193. Nick Plocienik on Preparing For Pikes Peak, Racing At Daytona, and Driving Porsche Racecars

This episode is brought to you by 6XD Gearbox. More on them later. We got some catching up to do, man. So we had you back on the podcast, what was it, 70 episodes ago. You were like into 120s, I think.

Yeah, it's a long time ago. Well, a long time for you.

Long time for me, but like, we gotta talk about some things here, because you've had a hell of a season since then. You're doing a lot of cool stuff with this Camaro right behind us, but I can't see behind me, because I'm in this super awesome race tech seat.

The race tech seats are the best seats ever.

Yeah, dude. We did the patience episode on these. I liked them. I was comfortable for a while, but I'm not sponsored yet, unfortunately, but nonetheless, that's a plug for them. But go ahead, tell us a little bit about what last season looked like. And then I got so many questions about what's to come, because you will be doing Pikes Peak later this year. But let's get to that in a second. How did last season finish up?

So last season, let's see, 25 I was racing, in the beginning I raced, I was in NASA, and then I did PCA. And that was me breaking into the Porsche Club Sports, driving the Cup Car around, it was pretty amazing. But I mean, during that whole time, I mean, man, we did, I don't even know how many races last year, I think like nine or 10 races total.

With the Porsche or?

Like with everything together. I think about 11 or, you know, bound and all how much track time, you know, we were up at Brainerd and, but yeah, so really it's been a growing, it was a growing year. We, I kind of decided where I wanted to go and tried to make the effort to get there. So all of the Porsche, the Porsche racing was just, it was to get me to where I want to go now.

And race cars.

In race cars, real race cars.

Before you were, your Camaro was set up for to track stuff, but it wasn't full blown race car at that point, right? So that's why you wanted to dabble in the Porsches from what I remember.

Yeah, it was, I wanted to be in a factory race car and see what that was like. And I mean, I love it. There's nothing better than it. But we'll see how this thing turns out. But you know, I'm pretty excited about all of it. Last year, we went to SEMA. That was amazing. Coney Shocks, they had my car there in their booth.

That was a sick booth. We stopped by there. That was awesome.

Yeah, it was cool. It was a great experience. My first time at SEMA, my car was there. I got a couple of sponsors from that, which is pretty amazing.

Was that your first SEMA too?

That was my first SEMA, my first everything. So I walked around that place, I didn't even get to all the places.

It's not possible.

It wasn't.

When I went there my first year, I think I did 35,000 to 40,000 steps a day for two or three days and then a light day, it was like 20,000 steps.

I remember looking at mine, I'm like, Oh my God, 36,000, geez.

So you had some cool photos too, by the way, like not many people like leave there with taking awesome photo and video. You did a good job. Circus, circus, people clown on that hotel, man, but it's good for photos.

It was great. And with the Coney guys, and they did a really cool video afterwards. And I was able to drive around the whole entire city at night for about four hours.

That's cool.

And just, that was really fun.

Were you working with Aaron on them?

Yeah, Aaron, yep. Him and all the other guys over there helping him out. So yeah, it was cool. It was cool.

So obviously you went to CMA and all that. What's that experience? So you got to experience the Porsche race car life for a little bit. How much does it differ than Camaro? Cause you're going from American to German. You're going from front to, is that one technically, is that rear engine? That's rear. Yeah, so it's like all these crazy changes. Did you have to drive differently too?

Oh yeah. Well, the problem with this was I was racing the Porsche. And then as soon as I got into this car, I mean, I almost didn't even know how to drive it. But it was just, I wanted to go faster and deeper into corners, but this thing doesn't turn like that. And it's heavier and, you know, it's still a lot of street car-ish, you know? So the way how the Porsche drives and the way how this drives, that's completely different. But I guess you get to a point where you start to drive it enough, where you can start to switch back and forth and just take a few laps and just get used to it. But I just love everything about the Porsches and that's where I want to stay.

Okay, so you can see yourself kind of staying in that sort of space in the future?

Absolutely.

Well, do you... Besides the Porsche and this car, what else have you gotten seat time in? Like a lot of seat time?

So really, I mean, I drove that Mercedes for a little bit, you know, but that was a street car as well. And, you know, that was cool. I would love to drive a GT4 or a GT3 Mercedes, I think. The way they sound and how wide they are, they're just amazing. But...

Max is going to be doing that too. Did you see that? And the Nuremberg ring?

Oh, Max Verstappen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Dude, that's a sick livery.

I mean, Red Bull and everything that they're about is just amazing. And that's where I'm focused at, you know, at this point, you know. But, you know, you got to drive in those in those leagues. You have to have so much seat time.

Yeah.

And, you know, I did a testing with JDC, JDC Miller at Road Atlanta. And that was cool. It was it was cool because there's other GT3 cars that were there as well. And so seeing them and the LMP2 cars drive by, you know, but just getting the opportunity to feel what a real race team is is like. And that was fun. And so that was right before the Petit Le Mans last year. So that was that was really fun.

Was that in a which car was the JDC test in?

That was in the GT4 RS club sport.

Okay. Is that still technically like a 718 as well?

Yeah, I think so.

Okay. Got you. How did that? Because that's also a completely different car than what your Cup Car was, right? So how does it differ?

It's like a, it's kind of teeter-totters, you know, it's a mid motor and you would think that there'd be more stability in it. But I think from the setup standpoint and from how small the wheels are compared to the Cup Car, it's just, it's a different car. I like it though. I like it. It's hard to drive. It's, but when you're in it for a while, I mean, it's a good car. It's pretty good, I mean, yeah.

What's something, cause I saw you post something on your Facebook, I think it was last night, actually. You're driving like the Mustang at the ring or something. You're on some like heater of a lap or whatever. What's on your bucket list? Are you trying to just beat the Porsche guy? You're trying to just get in any seat you can? What does that look like?

I've had, just recently, I've had a few opportunities to drive an SRO, so it's a GT4, that series. And I've had a couple of people ask if I would, you know, if I'm interested, but, you know, the Lamborghini Super Trofeo, McLaren, the GT4 McLarens. And then just recently, like three nights ago, the Aston Martin GT4. So, I mean, there's all kinds of cars that I want to drive. I really would like to drive a Super Trofeo. I think that'd be really fun to drive, but I want to get behind a Mercedes, like the GT4 or the GT3, just to drive one. GT3, I mean, that's just, that's a whole nother level.

But, it's about like what, 200 horsepower difference too, isn't it?

I think there's about 200 horsepower difference, but what it is, is like how wide they are. I mean, you can take corners so much faster. I mean, you can just, it's full aero, all the speed, they sound so bad a**. So, but yeah, I'd really like to get into one of them. But, the Mustangs, they are growing on me. Not like a street Mustang. Not anything other than the GT3 Mustang. The GT4s are cool. They move, you know, and they can drive the heck out of them. Sam Paley is one of my buddies. And he's, actually he's in Australia right now for their opening of some series. I don't know what he's driving, or what class it is, but he's an amazing driver. And anyway, I like to drive something like a Pratt Miller car too. I think that would be really cool.

Well, you kind of got this like wide-eyed look at it now. It's like you just want to go racing at this point, it seems. Yeah. OK. Well, touch a little bit on this car then, because obviously you're preparing it for Pikes Peak. We're here at Patience Metal Fab, which these guys are always so inviting to have us over here. Gary and Brian. So it's just the first time I've been here, like after hours, after hours.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These guys are awesome. I mean, if it wasn't for them, I mean, this thing wouldn't be what it is. Gary has really taken upon himself to be full on with this one, you know. So I love these guys and they've treated me like family. So it's great. But yeah, this car is getting a whole bunch of work in 100 days from today is when I'll be at the track racing. But, you know, Magnus and Superchargers jumped on board with us. So we're going to have one of those in here. I just I put that on my Instagram or my Instagram. A whole lot more Aero. The Novum guys are creating some stuff right now. That's pretty, pretty amazing. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm so stoked. Cortex Racing, they are jumping in and making the first SLA for Gen 6 Camaro, and they're literally doing it right now. So it's pretty cool between them and patients putting everything together. Yeah, this thing is going to be just a monster.

So explain how do we get to these decisions, right? Is this because I know you and Gary, you went out to Pikes Peak last year, right? To kind of like scout things out, field things out. Right.

Yeah.

What did that conversation look like after? Like, first of all, getting into Pikes Peak is no easy feat because I think it's like an acceptance thing. Right. Do you want to touch on that first?

Yeah, sure. You know, so funny thing is, is last year, we went there, I'm, you know, I'm so new to racing. And I mean, I'm, I found that out being at Daytona, but I'm so new to racing. I don't know the names. I don't know, you know, who's who. And we, I saw this young lady walking towards us. And I had no idea who she was, but I thought it was really cool that she's racing up the mountain. And she was in a twin turbo 992 Cup car. And I said, Oh man, you know, I asked her about it. And then I was like, do you drive full time? You know, and this is Gary. Gary laughs at me every time. And I go, do you drive full timer? And he said, man, her last name is Unser. You don't know who the Unser are or who they are. And I'm like, no, I have no idea who they are, you know? And like I legitimately had no idea who she was or her family, no name. And she probably, I could only imagine what her thought was. But we have stayed in touch and her boyfriend was driving in IMSA or he still does, he is driving IMSA, but he was there and I met him, you know, just in January. But I started talking with her and just asking her a bunch of questions and next thing you know, like I would say like, we're not like friends, right? But like, if I see her, I'm like, I'd give her a hug, you know, sure. So I would say like a friends, acquaintance, whatever. Anyway, and I hope she sees this. And but like, I asked her if she would write a reference. And along with John Church from JDC. And they both did. And that was really cool. And I was actually chatting right outside of here. I was on the phone with her for about half hour one day. And yeah, and it was cool. So the people that you meet in this motorsports are amazing. So I ended up getting accepted. One of 75 people, one of 12 rookies who are going to be going up the hill.

Isn't only 75 people that go over here?

Yeah. So last year it was 70.

Okay.

And so this year it's 75 as far as I know. I mean, all I saw last year was 70. So yeah, and it was like a waiting list. Like you had to do your application and then you had to, you know, get your fees paid before you would accept it. You know, and then it was like three months and then, you know, you were waiting and waiting and waiting.

What are the restrictions? Is there like, I confess, like I've seen Pikes Peak for like, you know, like on Instagram and Facebook, and I think I may have watched like a documentary in the past, but is there like classes to it or anything? Or is it just kind of like, can you kind of break that down? I don't quite understand that.

I'll be honest. I don't really know how to break all that stuff. I know that there's, the class that I'm in is an open. So it's, I was reading it today, cause today it's the 100 days until the race. So this thing popped up and I just started kind of reading and the open class is a, it's like a car, a class that you can go buy the car, mod it, but it still looks like a regular car. And that's where, that's where I'm at. You know, there's factory GT4 cars, there's open wheel cars, there's, I don't know if the electric cars are in like a different bracket, but like there's some electric cars that are just crazy fast.

Yeah, I think that holds the record still. Was it a Volkswagen, I think? I can't remember. It was some, it was probably German.

The car that held the record, yeah, it was something like seven minutes all the way up the hill, like that's wild. I just started simming it and I'm at like a 10 minutes, like 30 seconds or something like that.

When you say simming it, is that a set of course, I'm guessing?

Yeah, and it's actually, from what I hear, the way how the track flows or the road flows is pretty accurate at speeds. So that's what I'm focused on right now. I'm doing that and I'm doing the Nurburgring on like iRacing. That's all I'm really doing.

So when you're simming, Pikes Peak, what car are you using?

So I did a Mercedes SLS, Okay. GT3 on there and a BMW, some BMW that's on there, I don't even know. But we're gonna download my Corvette or Camaro because I was just driving a Corvette on there as well. But somebody has a Z01, one LE on there. And so we're going to be doing that too.

Okay.

I'll see.

Interesting. I've always wondered how the mod, so I actually reinstalled the Seto yesterday because I wanted to play around drifting and practice that a little bit just for fun. And I know that there's a lot of mods in there. Like for example, I have Brainerd on there. Do you have Brainerd on a Seto? Have you practiced it at all?

I don't even know how to download it.

Yeah. I don't know how. I'm not entirely sure it's fully accurate. Like if I remember correctly, I don't think they have the bank on turn one or whatever, if I remember correctly.

I don't know.

But either way though, I want to figure out that whole world, the whole mod thing, just like it opens it up so much more. Like iRacing is cool for a lot of stuff, but it misses some things.

Yeah. I mean, I love iRacing. I feel like if you can drive fast on there, you can really drive fast, you know, like on a Seto, you know, I feel like it's...

Well, how about real life? Because you and I used to go back and forth for the longest time, and now I can't even keep up with you on iRacing. I barely even try at this point.

Yeah. No, I mean, you can keep up.

You broke my spirit.

Yeah, it's okay.

Okay.

Well, it was going to happen anyway.

Yeah, I know.

We had this, you know, at the last video, but no, in real life, it has helped because you get more comfortable, you know, but I think, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about Daytona here.

Yeah, it's coming up.

But I would say that in real life it does help, but there's a pressure. There's a pressure in real life that is not there. And the fact that you can obviously really damage of, you know, three, $400,000 car, you know, that you have to pay for if something happens or, you know, your life.

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But I think it gets you more comfortable going around fast corners, knowing how to do a line. Because if you know the line, it doesn't feel as fast as, you know, as you're really going.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

Yeah.

What's the latest new track you've been to? Was it Daytona?

Daytona's been the newest one.

What was before that? Did you go to Road Atlanta in person?

Road Atlanta. Yeah, I was at Road Atlanta. I drove Road Atlanta twice last year. VIR, Road Atlanta, Ozarks, Brainerd. That was all I really drove. I didn't really, I did a lot at Ozarks. Yeah.

So where I was going with that is, how many laps does it take for you to just switch on, lock in? Is it one lap? Is it five laps? When do you feel like you're in a flow state?

Usually like, it's usually like four laps, four to five laps. It takes me a while and I need to get that back, probably two laps. We were talking about that after the race. I need to be able to lock in like almost instantly. And I think I'm getting there cause it was always like five laps, even on iRacing, like when I'm racing with like online, I get a little nervous sometimes, you know, cause I don't know, you know, I don't want to mess up, but Daytona was just, there was a lot of pressure there and I, it was self-inflicted pressure, you know, so, but.

Is it better when you go back to like, let's say Brainard, right? Like does that switch come on sooner?

Yeah. That instant. So I mean, it's.

Yeah. I think once you get a few more seasons under your belt, you'll be like, all right, it's party time.

I think, I think if I've been to the track once or twice, it would be better. Road America though, for some reason I was there, that was my first time I rode America last year and I was fine. I even spun there and nothing like I didn't get nervous there at all.

OK. I think it's because it's not as many, even though it's a high speed track, it's just because it's less turns maybe.

I'm not sure what it is, actually. I don't know. I was so comfortable in my cup car that it didn't really bother me at all, like anywhere I knew I was going, like that didn't bother me because I knew the car, you know, so it's kind of like in this thing. Whenever I go anywhere with that, it's fine. But yeah.

Oh, it might have been because you were in a GT4.

It might be. Yeah. And like the first time we test drove that thing at Road Atlanta, they did a suspension change. And I mean, I was barely even moving and I spun it on turn three and I just like tapped the wall, you know, but like it shouldn't happen. And so like in my head, I was like, man, this car's and me are not friends, you know?

It kind of messes with you like mentally sometimes too.

Yeah. Yep. And that's what I need to learn. Like you see like Max Verstappen and all those guys, they're just like stone cold, you know?

Well, I think it's a good time that this new season just started last weekend. But like, even though they're b*******, they still got a job to get done, right? But they'll still complain while they're doing it too.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Everybody's complaining about these new regs.

Yeah. It's kind of it's kind of crazy to me. But like, what are they doing that for? You know, there has to be a reason. Like, what is the real reason why these cars are slower than last year?

You know, I mean, it doesn't surprise me, right? It's like like somebody made a comment on a Facebook forum. It's like this was the same conversation in 2022, same conversation in 2014. It's like there's always going to be complaints when they switched up, like the whole tires as well, too. Was it two years ago? Three years ago as well? It's like you're starting something completely new. Like one of the things that they always talk about when they're announcing it is like you're not just doing the chassis, you're not just doing the engine, you're doing both. And they apparently that's historically never really been done. So I don't know. You're still a Red Bull guy, though, huh?

I'm a Red Bull guy through and through, through and through.

Yeah. How's the flavor actually?

This is great. This is the white peach. I like this one. And then the vanilla. It's another sugar free one.

It's a berry one. Vanilla.

No, yeah, vanilla coconut. No, no vanilla. I don't know what it was, but it's really good, though. Yeah, I love Red Bull. They have the best. I would say everything about them. Even when I was younger, I wanted to be sponsored by Red Bull.

Really?

You know, and like so I'm really working for all that. And it's I'm repping them real hard. And I'm you know, I'm talking to a couple of people there. So it's what we'll figure it out. We'll get there. We'll get there.

My biggest thing. So I was drinking C4 is like a fish or last year. And what else? I like Alani's. But like, and I know it's an energy drink segment now. But the reason I like Red Bull is because it's not as much caffeine as the rest of them.

Yeah.

Like I think like once I start crossing that, like two, three hundred mark, like after like two o'clock, like I with my sleep.

Oh, really?

Oh, it messes with me bad. Like, oh yeah.

See, like there's that, what's that company? Black Rifle Coffee. Oh, sure.

I've heard that s*** makes people have panic attacks sometimes.

I mean, honestly, like I'm a big coffee drinker.

Is this wrong?

Yeah. And it's, and I love it.

I think they've done a couple of cars here for Black Rifle out of patients, I think.

Yeah, they have, yeah. There's a couple of them that have been in here. One of Ken Block's old ones or something like that. Something, I don't know.

Fiesta's or something.

Some, I don't know. It was a WRX maybe. I have no idea. But yeah, I would really like to talk to those guys. That's, those guys are cool. I like them, you know.

Oh, the Black Rifle guys? Yeah.

Black Rifle guys, yeah.

You know what breaks my heart? No, it's not the 2% female demographic. It's the fact that 80% of you guys are not subscribed and following the show. So go ahead, hit subscribe or follow. And of course, if you're on YouTube, hit that bell so you are notified when we drop a new episode. Let's get back to the show. Okay, well, speaking of sponsors and stuff, so you have a number for this Camaro, right? But you've also had quite a few upgrades, right? So again, this Camaro was stock, what, two and a half years ago? Around then?

Yeah, I got it. Yeah, two and a half years ago, two years ago, probably right now actually, two years ago.

So what's its final form gonna be for Pikes Peak? So you said it's 100 days from now until you're on the mountain, right?

Yeah.

Is it? Yeah, that's coming up.

Yeah, it'll be before that, that it needs to be ready. Right. I have an opportunity to partner with another company to go drive at Hyper Fest and give...

Hyper Fest. Why does that sound familiar?

Hyper Fest is like kind of like a big drift party and like all this stuff at VIR in Virginia.

Okay.

So and go do laps around Virginia in the car and that's in May. So we'll see where it's at. But my final form, well, it's going to have full aero, flat bottom, loud exhaust, probably close to a thousand horsepower.

Which Magnuson are you getting? Is that like a 2650 you're getting on there?

Yeah.

Jesus, okay.

Yep. I have it. It's kind of... It's really cool and it's the same blue color. Yeah. I'm pretty excited about it. The Novum guys are Nexfra. They are doing fenders, the flat bottom. And I think they're doing something else. I don't even know. There's so much stuff going on with this thing, but we just added the radium fuel. So Cortex is doing the SLA, be the first one. We're really excited to talk to those guys.

Based off what they did with this Volvo back here, man. It's like, I'm excited.

Yeah. I mean, I have some Cortex stuff on my Daytonite truck too.

Do you? Okay.

Yeah, the whole...

You're not selling that one anymore, are you?

No, that one is... That thing will be out soon. It will be in here soon.

You got something going on with that car now?

I sure do.

Or truck?

Yeah.

Okay. Because that thing was like 800 horsepower, but it was making 800 before I had a Haltech?

Yep. 800 with the Haltech, with the 4L80 tranny. Now it will be... It won't have that tranny in it. It will be a manual. Oh. Yeah.

Okay. Interesting. Okay. That will be interesting to see. I like the interior on that truck too.

Yeah. The interior is really cool. We're going to probably take that out now.

Who was it? Knish that did the interior?

No. No. Shawn Henderson over at Top Stitch.

That's right. I always get those mixed up or whatever. It's only a handful. There's only three guys here locally.

Yeah. I don't really know who this other guy is, but Shawn's been my buddy for a long time. And I mean, I've seen a lot of people's work and his is like next level. I mean, he's just the man, you know?

Sure. Well, back to just kind of stay distracted, of course. But so it's going out of MoTec now as well, right? Because like before it was stock ECU, you ran into a bunch of issues with that. Now you're going full MoTec, which M182, by the way. So it's like you're going all the way. Who's going to be doing the tuning for that?

There is, man, I'm going to butcher this. There's a guy who Gary and the guy who we got the MoTec and stuff from, we didn't get it from a dealer because he had already had it. So we got the 6XD sequential for this and we got the manual rear end for this, the pedal box, the AP pedal box and the MoTec all from one of our buddies because he had it sitting around for his Camaro build. They did one here, they did it here, they did the cage and all that, that Maroon one a few years ago.

Okay.

They put the air jacks and all that stuff on it. Yeah. So Dustin, he had all that stuff just sitting around waiting for it and I just asked him if I could buy it.

Okay.

And so he hooked me up and Corbin is his name.

Oh, does he tune? Is that the same guy that had tunes for a Red House, Red Horse, whatever performance? I don't know. They make the twin code red Mustangs, I think.

I'm not sure.

I wonder if it's the same tuner. I wonder if it's Derek's tuner, the same guy, Derek with the GT500.

No.

You don't think so?

No.

Interesting.

Uh-uh. No, I don't think so.

Because Derek's guy is a MoTek guy too.

Yeah. I don't think so.

Interesting.

It might be.

Who knows. I'm going to fact check myself. I assume I'm wrong until I'm not.

Yeah. No, I honestly don't even know, man. There's so much stuff that's going on with this car and I'm not a mechanic. I don't know how to work on these things and I'm a driver.

Okay. You got to give yourself a little bit of credit here too though. You still know enough to know what you want.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Because there's some guys that just, who was I talking to? We had Robin, I forgot how to say his name, whatever, but he was an engineer in IMSA or whatever. We had him on the show at PRI. And he's just like, man, drivers are a different breed because you get so many, they have to translate whatever the driver is saying and somehow make it work on the car, right? So it's like, you're able to speak the language a little bit at least, right? There's some guys that just get in and drive and see what's up or, you know?

Yeah. No, I mean, if there's, there's things that need to be changed, you know, if it's pushing too much, if it's understeering or oversteering, you know, if it's, you know, you can't get any grip when you come out the corners, you know, if you're, if you're, you know, when you're full, full whack and you're shifting gears and it gets loose, like, you know, there's a lot of things you do have to talk to them about, but, you know, I'm learning, you know, being driving an IMSA with JDC.

I mean, that's a huge, that's a hell of a program to work with.

Yeah.

I'm sure that was just like drinking from a fire hose.

Well, yeah, I mean, and the team was a new team. They were a GT3 team. They're running a GT3 Mercedes. So JDC has a whole new crew this year for the GS car. And learning, listening to Mikey and Chris on the radio and, you know, when we're talking about, you know, like debriefing and listen to the engineers and everybody, it's a big, it's crazy, you know, like the things that they can pick up. I was really impressed with some of their knowledge. It was unbelievable.

What was the most impressive thing?

I remember John Church was on the radio and he kept saying, there's this black cloud behind the car. There's a black cloud behind the car. And he was saying something about, you know, we got to bring Mikey in because it looks like something's going on with that rear passenger tire. And I'm looking at it going like, I can't even see this. Like, how are you seeing this on this? And sure enough, there was something going on with that backside. It wasn't a tire. It was actually gear, gear box fluid was coming out. And so it must have been like every time he's shift or something, something, I don't know. But I just don't know how he saw that. Like, I don't know. We didn't have like a cameraman just right on the car the whole time. It was just the normal cameras that are coming by. It was weird, you know? But you know, you take two clicks out the back and one on the front or something like that, you know, add a little bit to the wing and you get a whole new car. You get a whole new car, you know?

This wing is all, if I remember correctly, it goes straight through, right?

Yep.

Yeah, you guys designed that, what was it, a year and a half ago, something like that? Some craziness? Yeah, I feel like it too, isn't it?

No, it's not bigger. I think we need to have bigger side the end plates. Yeah, the end plates. But, you know, it's up to them. There's a full on engineer team working on this and aerospace guys and Formula One dude, I don't know.

I'll just shoot them a message. I'm curious if it's the same guy, because there's an former Mercedes F1 engineer that did some consulting at HPA, High Performance Academy, and he has a bunch of courses and stuff out there. He works with teams like you, right? So I'm curious if it's the same guy. That guy is a bucket list guest. I'm like, Kyle, I forgot what his name was. I don't know. But there's so much talent out there, man. It's like when you get to-

It's crazy.

Yeah. That's why I love the race car stuff. That's basically what this podcast has turned into, whether it's circuits or drag strip or whatever. There's so much to talk about.

Yeah. I mean, racing is crazy. The cool thing about it is it can bring everybody together, little kids to old men, old ladies even. It doesn't matter. The age range is just huge.

Did you meet the CEO of Megson? What was her name again?

I didn't meet her. I saw her. I was waiting to talk to her, but my connection over there is these guys are really cool. And you know, they're busy, busy.

Really nice people though. I can't remember what I added. One of them was a marketing person, but the CEO, she's such a nice lady. I got to meet her at a PRI a year and a half ago.

Yeah. I didn't meet her. Everybody there is really awesome though. I mean, Seybelt, those guys are cool too. Yeah. It's a good group of dudes, man, like for real.

What does after hours at the track look like, right? Especially when you're there for several days, is that you looking over logs, is that just talking to other drivers, engineers? What does after hours look like for you?

I mean, for me, after hours, I mean, we want to talk about Daytona. Sure. I mean, because when we're at like a NASA race or NASA or PCA, I mean, as soon as everything's done, I mean, we're out. We're off the track. We go get some food someplace and go back and sleep. But yeah, I spent a lot of time in Daytona for the roar. I was there on the 15th and we didn't even drive until, well, I think we drove on the 16th, but the race wasn't even until the 23rd. And I stayed the whole entire time.

Holy s***, okay.

So there's just a lot of cool things. I just, I got a chance to talk to the guys more, talk to the teams more, talk to some of the drivers who were still there. But, you know, just having the opportunity to, to immerse yourself in that industry and that everything, like not the industry, but like that situation, because Daytona is, it's like, it's a big place.

How did Daytona happen?

So I went to the test with those guys and they felt as if I was able to drive at that level. John Church really put himself out there for me with the team and said that, you know, let's give him an opportunity, you know, to try and to see where, you know, where, where he lands. And that's pretty much what The Roar was. And I was off pace there, I was off pace quite a bit, you know, I mean, three seconds is three seconds, you know, I mean, but I started to get more comfortable and my times are getting better and better and better. But anyway, they're like, hey, if you want to drive, you know, the three, the three person, you know, races, you know, we'd be happy to have you. And so I did. And I was supposed to do, I don't know if I'm going to do Middle High, I don't think I'm doing Middle High with them due to the, I don't know if they even need me right now, because there's not a lot of testing for it. And so I need to get back into the car to test. But a lot of things happen with the car at Daytona. So yeah.

So when you say you're off three seconds then, but you're progressively getting better, what's the result of that? Is that just you being, again, you know, a completely different car, completely different track? I mean, what do you attribute that to? Like, how do you, like, let's say you go back there next year. What's your game plan?

You know, the game plan obviously at Daytona is now that I know like the track, just making sure that I'm more comfortable. You know, a lot of the the jitters will be out because, I mean, I've been there now, right? You know, second time will be different. And I would only imagine that the next time I'm there, I'll be in my own car or my own group, my own series, well, not series, but with my own race team, you know? So that's kind of what the goal is to be with JDC again. But if I have my own program, it'll be different.

That makes sense.

There's no, I don't have Mikey Taylor and Chris Miller, you know, their season on the line if I crash the car, you know, or if I hit somebody and, you know, and there's a lot of money that Unitronics and LiquiMali and everybody's out bringing, you know, to these guys. And so I think that was like my biggest thing was, hey man, you know, I don't want to be the person who wrecks the car and wrecks the race for you. And that's all I was thinking about.

Right.

And you can't drive fast. You can't be at the limit when you're thinking like that. And so I feel like that played a huge part in the three seconds and four seconds, whatever it was.

So you were a little bit more cautious.

Oh my God. Yeah.

Yeah.

Like I was almost just like letting people pass me, you know, which you can't race like that. You know, you can, you're always going to be in the back. And like when I got close to people, it was fine. But then I was just like, all right, cool. Like what if they hit me? What if they slide, you know, then I'm going to wreck their car.

Like, like no dumb mistakes or no risky mistakes. Yeah.

They told me when I was there that I had three, three things, you know, don't get a lap down, don't get any penalties and don't wreck the car.

Did you get any of those three? No. Okay. Hey, that's an accomplishment.

I was, I was down a lap until I caught back up.

Okay.

So I was like, I had a spin.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. So, yeah.

Hey, that's a successful mission, man. That's successful to me.

Yeah.

Yeah. Again, Daytona is also massive, right? Like just like like an energy there, right?

I mean, the history and being there with like, I don't know, 200,000 people. I mean, it was completely sold out. You know, there were so many people there. Well, I wouldn't say sold out because the fans, the the state, whatever, it wasn't sold out, but there was a lot of people there.

Well, it's also, I think, I think the stands can hold like 250,000 people or something crazy like that.

Yeah, but like there was a lot of people there and there's a lot of people on the infield. You know, there's, there's a lot of people there, but it was, it was the fact that you go to the driver meetings for like, you know, club level stuff and it's, it's so different. But then you get into a room where everyone who's in there, I mean, Connor Zilich was in front of me, you know, Logan Sargent was in front of me. You know, I mean, you have these people of that. I mean, they're the tip top.

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And I had some other drivers who were right next to me, and I'm just thinking to myself, man, this is this is wild. You know, Robin Liddell was there, like right next to us walking in. And, you know, just even being a part of all that is just so so huge. And the NBC Sports guys had asked me to come chat with them. And I didn't know I thought I did something wrong. And he literally was showing everybody's book or like their page. And he goes, then I come to you and there's nothing here. How did you get here? You know? And so I told him and he was like, man, what are you trying to kill yourself? And I was like, well, no, but hopefully not. And Mikey was right next to me and man, Mikey's so cool. Like if you ever get an opportunity to talk to him, Mikey Taylor, he's he's a he's one of the drivers for JVC, right? Yeah, yeah. He's he's a character man. Chris is awesome too. And Chris is local here.

Okay. Where's Mikey based out of?

Birmingham, Alabama. Yeah.

Okay.

But he's from South Africa, so he has a cool, okay, cool accent.

Yeah.

Funny guy. But yeah, so it all I mean, everything happened at Daytona was huge. An hour and a half before the race, we had some car trouble.

Oh, okay.

And so my first IMSA race at Daytona, the car decided to want to not keep the oil pressure in it anymore. Right. So the oil pump went out. And we're like, what are we going to do? We have an hour and a half before the race. Cars were already going down to the grid for the fan walk. And we there's CSM is another racing team. They had a car from the VP Challenge that was that was in their truck already. We found out that they would rent it out to us. So we rented a car. And we had about 45 minutes, I think it was 45 to 50 minutes, to get everything from our car into this car and switched over for the BOP for everything from VP to Michelin Pilot Challenge. And then me being the first person in the car, there's a lot of pressure on there. And it was wild and yeah, that...

Did it feel pretty different compared to the other one? Or not really? Did you guys get like set up for the most part?

We didn't get a set up because we had no time. Like literally they pushed my car out. They pushed the car out with me in it just to get down to the fan walk and close the gates. And yeah, the car was set up on wet set up because it had spun before, like the last race that it was out there, spun like a 720 on the track. Found out that we didn't even know if it was fixed. You know, so we're driving this car and I literally found that out right before I got back in the car to go drive from the driver who spun. And he's like, man, it's good car, it's good car. And I'm like, okay, great. But you just told me that it spun and who knows what's wrong with it now? You probably just packed it up and put it on the trailer. You know, we'll deal with it later, right? And yeah, so set up on a soft set up and there's gear. The gear box was leaking. You know, the tires, I went to turn in at the bus stop on it and just spun it, you know, about eight feet from the wall. So there was my don't crash, you know.

Close, but not quite.

Yeah, it was crazy. But it was a great experience. It was a hectic.

Sounds like you got the full taste of it. Like it's like, it's all up from here now.

That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, you know what, like let's just go up. And so now with this thing, I'm like, well, we got some time. We'll test and make sure everything works right. And give it the business.

You said testing is gonna be at Brainerd then?

We're gonna test at Brainerd. I'm actually gonna be reaching out to JR over at Ozarks and ask him if we could drive there, rent it out. Maybe me and Dustin, who's in NASA down there, whose stuff we bought. And then Derek Carter. See if maybe us, we can just get on the track and just go and, you know.

He's got a new set up too.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's gonna be pretty sweet once he's all, is it done yet? I don't know. Yeah. We'll see how that goes.

Yeah. He broke it. The tranny broke in one of his cars just the past couple of weekends ago.

Oh, yeah. He was at some Trans Am thing, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah. Then he had some issues, but yeah, now he's got the twin turbo set up on there. So that's pretty sweet. Yeah.

I think the twin turbo is the one that broke.

Yeah. I think so.

Yeah.

He sent me photos.

He had twin turbos on it. So he has two.

Correct. He's got the supercharged one and a twin turbo one. Yeah.

And then the twin turbo one is, I think, the one that the training went on.

Yeah. That's the one that he was preparing for Trans Am and all that. So we, I went down to chat with him three, four months ago now, man, it was before the new year. Yeah. But yeah, it was, it was fun to get to know him. He has a very specific state of mind. Like it's pretty sweet. So it's going to be, yeah, it's going to be interesting. I'm curious, how come you didn't go to the Twin Turbo route, actually? I'm curious. It's just because of the Magnuson sort of partnership?

Yeah. I don't know. I like the supercharger for this and it's constant, you know? But I was thinking about it and we, I think Gary and I chatted very, very minimal about it, but I just said, you know, just leave it in there. We'll be fine.

Do you know what you guys are planning? Are you upgrading some like cooling mods as well?

Yeah, we just ordered an all new radiator, a big a** one. I don't even know how big it is, but it's a monster.

I think that's one, Pikes Peak is just, it just beats up on cars, man.

Yeah. And all the coolers in this thing have already been upgraded. So that was the last one. I'm pretty sure we can keep everything in there, but we did get a new tranny cooler, I think it is, another, or added a bigger one or something, but yeah.

One of the guys, we, actually the episode I just dropped yesterday, the guy's having his GTD service right now, apparently it was leaking.

Oh really?

I think it was the trans going out on it, or not going out, but you know, had some issues.

In a Ford?

Yeah, which is strange, because like another one of the guys I've had on the show, he's did 8,000 miles in his GTD already, because he's like across the country, you know, spinning like a top, it's doing great. So yeah, you never know with those, but no, I'm really excited to see how this goes. I mean, you have just a few more weeks. You said beginning of April or end of April is testing?

Sometime in April. I don't even know exactly. We got to talk to Brainerd, because we're going to bring it to Brainerd to go get all the bugs out and just be able to drive it and see how it feels with, you know, the aero and all that. So even though Brainerd is going to be flat, it's probably not going to be the best place to go, you know, and it could be a whole new setup as soon as we bring it to Ozarks, you know?

Yeah, but work out at least the basic bugs if there is any.

Yeah, and make sure everything works right, you know, shifting up, you know, down, making sure the brakes work.

So do you know which 6XD you guys put in this? Is it the STD or the XTD? I think it's the top trim one. Nope, probably, yeah. No, I'm excited, that's a pretty sweet side. There's a lot more people locally getting into 6XD, which is awesome, because I think Enth Moto is the only ones that I knew of that were running it before. So it's awesome to see more people running it.

That thing is beautiful. I mean, it looks like art.

It's like jewelry. Yeah, well, I don't know if you saw, we did a video where we toured their facility down in North Carolina. Yeah, so that's an awesome setup down there.

Yeah, that's cool. I was thinking like, man, can we just get like a clear, like trans tunnel right there just to be able to look at it?

Yeah.

Right. How do we do that?

Is it going to be? Are you going to have like a paddle set up with it or are you going to do like a sequential sort of?

It'll be all paddle.

Paddle. OK. Yeah, that was one of the questions I asked them as well, because like I just thought, because like my buddy that had the twin turbo Viper was all, you know, by hand.

Yeah.

But then turns out like you could just do it like paddle shift.

Yeah. I mean, I think I think it's cool to do this, but I feel like when you're racing, it's just. This is just easier. Keep your hands on the wheel, you know, don't have to think where you're at, you know, don't think about letting go or downshifting and, you know, doing is too much.

I wonder if it's like based off like the type of sport too, right? Because like if you're doing like drifting or like rally, right, like you would probably go from shifting to handbrake.

Yeah.

Maybe that's something like that. I don't know.

Maybe maybe that's what it is. I don't know. I really would love to get into rally. That would be awesome.

Yeah.

I really like it's on my bucket list to try to do something, but my truck is going to be like this now sequential that way.

Are you putting a 660 on that too? Or no, no, no.

Yeah, we're not doing that.

Let's say the street truck will be wild with that.

Yeah. I mean, you know, but and we're going to handbrake and we'll do, we're doing a whole new front end on that thing.

What possessed you to do that?

I want to be able to drift it a little bit.

Okay.

But I don't want to go drifting. I don't want to compete. I just want to do it for fun.

Okay. I'm about to lose an argument with my girlfriend because of you, by the way.

Why?

Because we're drifting on the Samoyed ever. And she's like, you know what would be kind of fun to do it with a truck? I'm like, no, no.

Yes. God damn it, Nick. Yes. Yes. Dude, that thing is going to be like the Hooney truck. Yeah. Honestly, I want the Hooney truck. I wish I could buy the Hooney truck right now.

I sold last year, didn't I? I think it was like 900 grand or something.

I don't know what it was, but if I had the money, I would overpay just to have it. Yeah. I love that thing and I would drive it. It would be fun.

Did you see my highlights last year when I was posting about the in-progress photos of it? Because we had the guy on the show that built it. Yep.

Yep.

Yep. So crazy.

At Detroit Speed?

Yeah, so he was at Detroit Speed at the time, but now he's like, you know, I was on, but he was at Detroit Speed. He was like the foreman or something over there. I think he did 70 or 80 percent of the truck is what he said. So it's super cool.

Yeah. That thing was just wild, man. And I would love to have my truck like that. And I think that's probably what we'll end up doing. I was going to sell the truck a while ago, and now I'm just so happy. The guy actually who wanted it asked me again. And I told him, I was like, well, if you want, it's going to be about $40,000 more, because now it's one of those deals where I realized.

You actually want it now.

Yeah, I want it. And I actually realized I was going to sell to him for just a steel.

I think I remember seeing the price, and I was like, kind of, damn.

Yeah, I mean, there are six figures into it, and that was a steel.

What made you want to build that truck?

I wanted a truck that, like, an old, it came from the Hoonitruck, but I wanted a Chevy. I don't know why. I really like Fords, because all my cars are Fords, except for this, you know? And I love Fords, but I really like the Chevy front ends, and those old C10s. But yeah, I don't know. I want to have something that me and my wife could just like go and like just hang out in.

I love the plate. The plate and the paint job just does it for me.

Yeah. It's so ugly.

I love it. That's the dude. It's silly. Don't change that. That's my favorite part. That's the only, if you painted a like fire orange or something, I'd be, or whatever. I think you showed me, what was the, you sent me a photo of it. What was it? Like a potential paint job on it or rep?

I don't remember what I was going to do. I kind of want to do it the same as this.

It'd be cool, but I just love it. Like the white flames and it looks sick. I don't know. It has a charm.

So Brian here calls it Ashly Larry.

Ashly Larry?

Cause every time you rub up against it, you get that coat, whatever it is, you're, you're blue. You know? So, right. Yeah. He calls it Ashly Larry. I think I like date night. It's cool. And like, I guess what I did was I pictured me and my wife being able to have a date night and go to like a drive-in movie. And...

When's the last time you were at a drive-in movie, I gotta ask.

We went one time to one, but not in date night. And I've only been to one in my whole entire life. And it was like when we first started dating, but like that was around the time when I had the truck, you know, when I first got it. And I just thought that was so cool. Now you have two kids and yeah.

Not enough seats.

I don't have time. You know, we don't have time to go and do stuff like that anymore, but we will soon.

There's only a handful of those things left. I went to the one, what was it? Stillwater, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's still, or Lake Elmo.

Some, yeah, maybe.

Oh, that way.

Yeah, that area. Yeah. Yeah. No good memories there. Anyway, that was a rough night.

Yeah.

I don't know how I ended up at the gas station. That was not fun, but those days are behind me. Yeah. No, that's a cool, that's a cool rig. So we touched on Camaro, we touched a little bit on Daytona. Is there anything we're missing on Daytona? I feel like there's something else I wanted to ask there. What was it like getting accustomed to the track? How does it compare to, you were doing a lot on the sim, I'm sure.

Yeah, I did a lot on the sim. And actually a couple of times, Mikey Taylor and I, we drove together on there. He was kind of showing me the line and I'm pretty good with-

They've been there multiple times before, I guess.

Yeah. I'm pretty good with like remembering like a lot of that stuff for like the hand eye, you know, seeing it and just, but I was on the sim a lot, a lot.

It's fun seeing, like every once in a while I'll log in, I'll be like, ah, f****** Nixon.

Yeah, yeah. I, there's, I'm always on at night now. But it was just, you know, I had no idea what I was in for. There's a lot of people right now. And that's one thing I wanted to touch on in this is, you know, everybody thinks that they're a race car driver and everybody thinks that you can drive really well or they can drive really well. And, you know, and even even when you're racing an even NASA, you know, there's people there who are amazing drivers. There really are. There's some good dudes there, you know. But sometimes like horsepower, if you win, and you have a lot more horsepower than the person who you're beating, doesn't always mean that you're that good of a driver. You just have that fast of a car. You know, and I see that quite a bit. And then you'll, you know, like now, because people look at me as like a race car driver, you know, it's, it's, oh, could you drive my car? Or, hey, how do you do this? Or like, you don't even have the capability to do this, you know, and going to IMSA and having a weekend at Daytona with all these crazy drivers, you really, you really get put in your place. You, it's a, it's a checkup from the neck up, you know, like really it is. And I mean, I was dead last. I had, I mean, there was like four cars that were slower than me, you know? And I mean, I couldn't even believe it. The pace that everybody was at, the, even the girls, the girls were just f****** awesome, you know? And I was so impressed with them. There's this Madeline girl. Madeline Stewart, I think it is, her name. Dude, she was like amazing. I couldn't even believe it. And not that I couldn't believe that a girl, you know, because Lonnie Unser is amazing, you know? And...

Well, and to kind of jump in on that, you probably don't see that as much even at like a grassroots level, like a NASA or whatever. It's like, it's just like, when you get to that level, you start seeing so much more talent across.

Yeah.

There's this one, I forgot what her name was. I follow her. She's I think she's based out of Wisconsin or whatever. Apparently, it's just some sort of hell of a driver. But I think I get what you're saying, though.

Yeah. And it's it's just it's so amazing. And, you know, and I think about my daughter, you know, she just wants to race. She wants to race.

How are your kids doing that way? Because like they they're both karting now, right?

They both are. Yeah.

Yeah.

So they're at they're doing electric karts right now. Peli has a kart for Stockholm for outside tracks.

OK.

So she has a little kart. She drove it for the first time last year and she broke it the first time. She hit a curb, scared the s*** out of herself.

But she wanted to hop right back in, if I remember correctly.

She she didn't actually.

Oh, OK.

She didn't want to get back in and she was really terrified. I mean, she hit the corner. She came. I just had her in a parking lot and she didn't stop. And her hands, you know, her arms were too short and the wheel was too big. And she went to turn. Well, she could only turn this much. So she hit the back. The back right tire hit the curb and she flipped, like not flip a spun in the air. And like I saw my daughter like almost come out of the cart and I didn't have her neck thing on. I just I didn't think that any of that was going to happen.

Right. Because you were just in a parking lot, right? You don't think it was going to be anything crazy.

Who would have thought that? And I felt so bad. So we brought her to Stockholm a couple of times and she went out there and she was having fun. But she was scared to push on the gas.

So she got her confidence back after that day?

Yeah. And then she started going and then me and her talk. Now I got them a sim. They have their own sim now. And so that's really cool. But getting them back on in the little carts was really fun. So now...

Your daughter is the oldest one?

Yep. So she just turned six and she's an animal out there. She really is. It's actually really fun to watch her drive because she's like head down and you can see her when she wants to turn right. She's turning her head way before she has to turn, you know. And then there's Beckham who just turned four. So he was driving when he was three there. And he's going, he's just going as fast as he can. And we had him when he was three, he was on the highest level, you know.

When you say highest level, you mean like speed?

Yeah.

What kind of speed is a three year old getting up to?

So, I mean, they're all on the same. So like these things can go like one to four, right? And so four is what the older kids are driving, you know, the ones who are, I mean, there's kids who are younger than or same age as Pelly that aren't even on four there, you know, but she'll be on four and her, her, her cousin, you know, they're, they're on four and there's a bunch of kids, you know, but Beckham is just turning. He just turned four a few weeks ago and he's always on four and he is just driving around and just cruising. And I'm like, man, look at this little dude. Like, and then last, last week they said, well, we're going to have to put him in the next group of kids because he's driving on four and he has no competition. You can't just keep winning. You know, what's wrong with that? Right. But I mean.

Mercedes is there for eight years.

But like, you know, that's that's really cool. So he every every time at night, you know, me and him have a little bit of wiggle room with with with the whole going to bedtimes because he gets a nap through the day. So I go down to my sim and he goes down to his sim.

OK.

And so he's driving around. And last night he was down there and just like just killing it. And I'm like, man, dude, you're four years old. You can't even hit those the pedals right. And I see him here like push real hard. And it's so cool. That's cool.

And again, just for my own context, like one to four, like, what does that like? Can you kind of take me to each level? Like, what does that look like? One is like these are electric cars.

He said these are electric cars. So one is like slow. You know, I mean, it's like a slow jog.

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Right.

Okay.

And then like a two is like, you're still kind of jogging. Okay. And then three, there's like a big jump from like two to three. Okay. And then four, I mean, they're probably going 15 miles an hour.

Okay.

Maybe, I don't know if it's 20, but they're going pretty good.

Like a full on like sprint sort of.

Yeah.

A little bit more than a sprint, yeah.

So, I mean.

Well, not my sprint. I'm slow as hell, but.

No, but yeah, it's, they're moving and they could definitely get hurt, you know?

Yeah. At that point, yeah. I just wanted to be like, okay, they're not going like 60 miles an hour. No, no, no, no.

Cause it's all indoors at Pro Kart in Burnsville. So.

Okay. So it's like, oh, so it's like, is it like that, those sort of speeds or a little bit slow, probably a little slower.

They're slower than the big karts.

Okay.

Right. You know, but they're, I mean, my daughter's faster than my wife.

He just had to drop them on the podcast.

I had to. I had to.

Wenda, so what does the next progression look like? Is it when they turn like five, six or like, how do you progress from there?

So Stockholm, you have to be, I think to race out there in that she's at, I think it's, I think it's six. Okay. I think it's six is when she can race. So she's going to race this year. Hopefully we can get her out there before, so she can practice and just get acclimated with that whole outdoor karting.

I need to get back. It's been probably two or three years since I've been to Stockholm. I love Stockholm.

Yeah, it's cool.

It is the coolest place. Come on.

I have a kart. Alex has a kart.

I know. The thing is, is like now that I actually, I got a day job now. That's the thing. Like it's like going out during a weekday. That was my, always my thing is like go on like a Wednesday, the hump day game.

That's what we do.

Yeah. No, yeah. But now it's like, I got to pick and choose a little bit, which is probably for the better. Cause before I was just doing everything all the time, cause I built my own schedule, but I don't know. It would be nice to get out of Stockholm again. You guys ever go on weekends?

Probably not. I mean, no, but I mean, I'm sure we could because I want to start getting her more involved out there. The community is pretty cool. And you know, the owners out there are really nice. But the thing is, is that it's going to kind of be hard because Beckham can't drive out there. You know, so it's going to be Wednesday, Thursday will be Pelley's driving out there. And then Saturday mornings will still be at Pro Card for sure. You know, at least with just Beckham. And then the days, the weekends that she's going to have her racing out there, because then we have to figure it out. And I don't want her or him to not have time to do what they want to do.

That makes sense. Yeah. How do you, speaking of time, how do you do all this? Right. Because like you, you got multiple businesses, you got kids are carding as well. It's not like you're not iPad kids. So it's like, how do you find time?

No, they're not. We don't have iPads for the kids, actually. Honestly, like I couldn't do what I do without my wife. My wife is, she's, she's the reason why I'm even successful. And that's not even trying to like, no, we didn't just, we didn't talk about this before. So, you know, but it's, she does all the heavy lifting at home, schedules where the kids are. And you know, yeah, she has an opportunity that she doesn't need to be at a place to work all day. Right. But she does go to the office three times a week. And, you know, if we need anything, I'll call her and tell her, hey, we need this or whatever, and she'll go grab it for us. But yeah, man, I, she, I don't know. I just, my job is to work. You know, my job is to work and to develop whatever I can for the family, you know. And fortunately, I have on my other business, you know, we, I have two amazing partners who are just animals, you know, so, and this is their first business. So for me, it's a little different because one of them works a job and, you know, he can work that job because he can be remote at times, but then he can also do the other job, the app. So.

Are you guys promoting that app yet, by the way? Like how actively are you pushing it out there? Or do you still want to hold off on it?

Yeah.

Hold off a little bit?

I'm still gonna hold off on it. Okay. But it's moving.

It's moving. Once you told me, I'll fair.

Yeah. It's moving. The thing is, is we just don't want to give other people an idea of what's going on. We do, but we don't. We're just not ready to do that yet. Very soon, I would say within the next month, we'll be full fledged. I mean, we have a marketing team right now. We have new development team. Yeah.

Okay. So if anything, again, cause we won't disclose on this show, but if people want to hear about it, probably follow you and all that stuff. Especially if you're in the trades probably.

Yeah. Yep. A lot of it's great, you know, and it's for the construction industry, but at the same time, it's actually a lot of automotive places are using it. So when I'm able to do that, I'll reach out to you and we'll...

Well, see, cause this is going to drop two and a half weeks from now. So probably not yet at that point, but either way, follow you for updates. Okay, so in this car, you had... Wait, you were telling me off-rage, you got rid of the Porsche as well, right? Cause it's the previous generation car.

I got rid of the 991.2, the Porsche I was driving, cause I want to get the 992 Cup Car.

That's a big jump.

It is, it's different though. Because a Cup Car is still a Cup Car, the difference is at what limit, right? It takes a lot to get the 992 on its limit, and it's fast and it's wide and it turns and it's great. But I am so in love with them. And to me, there's nothing better than a Cup Car. And that's why it's like, I want to just be able to go, like if I had the capability to just drive Cup Cars, I would love to do Carrera Cup and then go from Carrera Cup straight into like a GT3R, like just right into it, you know? But yeah, that's...

I tried it on Sim when you told me you were doing Road Atlanta, and I was like, this doesn't feel like any of the other Porsches, at least on the Sim, I'm not sure what it's like in real life, but it felt like it was on rails.

The GT3R? The 992. Oh, the 992, the new, the 992.2?

Yeah, compared to like the, what was the previous generation? The one that was based off of your car.

Well, they had, so they have the 992 that was no ABS and all that stuff on it. And then they had mine, which was 991.2. And now they have the 992.2. And that thing is absolutely amazing. And from everybody who I talked to, and from what I know, and from what I've driven, it is like that. That car is like, I would say, the best feeling car on iRacing. That's amazing.

I will say, for the longest time, I was b******* about Porsches on iRacing. That one, it was hard to find complaints. I don't know what it was. I would always get good times on Porsches. I just hate driving them on there.

I know.

It takes a little finesse.

I do like that Ford though. I was having some fun.

The GT, whatever, four or three on iRacing?

That's a GT3. Yeah, the GT3 Ford.

Yeah. No, that was awesome. I drove it on Road America last year when they first dropped them. I really enjoyed it. So then you do see yourself potentially, like let's say things go well this season. Could you see yourself getting a 992 next season? Or for 2027?

Yeah, 100%. So it just depends where I'm going with sponsorships.

Okay.

There's people who would love to have a car or sponsor a car in career cup. And then there's the GT4 version, you know, the GT4 route, which would be IMSA and GS class. I'm definitely not ready for a GT3 car in IMSA, right? But the GT3 Cup Car is different than a GT3R, you know, but I want a 992 Cup Car.

Do you ever see yourself, like let's say it's three, four years from now, do you see yourself potentially like IMSA wise, driving one of those experimental type cars or like those top, what is it, the enclosed cockpit?

The GTP?

Yeah.

Like the hyper car, like JDC?

Yeah, yeah.

Like the Porsche 963?

Yeah, yeah, for example like that.

I don't know. I don't think so.

Why do you say that? I'm curious.

I don't want to. I think they're cool. I think it would be amazing to like be at that level, but I really just want to drive like a GT3R or a GT3 Mercedes or a GT3, you know, that I just want to be in like IMSA calls a GTD. So I want to, I would love to be like GTD or GTD Pro. Like if I ever got to that level, you know, and we'll see.

Okay. Is it just probably because it's a little more, I don't want to say street cars because it's far from it, but kind of has that like street car look.

Maybe that's what it is. I honestly just don't even know. I have, I mean, it would be cool to just drive the 963.

It's kind of a little less recognizable, right? Like if you're talking to like somebody like, oh, I'm a race car driver. What do you race? I race the Mercedes or the, you know, the Ford Mustang or whatever. Maybe that's what it is.

I honestly have no idea. Like everybody's like, dude, did you ever get a chance to drive that car? I'm like, hell no. I didn't get a chance to drive that car. Things like $3 million and it probably cost me like a million dollars just to get in the car. You know, like, no, you know, no. But it would be cool to drive it. That racing is just, you're at another level. You're at a whole other level with those cars. I mean, you're racing factory race car drivers. You're, you know, I mean, it's just different. You know, I don't know. I have no interest.

What else is on the calendar then for the rest of the year? So obviously you have Pikes Peak coming up with this car. What else? Anything besides that?

So I don't have really anything set in stone. I probably will pick up some like track days, you know, with this somewhere. But I am going to wait for the sponsorship stuff to come through and we will see because if that's the case, I'll just be hopping in a couple of cars with a couple of teams who have offered me to drive with them already.

Based off the texts you showed me, it looks like you'll have some options open.

Yeah.

So that's kind of like where you're at right now. It's like just seeing what the right fit is.

Yep. Right now business is more important. I need to make sure that business is good.

With this wind man, you'll be busy.

Right.

Yeah. Those shingles are flying off.

I'm telling you, I really honestly feel like they're going to have some good stuff going on this year for our industry. But yeah.

Sweet. Well, before we start wrapping up here, is there anything else you kind of wanted to touch on?

Man, I'm just, if any of you guys, you, you, anybody knows anybody who wants to sponsor a car going up Pikes Peak or, or any of that stuff or, you know, let me know. Yeah. That's really about it.

I mean, it's that season, man. Finding sponsors for that. That's the problem with everybody we've had on this podcast is they'll say like, that's the hardest part is like, you and if you have the skills, it's getting the sponsors to do it. Right.

The biggest thing is, is the return on investment for the sponsors. What are they getting?

Right.

So there's a lot of drivers right now, who haven't even done what I've done, you know, and they've been driving for years. And, you know, I'm really big. I'm diving into a lot of things and talking to a lot of people who are, who have big sponsorships and companies who helping people get sponsorships. And it's it's not even about the best person. It's not about if you can drive the best, if you can, you know, drift the best, if you can, if you're the best, doesn't matter. It's how you can get their return on investment. You know, you can be the best, but you're not showing everybody. So if your social media is not good. I know this kid, I'm not going to say his name, but if he he sees this, he's going to know exactly who I'm talking about. But the kid, young kid, I mean, just everything he does, he does his following. There are 200 some thousand people follow him, you know? 300 something, I don't know what it is, but it's a lot of people and I'm like 1800, you know? So like who sees my stuff? Not really a lot of people.

To be fair though, on the following front, if you look at me, I have a fraction of the followers of anybody and I still did 150 million views last year compared to people who have 10 times the followers I do. So following isn't everything because the algorithms nowadays, if you post good stuff, it will get out there regardless whether you get a following or not. That's what I like to remind people of.

And I'm looking for somebody to kind of help 100% with my social media.

Actually, I know I was gonna talk to you about this off air, we might as well do it on air. What's that look like? Is that people coming with you to race events or?

Yeah, I would have somebody come with me. Like so Kendrick was doing my stuff and he just got offered. He got offered an amazing job and I'm a little hurt about it because selfishly like you want to still have your guy. Me and him had like a good, like he could tell me dude, stop doing this and I would listen. It didn't come at like a weird, the businessy thing. It was like friends like dude, stop doing this. You'd give me insight of, this will look better. Some of my videos look, I mean, they're pretty good. But yeah, he got to offer for a job that, I mean, of course you need to do, you need to take care of your family. Right. But now I want to have somebody who can do some videos, come over here, take some videos of these guys, working on it, go to my testing, go to Pikes Peak, go to my races and make some cool stuff.

What you need is a car guy to work for you on the side, but technically work for the company too. So you do both marketing roles.

Yeah.

That's what you need.

Yeah.

Because unless you have enough car content for a car marketing guy or race team marketing guy, but...

No.

Yeah.

I don't.

You got to find that right hybrid.

Yeah. And so Josh, Josh Way...

Oh yeah. I need to talk to him. I need to get him on the show. It's about time I do that.

Yeah. Yeah. We need to get him on here. He's absolutely amazing and he does my stuff for my business. And so he just, we shot our first video last week.

Okay.

And we'll see, he's just busy, you know, and I just don't know if he's going to have enough time to do the things that me and Kendrick were doing. You know, I mean, he has a family and Kendrick didn't have a kid, but he had a wife or he's married now. But you know, he could leave and just go do this stuff where, you know, if you have a family, it's a little different, you can't just up and leave. You can't just get up and say, oh, I'm going to be over there at 10 o'clock.

Yeah, I get it.

You know, so, but Josh is amazing with what he does. So yeah.

No, so this is kind of like your open, indeed sort of like looking for videographer for hire sort of deal.

I am and I'm going to use this.

Anybody want to they got to go through me first? Well, I smell that b******* from a mile away.

All right, my man, my man. Don't b*******. Don't b*******. But there's a couple of guys who've been doing good. But, you know, I already asked, hey, would you want to come shoot some videos? Oh, of what? Of what? What are we doing? Like content, just like, you know, but I'm not that that savvy yet that I can create my own. I need some input. I need to.

OK. You know, I was about some ideas off camera. I saw a few of your videos, but I didn't pay attention that closely because, like, yeah, I'm editing videos 12 hours a day every day. So I'll take a look.

Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah.

But on that note, do let's rip the usual three. So you remember how this question goes, right?

Oh, the the street car, the race car and what else?

Yeah. So at the end of episode, every episode, you have to choose three cars. You have an unlimited budget. You have to choose a daily driver, a track car and a show car. Do whatever you want with it.

A daily driver. Um, Cali, a daily driver. I think I had a problem with this last time too. Um, I would say that if I had unlimited money, I probably wouldn't live where there's snow. So I would say I would get a GT, a Porsche, GT3 or GT2 RS. I would probably do a GT3 RS, get the Mantai kit and all that stuff on it and twin turbo it.

Okay, fair enough. Yeah, you got a, you like those.

I love them. I mean, yeah, that's just...

Okay, so that's a daily driver.

Daily driver.

Okay.

Um, race car.

Yeah, any sort of track.

GT3R, Porsche GT3R, or I would love to have one of the super car V8s, the right hand drive Australian cars.

Oh, those things are sick too, yeah.

And that would be so cool to have that. Or Pratt Miller Corvette. If you want one of them.

Which one? You got to lock one in.

Yeah, I would just say GT3R.

Okay, got to stay consistent.

Yeah, yeah. And then show car. I would have to probably do like an old school, like show car. And you know, Kevin Hart has one of the baddest Grand Nationals I've ever seen in my life.

Oh, okay, yeah.

And I think that that would be really just 1400 horsepower, just crazy, something like that.

Like Grand National, man, behave 1400 horsepower. It's a show car. It's a show car.

It would just look sweet with a giant turbo or giant two turbos is hanging out of one of those things. I don't know. I think it's sweet, man. Just I don't know. That would be really cool. Just all black. And I don't even like black cars, but all black.

Oh, you got to do black national. Come on.

Yeah. Yeah.

You can't do nothing goofy with that. Yeah.

Just all black everything, not an ounce of chrome or anything anywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. Then we talked about the Grand National last time. I was here with the patients, guys.

Yeah.

Yeah. Which, by the way, shout out to them again for letting us use this space.

Thank you, guys.

Yeah. I was hoping I would at least run into one of them over here, but I came well after hours.

Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't even expecting it to be open at all.

But yeah, it kind of worked out. We're on that note. Where can everybody find you?

You guys can find me, Nick Plocienik Racing on Instagram, Nick Plocienik on Facebook. You guys can go check on my website as well.

I was going to say, do you have a website?

I do. Yeah. nickplocienikracing.com.

OK, sweet. So I haven't checked that out. I'll have to take a look at that.

Yeah, it's just we're starting to get it together to more or less have people, you know, we're going to put merch and stuff like that on there. Some kind of some cool shirts and stuff like that. Sim gear, stuff like that. Yeah, we're just going to try to have some fun with it.

And, you know, yeah, yeah, no, I'm excited. I can't wait. What are the dates for Pikes Peak? June 21st, you said?

June 21st is the date is the race date. Yep.

I've always wanted to see. It's also difficult to spectate out there, isn't it? Like you can't not anybody could just come. Right.

No, I think you can go, but you're going to be there all day if you decide to go up to the top of the hill.

Yeah, I got I got to lose 20 pounds for that s***.

Yeah. No, no, it's not that actually, Gary kind of, yeah.

No, when I went there, I went there twice for when I used to run road rallies. And one year I came back there, I was a little bit lighter. I think I was about 210 at the time and I was running around. No problem. Right. But when I was up there, how have you feel? Dude, every pound counts up there.

Oh yeah. That's why I'm like, man, I got to get smaller. But I got to get small just to be smaller anyway. Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe I'll see. I'll check my dates or whatever. I've always, that was always a bucket list. It'd be really cool. I like to fly and travel to events where I have friends there, right? Like, you know, it's like I'm going to Texas 2K. A bunch of my friends are going to be racing out there. Same thing with street car bragging rights, whatever else. Like at this point, I tried to mix events with the show. So it makes sense. Plus I'm due for a Denver trip anyway. I got a few people I want to talk to out there.

Yeah. We're getting some support by a trophy truck team out there. Oh, okay.

That's another bucket list type of guest. I never had a trophy truck person on the show.

Yeah. They are awesome. And big shout out to all my sponsors actually. There's quite a few of them now that have kind of just jumped on board. So Spyderco knives, they're out in Golden, Colorado. Yeah. I just got my box of knives actually today. Pretty cool. LiquiMoly has just jumped on board and helped out. And Magnuson superchargers. You know, obviously Patience, you know, these guys have just been amazing. Anderson Composites been great to work with. Race Tech. You know, they're just they're awesome. You know, I really like those guys.

It's all about the team you have behind you.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's just a lot of people doing a lot of different things, you know, so yeah. Tint Pros, huge shout out to them.

Man, shout out to Tint Pros, but I'm going to shout out my boy Trevor for designing the rep though.

Yeah. That's my boy. Trevor over there, I mean him, him and Sam, they've been kind of going back and forth over at the Fridley location. About everything I had to go on with this. And they've been, they've been awesome. And I have a whole new thing that is going to get done, but it's going to keep the white and white and black for sure, unless I get this new sponsorship. It will be a whole different color.

Well, on that note, man, thank you very much for coming back on the show. I'm glad we can make this happen. I think we're due for a catch up. We got to go do some racing again.

Let's do it. Let's get on it.

And everybody, thanks for tuning in and I'll see you all next time.

Yep. See you guys.