171. The First GT500 in Trans AM, Supercharged vs Twin Turbo, Racing on the Edge w/ Derric Carter

I've got nicknames for both the car. The first one, the supercharged car is Ford Banger, kind of like a playoff, like a Ford Banger thing, but Ford Banger, because I've had it in the wall so many times, you know, it doesn't just bang it up. So we went with Ford Banger on that. And then the Twin Turbo car we call Junkyard Dog.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. Today, we're in corn country. We are here at Midway Mustang, and we just picked up a fun little project for DAM, which we will touch on and announce here at some point, probably even during this episode, to be honest with you. But nonetheless, since we were down here, we figured we'd come by and say hi to Derric Carter, who DAM met a few years ago at Road America. It's gotta be, what, two, three years ago now? Take me back real quick. So this was about two years ago. Was your car stocked, was his car stocked back then when he was giving you advice?

Was it?

Yeah, it was stocked, yeah. We were out there driving on the track, and I remember he had a Mustang. It was like a, not quite Mystichrome, but I mean something like that, right?

Yeah, it was Mystichrome wrapped.

Oh, okay, yeah, Mystichrome wrapped, and I just, I remember blown by a couple of times, you know, to say the least, and I think you had come and found me, and you were like, man, what have you done to that car? And I was like, it's stock, it's like nothing's been done to it. I don't even think I had brakes or anything done to it, you know, at that time. And, you know, we just, we talked about just comfortability in the car and then got into the whole like driving with two feet thing, you know, because you're like, what can I do to try to be faster? And I was like, man, you know what, learning to brake and gas, you know what I mean, with two different feet definitely, you know, help not, you know, doing the transition you did try. How'd that go?

Not great. I did not. Yeah, that's not for me just yet.

Still to this day.

No, no. I have gotten better though. My times at Road America have gotten significantly better. That's cool. Yeah, I just remember you were also, we had a friend of ours, was this car 1200 horsepower at the time?

Marks, yeah. 1200, not, a thousand wheel.

A thousand wheel.

No behind the balls actually.

Yeah. You were getting faster times than him too. So on which he's, he's not a guy who likes to lose. So I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah. I think, I think by the time the weekend or whatever was over, I think he was pushing a hair ahead of me for, you know, like, you know, with the times. But sometimes that's what it takes. We call it in racing, chasing the rabbit. Like when you have a rabbit to chase somebody that's faster than you or doing better than you, you realize your own limitations and where you're at as a driver. And I've found that having the rabbit chase definitely helps me. My times are better. I can drive harder. And you realize like what you can do, like how much harder you can push the car. Cause if you're just out there doing it yourself, you're always going to have that like feeling inside of you that's going to kind of give you the limitations. Like, oh, that corner felt a little off, but you get somebody to chase, it doesn't matter if it feels off. You're just going to get it.

Exactly. I've tried having an instructor in my car too. That is too much. I don't know if it's just cause I'm a guy or if I'm too old or whatever, but like trying to drive and have input at the same time, like it wasn't working. I'm a lead follow. I love that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, having an instructor in a car, it was rough for me.

I would agree with that. I wasn't, I wasn't a huge fan of the instructors. I took a couple with me and when I first started driving and I was going with instructors on the car, a lot of the guys that I had were driving cars. They were like BMWs and things like that. There were nothing like a Mustang. They don't handle like a Mustang. You don't come into the corners the same way that you do and something like that. And then I, I met a guy, an instructor and his name was Ray and he drives like a Grand Sport Corvette and he's running around with chin and stuff at the time. And he was good. Like it opened things up. Instead of like correcting me on like what was wrong, he sat in the passenger seat and would like teach you to drive. Like if you were coming on a corner and you're coming in hot, he'd be like, on the brake, okay, open it up and turn. I mean, he was like the rally guy that sits in the passenger seat kind of, or he's just telling you what to do and like what's coming up.

Short and sweet too, right?

Yeah, very short, very direct on what it is that was being done. And he would like tell you when you were doing good. It wasn't just sit there and like tell you everything you're doing wrong and trying to talk to you. It was like instant coaching right there. I thought Ray should have been a coach for sure, but he's kind of followed me over the years and stuff. And I think sometimes it's finding that right person, but the five other guys prior to that, I was like this, I can't, I can't, I don't want to do it.

So one in six is what it took. So one in six driving instructors just don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Maybe, yeah. And he just pushed me. I think it was the biggest thing was he was just pushing me. He saw that I could drive and he even went to the chin guys. He's like, I don't know what these guys are talking about, about this guy can't drive. This guy can actually drive and he can drive very well. I just don't think you were pairing him with the right guys. I think that was kind of some of the deal too. I think I was scaring instructors. They were wanting me to back down. They would feel the car start to move around and they're like, whoa. Then it starts to make you feel like, am I doing something wrong? I'm like, I know I'm not doing something wrong. I've been driving this car.

How important of that, again, we're just going right into it here. You've been doing a lot of track stuff. I think shortly after we talked to Road America, you got into NASA. How important is that? We have a mutual friend, Nick. How important is that having mentors or people that you can work with and stuff to get into this kind of stuff? Does that help a lot?

It's huge. So NASA and our AAX group, we've really found a group of friends and even our Mid-America region, I really consider a lot of them to be almost family to an extent. I know we don't always sit down at the same table to eat, but we share stuff on the phones and we go to events sometimes just to be able to see each other. But yeah, especially when you're chasing the same dreams, maybe with different goals, you have people to share that stuff with. And I've never found such a group of people in any other thing that I've done in life other than racing, where you just meet a good group of guys that are willing to help each other, to help each other grow, teaching each other how to drive to be better. And Nick's one of those, Dustin Drawlinger also. Me and Nick and Dustin are kind of the mid-America AIX group. And we all push each other to do better and be better, whatever that means. And it doesn't matter to us. I don't think who crosses the finish line first. It used to be Dustin. Dustin was always the guy that was out in the lead. And I think over time, me and Nick had gotten faster, our cars are faster. And now we really push and challenge Dustin. And he's still there in our corner, rooting us on, no matter what it is we're doing, whether we're racing with NASA or Trans AM or just off. I think he was driving with PCA some and was kind of doing some IMSA aspirations and things like that. Which I'm not exactly sure what he's doing with those this year, but the support is nice. Because you don't get the support when you're racing from home or from your family or people that don't do it. Like you'll get the, hey, my son races or my husband is racing, but it's not the same as people who are there doing it with you. It's nice.

Yeah, I bring my family and stuff a lot of times too and their concern is just don't crash.

That's always it. It's like we have suits and cages and all that stuff for, we'll be okay and that's the thing. You always have to believe no matter what happens that you're gonna be okay. I mean, you can't be the best driver that you can be if you don't believe that you're gonna be okay, you know?

Yeah. So, now we can talk cars here, because you're, so Nick has his Camaro, stuff like that. You seem very Ford forward. Is that just, is that a thing that you've just a huge Ford fan? Like you don't see a GT500 out in that stuff very often. So what, how did your choice of car come into play here?

Man, so I've always been just going back to being young. For some reason, it was always a Mustang, you know. Even being like a naive teenager, I thought that the first car that I was ever going to build or thing that I was ever going to do was going to be some barn find Mustang that I was going to build in my mom's garage, you know, or carport. And it didn't end up being a Mustang. It ended up being like an 89 Toyota Camry instead. Like I didn't know anything about cars. You know, I picked up Haynes manual and read it from front to back. And from there, I like fixed an alternator and then bought it for like $200, sold it the next day for like $900. And that had me hooked. After that, I started flipping cars and then that just kind of steamrolled into junking and salvaging cars and trying to find anything. You buy a car and figure out how you can make the most money off of it. Got into the catalytic converter game. And, you know, now I own a scrap yard, parts yard, tire shop, car dealership, pretty much everything that has to.

You were getting catalytic converters legally though, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You get them off the vehicles.

Tell me more. It was kind of like a cheat code. Once you learn like what's on a car, like I learned the makes and models and motors for what they are. So if I would show up to a car, you know, a normal scrapper might only pay $300 because he's like, oh, I might get $100 out of the converter. I'll get a couple hundred dollars out of the body or whatever it is. But I knew exactly like that car's got a $380 converter on because it has this motor this year. So I kind of like broke the code before there was like actually a code and that kind of like pushed me forward in the process when catalytic converters really started to rise in price. Back in the day, it didn't matter what you had. If you had it in your hand, it was like $30 or $50. But there were times, I mean, they were worth hundreds and some of them were thousands of dollars that you had.

I remember in shop class when I was like maybe 17 and the kid had a Ford Ranger and I was working on my car and we were out there and I hear a drill running and he's drilling holes in his catalytic converter to make his exhaust louder. And I'm like, dude, you just picked like the most expensive part on that truck to drill holes into right now just so you're aware.

Yeah, yeah. Do it before or do it after. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

That's crazy.

I know.

Yeah.

He wasn't very bright. I don't know what he's doing anymore.

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I'm about 15 or 20 minutes away. So Eric's been a huge help. Midway Mustang itself, I mean, it's just been a huge help in the growth of cars and everything that I've done like it. It started with like a 2013 GT500 that I had like aspirations to make, like the fastest car I can. I wanted it to run eight seconds and I wanted it to do 200 mile an hour while having air conditioning and being able to drive to the grocery store. Kind of like an all-in-one car. And this is going back to like 2015 or 2016. And at the time I was buying a lot of, doing a lot of insurance builds and stuff, for the car a lot. So, I bought Mustangs and things. And I was pro-charging them and doing what I could to make them faster and transmissions and whatever could be done. They were just, he was such a help all the way along. I mean, like this place in general, I don't know if you guys have shown what all's here, but I mean, just having the parts like these that you can't find barely anywhere in the country, that close, allowed me to build stuff. And he's been like a huge help too. And just he's never been like a sponsor per se, but always kind of like back there like silently. And more of a friend than anything over the years. We've become friends. I was actually super jealous of him when I first met him. I was like, look at what this guy's got, like these cars in this place. And like, wow, dude, like, how do you do that? You started out of your garage, you know? And now I have a story of where I started and to where I've come. And just over the years, we have become really good friends. And this place is an asset to anybody who does anything with the Mustang, Camaro, or the fast car stuff. I mean, you just picked up a car from him to do a build transplant into a, what was it, a Cobra?

Yeah, a 93 Cobra, which I bought a 93 Cobra from him also several years ago. Yeah. Yeah, I bought plenty of stuff. I'm sure he's got a kid that I've helped put in college.

Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about it too, you know, all this stuff. And there are times like I wanted to put my passenger seat back in my car. So when I went out to Ozarks like last month, I could take some people for rides because I was able to do it for like some HPDE sessions in between racing. And I realized like when I had cut my harness out, I had like remove that section because I was like, why do I ever need a passenger seat again? I'm like, man, they need like a harness or something. He's like, oh, there's a, you know, piles of harness out there. Go find what you need and nuts and bolts and screws and just random stuff that I need. He's like, man, just go, just go find. I spent a lot of money with him over time too. Super good people. So anybody who ever gets a chance to meet him or deal with them, you know, whether it's on a business or on a personal level or whatever, they're way ahead of the game if they got Eric in the corner.

Oh, absolutely. It's cool s*** that I just, you know, sometimes I look for an excuse to come here and buy something. Yeah. I can hang out here for a little bit.

Yeah. No, it's the same thing too. Sometimes I'll come up here just to see what he's got and just shoot the s***. And somehow I always end up leaving with something.

Yeah.

And I'm just seeing pallets of engines all around us. Like, and obviously like in the camera, I can see all the door panels and just insane.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just everything. What's it called? So getting back to like the racing side of things. And so how do you go from, again, stock Gt500? What's that progression look like then? So what's next? You go into NASA.

Yes, I went to NASA. So how it how it started, I was I was doing HPDE to like a level that, you know, HPD is kind of about pushing yourself or it's not like racing. You go out there and find some guys that are fast and, you know, you chase them down. And we had really me and my buddy Josh had talked a lot about like turning it into a race car. It's like, how do you take a 90,000 something dollar car and turn into a race car? So it was just kind of like a dream per se. But I had I had track insurance. I had an incident at Road Atlanta. It had rained there. And I mean, when I say it rained, it had come down and it was like 11 o'clock in the morning. And I'd never seen a rain like it. And I had put slicks on the car for the first time. There were like some Toyo RRs and I was out there driving. And when I went on track, it was like four o'clock in the afternoon. That's how long I waited. But it was the very last session of the day. The guy said the track was dry, except like, you know, a couple of turns. They're like, yeah, this turns wet and that turns wet. So just kind of be careful there. When I went out there on track right away, I wasn't feeling it. I had first couple of turns like, no, this isn't as too much water and it's too moist. So I make it to the back straight. And I go to like pass around like a Ford Focus. Now, normally the cars will hit. Have you been to Road Atlanta? No, I have not. Well, they'll do like 165 or something like that, maybe a little more on the back straight. And I'm doing like 125, you know? So I mean, in the GT500, just kind of cruising along. And I go offline to pass him and it's right in an area, they kind of call it the kink. It's like turn nine, where instead of being a straight, there's just a little bit of a bend there. And I went offline when I went offline, you just saw the color of the concrete change from like that light to the dark. And as I went outside, but then also corrected the wheel to the right to follow, the steering wheel just turned a butter on me. There was just nothing there. And is it like lost its traction? I instantly snapped it open, but I was already like pushing, the momentum was already carrying me off to the side of the track. So you end up in the grass and I had a surprising amount of traction there. And I just kind of barely tapped the wall and then tried to walk it back on track and I did. But when I got back on track, it must have been all the water and the mud and stuff like that that was on the tires because it was just on glass and sent me into the wall on the opposite side.

Oh damn, okay.

It felt detrimental, you know what I mean, at the time. But that was like a three day HPDE deal that I was doing. It's supposed to be two days at Road Atlanta. That was the first day. And then immediately to Barber after us following Chin. And the car is messed up, but the radiators and coolers and stuff like that aren't leaking. But the side of it's all messed up. And we grabbed out a bunch of Gorilla Tape Man and just taped it all up and smacked a Band-Aid on it and ended up finishing out the weekend there.

Oh, no way.

Yeah, I was doing so much track stuff that it wasn't even a month. It might have been a month before that. I was talking about doing track policy. I paid for a couple of individual day ones. And I was weighing the cost of an annual policy with how much I was tracking. And I'm super cheap, so I didn't want to do it. But I'm like, it was $5,000 or something just under that for the year. And I'm like, $5,000. I'm like, I haven't wrecked this car. Nothing bad's happened yet. I feel like I'm a pretty safe driver. And my girlfriend at the time, Kaylee, she was like, you spend that kind of money on stupid stuff sometimes. To protect the car as much as you're out there driving, going back to the family saying be safe. She convinced me to do it. And I was like, okay, I am gonna be doing a lot of driving into the next year and stuff too. So I might as well pay for it. And I did and luckily I did because that's what kind of opened the doors, right? I they the car was totaled out. They totaled out the car. I bought the car back for like twenty five thousand dollars or something. And I mean, you you can't go buy an S550 Mustang for that kind of money, let alone a GT500 and the drive trains were 30 in it. You know, I mean, so in anybody who doesn't have track insurance definitely should get track insurance if you're tracking. I mean, for instances like that, I mean, it just it worked out really well.

I didn't know you can get a year policy for those, though.

Yeah, I looked at those were options when I looked at it too. But like he said, it's like crazy expensive, but by it's three or $400. Otherwise, each day.

I was going to say, if you do more than 12 sessions, though, a year, it kind of pays for itself.

It has to do with how much, how valuable your car is to mine was like, you know, I think it was insured like 95,000 or something like that. So for me to do like a weekend or like the day sessions, it was like $500 or something like that, like for, you know, for the weekend. So you go over and you're like, am I going to do more than 10 track days? I don't know if it's by the day or by the weekend, but more than 10 track days or 10 events next year? And I'm like, yeah, I'm definitely good.

Yeah, as I said, short answer, yes.

So that's where it made sense and it brought the cost down. But as soon as it was wrecked, you know, and it happened, I think my first call was to Josh. I'm like, dude, it wrecked the car. Because we were like, we've been into the car stuff for years. And he's like, well, it's time to turn it into a race car. And he was like, kind of being sarcastic, but kind of being serious. And it just kind of like weighed on me over the weekend as I was out there driving. And I'm like, to start with that kind of platform. And from what I had found, I didn't know anybody in the country had ever built a GT500 to actually road course or do any type of wheel to wheel racing with. And I was like, how cool would it be to be the first guy to do this? And it just snowballed from there. Next thing you know, we're taking sauce to it and we're cutting the stuff out and going off to go get it caged. And I did, through research, I did end up finding out there was one guy who had built a GT500. His name's Cal. He goes by Cal, but Chris Lemp out of the Great Lakes region of NASA. So I actually went out to Gingerman, to an event out there, a NASA event, to go meet him and see his car. He was super inviting, too. He's like, yeah, I'd be so cool to get another GT500 in. Take pictures of everything that I've gotten. He told me where he got a lot of his stuff from. So again, meeting other racers who did the same stuff, I was just able to build the car from there. And right away, after getting out of comp school and going out to do my first race and getting that very first green flag drop was like nothing I felt like I had ever experienced up to that point. It was just so intense. You're out there and all the cars are roaring. You don't even know what to expect, man. And they drop that green flag for the first time and everybody roars and you run into turn one together. And I mean, it's crazy. And the world just, you know, everything just slowed down for me, you know, as you fight through all the stuff. And from there, it was just like, it was like drugs. I think sometimes doing drugs might be cheaper than racing. I don't know about, I don't know about the long run, but I mean, it's like, it's crazy. So I went, I went and I ran in NASA's program for a while. That's where I met Nick and Dustin and Donna, who heads our region and, you know, followed NASA around for a while. And I've kind of dabbled in some other stuff. Now I've went to, I've done a couple of events with SVRA and now just recently with Trans AM and stuff too, but it's all just been about growing. You know, there was a time where I was nowhere near the front of the grid and then to a time where, you know, you're just kind of leading the grid almost every time. And for me, it's not about the, it's not about the trophy or the, like what place it is you're getting. Like I don't care about getting first place. I care about like having the challenge. Like I'm paying for the challenge. I want the challenge to be with myself or with the other racers or whatever. So I feel like that's what it is that I'm seeking is have been like kind of like moving to other organizations and trying different stuff.

How was the Trans AM thing then? Cause you, I think from, I remember you went in and kind of expecting to be like, oh, we're just kind of doing this as a trial thing. We're going to go out there or whatever. And then you ended up podium in that too, didn't you?

Yeah, yeah. So the Trans AM thing was awesome to say the least. Like it was so, everything about it was so big. It was, it's far away. It's more expensive. You know, you get the TV coverage. You've got the cars there that are faster than you. You have drivers that are more experienced than you. So the stage of things just felt bigger. And like, so that already in itself kind of just felt like a challenge. You knew you were going to be challenged to some extent. And that event, the Trans AM races, they're 100 miles or 70 minutes, I think, whichever one ends up finishing first. And trying to figure out how to make a Gt500 compete 100 miles in 70 minutes is already tough. You know, like that's the first challenge in itself is what do we have to do to make the car last that long? And I had my fair share of like issues, mechanical stuff, and my hood flew open while I was out there. And broke, that was that we had to deal with that. And I had a coupler blow off of the charge pipe. So I was out there running a lot of the race without any boost or anything. So it was a challenge for sure. But somebody there told me actually that weekend, he's like, you know, racing Trans AM isn't always about, you know, crossing the finish line, like where you cross finish line. Sometimes it's just about finishing. Like there are a lot of cars that go out there and they just can't finish like they don't, you know, you never know what's gonna happen during a 100 mile race. When you're out there, you know, running 10 tenths the whole entire time, like things break, people wreck, stuff happens. And I think a couple cars broke down and I think one guy, I remember him like spinning out and then he got back in the race and then I blew a tire or something had happened. So somehow I ended up completing 18 out of the 30 laps that was down there at Kota and it was just more than the other guys. There were the subsequent guys completed less laps. So we get done with the race, I ended up getting across the checker. And so that was cool, the experience of being able to finish, especially with the issues or whatever that we had. That was the first feeling of like meta-challenge. Let's finish. I had no idea that I was going to be able to finish at all. And so I get off and they're directing us one way and the other way. And I get out of the car because people were pulling over in park and I'm like, where do we go from here? Like, are we supposed to go to tech? Or what do we do? I just asked another driver. It's like, oh, you have to wait here, whatever. We're we got to wait for podium. And I'm like, OK, I'm like, we have to wait for like the other drivers. And he's like, no, if you're here, you made podium. And I'm like, what? Like, how's that possible? I at that time, I was like, did I even finish like half of the race? Like what happened? And so man, it was it was a good experience. And I feel like for this next year, it just it hooked me. The challenge part of things was met. So as I go into this next year, I plan on doing quite a few Trans AM events, if not trying to do the season with them, I think. I looked at Mid America schedule, like NASA's and the Trans AM schedule, and there's only like maybe one event that was conflicting there. And so yeah, I think I'm going to give it a shot. Sweet.

So what does it take to get, because again, you're also the first GT500 in Trans AM, correct?

Yes. Yep.

So what does it take to make it compliant for Trans AM? Because I also noticed that when I was going through your Facebook page, you also got Turbos on the car now instead. Yeah.

So it's definitely been some work to some extent to get them to accept the car and then figure out where it's going to be and what it's going to do. So it's still kind of like a trial thing. I worked with Aaron, who's the head technical director of Trans AM, and Cal Lamp, who I just talked about earlier, he kind of had opened the door on the Trans AM thing the year prior. And so the door was already open to have a conversation with him, I'm a Gt500 guy that wants to run it. And so they put us in the Gt class, which is like the lowest tier of the classes. And even though our cars make a ton of power, they're extremely heavy. Like my car's like 4,000 pounds. And so in a 100 mile race, you're talking about going through like brakes and going through tires and stuff like that, you get these wear items, these consumables or whatever, run out a lot faster in cars that are out there, you know, 2,800 to 3,200 pounds. So we put us in the Gt class to just kind of see like how it's going to go. It's the introductory class for Trans AM. So if they don't really have a place for you, and it doesn't seem like you're crazy ahead of the rest of the group, I think they put you in Gt. And then it's kind of like if you go out there and you're, I think you're winning every race or you're walking circles around everybody else and they might look in to move in the car into like Sgt or Xgt, which are like the classes that are up. But my first race obviously didn't go the greatest in the sense of like being able to complete the race. So I imagine that they'll still have me run in the Gt class next year. They also looked at the times and stuff like that too, like at other events and other races that I've ran. Like what times is he running compared to what the XG, SG or GT cars are running. And I think that the times were pretty comparable or somewhere in the middle between like what the guys in the Gt class has run, which there are guys that were running faster times than I've ran for sure. And then the SGT class, same thing, the guys that are in the top are way faster than what I've ran in the past, but the slower guys are a little closer to the time. So I'll figure out I guess as the year goes on, do they keep me in the Gt class or do they move? Again, to me, it's all about the challenge. So if I was in the head of the Gt class and I'm just out there running first place every time, to me that's not any fun. That's like, you might as well pay to run time trials because I'm trying to battle with a guy or a couple guys the whole time around the track. That's what racing's about.

Well, we know that Trans, so I do the Optima Street Car Challenge at Road America and Trans AM runs that same weekend. And we watched a guy tear his car completely apart after a day of racing.

The challenger, I think it was Trans AM. It was the young kid. I think he was 15 at the time or 16 or something like that. Some green challengers.

We finally went to bed at like midnight or something. And that car was, I'm talking like it was in pieces, engine out, everything. And then we, about six or seven a.m. I got up and I heard them fired up for the first time. So they spent all night putting that thing back together.

Like down to like the tubes, dude. It was like the craziest thing I've seen in my life.

Yeah, it was pretty rough.

So okay, so then I'm sure there's a broader scope of rules though, right? Like, you know, it's like you have to be within this weight, this sort of horsepower. Does that also come into play as well or?

Yeah, they work off of, I think Trans AM works off of like a balance of power versus like a weight to horsepower ratio like NASA does. And I'm not exactly sure. I wish I could tell you, I know how it all works to whatever extent. I'm just kind of like, hey, I'm here, you know, I want to race. Just, you know, put me somewhere and let me race, you know? And then I don't want to be the guy that comes in, you know, to an organization or to a class and people are like, like, that car just sucks. Like, why is it here? You know, it shouldn't be here. It belongs in a different class. It's faster than everybody. It breaks all the rules and stuff that are here because organizations deal with it and I dealt with that. I felt like this last year and a half, I was dealing with that at NASA. We were, you know, protesting and doing a lot of stuff against the number 18 Fessler car that we didn't feel was, you know, meeting the rules and legal. We thought that they found every gray area and, you know, took it to like the extreme of like past that point and I don't want to be that. I don't want to be that guy that's always... And I hate to say like, be that guy probably isn't the right terms because it's not the Fessler's fault. Like they built a car to the exact extent of what they felt the rule book could be. It's kind of the NASA organization allowing it to go, I felt like, in not enforcing their rules and the stuff that was in the book as far as what it is that we fought. So I don't ever want to go there and be that guy. It's kind of one of the reasons I started looking towards another organization was because of some of the politics and things like that that were involved in racing. I'm just trying to go out and have a good time, you know?

What's been your favorite track so far, by the way, since you traveled probably all over the country at this point?

Man, favorite track. Road America is like the GT500 track. I mean, it just is. I mean, just the big straights and the ability to breathe, the big braking zones, the way that the corners allow you to just open up and free flow into them. It's a lot of fun for a GT500. There are definitely cars that are faster, but I swear they built that track for a GT500 or the GT500 for that track, you know, Middleton Motorsports out there. I mean, they've had some pretty great success out there with that track. But the times and the things that they've done out there. And that's, it's either gonna be there.

What about two and three? If you had to pick a two and three.

Probably Sebring and Road Atlanta are two really fun ones.

Sebring's gotta be a crazy one.

Yeah, Sebring's a lot of fun. I've had my most, the most like mechanical failures and off tracks I've had for sure have been at Sebring. Sebring is a hard track on a car, especially a heavy car and a high horsepower car because the mistakes, when you make mistakes, there's not a lot of room of like mess up, you know, and you go into a lot of turns and stuff. It's like, you've got a 90 degree turn to the right after coming off of, you know, 120 mile an hour. So if you miss your braking zone, you're off in the grass and in a tire pile, which has happened to me. I've lost, I lost brakes on the back straight before. I've lost suspension. I mean, things have happened out there, but it's so.

Is that Sebring in particular or in general?

It's Sebring. Yeah. Holy s***. I, like anything else, just kind of learn in my brake rotors before I went to the event, I was like, oh, there's some cracks in these brake rotors. You know, little questionable, but I rode with rotors that have been, I thought in worse shape and I was out there, I guess hard on the brake. And when I was on the back straight, it must have been like the cooling effect because there was only like 55 degrees down there or something that day. And I was like 150 mile an hour. And all of a sudden I thought I blew a tire. And no, it was my rotor exploding, like it just disintegrated. And yeah, and a piece of the rotor got lodged between the caliper and the rim, snapped a control arm at 155, but the GT500s have like the independent control arms where it was like one on the front, one on the rear. So there was like just enough of it hanging there. I had no front brakes or anything. So it was like everything I could like pump the brakes and try to scrub the tires to like bring it down to like not hit the wall, going there towards the end. And Sebring is tough. That's where NASA's national championship is going to be this year. And Trans AM's first event is going to be at Sebring too. So it's nice to have some experience there. And again, it's a super fun track. So getting to run with both organizations there at that track will be a treat, I guess, to say the least. Yeah.

What's the most difficult part about Sebring? Is it just kind of like the fact that it's just a rough surface?

It's a it's a rough surface for sure. And I don't know if it's so much that is it. It's just the the high speed zones to the breaking, right? Like there's not a lot there that's like extremely flowing. Like Road America is like a flowing track, right? Like as you hit certain turns, you know, it's like comfortable as you know, you're able to track out and get into stuff. And Sebring is like, like I always tell people, it's like high speed technical. Like you've got to get it right. You know, if you don't get it right, and you can see all kinds of places where people have not got it right. I mean, the walls of Sebring are just lined with, you know, people that have that have been in them and stuff. So, yeah.

Have you? So I think about this all the time, because really the only thing I've ever tracked is an S550 Mustang, whether it be the car I had before the Gt500 I have now. And I'm like, man, I'd like to try a different car. Have you tracked anything else? Because it does. I let people realize how much it is the muscle, one of those things around sometimes. And like you said, I like the long, sweeping straights and all that kind of stuff are great. But when you get on a small technical course, it's an absolute bear.

Oh yeah, for sure it is. I haven't had the experience or the chance to. I bought last year when I was in Atlanta, I bought a C6 Corvette. It was caged and good to go as far as the racing or track part of things goes. But I've been so busy with what I've been doing, all the GT500 stuff that I've been doing that I just hadn't had time. I bought some slicks for it and they ended up being oversized. I took it to Ozarks and they were rubbing real bad and took some plastic out of there trying to fix that. And I wasn't able to, that was the only event that I took it to and then Sunset just sat in the garage. It's a full time job keeping two GT500s ready to go, track ready and then driving them with the weekend. It's just kind of like, where's the time?

Right. All right, so what's gone in to the car or cars? So now you mentioned you have two of them. So is one the main girl and then you got the side b**** or what's, are they both built the same or what do you got into the cars?

No, so they look the same, you know, in the sense of just like when you look at a car like, oh, you have two cars that are the same. Like, no, they're not even close, man. The original GT500, I built like a stock GT500 to like, I felt the maximum level you could build it to. I mean, all the coolers, upgraded lines, every upgrade that you could like really do to the car had been done to the car to try to like, keep it cool and manageable. And I've been so comfortable in that car, like, and still am, like I get in that car and I just, I feel the max amount of confidence, you know, when I'm in that car. And I met, I met a guy, like I'm gonna say met a guy, it started with like phone conversations and then multiple phone conversations. And you know how you just sometimes you become friends with a guy, like at that point and never even met. But I met Steve Luca, who owns Serpent Stangs out in Bowling Green, Kentucky. And he has been like just such a valuable asset in the sense of, like opening up the world of like the GT500. Like, like here's what he had a Twin Turbo GT500, he ran like a Twin Turbo Hellion kit, got a ton of weight out of his car, or his car was down into like the low 3000 pounds. He was doing time attack stuff with Gridlife. And he had doing time attack stuff, trying to make a car as fast as you can, you know, on a handful of laps. I learned a lot of stuff from him and he taught me a lot of stuff on, that I didn't even have to do, you know, myself. Like, oh, here's the setup that you, you know, you should run. Here's the kind of, you know, wheels to run. Here's what we did. You know, we've been down these roads before. Here's what to do and not to do. So that really helped to like speed up that process of things. And he recently in the last year, he decided he was going to go with like a different type of like turbo setup, with like a turbo smart setup instead of the Hellion setup he was running. And so his Hellion setup was a twin turbo sleeper kit where it puts the turbos underneath of the car. He was running a Motec that was tuned by Johnson Tuning, Corbin, the same guy that did all the code red, GT500s or whatever for Fathouse.

He's over at Fathouse right now still, right?

Yeah, he's the one who did those. So Steve had taken this system and I mean, he's breaking records and stuff with it, you know? And he was talking about how good it was, like going from the supercharged system to the twin turbo system, how like cooling became so much less of an issue, the handling of the car became better because it's taking all this weight that was up top, all this heat soaking, you know, supercharger setup that was up top and heavy, high weight, and taking all that weight and relocating it down low, not having that heat soak that was up there allows the car to go out there and breathe better and run times without as much of the cooling stuff that the stock GT500 has, so that gets a lot of weight and fluids and stuff like that off of the nose. And he was just, you know, he's talking about it. When he went to this twin turbo deal with Turbosmart, he's like, you know, I'm going to sell my twin turbo system. Do you have any interest in it? Ah man, it weighed on me. It weighed on me. He was talking about doing it. It was like three or four weeks and I kept thinking about it. And I called him and talked to him about it and talked to other people about it. I'm like, do I or don't I want to do this? Like, you know, yeah, I want to do it. You know, and I'm so happy that I did because it does. It handles so much better than the stock GT500 does. I'm able to go out there and run those times. Corbin has done an amazing job. Like whatever he does with that Motec, I mean, he's just like, he's a wizard. I mean, the way that the traction control stuff is set up, the way that the car, you know, is able to make power is just, it's so much different than what the stock stuff and computer, I guess, is like capable of doing. So the Twin Turbo GT500 is definitely like the one now. But I take the other one to the events as like a backup car in case something happens because things do happen. I actually thought that during the Trans AM event, I may have had to have run the supercharged car just because I had blown a trans cooler. Something luckily I had one was able to fix it and get back on track and stuff with it. But I thought that I was going to end up having to run the race with that. So it's like, if you have them both, you might as well take them with you. And you never know if you got an off track incident, like pull the fenders and pull the hood and whatever. And the Twin Turbo car, I've got nicknames for both the car. The first one, the supercharged car is Ford Banger. And we call it kind of like a playoff, like a Ford Banger thing. But Ford Banger, because I've had it in the wall so many times. It just banged it up. So we went with Ford Banger on that. And then the Twin Turbo car, we called Junkyard Dog for a while because we were taking it to the events when it was a stock car. And it seemed like every event was having to like rob parts off of it for the other car. Like if something happened, blow a tire and it ripped the wiring of the shock out. Like, all right, take the shock off of this car. We're jacking them up and pulling it out of the trailer, jacking it up in the paddock, take parts and stuff off of. And now it's become the main car. So, I guess we're going to see this next season how it fares, but yeah.

Can they control the DCT and stuff too with the Motec still yet or no? Is that?

No, so it works with it like Middleton Motorsports when they did the initial tuning of the car, they had done some changes and stuff to the transmission. You could tell like it shifted later the way it did shift was definitely different. When you compare the stock to whatever Middleton does, I don't know what they do, but it's definitely different. I was concerned that I was going to lose that and it was going to go back to the way the stock stuff was, but the way Corbin had explained it is however they tuned it or whatever they did, that stuff stays with the TCM and the transmission control module in the DCT. So I have the best of both worlds, I guess. I have got what Middleton did with the transmission stuff and then what Corbin was able to do with the the traction control and the actual like the power stuff and it's like the ultimate package. I feel like it's unique. I mean you would have to go through with all these different guys and this different stuff to get what it is that I got out of the car. I mean even if something crazy happened to it like it burned down, it'd be tough to go through and try to recreate everything that had been done to it already, you know.

What do you have in there? A Motec M150 probably?

Yeah, I believe that's what it is, yeah.

That's the package that, trust me, I've looked at that package. It's $15,000 to get the Motec and the tuning and all that stuff, but yeah, it's the M150.

It is unbelievable though. Steve told me like this, he said, you go out there on track, he's like, and if there is, he's like, it's like you wave a magic wand and you're able to just drive. It's the way that the traction control works and that Motec brings the power in. I wish I could explain, he's got better words for it for sure than I do, but he sold me with the magic wand thing when he said, he's like, it's like the magic wand out there on the racetrack.

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You know, turning into a corner where when you know you put the throttle down that it's going to kick your tires out because you're putting too much power to it. You really can just put your pedal like to the floor. Why that car will just spit and sputter and blow flames and everything as it's sensing that you're starting to lose control, but it's doing everything it can to stop you from being able to lose control. So it's like I said, they call them nannies, but it's like a set of nannies that's like, yes, it may not be as raw as some of these Trans AM guys, what their raw cars are running, but it allows you to go out there and drive this beast to its absolute maximum potential. And that's what, with the help of Steve and Corbin, have been able to put together and build. It truly is an unbelievable package, man. Awesome.

Now I'm back on that train.

So you need Motec, and now you need Turbos?

I know.

Because that solves your cooling problem, too.

I know, when you think about the money and the cost of it, it's like, right where you were sitting, I was like, I could never spend that kind of money on a computer. It just doesn't make sense. You don't know until you've had one. I was not a believer. Myself, yeah, man, if the funds are ever there, it'll open up the world.

He just blew the funds on my car outside.

I got to start hanging out in Midway Mustang and that wasn't a problem.

Yeah, get this just a hair closer, by the way.

Just rotate it your way.

You can just pull it towards you like that. Yeah, there you go. There you go, golden. Yeah, you need to stop spending your money like a wild dog. I know.

I have too many project cars. That's the other problem.

You don't sell anything either.

No, I don't.

These guys got to figure it out. They take apart other people's cars.

I have my own junkyard without actually legally having a junkyard. Oh, yeah.

I know how it goes. I have a hard time selling stuff too. Only within this last year have I really got... I had so much stuff left over from all the Shelby stuff that I tore off. I was like, I'm going to start putting stuff on eBay. I've never been the junkyard to send much of the eBay stuff. And it was crazy. As soon as I would list stuff two days later and sell, there's always somebody out there looking for Shelby stuff, I guess. But I have a hard time selling anything, selling cars, selling parts, selling anything. I was like, maybe we'll use this later, three years later, still sitting in the box.

That's where I get into where, and I come from the days that we used to, very first cars that I ever mess around with my dad was we had a couple of 69 Mach 1 Mustangs. And I remember there was a lot of like emission stuff. People took off those cars and threw away back in the 60s and 70s. Well, now that stuff is worth its weight in gold because you can't find it, right? So I don't know. I'm sitting on a set of my carbon fiber wheels. I don't know what to do with. I'm like, it's a lot of money sitting there, but at the same time, they're carbon fiber f****** wheels and they're pretty cool.

Yeah.

I don't really want to get rid of them, but they put me really close to Motec.

For sure. Yeah. And the value of those is, as I've been watching, it's slowly been going down. You know, it's like, if you can get out from underneath them, if you're not going to use them again and you're going to continue to track the car, I would say trade it out, you know? And I've looked at that too. Like, what's the trade off? I take this supercharger off and all the stuff that's there to like build the supercharger and buy this Twin Turbo kit. What can I get back out of? Of course, that stuff is all still sitting there in a box, but the idea is that like one day, if I get $5,000 back out of this whole, you know, all of this stuff, it'll go towards paying for the, you know, the Motec or the Twin Turbo dealer or whatever. So I try to cost way it too.

Yeah, no, I'm in the same boat. They don't exactly, carbon fiber doesn't age well either, I think is another thing that I've heard.

Yeah.

You should probably get rid of those then. I know. So speaking of wheels then, what do you run for wheels?

A work line? No, I run Apex. Yeah, I run Apex. I don't remember what the exact model is. And that was one of the things that Steve had put me on to when I was talking to him. He's like, you know, I've done a lot of testing with like wheels and stuff. And if you want a cost efficient wheel, like this is it, like the entire set, I think one set I bought for like 3,200. The other one was like 2,800, whenever they were on sale. And they're S550 wheels. And I run like a massive spacer on the front. And he was the first one to be like, you know, I've done this for time attack stuff. You're going to be out there for quite some time. And I haven't been driving with this setup on it for very long. So like, it's not my fault if you like lose a wheel. I'm not telling you like to do this. I'm just telling you it's kind of like to an extent work for me. And I ended up using a OP. Racing's like extended stud, like a four inch stud. And then it's like, I think I have a 42 or 45 millimeter spacer on the front. It's just it's a massive spacer. But when you look at the GT500 rim and you flip it over, like if you ever looked at it, it is like a giant spacer that's built into the rim. And he just didn't know about how that weight and how that that much pressure was going to do on those studs. I've had zero issues. When I say that, it was like the one thing that did the car and have never had to look back on it has been like that wheel setup. So I'm able to run 18 inch wheels. I run AP. Racing's brake setup. And it allows me to run the 18 inch wheels. And with that, I'm able to get my hands on Pirelli scrubs. They're like a 325, 680 18, pretty fat tire. And that's been the tire for me. Again, that was something that Steve was like, hey, done a lot of testing with tires and a lot of stuff. This is the tire to run. So can you see how meeting this guy was super helpful? Like he tried a lot of stuff out ahead of time. And we still work, you know, we still work together. Even on the car. Now it's going out to Bowling Green right after this weekend. And we're doing a bunch of upgrade stuff to it, to like try to get it ready for this next season. And then try to work to make the car faster. But I probably spend, I don't know, probably three hours a week on the phone with him. And I don't know how you spend that much time with a guy just bouncing off, you know, ideas and talking race car and part stuff or whatever, but we do. He's been, he's become a real good friend, so.

I found your next spiritual advisor, Dan.

Yeah, well, that's one thing with the tires on the stock wheels right now, or I've got signature wheels on there, but it it's hard to get something in a 20 man. It is like impossible. And then when I optimize, they want 200 treadwear or up and that's nearly impossible. Get 200 treadwear tire for those. Oh yeah, so it's been a challenge.

Yeah, I did a lot of stuff checking out the tires in the in the 20s when I was running those. And I did find the good year, the good year, they're like the F1 3Rs.

Oh, okay, yeah.

Those hands down are the best tire. Like when it comes to running a 20 out there on the track. I'm sure you familiar with Shelby Flyer, who he is from YouTube. He was the one who was like really pushing those tires. And back when I was doing a lot of HPDE stuff, I was sending him messages and kind of talking to him and stuff. And he's just like, these tires are it. And for the 20s, they are. The compound, the way that it like, even when they're done, they're like melted down, it's kind of like that of a scrub. They kind of mimic what a scrub is with being in a 20 inch tire. But changing over to scrubs, let's talk about getting faster. If you change your brake setup and ran like 18s with like the Pirelli scrubs, not only are you saving a ton of money, but they're a really good tire as far as grip and picking up a ton of time. You have to spend $6,000 on a brake conversion, but you're able to now buy tires for $150 a tire. I mean, you know what they... I mean, it's crazy. By the time you've went through three sets of 20 inch tires, if you've bought them new, I don't care what tires it is that you bought. You spent $6,000 plus dollars. You've already bought your brake kit. And now for the rest of time, you're at $150 tires. And the scrubs, they're so good. I've bought new sticker tires and I've bought scrubs. Sticker tires, the only thing is they come in immediately and the scrubs will take that extra lap or so. You gotta try to get a little more heat into them. But that's all I run. Every NASA race, when I ran the Trans AM race, I ran with scrubs. I primarily believe in it, mostly because of just the cost. I buy them by the pallet, usually. So I'll buy 20 to 30 tires at a time. And I'll spend that, whatever, $3,000 to $4,500. And then you just pick the best ones. There's always those like eight or so in there that are like, these are like the important race tires. And then it's like, these are the race tires that are like a little less important than these ones here that you'll like qualify and practice and do that stuff on. So you get a pretty good selection for that. And obviously a pallet would last you like probably forever, but they're never bad. They always have a ton of dots on them and they're always like, they're good.

This is like a solution podcast for you.

Yeah, I know. Well, how's the AP Racing brake kit? Because right now, I love the way my car stops, because it stops like nothing I've ever driven. Not that I've driven much of anything but Mustangs, but it really shuts down.

Yeah, the AP Racing brakes are good. I mean, the stop ability, you're still able to stand on the brakes for sure. It's the longevity part of things that I've struggled with, with trying to make the APs work. Like if you're going out and you're doing your HPDE or even your, you know, your time trial stuff, I think that they work. They're probably a little on the undersized side for what they are. But the brake compounds of what I have found have to do with like your maximum stop ability. I don't know. What pads do you run?

I'm still running just the stock pads because I haven't got the power or anything yet.

Oh, I got you.

And I've still got, I had another set laying around. So they've actually been lasting me quite a while, but I'm not out as often. I can maybe get three weekends a year. I can get out and get on the track.

Oh, I got you. Yeah, that's unfortunate. Yeah, I know.

Trust me, it is. It's not cheap either to go out and race for a weekend either.

No, it's not.

Even if you're doing HPDE stuff, it can be kind of expensive.

Yeah, I was running when I was still running the stock wheels. And even with APs, I was running Hawk DTC 70s in the front and then 60s in the rear. And the bite, the initial bite of those and the way that it brings you down from speed is like so aggressive and so instant. But with that, you generate a ton of heat. When you go from a rotor that's this wide to something that's this wide, the surface area and the friction obviously heat things up. So I've got some brake deflectors and some things in there. And we're looking at maybe doing brake ducts here this next year. But I've learned to change up the way that I brake too. GT500, you can come down from Road America right from 165 and just stand on the brake with all of the force that you have. Car will wiggle and it'll straighten you out and stuff. And I've learned it, brake preemptively, you know? It used to be like the fastest thing was brake as late as you can and now you know you have to conserve stuff, so maybe brake, you know, maybe slow your braking down and come into it. And once you find that level, you can still keep the same times of braking, I think when you're just starting out driving and you haven't done a lot of racing or a lot of tracking. It's brake as late as you can, just stand on the brake. With the GT500, you get that ability to be able to do that.

No, one of my favorite things to do is scare the living s*** out of a passenger because you're coming into a corner way too hot.

You're never gonna be able to stop.

There's no way you're gonna stop this 4,300 pound car and then they're kissing the dash.

Yeah, for sure.

It's a lot of fun.

Have you done a lot of weight reduction then as well or not really?

I have done some. I've got the Twin Turbo car down into the 39s. When I'm off track and I don't have as much fuel and I think it starts somewhere probably around 4,100 or so. And the supercharged car, it's still plus 4,000. I haven't seen 39 anything on the scale with that car yet. It's hard to get weight out of the car. DCT weighs a ton. The engine is huge. You've got all the coolers and the stuff that are in the front. And then the S550 body itself is built so rigid, you know. I mean, you could flip that thing over on its top and it's not like it, you know, is going to crush down to the driver's seat. It's just the reinforcements and stuff they have.

I'm sure a couple have come through here to have. Yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah, we've seen some pretty wrecked and messed up ones here for sure, but trying to get weight out is tough. It's that do you want to spend the money or do you want to spend the time, you know? And it's like, it seems to equivalent, it's crazy. Somebody once told me, they're like, if you're like, it was like, did they say $100, a hundred dollars a pound or something? When you get to the point where you're starting to scrape for weight, you're either gonna spend $100 a pound or you're gonna spend like an hour a pound. Cause that's scraping seam sealer trying to get a pound of something out or you're gonna spend $500 to try to remove five pounds to change something from steel to aluminum once you get to that point of taking out all the basics and stuff for sure.

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The upgrades that we're doing to this car, you know, as it goes to Steve, it's going to see some weight reductions, I think some more for sure. I'm putting a fuel cell in it that's going to actually allow me to run that full, like 100 mile Trans Am race. I've got a tank in it right now. It's just kind of like a gravity feed tank. And it's like one of those like gray areas of the rules. It's like it's it's not a cell. It doesn't have a pump or anything like that in it, but it just kind of feeds the stock tank as the stock tank runs out. And so we're actually going to put a fuel cell in it. With that, we'll be able to remove a bunch of the metal and extra stuff that's in the back seat between the frame rails and then all the metal and stuff that's there in the back. But then you're going to stick a 65 pound fuel cell that's in the back. Because mind you, it's 44 gallons. You know how much fuel the GT500 drinks? It's a 44 gallon fuel cell. Like let's grab a fuel tank out of an excursion.

I was going to say, I think that's an excursion fuel tank is 44 gallons.

Yeah, we have an excursion side to happen to know. And I look at that tank like, wow, this is what's going to go in the GT500. And we've taken the glass windows out and put in polycarbonate windows in. We've cut every bit of metal that we can get out of them. I feel like out of it, but it's just every, there's another level of everything. And Steve's telling me like, we can get more weight, more metal and stuff out of it. Once your stock tank's out of the way and you can remove the metal in the backseat, it's kind of like, what's it there for? You know, put an aluminum plate over it. Once the stock fuel tank's not there, we'll be able to take the exhaust and run the exhaust out the side, like out of the rocker panel-ish area. So that'll take a bunch of weight off that. That exhaust, that back half of that exhaust system on the GT500 weighs 85 pounds. Yeah, I took it off when I was in Florida and tried to make these like, it's like three inch dumps, where it just like dumped down on the ground to try to remove that weight or whatever out of there. And that didn't go so well. The GT500 generated so much heat. It was putting so much heat out there. It ended up swelling up the gas tank, the fuel tank from like heat and encased the drive shaft. And the drive shaft rubbed a hole in the fuel tank when I was down at Homestead. So I was like, okay, we're not doing that. Put stock exhaust back on it. So I had to put a tank and a drive shaft back in it, which I got the tank from Steve and the drive shaft from Midway Mustang here. And that's another thing too. Every time I have like a part failure or something, I call Eric, I call him home and be like, dude, this broke, I need it now, overnight. He's like, he usually is able to get it to me the next day or the day after, so yeah.

I took a breath.

That's just me being fat.

Are you doing a year 40 pounds lighter than me? Yeah. All right, so then you've done a lot of experience. So did you track anything before to 500?

No, not really. I went to one event, my buddy, Josh, that I was telling you about earlier, his stepdad took me to a ginger mint event. I was doing drag racing at the time and I thought like drag racing was it. I'm like, there is-

You mentioned eights earlier, that's true, kind of chasing.

There was nothing I felt like that was going to give me that adrenaline rush, waiting for the light to drop, being out there, just the smells and the fuel. I mean, just everything that was going on with drag racing. I thought I was a drag racer to heart. I don't care if I ever see a drag strip again.

It's kind of hard to think about racing for 8, 10 seconds when you can get on a track for 100 miles.

I mean, seriously, you know what I mean? Or the multiple sessions that you're able to go out there on track. I mean, it's like real life Forza driving, actually going out there and doing this, whether you're on a racing level or you're just kind of doing it. I was like a weekend enthusiast for sure. So he took me out there. I had just a stock OEM Camaro at the time. And I went out to Gingerman and I loved it. And he was like, you're really reckless. You don't know how to drive and what you're doing. I'm just out there driving this Camaro, sliding it all around the corner. I'm like, this is so much fun. Then I bought the GT500. Being a man of business, I've never been a guy to splurge on anything. I've always wanted to make sure that everything that I had, businesses taking care of, families taking care of, workers are taking care of, and everything that like in my life always comes last. And I had ordered two tow trucks a few years ago and I got like kind of screwed on the deal. They were supposed to be like $103,000 a piece. And like three weeks before they were done, I was supposed to go pick them up. They called me and they're like, oh yeah, Ford pulled their wholesale incentive rebates or something. So the cost of the trucks are going to go up. And I'm like, well, how much? They're going to be 118,000 a piece, like 15,000 a piece. It's an extra 30 grand. And the idea was I was going to have one tow truck down in Florida that was new, and I was going to have one in Iowa because I split my seasons or whatever down there. And I also work while I'm down there. And so I went out there with the idea, like I need one tow truck for sure. Cause my tow trucks were hurting real bad. And if this isn't the last tow truck, I feel like I'm ever going to be in, like I'm not absolutely in love with it. Like I'm just going to tell them to like get screwed on the other one. Cause I already have to pay that extra 15,000. And I went out there and I really liked my tow truck, but it was slow and it was big. And it wasn't the last one that I felt like I was ever going to drive. So on the way home, I had already had like fun set aside and just kind of the way like business stuff works. Like, well, I need to spend money on something. And, you know, having a car lot and yard and stuff like that. I'm like, you know, if anything, you know, I'll buy it for inventory, drive it for a little while and then, you know, put it, put it back up for sale or try to make some money on it. And I came home with a new tow truck and a GT 500 on the back. I stopped in, I think it was Nashville or something like that and bought it at a dealership. It was the color. It was everything I wanted it to be. And that was like the only way I was even able to justify. So that's how I ended up in the GT 500. And then these guys, they have these cars, you know, these Hellcats and these GT 500s and this stuff, and they never drive them. I can't understand owning a car, like going out on the track, as much fun as I've had, and you've had being in them, how a guy can own that thing and just let it sit in the garage is unbelievable.

Especially a Hellcat.

Yeah, you know.

It's like, bro, they're 35,000, dude. People are stealing them, they're so awesome.

Yeah, yep, yep, they are. So, I got to just track in the GT 500 right away, and I've been a Shelby guy, I've loved Shelby's, I've had S550 Mustangs that I've built, stuff I've done for the drag strip, and things like that, and street cars that have been built, and it's just always been Mustang everything, but true track, and yeah, it's been the GT 500 all the way through and through. I don't even know what I would do in a different car, I've thought about it. I watch these Trans AM guys drive these cars, I'm like, man, it would be so cool to get in one of these cars and drive, but it feels like the journey that I've been on between building the car and trying to get where it is that I've got with this car, and even my, I don't know if you'd call it a career, I guess, in racing for what I'm doing, it feels almost like it'd be kind of like a loss. You go in and you start driving something else, and you end up liking it better, it drives better, and then everything that you did was kind of for what. So I really just want to take this GT500 thing as far as I can possibly take it. So this year with some of the upgrades and stuff that we're doing, we're putting an SLA conversion on it, so it'll be the first GT500 to ever have an SLA. And I don't know how many they've done on the S5 50s period. Cortex is the one who's making it, and it's kind of still in development. They've made it and they are making it, but there's still a couple things, I think when it's all done, they want it sent to them to have a couple of things checked out and still done, I think was the plan. So putting the SLA on it. AJ Hartman's making me a massive rear GT3 style wing that goes through the rear windows. It's the swan style. Steve's had one of those on his car and said it just made crazy improvements, improvements to the aero and stuff like that, up front with the big giant splitters and things. So there'll be some learning curve there, because all that stuff, when you start to do that, you put this fuel cell in the back that carries a bunch of weight and stuff now. You kind of got to learn to redrive the car to some extent, but I'm excited for these upgrades and some of the stuff that's happening, because it'll be the first car, I mean, it's already kind of the first car of its kind to do what it's doing, but it really will be the first car of its kind, with all this stuff that's done, Twin Turbos, Motec, rear style wing, big giant fuel cell, I mean, it's cool.

Is the motor still untouched other than the Turbos and stuff, or the whole?

Untouched, I mean, it's crazy when I think about these Trans AM guys that have to pull their motors out and rebuild them all the time, and some of these other guys that I've raced with, they're like, oh yeah, we popped a motor because this motor, this GT500 motor, it's just taking it. I mean, it's got, the one car's got 6,000 miles on it, the other one's got 8,000 miles on it, and they are all track miles. I mean, just pedaled to the floor, just giving it to it. And I mean, and at crazy levels of temperature and stuff too, that they should not be able to get, my cylinder head temps, when I was looking over the Motec data at Trans AM, my cylinder head temps were in the 260s, 270s. I mean, they are way up there. Coolant temps are high, up into the 230, even just briefly touching even into the 240s. And a lot of motors, they can't take that without popping and blowing head gaskets and stuff and Ford with the GT500, man, they made a good one for sure.

I know I've been super impressed with it so far.

What about on the trans front though? Cause I know that if you were to choose which one's more reliable, is it the motor or the trans? I've always heard that trans stuff when it comes to 500s. Is that all good on that front?

So overheating the trans, I was doing a lot. I've had to go through.

Okay.

You and I are gonna talk after this too cause I'm having the same problem.

Are you?

Or right here live.

Yeah, I guess that works too.

Yeah, so I had to change the way that they designed the cooler. The stock cooler is actually great. Like it's big size. The way that the air and stuff is able to flow it is great. It's the location that they chose to put it is horrible, right? It sits down in the bottom part of the bumper, horizontal to the ground. It's got your belly pan and stuff like that that's underneath it. And while it has these like channels that's supposed to allow the air to like go in, into the cooler and like extract out of the back. The reality of it is there's a big giant plate that's underneath of there, which creates, you know, like an area of high pressure that even though the air is getting in there, it's not flowing through it the way that it's supposed to. So I ended up through a lot of trying to figure out what to do with it. I ended up taking the stock cooler and ended up flipping it up in the front and then just used a little aluminum to box it in there. So yeah, it's stacked in front where the radiator is and your heat exchanger and things like that are, but it's the very first thing that gets the air. Like I said, it was boxed in with aluminum. It solved the problem.

Really?

That was after Piggy back in a second cooler. I used SP's line kit and I was able to run into the stock cooler that still sat down below and then I ran a line up into a second cooler that I had mounted where the original battery was in the engine compartment with a fan. That even wasn't enough to solve it. Then the one other thing too is that upgrading the line size probably helped some.

That's my next step because I had the SPE line.

They're not big enough. I actually reached out to them and tried to talk to them about what I was doing as far as the road course racing stuff and I was trying to be nice about, like, hey, your guys' lines, they're not big enough. They might work again for the guy that's going out and doing a 15 minute HPDE hit, but even you, you're saying that you're having problems and stuff with them and they're just a dash six line. They're so small and we figured out how to get bigger lines on them with factory fittings and stuff that are there. So I'll go over that with you when we're done because it'll be some, probably some valuable.

I switched out my cooler because my cooler went, I bought the line kicks. I thought my lines were leaking, which is what everybody has the problem with, right? But I found it was actually my cooler, the stock Ford one. And so then I went to go get another cooler and it was $1,500 and they were on back order. So I was like, all right, cool. So I bought basically, it's the same size, still bar and plate. It's like the identical, but it's from Mishimoto. It's an oil cooler, but it comes with dash 10 fittings on it. So I'm necked all the way down to my SPE lines and I have it mounted in the same position that it's in.

It doesn't have the same. Does it have the same? Oh no, it doesn't have the same holes on it. Trying to think here. Well, to adapt to the factory lines, I'll show you, there's fittings. You can take the fittings that they run the differential cooler. There's a differential cooler in the back, right? And they have a thread on one side and then it slides over the fitting like your transmission fitting or the actual lines themselves. So you get a couple extra of those, you slide it over the line and then you have half inch pipe thread there to work with. So you can go from a half inch female pipe to like a dash 10 and keep that size consistently all the way through. I'll show you your explain it a little better, show you the parts and stuff that are there.

I was gonna up my line because now I have bigger fittings on the one end, I know I'm gonna up the lines either way.

The SPE lines are not big enough. Like I said, I tried to talk to them, they were like, yeah, we don't know what you're talking about or what you're trying to tell us, man. That's what the guy on the phone was trying to tell me. I don't know what you're trying to say here, what you're trying to get at. I'm just trying to explain to you what it is that I've went through and your guys' lines aren't big enough. Maybe you should offer a bigger size line or something. At that time, I asked, could you make me one? They're just like, no, we haven't had any problems with our stuff, it works. They're kind of rude about it for the most part. Ever since then, I've been like, screw those guys.

Yeah, no. To be fair to some of those people, I'm sure they get a thousand emails a day of somebody being like, these lines suck. They're like, well, did you actually put them on right? I had put mine on and it fell actually against my AC compressor and rubbed a hole in it too and spread transmission fluid all over the place. That was fun on a rally in the middle of Iowa somewhere.

Yeah, and I'm sure that guy was just a worker to whatever extent. I went on, I was on a forum or Facebook page, and somebody seemed higher up in SP, started talking to me about it a little bit. It sounded like he didn't even know what it was the guy was talking about. Because SP themselves, the lines they make are quality, right? I mean, they fixed the problem that was out there on the market. The issue that they had with the lines blowing out and things going bad, like it did fix something, is just they need to be a little different to hit like that true performance sector, I think.

So do you go to a PRI at all?

I went last year for my first time, because that's kind of like the place where you can like everybody we've talked to.

It's like, yeah, that's where you really get face to face with people and talk about real problems or solutions or whatever ideas. Yeah, like that's the place to do it.

That was the coolest thing last year, going to PRI, going around all these different booths and getting to see these like you don't get to see the head guys like talking. It's so hard to get somebody on the phone, you know, and you go to PRI and they're there, like the guy that, you know, you've been like, I'm never going to be able to talk to this guy and he's standing there in front of you. So that's super cool. I'm going to take some advantage of that this year. I can't wait to go back. That was a lot of fun.

You haven't any luck getting, have you been trying to get sponsors and stuff then too? Because that seems to be a lot of people are doing it that way too.

I haven't spent a lot of time with that. A couple of reasons why, I see some of these guys that are out there doing a lot of the sponsor stuff. And it seems like a lot of their life and their times are kind of enslaved to the requirements of what their sponsors have to do. And there's like, if I'm going to spend that same amount of time, it's like, why not just spend that same amount of time working, putting my effort towards working and making the money myself and just kind of paying for it. I think it would be cool to have sponsors. I think that there's a lot that I can offer to people as far as exposure and knowledge and things like that and work with guys to help build and develop things. But there's that, it's gotta be, there's gotta be give and take there, you know what I mean? Just cause you're offering me some percentage off of some parts that I may or may not buy just isn't enough, you know what I mean?

There's so many ways about it. Like this is something I've been navigating the last, I wanna say two and a half years is, and both personally and with people I've spoken with, there's a give and take for sure. But people are way more willing to also just give parts too. Like as long as it makes business sense, right? For them, they gotta see an ROI on it, but you also wanna make sure, again, you don't wanna be a dog and pony show or whatever it's called. There's definitely a balance to it for sure. But you're probably getting to that point to where it kinda makes sense even.

Yeah, I feel like it's starting to get there. When it comes to sponsorships, I know they're not like sponsorships, but guys like Eric at Midway Mustang or Steve or Corbin, it's like, yeah, they're not sponsorships, but I advocate for these guys so much because of the stuff it is that they do for me. And it's like, yeah, it's not in the sense of sponsorship where your names are on stuff. And I'm out here doing the true sponsor things, but they're like friendships or business relationships that almost feel to me like sponsorships because there's give and take, you know what I mean? I'm trying to advocate for them and do the stuff that we do. So they're not the traditional type of like sponsorships, but I could pick up the phone and call any of these guys like, I'm stuck, I need help, this car is acting up, or I busted this part, or something happened, and they're going to do whatever they can to help you at any time. So I like those relationships a little better than some of the corporate stuff. But yeah, as you continue to spend money, Trans AM racing isn't going to be cheap for sure, and maybe looking towards some sponsors or some things like that, and being the first GT500 to get into Trans AM, and hopefully continue to make podiums, and building a unique car that hasn't really been built before, I think offers some value. I've tried to continue to do the Facebook and some of the YouTube stuff and things like that. That itself is time consuming. It takes a guy to do this, and then you need the guy that chases you around with the camera, or you got to figure out the time.

You saw me filming with Dan over here. That's gonna be for the build series we're gonna do with that. And I'm telling Dan, all right, the build itself, let's say for every hour to build, there's still another two and a half hours of filming, editing and all that. So it's like, we can go have these on that.

The editing takes a long time. I've sat down, when I'm in Florida, I can do a little more video stuff. When I'm sitting down, trying to edit and do stuff, it just seems like it takes forever.

Well, I know people also kind of outsource that, whether it's like an 18-year-old kid just trying to get things going, or even outsourcing outside of the country or whatever, it just kind of depends on what you're trying to do. But what's the over-under on this, Dan? That he has a license plate that says, daddy's money, but I'm daddy. Do you have that license plate or no?

I do have that license plate. Do you actually, really? How do you know I have that license plate? Oh, you have that license plate?

No.

Oh, I do have that license plate. How do you know I have that license plate?

Do you actually have the bracket or no?

No, it's that license plate that says, daddy's money, but I'm daddy. I have that sitting, right when you walk in my house, it's actually sitting there. Yeah, that's hilarious.

Well, he's the guy who took all that s*** from your house, so that's probably where he saw it.

Yeah, yeah.

No, he literally just pulled that out of his a** just now.

That's so crazy. That's like, I literally, I was last year for my birthday, Kaylee bought that for me last year for my birthday, and then one that had a 24, and that's so funny. I'm gonna send you a picture of that later, show you, and I really do have that sitting at the top of the stairs.

Well, everything you're describing, I'm like, yeah, this sounds like exactly the type of guy. Like, because you're self-funded and everything, yeah. Again, self-funding your own racing isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world. I mean, what does a weekend cost you, on average?

So that's the thing, again, going back to just being cheap, right? That guy being an entrepreneur and doing your own business stuff, man, you got to figure out how to be as cheap as possible. So when it comes to crew, it's like me and Brian, who's one of my workers, he's worked for me for a long time, good friend, he comes along and we do it. I still work on my own stuff. We run scrubs, it's like the cost is like the entry, usually the entry getting there and then like paying for lodging for the most part. So I don't know, the Trans AM thing, it's like $3,000 to get into a race for Trans AM, that's a little expensive. You'll go through probably two sets of scrubs, so it'd be like $1,200. And then the cost of getting their fuels, probably like one of the bigger expenses, that and then the lodging. So maybe a couple thousand dollars to do that. So I would say on average five or six thousand or whatever for a weekend if it's done right. Nothing major breaks or anything that happens. And there are guys out there spending like $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 to go race. One of the guys that was there racing Trans AM was Paul Menard. You guys got Menards up your way. And he's the son of the owner of Menards.

John Menard is the richest guy in Wisconsin.

Is he? Yeah. And so his son Paul races Trans AM there. And I'm just watching. Like he's not even taking his own car into the line before you go on track. They're showing up there. You're not even driving through the paddock with the same tires that they're getting ready to race. Jack ended up and putting the stuff on and they're all running around with all their stuff. I'm like, man, I can only imagine what that's gonna cost. So you gotta keep the cost down. When you work for yourself and you make your own money, it's like, this is a hobby, but at the same time, people will, like any other addiction, people will just go broke at the end of the day racing. And getting into this is kind of a question, like, do I wanna do the Trans AM thing next year? It's gonna cost me some money. Where is it gonna come from or what am I gonna do? And it's like, well, I'll do less of this or more of that, just putting forth the work and the effort to make sure that I guess the money is made. And fortunately, I've built enough that I think that my kids are okay and business is okay, workers are okay. And that's always the first thing, is to make sure that everybody around you is good. Cause they're the support, right? Without them, you couldn't do any of this. Workers always think that you take them for granted and it's like at the end of the day, I need you to do your job that I'm asking you to do. But I'm never shy of saying that everything that I've got is built on the guys around me that help me get where I need to go. And a lot of them have been friends. People always say, don't employ your friends. But some of the closest people that I have at work for me are friends or they've just become friends over time because working with each other day in and day out and whatever. So I always want to make sure that they're taken care of. But I think I'm in a good enough place that I can at least get through this Trans AM season, I think, and see how it goes.

I've had worse luck employing family, to be honest.

It's a lot harder to tell them to screw off and then go sit at Thanksgiving dinner with them, and you guys are at opposite ends of the table.

How are you getting two cars to the track? Are you doing your rollback with a trailer on it then?

Yeah, exactly that.

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.

So of all the events that I've went to, we're talking HPDE and the grass roots and even the professional stuff. I am the only guy that I have ever seen show up with a tow truck. No other track have I ever seen a guy show up with a tow truck in his car and owning a salvage yard. You know, I'm in a tow truck all the time, so and my tow truck's comfortable, so it's not like driving it. It's like, to me, it's like driving any other truck and it's quick to load it up. You drop the bed down, you drive the car up, you throw your chains on it.

I watched you do it at Road America, I was like, dude, that's genius. Like, I don't know why anybody's not rolling out.

Yeah.

You know who else has a tow truck? The Cybertruck guy. Remember, he has that Cybertruck for all of his stuff?

Yeah.

And then there's also the Civic people that I had on the podcast way back when I had Brainerd. They also got, he has a tow truck company too.

Well, they drive Honda, so they need a tow truck.

Yeah, that's fair. But it's rare. It's a good way of going about it.

Yeah, yeah, the tow truck works well, and then obviously keep all the fuel spares and the stuff in the trailer. I'm trying to figure out, there's not much of a way to do it, but I own this portable hoist, and he's actually, we talk about sponsors, he's actually like the only guy that's ever like actually truly sponsored me. Like I bought a portable hoist from him, which is a hoist on a trailer. It's a trailer, you hit a couple of rams, it sets down on the ground, it's a 9,000 pound lift, and you can take it anywhere. I've taken it to races and nationals and things like that. And that always requires that second truck, like the dually to haul the lift.

And it needs to be able to get a car on it as well, right?

Yeah, we can put a golf cart on it, and put it sideways and take that. But yeah, we haven't figured out how to get a car on it. And it's always like, do I want to take the lift and the race car or take both race cars? And I've robbed parts and stuff and needed the second race car so much, it always ends up becoming the race car. And I take the lift whenever the girlfriend can drive or I've got somebody that can chase me down that can drive for that long.

What's that like for looks? Because that thing is a pretty impressive setup. I've seen it on your Facebook, but when you roll up to the track and you whip out the two post lift, like is that...

People are just like, dude, what is this? Oh my gosh. Like I went to a Gridlife event and people couldn't believe it. I mean, photographers are coming over and video people and people are wanting to talk about it. Like I'm in the grass. We're in the grass at Autobahn, which is bumpy and a little sloped and the car is on there and it might not look quite straight because it can have a certain degree of pitch and still go up.

Well, Dan knows about that. He knows a lot about that.

And it's like the star of the show. Every time I go anywhere, people haven't really seen them in person like that. So it's super good exposure for Portable Hoist.

And is that the brand name?

Yeah, it's Portable Hoist and they're like, that's the thing that people always have a hard time getting over is the price point of them. They're like $20,000. They're like, man, it's $20,000 for a lift, a lift that you can take anywhere. So when I'm done at the race, as it comes home and I walk right out the back door of the house and bang, my race car is there. I don't have to go to a shop or go drive to the lot or anywhere that I need to go. It's always there. And when you think about the cost of buying a lift, pouring concrete, having somebody install it or having it, I could back it in here right now and drop it down and bang, this place has a lift in five minutes, you just can't beat it. Yep, star of the show though, everywhere it goes.

I've seen people figure out over Quick Jacks and I'm like, dude, a whole a** hole is that a trailer.

Dude, you got so many questions, same event, so many questions at Optima about that.

Yeah, and I need it, when I went to Nationals with NASA, that thing, that car spent half of the time I was there on the lift, we were just having so many problems. The Twin Turbo system, it was super fresh at that time. I mean, I had just put it on the month before, so I hadn't been through the trials and tribulations of overheating lines that were melting and certain things touching and just certain stuff not working. So it was like every time I went out there on track, I was coming back and having to work on and fix some stuff, and that was the same thing there, just the star of the show.

That's awesome.

So obviously you've had this car, or both cars for a little bit of time now. I guess we can go two ways. What's the best experience that you've had, whether that be on or off track?

Experience, I guess, in the sense of what? Give me some kind of direction.

I guess whether that be either getting podiums or doing stuff with the car.

Okay.

Since the day you put the car on the rollback and drove it home, what's been the favorite?

That's got to be one of the best days.

It might be, some people might consider it to be super cliche, especially whenever they listen to this, but seriously, I think it's the people that I've met. I really, it really is. Like, if you're just a guy that's sitting in a corner doing your own thing with nobody to talk with, communicate with, bounce ideas off, you're just that guy in the corner that's just like racing and like doing it for yourself. Like at what point in time does it fizzle out? It's like having a basketball and being a great basketball player and only having a hoop by yourself in a gym. Like, yeah, you can do it for a while, but at what point in time are you just like, I need something more. I need feedback and I need challenge and I need all these other things. And like I said, some of the friends and the people that I've built around me have been great. I don't know how far or how much drive I would have had to continue to do this if it wasn't for some of these guys that have continued to push me. Dustin being one of the best and Nick, again, is just awesome when it comes to this. Both of those guys are continuously chasing something and it always feels like you got to keep chasing something too. So it's hard to sit there. If you're just sitting there idle, like, yeah, I'm good where I'm at. It's kind of like, what are you doing, dude? You know? So I think that overall is some of the best experience that I've had. And then I just can't say enough about just being able to go on track and just being able to race. Like, yeah, crossing the, there are certain events that crossing the podium first place, getting first place and getting on the podium or whatever is awesome. You know, I won the national championship in 2024 down at UMC, and if you list go back and listen to my video, I'm like freaking out, you know, because I didn't think I was going to. I actually thought I was going to lose it to to Cal. Me and him were running ones and twos and traded places. They're they're a couple of times. So that was that was awesome. But being able to just travel around the country and check out the different tracks, it's like unlocking levels and in racing and, you know, you get new cars and new tracks and stuff and you go to a new place and it's just, it's all the experience, all in all. And I just, I don't know that I would trade it for the world. Seriously, if the old lady was like, you know, option is racing or me, like, I don't want to tell you, it's, you know, well, don't make me choose, you know?

So obviously you named the other car Ford Banger. Has there been any like really scary incidents or most of them you're just been like, all right, cool. Like, I guess, brown starfish moments.

So the times that I've had off track, I've had stuff happen. It's always like every time something happens, even like when it comes to race, and I'm one of those like the world kind of just slows down. You know, it's like, at Sebring, I went to go pass a car and slung shot pass him and went to hit the brakes and realized right away, there like is the pedal fell down. I was like, there's no way I'm going to be able to stop. And I'm like, I see, I think they're called like Wolfs or Thunderers, but they're like these little like F1 looking cars. And I'm like, if I try to make this turn at all, I'm going to T-bone this guy. Like, I mean, I was going to just destroy this 4,000 pound car into this little like 1500 pound or 2000 pound, whatever. And so, you know, you're like, I need to get through the traffic and navigate. And then it's like, as I'm going through the grass, everything, the world's slowing down. I'm picking my exit point. Like where is going to be the least amount of damage? There's a spot right there. Try to try to feed it through. So I never get like freaked out. It's always like how to manage the situation, you know what I mean, as best as possible. I've had hoods fly up on me twice once at Ozarks. It broke my windshield. I couldn't see anything at all. That sucked. I was going around a pretty fast part of the track. I was just able to get on the brakes and get off track. And then when I was at Trans AM, I posted a video of it. My hood flew up again at Trans AM. Like sometimes I'm like, the guys that I bring with me, like, you got one job, you know? But it's like the hood thing. You're in the car and you're in both times. It was somebody else. They check something under the hood and they just didn't latch it. They just didn't latch it. You know, the GT500s, they have the thing, it pops up and it's supposed to be flush. And the very first guy, I just, I don't know that he knew enough to know what it being latched all the way was, you know? And, you know, so it flew up and then it Trans AM, it had happened. It had happened too. And we had the incident where my charge pipe blew off. So we pull into the hot pits and we're trying to fix it. And I think just in the commotion of everything that was going on, he's just like, dude, I never shut your hood, I'm sorry. You know, but I had a polycarbonate window and so when the hood flew open, I was able to see like under the gap, right? Normally you would like pull off to the edge of the track and like wait to get towed off. But I'm like, you know, I've watched enough professional races and I've watched these guys like drive with their hoods open. And I knew that there was an exit spot at like turn five that was near where we were paddocked at. And I'm like, it happened at turn one. I'm like, if I can get to turn five, they can let me off and I can pull it down, duct tape it up and try to get back on track. So that was one of the things that had happened while I was there. So I did. So I drove at like probably well over half pace. You know what I mean? And made it through the stuff and got to turn five.

I'm like, open the gate.

Yeah, that was crazy. But that's just taking them for what they are. Like anything else, man, try not to get scared. Always realize that you're gonna be okay at the end of the day and try to fix whatever you can and get back on track. I'm never that guy to quit a weekend either. When my break blew up at Sebring, I'm tearing it apart. I'm out there till two o'clock in the morning with whatever extra parts we had robbing. I think I was robbing parts off of a junkier dog or whatever at the time then, some control arms and some stuff to make it work. But never quit, never quit, never give up. Always go out there and put forth what you can. Because what was the point if you did? I watch some guys that they'll have some kind of failure or something on track and I'll just be like, yeah, I'm just done. This just ain't the weekend. I'm like, no, every weekend's my weekend. It's kind of how I put it.

Well, the effort you put in to get there, it's like why?

I know, man.

I mean, the check engine light came on. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know. And it is. It's a lot of work. I mean, just getting down there, like the drive from here to Texas was like, dude, I don't know, 18 hours or something like that, in a tow truck with a huge trailer. I mean, it ended up being like a three-day drive or something like that on the way down there.

Do I freaking love that name, Junkyard Dog? Yeah. Please, if that's not like trademarked, jump on that s***. That is awesome. Especially if you just get all these random colors, like every single race. Oh, the car's half red now, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

But I guess you only take parts off when you need it, I suppose.

Yeah, and I've ran with all kinds of different color stuff. I've had different color hoods and fenders and stuff, because sometimes you just got to, you know, you only have so much time between events or between races to just throw some stuff on and then kind of get the color part of things figured out later.

As long as it works, right?

Yeah. I've had enough off-track incidents that like right now I've got some stuff at the body shop and they're just painting it rapid red and putting black stripes and stuff on it now. So I'm like, you know, when you have two cars and you race and do as much stuff as you do, all the backup parts and stuff you have probably should have backup body parts that are the same color. So you can just, you know, put flies open again, just put a hood on it, you know, or stuff your stuff in a tire pile, you know, throw a bumper and a fender on it and kind of call it a day.

So well, yours is four colors, I think, right underneath blue, white, orange.

I think that's it.

Oh, and then, right, so you got the different color stuff on it and then wrapped it.

Well, yeah, cause I, so actually, I, Eric helped me source the car I have now. And I, he actually, I was, him and I were looking at one cause I was going to buy one of the cars he had come in here. And so I was looking at GT500s and he's like, ah, he's like, dude, they go for stupid money. And then he's like, I might know a guy. So then he put me in touch with Rob at the parts farm and Rob had a car that he was building for himself. And so I picked up Rob's project, like 90% done. Everything was done except for paint. So then I brought it home and just wrapped it immediately.

Yeah, they go for stupid money too. Have you seen, like, do you watch Copart and IA? Do you ever watch them go, I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like these guys are paying $40,000, $50,000 for these cars wrecked. We know what they cost to fix. I mean, to put a whole front end on one of those cars and get it to match, I mean, you're like, you might be saving $10,000. And even that could be a question. Yeah, maybe by the time you get into it and you see some of the stuff that's been done, you're like, oh, I wasn't accounting for that. And I see them like as non-running drives where they're not running. I've seen videos where guys have posted them on Facebook, like, yeah, I bought this car from the auction. I paid $28,000 for it and the motor's locked up and it's like, whoa, what are you gonna do? It's not like if Eric doesn't have a used motor for one, I don't know where you're getting one from, other than from the Ford factory itself.

They're really coming down in value right now too. So that's the other thing. When I bought my car, I paid $70,000 for it. That was a $125,000 car. Because it was a golden ticket, track pack. But now it's, if you got one and mine's got a rebuilt title, so I'd be lucky to get $60,000 for it probably now. If I painted it, I can maybe get $70,000, $80,000 for it.

No, man, you just got over time. Like anything else, just love it, keep driving it, keep building it.

I did it because I do like what you're doing. I try not to bounce mine off the wall, but I'm beating the piss out of it. So I didn't want to get a brand new carbon fiber track pack car and then go out there and be scared to drive it. I feel like I can push it a little bit harder knowing that it's already been wrecked once, who gives a s***?

Yeah, exactly. And we can find the parts, there's enough of a source out there, like Derric or whatever, to find the stuff you need.

Plus I saved 30, 40 grand right off the top end by buying a rebuild type car.

Yeah, I know some people are so scared of them. I sell insurance bills for a living, it's one of the things I do. Some people love the value of what they are like.

My navigator out there, well you and I have talked about getting front end parts for it.

Oh yeah, I think I bid on one or two of them for it.

Yeah. But no, I don't mind it. Same thing if somebody's selling a rebuild title car, they're like, what should I look for? I was like, well first of all, get the VIN, Google the VIN, it'll show you all the auction pictures. If it looks like the front bumper was pushed into the rear bumper, maybe you don't want that car. But my car, the Gt500 I have now, none of the bags are blown. I mean, if you're not hitting hard enough to blow bags, and not blow a bag, then who gives a s***?

Yeah, seriously.

There's not much you're gonna do to it.

Yeah, but I've learned over time that everything's replaceable. Even if you have like a crunched piece of metal, it's like you cut it out and you weld it, it's never gonna crumple there again. By the time it's fixed, a lot of these guys, they over fix everything anyways. But yeah, I've rebuilt title stuff's the way to go. And I've had some customers too. Like I sold, I had this one Ford Fusion, I sold like 2012, I sold it for like $3,000 to a guy, and he didn't have it a week, had full coverage insurance on it, and went out and totaled it and got a check for $6,500. A week later, came back like, you got something else for me, because I totaled that Fusion, and they kept me a check for double what it was.

No, that's it. I've not had any problems in sharing one. I have not had any issues at all.

There are a couple companies, like Geico I think is weird about them, but like Progressive, Progressive will insure anything. They will, I mean, those guys just want, I think they just, they have so much money that's coming in at the end of the day, they can afford a couple of those like weird losses or whatever.

They are weirder when it comes to filing a claim though, because they want like, oh, they're like, go to the junkyard and get all these parts and they're a lot more frugal about filing a claim than I've had other insurance companies that are like, yeah, this is whatever, they just cut me a check, they don't give a f***. They're like, this is what it is, we understand, blah, blah, blah.

When I did the track insurance thing with OpenTrack, that was the easiest insurance experience I've ever been through. I mean, they were like, by the time I was paid out, it was like a month later, they came and looked at it. I mean, it's like a new car, like you're not gonna go source junkyard parts. Everything was brand new OEM stuff. I think that's how all their policies or whatever worked for that. And they came out and the guy was like, added all the stuff up and was like, yeah, you're within whatever percentage of the cost of value of it. And I was like, I thought I was gonna have to buy it back for like 50,000 or something. When he told me 20, was it 24, I think was what it was. Buy it back for 24,000. I was like, what? Oh my gosh.

I just went through this with an excursion and they let me, their payout was more than I thought I was gonna be in. The buyback was like 1,100 bucks. I'm like f****** sold, I'll keep it.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can always find something cool to do with it. You know, a race car, an excursion or something. 1,100 bucks. I mean, that's a good start for a mud truck if anything.

I was gonna do like a rock crawler. It's a seven, three excursion truck. So yeah, I'm not getting rid of it. I put a ton of money into the motor already. So yeah, it's not going anywhere.

Yeah.

Well, I need more further...

No, no.

Well, should we pop the usual three?

Sure.

Sweet. Well, that'll do it.

Me? Right now? Yeah.

That's what... No, I'm tired. We have a fish and podcast every once in a while. And I'm sitting here thinking like, this guy's rattling off every question I've had, you know? So yeah, no, usual three.

All right, cool. 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. What are you going to pick?

An unlimited budget for the three cars. You know, there's a lot of cars out there, man. I mean, in my life, I've driven a lot of stuff, a lot of fast stuff, a lot of cool stuff. I've been in Hellcats and Corvettes and whatever. And I just, I'm a Shelby guy all the way through and through 100%. If I had to pick the last sports car it was that I was ever going to have it ever going to drive, it'd be, you know, 2020, 2022 GT500. Regardless of the fact that if I, unlimited budget, I can go buy a million dollar car. I don't know what a Bugatti is like or anything like that. But I know that the GT500 is one of like the best, most solid cars that's been built. One of the most, you know, fun and blast to drive. And it's got the Shelby logos all over it. So it'd be a GT500 for me.

Eric's got a bunch of cool cars here. And he says that's one of his favorite cars.

Yep, yep.

So is that for daily track show?

I guess, I don't know. Track, let's say track, you know what I mean? Because obviously I stand behind track in a GT500. I try to convince every person on Facebook that has a GT500 that's not track in it. Man, you got to go out there and you just got to try it, you know?

So would you take your turbo car or a supercharged car?

The turbocharged car is like a fully built race car at the end of the day. So we're talking race. If we're talking old, I'm 50, 60 years old, just put me in a stock GT500, man. Let me go out there and rip on the track. You know what I mean? It's reliable. It's not going to break down on you. It's going to do everything you need it to do. And then if you really want to, you can just drive it home afterwards. You don't even have to load it up on a trailer. So, yep, yep. Daily driver. This is funny. I absolutely love a Chrysler Pacifica. It's so funny. It's so funny, it's like, we're talking unlimited, I know we're talking unlimited budget here, what I'm talking about, like the reality of life. Yeah, like a new Chrysler Pacifica. So I've been in a couple of them. I've had them for like rentals and things like that. And I've going all the way back, like when I first opened up the junkyard, I've always had like a van, even though I drive a pickup truck, I drive a dually pickup truck around like on a daily basis. And I love it. You want to talk about something daily driver that's good for getting groceries, hauling parts, moving kids, taking, you know, whatever it is you need to go and where you need to do. A van is just awesome. You got a family, every family should own a van to an extent, but it's funny because every time I show up to buy a junk car from somebody and they got a Cresta Pacifica, I was like, how do you like it? And everybody's every time is just like, oh, I love it, you know? So yeah.

I'm not crazy. I wanted a Pacifica like five, six years ago, before I pulled the trigger on a Cherokee, I was like, huh, Pacifica? Perfect. It was a photographer.

And they have, you know, they have models that they just look so good, you know, black on black or the S models that are good. And when the Pacifica first came out, it like changed, like it looked, it was a van, but it looked so much different for many. It didn't look like your typical minivan, you know, it was sleek, it looked good, it sat low, but it'd come for every option that they've got in them. Yeah, same thing. If I'm an older guy or even now, you know, Chrysler Pacifica for a daily driver.

He might be a Lehigh or a Coca fan because he was one of the brain challenge behind the Mustang and the minivan.

Oh yeah, I guess that could be it. Yeah. Pacifica, I think that's the first time we've had somebody say Pacifica.

I'm just thinking feasibility if it's the last thing that I have to have. You're going to have a daily driver, yeah.

All right, then cool, Showcar.

Showcar, man, it's got to be, I would say 67 Fastback. I mean, going back to the Mustang thing, just so nice. When you see them in there, just all done up from top to bottom, I mean, you go to a car show where somebody's got it, that's always, I go to a car show and just spot one from a million miles away and at least that 67 generation, and that's always what I'm drawn to and head towards. There's a couple of cool ones, too, like SVRA, which is the, what is it, Something Vintage Racing Association. They got some guys out there that run some older Mustangs and stuff like that that are out there, too, that's so cool, go out there and see them doing that, but there's show cars everywhere they go. The drag strip, the road course, cars and coffee, it doesn't matter, they stand out, I feel like, above everything else.

I got one more question, what's your aspiration with this? Or what's your end goal? Because I know some guys are like, I wanna be in IMSA, I wanna be in this series, this series, do you have an end goal besides, or do you just go out there, you just wanna race?

Yep, I just wanna go out there and race. It's about the challenge to me, once the challenge is over and anything in life, it's like you gotta start looking for what's next. So I'm just working on stepping up the growth of things. I think that the chase of like, I wanna go to, I'm sorry, I wanna do this. There's a lot of money grabbing the chase of things. So it's like, you can't take the fun out of it. Once you take the fun out of it, things are rough. And I actually had a, I've had a talk or a couple of talks with Nick about his dream and his chase of trying to get where he's at. And as he started racing and doing some of the stuff, he's like, man, there's a lot of politics and people aren't friendly in the paddock and they're not. And I'm like, at the end of the day, what are you doing it for? I'm like, me and Dustin can go out and it's just the two of us out there at a race at a random track, like Hedge Hollow, that there's no spectators or no nothing at and have an absolute blast of a week and a blast of a time. Like, you know, at the end of the day, you got to ask what it is that you're doing it for. And for me, it's the fun and the challenge.

I think those are good answers you can get.

I got one more quick question. I've been staring at your hat this whole time. And I keep asking, didn't you have, was your car in a music video, too, for Tech 9 or?

No, I was in a music video.

You were in the music video.

Tech 9, yeah, but I have thought about it so many times about reaching out to them and just wondering, would you guys sponsor me? And when I say sponsor me, I mean, just let me plaster your stuff all over. Because I am a Tech 9 and a Strange Music devoted fan through and through. Side of my trailer's got Strange Music stuff on. I wear Strange Music clothing. My race car, my Twin Turbo race car, I have a Strange Music plate on that, that I race with on that car. In almost every event I go to, there's one, it's like one guy who's like, man, I saw your trailer and I saw your plate. Like, what's it about? I'm like, dude, I just, I represent Strange Music. You know what I mean? I've been a Tech 9 fan forever. Yeah, yeah. I named my daughter Nina, too, you know? Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. That was, that was, when I tell you that was a fight, man, that was a fight. Like, trying to get it to that point. I'm going through all the way through, like man, in European countries, there's all kinds of girls named Nina, you know? And just going all the way through. And that was, I stuck to that so, so I stuck to that so hard and you know, just like I said, all the way through and through Strange Music, Technon fan. Where does that come from? So back in the day when I was like, you know, 18, you know, 18, 20 years old, I thought, I think Lil Wayne was probably like the top of the pinnacle, you know, when it came to like lyricist, right? Like, and to me, music and rap was, it was and always has been about the, like the technique, the delivery, the cadences, and then the things that make you rewind something and listen to it again. Like, you're like, I heard something, you're like, whoa, did he just say that? And you play it back, you're like, oh my gosh, what happened? Every Tech Nines song is like that. I mean, you go back and you listen to the things that he says. And I was really big into that lyrics, pulling them up and like seeing the things that were said. And, and Lil Wayne, falling off is a rough word, but it was kind of like he, there was, he kind of went a little more like the mainstream and some of the things kind of like they started to be like recycled to like an extent. And Tech N9ne, the first time I ever heard Tech N9ne, I think it was in the trunk. It was a song in the trunk. You know, do you know that song or no?

I can't pull it. My friend, the first one he ever put me onto was the one where he talks about killing a baby.

Oh, there you go. Yeah.

I don't remember the name of that song either, but yeah, I know what you're talking about because his lyrics are great.

Yeah.

What was the name of it? It's like escaping me right now. I know what you're talking about.

But yeah, the lyrics are great. So to me, it's like, you know, listen to that music or whatever. It's like, it's like a challenge. And then as I got through all of his different stuff, it was just like times of life where like things are bad or whatever. Just being able to like sit back in the seat and just listen to music and like being able to just fall into it, you know? And when you're when you're at the, what do you say? Like the the top when you when you everybody relies on you for support, sometimes it's hard to find to support yourself, you know? And I found that in music over the years and and just strange music, tech 9, it's just it's always been that for me. So yeah.

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

What do you mean?

Find me on social media?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm on Facebook, Carter Racing 563 and then YouTube. I think same thing. I think it's Carter Racing 563 on YouTube. So sweet trying trying to grow it like anything else. You know what I mean? It's a slow it's a slow process. I've got to put it on the side of the car with the I had a vinyl guy do me the the QR code or whatever. You know, I've noticed like when I went down to Texas and I came back and it made it maybe it was just there. It's Trans AM. I had like three more followers than I did before I went down there. And I'm like, what was it? The car was at the event. I don't know.

But yeah, dude, it's it's crazy. Just a little like just a little bit of effort in that space can go a long way, dude. You got a cool thing going on. So I can't wait to see where this goes.

Dan, you can find us at Gunna Garage.

As for me, this is going to be right after the Haltech Black Friday sale, I think. Yeah. What's next? Wednesdays?

The sale is over.

Still, you get the you still get 5% off using coming outside. Then we got high performance again.

Talk to Shawn. He's always fun.

Dude, you know what? Off camera conversation. Me and Shawn have been a problem this week. All right. But anyways, thank you for coming on, Derric. I'm glad we got to finally meet. Dan's been talking about you forever. He's like, I met this really cool guy at Road America. And I'm like, I think you're making it up.

I've been wanting to sit down and do this too. Mostly I actually have a chance to sit down and talk about some of the stuff that's going on here. And you talk to people and have conversations with them. It's cool to almost get to sit down here. I feel like I documented some of the stuff that I tell people about all in one sitting.

So it's cool.

Exactly. I always tell people it's hard to turn 20 years into a two hour podcast. Yeah, for sure. Dan, thanks for existing and we'll see y'all next time.