212. Grid Life, Club TR, K24 Swaps, and What Racecars Really Costs w/ Mike Bryant & BJ Ragudo

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Monoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris, aka monoxide man of many automotive aspirations. And I am here finally doing a local episode. It's been a little while. I need to get back on that. But I'm here with somebody I've been playing, doing an episode for quite some time. Mike Bryant and then your good buddy BJ Ragu dough nailed it.

Like the pasta sauce. All right, we're good. All right. So we've been talking about doing this episode for it's got to be close to a year now. Half a year something like that. Like yeah. After you did the photo shoot for the car. Yeah. Which, yeah, that was like that was two years ago I think. Because I still have my canon back then.

Right? Yeah. No, you've done quite some stuff since then, especially when it comes to grid life. And then you got this. This is your build going on up here. Yep. So real quick, let's start with you. What's this car? How do we get here? And I guess what's this year's plans. Yeah. So it's a, it's a 2006 NC Miata that has a K 24 swap in it from Cape Power Industries, tuned by Rs Motors here in Lakeville.

And the the impetus for the car was really just supposed to be a way for me to start doing track days with my buddies. You know, I had an E90 335 at the time. That was street and track, and I had convinced my wife that ditching that for the track and getting a miata was going to be far cheaper.

And that was true for about three months. And so we started tracking it, just doing HPD local things with the two liter stock, two liter through some coilovers on it and whatnot, and we're having a lot of fun with it. We ended up doing some HPD events with Grid Life. We did a Road America event and a middle Hyo event, and I was convinced that I was just happy doing the HPD stuff.

You know, top down, still roll bar, but, you know, totally just chill vibes and enjoying it. And then we had a couple of other buddies, Ian Flavin who? Flavin, Ian Flavin who was getting into the time attack portion of grid life and convinced me to come try it. And the car just I mean it went completely downhill from there.

It went from a street car to this. I remember coming home one day and talking to my wife and me like I could keep it as it is, and it'll be a street car, and we can take it on date nights and have fun with it. Or I can go full race car with it, but we won't be able to do Dayton Hates and she goes, I don't want to take that for date nights anyways.

She's like, it messes up my hair when we're on the way. The convertible doesn't work. And I was like, okay, good. From that moment on, we're going full race car and we haven't looked back since. How long ago was this roughly? This would have been 2023 when things really started to go off the rails. Okay. Yeah. So three years later.

Yep. Things have changed drastically. Yeah. The the rules for club tr r two and a half leader and under with a few minor exceptions. But they've got to be sealed motors for the most part. So you're not allowed to do cams or anything. And at that point we had I had famously money shifted the two leader at Road America after doing, you know, a personal best, all excited and managed to blow that engine.

So that was a good reason to go to the ubiquitous 2.5l that everybody swaps into the NC, but without a set of cams, it's just a tractor motor. It's worthless. And I was going to try and run Grid Life. We did a couple of events with the two and a half leader with no cams, and actually did fairly well.

We did just well enough that I was like, we could maybe be competitive if this had the right engine. And sure enough, Ian convinced me he shared me a link that K power was coming out with the K 24 swap kit for the car, and it was like an immediate decision. Horrible decision because it's it's become my entire life and all of my money is gone.

But it's an amazing car now because of it. Yeah, it must have cost an arm and a leg. Exactly. Yep, yep. The price we pay. All right. And we'll get to your bill here in a second. But I'm curious what goes into that swap kit because, like, that's not I can't imagine that's an easy thing to pull off either.

It comes with a handful of things. So it does come with a handful of things. But the reality is from a size perspective, it fits in the engine bay beautifully. So it uses a V8 roadsters subframe. The original Miata subframe wouldn't have given enough room for the the oil pan, and the K 24 is a couple inches taller than the 2.5l, which is already about an inch or two taller than the two liter.

And so you're running out of clearance. So you use the V8 roadsters tubular subframe, or a modified RCS eight subframe to make it work. And from there, I mean, we're still using the Mazda engine mounts that they bolt right up. It's an adapter plate to the transmission, so it's still the NC transmission and you're pretty much good to go.

New harness and ECU okay. What is this something you did over like the course of like a weekend or something to do it yourself or somebody that's proficient with it. Definitely could. But at the time, you know K power was looking for ways to promote this. And I had reached out and there was Speed Academy that had used their kit and done a video about it, but nobody was competing with it.

And the NC is not a very loved chassis as of right now for competition type of events, right? Certainly in Grid Life Club TR, we had seen some NCS that were running in the in the C format, but nobody was really running them in the time attack stuff. And so we had talked and thought it would be a really good fit to have their kit swapped in and get it ready for Road America.

So they busted their hump once we got everything lined up. And within a week, you know, given all the other project cars they had had, I had dropped it off in Chicago, drove back down, picked it up that weekend and then drove down the road, Road America and ran an event with it. And then on the tuning side of things, are they doing all the tuning as well?

Or so we used. They had a base map that they've worked with all tech to set up. But now Ron Solomon from SES Motors is doing all the tuning local guy in Lakeville, but also prolific with the case series. He's doing some awesome stuff with an eight right now where he's got a K 24 swapped into it to an eight HP, and he just knows these engines, you know, in and out and has been able to extract, you know, as much out of it as we possibly can get.

Is this on a hall tech. It's a yeah. Hall tech 1500 oh 1500 okay. Cool. Yeah. So now I want to talk about your build because when I, when I asked Mike to do his podcast, initially it was going to be just me and him. And I was like, you know what? Like, do you want to have anybody co guest with you?

And then, you know, he threw your hat in the ring. So yeah. What's the story with this car and then so backdated I mean I've had the car since I was 18. Oh okay. Ever since 2021 or 20 20 or 2001. Jesus. 2017. This guy looks, yeah, rough for a 21 year old dating myself. But no, I've had it pretty much my whole life.

It's gone through a lot of iterations. It's been turbo, it's been on nitrous, it's been through hell and back on the same motor. I don't know, I was living out in New York for a few years. Wife, I mean, traveling back and forth, got back into racing because of these guys. They were like, oh, you should come out to these track days.

And I was like, it's a local, local event. So when Covid hit, I got the car back running again on the V6 and went out and, you know, had fun on track. And I was like, oh, everybody's doing this. So I was just like, hang out with my friends. So you got to tell people what it is because it's it's obscure, right?

Yeah, it's it's a K 24 swap 3G eclipse. Okay. I pretty much did everything. I did do everything to it. It's on a tech R3 and a how tech PDM did all the wiring besides the engine harness. I put a it's a right wire harness. It's super super easy slimline, but I don't know. Out of this garage I put the motor in welded all the mountain in.

That's cool. Yeah. He's fab up the exhaust. What you've done, you modified the header to make it work. Yeah. The header didn't fit too well, but he went through and he wired up the PDM like he's not talking about it. But you know I think it's like it's hard because like I see it as just another car that like I wanted to build.

And I just out of the garage like I'm not too much on social media stuff anyway. But I don't know, I ever since grid life happened in Ian freaking, you know, it's all time tech now. It's like everything for the past like three years everybody's been pushing and I'm like, I got to get my car done. I got to get my car done.

The only reason why I probably have my car done is because of these two. So. So how long was the car down for while you were working on it, or were you doing like in bursts and iterations? Well, I'll give you a situation. We went to Ginger man for my first time in tech session like event. I got back home and was like, I'm gonna pull the motor.

Since I got to stay in street class, I'm going to put a bigger engine in it and that's you can put a bigger engine as long as the same manufacturer, right? Okay, I did that, never finished it, stayed down for like a year and a half. And then we moved into this house and all of a sudden I was like, well, everybody's got a K20 for now.

So I was I switched, never finished my project, then went over and bought a 24 and trans and we decided to just go full out on it. We can't downplay how ridiculous this is. We literally had a phenomenal weekend at Ginger man. Yeah, short of beaching the car, everything went beautifully. We all brought the cars home in perfectly good running condition.

Yeah. And all of a sudden we were getting text messages that, yeah, I'm ripping the engine out. It's gone. I gotta, I gotta v6 from the minivan I'm putting in. We're like literally, literally. The next day I had the motor out and I was like, I just, I think I'm just going to do this. This is fine. I think I can do this within the next week to get ready for Brainerd.

Yeah. And didn't make Brainerd. This was not the end of the season. Yeah, it was at all. It was in the middle of the season. Right? Well, how long was this? This was the last year. Was the year before or it had to be 2023. Okay. Yeah. Right around when things went off the for you. Yeah. The next year he went off and he got a did the K 24.

And then that's where I was like well I mean I want to be competitive ish in a sense. Because if I were to like do anything else, I'd have to get a new chassis. I didn't really want to go to a new chassis. I've had this my whole life. I was like, I just want to keep it. Like, I don't think I'll ever get rid of it as much time as I'm like, oh, I'm going to get rid of it.

I don't really have the heart to. It's been in like I've had it for a long time. That's so sick to like. I love to hear stories like that because, like, not everybody keeps a car that long. Like, this thing will be gone in five years. Guaranteed. Zero chance. Right? Like, the longest I've kept the car, I think was 2 or 3 years.

But granted, like, you know, I'm only. I'm a young buck, so, I don't know. I'm starting to love this stupid thing, though, since I got the coilovers on, but I get that's like, it's cool to, like, go through those iterations. When did you first start modifying that? Literally 2001, 2001. Like the first year that we got it, I wanted, I think I took a loan from my cousin to buy an exhaust.

I was, I think I was 617 at the time, and I literally took the loan from my cousin and I was like, hey, let me borrow like $600. And he was like, fine, you gotta, you know, pay me back. But there's going to be there's going to be a little bit of interest. I was like, oh, cool, crazy.

I was like, cool. So you were ahead of the curve for Too Fast. You furious then? Oh yeah. You had 100% when that, when that came out, I was already like done. I'm going to do whatever they're doing on fashion. And I was like, it's just going that way. Back then it was cool to be like super loud and obnoxious and yeah, you know, cops wouldn't really bother you as much.

You're just like Tyrese. Exactly like Tyrese. That's true. Not bald. All right. And it's not a convertible. We'll get there.

So then. Okay, so now we're here today, then. Are you guys traveling all over the country together? Are you guys doing, you know, every single grid life event at this point? What does that look like? It kind of depends on the year. So Ian and I have been pretty committed to grid life and specifically in club TR because of how competitive it is.

Right. And it is phenomenal that it's a national series. So whether you do Watkins Glen or wrote at Lana or Ginger man, all of the points are worth the same, right? And they're all effectively championship points now. So it kind of incentivizes you to travel. And because of that, it also brings all of the best drivers from all of the individual regions.

Whereas with like SCCA or NASA, right. A lot of times you'll get the absolute killers that will kind of stay in that region, because that is where it counts towards the points, right, for that section. But with grid life, you know, everybody has kind of realized that all of the ax murderers are coming to grid life now. And club TR is a group that will field 27 to 30 cars on a consistent basis.

So that part beyond like you have this wide breadth of people to build some with. You also have the best level of competition to measure yourself up against. So we've gone pretty hard on traveling across the country, going out to Watkins Glen next weekend, for example. And already this year we've been to Carolina and wrote Atlanta and Michigan.

Okay. So it's it's pretty awesome. Club is the best class. And to me like you get a pretty good diversity of cars. So you've got a Mazda chassis, the BRC chassis and literally the three G chassis with the K 24 is going to be there. There's really only two engines that are competitive, but there's a wide array of charts.

So the competitive engines that's the K. And then what's that. The FA for Fayetteville. Yeah for 24. Yeah okay. Yep. Yeah okay. Are you still going to go to walk ins given your current condition just for moral support. Just for word. Okay. That's still cool. Is she going for that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say how long because like this is a these are manuals.

All of them. Right. Yes. Yeah. So at this point. How long do you start shifting with that again? The doctors have said for months we're going to try and push that down to three. We're going to try and do the Brainerd event, and then we're doing the Tire Rack Ultimate Track Card challenge down in Eagles Canyon in Texas.

That's in October. So the goal is right track down there. I can't remember who told me. I heard it was awesome. I've heard only good thing Scott Robertson spoke a lot of it as well. And so that is that's one that I definitely want to make. Okay. I think I mean, we're going to be completely outgunned. There's no classing for that event.

It's it's bring what you've got. And you know, we're going up against an 800 horsepower Pikes Peak car for example. So we've got no shot there. But it'll be cool to to try it. Yeah. How long has it been the injury, by the way? Like a month now. It has been five weeks. Five weeks. It's gonna be a good time to document this.

The comeback. That's a good point. This is that rocky cutscene. Build yourself up. Yeah. We've talked about. So the eight HP transmission that is common in you know what Jaguars, BMW Chryslers and Dodges and all that hot right now it is. And yeah. As of right now it's legal. And so we're like well you know maybe yeah dude that be wild.

There's no way to get it done in time. By the time we got that done I'd be back to being able to shift Emmanuel. So it's not going to happen. Yeah,

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yeah, that'd be a cool project sometime. Yeah. I'm seeing more and more companies are getting on that eight HP train, which is. Yeah, that's yeah, that's going to be cool.

I wonder because you know, I'm, I'm one of the guys that just loves the engagement of shifting the car. I love he he'll towing I love hitting the the downshift just right. That's a big piece to it. So I wonder if I'd lose a little bit of that if I was overrated. What's over in heel toe is overrated.

Now you got a health tech that does everything for you. Now you got a standalone that does everything for you. Now, I tried that, I had the auto blip on, I had I hated it, I hated it, really? Yeah. It takes a lot of the engagement out of driving it. Yeah. You know, and maybe I could have been faster, but I don't like it.

I'm still old school that way. It just depends like, you know, it's like there's nothing wrong with like a DCT, for example. Like. And I say that looking at my DSG right here, but like, but like kind of comes down to whatever you prefer, right. Like you don't want gets down so far into the sticks to where it's like you get so obsessed with being fast, you forget about having fun.

Yep. That's the whole reason you got into this in the first place. It was. And yeah, that's very easy to forget. I've forgotten it multiple times in the last couple of weeks alone. Yeah, I mean, it's still fun to beat the fastest and the best there ever was. An ever will be, right. That's also fun. But exactly. Yeah.

So talk about that as well. Because like you've had quite a few podiums as well. Right. We've had a couple of podiums. Yeah. And some very close. We were very close in middle hail I think about a 10th and a half from being on the podium there as well. The car struggles at big tracks because of the gearing, like one of the cool things about grid life and club as a whole is, you know, all of our competitors, even though we're trying to beat everybody, we're trying to beat everybody at the best.

And so we'll literally overlay data with our competitors on a consistent basis. I don't want to necessarily beat you by a second and a half when I know you're capable of, you know, going faster than that. I want to beat you. And when you go your fastest, so you've got no excuses, right? And one of the things that we found, like at Road Atlanta, for example, between turn seven and turn ten, so the long back straight, we were literally losing a second and a half.

And a big part of that is the the gear ratios. So we went to a 512 final drive ratio in the rear end to try and keep it in the higher rpm range. But we still haven't changed the actual gears themselves. And it's a five speed and they're just really long in between. So I say all that because the podiums have come at short tracks.

Audubon Country Club South, we took second place there and at Ginger man we took third place. And both of those places are somewhere that the cars don't really have an opportunity to stretch the legs a whole lot. So what, an eight hp solve that 100% and it would get banned immediately after. That's usually how it goes, right? You get a lead trophy is what it's called.

Yeah exactly. Yeah. It's like oh all the development costs. That's neat that you did that. You can't do it anymore. Yeah, yeah okay. So when it comes down to club TR then what are the rules like. Obviously you have a little bit of wiggle room but like is there certain like when we're talking transmissions. Is there some certain things that are just outlawed.

So debts are outlawed okay. You know sequential are out loud just straight across the board. Like you could not take my DSG. I think it's a it's a dual clutch. So yeah I'm not I'm not certain. Ian shaking his head. No at me. He's a rules lawyer right now so it sounds like. No, pull it up Jamie. Exactly.

Yeah. What have we got on there? So those things are not, And I think a big part of it is the barrier to entry for club, for the most part, is the engine restriction limit. So it's got to be a four cylinder, 2.5l or under. It can come from any different manufacturer. Like right. We put a Honda in the Mazda.

He's put in a Honda in the Mitsubishi. Okay. As long as it's two and a half leader and under, with a couple of exceptions like the 350 Z, the VQ out of the 350 Z can be run a couple of the BMW inline sixes that aren't from the cars can be run like the older ones, like the M50 and stuff like that.

Okay, yeah, they're trying to open it up to more because the K 24 has been dominant for so long in that class. That's really the biggest barrier. So dude, I, I don't envy anybody who has to deal with setting up rules for these events because it's a constant balance of power thing. Right? Seems like a freaking nightmare. Well, and how do you balance not even just from a performance perspective?

But as the class grows and you get more and more people that are interested and want to join, it's hilarious. Even in our own circle of friends, like people have cars that they already own, that they love, that they want to race, and it fits perfectly into the class. Except for this. You know, this one thing. Like, I need cams for my engine to be competitive, right?

You get enough of those kinds of people where, okay, you could grow the class pretty quickly if you opened it up to more options, but then you hurt the current guy, right? Like so like so you said cam cam upgrades are not allowed currently. Correct. So is there an example of somebody who would benefit immediately from that upgrade.

And then if that upgrade comes, does it hurt somebody else. So the 2.5l that everybody swaps in in the NC right would benefit greatly if they were able to run the more aggressive cams that are common in that engine swap. You know, most people don't just do the two half, two and a half and drop it in and let it run.

They put in a more aggressive cam profile into it as they put the engine in, and that livens it up to a wider RPM range and gets you some power up top as well, because they just it's hard to compete with the Vtec capability in the K 24. So that would open it up greatly. But then if you open up cams to it, well then I'm going to put a cam in the K 24 and still stomp you okay.

Right. That's that's a huge thing. You put a cam in the K20 for. It's totally totally different story. Frankly it's the afterburner one I don't know if you guys if it was like you can only use factory stuff with factory stuff, right. Like take it from a different motor and put a factory cabinet. And some people do that, but they they still don't allow you to do things like that.

Right? You know, that's one of the rules you have to stick with. Everything has got to be closed. So the FAA 24 and Ian's car, you know, that's the same story. You open that up and allow them to do cams. And now that engine, they've gotten to pretty much parity with the K 24. And the way that they've changed the rules through, the other balance of power that they do a lot is required minimum weight.

So they've lowered the required minimum weight for the fatwa 24. And that has, you know, brought it in line. And now you've got guys in the FA 24 that are competing really closely in the Championship with guys that are K swapped. But again, you would literally have to write the rules so that cams are allowed in this engine but not this one.

And that gets really complex then. Right. But I think it comes down to that word. You said parity like that's the end goal is like you don't want the car to be the fastest. You want the driver to be the fastest, that kind of goal. So I agree with you completely. I don't know, making a statement, asking a question, Harris said.

No, the the question is, is that what time attack is about? Because time attack is not necessarily just about the driver, right? A lot of it is about the build. There are classes that I think are more suited or more focused on. The driver. Sunday Cup, for example, for a long time felt more like it was driver based.

But even now, you see, as that class evolves, the guys that are building the Honda Civic are starting to really come out on top cars with lower center of gravity. I think in the nature of time attack, it's it's always going to be a combination of driver and builder, which is rough for me because I'm I'm not a builder by any means.

I don't know what I'm doing. That's classes are still weird and that because there's an extreme class to right. Or some sort of extreme class in grid life. Yeah, there's there's unlimited. Yeah. That class is insane. That f****** Corvette, dude. Which one? Well, the one we. The one that's been going viral. Right, right. What's the what's the other one I'm thinking about?

So C7 is the one I'm thinking about. Yes. Ferris. Gautami kind of set the stage. Does he do grid life? He used to. He used to. Yeah. Yeah, that's where he kind of cut his teeth. And now he's doing, like, the world time attack stuff. Yeah, going over to Australia and whatnot. He just wants to break work records.

That's all he wants to do everywhere. Yeah, I mean he he really did. He dominated grid life to a point where nobody could touch him. Okay. I guess I never knew that he did that because I only started following him like two years ago, which was when he probably made the jump as my guess. Right? Yep. Yeah.

So he was, you know, dusting everybody in unlimited before that in good life. Yeah. I think a club is also like one of the only, you know, areas that you can actually build a car. You go to, you know, street class. You can't do anything with them really. You can't put arrow, you can't put a wing, you can't, you know, there's only certain mods you can do.

And then from there it just gets even wilder. Like we start stepping up until realm that starts to get really hard to like, be in. Unless you're going to dump a lot of money or make a lot of horsepower. That's kind of thing. When you get into that unlimited area, like it gets really expensive. Like, I mean, granted, this isn't exactly cheap either, but no, but at least then you can have people that want to build their car the way they want to build their car.

Yeah. You know, you get a lot more flexibility to do things with it. Like we can have gutted interiors. We, you know, we can cut out, wait in certain areas, you know, having a wing, having a splitter, things like that, you know, makes club TR just more appealing to like, you know, person that likes the mod. Ricard.

Yeah. You had asked about the class rules and like BJ said, it's pretty open, right? So you're the four cylinder 2.5l and under. Let's just go with that route. And then the arrow restrictions are really around the size of things. Right. So your splitter profile, it's got to be three inches from the front leading edge. Right. And it can be shorter than that if you want it to be.

But it can't be any. Everything matters. Exactly. Yeah. That's what my wife says. She's great. And that the the wing has a certain chord length that it can be as well. So you're within your length combined. Right. Has a certain limitation there. Outside of that, you know, the rules. Are they as a class evolves are kind of opening up more and more.

At one time you needed to have an interior that's gone now so you can cut the interior, whatever you really need to do to get to the minimum weight of the class, depending on the engine that you've got in the car, is going to determine, you know, what you're able to do with the car, and it gives you that free rein short of cutting structural things that are safety related.

That's where things get weird. Again, it is. And, you know, club is like I said, it's ax murderers and it's full of people that are trying to find every edge. And so we've seen folks cutting some things that will make, you know, make a safety inspection. Yeah. What about when it comes to power to weight ratio? Is that a thing?

Because I know a like that's like within certain classes. That's kind of the well SEC and NASA both. That's what I was saying about they've they're effectively power to weight. And then they've got modifiers right within the class. So you aim for a power to weight. And then depending on the tire you're running the size and all that kind of stuff, you'll add or remove power to your equation.

Grid life is not like that for club TR, okay? It's not power to weight whatever somebody can squeeze out of a stock internal K20 for, they can do so. You know you see front wheel drive guys that are doing 230 to 240, right. With less drive train loss because of the front wheel drive. That's totally okay. And so whatever you can do to get to minimum weight and whatever power you can squeeze out of it, free reign.

Everybody can use spherical bearings if they really wanted to it. And I know in Nassau you take a big hit if you go spherical versus poly or right stock. Well, heck, I would take a penalty just for being double a arm double in NASA. Okay. Yep. Yeah. That's one thing that's kind of weird. Like you can't really compete in all three of those together.

There's there's ways to do it, but to max yourself out in each class is really hard. Yeah. Yeah. To actually be optimal. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Which. Yeah. You and even be able to make all the dates in the same way. That's why you don't see a lot of people doing, you know, two different events or two different, you know, NASA or grid life or SCCA and NASA.

I guess those two, in a sense, could kind of work together because they kind of got the same rule sets, right? Yeah, but there's rarely anybody that's doing grid life in another, at least that I know of from the most part. What I have seen is folks come over from NASA or SEC into grid life, and a handful of them have have done really well.

And I think a lot of people get shocked at the degree of competition that they're actually experiencing at a grid life event. It's like, that's awesome that you're kicking butt, you know, all up and down the East Coast kind of thing, or all up and down the West Coast. And then these grid life goons come in and slap the track record down, and it's it's just wild.

That's one of the things that Pirro told me. Are you guys all right? Yeah. Yeah. I think it was a year, two years ago. Like I was telling him about my buddy who was doing NASA. He's like, all right. Tell him to come to grid life. Yeah, 100%. You know, Eric Magnusson is one in the sphere that had come over from NASA and is doing phenomenal in in grid life in Time Attack.

It's not something that I see very often. I think they can get there. And it's not to say that they don't have phenomenal drivers in those classes, but there's one thing to, I think when you're dominating in another organization, there's not a whole lot of impetus to continue developing the car and finding that last 1% when you're already on top and then you come into grid life.

And these guys have been developing the cars to the absolute bleeding edge for the last 5 or 6 years and building it to the grid life requirements. Right. So that's a little bit of a sticker shock, if you will. Maybe that's not the right term, but yeah, you've come over now. And now it's time to start building to that 1% of grid life if you want to be battling.

Okay, so speaking of building, then where are we at with you then? When do we start seeing you? Are you do you have intentions on competing, wheel to wheel and all that? We'll we'll know. Okay. Time attack for sure. I just, I probably could get in the wheel to wheel. I just the bearing entry for wheel. The wheels crazy.

Like you just never know when you're going to hit somebody. You never know when someone's going to, you know, draft you in accidentally, you know, give you that last push going in the corner. You just don't know when something like that's going to happen and it's bound to happen. You're talking will the wheel right. Your car is going to get bashed pretty hard.

I see myself as more doing the time attack stuff, doing stuff wherever these guys go, pretty much. I want to just be there in some capacity. Yeah. Sounds like you're going to be doing wheel to wheel pretty soon then. I'm not. I'm not being in here or you. So if you guys are doing that, I mean, I still go out and probably do grid life anyway because me and my wife already talked about it, where whether or not what you guys do are probably still at least go to 1 or 2 events.

Yeah, and I'm hoping to start that next year. At least get the full season in next year. This year, our September probably be the first time I have it on track is okay. Is there anything left to do? I just need Rhonda tune it and okay, there's always something to do. But yeah, there's always there's like small things to do, but it's track ready.

It's. I've been driving around the neighborhood and causing a ruckus, but you know, it's going to be so cool to see that thing on track. Like, that's that's another thing that I love about this class is from RSX. You know, you see the common integrals. Burks are huge in it. Right. And you're seeing more Miata. But like you get really cool builds.

Like when was the last time you saw a 3G on a racetrack? Never. No one no one ever wants to see those. Let's just be real. Tyrese did not make those any cooler than they really were. Everybody is going to flock around that car. It is so weird. Yeah, because most people always say like, why did you put so much money into this when you could have just bought a different chassis?

That's literally what it is. I mean, I took a lot of time and effort to do this, but I probably could have done it in half the time if I were to have gotten a chassis that's already been proven right. Sure, I could for the fun of it. Yeah, and that's the thing. It's that's what makes Clubcard really, I think, appealing.

You can have those opportunities to go do something really, really crazy. Whether or not you're going to be like, super competitive is a different story. That might take you a few, you know, a few years. But you once you are competitive, it's really cool. Yeah, yeah. You convinced me. I might get one now. It'll cost you $200. Yeah, I think my dad.

I know he didn't get a 3G. What's the other generation? Two. What? I think it was a 2G. Yeah, yeah, that was the Fast and Furious right there. Yeah. He was the beginning. Was it. It was a 2G wasn't he. Got like 800 bucks. Stopped running after two days. Yeah. That sounds like that's why he first moved to the country and everything.

Oh it was rough. Yeah, that sounds like that's what. Yeah. And then. So. Okay, break this down then, because I'm actually not familiar here is club tr a class both in time attack and in wheel to wheel. Or is it just a wheel to wheel thing? It's just time and time. Just time attack. Okay, what's the cause?

There's a wheel to wheel version of it too, right? GLC is the closest thing, okay? And that is power to weight. So a lot of people, you know, kind of if they're going to go wheel to wheel and they're going to go into glitzy, you'll have seen some time attack folks make the leap from club to to talk.

Gotcha. Because the the cars are very, very similar. Their power to weight is 12.5 to 1. Yeah okay. So 12.5 to 1 and ours are a little bit better than that. You know we're closer probably to the 11 to 1. But the chassis are very similar. Wheels and tires sizes are pretty consistent right. It just carries over really well.

You can throw a cage in a club car and go race glitzy the next weekend. Okay. Gotcha. And then you guys were laughing about that a second ago. Is that what the next intention? It has never been mine. But it's Ian's. Ian's intention is. And goal has always been to go to wheel to wheel to deal. Specifically, I'm kind of on the same line that BJ is where I love this car, and even though it's a silly NC, I don't want to see it get banged up.

And no matter how clean you are and grid life, you know, pushes real heavily that they want to focus on clean racing first things still happen. Oh yeah, and I don't want to do that. But you know, we've been talking about the endurance racing aspect and that would be with a different car in a different chassis. And that to me is pretty attractive.

It's not that I don't want to wheel a wheel, I just don't want to bang up this car. So endurance racing would be still wheel to wheel technically though, just over a longer. Yeah, right. Exactly. A little less risky. You would think so, but I think, you know, once you put race car drivers in an ego. Yeah, I think egos and red miss take over really heavily.

Even if you're in an eight hour race, you know, it's probably really hard to tell the driver in the moment to back off. Right. I'm sure I'm sure that mentality carries over more, but it's still wheel to wheel. Yeah, that makes sense. That's I'm curious. Okay. So let's say I want to get into what did you hit that I hit the mic.

Did you finally have the like. It only took 40 minutes. Almost. Not bad, not bad. All right. So I'm not sure how familiar you are with my ambitions, but at some point I do want to get a GR 86 off of Ko part. That's that's. We're finally almost getting there financially to pull the trigger. It's okay. It's been a f****** journey, that's for sure.

But all right, after, let's say I get it back to where it needs to be. How long realistically, until I could be on track, let's say doing the time attack stuff. Two years. You could literally just go take it really right off the bat and just go. It doesn't matter. It just it depends on like, how competitive do you really want to be?

Like, oh, I want to be trash the first however long. Yeah. So then don't have expectations and put the car in the chance to, you know, be at the top. Well the main focus a lot of people don't understand is like take what you have, you don't need to put a lot of money into it, go out and actually be on track with people because you'll learn a lot more from being on track versus just like, I need to have these tires, I need to have this, you know, suspension right away.

You know, everybody gets stuck in those situations where I had to tell myself, stop telling myself that I need to buy all this stuff before I go on track. Like there's things I want to do, but I don't need them. There's no point. I can just be on track right away. I think what people see outside looking in, right, is you look at this car now and it looks like a totally track prep race car, and people's inclination is, okay, I need that.

Like that's what is required for me to go on track, right? But there are so many avenues into this hobby that track Night in America does track night in America is locally everywhere. That's this weekend, isn't it? I think there's one I need to register. I've seen Dodge Durango out there and man, do I applaud that, right? Because the reality is you're going to suck at driving on track the first time you get out there, you get information overload.

And it's the little things, like the things that don't translate from street driving. You pull up to a stop sign, you lift off the throttle right, and then you don't realize how long it is before you actually start pressing the brakes, and you start pressing the brakes gradually. Right? 99% of people, when they go out on the racetrack, they treat the track the same way.

They'll come up to a corner, they start lifting off real easy. They get easy onto the brakes, or they maybe they get nervous and they stab the brakes and just lean into it. Right. It's little things like that that you learn whether you're in this or a minivan, those kind of mechanics. And as you are looking at getting on track and getting started, the only thing you need is track set of brake pads and brake fluid.

And that's just for safety. That's not for performance. Yeah. It's so that you don't boil it going into a corner. Yes. The reality is that will also highlight it'll it'll sink in really, really quickly. And it takes away your desire to compare yourself to other cars and other laps out there. You get your car out there. Once you get the the grade six, throw some pads on it, go out there and start having fun.

And you only compare yourself to yourself, not to others. And that's where the hobby really takes hold. I realized I have no future in this when I got on the sim with Dana Basinski. Oh, God. Oh, wow. Wow. Good call. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I like, like, because, like, depending on the track. Right? Like, me and Pirro sometimes would be close.

Usually he's still faster than me, you know, by, let's call it half a second or a second. And we got f****** Dana. He's like three seconds ahead of both of us. And I'm like, yeah, there's nothing here. We did for a couple of years we did a winter sim league and I was just frankly, I was kicking a**.

I was doing really, really well. Then we invited Dana. I was like, son of a b****. And I got to the point where, like, Dana and I, you know, I can I can keep up with him. If I put a lot of the practice in. And what I never realized, I ended up calling him and asking like, dude, what are you doing?

How are you going so fast? Because SIM doesn't perfectly translate to to real life, right? And I'm competitive in real life. We get in the sim, I thought I was good, it's just hours. It's just time. It's like anything, right? It's repetition. Now he is a naturally very fast driver, but he also puts a ton of time into that as well.

And it would be the same if you put, you know, 20 hours a week into the sim, you're going to get really good at the SIM too. And the same goes for for track driving as well. The other beautiful, beautiful thing about going out there with a effectively stock car. I mean, that's how I started with this, right?

I literally threw a set of coil loaders on it and went out on track. And it is you learn the fundamentals so much faster. When the car doesn't have aero, it doesn't have super wide, super sticky tires because all those things can cover up what, what mistakes you're making or the things that are holding you back. So yeah.

So how long have you guys been doing track days together now?

Gosh, I think I think it was 2019 when I started with the, the BMW just going out to track night in America at Dakota County Tech and then did a Brainerd event with it. And then it was 2021 when I got the Miata. Okay. What's 2021? Yeah. When you're in KCS garage. Yeah. Holy crap. Wow. I didn't realize it was that long.

Honestly, that might have been 2022 by the time that came around. Because at that point, yeah, it probably was because at that point we were taking we were using dry ice to take out the sound deadening. Yeah. So that was after the conversation with Rachel of like, I don't want to take it on date nights. I bet she regrets that comment.

I bet she really does. Yeah, she probably should have said that because we'd be way better off financially. Hey, what a poor, poor money into some type of hobby. Yeah. What would you do instead? Golf. Oh, no. God, no guns probably. I'm sorry. I've got a lot of friends at golf. I, I can't, I can't. No, I've tried it, man.

I do not have the mental fortitude to golf. My wife's probably shaking her head at me right now because I got too many hobbies. I go in and out from hobby to hobby at, like, every single year. So yeah, I know that's what I'm reminded myself of doing is like, just stick to one thing because, like, that's the problem.

Minnesota, right? Like you have people that have winter hobbies and they have both hobbies and they have car. That's why we don't have as many car people here. Do you have all these hobbies? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean your your off season is supposed to be still a car hobby. That's, that's when you prep everything. That's when you build everything.

But then it's still cold out in the garage. You don't want to go out there. Do you have a heater out here? Not yet. Not yet. I will in at some point soon because I got a new hobby installing heaters. Yeah, it's the it's low on the totem pole right now. I don't know, maybe this probably this end of this year.

Try to get it in before winter time. Yeah. It's so nice. Like, does it like our new house has, like a heater and it's like, oh, it's worth it. It's it makes life so much better. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to sell you on doing it, like, ASAP. I think you would have had a heater in here earlier. I probably would have had this card on.

Oh, I'm sure of it a lot quicker. You're just more reasons. Yeah. Let's go to Home Depot. I'll just pause this around Home Depot real quick, Mr. Heater. Oh, oh, we're gonna build splitters now. Heater and AC, you know, dude, that's a mini split, man. AC is asking for too much. Here's the problem I have with some bougie s***.

AC is cool. Like in theory, it's really cool to, like, want to have. But if you're a person that likes to have your garage open and like see sunlight and you know, not just have your garage closed the whole entire time and AC unit sucks because you have to have it closed. You got to be enclosed the whole entire time.

Yeah, the heater is necessary because it takes away the, you know, one month prep to race season. All of a sudden it's like, I have all these plans, all these things that we're going to do to the car in the off season, right. Because every year you kind of you hone in on where the next stage of development is like, this is the weak point for us right now.

It's the transmission, right? And, you know, our season is effectively done in September or October unless we're going across the other side of the country. So you think you have all this time to get ready between October and April, but everything happens at the end of February, like, right. Because that's where it's finally getting the push. Literally. March is like, hey, did you get it done?

Hey, so when the weekend that we're going to do this, hey, are you ready for the event in April? And it's usually no, no. Yeah. And everybody usually scrounge to get everything done. It's that's the hard part. It turns into why you don't do it until you need to do it sort of thing. Right. Yeah. Literally. Well there's so many I mean so like with road course.

Right? There's so many aspects to it. It's just as important to make horsepower and torque as it is to make sure that the car is well balanced. You can't skimp on one aspect or the other. You can't focus just on straight line speed, right? If it means that the balance of the car, the car is too heavy and you can't make it through the corners at the same side of it is, you know this.

The NC is phenomenal. Through the corners. Our minimum min speeds are right at the top with everybody. You know, that's why Audubon and Ginger is so good for us is because the car is so well balanced and so light and nimble. But in order to be at the very top now, we need to make sure that we've got the gearing right.

The gearing has to be just right so that we maintain the torque and the right rpm range, and we keep the K 24 kind of strung out, right? We can't be dropping down to 3500 rpm. So all of those things have to come together. And that's what makes it really hard, is when you try and compress your development into 1 or 2 months, and you have so many aspects to try and solve for.

That's where you know the growth ends up happening. I think, at least in the Midwest over a five year time period, that in finance is alone. I mean, it's it's a tall order to come in and build a competitive race car from zero. Right? I think the guys that have that kind of money, to be perfectly honest, are probably racing like GT3 cars, you know, not me out as.

Yeah, because this took several years to get to this point. It did. Yeah. And it took. So it's a little unique. So it's taken several years right. So we kind of started going real deep in 2022. And we're you know midway through 2026. But the reality is. I did make a pretty big jump in 2024. Oh you were in Powerball winner.

Yeah. Cut this right now Rachel know about that. Yeah. The the the jump to throwing the K20 four into it also came with lightning. The car going with you know big arrow and that kind of thing and really trying to to delve into it. I mean we were with a 2.5l and, you know, no front splitter or anything like that.

It was hilarious. We're at Mid-Ohio and looking at the timing sheets and still do an PD, and I'm like, man, my lap times would have put me at like 12. Like, that's that's pretty cool. That's pretty awesome. You know? And I was telling Ian, like, I don't need to be competing or anything because I can look at my lap times and look at what you guys did, and I can be happy.

And he convinced me to try it. And suddenly it's like, okay, well, if I throw a wing on and I throw a front splitter on, oh 12 goes to 10th, right? And now if I put wider wheels on and I lighten the car now 10th can maybe, maybe I can squeeze into eighth even. And it's like all of this progression happen so fast and then it's okay.

So we'll throw the K 24 in it and we'll be top five like no problem. Right. Obviously. So we throw the K 24 into it. Sure. S***. All right. We're we're talking top five. We're in the podium sprint now. You know we're televised. We're on YouTube. Like honing in on the car. This is awesome. It's like okay now what have we got to do to get to first place?

It's like all the big things, all the low hanging fruit now has been done, and all that's left is the really expensive s***. Like developing a way to swap an eight hp in right would be a huge cost. Or the other thing that we're thinking about, you know, other solutions, they're all uncharted territory. And that's where all the money is.

And that's the thing that you don't see from the outside. It's like, yeah, you're that close to being competitive. And as soon as you get within that 1%, every dollar that you spent now that's all going to get doubled to chase that last 10th of a second. Yeah, I heard like I can't remember at what point. But it gets to like $100 per pound or whatever.

Like trying to shave like ridiculous weight. Like yeah. What does this way, by the way, this is around 22, 50 or so without me in it. Okay. You throw my fat a** in it and it's right at 2550. I know, fishing for that compliment. Yeah, but yeah, you're right at 2550, like, this is and that's, that's our required minimum weight for the class.

So it's literally about now it's managing how much fuel we have before we go out on track. Because that's going to determine how how many gallons we use. And when we come off track, if you're in that top five area, you get impounded right away. They'll bring you in. If you break any record or anything of that nature, they'll make sure you are following the class rules.

They'll put you on the scales. So if you ran through too much fuel, right, I could literally be a pound under the required minimum weight if I went through too much fuel. So I mean, that's how close we're trying to get

setup wise then. So let's talk South Carolina, for example. Did you have a lot of runs out there? Yeah. I mean, it was the first time I've ever been to that track. That's one of the unique parts. But so we get 6 to 7 sessions in a weekend.

And with the way that we're set up, you are fighting in good life. You're using those first 6 or 7 sessions to earn yourself a top five spot into the podium sprint. So when everybody else is done on Sunday morning, the top five guys then go in one last shootout, basically where everybody's out on track, spread out by about ten, 15 seconds or so, and whatever has happened through the rest of the weekend, whatever lap times been put down does not matter.

It's the podium sprint lay it down on it counts. That's going to determine the first through fifth finishing position. So if you get in a podium sprint you basically get eight sessions. If you don't, you're basically getting seven sessions. And depending on the track size, you're talking maybe 6 to 7 laps on a consistent basis. Okay. That's for the entire weekend, 6 to 7 laps per session.

So about 36, 42 laps is what you can probably expect if nothing goes wrong. Yeah, I was going to say that you can probably cut that in like three fourths of that. Okay. CMP going into turn four I rip my shifter out. So I'm going to downshift into fourth hand, goes off the wheel and my hand just goes forward.

And the shifters like right here. And I'm like, I make sure I make the corner. And then I just kind of look back at it dumbfounded a couple of times because I'm like, what has just happened? The bolt had backed out, you know, KS rattle, they vibrate like crazy. The bolt had backed out and it was not on my list of things to check.

And so it pulled it off. So that session ended up with two laps, you know, instead of the 6 or 7. So things like that happen. Aim for the bushes. There you go. Yep. That's great. Like you're talking about like that holds it into the shifter fork. Right. Yeah. Well, yeah. So it's an early shifter. And so you've got the, the actual turret mechanism, and then the turret mechanism pulls up and then the shifter kind of just seats right into that.

And it's held in with a bolt into a ball bearing. Yeah. That bolt backed out. And I didn't realize I was like, man, it's not really going into third very well. But you know, screw it. I got other things to focus on. Right. So I'll just be a little bit more ginger on the clutch. Well, I wasn't going into third because it was shaking.

So okay. So then that's the weekend where you have the only reason I asked about this, because like for example, we went to Optima Streetcar Challenge and it's like my buddy had like I think five laps the whole weekend or something crazy like that. Yeah. Is that autocross? Well, so it's like, well, so they have, autocross road course, the stop box, and then there's like another fourth challenge or whatever.

But when it came to like the road course particularly, I think it was like, I think he only got like four laps that that weekend. It's hard to learn a track in four laps. Yeah. Really is. No. Yeah, 100%. It's like, yeah, you can only compare so much. Yeah. Whereas that okay. So it's way more than that then it is.

But man it doesn't feel like it when you're when you're in it. Like his first time out at Ginger man. You know it. It's there's no amount of laps that really feel like you get a chance to learn it quickly. And so a big part of competing in Time Attack, when you're doing it on a national level is how quickly can you adapt.

You have to know your car really, really well and how it behaves, but every corner is a little bit different. One of the things you learn how to do is take a corner that you're familiar with, from a track that you've been to numerous times, and apply how that corner feels to somewhere new that you're learning. Sure. So maybe your approach is the same, but even when you're talking, you know, so you're our goal is to get into that podium sprint session.

You've got 6 or 7 sessions to do it, but this is time attack, right? So the reality is you're fastest time is what's getting in, getting you into there. And the fastest time is going to be highly dependent on track conditions. Early mornings when the track is cool and the car is making more power because the air is colder and denser, it's going to be your best shot at laying down those laps, so it behooves you to know the track really, really well.

So right away on Friday morning, you can lay down a burner and a lot of guys progress throughout the weekend and get faster. And the hard thing is, is like, yes, you are driving faster, you're driving the track better, you're driving your car back better, but your lap times might not be improving at the rate that you think they should be.

And that's simply because the track degradation isn't as good, or the temperatures have gone up and the car is not making as much power. And so while it feels like you've got all this time to learn the track and become competitive, the reality is it's held to basically two sessions Friday morning, Saturday morning, and if you're lucky, Sunday morning.

But then that's your last shot at laying it down. And everything comes down to how the track or what the weather is. That's a big portion of it. Yeah. Because like when we were down in South Carolina, like I think it just kept getting hotter throughout the weekend, I think. Yeah, right. Keeps getting hotter. Right. Gets greasy and and I mean, what does that mean.

Like, yeah. The track surface is literally getting grease here. Yeah. It just gets more slippery. It's a lot more heat. You you can maybe get like two really good laps, right in the very beginning before your tires get real heat soaked. Yeah, that's another big part of it. Archie, 660 is really good when they're cold right out of the gate, and they're phenomenal when they're fresh sticker tires.

So we talk about it in heat cycles, right? Your heat cycles, the number of times you've basically been out on track, gotten them up to full temperature, right. And run them through their their tire pressure across the tire. Right. So that'll be one heat cycle. And these tires there are 200 Treadway tires. So that is you know a more aggressive street tired still considered a street tire.

But the reality is they're super soft. And that softness goes away as the compound heats up and cools, right. Changes the the molecular structure of the tire. And so the early sets, the early heat cycles are your absolute fastest. And once with the six 60s, once you're past six heat cycles, you're not on a competitive tire anymore. You can lay down a mid-tier kind of level.

They're great for learning still, because there's enough grip to feel the car and feel confident. But it's not going to be as fast as the sticker tire up to maybe a second a lap. Okay. So that's a big part of it. As drifters go out there, they lay down more rubber on the the track. Right. And it's not even necessarily about the dirt that they might lay down to.

And this is something that's relatively unique to good life because they run active drift sessions in the weekend on the big track that we're actually competing on as well. And when you lay down more rubber on and off the line, as the track heats up, moisture builds up. When the moisture builds up on top of that rubber that's laid in, that's when the track starts to lose its grip.

Because the best part is, and you'll see this in like formula one, right? They'll talk about the the track evolving over time. You actually do want a layer of rubber on the track, because the rubber from the tire sticks to that track rubber even better and gives you a really good grip right up until a level of moisture builds up on it, and then it becomes more slick.

Now you don't have the the abrasiveness of the tar and of the road surface. And so that's where you'll just see lap times naturally come down to. By the way, I think that's the best way anybody's explained it on this show. Like beginning to end. Sweet. Like thank you. I'm just saying like sounds like my clear, concise, well thought out.

Cool. Yeah. Thanks. Here's your blue star. Little star. Yeah. Oh, my God, I was just watching The Dictator the other day. It's like, what did he call him? It was like you're the sheriff of Celebrity Douche Town or something like that. Like, I can't remember what it was nice. That was like one of my, like, go to, like, this is a good movie.

One of the greatest there ever was. Never making like that again. They just won't. Well, he's he's making a new Ali G movie or something. No way. That's why I did not verify it. My brother told me, though, and he's usually pretty good about verifying stuff. Yeah, that was his OG character, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, that was that was a good one.

Yeah. So then are you guys all running six, six, six, six, six seconds across the board? Yeah, that's actually the tire that in clubs here. It's what that's the territory got to use. They also had a big trailer over there that's super helpful. You'd think so. It's not it's not. No no no. So yeah it's a Sunday Cup and club TR spectator.

It's it's yeah. You have to run Falcons. You have to run a Falcon 200 tread where. So Falcon technically they make a couple of different ones. They've got like a 510 and a 615 K or something like that. Those are we use those for rain tires. But when it comes to overall performance yeah the 660 plus is your only option from a competitive standpoint.

Okay. And yeah, they don't help us a lot on that. No shout out to Falcon. Is it restricted to just that tire for the event to then or no. How do you mean like is that the only tired it's allowed to be on property that we can. No no no no, that's just for our class. Gotcha. Yeah.

See guys they they don't have that restriction. You know, any other class? Unlimited. For example, I thought they were on 660. Now they are because it's fastest. Oh yeah. They qualify on them because it's it's the 660 plus is a phenomenal tire for the first few heat cycles. Like it is super grippy really compliant. Speaks to you. Well like literally the sounds that you make and the way that you can feel the grip come and go.

It's I love the tire. It just doesn't last right at all. The amount of tread that we still have on the used tires, which is phenomenal for HPD guys. Right? Or anybody that's not competing that doesn't care at that level, because the amount of tire life that's left is huge, but the heat cycle is gone from a competitive standpoint.

And yeah, that's that's our really our only option to run that. It almost kind of makes sense. Like if we bring it back to my perspective, which is like full on novice, not a bad tire to get as a takeoff maybe. Oh, absolutely. You should be looking for that all day long because we'll sell them for dirt cheap to.

Yeah okay. What size you running around? 255 I've got a set of 245 1717. Yeah. Damn f****** 18. I need to give me a takeoff. Supplier. Dude, there's there's a lot of guys that run 18 in the class, and so I can definitely get you hooked up for that because it is it's a great way to do it.

And we're happy because then that helps pay for the next set of stickers. Yeah. Right. Yep. So the way that we normally go about it is we'll run a set of stickers for the weekend, and you use those for that Friday morning session or the Saturday or Sunday depending on, oh, interesting. If you need to get into podium sprint.

And then if you are confidently into podium sprint, you'll see guys throw stickers on. Or maybe they bring two sets of stickers and they'll run that in the podium sprint. Or it is. And then the rest of the weekend we're using the heat cycle tires. Are you are you changing all four? Are you okay? So it's not just like you're doing the rears or just fronts.

Front wheel drive guys. You'll see. Just do the fronts. Yeah. And then they'll run the rears is just you know, they're basically shopping cart things. You really wanted to get it to rotate. You don't want it to over rotate obviously. But the rears are just there for the ride. So do you do you think you'll go to would you use a more worn tire in the rear just to create that rotation more and keep it?

Depends on how it feels. Okay. Really, I don't know if that's something that I would feel comfortable because as a novice driver, it's like you're taking it to another extreme to get it to rotate. Got it. You know, it's very scary driving from the car. Yeah. It's weird. Is there a lot of front wheel drive guys out there?

There. There are a lot of front wheel drive cars. There's a lot of them, but there's only like three super competitive because there's one accord that's like, isn't accord really? Eric Cattell is building an accord right now for GLG. Oh yeah, GLBT, I believe, and he's got a civic that he runs in GLBT. Okay. And yeah, yeah, Ian Ian is miming over there at me.

What they do, what the front wheel drive guys do is run a narrower rear tire to manage that level of grip, so that the rear end will rotate. Yeah. So otherwise in collector, it's I mean, there's not that many people that are formula drive that are super competitive besides Mario. And yeah, we've got a running joke in the club to chat that front wheel drive is just so much easier to drive than rear wheel drive.

It's a running joke because it's it's clearly not true because club TR is it's a fantastic platform for these front wheel drive cars. And the positives of them are that, you know, they have less drivetrain loss, so the power from your engine is communicated to your wheels more efficiently. So whereas we all have the same engine, call a spec engine if you will, right?

And all things being equal, if you make 240 on the dyno and a front wheel drive car, you know what you're going to see in your rear wheel drive cars. Maybe a 13% loss on that, right? So they're 240 is going to be closer to our 225 or 230. And in a time attack setting, that's a big benefit, especially at a big track.

You know, you don't see a lot of front wheel drive race cars. You know, in road racing a whole lot is certainly a bunch of prolific racers like Peter Cunningham has been famous for running front wheel drive and tigers and whatnot, but they have the the counter benefit or the the counter to that benefit is that the front wheels are doing all of the work.

Right, right. And so you'd think they'd wear out faster and they do. And then you have a lot more understeer because of that. And so when we talk about making the rear end rotate, it's about setting up the car to frankly, what is probably a wicked dangerous level. Like the cars are just on a knife edge because you've got to get the car to rotate for the corner, but then you don't have the same degree of control that you have in a rear wheel drive car to manage the throttle, to control your angle.

And so they set the cars up really crazy in order to make that work. And that's why we we have the joke that, you know, it's easier to drive, but by a long shot it's not. It's so different. Like, because I for the last four years I've only had front wheel drive in the last car I was making twice the stock horsepower.

So it was it was doing it. But yeah, understeer was a serious I remember the first. So my last car, my white car, the Mark seven, I actually did a YouTube video on it. I think it was almost five years ago now with the previous owner when he had, you know, stage one, whatever it was, I love that.

Yeah. Euro stuff. Yeah. It was making like 220 horsepower at a time. Like it was just barely more than stock. And I in the video, like, I almost understood it into a tree. Oh, my God. Like, I was ripping it. And then, you know, fast forward a year from there. I actually ended up buying it. At that point I was making I think it was three.

No. Yeah. It was 340 horsepower and three 90ft pounds. That's wild. Yeah. In a front wheel drive car. Well, yeah. Because now. So now even, you know, from a drag racing perspective, we're on the street, right? Even the physics are not there to help you. Right. Because you go to accelerate. And whether it's front wheel drive, we will drive or all wheel drive.

The car wants to squat, right. The rear end wants to lower is the front end lifts. But if your front wheels are the ones that are powering the car forward and you take the weight off of them, now you lose grip. You're fighting everything. I remember Max Verstappen said something about front wheel drive cars like it was a year ago.

I was like basically saying they're all dog s***. Yeah, yeah. He's like, it's so right. He's like, I think he said, like front wheel drive car should not be a thing or something. Yes. I mean, it's very true. What's what's the eclipse again? It's wrong. We'll drive. Yeah. We'll drive. Yeah, yeah. But I don't know. It's. We'll see what happens when it gets on track.

I'm very prone to going off track, so it's it's bound to happen. That's how you're finding the limit. That's how you know you're doing it, right. Well, how much custom stuff are you doing here? Because, like, you literally do everything from what it looks like, it's got pretty much all all the suspension. It's on BC coilovers, some spherical arms, but for the most part everything's modded on it.

I don't think it's modded to the right extent. It doesn't give me a lot of like, I can't drop it real low because the control arms get all funky on a Macpherson, but. Right. Yeah. It's like I said, it's been modded for like, forever. Every single thing that's everything on there has been done by me. I don't know how thick is that sway bar or I guess with these it's probably the same thing as, like, my car's like, you want a big rear, but nothing on the front.

Pretty much. Yeah, I thought about taking my front one off just to see, but, I don't think our be able to have the same ability in myself to take it off right away. I think I should do it just to already be there. Like, not get so used to the car the way it is and then take it off and all of a sudden it's like drastically different.

If I went into it and it was drastically different already and I just drove that way and learned from it, I think I'd probably learned a lot quicker. I just don't know if I want to do it yet. Well, you got to find the balance a little bit, right? Because there's there's always a right way to set up a car to make it faster.

But then you also have to make sure that you manage that for your driving style to. Right. And that's part of it is you're figuring out your driving style as well. What you know, how you pitch a car into a corner, how you catch it, what kind of what your hands are like. And I think that goes with everybody too, though, right?

I think a lot of people that are new into the sport, or that get into road course racing, tend to very much overdrive the car. I know that. I think that's still me. Like, I've, we've been doing it for how many years, and I know myself already that I overdrive the car. Every single time I go into the corner, I smash the brakes and then I hook it into a corner, which you technically really shouldn't do.

But I want it to rotate and then I smash the gas. Like it's not technically the fastest way, but it feels like, you know, I'm trying to learn the car a little bit more to see where the edge. You know how far I can take it. When's your. When's your next time on track? Are you going for this New York thing?

No. Well, I think we might be going there, but not to not to race. Okay, well, that's what you guys are all just spectating besides Ian. All right? You're going to be f****** s*** up. That's a technical term. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm hoping September. September is really? Unless I can get into DTC situation next month, I will, but which would be awesome to feel the car out in a low speed, relatively safe but technical space.

Yeah, I'd rather test it out at DTC just because of that. But being at Brainerd and then on the big track, I'm going to be pretty slow. And obviously that's it's just going to take up a lot of people else's time. Lots of point buys. And but awareness is like the most important. It doesn't even matter how fast you're going.

Right? It's it's your awareness on track. Can other people trust you right when they're going by, especially, you know, in a place where you've got massive differences in speed depending on what kind of cars out there. It's like it's really easy to get super tunnel vision into what you're doing and not looking your mirrors because you're so hyper focused on the thing that's ahead of you.

Right? Yeah. And then you got an 800 horsepower Corvette that's coming up behind you. And, you know, you've got to be predictable. And part of being predictable is knowing that they're coming in either not moving and giving them the point by and staying your, your line or some organizations want you to pull off. I think that's that's silly.

That's that's silly and dangerous. Yeah. Just to pull off the passing car is the one that's got the obligation to make it. But that's my least favorite thing, man, when I'm driving on 94 and it's like they don't give me the point by that fork. Going into point by was with a different thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's you as you're going by here's.

So the last time I was on track, I want to say it was in a, it was in a Gt500. So like the newer ones or whatever. Like my, you know, my buddy let me drive it out of time. And one of my, one of the things I ran into is, well, one, I was over driving, which very easy to do with a car like that, but, yeah, yeah, Pirro and Dana were giving me hell for like, hop on this.

Like, yeah, I did this. They're like, you're f****** idiot. Thanks. But what I was going to ask is like, one of the things I run into. And maybe it's just because I have s*** hearing sometimes, but, like, I feel like. Do you drive by sound at all, or do you pay attention to that? Yeah. I don't know if my helmet was just too thick or if I'm just making excuses, which is a very common thing I do.

But was it a statute 500? Yeah. So I mean, now you also have to think that the way that people are building the cars now is for comfort, even in that kind of car. So there's unbelievable amounts of sound deadening, tons of interior into it. But you're absolutely right. Sound and feel. So you break it down between sound, feel and vision.

Right. And feel. Vision. Okay. Vision usually comes last. Okay, enough. And I can explain why that is. But from a sound perspective, a lot of times when we're shifting it, it's there's nothing visual. You're not looking at your dash, right. When you're going to make the shift. It's about where does the engine sound like it is at and it's RPM range.

When you talk about downshifting, right. If you are heel towing and you're trying to match your revs, you're not looking at your dash to see, okay, I need to hit it this much in order to get it up to, you know, 4500 rpm to make my shift. That's all sound. So without that, yeah, it's a big deal. But then the other thing is the sound of the tires.

Right? So speaking of Max Verstappen, since he keeps getting brought up on this, you know, he talked at one point I saw him mention in sim racing he'll turn the engine noise almost all the way down and turn the tire sound all the way up, because the tires are communicating to you of where the limit of grip is, right.

So that's a hugely important factor that goes into it. And the rest will come from the field in the seat. And then the last piece that people usually put together is the vision. And that's really about where you're looking on track. It's not that you can't see where you're at, but when you're new you, you just something about our mental load.

It focuses your vision directly in front of the hood. Yeah. Television. Exactly. But tunnel vision straight in front of you. People underestimate how much your brain can process the information without you consciously paying attention to it. So when your eyes are up on the horizon, as you'll hear people talk about, you know, it's not that your eyes are locked in only on the horizon, right?

They're bouncing back and forth a lot. But if you are looking just in front of the hood because you're trying to hit your turn and mark, or you're trying to hit your brakes on, so you're just looking here, you're robbing your brain of processing the information that's ahead of you, and the amount of calculation that happens in that time.

When I look further ahead at the next apex, you know, before I've even gotten there, my brain already self-consciously knows what I want to do. And that part is just the last piece to come, because people get nervous and so they want to lock in, right? They want to hone in on something. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, I'm gonna do a very easy question here.

What's what's your guys's favorite track? I'll start with you. Very easy question. You said no, no, no, it's easy one to ask, right? Right. Yeah. I gotta say, Laguna Seca is probably my favorite track that I've been to to this point. It's right between. It's right between Laguna Seca and wrote Atlanta for me. My car is more suited to Lughnasa.

It's it's really, really good. They're Road Atlanta. It's not. But that just that track is just an amazingly fun track to drive with. I think the common thing is elevation change is a lot of fun to be on track with. But yeah, Laguna Seca for me. Okay. I haven't been to a lot of tracks. I don't know.

I'd probably. For me, I'd say it's probably one of the more dangerous ones, but road America, I spent a lot of time on the sim rig on road America. Like driving there. I know, like what the layout is. I'm comfortable being out on there. Otherwise it'd be ginger, man. But ginger means very much like a technical course. It's very safe.

Like. Yeah, it's flat. Yeah. It's flat. There's no well, there's hardly any barricades there. So, you know, between those two. But I would say for a big track it'd be World America for me. Okay. As much as I love elevation, like flat can be good. You can do a good flat track, but it's got to be different. Like, Black Hawk Farms is probably my favorite club track, you know, at least in this area.

And that is completely flat. But it's just super technical. There's no time to take a breather and relax or anything of that nature. And because it's so technical, there's just always something to improve. It's really tight. Trees feel pretty close, even though they've moved some. So you can do flat really, really well. But I think elevation helps make something dynamic.

What's the bucket list one.

I really want to do Summit Point. Oh, that'd be a cool one. Yeah, I haven't I mean, we haven't done a ton of East Coast tracks. This year was the biggest exposure to the East Coast. But Summit Point would be a blast, I think. And I, I do love club tracks because of this thing. Okay. Yeah. All right.

I'm gonna ask you a question that's going to be difficult to answer. Or maybe not. What would it take to replicate this?

Are we talking about we have to call us the same mistakes. Yeah, yeah. Rachel. Stop listening. Truth be told, we're probably around $80,000 into the car as it is now. That is including a lot of the things where I bought incrementally over time as the car was evolving. If you were to just take the A stock NC and go straight to this, you're probably looking around 45,000 or so.

Okay. It's still relatively simple. You know, it's still all stock control arms. It's still a stock NC transmission. You know, from that regard, there's not a lot of cost and development that has gone into that yet. So I think that's still really attainable. Track car competitive track car as well. But you know, over the five or so years before we really decided exactly what we were building to, there was a lot of things that we bought in between that ended up getting replaced or changed any.

Well, first of all, do you take a firm. Yeah, I'm paying for on this one. Yeah, yeah, I'll let that go. Yeah. I'll take a firm high interest rate though. High interest rate. Yeah. You gotta pay it in for payments though. Yeah I think it's until like I think you missed one. I think it goes up like 30% or something stupid.

Oh, I looked at it. Makes sense. Dude. I think it's like I can't remember where I heard this stat, but I think it's like somebody, like big distributor, like sites, like, I think it's like half of their mods are bought with like a firm or like paying for, like modern automotive like formats and all these guys, people really use that s***.

Wow, dude. It's wild. Like. Oh, yeah. Couldn't you buy Gold Pass with a firm this year? But something similar. Okay. Yeah. So the gold pass, you can basically jump in early for good life. And as long as you commit to buying four of the events all up front, you get kind of early access. Okay. But yeah. What about you?

We we can speak about this in a different, different time and time and place. All right, all right, all right. Oh, I think just in the swap alone. Like getting the motor in, like, parts wise, I'm probably like 2020 k deep. Okay. Mongo running buy one for $200 off marketplace still, right? Yeah. Yeah, I, I probably could have done that and actually got one off of market like a k 24 off of marketplace.

But I wanted to start out right away with like the right K 24 versus like and Honda Odyssey K 24 you know. Yeah like various types of K 24 to choose from right. Yeah. So they all have different horsepower ratings and whatnot. And you want to everybody wants the what is it. 06008 Acura TSX okay. Or from from Japan.

It's like the BB motor, which it can be had for about $1,000. Okay. Which is still crazy for an engine these days. Crazy good. Right? That's really inexpensive. You know, when you're comparing to, you're like an S2000 engine, right? If you're trying to replace that, you're talking, I don't know, it's like six grand. Yeah. Something in that range.

Those things are right there. Dumb when it comes to price. Man. They have exploded since Covid. But now you're talking like very niche. And like, you know, we're taking it back to like early 2000s of, you know, wanting to restore something. A lot of like older guys that are in the muscle cars are kind of the same way.

Right. If you want Vin number stuff, you're going to pay high dollar money for Vin number stuff, right? Those guys are weird. Yeah. I mean, muscle cars. No, just the whole like, yeah, it's got a thousand, like the Evo numbers for 140. Do you see that the other day? No less than a or what? On was on bring a train trailer.

Yeah, I saw it was less than a thousand miles for like an Evo eight. I think it was. Oh, my God, $140,000. Could you imagine paying that much for, like, no, like no respect, but like, no. But the car was like, how much do you know? You're just looking at people that just want to collect stuff and now it's not going to move anywhere.

The collectors I'm getting like, I don't understand that. I don't understand it either, because a lot of those guys have a lot of vehicles that they don't ever drive. Now you get to, like, not appreciate it and do it, drive it. I don't know, I think they still do. I mean cars are cars are used for so many different things.

People see them as art. People see them as a, you know, a icon of their childhood. Right? And they want to have a piece of that. I remember being in my basement with my buddy, playing ping pong as we'd watch the Barrett Jackson stuff, and people were dropping that kind of money or more on 69 Camaros. Yeah, right.

And it's just the generational change. These are our 69 Camaros. That's 100% true. I just couldn't imagine though, like being like, let's call it 75 years old and let's say I'm about to kick the can. I'm not going to wish that I had less smiles on my Camaro, I agree. No, I like I don't know, it's just weird.

Like there's some cars where it's like an investment. But like when I went down to Kota, like when I was doing some podcasts in Austin, I don't know if you saw my story. I was seeing all these, like, there was no less than $500 million worth of Ferraris on the property. Oh my God. Like, it was like we're talking like Enzo.

Whatever. Yeah, and these guys are driving the s*** out of them. And it was awesome. Like some of them were at Goodwood, actually. I was like, I was like going through Facebook. I'm like, I saw that one. Like, so how much of that is like, you know, the different subcultures of car culture, right? You've got the guys that drive right, guys that seem as art pieces, guys that seem as investments, right?

Guy like it's it's all kind of across the board now we're drivers. Right? That's how I see a car too. It's like that's that's sitting there unused is a colossal wasted opportunity of fun. But to that person. Right. It's we were just having this conversation at the car show, right. How many of these guys have 200 tires? But don't ever use the ability of 200 modest.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and these, these guys have, like, real race car stuff on their cars, but you never will ever take it on a track. That's that I got I can't, I can't get over. I don't understand the track inspired thing. Your car looks sweet, I get it. Do just try it. Just. Just try putting it on the track.

You remember that ruined Detroit in the 80s. Just try him. That's crazy. That's why it's a drug and they're on a comeback. It's all good. Oh, I watched the grand tour. They had all the green cities. It was great, right? No, I forgot what his name was. He hit me up. He offered for me to, like, judge the show.

Oh, wow. And like, I, I didn't. I would have taken that opportunity 3 or 4 years ago where I would have been a little more unbiased. But I rejected it for two reasons. One, I don't have time. Like I just truthfully, I'd rather just be editing. I love editing and it's like there's a direct like effort result thing, right?

Like I love what I do, right? And I just don't have the interest to go to Saint Paul. Like to judge a car show. No offense. Like it just I want to do this other thing more. But also, it's like I would be so heavily biased towards like anything race car because I'm like, I can see the effort here.

And actually I just had ry wire on the show. I dropped the episode in two weeks from now, which people listening? It's two weeks ago anyways. But like he goes around the world judging these shows like Sema and all that stuff and like, he's very heavily motorsport biased and like, I'm just like, I could not fairly judge, like, there's just zero chance we might have needed you.

Yeah. In that perspective. So people, Ian and I put our cars in the show. Now we're complete idiots when it comes to car show stuff. Right. That's that's not our scene by any means. But, you know, I got the bum foot and we're still trying to do, you know, cool car stuff. And so we put him in the show.

BJ comes with us, we get it all stage. We get everything set up. We had people flocking around these things. One, probably because it sounds like that car show is a lot of the same people over and over and over again. And so these are new to them, right? But they are just flock and they're talking to us the whole time.

There's hardly any other like actual race cars there. So we're like, we're shooting, man, we got this, this functional build thing. Like, we got this. We didn't put the lot number stickers on the cars, so we couldn't get judged because we didn't know that that was a thing that we had to do. But it's like the race car can be a show car, right?

Thing just it carries over so well. They attract attention. And this is what you guys are building to, you know, you can still have that show car feel if that's your scene. But just go put the car on track now too. And you can literally have both aspects of it and it's a lot of fun. It's just we needed somebody who like track focused cars at the time.

The thing is though, is like, I'm friends with so many people in the scene, like I like the thing is, like, I truthfully like I, you know, if I haven't seen you in like two years, right? Like in your case, I've seen in two years, I'm like, I f****** like this guy f****** voting for him. Like. Like I am a horrible judge.

Like. Like if I saw something from, like, the patients, metal fab guys would be like, they were there. Well, I don't know. I don't know if the show, but like, it's like like what do they have there. So they had the, the blue Volkswagen. Was it a golfer around. Yeah. No it's like a blue. Yeah. The blue one.

They took that car to Sema like it won there too. I wouldn't even yeah I would not look at anything else. I'm like I know what went into that car. I know that car story. Like I know it in depth. Like so they brought that and they brought the, the Pikes Peak, the next car and that one too.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's like I'm. I'm good friends with Nick. His office is ten minutes from my house. I'm like, I would much rather like. So it's like. And the other thing is, like, a lot of drama comes from that. Like every single modest, my Facebook blows up with people b******* and moaning like, how did they get a trophy?

I think the drama from that is hilarious, but we've got our own drama, you know, in every culture. But like, the thing is with like, race car stuff, if there's drama, I could just be like, scoreboard.

Yeah. Like, I mean, like, there's the proof you're not like, how do you how do you debate drama when it comes to show cars like, oh yeah, well I got a rap and it's like, well, my f****** tuck is even better. Like, again, we just start calling people cheaters. Yeah, people. People cheaters. But again, like it goes back to what you're talking about like ten minutes ago.

It's like I respect every aspect of the community. I just didn't want to be like, I didn't want to be central to that drama. As long as like there's some people, it's like, yeah, it's like I didn't want I didn't want to explain myself to anybody. That's why I do this podcast. That's why I talk to who I want to talk to.

Yeah, because I don't have to tell anybody why. That's a good point. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So that's why I decided not to judge. I can understand that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot Nick's car. I was out there like Nick's car has a lot of effort gone into it, right? Like working with patients, like, you know, he just did Pikes Peak, and it's like, I think they got the canoe in there.

They were having some issues. What do they have? I think it was like some airflow related issues or whatever. But like that's cool, right? Like I know the story behind that car. Like it's, you know, and the results behind like with you and it's like, this is still my favorite Miata. Right? I think that's only because, like, I don't talk to me out of guys.

That's okay. You just talk to me because they're. That's because they're weird. Yeah. We're going to talk about that later then to be an off camera discussion. We got to talk about that. No, it's I hear where you're coming from. I mean, you know, we brought we brought the grid life trophies, you know, popped them up under the hood because it is nice to be able to say, like, yeah, it's not just we didn't just throw the wrap on it and make it look like a race car.

Like it actually is out there performing. Yeah. And like, listen, like the whole, like coilover or lowering springs or whatever. Like, it does make the car enjoyable. Like I just do coilovers on my car, like. So my last car I bought already modified this one. It's the complete opposite. This thing was bone stock. And like I'm going through it like, you know, it's like like through work.

I got links for a discount because, like, you know, I work for them. So it's like, all right, I'll start with that. But I also got like, what is it called. Fitment. Fitment Bros. Fitment industries. No no no no no no no no some fitment bro. It's you go on eBay and it's like they basically have scratch and dent stuff.

Oh okay. So cheap a** over here. I didn't exactly have a bunch of time at a time. But like you know, I was like, oh man, I can get this. The same sway bar I had in the last car because same platform. I'm like, I got it for. I think I was like 30% off or whatever. Nice. The slippery slope began at this point.

Yeah. You're sunk. Yeah. So then. All right. So now like I learned how to do and links again, like I'm 200 episodes deep in this podcast. I've never really done many mods myself, which it's kind of f****** hysterical. I've done 200 episodes of a automotive motorsport podcast doing that. But now it's like, all right, now, you know, coilovers.

I just did those a few weeks ago. I'm thinking about which nuts are loose and they're still, Oh, dude, I think about that constantly. Don't feel bad about that. Oh, yeah. You want to see a photo? Yeah. No. You remember how my shifter came out in my hand? Yeah. See what it looks like when a shock comes out?

Yeah, that was that was an education. That stuff happens, though. I mean, if you're new in industry or just new modding cars, the only way you're going to learn is if you make mistakes. I just hope to keep it like non-financial, destructive. That's like hopefully a long industry to be in. I don't know anybody that hasn't made any type of financial situations any better being in automotive industry.

Yeah. So but where I was going with that is like, it's fun to like, you know, modify cars. I'm not going to like talk s*** on somebody who's doing just a show car thing. And they're actually working on their car and, you know, doing stuff because like, now I get it from that perspective. I'm living the dream. But at the same time, like, it's just apples to apples, like apples to oranges to bananas.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, I'm with you. I'm with you. They're all fruit, but they're different fruit.

We're keeping the flow going. Brought to you by meal factors. The next sponsor. Dude, I always say this on the show. You see me sponsored by, like, DraftKings or. No, no, not prize picks. You know, I made it. And Blue Choo, that's the other one. Blue chip, blue shoe. Yeah. You know, I made it. Gotta keep it up, man.

You're gonna get over that age, man. Are you gonna hook it up or what? Yeah, it's going to be a wild race car, dude.

if you're drive to be competitive, I mean, if your drive to be competitive is so strong, you'll you'll recognize at a certain point that you just need help, right?

You need financial help. Okay. I was like the way you said that you need mental and financial help. Yeah, that's even better. Help, by the way. Yeah. There you go. It's it's really hard to overcome it when you are the content producer, the social media manager, the financer, the car builder, the driver, the transportation. When you're all of those things, wearing all of those hats and it's still expensive to do it.

I think at a certain point you'll take whatever sponsor you can get, if that's the only fans, if that is whatever. And that's where you get into a lot of controversy online, you know, so out exactly. Either a sell out or a brand that somebody doesn't agree with. And it's like, listen, I am just trying to fund my hobby.

I'm just trying to help and I love. Yeah, exactly. If someone's going to be like, hey, we're fun. You a full year set of Falkland naughty six 60s and it was only fans. You'd be like, oh yeah, only tires, I guess. So like, what do you, what do you need me to do? I'm make it immediately. Yeah. They'll lose a lot of money if they do that.

Yeah. Because like what. What's a season cost for you guys. Oh, God. So it it's hard to lay that out because your brain shuts down. Your brain shuts down. And but it's not an understatement at all to say 20, $25,000 for this kind of amateur level of racing that we're doing, where we're funding it all. And a lot of that goes into travel costs.

You know, to be perfectly frank, if you run an entire grid life season, if you do, thank God they left. If you run an entire grid life season. Say you do six events, right? You can probably count on your average weekend cost just to get in the door. Being around $1,000 for good life events, then you've got your travel.

This year has been brutal, right? Going from the Midwest to the East Coast for all of these events. And the cost of gas is going to change that on a consistent basis. So yeah, I wouldn't be shy at all to say it's $25,000 a year to run this. And that's if you're staying at a red roof in. Exactly.

Yeah. And if nothing else or you're camping. Yeah. Yeah, it's even cheaper. Like you, you camp out and but it still expensive suffering. You're 110 hundred degree temps. Boring rain like. Yep. It's it's just it is a lot of money to do what we love to do, right? And, yeah, I'd probably be way better off financially if I wasn't doing this hobby, but I don't think I'd be enjoying life nearly as much.

And then what I'm going to do, I'm gonna wait until I'm 65 to start doing the things I like to do. Like, now I've got the money to do it, but I don't have the body or the mind to do it, you know? Well, body is failing at the moment. Hey, let's not listen. All right. It was right there.

Yeah. Two. Two soon. No. It's true. But, like, imagine this kind of injury at 60, 67 years old. Oh, dude. Right. The recovery time is going to be way longer. And now, by the time I do get recovered, states a year and a half. Now I'm 68 years old, right? My vision is going. The the feeling in my hands, like there's little things that people don't realize how much this does take a toll on your body.

The reality is, even with the torn Achilles right now, I could push the clutch in. I could get in that car and I could drive it. I could throw a racing shoe on me. Dude, I'd be b******* and moaning. I would be too, right? But that just driving it forward and backwards isn't the problem. It's now doing that under g loads, right?

It's doing it under timing and pressure and getting it right and not being mentally distracted by that. Like that part is the aspect that holds you back. Well, as you get older, all of those things happen. Well, not even is that like, you can't work on it. You're 65, right? Are you going to really, like, pull the motor out, you know, twice a year, right?

Yeah. Do it and like do a refresh and put it back in. Or are you going to do an alignment? Alignment suck man. Like they're not the funniest things to do. You gotta. That's why Ian doesn't.

You know in alignments you got to do like three times a year if you really want to be. Oh man. Way more than that. BJ just wait. That's I understand that, but how often do you guys really do alignments? They suck. Yeah I know, so three times a year. But no, seriously, you should be doing an alignment if you're chasing every time, you should be doing it before every event.

And frankly, you're going to be adjusting your alignment for that track, right? Do we have longer sweeping right handers? Do we have a lot of tight, technical corners that are going to change the way that I want the rear end to pitch and rotate, like you're going to be changing your life for that and you're doing this. You're not going to like an alignment rack, I imagine at this point.

Right. Well, yeah. We're going to Ian's alignment wreck. Yeah. There's the man. We've got hub stands now. And so still doing it with hub stands and string. It's still a great way to do it. And that is something that we've now invested in. But you know, some of those things take time. They're not cheap. So they bolt on to the wheel.

You take the wheel off, you bolt the hub stand on, and they got ball bearings on the ground so the car can then set down on the ground and the suspension can, you know, unwind itself basically on the ball bearings. And then you run string along both sides of the cars. And that's how you're going to measure the difference in your toe and whatnot.

And that is still probably the best way to do it. You know, I at least at the track, it's your mobile way to do it. It's great. When I did it, it was super easy. I mean, sitting Cameron Toe is great. Caster is a different story, though. That stuff's it can get a little wonky, especially having to do it like multiple times.

Do you mess with the caster on that? You can on the rears? You can. Okay, I was going to say the front caster be weird because the elf was going in the transmission. Yeah, the front. So you can't it's static, but the rear is you can change caster. So okay. So $25,000. Yeah. Oh yeah. Sure. Yeah. That gets you into your events effectively between travel costs.

That's not talking about upgrades that you need to do. You know that is including like where items like tires and whatnot. But that's if you were campaigning in the same car year over year basically. Right. And nothing breaks and nothing goes wrong. Good luck. Good luck. There's been lots of times where we get everybody's scrambling to go to the auto store when we go to the store, because they got to be on track and two hours and it's like, yeah, people trying to find parts around the paddock scrambling.

It's just it's hectic sometimes and it's just out of pocket money that you just are like, well, I didn't think my weekend was going to go this way. You ever stop to consider like how long it would take to physically burn $25,000? I have not like, you know what I mean? Like like if you compare track time and all that, like if you're burning like, like if you had $25,001 bills, you had to, like, set it on fire, wait for it to burn, set it on, fire away.

Like I think it would take longer. I think you're probably right. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. So I mean, that's where you, you get to a certain point and you go from just being the hobbyist and this is, you know, my dad tried to talk me out of competing for, for years because he, he did this as well.

This is he's a financial advisor. Is that his professional career? He was he was with Wells Fargo for many, many years. Yeah.

He he raced in Porsche club and SEC okay. He raced 944 Porsches, you know, the ugly duckling kind of car. And so he saw what the cost was. And you know, when he was done with it, he knew, you know, what that was like. So he's like, don't don't compete. Just go have fun. Go out on the track.

You'll have 80% of the fun for 20% of the cost. And I was like, yeah, dad, I'm going to do that. And then I looked at a lap time sheet and I was like, you know, I'm pretty close there. And then every time, like, he loves to support me and come out, but he's still like, you know, I told you so.

I told you to not do this. I think that's just Mike's aura in general. Anything he does, he's just like, so we're going to take this to the next step, or you guys want to compete or it's literally everything. It's why I can't golf. Yeah. What's the next step in golf. Oh I got it into hole. But can you get a rocket powered club?

Man. That'd be cool. Yeah, yeah. It's like you like, what is the next step in golf? You turn into dude. Perfect, right? With your trick shots. Yeah, yeah. And you're editing to make it look good. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of editing and looking good. Do you foresee yourself continuing to go down this rabbit hole and, like, whether it's together or you like?

Because, like, I know you have a bit of a social platform. Do you foresee yourself kind of pushing that forward? I'm trying really hard. It turns out there's a lot more to understanding the technical aspects, the algorithm and how that works. The timing of the posts, like it's not just about creating something that people want to watch, right?

It's about consistency and timing. And I'm yelling at Nick. I'm like, stop f****** posting at 11 p.m. yeah, that is time. But that's what he's got. Time. Yeah, the guy is the busiest. Like he's got kids, he's got a business. He's got he's racing cars like I get it. But I'm like stopping 11 schedule. You can't posted. Yes you can.

And I need to message him again. Yeah I mean I could probably learn from you and from you. I don't even have social media. And I still know this. It's.

So I'm really bad at it. But yes, I am. I'm trying to do that because, you know, there's a couple aspects to it. One is like getting in the door with any sort of sponsorships. Right. The first question is has absolutely nothing to do with how you're performing. And that's where I first started out. I was like, okay, I'm starting to do well, you know, maybe this will help me garner attention.

They don't give a s*** because if you get first place in, three people know about it, it doesn't matter. Right, right. And go ahead from my side, like I, I am in like, you know, company 23. And like, I have a lot of people reaching out. Well, now, I shouldn't say a lot of people, but like a decent amount people reaching out for like, you know, free parts, Spartan sponsorships and I that is a significant factor.

Like it. There is a we do well I do a decent bit of like goodwill. Like you know what this guy like, you know, like it's going to go on a track or whatever, but like at the same time, like there has to be a monetary figure attached to like, will this give me sales even if it's like 1 or 2?

Like getting that word around is huge, right? It is. And I've been able to garner some relationships. Right. There's names on the car for a reason. Right? There are people that have helped me along the way. We'll make that work. Yeah, we'll make that work. You know, and it comes down to getting parts and help developing the car.

It's it's huge. Right to. Yeah. It's huge. It's super important. And the more people that help me, the more I want to get their name out and tell people about how great of a job they do, because the reality is the results are there. The people that are working on this car and helping me are doing it right.

Have you been to pry yet? No, dude, you would kill it up here. I why you would leave with some sponsors contacts? Well, let's put it this way. Like, even better. Well, like, the thing is with pre, right. Like, you get to talk to these companies direct, right? Like you get to talk to the people in our industry.

Like let's apex for example. Right. Like you get to talk to the people that are potentially engineering it or like the sales guys are the marketing guys. And you get to be like, oh yeah, here's what I do. Like. It's like, truthfully, if you are trying to make it as a racer, you even like you're I think you have 3000 followers.

Something I can remember looked at your profile today somewhere in that range. Yeah, it keeps going. It hits a certain number and then three days later it goes right back in. Those days are miserable. What is that about anyways? But like like if you have like a little bit of a fall, you need a ton. But like if you can at least like get that relationship prize the place to do it.

Okay. Like it's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, go down there. You have nothing going on in November anyway. Nope. Yeah, you'll be sprinting by November. What are you talking about? No. Like, it really is like. Like Nick did that a lot of race car. I was like, yeah, like I literally was sitting like. Like Rob Dom was at the same table as me.

I didn't say hi because I was nervous, but like, you know, he's such a handsome guy. Yeah, but, but like, I'm like everybody who's anybody is there. And so that is something that we want to do. And what is cool about grid life is it's kind of like a mini one of those, right? Yeah. Stance works. Mike from stance works.

He goes to grid life. They have all the measures. They're seen them. All right. And I can respect that's that's a huge thing. We're at a point now where car is pretty developed. I have my partners from that aspect now. I need help getting to and from events. And that basically becomes money. It's money. And it's if we're going to help you do this, you have to go to X amount of events, right?

You have to promote it at a certain rate. And there's that. And then I still want my social media brand, which at the number of followers I have, you can hardly call it that. But I really do want it to be a bit of a motivational thing, because there's a lot of people that want to do this in general, and either don't know how to get started or don't think that they should, or you see a lot of guys that will come into the the industry or into this hobby, and they'll be there for 2 or 3 years and then they get out because the money beats you down or the lack of success beats

you down. Right. And so it feels like and to me today, there we go. You have no success. You have no money. That's why we're on the it's like, want people to see that? Like, dude, live in your life the best you can, whether you get in the results or not. That's just cool. And if I can share the cool s*** that I'm doing, like, that's what I tell my ten year old son.

He's 11 now, but like, Leo, just do cool s***. I don't. I don't care about the rest. Live your life, do cool s***. Don't get stuck in a corporate job kind of thing that you hate. Just do cool s***. And that's what I want people to be able to see. And that's what we kind of get to do.

We're fortunate to be able to do that. Yeah, the the, the money trade off is a tough one to like. It's so much easier for companies to give parts as what I've learned it is. Yeah. The cool thing is though is like once you fulfill your obligations, like you can just sell those parts in that car into the next thing.

So that's kind of. But then you have to switch. It gets it gets weird. So like I get like once the car is built, like, all right, cool. Like Powerball tickets, like. Yeah, pretty much. So as we started rapping down here, then what's next for you guys? Just full season, a good life. Get it on track and drive as much as I can.

I know I've been saying I don't have a social media, but I do have a social media. I AOL com yeah, dial up is also you're using Hotmail still. I mean the papers Netscape dude. Come on. I don't know what the f*** that is. You lost your old people. S***. No. Yeah. Just being on track more, getting more exposure, trying to develop it more.

At least stick with it. Trying not to change platforms, I think is the biggest one. I think I'm going to have a hard time not wanting to be like up to these guys spaces within the next two years. It's going to be really tough. I think those trial interpretations are going to take a big hit within the next like two years.

So yeah, I think you're right. But that would happen even if you took the best chassis and the best engine, that would happen anyways. No, definitely. You just hit that wall. I think it's just more or less the, you know, the R&D work of that is the unknown where a lot of the cars like, I mean you take a civic BRZ, FRS, yada.

Like there's been a lot of work done to those. So you got a lot of backing, a lot of, you know, aftermarket stuff. I think that could work really well in your favor. I'm sorry if I'm taking this off hand. You're my co-host now, but please go ahead. I think that could work really well in your favor, because you do have something that stands out and is very, very different, right?

Like Miata Z, a dime a dozen, even if the NC isn't right, whereas you'll stand out as I don't know, you're the first K20 for 3G that I personally know of. Anybody else with a 3G will see that and think it's cool see themselves in you. But also as people are walking through the see of Honda, Honda, Honda Honda.

Oh my God, what is this? It stands out. It's totally different. And you could really use that, let alone with the fact that you're doing it all by yourself. Yeah, I agree, it definitely takes another aspect of like wow, as being an outsider or something that's out of the ordinary and it gives you a little leg up on that, but just it's hard if you want to be competitive though, like just do the thing.

Like I want to be where you guys are at, like competitiveness wise. And that's going to be the hardest part for me. Let me know when I'm competitive. I appreciate that when you got trophies ready, man. That's what I want, I need, I need a trophy. There's gonna be a lot of late nights once I heaters in here.

It all starts with, like, that's it. It's true. You get six months a year back, dude. Working in a cold garage, miserable. And then going Home Depot after this, then. Hell yeah. I mean, Lowe's is right.

I didn't realize how garbage loss was until, like, I could not get anything I needed from. I'm like, can I go to Home Depot? I'm like, dude, I'll drive the extra ten minutes. Yeah, I didn't realize how big of a disparity it was until I started working on this thing. It's ridiculous. Yeah, they got better wood screws. All right, well, at the end of every episode, I like to ask my guest or guest to pick three cars, and it goes like this.

You have an unlimited budget. To pick three cars. You have to pick a daily driver, a show car and a track car. Who wants to go first? Holy crap. Swap whatever you want. Do what you want. All right. My show car would be a Gunther. Works 993. You know that? Oh, yeah. I tried to get him on the show while I was in Cali, but they were freaking Goodwood.

Dude, that car speaks me. So the 993 turbo and the 993 GT2 were my favorite cars growing up. 993? Is that early 2000 or is that before 2000? It is like 99 era. The last air cooled nine over 11 before then? Yeah, before the the egg shaped 996 headlight. That one. Yeah. Yep yep. Those are my favorite cars.

And then Gunther works has just made it look as perfectly modern you know. So that I guess would be my show car, despite the fact that I'd want to drive it on a consistent basis for a daily driver. Oh, man, I don't know. I don't ever think about daily driving anymore. I go back to my my E90 335 I love that car.

Okay. You want to do like an M3 or something from that era? No, no. The twin turbo felt phenomenal on the streets, right? The low end torque was absolutely amazing and I loved everything about it. It fit. And if we're talking about a daily driver, despite all the issues I have with it, and now I second guess it, that's still where I'm going.

I mean, is a BMW dude, you just went like three octaves higher. Yeah, that's really bad choice, but I'm sticking to it. You're sticking to it. I am king of bad financial decisions. I'm sticking to it. 2009 9335 I, that's the daily driver. The Gunther works is the show car, and then the race car would be. I'm going Porsche again.

Porsche 917 K. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. You did use a little bit of the budget on the Porsches. You said no budget. Yeah. No unlimited budget. Yeah. And then he went with the sentimental one for the daily. Okay. All right. What are you thinking? Let's see. For a daily, I'd probably be. I'd probably want a skyline, to be honest.

It's like, you know, it really doesn't need to be like a a GT-R or anything, but you're talking like a 32 or. Like R 32 or. No, like a Nissan Skyline. Like like a 35. Like 34. Oh 33 most like a 33. Okay. Yeah. Race car it. I have to be like a E36 or E46. Those are like, just tried and true, like race cars in general have unlimited budget.

Hold on. I like this like nobody says the R3 33 I love it, I f****** great, I love hearing that. It's I don't think I think I've heard that maybe once on this show. So thank you for being way better in my opinion. Yeah, I like them. And then for a show car, be the San skyline. Okay, okay.

That's like super hard to get. Like you're talking like $100,000 worth of if you even want to find one that's somewhat clean. Nice. I want $140,000 Evo off. Bring a trailer with only 1000 miles on it. Right? Dude, that's just. I like, is it dry rotted like I like it's so cool, but, like, dude, like, I'm not a mechanic, I don't know.

Is that a real thing? Real. Well, yeah, but is that like the hoses and the belts? Because, you know, not running. I'm still. Is it stock? Yeah, I think so. It's not like at all. It might have molested you might have OEM plus wheels I don't know I don't really. Wheels are wheels. Yeah that's stock. Yeah. It's it's like a thing.

Yeah I would still consider that stock even though they have. I forgot to ask you about how was your experience. Fry wire. I don't trash garbage. To be honest. I don't have any experience with them. I literally just bought it. I bought, I went online, I was like, well, I emailed them and I was like, hey, I got this going on there.

Like, we suggested this. And I was like, all right, cool. And I just, I bought it, the stuff that came and it I will say it worked out like phenomenally. I was curious because I, I just met the guy. So it's been, you know, super easy all the connectors that I ordered and had all plugged in car started like, I don't know, I had a couple of troubles with the the tech, but it would have started right away, like first try.

Well sweet. On that note, where can I find you guys, social media and all that stuff. Go ahead. Oh, I only got one social media. It's Instagram, it's performance motorsports.

And then if you want YouTube, same thing. Please do a ragu wrap. Yeah, I'm begging you. I well, I want to be awesome. I have not thought about that. That's actually license plates going to be saucy or something. That's good. I'm gonna I'm gonna bring ragu source to me everywhere I go. Now. Not a sponsor. Just love their sauce.

Just full of pasta sauce. Because they know they also have, like, the little ones that come with the meatballs, too, I think. Right. Yeah. You know what? Now, now that the the car is red, I'm just going to make the wrap. I wasn't that always red. No. Well, it's always been red. But I'm saying like the ragu sauce I'm just going to make it the it's going to say ragu on the side.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. God, it's going to be so gaudy. Yeah, right.

Dude, I got you. I'll draw this up. Oh, my God, I'll draw this up. Run this. I'm leaving. I'm gonna put this through AI right before I leave it. We're making this happen. All right. And then on Instagram, I'm at the Mike Bryant and on Facebook, Mike Bryant racing. All right. Sweet. Well, guys, thank you very much for making this happen.

I'm glad we finally got together. Yeah. Thanks, Harrison. Thank you everybody. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you all next time.