198. Matt Latino on Pro Stock Racing, 1500HP NA Engines, and Making Horsepower With Cats

This episode is brought to you by 6XD Gearbox. More on them later. My first question, what is pro stock?

Pro stock is a pro class in NHRA drag racing. What is considered pro are the classes that are televised on Fox Sports 1. They're the ones who race on Sunday. There's a few classes that race on Sunday, but there's four pro classes in NHRA drag racing. Everyone knows top fuel dragsters, the big long rail cars, nitro burning. Top fuel funny cars, similar, but with the lift up bodies on them. Pro stock car, and then there's also pro stock motorcycle. Top fuel dragster, top fuel funny car, and pro stock are the only classes that run the full 20 race series in NHRA drag racing. Pro stock is extremely unique. What's so cool about these cars is when people think drag racing, and a lot of other motorsports drivers who are in circuit racing or time attack or rally, whatever, a lot of people will say, how hard can it be to drive a drag car because they watch these in car videos and not to take anything away from like the pro mods or the 10.5 guys or whatever. It's let go of a button and it's hang on. Mind you, a lot of these cars, you really got to hang on and drive them. But pro stock, you've got to leave with a clutch. You've got to have a 020 reaction time or better. And you've got to shift through five gears at 10,500 rpm every single time. They're naturally aspirated. They're 500 cubic inch. They run on a high octane race fuel. So no additives, no nitrous, no turbochargers, no nitrous. Races are typically one by the thousandth. So as a driver, as an engineer, as someone who really appreciates the fine tuning, these cars are incredibly unique.

Well, that was one of the things I was telling my brother about this off-camera is that these are naturally aspirated cars, making how much horsepower, if you had to guess?

Around 1,500. We usually give a ballpark because with naturally aspirated vehicles, you can have terrible altitude where they maybe only make 1,200 horsepower. You could have absolute nails condition and maybe they're making a little over 1,500 horsepower. So we usually give that 1,500 horsepower kind of ballpark, which is around three horsepower per cubic inch. So the engines are very state of the art.

And I kind of want to allude to this early in the podcast. We will talk about emissions at some point. But I want to just kick off with the racing just because that's the fun part, right?

It's cool. We all like racing. Yeah.

Well, to be fair to Sciency and the stuff about all the emissions, that stuff is really cool to learn about too, especially after our episode with Banish.

Yeah.

Yeah. But anyways, on the racing side of things, so you guys do 20 tracks throughout the year.

Yeah. 20 events. We race in Pomona twice.

That's right. Yeah.

So we have 19 different tracks that we run at 20 events.

Okay.

Yeah. We used to race in Vegas twice and Charlotte twice, but they reduced them to one only. Just to bring more tracks into the mix, keep it exciting for the fans.

So one of the things that blew my mind about this is that these cars are running, what, like six fives in the quarter?

So, yeah, depending on the track conditions.

Yeah. Fair enough.

Anywhere between upper 640s will be kind of like the... If we're running 6.4 or anything, the track conditions are great. In the heat in Arizona, maybe six high 650s, low 660s.

That's still pretty crazy, like impressive.

What's interesting is you're in fifth by the eighth mile. So...

Oh, really?

Yeah. So you go through five gears in less than five seconds. So in less than five seconds, you're in fifth. That's one hand on the wheel the whole time. And if you even ease pressure off the shifter, if you hesitate a little bit, it won't go into gear. If you lose a little bit of pressure, it'll pop into neutral. You have to ram it in gear and hold it there the whole time. The only gear that holds is fifth. So you get it in the fifth by the eighth mile and just be ready to launch the parachutes.

So, okay, what kind of transmissions are these cars running?

It's a Liberty transmissions, a Liberty five-speed. One thing I'll say early on in the episode, I'm not an engineer, I'm not a tuner. Even when it comes to emission control, I'm not in emissions. You know, I'm more of a sales guy. I'm a driver. I'm a very knowledgeable sales guy and driver, but I may not be able to answer every single question you ask, but I'll do my best. Yeah.

Well, at the end of the day, it's like, you know enough to at least be able to communicate what you want out of a car, I imagine, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, how did you even get here? How does one get into pro stock? How did you get into pro stock?

I'm fortunate to have some family ties. So I'm very particular on how I tell this story, because when you see someone driving a pro stock car, a professional car, whose dad also races in that series, everyone looks at that kid and says, he's only doing it because of such and such, because of family ties, because of family money. I owe my life to my father, my family, everything. Basically, it started very young age. I won't give you the, well, it started all in 1990. So, but basically, my dad's been racing his whole life. He used to run a Pro Mod car. You familiar with Pro Mod?

Yep.

So he ran Pro Mod for many years. I was the clutch guy on my dad's Pro Mod team when I was 12 years old. So I was always like, I didn't care about school. I didn't care about any, all I wanted to do was go to the racetrack on weekends. When I turned 15, I bought a 1964 Plymouth Valiant with a 318 in it, made no power at all. As soon as I turned 16 and got this thing road legal, I took it on the racetrack. The second I could drive it on the racetrack, I was there. It ran like 1590 and by the end of the weekend, I wiped the cam out of it and it was not running anymore. Built a stroker small block, got it running 1190s, put a hundred shot of nitrous in it, got it running 11.0s and then I just got hooked. I just got hooked into racing and I've always wanted to run a pro class. I got a pro street duster. That was like an unfinished pro street type car, old school pro stock type setup. I got it running 9.0s. That was five years ago. At that point, I said, this is fun, but it's not fast enough. When I can find a way to bring big brands into the sport and fund a professional race team on my own, that's when I'll race. So it's never been, and that's just with my role at Global Emissions, I've learned a lot with sales. I've owned and operated a couple of businesses over the years, which has got me really knowledgeable in marketing. And just being around this my whole life, I've learned what brands need to see in motorsports. So I finally found kind of the chemistry on what's needed to race on a pro team and fund it on your own. So last year was my first year raising some sponsorship funding, went out, ran half a season, scattered 11, did 11 events throughout the year. I did a little bit better than everyone was expecting. And I was able to secure funding to run a full season this year. So like again, got hooked at a young age and just slowly worked into how can I do it myself.

At this point, now you have an understanding of what businesses need to see. I'm actually curious from this perspective, actually, what I get a little bit of an understanding of that from my day job as well, which is I get to see the other side of people asking for sponsorship and stuff. At this scale though, when you are going to 20 NHRA events a year, what do sponsors want to see?

Well, they got to get value out of it. The days of, hey, give me money and I will put your brand on a race car, and lots of people will see it on TV or in the stands. I'd say those days are over unless your cost to race is pretty low. It costs near a million dollars a year to race one of these cars. No one is funding one of these out of their pocket unless they start off as a billionaire or a multimillionaire or they've got a generational trust fund of some sort. Really, you have to have sponsorship backing. I want to make sure that I give my sponsors value, otherwise they're going to sponsor me maybe for a race or maybe for a season, but they're not going to sponsor me next year if I don't provide them that. What I need to do is a B2B aspect. That's what a sponsor needs to see. If I'm bringing in, we can talk about FAS for example. FAS is my primary sponsor for the year. They're a diesel solution company. They do fuel filtration systems. They do basically all weak points on any diesel truck. They likely have a solution for it. Very well known company. Our business, Global Emission Systems, works with a lot of trucking fleets and trucking distribution centers. So there's chemistry there. FAS could benefit from being introduced from some of these trucking fleets and trucking distribution centers because that's who they really want to sell to. They do a lot of light duty trucks, but they want to get into commercial because there's potentially millions of dollars in revenue available for the right connections. So if I bring FAS on board and then I go invite some trucking fleets that we have some connections with to the racetrack and make some introductions and they can start doing business with some of these guys through B2B connections that we make through motorsports, then if we're asking them for say half a million, let's just say on a ballpark, but we can generate 10 million in revenue for them, that half a million dollar marketing expense is a no-brainer. So it's all about providing, bringing them revenue, really that... And every sponsor is a little bit different. Like I have some sponsors where they just love the fact that they're on an NHRA drag car. And when we go race in their town, they bring all of their staff, they use it as a networking thing. Some companies will spend $100,000 on an event to take care of all of their staff. They'll rent a venue, they'll bring in entertainers, events. If they want to do a once a year, big thank you type thing for all of their staff. You could also sponsor a race car, and we've got a hospitality where you can bring all of your staff out, you can take care of. We also race, we have 20 races a year, mostly all in different states. If you're a company that operates in multiple states or you sell a product, you can also use the racing program as a way to get your customers out. It doesn't necessarily just have to be about the B2B connections. It could also be about getting your customers out, thanking your customers, like, hey, we've got a race car that's going to be racing near your area. Why don't you send two or three of your employees to the race? Customer retention. It's all about giving them a value that goes over and above just a sticker that people will see. Now don't get me wrong, there is big value in putting the branding, like we are televised on Fox Sports One. There's thousands of people in the stands and in the pits, so there is value there, but it's not the value. You have to have B2B value, or value that goes over above that.

Yeah, that makes sense. What am I gonna start seeing one of these in a grocery store or something, right? Like if you get sponsored by Hy-Vee tomorrow, or what is it, do you have down here lion foods?

Oh, food lion, yeah, there's food lion, all these all over, Paris teeter, whatever. Possible, possible. You know, I fire out all kinds of pitches to, jeez, a ridiculous amount of companies. But what's interesting is though, some of these connections are not as far off as you think. For example, we do a lot of business with trucking fleets and logistic companies. A lot of these logistic companies are running logistics for grocery stores and food chains. And we've had executives from grocery stores attend our race because a trucking fleet that we've invited, invited them, or they sponsored one of our race cars, and they wanted to take care of one of their biggest companies, which was the owner of a grocery store chain. So the connections are there. It's possible. Right now, we do a lot of automotive industry, a lot of diesel trucking. I am actively working on bringing in some lifestyle brands. Hopefully, I'll have some sort of an announcement to make in the near future about some actual large lifestyle brands that are coming into the sport. But we'll see.

Yeah. Back to the car side of things, though. So one of the things you mentioned earlier was this is a million dollar season here.

Yeah.

Give or take in either direction, whatever it is. What goes into that? How is that distributed? Because obviously you mentioned travel. Travel is a big part of it. But kind of break down the cost of a season for a pro stock.

There's a couple ways to do it. The most common way, the most popular way, at least the most effective way at running these cars and winning races is to run an arrive and drive series, or run with an arrive and drive company program. So there's us, which is KB Titan. My father is one of the owners in KB Titan, alongside Greg Anderson, Jim Whiteley, Keith Haney, Rob Downing, some of the guys here that run this place. And we offer a service where if you are a good driver, and if you've got the money, you can race one of these cars. The cost is anywhere between 800,000 and a million. The reason there's a variable cost, it's what do you bring to the table? Do you have your own truck and trailer? Do you have your own crew? Do you have your own golf carts? So typically, if you've got a budget of a million, a million is your safe expense. That's $50,000 a race. And again, this is ballpark. So 20 races a year, 50 grand a race, $1 million. That's the arrive and drive type program. Alternatively, you could own everything. One massive expense up front, lower operating costs over time. To buy one of these cars, you'll spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars on the chassis. The motors, there's really only a couple of guys that make competitive motors. Us and there's Elite Motorsports, which is our biggest competitor. They also have an arrive and drive program, but you can buy motors from them. You can lease motors from them. So you could get a motor from them. If you were to or you could build your own. There are some independents out there that do build competitive racing engines. I would call that probably a couple hundred thousand dollars for a motor that will really compete. Truck and trailer, half a million. Golf carts, crew, staff. You'll easily spend $2 million just your initial upfront. Then there's parts, there's fuel, there's the diesel to get to all the races. So really, the best way to do it is to run with either us or Elite Motorsports. We have everything you need to win races. We have a whole slew of CNC machines that never shut off. We've got the best guys in the business. So if you come to race with us.

It's a party now.

If you come to race with us, you will have everything you need to win. As long as you can drive the car effectively, you'll win races. So for business guys who work in a budget, like in my business, believe it or not, I have a job outside of this. And in that job, I have to set a budget on what I think I'm going to sell and what I'm going to need to make those sales. Race team, a lot of guys who operate that way would prefer to run this way because I can budget all my expenses for the year. I can figure out what I need to raise on sponsorship, and it's easier to plan. There's less what ifs. Well, what if I blow a motor? What if I break a transmission? What if X happens? What if the truck breaks down on the way? I don't have to worry about any of those things because I show up with my helmet, with my driver's suit, I jump in the car, I do the race, I help the guys out a little bit, but then I go home and I don't have to worry about anything else. So for someone who's got a full time job, that's the best way to do it. But yet I answer your question about, I guess there's the breakdown of what it cost, right?

That makes sense. So team-wise then, I imagine you have like a fleet of people joining you guys at every single race then?

Yeah. Our KB Titan crew, we have about 30 of us that come to every event. There's on each car, there's obviously a driver. You've got your back half guy which handles after every pass, driveshaft comes out, tires come out. There's a service interval for the back half of the car. There's a clutch slash transmission guy. That's the guy who pulls the clutch out after every pass, resurfaces it, checks the tolerances, pulls the tranny out, changes gear ratios. We change gear ratios after almost every single pass.

Oh, really?

Just based on how the weather changes throughout the day or just how the car performed, we may need more gearing, less gearing in certain gears. So that tranny comes apart and new gear ratios get put in all the time. So there's two guys there between the back half guy and the clutch guy. There's an engine management guy who can also be a tuner. A lot of the tuners are also engine maintenance guys. So after every pass, they'll check the valve flash, check valve springs, change springs as needed, do leak downs and compression and whatnot, and do the engine service. So there's three guys per car, and then there's a few other guys who just focus on tuning in the mission control trailer.

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Qualifying sessions, we have quite a bit of time. We have two passes per day. There's two qualifying sessions on Friday, two on Saturday, and then on Sunday, it's eliminations. And we'll see you next time. That's actually one of the reasons why NHRA drag racing doesn't play live, because that happens often, and you can't have people sitting there for an hour while they clean up the track. They play it a couple hours later. So segue back into how much time we have, about an hour. So on elimination rounds on Sunday, we have about an hour. But we can do anything within an hour. We can get the car near, we can change gear ratios, we can change an engine if it gets hurt. We can pretty much overhaul the car in that one hour between rounds.

So why this? Why did this call to your name? How come, again, this is Charlotte or Charlotte area. This is NASCAR country here. Did you ever have any aspirations to go anything beyond drag racing or not really?

Yeah, yeah, I still do. I might be, see, what's cool about drag racing is you can run a drag car into your 60s or 70s if you want. A lot of other forms of motorsports, not so much. I think I'm still sharp enough where if I wanted to get into rally or some sort of time attack type racing, I could do it. I want to drive all of the race cars. If there's an opportunity for me to jump in, like even if I could get a chance to run like an Arca series or get in any form of NASCAR, I would love to try that. The Craftsman Truck Series, that would be great. That'd be so much fun. Anything that has a motor, wheels and ideally a clutch and a shifter, I would like to drive it. But right now, drag racing for me is the most attainable. We're part of the ownership group on a professional drag racing series that won 17 out of 19 races last year and all three races this year. So I can get into pro stock drag racing right now, potentially even win a championship in my first full year, which is this year. Like I have those tools available for me. So I would be silly to not pursue this.

Right.

Not saying this isn't incredibly cool to me. Like this is awesome. I've wanted to do this my whole life. But yeah, of course, I would want to try to drive.

You would dabble.

I would dabble into anything. I'm from Canada. I moved here a little over four years ago. In Toronto, I owned a custom auto motor shop where I did, it was called Anything Customs because we did anything. So I've worked on and built a lot of cars that race in all kinds of different types of series. So I'm just a motorsports lover all around. But drag racing is just a family thing. My dad's raced, drag raced his whole life. I grew up around drag strips. And it's like, to an extent, it's all I know. So that's why I love it so much. But yeah, I want to drive everything.

I saw something about some regulations or something changing. Is that something that's coming up as well?

Hood scoops? Yeah, yeah. So hood scoops, I think it was 2014 or 2016. NHRA made the switch to EFI. These cars used to have hood scoops with twin four-barrel carbs on top. And I guess what was happening is they felt that if they got rid of the hood scoops and the carbs and went to EFI and put flat hoods on all these cars, it would draw more attention to the audience because they'd be more relatable. They'd look like the cars that are being sold. And also a lot of the manufacturers liked that because there was support from Dodge, Chevy, Ford at the time on all the classes. So again, they liked that these cars looked more like the street cars. So that was the switch. We finally just got to a point where we've mastered the tuning on these cars. And then now NHRA feels if we put hood scoops back on the car, they're still going to be EFI. But it'll be like kind of like a twin four-barrel type set up, but it'd be twin throttle bodies, EFI throttle bodies. And they're putting hood scoops back on these things. So yeah, we're going to have no choice but to convert all these cars over to top mount air intake and hood scoops that's coming for next season. It's good and bad. A lot of controversy around it right now. What's cool about it is they will make more power. We're bringing in denser air. It's more evenly distributed to all the runners. And tuneability is a little bit easier. We'll probably pick up 20 horsepower, give or take, which on these cars is a lot. So we'll run faster numbers. I love that as a driver. What I don't love, and this will impact me for next year, because what's going to happen is we're going to have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop this. Like a lot of people that were for this change are saying, that's a big deal, you cut a hole in the hood, put the hood scoop on top, change the intake manifold, you're done. There's not like an off the shelf intake manifold you buy and run these cars. Everything's made in house. We design and engineer our own intake manifolds, our own, like everything is made in house, their own development. We've gone through probably a hundred different variations of intake manifolds to get to where we are now. So we can't just say, okay, well, here's a basic design, this will work, throw it on and we're done. We're going to have to spend thousands of hours of R&D to be able to get to a point where we can efficiently run the hood scoops. Plus, the bodywork it'll take to close up the front end holes and open up the hood and get the hood scoops on all of them. So easily a few hundred thousand dollars at a minimum of an investment, and someone's got to pay for it.

Between all the cars or per car?

Between all the cars. That's me ballparking, it's probably way more. I'm just oblivious to the fact that I'm just a driver. But if we were to go into the engine shop right now, there would still be guys on the machines, they're still working, it's eight o'clock right now, and they're not going to stop. They are on this all day, all night, they never stop. So it's just going to add to that, with just more overtime, more money. So likely my driver fees are going to be more expensive next year because of this change. Don't love that. But a lot of fans seem to be really excited about it.

Okay.

Do love that. So for me, as someone who, you know, loves the fan impact, like realistically, we do this for the fans. We're putting on a show and that is the best. Without fans, no one would do this. So fans are excited about it. I'm excited that we'll get to run a little bit faster.

When you say a little bit faster, how much are we talking like?

We'll probably pick up a few hundreds.

Okay.

So to a lot of people, that's not much. For pro stock cars, that's huge. If we can go from running a 650 on average to a 647, that's a huge increase. That's a big difference. The record right now, I think, is a 644. That record will get broken next year. Without a doubt, that record will get broken. So we can start on average running 640s because my best run in one of these cars, like I said, I only ran half a season last year. My best run was a 649. There's a huge difference in how a 649 feels to how a 660 feels. So the thought of running a low 640 for me, I'm super excited about that. I really want that. We've got the vision. We've got the blockage now. So when you're in the left lane, you've got to kind of see around the hood scoop. That's going to be in your vision. You already have. I'll put you in one of these cars when we're finished up here, and you'll see there is so little vision in these things that will take away from your vision. So I'm mixed on the hood scoop. I know our guys aren't too happy about it because of the R&D. That's got to go into it plus the cost. I'm impartial as a driver.

Okay. Fair enough. I get made fun of every once in a while. But like last year, I watched all of Street Outlaws, because I never watched it as a kid. And that was one of the things that they would talk about in the episodes. Like, oh, that stupid hood scoop again, the way of seeing the light. And I guess, I mean, it's hard to even see in that car from here. That's interesting.

Yeah, there's very little vision in these things. The hood scoop is definitely going to add to it, but they've run hood scoops before.

Right.

They're running again. Difference is the hood profile was a little bit different when they ran hood scoops. If you see the cars right now, it's going to get like a cowl type deal. I don't believe the cowl was as high before with the hood scoops. Now, we're not going to make all new front ends for our cars. We're going to keep these existing front ends. We're going to cut a hole, the hood scoop is going to go in there. Now, we have the raised cowl plus the hood scoop. So, we've got a little bit more. But realistically, it's off to the side. You just need to see straight ahead of you. The hood scoop is offset. As long as you have a straight line vision, you can see the cones on the center line. You can see the sidewall, it'd be all right. But you just never make the excuse you can't see. There's always a way you can position yourself to see. Left lane, you will be at a disadvantage with the hood scoop, without a doubt. But I know, again, I've seen it because my dad raced Pro Mod for many years in a supercharged car. So, we had the injector hat, which was similar to the hood scoops, big blower hanging out of the hood. When we were in the left lane, I know my dad, he would have to do one of those. So, you could see it clearly. And that's all it's going to be. You just got to find what works for you, what angle. Like even when you're in the right lane, sometimes that pillar gets in the way and you got to do one of these in these cars. So, we'll adapt. And what I'm happy about is I'm still a new driver. It's not like I've run these things for 10 years and gotten comfortable with this. And that's going to throw me out of whack. I'll adapt to it the same way I adapted last year. It's not a big deal.

One of the things, well actually, let me start with this. What would it take to just re-engineer that front end? Would you be able to go in the future, again, let's say, bring that cow a little bit lower?

I don't know because there's an NHRA regulation to it. So there's a template. Any new car that gets built, they have a template that sits over the car and it has to follow that profile. I don't know, to be honest with you, I don't know what's going to change in term of templating, but I don't think you'd want to change it, to be honest, because there's an arrow aspect to it. So if we lower that cowl down to get more visibility, you may lose arrow. Like if you look at the profile of those cars with the hood scooped away, with the cowl, the way it transitions into the Lexan windshield, it's a pretty smooth transition. I think you would lose arrow if you got rid of that. So I don't think it would be worth even redesigning the front ends.

So you mentioned you have some engineers here working on like the engine program side of things. Is there an arrow department or anything like that or what exactly is that?

There's not a whole lot you can do with arrow because these cars are templated and they are very heavily regulated. There's little things like the height of the wicker on the back that you have tolerances you can be within. Sometimes that can be adjusted based on where we're at, based on whether we want more or less downforce on the track. But no, we don't do a whole lot with arrow.

So, when we look at you versus the competitors, does most of it come down to set up an engine program then?

Pretty much, yeah. There's engine programs, a huge part of it, but it also takes a lot to get these cars down the track. A lot of it, you hear the term weight transfer a lot when we talk about pro stock cars. These cars leave, and a lot of people don't believe this fact, but it's true, these cars leave, they launch harder than the pro mod cars do. The way they transfer the weight and plant the tire, you can take five pounds of weight in a car, and you can move it up. If you take a five pound weight puck, and move it from say the passenger side door jam area, and just move it up 10 inches, that will affect the way the car weight transfers and plants the tire. You can take five pounds and move it from the front of the car to the back of the car, massive difference. Little things like that, knowing where to put the weight, knowing how to adjust the suspension, knowing how to adjust the preload, tires, like even with tires, an older tire versus a newer tire may have a different rollout. Even though the tire is exactly the same size, some tires may measure, say like, the rollout of the tire might be 103 inches, like 103.5 inches, but a more worn tire might be 103 inches. So instead of doing a gear ratio change, maybe we want a slightly shorter tire. There's so many things that come into effect with tuning these cars. Big part of it is tuners. We have some of the best guys in the business. Not to say any of our competitors don't. They're brilliant. We've done very well, I think, because of our R&D program. Our engine machine shop is incredible. We've got a mastermind of guys that we kind of brought together a super crew. We bought a business which was formally known as Grey Motorsports back about four years ago. That was a championship winning NHRA team, which had great talent. Then we had the opportunity to acquire KB Titan. So when we acquired both businesses, we put together both teams of knowledge. And once they all realized that we're all here to stay, and they all said, you guys are doing this? Wait, you guys are doing this? And they all started realizing all the little things that ways to make power and ways to tune cars and suspension. We just have an unbelievable crew. We have an unbelievable team. I don't believe the power difference is very significant between us and the competitor. I think we just have an edge, maybe a little bit of an edge on power, a little bit of an edge on tuning. I can't quite explain it. I just know we've got a great crew.

All those little things kind of add up to those thousandths of a second.

Absolutely, and that's what it comes down to. My last race in Pomona, last week in Pomona, I went up against a gentleman named Aaron Stanfield. Great racer. He just won the World Series of Pro Mod Race, which he's not even a Pro Mod racer, but he got into Pro Mod and he won that event because he's a great driver. We qualified within three thousandths of each other. So we were almost identical in, actually no, we qualified with identical ETs. He qualified better than me because he was 0.2 mile an hour quicker than me. So we were almost identical, but he had better runs than me all weekend in qualifying. We went into eliminations. He had an 0.18 reaction time, which is considered very sharp. I had a 0.003 reaction time. So I beat him by four thousandths of a second. One of my other drivers, Cody, like my buddy of mine who drives with us, Cody had an 18 reaction time. His competitor had a 14 reaction time. And he got beat on a whole shot. It's only four thousandths of a second in difference between reaction time. But that was enough to lose on a whole shot by like one thousandth of a second. So if you can find a thousandth in suspension, if you can find a couple of thousandths in weight transfer and get your 60 foot a little bit better, if you can have five horsepower more here, that's good for a few thousandths. Every little thing makes a difference.

What are these cars 60 foot, roughly?

On average, 980s.

Oh, wow. Okay.

So if you can get into the 970s or 960s, you've got a car that's dialed in well. Some of our cars will. My car has been averaging 980s. It's still, I'm new to this car. Anytime you put a new driver in a car who's taller or heavier or lighter or shorter than the previous driver, it can take 20 to 30 runs to get that car dialed in. I'd say between 970s, 980s is an average 60-foot.

20 to 30 runs, so then you're talking about five, six events probably?

Yeah, unless you go testing and spend a lot of time. I'm testing on Tuesday actually coming up.

Like here at this track here or where do you typically go?

We'll go test. We like to test at Rockingham. Rockingham is a two-hour drive from here.

That's where we were planning to go tomorrow for street car bragging rights.

I got some friends running that event. Really?

I'm up in the air right now debating between going that or I've never been to a grid life before. That's an hour south of our hotel. It's like hour this way or hour that way. It's like, we'll see.

You can't go wrong either way, but they've got a pretty cool event going on right now. There's a huge attendance. I just saw a post that Rockingham Strip just released. They've got a pretty cool event going on right now. I can share some of the, I don't know if you have the contact information like the track owner.

What's his name? Nate, I think it is. I don't know if you're a track owner or not. I was thinking about the event owner.

Yeah, there's Danny. I believe it's Danny. Anyway, great guys. We like to run at Rockingham. Sometimes we'll run in Darlington.

Okay.

Sometimes we'll run Darlington, like if they're doing surface prep or redoing the track at Rockingham, we'll run at Darlington, but usually Rockingham. Moresville Strip, we sometimes will go there just to work on our 60-foots, or we'll bring the burnout car there to break in tires and clutches and whatnot. But yeah, we usually go to Rockingham. Or if we're testing somewhere, you can test on the Monday at the event. So if we race in, say, Phoenix, Arizona, and we're going to Vegas and the conditions are going to be similar, we'll sometimes stay on the Monday and test at that track that we just raced at.

Who's got the best prep?

The best track prep? Well, they're all prepped by NHRA. So they're all prepped the same. However, it usually comes down to conditions. So like Pomona, you'll have great conditions in Pomona, California. We get Gainesville, Florida will have some really good conditions. Bristol, Tennessee, you'll have some of the worst conditions because the valley, the altitude, which is a nightmare tuning in those conditions. Vegas is pretty not so great conditions just again, because the altitude, the air is not the greatest. But the track prep is usually all the same.

Braking, I want to talk about that. So you mentioned and you showed us a little bit, you showed us the burnout car off-camera here earlier. So you guys don't run fresh tires on ever?

Not usually.

Okay.

Yeah. And there's only so much I can say publicly.

Okay.

But what I will...

We can cut whatever too.

No, it's all good. But it's a pretty well-known thing that most people don't run brand new tires. I can't quite explain the science behind it, but a broken-in tire, it's better for the way these cars launch it. There's kind of like a spin and go type thing. If you watch a slow-mo video of one of these cars running, it doesn't just plant the tire and take off. It usually has like kind of like a spin and go type deal. And brand new tires are more likely to just plant and blow the tires right off and just give you violent tire shake. A broken-in tire is a better working tire.

That makes sense. Yeah, it's like I always hear some engine builders talk about like seasoned engines. Yeah, like they just...

Well, actually, like we've seen a re-home, we'll take an engine, we'll do a rebuild and do a re-home on the block and pick up power sometimes. Like we've changed nothing at all. We just refresh the motor, re-home it, put it back together, put it back on the dyno, and made like four more horsepower than it did previously. No explanation why, just like what you're saying about a seasoned engine.

Let's transition a little bit to Jezzy, or global, what is it?

Global Emissions Systems, Inc. But you said it right, Jezzy. Some people call it GC, which is definitely wrong. Yeah, what do you want to talk about?

Yeah, and I'm sure we'll come back to this just like an old brain reboot here, but a lot of synergies. Yeah, so I guess what is Jezzy?

Global Emissions Systems, Inc. manufactures emission control systems for any internal combustion engine. We have solutions for which you'll obviously know the G-Sport brand very well, which is the High Performance Metallic Catalytic Converters that are EPA compliant, handle over a thousand horsepower, street driven, legally, no problem. That's the brand that mostly everyone knows. We have another lineup called DPF XFIT, which is Class 8 transport trucks, handful of light duty diesel trucks as well, DPFs, DOCs, direct replacements. We also do a lot of emission control and power gen. A lot of all these big data centers that are all popping up have massive power generators that run 24-7. We make emission control systems for those. We're in marine, we're in off-road, a lot of heavy-duty off-road equipment. But yeah, we make emission control systems basically for anything with an engine. My brand that I specialize in is the High Performance Metallic EPA compliant catalytic.

The G-Sport stuff?

G-Sport, so that's my line. I'm the Director of Business Development for G-Sport. I work with exhaust manufacturers on developing product that will meet or comply with emission systems on modern vehicles, make recommendations on what cats they can use on their exhaust development, make sure that what they're doing is legal, complying with EPA standards. We supply a lot of performance shops, custom fab shops. We do retail as well if you're a fabricator and want to fabricate into your system. It's just showing to the world that the days of a catalytic converter robbing power aren't necessarily truth anymore. OEM converters, yeah, for the most part, there's a lot of restriction there. My job, big part of my job is to prove to people that when sized correctly, you can comply with emissions, you can keep your check engine light off, you can keep that smell down, and you cannot lose power whatsoever. That's a big part of what we do. Performance without compromise, that's our slogan. Yeah.

So that was one of the things that we talked about on our previous podcast is like the sizing aspect of it. So like for example, like, I can't remember from the episode exactly, but let's say you're going like an inch wider in diameter with one of your cats, you could basically not lose horsepower. How exactly do you like talk to people about this?

So we'll recommend a size based on the power levels and the load of your vehicle. So when I say load, there's a couple things to consider. So some vehicles have hotter exhaust temperatures than others, whether it be direct injection or whether it be an old school fuel injection set up. Also, whether it's a heavier vehicle, heavier vehicles will produce more load on the exhaust. You can have a 600 horse, let's go with a 700 horsepower Whipple Supercharged F150, five liter. Or a Whipple Supercharged five liter Mustang. That truck will have more load going through the exhaust because it has a higher gross vehicle weight rating. So it's a heavier vehicle going up a hill, it's propelling more weight up that hill. It's got to pull more, it's got to push more. So the more weight, and also could be towing a trailer, could be towing a boat. So typically on heavier vehicles, we'll recommend a larger diameter cat. I actually have, I just recently started a podcast type video. Not really a podcast, but I just started a series called the Catalyst Corner. You can watch it on YouTube. It's all things catalytic converter. And typically once a week in our videos, we'll do a tech talk. I just recently did an episode, if we can maybe find a way to link it, that'd be great.

Yeah, sure, absolutely.

Where we did flow numbers and we showed the difference between a four inch 200 cell cat, a four inch 300 cell cat, 400 cell cat, four and a half inch, five inch, six inch, and all the different sizes and how they flow, the difference in flow. So it's really just, I guess it's, yeah, how do you size the cat? We have kind of a standard breakdown on our website that breaks it down in terms of your vehicle's year. That's going to be the emission control aspect of things. A lot of more modern vehicles, say newer than 2017, require 400 cell per square inch cat to keep the check engine light off. Where vehicles older than 2017, you can get away with a 300 cell. Vehicles over 500 horsepower should have larger than four inch cat. So 500 horsepower or less, four inch diameter cat. And we've done this based on testing, based on hundreds of vehicles' data that we've gathered. If your car makes between 500 and 800 horsepower, four and a half inch cat. If it makes between 800 and a thousand horsepower, five inch cat, thousand or more, six inch cat. There are some exceptions. Some vehicles put more load through the exhaust and we recommend going higher. Some vehicles just run hotter. A lot of the supercharged applications, we recommend going one size up. So for like an 800 horsepower or 750 horsepower, supercharged five-liter, what we were just talking about. In theory, the four and a half inch cats would work fine. But, sorry, the four inch cats would work fine because it's 800 horsepower, two banks, 400 horsepower per bank. It would be with intolerance. But when you go to the four and a half inch, it's just a safer play. You've got more heat disbursement, you've got better flow, it's going to last longer. It's kind of boring when I talk about it, to be honest, because it's just... But we've got... And actually, one thing that I'm working on right now is a master spreadsheet on every single vehicle that we've gathered data for, and what is the best recommended cat. That's going to be going live on our website pretty soon. As vehicles get more modern, get more tighter on tolerance with emission control, it's not necessarily a one size fits all anymore. So that's why we're kind of working on a master spreadsheet. But it's pretty straightforward. Like our four inch to four and a half inch cats should work on pretty much any modern vehicle, making 800 horsepower or less, not raw power, keep check engine lights off, pass emissions test. And if you're ever not sure, you phone into our company, they direct you to me. I tell you exactly what works. Just because I work with all the major brands and we've tested just about any modern vehicle on the market with every single one of our cats.

Are you guys doing that here? Or somewhere like SEMA Garage?

Some of our partners use SEMA Garage. Some of our partners use other third-party labs. Some of them do it like AMS does. They're testing in-house. I know you had them on their podcast recently. They'll take a car that they want to develop a downpipe for. They will try three or four different cats on the dyno to see which ones wear it max. So they'll do a straight pipe version. They get their baseline. Then they'll do a catted version, say on a smaller cat and see if there's any restriction. If there is restriction, they'll step up in size. They get it to a point where there's no power loss. And they go, okay, this is the one that we need for power loss. Then they'll go run an emissions test and make sure it's, it will, you know, pass an emission test. They'll go through drive cycles and monitor all their, their readiness monitors and make sure it's run all the O2 data and all the emissions efficiency data and make sure that it keeps the check engine light off. That's another aspect of things. So yeah, some people just send the cars to SEMA garage. They'll send a couple of variations of cats and just basically say, figure it out. A lot of others will do in-house diagnostics and R&D.

Okay, cool. So like the days of me having to get like a catless downpipe are pretty much gone.

Yeah, you don't need to do it anymore unless you want to. Like some people want to run a catless downpipe.

Or just a straight pipe altogether.

Sure, yeah, just a full straight pipe and shoot flames and have all the exhaust smells in the world. And that can be fun. You know, as someone who's an automotive enthusiast, went through that. Now, as someone with a wife and kids and...

That's usually the discussion.

You know, like, I don't really want to come home smelling like a bonfire. And I want to take my wife for a ride in my car and have her enjoy it. So, you know, driveability is a big thing. And a lot of states now, you have to pass an emissions test. And if you don't have a cat, or if you have a check engine light off for efficiency, or if you have to do a sniff test and the cat that you have in there is not efficient, you won't pass. So, it's not even, it's actually just a necessity in a lot of states now. So, we provide a product that genuinely works well, does not have any downside apart from the cost. You've got to buy it. Like that's really the only downside. But that's it, yeah. You don't really, you don't have to do that anymore. Like if you want to keep your smell down and have better driveability, you don't need to compromise power.

So, you don't have to get into specifics on this, but let's say some of your partners that you work with, these exhaust partners, do they kind of have like different, from my understanding within CATS, like you can have a little bit of this, a little bit of that, like different compounds and like metals or whatever, or is it just kind of standard from what you get to find?

Some of our partners that buy hundreds or thousands at a time for specific vehicles, we will develop, so we do, we are one of the only catalyst manufacturers that is totally integrated. We do all of our own development. We have a team of research scientists with PhDs that develop all of the wash coats for our cats. It's actually 20 minutes down the road where we coat all of our catalytic converters, where we impregnate the precious metals and do all of our formulas. So we have some European customers where the formulations are a little bit different for emissions regulations that are very specific. We'll take OEM cats, we'll break them down, we'll analyze them, we'll see the precious metal loadings percentages of platinum, palladium, rhodium are just the most popular precious metals in cats. And we can reverse engineer a high performance version. For 99.9% of the vehicles on the road, we have developed a formula that works across the board for anything. It's just a matter of choosing the correct substrate size.

Okay. Substrate size, is that before you start talking about cells or is that?

So there's cell. So when we talk about cell, what that means is C. So CPSI stands for cell per square inch. So if you were to put a one inch square on the body, on the internal substrate, actually, I've got a cat somewhere in here.

Yeah, sure. We can pause for a second.

Let me go.

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I don't know if this camera can see me or not, but hold this guy up here. So he asked a question about cells. What is cells? What is cell count? CPSI stands for cells per square inch. So when people say, I want a 200 cell cat because that's the least restrictive. I'm not going to put a 400 cell cat on because it's going to rob power. Okay. So I'll talk about that in a minute. But first, what is a cell? Cell is the amount of channels in the body of the catalytic converter. If you were to draw a one-inch square on the face of this cat, on the substrate of this cat, how many channels do you get in that one by one square? So a 200 cell per square inch cat, a 200 cell cat would have 200 channels in a one-inch square. A 300 cell, 300 channel, a 400 cell. Yeah, very straightforward. So the higher you get in number, the smaller those channels are, and the more restriction there will be. The slower it will flow. So, but it's all relative to the diameter of the cat. So for example, if I have a four inch body, 200 cell cat, which is like the industry standard for cheap Chinese catalytic converters. So a lot of people in the market, they'll go find a cheap Chinese 200 cell catalytic converter for a hundred bucks and say, that's what I want, because it's not going to rob power. First of all, it's probably not made as well. It's likely going to fail due to the internal furnace brazing. We can get into that if we want. But if you go to a four and a half inch diameter, 400 cell, it actually flows higher, has a higher flow rate than a four inch 200 cell. So if you're concerned, if you are really that set on a 200 cell is all I will go with, because it won't restrict flow. Just go to a four and a half inch diameter and it will actually flow better on a 400 cell than a 200 cell four inch. So one half of an inch in diameter will flow better with twice as many cells.

Okay. I'm registering now.

I know it's kind of boring talk. I'm not going to beat around the bush there. But second, once you get it all makes sense. And this is kind of why I started the Catalyst Corner series. We talk about these things, we put the graphs up as we're talking about it to make it real easy to understand so people can kind of take some of the misconception away on catalytic converter technology.

Right. So again, to reiterate, right? So if you just add, let's say, an inch, but you have more.

Yeah, an inch is a huge amount. Like you go from, say, anyway, nice. Yeah.

Anyways, why are we laughing?

Anyways, I saw this video the other day. It was a car sales guy. And he was saying, I'm going to go with the other model because it has three inches more of trunk space. And three inches is a huge amount. And then the sales guy goes, that makes total sense.

Anyways. So, okay. We add an inch in diameter.

Yeah. It makes a huge difference. It really does. So even just a half of an inch makes a huge difference. So you can take a 200 cell, four inch catalytic converter and flow test it. And off the top, I don't know the exact flow numbers. I can bring them up or I can just go off the top of my head because I just did an episode off on this. It'll flow like 880 CFM at 28 inch pounds. That's on like a super flow 1020, which is the same type of flow bench you'd use to flow cylinder heads, intake manifolds. It's like the industry standard for flowing intakes and exhaust. That'll flow, say, 880 CFM. If you then go to a 400 cell, it'll flow like 820. It is a slower flow.

If it's the same size.

If it's the same size. But if you step it up half an inch and go to a four and a half inch, 400 cell, it'll flow about 890 CFM. It'll actually flow better. If you go to a four and a half inch, 300 cell, which is something that we offer for anything 2017 and older. So if you've got a supercharged five liter Mustang or like a supercharged M3 Hemi or supercharged LS or turbocharged, anything like that, that's older than 2017. You could go with a four and a half inch, 300 cell cat, EPA compliant, which we offer. Keep your check engine lights off, pass an emission test, and it will flow around 980 CFM, 100 CFM more with a higher cell count and just a half inch bigger. That's only a quarter inch in radius all around. You can very likely fit that. Most factory catalytic converters are at least five inches in diameter.

Oh yeah, fair enough.

But the reason why you can go smaller is a five inch diameter factory catalytic converter has an internal substrate that's only about 3.75 to four inch. On a factory ceramic catalytic converter, there's an insulation blanket that holds the internal substrate in place because you can't weld ceramic core to a metal can. So they use this, it's kind of like a fiberglass expanding foam type material that holds the catalyst. That takes up about half inch in radius all the way around. So a full inch in catalyst size. Plus the OEM catalytic converters are usually 600 to 800 cell on the primary brick. So we go to larger cell channels, we go to larger internal diameter, but smaller external diameter if that makes sense, because our cats don't have that matting material on the inside. They're furnace brazed.

So furnace brazed, yeah, you're talking about that earlier.

Okay, so yeah, there's so many things. Like you could talk about cats all day. It'll still be boring.

That's fine, there's a market for them, I'm interested.

So OEM catalytic converters, again, just to reiterate, they've got a ceramic core catalytic converter. Picture a ceramic plate or mug, hold it from a couple of feet off the ground, drop it, it's going to shatter to bits. How do we hold that ceramic core to a metal can? You can't weld it, so what you do is you take this matting material. It's like a very dense, I don't want to call it foam, but it's more of like a fiberglass type matting material that you wrap the core of the ceramic cat, it gets pushed into this can, and when it gets heated up, it expands and then holds the internal brick in place. On high performance applications, or someone goes and bolts a supercharger on a car that never came with a supercharger, they go do a tune and now it's running a little more rich, that cat will fail so quickly for a couple of reasons. That matting material, it's not designed to withstand spikes of high temp. So you get temp that comes up, you get hot and cold cycles on these high performance vehicles, that matting material then gets brittle and starts to, that internal cat gets loose and starts banging around inside the core. And it starts, remember, you drop that plate, it shatters to bits. You've got this ceramic core cat rattling around inside this can. It's only a matter of time before it gets crumbled, caves in on itself and just absolutely disintegrates. Also the added heat will just melt that ceramic and just, you see, I don't know if you've seen or not, you can maybe put a little B-roll clip or something of what a failed ceramic cat looks like. It's ugly. Metal cat. So how can we hold a metal core to a metal can? If you want a cheap, easy process, you could use that same matting material technique, or you could do what we do, furnace brazing. So furnace brazing, we take nickel, like a soft metal, and we line the exterior of the core, the catalyst core with nickel, press it into this tube and then put that whole assembly in an oven where it slowly gets up to temperature to where that nickel melts. That nickel will melt now, melt and coat the entire outer surface of the inner core to the inner surface of the outer mantle. And basically it's like it's welded in place. It fuses it together, kind of like brazing pipes. You know, if you've got like a copper water pipe, you heat it with a torch and you put your brazing material and it solders it and goes inside and holds it in place. Similar process, the nickel furnace brazing process is obviously way stronger than like a little copper pipe. So kind of just giving you a visual on it. But it's essentially one, like I can't take this core. Like you see, someone wants to, if you've ever seen people hollow out the bricks of their factory cats, they can just take a punch or a hammer or whatever and they just punch it. That ceramic core will crumble to bits so easily. You cannot do that with one of our cats. It's impossible. I don't really want to wreck this cat, but if I wanted to give you a demonstration, I can take a punch. It would take me all day to just make, like I wouldn't be able to, like I could dent it and ding it up. I can't push it out. I'm pushing as hard as I possibly can right now. On the core of this cat, it won't move. Impossible to move. So you can't get this to fall apart. The only time you'll ever see one of our metallic cats fail is when you overheat them or over fuel them. So if you've got a cat that's too small for the power level, or if you've got a car that's running real rich and dumping a bunch of fuel in the exhaust, that fuels building up on the metallic substrate and eventually gets hot enough to ignite, nothing's going to survive that. Titanium won't survive that because it's little explosions on the surface area, and it will break it down, beat it up. It'll survive a lot longer than a ceramic cat will, but it won't survive the toughest condition. Nothing's bulletproof, but this cat right here, the strongest cat on the market, it is the most robust emission control system you could possibly put in your high-performance vehicle.

Okay. When somebody's like, for example, let's just say poor tuning, and you're just dumping a bunch of fuel on there, it could still eventually burn up and just work its way out as well. It's not like an immediate fail or is it just bound to fail?

No, it can. We've never advised that for a couple of reasons. One, it's not an efficient tune. Yeah, like burble tunes and these pop-bang tunes, it's cool. I'm reluctant to even say it's cool. There was a time...

Hold on, how old are you?

I'm in my 30s now.

Okay, yeah, so you're... Right.

I was about to say there was a time where I found it cool.

We all did.

Right. But when you realize it's not efficient, you're leaving power on the table and you're destroying any emission control system that you have in place. If you're not running an emission control system and you just love the burbles and the pops, all the power to you, go ahead and do it. But if you want your vehicle to be truly running efficiently, maximizing power and complying with emission standards and actually having a street legal vehicle, you're not going to tune your vehicle like that.

Yeah. Well, and the reason I'm pushing for this conversation is because, again, I didn't even know that this world existed until I had my episode with Banished, of course, where it's like, oh, you can have the high horse, your cake and eat it too, right?

Yeah.

It's like you can actually have high horsepower without, you can actually go past emissions. Now, Minnesota, a lot of my audience is from Minnesota because that's where I'm from, right? But and it's like, we don't have emissions testing. So it's like, we selfishly don't really have to think about, yeah, we can get in trouble for various things, but there's a lot of states where you do have emissions testing, and it's like you sacrifice.

Or counties, there are some states where the actual whole state doesn't have emission control, like North Carolina, for example. Certain counties within city limits require emissions testing, other counties, more rural counties.

That's what I heard.

Yeah. So sometimes it's by the county as well.

Yeah.

Most states, almost every state, even if they don't do emission testing, still require you to have a catalytic converter. If your vehicle was factory equipped with one, you technically have to have one. So if you get stopped by even like a Florida State Patrol, Florida, there's no emission testing required. But if they really want to be a pain in the butt, they could look under your car and say, oh, you have no catalytic converter. And they can write you a ticket for no cat. It probably won't happen. Most people, no one really gets tickets in Florida for not having cats. So not the greatest example, but there are states that don't actually require you to pass emissions, but still do require you to have a cat if your vehicle came with one, which is pretty much any vehicle made after 1973.

Okay. Trying to think what else I want to talk about cat-wise there.

It's an interesting transition going from the race right into the cat.

So you guys run cats and these or what?

Funny you should ask.

No way.

We don't. However, we've tested our cats on one of our pro stock engines on our dyno here at KB. I've got a video on it. If you go on our G-Sport Instagram page, you'll see we did a video. Greg Anderson, one of the most winning drivers in pro stock history, running the dyno. He's made thousands of dyno pulls in his life. We told him we want you to do a dyno session with catalytic converters. He was not thrilled about it. Why are we wasting our time with this? First of all, it's not going to, you might blow up one of our engines here. He's never done anything like this before. I really don't want to do this. But if you're saying, I assume, like me, I assume all liability for anything that could happen to one of our engines to do this test, we'll go for it. Go for it. So we did it. We used our largest six inch cat that we have to offer. We put it on one of our 1500 horsepower NHRA Pro stock engines, ran it on the dyno back to back with and without cats. It's like they weren't even there. No power loss whatsoever. No loss in power, no loss in torque. We then tried our five inch cats and there was a five horsepower loss, mind you, on a 1500 horsepower engine. That is nothing. Nothing. And then we came to find that there was a broken valve spring. That was probably where the five horsepower loss came from. But no, we have ran them. And the reason we did it, we did it for two reasons. Number one, marketing stunt show that, hey, you're complaining about your C63 Mercedes that makes 500 horsepower, about putting a set of cats, like, you won't lose power. It's not going to restrict it. I just proved it on a 1500 horsepower race engine that it's not losing power. You don't need to worry about your street vehicle losing power. That was number one. Number two, EPA, depending on which kind of administration you have, gets strict, they lay off. They get strict, they lay off, but they always come back more strict. Okay. We have an administration right now, which isn't super concerned about EPA and emission control, which is fine, but eventually it's going to go the other way and EPA will come back with more. It's what they do. They give more restrictions, they back off a little. They gave even more restrictions, they back off a little. And then they're always going to go back for more. So there may be a time where EPA comes in and says, motorsports, these cars are dirty. These cars are bad for our environment. We don't want to have them anymore. Or these need to have emission control systems. You've got to put cats on your race cars. There are actually a lot of European racing classes and racing divisions that are required to run a catalytic converter. It's not bizarre to think that one day American racing organizations would be required to run catalytic converters. So we do it kind of a preliminary testing for if we were ever to be required to run cats, we would have a solution and we could keep our sport alive. Or if EPA were to ever step in and say, we want to shut this down, we can say, hold on, we have a solution. We're going to run cats on our cars. They're already EFI, which means we can tune them to run efficiently. They are tuned to run very efficiently. And we can, if we ever needed to, we could put them on just like that. Same with NASCAR. Like I won't say who, but we did emissions testing on NASCAR motors with a very big player in some of the NASCAR series. And we did durability testing with our cats and actually found a solution and we found a catalyst that works and will withstand 600 laps of heavy abuse. And we could do it. So no, we don't run them on the pro stock cars, but we could.

Yeah. I guess the only negative thing is cause you guys are so within a tight set of rules and restrictions like that. There's probably a couple extra pounds, if you were to add up.

For sure. You would definitely not want to proactively put on a set of caps on these cars.

Yeah, but if everybody was required.

If everyone was required to do it, if it was spec'd or if it was mandated by EPA or some sort of government regulation, I don't know that would happen, but it's always a possibility. If it was spec'd, then everyone would be at that, I don't know, five pound disadvantage or whatever it would be. And we would find a way, we would just move weight around. We would adapt to it pretty quickly. The weight of a hood scoop for next year would be more significant than running a set of cats. Yeah, truly though, the impact that the hood scoops will make to these cars would be more significant than the impact of running one of our cats, which you think would be a massive impact, putting catalytic converters on these things, but it would be less of an impact than hood scoops.

I'm just thinking, what other kind of variations do you have between this? And let's say, again, you're competitors. Tweaking-wise, as a driver, I guess, how do you prepare to have a successful weekend?

So that's every driver will give you a different answer.

Yeah.

The biggest thing in these cars is your reaction time. There's five time. There's a lot of things you need to react to in these cars. There's number one is how quickly you can get off the line. That's reacting to the tree, to the lights coming down. Second is reacting to your shift light. You've got to shift four times. You leave in first, shift two, three, four, five. You have four shifts. But also you've got to react to how the car is reacting on the track. These cars very rarely leave straight. When you launch in one of these cars, it usually goes a little left or a little right, and it carries the tires. You can't steer the car until the front tires touch the ground past 60 feet. You usually need to shift the one, two right around the time the tires touch the ground. If you launch and your car is a little left or a little right, you've got to be able to focus on having the tires touch the ground, get it back into the groove, nail your gear change. Don't over-correct it because if you over-correct it, you'll be steering it all the way down and you'll miss all your shifts. So the biggest thing is focus. So as a driver, how do I prepare to get into one of these cars? It's mostly the question is how do you get your head right? How do you get focused? That's where I say every driver will give you a different answer. For me, I'm trying, and this sounds crazy, I'm trying very hard to not have a routine. A lot of drivers will have a very strict routine on what they do, what they attribute their reaction times to. And it's, say, like a crystal clear lens, or putting ice on their face.

I've seen those videos.

Yeah, I've actually done one. Or doing walking lunges or a stretch routine. And don't get me wrong, I think there is something to that. I have a pretty strict workout routine, and I don't eat junk and whatever before I race, but I don't know, man. I can, we entertain easily 100 guests per day in our race team. I can go from selling catalytic converters, talking business, introducing people in the pits, to right up to seconds before I need to put my race suit on and get in the car. And I can switch like that and just focus. Everyone's a little different. For me, I think it's just about trusting your car and trusting your crew. That's the biggest thing. If you are scared in one of these cars, you should shut it off and get out. You should never drive one of these cars if you don't trust your car, if you don't trust your team, or if you're nervous at all. So I think that is the biggest key to success, is trust and being comfortable. And that's different for everyone. For me, I just love doing this. And every time I get this driver's suit on, I think to myself, I'm so damn lucky to be doing this. I'm so fortunate to be able to get in this race car and do something that I've dreamed of doing my whole life. How could I be distracted, or how could I be nervous or scared? Like, the second that suit goes on and you get in the car, I can be smiling and waving at my friends, like right before I go to start the race car up, and just instantly be in the zone the second it fires up, because it's go time. It's go time, and it's so awesome to be able to do this. So again, like I said, every driver will give you an answer. And I know just from seeing my teammates, they have different routines, and some of them are super strict. Like, I go in with a scratched, dirty, smudged lens, just for the purpose that I can't say, like I don't want to get in the car with a smudge on my lens and say, oh, I didn't cut a good reaction time because I had a smudge on my lens, and it's normally crystal clear. I want to get used to the worst conditions. I want to get in the car 20 minutes before I need to and sweat my nuts off, so I can get comfortable. If I got a pee, I'll go drive the car, so I know what it's like to race having to go to the bathroom. You know what I mean? So I can't get in the car and go, oh no, I didn't do that one thing. It's just about being confident in yourself, trusting your car, trusting your team. That's the best advice I could possibly give to any new driver. I know I'm a new driver, but I've done well.

It's been working good so far.

We've been working well and 15 out of 17 round wins that I've had have been on whole shot. So not being faster, but being quicker to react and basically being a quicker, better driver off the line. So again, being new, but I also think I've got some decent advice to share. And that's one of my best pieces of advice to any new driver, trust the car, trust the team, trust yourself.

So do I understand that correctly? You've won 15 out of 17 races or?

Rounds.

Rounds.

So to win a full event, you need to win four races back to back.

Correct.

I have not yet won a national event. I am very confident to say this year, I will win multiple national events. It sounds like people are going to look at this and say, this guy's so cocky. But I trust myself, I trust my car, I trust my crew, I'm going to win races. I've got the same stuff that some of my teammates, Dallas and Greg, who win all the events. I got the same stuff as them. I've progressed as a driver where I can confidently say, I'll win races this year. So yeah, your question about race wins, that's round wins.

Gotcha. Understood. Yeah.

20 cars will show up. Only the fastest 16 in qualifying get to race. And after the first round, immediately eight of them get eliminated. So 12 cars of the 20 that show up go home after the, basically four to five of them don't even qualify, depending on the car count. And eight of them will immediately go home.

Okay. Oh, so there's like, that's actually a good question there is, how big is the field overall that travels the country? 20 cars?

On average, 20.

Okay.

We've been seeing good car counts lately where we've had 21 to 23 cars. I'm going to call it 20 on average.

That's one thing that I heard recently is like, there's maybe, was it, was it Pro Mods? Like a couple hundred Pro Mods in the whole country or something like that? Some crazy low number.

Pro Mod actually has a really good car count. So Pro Mod right now is very competitive. There's the new winter series that's been started. They run three races over the winter. There's the World Series of Pro Mod. There's the Snowbird Nationals. There's, there's that series, which always gets a ridiculous number of cars that show up. The NHRA Pro Mod series has not been getting a huge attendance. I couldn't say exactly why that is. We don't race Pro Mod. We used to. I know the parity is tough. Pro Stock is cool because they're specced, and really anyone can win. Pro Mods, you can run a supercharger, a turbocharger, or twin turbos. You can run nitrous, but you can't combine them. So there's different sets of rules for different power adders. And they're constantly saying, okay, these cars are now ahead, so let's give them, they got to add 10 pounds. And they're constantly fighting parity and trying to keep these cars aligned. It's so hard to keep up. With the Pro Stock cars, it doesn't change. I mean, aside from the rule change for next year about the hood scoops, and again, that's going to affect everybody, not just one specific group. So, we've been seeing good counts. Some people will say Pro Stock is dead or Pro Stock is not exciting. We've got great car counts. The class has been more competitive than ever. We're running consistently competitive numbers. More new drivers are getting into the sport. I think this class is where it's at.

So, you think it's going to grow beyond that 20 then in the next years?

Yeah, absolutely, it will. I think now with some of the programs that both us and Elite Motorsports have in place with new drivers, if you're good at marketing and good at bringing brands in, or if you've got the money to drive one of these cars, it's now easier than ever. The days of having to build your own car and do all your own R&D and make the investment of everything, you don't have to do that anymore. If you can come up with the money to race and be a good driver, you can win races. That's one of the biggest things is being a good driver. We've seen a lot of drivers come and go over the years that have the money, but they don't have the reaction time. Or they get nervous and they left early, or they miss their shifts, or they just give up on it because some drivers, they think because they have the money, I'm going to go to the top right away. That's not the case. You've got to be dedicated to this, and you've got to put time in to be able to win some races.

All right, let's talk about that, Mr. Driver. Okay. How different is this? Okay, do you have a sports car that you daily or drive around at all? Like, do you have a manual car, is what I'm saying?

Sometimes. I say sometimes because I'm also a licensed car dealer, so I buy and sell and flip cars in my spare time. I was an automotive wholesaler for over 10 years. During that time as a wholesaler, I would drive the most unique car I had on the lot at any time, whether it be a Miata. I hate Miata, sorry. I think I commented that once before. You and your audience, I'll love them. I recently had a C6 Z06 Corvette that I daily that. I'm dealing a high mileage Ram Rebel right now. So I also play the market a little bit. If the timing is right to get into a diesel truck, and I think I can buy a brand new diesel truck and not lose money, because again, I import cars from Canada. So little side bar thing here. We're into a lot of stuff.

That'll be a fun discussion off camera as well.

Yeah, I still have my 1964 Plymouth Valiant that I got when I was in high school, and the first car I ever drove down a racetrack, I've got it tattooed on my body. I love that car. I'm in the middle of putting a Gen 3 Hemi conversion into that car with a six-speed stick, tubular front end, nine-inch rear end, four link. Just really cool car. That'll be a fun car. That'll be like a high nine-second street car that you can drive it daily. You could drive it across the country with air conditioning if you want.

But where I was going with that is, okay, C6, C06, probably a manual. How different is the manual on that to the manual on this?

So much different. Well, for starters, you don't clutch to shift in these cars. You launch with the clutch. However, it's similar when it comes to putting it in gear, rolling off the line. So I'll walk you through a run in one of these cars.

Okay.

So you start, you fire the car up, ignition, fuel pump, fire it up, fan, water pump, computer, put it in gear, clutch in, in gear. Once it's in gear, you ease the clutch out. You can give it a little throttle. You don't really need to. So your clutch out, same way you would in any manual vehicle. In gear, clutch out. We start our burnout in third gear. As I'm rolling into the burnout box, I bang two, three. But I don't put the clutch in.

Okay.

I just, actually, no, I do put the clutch in, bang two, three, but you don't need to like clutch two, clutch three. So clutch in, bang two, three, come to a stop.

I see.

I'll put about 1200 pounds of brake pressure, hit the line lock, give it a couple of whacks of the throttle and then dump the clutch. Burnout would be pretty similar. So like a burnout in a street car, usually you're starting in second, or like in the Z06, I would start in second, give it a little rev, dump the clutch, snap the throttle, get wheel speed going. And you could shift to burnout, but you're usually clutching that shift. You bang four or five in the burnout in one of these cars, but you don't clutch it. You dump the clutch to get the wheels moving, bang four, bang five without touching the clutch, just strictly feathering the throttle, off the line lock, continuing, kind of continuous throttle, put it in reverse, clutch, so you're clutching off the reverse. So everything is the same as driving a manual vehicle right up until you launch the car.

Okay.

Your full throttle, full clutch, and the key is to not be soft on the clutch. You got to dump that clutch to launch the car as fast as you possibly can under wide open throttle. So basically the person who's quickest at getting their foot off the clutch, reacting to the tree, is the person that's going to have the best reaction time. But after that, you're just banging two, bang three, bang four, bang five. You don't even touch the clutch. Okay. The next time you touch that clutch is to lift. You're clutching in and off the throttle, off the shifter, kill the power.

So, and pulling the parachute at the same time.

Yeah, and launching the parachute. So we've taken on new drivers that have never driven a manual vehicle before, and it shows, it absolutely shows in their staging, in their burnouts, in their backing up. You'll see a lot of jerky, like same thing, like watching someone learn how to drive manual. That's what it looks like watching a driver who's never driven a stick vehicle, try to drive one of these cars. I've seen pro mod drivers who drive faster cars than this, jump in one of these cars and try to license, and be so lost, because these are so much different. There's so much, I don't want to call it more driving, because I have a tremendous amount of respect for pro mod. I want to drive a pro mod car. I think they're awesome, but they are way different. There is so much more going on in these cars than a pro mod car, a top fuel car, top fuel funny car, way different. So I've seen some really fast drivers stall these cars or not be able to get the burnout right. So definitely driving a manual street vehicle with a stiff clutch will help you a lot with the staging and the burnout in these things.

How do you know, scratch that, if you don't do a great burnout, does that basically mean like, you don't even try?

Not necessarily, but it will impact your run. A perfect burnout means you're starting in third. Some drivers actually start in second and they'll bang through three, four, five real quick. We all start in third, bang four, five. The perfect burnout is not banging it off the chip, which is hitting the rev limiter. So just off the rev limiter and carrying your burnout through the launch box. So where your rear tires launch and take off for the run, you want to do a burnout through that line, right through the groove. If your burnout stops early and you don't lay that fresh track down where you launch, my tuner will very likely open up my door and turn my launch RPM down by 50 or 100 because we might will very likely blow the tires off if we launch. If you do what's called moughing the burnout, where you go to get the tires rolling and you stop the tire or you don't get enough RPM or wheel speed to carry the burnout, absolutely, I'm going to actually back up and try to do another burnout.

Okay.

If you've crossed the line already, you can't burn out, you can't do another burnout, you can't cross the line twice. So you can go do a burnout, cross the line if it was a failed burnout and you want to do another one, it has to be short and sweet, you can't cross that line again, immediate disqualification if you do it again. If you muff it, if you stop it earlier, you could put wear on the clutch. If you're steady, if you're real high on the rev limiter through the whole burnout, that puts a lot of wear on the valve springs, you could likely, you could even break a valve spring on a burnout and go to launch the car and have a broken valve spring and be missing all the way down, potentially causing total engine failure. So it's very important that you get a nice, smooth burnout. To the way the car launches, to the way the car performs, to getting the clutch, even backing up from the burnout. It's important that everything stays consistent. If you are a manual driver, you've seen a manual driver that slips the heck out of the clutch, rum, rum, rum, rum, rum, to get going, like, just call me out. Well, yeah, that's you. But someone who slips the clutch a lot when they're backing up from their burnout or when they're rolling in, they'll glaze the clutch more. That will affect how the car is 60-foots. That will affect how the car launches. You want to engage the clutch as quickly as possible, get momentum, and then get off the clutch and coast. So yeah, everything about your staging process affects your run, including the burnout, especially the burnout.

When you first jumped in YDs, what were some mistakes that you made? Did you make any?

Everyone.

Everyone?

I made every mistake you can make. And any new driver, and some of the most experienced drivers still make mistakes. The most common rookie mistake is clutch pressure. When you get on the two-step on one of these cars to launch it, so two-step meaning you're fully staged, you've got a couple hundred pounds of line lock, another thing we haven't really talked about yet is when you launch these cars, you have to have a couple hundred pounds of line lock on. So when you go on the two-step, the car doesn't roll forward. If the clutch air gap is not exactly perfect and you go on the two-step, your car could roll forward and you can red light immediate DQ. If your clutch isn't pressed in hard enough, the moment you go on the two-step, it will, that clutch pressure comes in so hard, it will blow your foot clean off the clutch pedal, your car will lunge forward, stall and you're immediately red lit, run over. That is the biggest rookie mistake. I've done that three times. There are experienced drivers that race for a career that still do that. It's called being light on the clutch or cheating the clutch. So I mentioned earlier, the quicker you can get that clutch pedal out, the better you can react. So a lot of drivers don't want to push that clutch pedal too hard. The harder you're pushing that clutch pedal, you get a little bit of a bend in the clutch. That's a movement that takes away from your reaction time. And also going from pressing your muscles to contracting your muscles to pull it. The harder you're pressing, the more effort it takes to release those muscles and take your leg off. So a lot of drivers will try to be kind of light, not pressing the clutch too hard because you get a better reaction time. But I mentioned earlier when we were showing you what it takes to run these cars, it's a fine line because I can press the clutch pedal in, and it won't be very stiff. But the moment you go on the two-step, force comes up against that clutch pedal. So you've got to almost overpress it, but not too much. So finding that line is the biggest mistake you'll make as a rookie. Cody Anderson, who's Greg Anderson most winning driver's son, his first two events in round one of elimination, he did that. Again, that's not saying this guy is a bad driver, he's learning. I did that. I've done that three times in competition. So will I do it again? Probably. Probably. Because I see Greg in Dallas, some of the best drivers we have, the most winning drivers in our class, they still, every once in a while, they find that line, they blow their foot off and it's over. Burnouts. It took me a little bit of time to find out the sweet spot on the burnout RPM. Shift points. You've got to shift right at 10,500 RPM. If you hit the rev limiter, you lose momentum. If you shift too early, it falls out of the power band and everything falls off. You feel like your head is going to go through the windshield with how much power you lose if you shift early. So getting your gear changes perfectly. Lifting at the right part. These cars are a lot faster than anything I've ever driven before. So knowing when to dump the parachutes, when to get off the throttle, that kind of transition, that's going to be a learning curve. But yeah, there's a lot. For getting to turn the right switches on, you've got a shock switch. Your shocks are deactivated after you do your burnout, you turn the shocks on. Your cars have O2 sensors. You have to turn the O2 sensors on a minute before you run. If you don't, they won't be hot enough, they won't read right. So there are a lot of things you can screw up as a rookie. I still make mistakes every once in a while. You know, like I'm, we're all still learning. But yeah, the biggest thing is clutch pressure, launching that car.

So 20 car field, how many of them are KB Titan cars?

Six of them are house cars. And then we've got two other drivers who lease motors from us.

Okay.

So KB Titan power is in eight cars. Six of them, we own service and tune in-house.

Understood.

And then yeah, two of them, they lease motors. They have very capable tuners and they run their cars on their own with our motors.

And these are all Holley EFI?

All of them.

Every single car in the field.

It's specced Holley EFI.

Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I feel like there's something else I should be asking about the cars. What about suspension setups? What are, again, spec in all of them or?

There's a spec to a degree. Can't tell you anything else.

Okay, hey, fair enough. Hey, I knew I'd run into that one eventually. We made it what? Hour 32 before I got into that. Can't tell you.

Not that anything's really top secret. It's just, there's also, as a driver, I'm clueless to a lot of things as well. There's some stuff that our team won't even tell me, even like my family's part of the ownership group here. I'm one of the drivers here. I work on my own car. But there's even some stuff that I don't know and I'm not allowed to know because they don't know when I might end up on the podcast talking about things that I may not supposed to be. So suspension, I don't know what I am and am not allowed to talk about. So let's just not talk about that.

You said working on your own car. What does that look like?

So when I started racing pro stock last year, I committed to running races with KB Titan after the season had already started. I got my license in the fall prior to the season starting, so I could try to work on sponsorship funding. And I got enough sponsorship funding to run a few events. And then I ended up picking up momentum and running more events. But in the start, since our group did not know that I was going to be running the series, I came in after the fact and said, hey, I got some sponsorship funding. I want to run. They said, well, good. Well, we've got a car you can run, we've got some engines you can use, but we don't have a full crew. What can you do? And me being very mechanically inclined and being part of my dad's race team for so many years, I can do clutch, I can do gears, I can do trannies, I can do rear end housings, like we need to change rear gears, tires. Really anything you need me to do, I can do. So, okay, well, we've got a clutch guy and we've got an engine maintenance guy. If you can back half your own car, you can come race with us. So back half thing means this, there's a back half guy. When the car comes back from a pass, two guys, the clutch guy and the back half guy will collectively pull the front end off, put the car up in the air, and then the back half guy is going to go to work. He's going to measure the rollout of the tires to see how they've changed from last pass to this pass.

Yeah, touch on rollout real quick, just so I understand.

Rollout is the, I guess the circumference of the tire. So we take like a Taylor's measuring tape, flexible measuring tape. We put the tires at our exact run PSI. We measure the, so we'll go underneath the car and put a tape measure all the way around the rollout of the tire and see what that circumference of the tire is on the center. In every single pass based on the burnout and how the tire was affected, it can either grow and sometimes, sometimes shrink, sometimes grow based on the weather conditions, the track conditions, how the car was tuned, how hard it launched, how long of a burnout you did, how short of a burnout you did, everything will affect the tires overall growth. So we may get back from a pass and say, okay, car number three could benefit from a taller tire, car number two could benefit from a shorter tire. So we all measure our rollouts of our tires and give it to the crew chiefs. They analyze it and they may say, okay, take tires from car number two, put it on car number three, take the tires from car number three, put it on number four, number four goes on tire.

But these are all still spec tires, technically, right?

Yeah, they are, but they will wear differently based on how many runs they've had on them.

Understood, okay.

Tires is another thing that can be controversial and can be something that maybe I can't talk too much about. I'm only telling you stuff that everyone knows. A tire will change after every single pass, and every single team measures the rollout of the tire. We fully went into a sidebar conversation about tires there.

Correct. You're measuring rollout.

Yeah. My role when I started racing was to bring the car back in, get it in the air, measure the rollout of the tires, pull the valve cores out, take the tires off, and then you swap them left to right. Because one tire gets a little bit more wear than the other. So we swap them left to right every single time so they get even wear. So tires come off, they get rotated. Parachutes will get folded and packed. Battery charge has got to go on first actually. First and foremost, battery charge or tires out. We usually get a call, oh, driveshaft comes out. That happens before tires. I should have said that. So under the car, drive shaft out. So the clutch guy can pull the transmission back and take the clutch out. That clutch comes out after every pass. Back half guy takes drive shaft out so clutch guy can pull the tranny back and take the clutch out.

So restart the order here.

So car comes in, up in the air, drive shaft out, tires get measured, roll out.

Battery was...

Battery charger on.

Yeah. Can't keep bringing the battery on me, man.

Yeah. And that's the thing I forgot a lot, is to plug it in. So by the way, I always noticed when I was packing the parachutes, oh, shoot, plug it in, right? Tires off, rotate them, plug it in. By this time, we'll usually have a call on what we're doing with gear ratios. If a transmission gear ratio needs to be changed, me and the clutch guy will pull the tranny out together. Sometimes we have fully assembled transmissions that have the correct gear ratio that we need, and we'll just swap them. Other times we go into the trailer and rebuild the transmissions with the correct gear ratios. We'll get a call from, if we're doing a rear end gear change, then me as a back half guy, brake calipers off, axles out, drive shaft sensor out, wishbone down, rear end gear fully out, change out the rear end. That's something that the back half guy has to do, and then put it all back together. So that's what I did for the first half of the season. And once I started taking on some sponsors, I had more commitments. I needed to take care of my sponsors in the pits. So make sure they got the value, the introductions and everything that they needed. So we brought on, we were able to hire another back half guy for my car. So now my only responsibilities on the car are to drive it, fold the parachutes, and be there to help whenever I'm needed. But I have a full crew now. But yeah, that would be, that was what my duties were initially when I started. And now for any reason, if we're ever short a guy or if a back half guy can't make it, I can jump in and do those.

That makes sense. Okay, so the crew of three, so you have the back half guy, and all of the other two?

The clutch guy.

Okay.

And then the engine maintenance guy.

Engine maintenance guy.

There can also be a tuner, so sometimes it's a group of four, but oftentimes the engine maintenance guy is also the tuner. We do also have engine maintenance guys that aren't tuners, but they'll do engine maintenance on, say, two. Like, for example, my car, I technically have four guys, because my engine maintenance guy is not a tuner, but he does engine maintenance on two cars.

Right.

So he'll come in, do all the valves, valve lash, chain springs as needed, do the engine service, and then move on to one of our other cars and do their engine service. And then I've got a tuner who tunes my car, but does engine service on another car. Typically, engine guys will have two responsibilities. It can be either maintaining two engines or tuning one, maintaining another, or tuning two, maintaining none. But it's typically two roles.

Okay.

And it's based on their expertise and skill sets. Yeah.

Well, expertise, that's a word I'm struggling with today. Hello.

Especially when you talk a lot and use your dry mouth.

So yeah, yeah, yeah. Expertise and all that. What's the typical age range? Because obviously like expertise, the older you get, you have more expertise.

Yeah.

Are a lot of these guys in their 50s, 60s, a lot of young guys, older guys?

All across the board. My back half guy now that I have, he's 25 years old. He used to work for the Cadillac F1 racing team. He's a brilliant engineer. We brought him in from the UK. His name is Jordan Payne, great sportsman racer. He came here because he loves drag racing. He loves drag racing so much that he left his job with F1.

Jordan Payne, that name is... Do you have a crazy drag car in the UK or something like that? Oh no, I think, did you tell me about him before?

I might have told you about him. He has a Comp Eliminator Corvette that he raced. I'll send you some of his stuff after. He's got a pretty cool Comp Eliminator car that he ran in the UK. He wants to race one of these cars more than ever. We hired him for Global Emission Systems. He's one of our Design Engineers. But he's also a phenomenal set of hands. He's an excellent mechanic. He's great at turning wrenches. He is a hard working guy. He's now my back half guy. Nine to five Monday to Friday, he's in Canada at our office being a Design Engineer. Then every race weekend, he's working on the back half of the car. He's interesting. One of my, the engine maintenance guy, I actually don't know how old he is, but I think he's like 17 years, 17 or 18 years old. He's a young guy, but he's an engine maintenance guy, and he's phenomenal. And he's in our engine shop doing cylinder heads and machine work, and he's great. So if you've got talent, we will hire you.

Dude, no matter how old you are.

We just hired someone who has got to be in his late 60s as an engine maintenance guy, but he's great. He's been doing it his whole life. He's phenomenal at what he does. Anytime we can bring in young talent, we brought in a guy a couple of years ago as a back half guy, and then he learned clutch. So then he got on clutches. He just went and got his CDL. So now he drives one of the trucks. So over the past two years, he started as a back half guy, learned clutch, learned gear changes. He does gear, like tranny ratio changes, and now he drives one of the rigs. So it's pretty cool. You can come with us. Dallas Glenn, he won the championship last year. He got hired here years ago to be a maintenance guy, help out whenever needed. He always says, I got hired to sweep the floors. He got hired to do more than sweep the floors, but basically just an extra set of hands. He needs some labor help. Let's hire this guy. He's mechanically inclined. He can help us out. He's now driving trucks, maintaining cars, winning championships, and doing his own clutch service on his own car. You can come to us with just some good mechanical experience and learn everything. So it doesn't matter how old you are. Obviously we like bringing in some nice young talent, but if you look at the demographics of our group, it's all over the board.

Yeah, that's crazy. And I'm still like my head's spinning on an 18 year old just coming in here doing yeah, pro stock, you know.

And he said he can port cylinder heads, he can do floor rebuilds, and even just on like regular automotive stuff. Like when I bought my C6 Corvette, I said to him, hey, because they have those cars have weak points in the cylinder heads. They have valve guide problems. So when I told him I bought that car, he goes, do you fix the heads yet? Like he just knows this. He's just a cylinder head guy. I go, no, not yet. He goes, you want me to? I can do it. Just pull the heads or I'll pull the heads, whatever. Like he's just so confident. And his teenager is so confident he can work on these things, he can work on anything, doesn't matter what he is. And he's one of our machine guys. And we don't have to observe him or keep an eye on him. We just know he is very skilled.

I gotta ask, what's this kid's background? Does he have some crazy, like his dad was like the ultimate machine?

Honestly, I don't know. I gotta get to know him a little bit more. I'm still relatively new to all this.

No, that's just crazy.

Yeah, we've got a lot of talented guys that work their butts off.

Yeah, again, when I was, again, I tried to do a little bit of research going into podcasts, but not too much to where I know everything sort of deal. But when I was looking at how tight the fields are here, that's like, there still is a lot of variables, like the driver, the setup, everything, and you're still within a couple of thousands. It's just mind-blowing to me and all while being a stick.

Well, yeah. Well, that's the biggest thing. Like I was saying is, and that's what separates the best drivers from either the not-so-great drivers or the new drivers. Like I would consider myself to be a good driver. I'm not gonna say I'm as good as say Dallas or Greg or some of my competitors, like Jag Coughlin Jr. and Aaron Stanfield, who I was talking about how I beat him on a whole shot. That was great, but he still had a phenomenal reaction time. And I'd still say he's probably a better driver than me. He's way more experienced. A lot of these guys are. I think I'll get there and I think I can be one of the best. But going back to anyone with some money can run one of these cars, that will show you who runs just because they have money and who runs because they're phenomenal at what they do. Cause these cars, they're all pretty well exactly the same. So if you see someone that's like four or 500 slower, you gotta look at their graphs and see, are they smashing the chip on all their shifts? Are they shorting all their gear changes? And that's kind of what separates these drivers, nailing. You gotta go through five gears, four gear changes in less than five seconds. It's around four seconds really, because you look at your eighth mile times and you're in fifth around the eighth mile. Yeah, so it's just a lot going on in these cars.

It happens very quick too. I was like, what the heck is that tick or something? No, we're good. That's a lot going on.

It's a lot, yeah.

As we kind of close in on that two-hour mark here, was there anything else you kind of wanted to touch on? What did we miss? This has been a year in the making.

Yeah, so much has gone on. When we started communicating and you said, hey, I want to get on the... It's funny because we touched a little bit about global emission systems and G-Sport cats, but we talked a lot about racing, which is fine. This is kind of the cool part. High flow catalytic converters is a great product that everyone needs. And then we kind of... I've got this super interesting life where I'm driving race cars, I'm selling catalytic converters, but there's so much to how this all works out. What did we miss? Maybe the marketing side of things. So me, as a driver of one of these cars, I'm a sales manager for a catalytic converter company. I am not a millionaire. I don't have generational wealth. I don't have a trust fund. I've got a wife and two kids and a mortgage and a vehicle payment. I can't afford to spend a million dollars a year to race one of these cars, but I'm good at marketing and I'm good at finding what brands need. We talked a little bit earlier about some of the B2B aspects in this. I think that's something that could be taught. I think that's something that not enough people are talking about is the business behind motorsports. I think there's a lot of really talented drivers that are not driving race cars because they don't have the money or they don't realize that they can do it.

Some of them don't have a personality either too though.

Sure, sure, but some of them, I've met a lot of great drivers with great personalities that don't have sponsorship funding. Some of my best friends who have large social media accounts, they have big followings, they're well-spoken, they're great drivers, but they don't have sponsorship funding to drive through a series. And if given the opportunity, they would nominate, they would crush it. So I recently started a business called Matt Latino Marketing. So it started as just a company to run my books, like bring in sponsorship money, pay my expenses. And then I started realizing the common denominator of talented drivers that are suffering to get funding. And a lot of drivers, there's different reasons why they're not getting funding. They didn't budget their race team properly, or they didn't realize, oh, I actually need to raise more than I thought, or managing the money. The sponsor's willing to give them the money, but who are they paying? Are they paying the driver and the drivers going and doing, are they paying the arrive and drive program? So Matt Latino Marketing, it's a company where I help drivers bridge the gap, find their weak points on what they're missing in their sponsorship side and find that solution. If it's contract, building a package that's more beneficial for your sponsor and for you. Budgeting your race team, sitting down and planning what it takes for you to run a season so you can properly expense and plan your race season. Managing the money. That's another thing that people don't know how to do. You can be a great driver, very well-spoken, but they don't know how to manage the money. That's something that I do very well because I do that on the global emission side and it's for a very large company that operates globally. So I'm good with money management, managing the taxes, the logistics of things. So it's basically driver solutions for talented drivers that need help bridging their gap or have a weak point in their sponsorship racing program. So consulting for racers, finding where they can need some help, helping them set up their LLCs, helping them managing their money, wherever that downfall is.

So, okay, so that, and again, you eluded to, it's very different for everybody. Everybody has their own sort of struggles for, is another one of the things that you would kind of help with, because again, you seem to have it figured out when it comes to the sponsor side of things and knowing what companies are looking for. Is another part of that, the deliverables? Like, yeah, absolutely.

The biggest thing, that's one of the biggest things. So me as a racer, and we'll see if I have sponsorship funding next year, because this will see, this will be the deliverables aspect. Deliverables, there's another dry mouth word.

So that's pretty fast.

So deliverables are tough because as a driver, I can say, hey, sponsor my team. I'll get you in front of all these teams. I'll help you generate business. We'll co-create content within the pits. We'll do these giveaways. It's going to be great. I get the money. I put the brand on the car. If I don't deliver on my sponsors, two things could happen. The worst case scenario, they sue me for not fulfilling my end of the contract. The best case scenario of me not delivering is they don't sponsor me next year. Right? The perfect scenario is we deliver on everything. We bring them revenue. We prove a value that is equally beneficial for myself as the driver, for them as the sponsor. And now for next year, I say, okay, I proved results for you. I want to keep it rolling. I want a two-year contract now. Now we start building a stable career because you can build a career out of racing. But if your racing career is trying to get funding for the next race, you're not going to make a career out of this. If you can prove yourself and build a program that works and start working in multi-year contracts with sponsors, that you're delivering value with, you can start looking at making a career, doing something you love. That is ultimately my goal with Matt Latino Marketing, is helping racers make their passion and their skill a career. That's something that I believe I can do for myself and help other people do and live out their dreams.

I feel like I just got the talk from like a wise old man.

Well, maybe one day you can have my dad on the podcast. He's that one. He's that one. I don't want to take the old man part of it out of it, but he's a wise man that he's taught me a lot. He's taught me how to wrench on cars. He's taught me how to, like I learned almost everything I knew from being around him and his race team and seeing what he excels at and what he could use a little assistance at and just observing and being a part of it. He's a brilliant person that's built some phenomenal businesses and he'd be a great person. But yeah, when I speak, it's about what I've learned and I've learned a lot from him. So I guess a little kind of close out father appreciation right there.

Well, I read an article too that one time you beat him as well.

Oh God. I can't do an interview without someone bringing that up.

Yeah.

Whether it be like over the phone or what else. But my first ever round of competition was this time last year. We just got back from Pomona, California last week. So last year, my first ever race that I qualified for, so I don't talk about this much, but my first outing was in Arizona. I didn't qualify. It was the first and only time I did not qualify for a race. Next weekend, Arizona, eight and nine in qualifying. If you qualify eight and nine, you get paired up together. One race is 16, two races 15, three races 14, and so on and so forth, eight races nine. I qualified nine, dad qualified eight. My first ever race that I qualified for, my first ever round of competition, I beat my dad on a whole shot. So I just got off the line a little quicker. He was three hundredths of a second quicker in elapsed time. I was four hundredths of a second quicker in reaction time. So I was one hundredth of a second margin of victory. And if you go on my Instagram page, I have that race pinned on my profile. And it's something that both him or I will never forget. It was such a heartbreaking but also heartwarming moment.

Bitter sweet for sure.

It was so bitter sweet because, oh man, one Latino's got to go home first round. And that either dad's going to beat the son or son's going to beat the dad. And no one's ever going to stop talking about it. But first ever round of competition against your dad, like that is so freaking cool. Like I have wanted my whole life to race a professional series with my dad. The fact that we're racing together and I got to race against him in the first ever round of competition. And beat him. Thankfully I haven't gotten and beat him. That's like the cherry on top. But just being able to race alongside my dad is super cool.

That's awesome.

And it's a moment that both him or I will never forget.

Yeah. I think that's a good way to segue into the final and last question, which I'm sure you're familiar with. I think you've listened to an episode or two, which is at the end of every episode, I like to ask guests to pick three cars. You have an unlimited budget. You could buy anything, build anything, whatever you want. And it has to fall within these categories. Race car, or sorry, track car, show car and daily driver.

Okay. Ooh. I should have been more prepared for this because I actually did know that was coming and I didn't prepare for it. I'm a lover of all cars. As someone who worked in the automotive industry, I've driven probably wholesaling high-end cars.

Well, you've seen everything.

Yeah, no, but really I've driven, I don't want to say everything, but I've driven Ferrari 488s, 458s. I've driven probably a dozen different types of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, like any of the exotic cars you could think of. I've driven all the luxuries, I've driven all the sports cars. So it's so hard to pinpoint three, but I have to do it, so I'll do it. So refresh me again.

Race car, track car, of any kind of track.

But it's got to be a street driven track car, I guess.

Nope, whatever you want.

Interesting.

Okay.

So track car, daily driver and show car. Okay. I do really want a 67 GT500 Elinor Cologne. Everyone knows, gone in 60 seconds, Elinor. That to me is going to be my next build. When I finish my Valiant build, which I've been working on my whole life, basically, it'll be an Elinor build.

Okay.

Will that be the daily driver, or will that be the show car is a very good question. I think that'll be the show car.

Okay.

I will drive it, but it will be a show car. My daily driver, I own the car, my Valiant. It's such a unique car. It's a 1964 Plymouth two-door car, no post, the ultimate sleeper. That car was never designed to have more than 200 horsepower. I've put full frame rails in the car. I've braced the chassis. It's an 800 horsepower Gen 3 Hemi with a stick, coilovers, four link, air conditioning, backup camera, navigation, all digital gauge cluster. That is a true daily driving car that you could do whatever you want with it. That's my daily driver. I own the car and I'll probably never sell it. Race car. Well, I've got this race car, but I don't know if that's the one.

Yeah, you still got a long life ahead of you, Matt.

I got a long life ahead of me. I don't know, maybe like a, maybe like a 911 GT3 RS.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I love those cars. I have had the most amount of fun in those cars.

Like a 992 or the previous generation?

992.

Have you driven a 992? Okay.

Yeah. So the last dealership that I worked with in Canada, that was the last automotive industry job that I had before moving to US and doing a massive career change. I had a pretty great experience in one of those cars. Okay.

Did you take it to attract my agents?

Yeah. I didn't drive Billis' car, but one of our family friends, Al Billis, he's like a Porsche fanatic. His family is one of the founders of Canadian Tire, which is looking at Canadian Tire. It's massive. He's a Porsche fanatic. He's at just about every 911 you could imagine. But no, not a track experience, but got to drive the car to the detail shop. So I got the car at auction, brought it to the showroom, brought it to the detail shop, which conveniently I picked a detail shop that was an hour away. I don't work at this dealership anymore, so I don't have any. I don't have it. Yeah, it was a very spirited drive. Just an incredible driving car.

It's only 500 horsepower. How much trouble can you get in?

What's crazy is though that is not the most amount of power. I've driven 1000 horsepower street cars. It's just the way the car drives, the way it handles, the brakes. I really like that car. I know this is not really the rule, but I'll mix one more car into this. Sure. Audi S820. My dad has a 2017 Audi S8. I love that car. That is such an awesome, it's his daily driver. It makes 605 horsepower from factory. It's got big carbon ceramic brakes. That car launches so hard. You can go from stop to 150 mile an hour. I don't know the time, but that thing absolutely hauls. That twin turbo V8 never stops pulling. If I'm allowed to have a secondary daily driver.

That would be runner up.

That would be runner up. I told my dad, never sell that car. If you ever want to sell that car, I will buy it from you because it is such.

Is that the same 4.0 that we had in the SQ7? 4.0? Yeah, we rented an SQ7 in Texas.

Four liter twin turbo.

It's amazing.

Yeah, same thing. Same motor that's in the RS8s, the RS6 wagons, same motor. Unitronic makes a set of downpipes using our 6. There's actually a handful of exhaust manufacturers that makes a set of downpipes featuring our cats for that car. Downpipes, tune, over 700 horsepower.

Yeah, it's insane.

And it's a luxury vehicle with a long wheelbase. You can be in the back seat and recline it. You can be getting a massage. So I drove that car. I went 11.0s in that car at the local drag strip in Toronto with the air conditioning on and the massaging seat going. That's crazy. That is such an awesome experience. All wheel drive, that much power. That would be my runner up. In a perfect world, I've got 10 years from now, I've got maybe 20 or 30 cars. I have a small collection of cars right now. They're all very obscure, weird cars.

We gotta check in in 10 years. We'll have a conversation. We'll check in sooner than that.

Check in sooner than that, but that would be on the list. I still stick with those three that I listed.

On that note, where can everybody find you?

I do a lot on Instagram and Facebook, just Matt Latino across the board. Instagram is matt.latino, but if you put Matt Latino in, I'll be the first one to come up. Same thing on Instagram, or same thing on Facebook. You can follow on Facebook or just add me as a friend. I'll probably accept you. Matt Latino Racing is my website. If you're interested in the G-Sport products, I'll probably meet any of the High Performance Catalytic Converters. You can go on gsportbyjesse.com. My email, mlatino at gsi.us. But I'm most active on Instagram and Facebook, Matt Latino.

Sweet. Well, awesome. Thank you very much for coming on the show. I'm glad we made this finally happen.

Thanks for having me.

Everybody, thanks for listening, and we'll see you all next time.