need to know is like, those guys are hauling a** the entire time. Like, they do not slow down and it's super tight. And, you know, what you are doing now on those laps, in five laps, will have an effect on the handling because, you know, if you overheat the right sides or fronts or rears, that's going to continue to compound because you're always in the corner. So, it's very difficult to recover from a slide, from just the tire perspective. Those guys are super talented, yeah.

So, as we kind of start to wrap up here, what's next for you, right? What is the next one, two, three years? I know you're going to be doing a lot of stuff with Savage Geese. That's pretty cool. I love their channel.

Like, it gets pretty funny.

I can only watch so much YouTube because I spend 90% of my time editing for this, but every time I see like, all right, that's a cool car. I want to see something about that. I didn't care. Like, for example, Engineering Explained had that recent Porsche video. I'm like, eh, who cares? But nonetheless, what's the next one to two years look like for you?

Yeah, so I think we're going to finish out this year with the Savage Geese videos. We've got a few more, some track record challengers. Right now it's a 992 GT3 RS. We're going to bring out some faster equipment pretty quickly here.

And then it allows it to close this by the way.

I'm not going to say the cars, but you know that, yeah, that's what we're going to be doing.

Just make sure you don't get in trouble.

I think Mark and Jack would like the hype, you know, I think that just kind of builds hype for that video. It's going to be a big video. And still racing, man. I got my IMSA license. You know, I'm still racing. I can't say what I'm going to be doing. I don't really know what I'm going to be doing yet, but you know, I love working on cars. I find my way. And I also have the backup plan of the finance thing. I'm not interested in going back to that. The world is still opening up a little bit from COVID for the racing industry, and it's going to be really cool seeing what's going to happen here. So I'm all in, and this is my life passion for sure. I can't get away from it. I've never found anything I love more. Sorry, ladies, but it's true. It's literally true, yeah.

Hey, man, you watch enough of those Santa documentaries, you can see where his priorities lie.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. And just in racing in general, like a lot of guys stay single and just travel. Like the cars are, that's what they want. That's what I want.

Hey, you do that podcasting too, man. Come on now.

Yeah, true. Seriously. Passion over everything, in my opinion. Passion over everything, especially because you're young. Do it.

I keep telling Dan, he had a divorce. We could have so much fun, but nope.

I'm here right now.

Yeah. No, I'm single as a Pringle, man.

I'm just saying, you can't have Pringles. There's about 90 of them in there.

What does it take to maintain your IMSA license? Cause that's another thing that people kind of overlook. Like you gotta have for insurance purposes, things like that. Like even for me to do the Optima street car, I have to have a ultimate street car license. And that costs me money every year to maintain that. And so what does that look like?

It's a pretty penny. I mean, I had to pay a pretty good amount of money like in the four figures for it this year. Not like deep in the four figures, it still had a one, but you know, it's over a thousand dollars. And you have to, I mean, I could get one easily just because I have a record in there already for like, I mean, I raced, my first IMSA race 11 years ago and I'm young still, but yeah, 11 years ago.

Did you still have such a long career ahead? Are you still, you're what, 27?

27, yep.

Dude, like some guys, especially like in IMSA, like they can get pretty up there in age.

Oh yeah, definitely. And I'm all about it. And I think right now I'm faster than I've ever been. It's okay, sure. And I think I got more experience in a lot faster stuff than ever have before. It's been fun kind of flying under the radar doing the races we are doing, but I'm truly developing some serious skills. The whole time. So yeah, I feel faster than ever. I know I'm faster than ever right now.

So do you see yourself getting into a seat again in the next couple of years?

Yeah, for sure.

Okay.

Yep, definitely. Definitely. That's been my goal. And graduated in 2020, you know, from college. I had a big plan and just kind of went, well, the whole college thing didn't help, right? Like, yeah, well, that was fine. I was able to manage that.

I mean, COVID, right?

COVID just shut down everything, not college. Everything. I mean, I was racing in 2020, but we couldn't have the fans near the car, around the paddock, it was all separated out. It was just weird. And it just kind of like ripped my heart out for a little bit. So I took a hiatus, worked here as full-time coach for everybody. I've coached more drivers here than anybody else for sure. And they all know me since I was like eight years old. So that's the other part of it. It's like, I'm kind of like the, I don't want to say prodigal son, but like the fast kid. You know?

What's your day-to-day look like right now then? Is it just coaching out here?

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I've been super busy. Like I usually, I mean, I'll be here. I was here yesterday helping my boy Gavin Gleitsman, my 15 year old grasshopper. Yeah, he's so fast. And he's really fun to work with. He listens and he knows exactly what we're doing. And we basically, I run all of his races for him. So I do all this prep and then all the spotting, during the races and mentor for sure. Yesterday, he did his first TA2 test in a Camaro. Yeah, so that's like 550 horsepower, tube frame, 2800 pound, four speed dog box race car. So like just gnarly to the teeth fast. And he went from a Miata to that. And so that was yesterday's day for me. Today is with you guys. And then I'm going to be helping a guy in the afternoon today in a Porsche. I think he's going to bring his Boxster out. And then tomorrow, I'll be here prepping race cars and then Sunday's race day.

What does that look like for somebody who wants... So you'll do like HPDE day instructor type stuff then too? So if somebody wants to just... They can book a private lesson with you or something too?

Yeah, a lot of it's word of mouth. There is a way to sign up for instructors on the Autobahn website. I don't actually know if you can do that anymore. For me, it's all word of mouth. Like I said, I do like really, really high end coaching with the racers.

What's the day cost with you?

It's 150 an hour. So with a minimum of two hours, but that changes if we're traveling. So like if I'm coaching away, it's about, I don't know. I think the going rate, I'll just say this, the market rate is 1500 a day. So if you're getting pro coaching at another track, that's what it is. Yeah.

So what's that look like? So you'll go to other tracks around the country and coach as well?

Yes.

What happens if you ever do tracks that you don't know? So you have to learn it first before you coach?

I've been to most of them, yeah. I've been to most of them. Actually, when I coach at Indy, I've never driven the track, but it's pretty simple. It's flat for the most part. You know, for the most part, the third to last corner is a slanted braking zone, which actually throws a lot of cars off. But for the most part, it's pretty flat. It's not the most technical. I think most of the factors there are traffic with this lower class car. So yeah, it's harder to pass. But I've been to most of the tracks. I have not been to Brainerd. Like I said, I haven't been to Willow Springs. Or I've been to probably 85% of the tracks in North America.

Wow, okay.

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah.

Well, sweet on that.

Should we pop the usual three?

Yeah, absolutely.

Just before that though, what are your thoughts on Coda? You were telling me about that off camera. I don't want to leave without knowing what's the beef.

Well, we're racing in a parking lot at Coda. That's what it is. It's a paved and painted track. So, yeah, I was saying I came up with a good term when I was there running Mustang Challenge because I could just see typical Coda, the variability in lap times, lap to lap, or if you get a lap time deleted. It's because of the track limits, because the only thing kind of limiting your use of too much track is the rules, but people take advantage of that every single lap, and it's impossible to police. So if it just had grass or something slower on the outside of the racing track itself, it'd be great. Like Road America, you want to use more curb? You can use more curb, but it's gonna eventually break something if you use all the curb there. Koda, it has those sausage curbs, which that's not the right way to go either, because you can rip an oil pan off the car, tear up a front splitter doing that. And I talked to the teammates, I was like, dude, I feel like I'm driving in a pageant show. Pageant show isn't like, you know, dress up in a dress, like, you know, for judges. I feel like my laps are in a pageant show. That's not racing. Like, this is not race. The whole track limits thing, that's a gripe I have about Formula One as well. Yeah, those cars are like really hauling a**, but the track limits are the, like, honestly, the dumbest s*** they ever added to Formula One. I think it's ruining racing slowly. And I've told people pretty high up in IMSA and other series in North America, it's like, North America is the true last bastion of racetracks that are OG, running as they're supposed to be. Like, Red Atlanta, you can't get on the curbs of the exit of Turn 1 because you're going to be in the grass, right? It's going to be in the grass. Whereas Kota, you can, if you want to catch the guy in front of you, just use more of the racetrack that's paved. Like, it's just pretty goofy. The place is goofy.

I think it's Jamie Price photo.

I'm sure you follow. Yeah, I think it for, I know who he is.

I think he commented, like, because somebody was like, oh, why don't they make like this an F1 track, like turn this like one specific track into an F1 track. He's like, yeah, so they could ruin it.

100%. Yeah. Thanks, Jamie. Like, that's true.

I mean, I think he knows who he's looking at too.

Yeah, no, but that's the deal. There's too many cars. The reason IMSA doesn't go there with the WeatherTech series is because there's too many cars. There's like 60 cars. So, people are going to cheat every lap. And if you are approaching the weekend saying you're going to enforce the track limits, well, that's through cameras and people being posted up and IMSA officials being posted up in each corner to judge 60 cars every two minutes. Like, no, it's impossible. It's not right. It's not right. So, that whole S's section, massive variability there on track use, exceeding track limits there. Yeah, it's just, if they just put grass, like...

It solves a lot of problems.

Yeah. You don't even have to do full grass. Like, just do 10 feet of it.

Sure.

You know, right after the curb. Makes all the sense of the world to me.

Yeah, but then you gotta get a lawnmower. So like, oh yeah, you know, that really...

Well, between the roller coasters that they're building there, they might not have the budget.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if you've been there with the roller. It's pretty cool.

No, I've never been there. It's a bucket list. I've driven past it a bunch of times, but...

It is, so when I was there a couple weeks ago, they're building like what is going to be some sort of Six Flags style thing, which is going to be pretty sweet.

What's the longest race you've done?

25 hours at Thunder Hill. Holy s***. We won it in the E1 class, which is not like the fastest class, but we did it second time by 25 hours.

What car is that?

An MX-5 Cup.

MX-5? Okay.

Before they had the sequential, so it's still age pattern.

25 hours. Okay, so is that you and how many guys? Just you?

Five, I think.

Five, okay.

I did like a long, I did like eight hours, I think. Seven or eight hours is a long one. Yeah. Sure.

In several stints? Or all in one time? Okay.

Yeah, and I did like a three and a half hour stint to the end. The gearbox blew up, and with like five hours to go, this is in our run plan, by the way, we knew it was gonna blow up. Okay, okay, so you're ready. Yeah, so I just stuck it in fourth gear, and I didn't touch it after that. So like just clutched in for the pit stops, they pushed me to get started. I did two or three fuel stops, and yeah, fourth gear to the end, it freaking held.

You were finishing.

Yeah.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah, we tried another driver the year before, and he snuck his way into the finishing position, which he wasn't supposed to take. He'll know who that is. Lied to me about it, and blew up the transmission and we lost the race. And then the next year we came back and I finished it, and we won. So like we were supposed to do the first time.

What does that endurance stuff look like? So when you're two and a half hours into your three and a half hours, are you going, oh, this sounded cool at first, but now I'm getting sick of it?

I think if we were running like fifth, no, but we were in the lead by like a lap and a half. So there was a motivation there. Yeah, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was pretty motivating. I felt like I was getting something done. It was fun.

What's the scariest car you've driven?

I'm not really scared of any of them.

No, that's a real race car driver right there. He's got four wheels and a fifth to hold it. We're good.

Well, you know what? Actually, a couple of weeks ago, we drove the, it's out now, the Taycan Turbo GT and the Lucid Air Sapphire. Yeah, the Lucid is fast, man. That's a 1200 horsepower car. It's so fast. So that was probably the scariest because you can't really, you know, tell where you're at. But yeah, I'm just thinking about that electric cars, they can get scary because they're heavy too. And they don't really stop very well just because of the mass. But those tube frame like V8 cars, those are really fast and raw. I like those and they're really loud. So I think those are probably the scariest for sure. But they're cool. None of them are scariest and I don't want to get in them.

Yeah, you'll still rip it.

Yeah.

Yeah, all day long.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Sweet. Let it rip.

All right. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. I need a track car, a daily driver and a show car. You have an unlimited budget. Build whatever you want. Swap whatever you want. What are you going to pick?

Yeah. The... Can I do two for the... No.

Just like you tried to pick two tracks at the end there.

Yeah.

What are the three favorite tracks?

I'm a stickler for that one.

I think I'd like to... If I had a track car, I'd like to try the LMP1 hybrids. Those are going to go down to history as a pretty rare piece, I think. It's going to be a while before we see race cars like that. Sure. Again, every team had their own hybrid system. The Audis were diesels. The Porsche was a V4. That's cool stuff. Space race type of technology. And the budgets were just incredible for those cars. And they're all still there. Just can't run them without like 20 people. So you need to like a 20 person team to run them. So that's my track car. I'd say the Audi R18, E-tron Quattro, the last generation with that crazy tub design, with the really small nose, those were going to be very fast. And Audi shut the program after the thing with the diesel gate, which sucked, but. So for, what was the other one, street car?

You had track car, show car and daily driver.

Okay, daily driver. If I had a crazy one, like a Koenigsegg, I think one of those would be pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, like a really fast one. The one-to-one. One-to-one? I like that one, the CCXR is really cool, too. So I guess the one-to-one would be the single choice. And then Show Cart, 29, the Ford pickup. Yeah, I like this one a lot.

This thing is pretty slick.

It's on forged line wheels. Yeah, my dad rebuilt it, he built it, really. He bought it from a guy in Colorado, and then he redid a bunch of it. It's got this really cool, like dark purple paint to it.

Yeah, I thought it was black when we first got in here, and then we pushed it into the light, and I was like, oh man.

I know, that's awesome. It's super cool. And it's a true 1929 Ford pickup cab. So it's got the medallion front radiator cap. I think it's what they call it. I don't really know what they call that thing, but it's super rare. And the motor itself is a crate engine. I forget what the displacement is. Not huge.

It looks like a 302.

Yeah, it's small. Yeah, and it's got like the chrome plate of valve covers, alternators chrome. Might as well be a water pump. I can't really tell. And it's just a sweet piece. That thing looks so cool rolling around. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. And it's got the big Ford rear end, so it could take a lot more power if we wanted.

That's awesome.

Yeah. So I think that's probably, those are my three.

Well, on that note, man, where can everybody find you?

So I'm mostly on Instagram for the most part. My website needs to be updated a little bit, which that's on me, but websites still there is brittcaseymotorsports.com, mostly Instagram. That's where I have the best Instagram stories. I like posting stories. So if you follow me, I do post a lot of funny, cool stuff, all car related for the most part, maybe like a funny meme once or twice, but not really anymore. Yeah, if I find a clever political meme, I might put it up there, but for the most, I think those days are done. Yeah, but Britt Casey Jr is my handle on Instagram. I also have a YouTube channel, but it's not really updated at all. So yeah, that's how you find me. Yeah, I love this stuff more than anything. It's super cool to meet guys like you too that share the passion. So yeah, racing for life, cars, you know, I get it. I totally, totally get it. And I love your guys' channel. All the stuff you put out is like true quality stuff. And, you know, I think in the future, you guys should interview some people that I know too. I can make you guys up.

I love your suggestions. Chicago's a hop skipping away for us.

Yeah, well, we'll go to Ohio too, see some real race cars as well.

Well, that's one thing about this is as we, every guest we get on is another network we've tapped into and it's really helped a lot.

I do like tapping guests.

Yeah.

Sorry, sorry.

And cut. No.

Hasn't happened yet. But anyways, on that note, people, Dan?

You can find us at Gunna Garage or just check me out, MrGunnaGarage on Facebook. That's probably the easiest now. I'm gonna make a post here telling everybody why I've been gone.

Okay. Fair enough. Well, awesome. Britt, thank you so much for making this happen. This is awesome. Dan, thanks for existing and we'll see y'all next time. Thanks again for watching the show, guys. Be sure to go into the description down below and check out all of our sponsors. They are what make this show possible. It allows us to travel the country and talk to some really cool guests. Be sure to check them out, support them just like you support us, and see y'all next time.