52. Sigier Motorsport, A Career In Racing, KTM X-Bows, w/ Simon Sigier

That's perfect, but yeah, let's do this. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. And this is the Minnoxide podcast where we go beyond the meat. Most of the time, what happens at shows is we end up talking to people for five to 10 minutes, and then we just get taken away, distracted, and we don't really have long conversations. So that's why we kind of solve it by doing a long-form podcast like this. As many of you know, I haven't had a co-host for a number of episodes now, but today I figured I'd bring in Dan while we're still here at SEMA. So say hi, Dan.

Hey, how's everyone doing at home?

Yeah, so this is Dan from CarMunity. He's the reason I'm out here at SEMA, the reason for most of the guests that I've had on the podcast during this little SEMA series, which I think this one will drop Wednesday. We'll see. But nonetheless, I do want to introduce our guest, Simon Sigier, nailed it. I knew it was a 50-50, I was going to mess it up. So you're the owner of Sigier Motorsport, correct?

Yes.

So it's a really cool car.

Thank you.

It's really cool. So let's just, I'm going to let you introduce yourself right out the gate. Just tell us about what Sigier Motorsport is, and we'll just start from there.

Excellent. All right. So yeah, again, my name is Simon Sigier, owner of Sigier Motorsports, based here in Las Vegas. So Sigier Motorsports was established in 2016, back then in Miami, when I started to create my own company, basically to provide consulting, technical and engineering for racing teams, and also a racing simulator. So it was actually, I had a racing simulator that was available for rent, and I would bring in anywhere you want in the country. So that's kind of how it started. And I was right after my years with N-Sum Motorsports and the KTM X-Bow GT4 success. The very first time that those cars showed up in the country, we raced the P-Rally World Challenge, and had a pretty successful year with Brett Sandberg at the time, our driver. And yeah, first year the car was there, we actually won the championship quite easily, I must say. So as a technician and with some engineering knowledge, I was really impressed with how the car was built, the development of the car and how they created something from scratch, and get to beat cars and manufacturers that have been making race cars for way longer than KTM has actually created. So I want to say the love from KTM started from there. And I always told myself that one day I would try to buy one out, a GT4, like an older GT4 when it gets a little old, and maybe extend the back of it, make it look a little better, and put a better powertrain in it, because the GT4 was based on a 4-cylinder. So not the best sounding race car, but nonetheless very efficient. And yeah, again, I told myself I would put probably something bigger, like a 5-cylinder, something that sounds a little better, still respect the lightness of the car, and you know, pretty cool project, right? That was on the back of my head. But I continued in, and I actually moved to the West Coast here in Las Vegas. I've worked with a different racing team, including Lamborghini and Ferrari. Then I pair up with a former Formula One driver, Alexandre Prima, with who I created a team and managed his own race team here in Las Vegas. And we had anything between GT4, GT3 cars, Formula cars, prototypes. And then at some point, it was just getting a little hard to manage a fleet of many different brands for club racing. Our goal was to go back to IMSA. That's kind of how we met and how we started. Didn't really happen. And so I decided to take a pause and do my own thing. And all the customers we had wanted me to follow up with them and take care of their cars. And at the time I told them, listen, if you want me to work with you, let's get a car I want. And at the time, KTM had just released the GTX and the GT2 race cars, which was my dream was the GT4 extended, with a five-cylinder in it. I was like, wow, they actually made it. So let's try to get some of those cars here. And it happened. The customer I had, at which I feel very blessed about to have him following me on this venture, bought a car and then a second one and a third one. And I was able to get in that get venture and actually became a KTM dealer right after. So that was a year ago. And this year has been a big challenge to start a business in that route and get those cars on racetrack and get the maximum exposure as we can and really show what this car is really about. Because a lot of people remember the KTM X-Bow being the cool little track toy, open cockpit, nothing extremely special. There's a lot of different manufacturers making cars similar to the regular X-Bow. But yeah, the GT2 and GTX were, at least right now, really standing out and really making a name for themselves. So yeah, that's how it started at all. And yeah, as you can see, the car speaks for itself.

It's a phenomenal car. So I was actually looking into Sun a little bit about the chassis and the engine and all that yesterday. So Dan was telling me that's the RS3 motor in there.

Correct, yes.

Yeah, I mean, and you guys have it tuned up to, it's 600 horsepower. Is that at the crank?

On the GT2 version of the car, yes, it's a built engine. So connecting rod and pistons, oil pump, turbo, camshaft, even the head has been reworked to comply, obviously, and make sure that it makes the right power reliably. It's still a very small platform. We're talking about a 2.5 liter turbo charge. It's as light as a four-cylinder. It makes the power that most V8s would make on race cars. So it's, yeah, people don't really believe in it just yet, but it's very different.

It's really coming to light. So my neighbor actually, six houses down, he actually builds five cylinders for a living. So Ratified Motorsports, so I had him on the podcast as well. So he actually dailies an 1100 horsepower RS3.

I believe it.

Yeah, and you know, it's probably turned down to like eight or 900, but nonetheless, I mean, he's put on like 60,000 miles. I mean, it's just, and he drives it. I mean, it's not like it's a song.

It's astonishing of an engine. That's the reason why I really believe in that platform is because they basically chose, for me, which is the best engine that we can have for racing, it's lightweight, it's powerful, reliable, it sounds great. It's not too crazy on fuel consumption, fuel consumption, sorry. You can find parts, it really checks all the boxes. Back then, we had the LS swap that was always like, okay, we're gonna put an LS, it will be good. I think shortly we'll be coming to the, you should put a five-cylinder in it because it just solve all the problems you had even back then. Even with room, you can put an engine in anything. And putting this on a race car that is based on a carbon fiber monocoque, which is lightweight and very strong, I mean, it's kind of like a perfect recipe for a race car. So, that's where my beliefs are, and I think we're gonna do well with it.

It was such a, so I finally got to see one of those motors like torn apart. So I went over to the shop, and it was for a TTRS they're currently building. And it seems like it's just designed to be a powerhouse.

Correct, yes.

Yeah, but the thing is for your application, I mean, it's at damn near red line a lot of the time. I mean, it is being, like for example, these guys make it for like a roll racing application or dailies at 600 horsepower. In your instance, I mean, how many miles are some of those cars putting on on track days?

So those cars actually developed to be, you know, wonderful endurance cars. So they should be, and they have been actually be able to compete on 24 hour races. So there are weekends where we'll race where the car is nonstop for 24, 25 hours, plus all the testing before. And yeah, they own for a while. So that's, I think the reason why we're trying to stick, you know, stay below the 700, 650 horse power mark. After that, you also have to tell yourself that, you know, those cars with the tires that are running, they want to be able to handle more than that. The transmission engine, as far as cooling and reliability, I don't think it's an issue anymore. But if you try to have something that's sustainable on the racetrack and can, you know, last the same that it's supposed to do, yeah, you want to make sure that your tires can last. And so you want to make sure the power is adapted for that.

That's something that I've seen. It's kind of like, at least the era that we're in right now, like 600 horsepower is kind of like the sweet spot for like a track day performance vehicle. I mean, that might change in 10 years, you know, with hybrid and whatever.

Yeah, you're right, actually, about that. The hybrid is probably the next subject I want to abort on this. It's definitely of interest to try to jump on that, on that route as well, because there was the technology that we have today, there's a real advantage. It's no longer, you're adding all this weight and trouble to the car with cables, battery. Obviously, you add a lot to it, but the advantages, they're huge. And actually, the only car that was able to beat the GTX I brought to a great life a couple of weeks ago was a 350Z hybrid. And I was really amazed by how it was made. And yeah, what a success. We were talking about a 2003 350Z hand-built, in a way.

Okay, I was wondering if that's what we were talking about, the same thing.

Yes, we are. And it's crazy, because I have also this thought of getting something hybrid with KTM soon. And then that kind of confirms my thought. It's ready. I think we should spend time and money into something like this, at least on a hybrid side. I'm not too sure about fully electric race cars just yet. A lot of people will not be agreeing with getting full on electric race cars. The sound's a way that it doesn't last as long. And for endurance racing, it's just, as far as range, impossible. But hybrid is definitely the way to go, at least for the next few years.

Yeah, I feel like one of the ones that crowned it in the last 10 years has to be that new Acura NSX. I mean, that's a phenomenal car.

Super underrated, yeah, super car, I agree. I was fortunate enough to actually instruct at Speed Vegas, which is a racing experience company here in town, and the NSX, I was always told, be careful with that car, it's a lot faster than people may think, and they were 100% right. The way it can get out of corners, and even the braking, there's really nothing else that can compete. So that's what I was saying, it's so underrated for what it is, and it's really the future for sure.

So I'm curious, so where did your passion for motorsport start? It's probably a complicated answer.

It is, yes and no. The complicated answer is because I always kind of joke around and say that I came out racing out of my mom. I was already racing there, it's always been in my genes, I guess. I didn't really have a family that have been racing. My dad had some racing years here and there, nothing really professionally, but I was fortunate enough to go to a few racetrack in Europe and still building my passion from there. But yeah, I always wanted to be in cars, race cars, racing in general. So I started racing at the age of 12, 13 on simulators, then 14 on racetrack, up to 16. I was kind of finding my ways to the beginning on a racetrack, and then I decided to actually spend my money into a racing engineering school. So I went to a racing school in France, in Nogaro. So that's when I really started accumulating knowledge and really started to understand how we race, we prepare, how do we actually work with race teams. And I started an internship at Ensemble Motorsports down in Miami, right after the school. So that's where I want to say my career professionally really started.

Okay, so you came down to Miami, and is that when you decided to move to the United States?

At first, it was just supposed to be for a six months internship, I was actually advised to not go to the US for an internship because the visa situation. And from the school, they were telling me, oh, just go to a racing team that we're linked with here in Europe, and you would have great chances to actually have a job right after your internship. But I wanted something different. I wanted to get better with my English and get some experience with NASCAR. I had at the time, I was fascinated by Hendrix Motorsports, Penske, and all those teams that we don't really see overseas in Europe. So that was something I was really interested on. So I wanted to build my path. I was not able to get an internship straight up with a NASCAR team. But I had a great adventure with Penske Motorsports, working on a lot of different brands, a lot of different cars. It's quite a show at Penske Motorsports. I invite anybody to check them out if they are there one day. But if you have anything from GTM cars, Formula cars, Ferrari Challenges, Super Trofeo cars, you name it, they really have a lot of different stuff. As a technician, it's like the best way to build experience, because you can really find the difference between all the manufacturers and how you actually operate race cars in general.

Well, I'd imagine, because there's so many differences between those cars. I mean, from, you know, like, again, a Super Trofeo to, for example, the Formula One cars that we're having here. I mean, they're all fast cars. They're all race cars.

Correct.

But they're so crazy different. So what were some differences that you saw in the varying categories? Because like, I guess, what did your education consist of?

So the education was really about, well, first of all, the pure maintenance of a race car. How you take it apart entirely. You start with suspension engine, how you do all the checklists, and then how you actually check whether a part is eligible to go back on a race car or not. So those are all the, you know, the factors you learn at racing school. But also dealing with a racing team. Because if you try to work on a race car on your own, you're never going to go that far. Like you need a team. You learn that as low as, I mean, as looking at, you know, the Cars movie. That's the first episode, the first movie that was created. You can't do it without a team. And that's so true. And if you can't have a personality that can fit into a team and make it, you know, the rest of the people that are working with you, you know, a bond, I want to say, you're not going to go that far. So that's why I actually love about Motorsport is that it's not just about the car. It's also about the people you're working with and work against. It's really important. You have to make sure that your competition can be can be there. So you would see a lot also at the racetrack racing teams helping each other because it's it's important. It's and then I think that reflects also to the car community. It's so for me, that's that's newer. I want to say I started with Motorsports and I'm now with KTM. I try to get brand awareness. So we're getting the car a little bit everywhere and I meet wonderful people just like that. And it's good to see that whatever I learned and I lived in Motorsport is actually something we see a lot in the car community in general. Stuff that we see on the street.

So after you wrapped up school, you got your internship. So what was the kind of next steps in your career?

Just climbing the ladder kind of. So even with the degree I got from the school, the only thing that racing teams were allowing me to do was cleaning the cars, wiping them off, loading them, make sure we had everything to go to the racetrack. And then after I changed pads and make sure everything is there on the suspension area and start doing some setup, make sure the cars are aligned properly, understand tire wear, degradation, even on the car and himself, fixing, rebuilding engines and all the technical stuff that needs to be done all the time. So yeah, I kind of climbed the ladder that way. Again, I was lucky enough to be able to work on very prestigious race cars. One of the cars that really marked me was some of the DTM cars, the Audi DTM. There was a 2006 and a 2009 proper Audi DTM cars that were owned by a private owner in Miami and he was driving it all the time. So it was crazy to go through the process of rebuilding that car, getting it ready to the racetrack. And it was the kind of car that you have to warm up the engine before you start it. So that's something that a lot of people are aware. And those engines were built with basically zero play.

So it's like seized, right? It can't move.

Yeah, the play, the gaps between everything inside the engine is super, super tight. So if you were to start it, you want to have enough oil in between. So yeah, you would damage it if you started before that. So you want to make sure the optimal temperature were on before you started. And even after that, the starting sequence is very similar to our Formula One. Even after that, when I was with Mazda, the engines that we had, we would have to put warmed up oil and coolant inside. So they would be warmed up outside of the car, then you would put it on. So it's, yeah, it's crazy.

And how long is the warm up period?

It depends on the outside temperature, obviously. So if you start with a warmer day or colder day, it could be anything from 25 minutes to an hour, an hour and a half, before you can start anything. So all that, obviously, you have to prepare. Show up to the racetrack early. You make sure that all that works. I have a backup heater, you know, that does all the things. You know, you can't be there. I'm sorry, you know, we can't go on the track because we don't warm up the engine on time.

So I'm curious then, so what is the performance advantage to having such tight restrictions?

So there's a lot that goes with that. I mean, I'm probably not the best person to ask this question, but I'll take my put.

Yeah, surface level is fine too.

So yeah, the engines, first of all, they were built with certain tolerances, and they had to be a certain size and also so close to the ground. So they were trying to reduce all the rotative mass so you almost have no flywheel. All that to have the best performance on a racetrack and limit fuel consumption, tire consumption. So everything was developed around for that specifically. They also tried to have the engine as close as possible to the center of the car. So yeah, anything that can reduce the size of it, the mounting points as well, they were doing that for that reason. So that goes along with the rest of how they build the engine. So I won't be able to tell you exactly why.

I'm sure there's a very science to it.

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure it has to be close to those little facts that I just mentioned here. Yeah, it's all very compact and it has to make the power it needs to.

And certainly when you're revving to 9,000, 10,000 RPM, whatever it may be, those tolerances are critical, right?

Yes, that's correct, too. Yeah, you want to make sure that you're always applying the best power from naturally aspirated engines that are always working at a range of RPMs and temperature, those engines are not meant to be idling on a red light or anything like that. So they come with a different manufacturing.

I'm curious, I can't remember from looking at the fax sheet, what did the engines rev up to?

On the DTM cars, it was about 8,000 to 8,500. And then, yeah, again, naturally aspirated, crazy vibrations coming out of that engine, and it's hard to man it also to the car. So drivers would enter lots of vibration at all times, it's quite crazy. I remember the first time actually doing a warm up like this, we dropped the computer. The computer was sitting on the roof of the car. We started the warm procedure. The engine was pretty warm, but then you started up, go through the gears and all that. Well, first of all, I think the engine, one of the computers actually blew is a hard drive, because it was a mechanical hard drive and it did not like the vibrations at all. And another computer actually fell off just by the vibrations, walked its way out of the roof. But yeah, those are just like funny stories with that. But yeah, so actually those cars, it was never really about making the maximum power. There's plenty of engines that can make way more power than that, but it's about to make it reliably for a long time, and the same kind of power too. There's no such thing as link mode or anything like this. It's either it's on or off. So you want to make sure that everything is on the perfect level, whether it's electronically, all the sensors you have, just the harness also, as just the base materials that are used to be building those engines.

What sort of engine management system do you guys use, like MoTeC?

On the KTM, yes. On the KTM is all MoTeC, whether it's for ECU, PDU, and then we have a Sarini shifting unit on the car. It's actually kind of a new to me, a new generation of shifting system on the sequential transmission. So for the longest time, we have what we call a pneumatic system with a compressor, a little bottle and an actuator, kind of like a cylinder that moves the shafts to shift the transmission. Now all that is replaced with one little unit that's about five inches long with two inches wide, and it does everything. And it's even smarter than a pneumatic system because it really prepares the shifting, whether it's down or upshifting, it knows with DCU, and it makes the shifting smoother, quicker, and it saves also a little bit of life from the transmission as well. The transmission likes that a lot. So yeah, and all of that is, we all use MoTeC now. And it's great, honestly. MoTeC is definitely one of the best out there.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I know it's a little more open source, a little more controllable.

Right.

Which version of MoTeC?

So we have a M142 ECU in the car, and then we have a dash that I do not remember the brand just yet. It's not exactly like a C125 that we see on most builds. It's a different dash that's incorporated into the steering wheel of the cars that also works with the buttons on the steering wheel. But it gets the info from the Motec and get the display that we need. All that has been developed by Rider Engineering, which is the company that developed the cars with Swiss KTM. So they have a big impact as far as how the car was developed and how it performs. So yeah, it's good stuff. I can't wait until I can take you guys on one of those cars one day. It's a great experience.

That would be an awesome experience. Oh, so how did you, I guess, because obviously what you're doing is not a cheap endeavor, so how did you eventually create what you created?

Well, it really started from nothing. I mean, I came to... That's the story I like to say, and I think it would be great on podcasts, but I came to the US about 10 years ago with $2,800. That's all I had. And I just built my past that way, worked for a team and built my experience that way, and bring some great customers that became friends along, and they started believing in what I wanted them to do, if they wanted to have fun, and for what they wanted to do in motorsport. And that's how it came in. So we started selling cars and getting on track, more than as much as possible, I want to say, so we can get as much data and as much experience on the cars and create everything around those race cars, whether it's tooling, logistic, the trailers, so they can be perfectly made for those cars. So that's kind of how it started. And then I created what I call the service packages for those cars. So you don't just buy a car and figure it out on your own. You have a full support after that, which is, I think, really, really appreciated and different from other manufacturers, I want to say, or race car dealers. So that's kind of how the success, I want to say, started earlier this year. And yeah, here we are now with a few cars in our shop, and we have a GT2, I'm going to get a GT2 race car that's eligible to race in SRO from next year here in America as well now. So that's our goal. We're trying to get back into pro racing on that level. So yeah, that's... I don't know if that answers your questions, but...

Yeah, I think so. And then, so I guess, man, there's so many different places I want to take this. Like I'm kind of overwhelmed right now because this is, I mean, it is super interesting. But is there any street legal versions of these cars?

There is actually, yes. There is one called the GTX-R. So just for reference, we'll start from the beginning. So the GT2 is the main car that it created back into 2020. It's the 600 power version, 2300 pounds, fully, you know, full carbon fiber, monocoque body, and about, I want to say 10, 20% of the back of the car is the top frame to hold the powertrain. A GTX version was created out of this car. Instead of a built engine, you have a factory engine straight from the RS3. Little smaller brakes, and then a little less downforce. That's more of the consumer or track toy or club level race car, I want to say. That's the one you would see the most. And then the GTX-R is the street legal version of that platform. So they kept the five cylinder, they installed the DQ500, which is the dual clutch transmission that comes from the RS3 as well. So no more clutch pedal. You have also an automatic canopy. So it's definitely more made for the street. Unfortunately, we do not have those cars street legal in the US, just like a lot of other cars that we wish we had here. But we are strongly working on trying to get some type of version of this car here. The demand is way too high. Every other day I'm receiving emails or calls like, hey, I'm really interested in buying a car, but can I put it on the street? My answer as an official KTM dealer has to be no for now, as we're bonded with a contract with KTM, a sports car. But eventually, we're working on it. So just stay tuned with us. Whatever is possible, we'll get some guys on the street with those cars.

So how many KTM dealers are there, like authorized dealers?

Authorized dealers, sports car here in the US, about four now. One in Miami, the racing team actually used to work for in some other sports. There's another one in Chicago, which actually holds most of the parts, spare parts, that we can get here in the country. Myself here in Nevada. There's another one in LA, I believe, and actually there's an extra one that just opened up in Arizona. They're just a dealer, I believe. They just have a point of sale for the cars. They're just getting themselves ready for servicing also and testing with those cars.

Okay, so what does that conversation look like back with the headquarters? What are you looking for in your market? Because obviously there's a high demand to get something street legal, especially in the US. I mean, how many units are sold in the US, roughly?

Roughly, so for the race cars, we probably can account about 30 to 40 race cars of the new model. Combined with also the earlier X-Bows, we'll probably see about 50 cars, I think. As far as the street legal version, so when they released it back late last year, they sold out 200 models almost instantly. It was that crazy. And that's basically the production for two years. They produced about 80 cars this year, and they want to produce about 120 next year for 2024. And after that, it's hopefully going to be a little more. But KTM Sportscar is still a pretty small company. They kind of reflect also what I put into my business. It's quality over quantity. And that's what we thrive for. We want to make sure those cars are... They share a very, very good recipe, but we want to make sure that's transferred to the right way. We want to make sure that every people or every customer that buy one have the best experience as possible, and they can talk only good stuff about their cars, because that's really what we're trying to make. We don't want to try to make the fastest thing in the world or the best thing, because there's always going to be something better eventually. But it's about that recipe, again, where you have a proper Audi powertrain paired to a carbon fiber monocoque that was developed, actually, with Dallara, by the way. Dallara, who is a manufacturer for chassis for IndyCar, even so Formula One back then, so a very solid brand. And they developed the crossbow chassis, the two-seater carbon fiber monocoque, which you wouldn't see, not anywhere, but at this level of quality, you wouldn't see that anywhere. That's what I'm trying to say.

So then, do you have any kind of customer experiences or public experiences?

We do, yeah. So we are also partnered, in a way, with Dream Racing, which is also a racing experience you can do here in Las Vegas. They actually own their own crossbow GTX that we support sometimes. So you can just buy your experience by the lap over there. So you can do as early as three laps. I do recommend to do at least 15 to 20 laps to get the full experience, because again, it's a race car. It requires a little bit of warm up, and the speed is quite... It's crazy. On corners, there's not so many cars that can get to that kind of speed on corners. So you want to make sure you get up to that speed first for yourself and then start enjoying the car. After that, we propose the private test days with our own cars, with the full racing team support. So you even have coaching on and off the cars. We download data, we show you everything, how you can get better, and also we give you the full power possible on the car too. So you can really enjoy it as much as possible.

So when you say you give full power, do you guys start ramping up the tune, for example?

A little bit, yeah, depending on the driving experience, the driving level. We kind of keep that secret a little bit. We test that at first. And also depending on how cold it is outside, we want to make sure that the tires get warmed up properly, and you don't get yourself in a weird situation and dangerous situation. So we play with that. Obviously, it's just a boosted car, so we can just play with the boost, the maximum boost. And then from there, we'll try to make sure that you can get the best experience as possible.

So my first experience with that was actually, I want to say, two or three weeks ago. So in Minnesota, literally in my backyard, like two miles away, we have an Enth Moto, which makes the fastest Vipers in the world. So my buddy just received his 2000 horsepower Viper back. He wanted to, you know, he just switched it to a three-speed auto at the time. So he went out to the drag strip to test it, and this is my first time watching the MoTeC opened up, because this is his first time on the track, and the conversation went like this. All right, can you do more? Can you do more? Can you do more? Because it was a cold day. I want to say it was 55 degrees, but it was sunny, so we had some traction. At least there was some heat on the track. And it was just really cool, because the conversation that was being had there, it's like, all right, I can do a little bit more power. Let's give it a little more power early on, and a little, you know, whatever. It's super cool to see that. And then I imagine a similar conversation takes place with, again, with your customers over there. It's like, all right, I don't like how, you know, what these metrics that I'm seeing, I'm not confident in you being able to take more power or whatever. What other kind of tuning are you able to do besides power? Expansion or anything like that?

Yeah, so setup is quite important, especially for a road course, and the racetrack that we're going to, there's always a little bit of setup adjustments we have to do. Sometimes we do it for the driver, sometimes really to make the car the fastest as possible. So depending also on the tire manufacturer we use, there's always going to be setup adjustments, alignment, suspension geometry, that we can change stiffness also on the shocks and the springs. So after this whole year, we probably have committed about 20,000 to 25,000 miles of racetrack use, which is a lot. Obviously, that's with different cars, with all the cars that we had combined. But it's great because we were able to see the difference, first of all, between cars, which is actually not that much compared to any other race cars I worked on. There's always a huge gap of differences between setup adjustments. You would set up a ride height or a shock, not the same way from a car to another. But with KTM, for some reason, you can take a set of shocks from one car and put it on another, and you would feel the difference exactly the same, or very, very close to it. And I think that's really because the car is using a common 5M monocoque that really doesn't flex as much as a regular top chassis. So everything stays very, very accurate, whether you're changing all those components, which is really good. Everybody kind of wants that in racing. So yeah, we do try to set up the car maybe a little more on the safe side, maybe a little understeery in a way, so the car doesn't spin as easy. And depending on the driver after that, we can adjust that according to his liking for sure.

By the way, these are my favorite types of podcasts, the technical ones, because I learned so much. I've had a number of engineers and tuners and all that come on the podcast, so it's super exciting to talk about this. Let's see, I'm trying to think what direction I want to take this now. So you went to Laguna Seca over there for Gridlife, correct? So what kind of series do you guys typically race in?

So this year, we actually raced the NASA WERC championship, which is WERC stands for Western Endurance Racing Championship, which was a championship I've been doing since I moved here in the West Coast. They have a very good track from Buttonwillow, Chuck Waller, Utah Motorsport Park, Laguna Seca is one of them, Sonoma. So it's mainly on those good racetracks, and the race varies between four hours to all the way to actually 25 hours, what we would see in ThunderHill. So the goal is always to prepare for the 25 hours of ThunderHill. So doing the championship was really great. After that, the cars are eligible to do anything like Trans-Am, now SRO. Grid life has been something that visually attracts me a lot earlier this year and since I kind of arrived in the US. And I always told myself, one day I'll make it happen. And this year, it happened out of nowhere. Like I was saying earlier, the past few months for the company was a little hard. It was a lot slower. So I had to part ways with a few of the technicians we had and a few of the personnel we had at the team. So I was left with one technician that was actually off the week prior the grid life event and during also the grid life event as well. So we put a little pause in the workshop. The car was apart. The main car that we used was apart for winter revision. And it just happened that a ticket showed up to me in ways that I couldn't refuse. So I bought the ticket from a gentleman that couldn't make the event. And I get out of the office. It was Wednesday night. And I was like, all right, I got to put this all together again. So I went back and wrenching on the cars, put the engine back on, transmission, everything was back on the car the same night. Thursday morning, I had the help from one of the crew members to put the rest of the car back together. We did a light setup on the car, find some tires, a little bit of fuel, loaded everything in the trailer, and we're gone by 1 p.m. on Thursday to make it to Laguna Seca before 10. That's the last time where they closed the gates for us to set up. So we showed up there pretty late, unloaded everything, got everything ready for the morning. And grid life, track battle, the time attack, sessions at grid life are very short. So you have about 3 sessions of, I want to say between 4 and 6 laps each time. So whatever you have to do on a racetrack, it has to be super quick. So we worked some kind of setup that we think would be best. We were missing some front canards that was going with an aero package that was created for the car from KTM. So we only had the big rear wing and some louvers and front fenders. But I almost know I did front downforce. So the car was not turning as much as we wanted.

Yeah, it was light up front.

Yeah, very light up front. And it was the first time for me to drive like a Laguna Seca. So it's the same thing. I drove because my pro driver was away. He was not even there either. I would have hired him, but he wasn't there for that. So it was kind of like a one man show, but it was such a blast. I feel really fortunate to be able to make it happen.

So who was all there? It was you and then who else?

So I just had one of the crew members that was able to make some time to join me on that. And that was it. So we were just the two of us making it happen. So I was driving and sending up the car as much as I could. And he was helping on the logistic and make sure everything that we need around the car was there. Tire pressure, tire temperature, all that kind of stuff. It's the kind of event also you want to use tire warmers. So all that has to be set up prior, you know, a few, something between 30 to 45 minutes before each session. So that was really cool by this kind of help. And then, yeah, without any setup and even with the canards not being there for that event, which again, I discovered it was a pretty fast track. Like you're carrying, you have to carry a good amount of speed throughout all those corners to get a good lap times done. So downforce is extremely important, which we didn't have a good package for that event. But we still make it a success when we finished P2 in the Unlimited class for our first attempt.

And how many people were in the class?

In Unlimited, I want to say it was about 14 cars, 12 to 14 cars. In total, for the entire time attack, I want to say about 60 cars or so. There was still one class above us, which was the Super Unlimited. So that's where we saw that Yokohama Wolf car.

And I believe Damon from DDE was in your class with the Trofeo.

The Super Trofeo car, yeah. He did mention it was one of his first track event. And I want to say I was really happy to see how he did. I don't know him personally, but I appreciated the way he was aware on the racetrack. Again, the session was really short, and he had a lot of fast cars out there. And personally, we didn't really get passed by any cars because the session was so short. But if you have a few seconds behind the pace that we were doing, you would for sure getting passed by some crazy cars sometimes. But again, yeah, his awareness of being around and letting faster guys go was really good. And I would be really happy to share the track again with a gentleman like that.

Me too.

So what defines the Unlimited class then?

So in the Unlimited class, it looks like you only need to have a VIN number on your car to qualify for the Unlimited class. But after that, you can have the aero you want, the engine you want. It really doesn't matter.

As long as it's been a production vehicle of some form, effectively.

And then the class above that, what's the requirement for that?

Super unlimited, there's no requirement. You can have open cockpit, open wheel car. It looks like there's just no... You can bring whatever you want. As long as it rolls, and there's a fire suppression system or a roll cage, I think there's obviously minimum requirement for safety, which is required, obviously. But GridLoft did a really good job at all that with the technical inspection, and the media coverage was astonishing. I think it's... I didn't expect it to, but I think they will do very well in the next few years at being one of the top racing series in the country.

Pound for pound, I'd argue they are the best motor sports, well, grassroots motor sports series out there in the US, right?

Right. And that's coming from someone, again, that raced IMSA and ISRO for the past 10 years here in the US, and obviously those are the top class racing series that you'd find, with all the big manufacturers bringing big money into those programs. But Great Life, this way of doing it, was a lifestyle that just fits with the newer generations. That's the gap that I'm finding between the two, Great Life and the other racing series that we have out there. But just the way they're doing their media platform, it's what people want to see. They want to be connected with the cars and be able to attempt to bring their own car too and be part of it. And I think that's what Great Life is bringing over some of those other series out there.

So give me an idea, how old are you?

I'm 31.

31, you said?

Yes.

Okay, so you're almost in that younger demographic, because you're only 7 years older than me in this instance.

He's 3 years younger than me.

Well, Dan's 55. Running community has aged the poor guy. So here's a question I really want to know. So that car, you've obviously had a lot of experience with various cars. So give me an example of just how fast this car is compared to, let's say, what's the track time that it puts down?

Well, let's just take the lap times we've done at Laguna Seca. I was able to put down at 125.2, which is what you would see right before that track was repaved on the GTD and GTLM cars, the factory GT3 cars. So it's quite astonishing for the price of the car, I want to say. But again, there's still cars that are quicker than that, but we'll also have to take into matters that, we're at the early stage of this car yet. We just released that aero package that would increase the lap times. I mean, sorry, decrease the lap times, making the car a little quicker. But then rapidly, we find ourselves in a situation where we need more power. So we have something that's reliable, that turns great, it's comfortable, it's a lot of fun to drive, and in a way, it's very safe too. Now it's just okay. Let's build something crazier if there is also a demand in the application for it. So now there's time attack and those kinds of events are becoming more popular. I think this car would do great. Now, on the engine side, I don't think we're trying to do anything quicker than this. Maybe something to match GTD or GTLM cars, which is definitely not impossible. But then the other questions we get a lot is, how does it compare to a car like a Super Trofeo? That's the car that a lot of people are after.

Or even like a normal Lamborghini track time. For example, since we're in Las Vegas, you have these experiences on the track. Do you have any data to show how that car compares to one of the normal Huracans you can rent out there?

I don't, to be honest. I don't really have data, but it's just...

It's not really apples to apples.

Right, yeah. We're not comparing. First of all, just the tires that are being used are completely different. A very good DOT compared to Slicks tires, it's none in day, and that's what the KTM were developed for. You would see much more efficiency and performance just off tires alone. After that, it's really how the car was developed, and the hour package you can get was that power delivery you get from that five-cylinder. I think that's what changes everything. It's also a very different car, you really don't see that. The way the canopy opens, the way it looks, a lot of people are like, what is this? It's different, it's not a Lamborghini, it's not a Koenigsegg, it's different. And a lot of people, when they say, this looks expensive, when you tell them the price, which is right around the $300,000 right now, the GTX is a little less than that, a lot of people are like, what, that's it? Well, it's already a lot of money, but that's right. If you try to compare it to something like even a brand new Super Trofeo, or for a challenge car, it's in a way much cheaper. And it's not where it shines the most for me, and that's not even how I try to even to sell it. Where it shines for me, it's the maintenance cost. It was built to endure that stress on a racetrack, and it was built as a race car at first. It was not a street car converted as a race car. So everything was made from the ground up to perform on a racetrack. So you're ending up with a maintenance cost that's a lot lower than most of the cars in that category, and it's actually way closer to a TCR car, for example, which is obviously a much smaller platform. So yeah, I think that's what is really going to change the game, or it's what's changing the game as far as right now for the performance you get and how much you spend. The smile per dollar, I guess, it's where it's at with KTM.

So what kind of people approach you to buy this sort of car?

So the most popular one, I would say, are people that already had race cars before. The few of them that I have had GT4 cars, some GT3 or even Radicals, and they're either tired of not getting the support they need, or they want something quicker, but they don't want to spend GT3 money. So they try the KTM, and it's like, yeah, I mean, I'm a Porsche guy, or I was being into this or that, and they end up being very happy with what KTM has to offer, and also all the support they will provide. So they feel safe, they feel like they don't have to overthink too much, they just want to have the fun and have something reliable, and that sounds great, and it's quick, and the GTX, even the GT2, answers all these questions. So that's how we started. I don't want to say we sell a lot of cars. Like I said, it's only about, the GTX and GT2 are probably about 20, 25 cars. Probably not even that much. Just about 20 cars, I wouldn't say in the country, so for the past two years. So yeah, we want more of them, obviously, as much as possible. But again, the quality over quantity for us.

Of course.

Yeah, so now that we feel like we're more established, we're more ready to get more cars in the country and support more customers. So yeah, we'll hopefully, we'll see more very soon.

So what does support look like?

So I tend to try to overkill a little bit the support in a way where, well, first of all, we transport and bring everything you would need at a racetrack, all our equipment. Even that we can do setup or check the geometry of the car on the spot at the racetrack as well, it's very important. And so we bring all that, including some hospitality. We set up our trailer with a simulator inside. We have reaction time practice, also massage tables. I mean, everything you would need and could ever ask at a racetrack, we bring it. We try to not do something too light, like sending just a mechanic or technician with a car. It's something I try to avoid, because if you're already spending a quarter of a million in a car, you should be able to spend a little bit of money for your race weekends and make sure that it's a whole success. Because most of the owners, actually, they're still actively working, they're managing businesses and stuff like that. So when they make the time to go to the racetrack, they want to make sure that all this time, that the little time they have is a success. And that's the key, that's what I'm trying to provide. Make sure we respect that time, and we provide also great coaches that make sure that you're getting better and you're doing this for a purpose. And then you're enjoying the car more than anything. That's the goal, for sure.

So initially, I would purchase the car in this instance, and then is there an additional support fee for you to go to the track with me?

So usually it was the purchase of a car. We try to support a car right away, part of the deal with the purchase of the car. And after that, yes, of course, there would be a fee because it's not a cheap sport. And technicians and engineers, they cost money. They want to get rewarded, obviously. And everything around, obviously, transportation, tires, fuel, all that. But that's the thing, we provide everything on the spot here. You won't even have to care about your tire pressures, tire temperature, the amount of fuel you're carrying. We take care of all that for you. We scan even the schedule ahead of time so we know what sessions you're going to be doing, whether you should do the entire hour sessions or just 20 minutes at a time so we can adjust a few things in between. We try to also do reference laps with a pro driver before so you know how good you are doing or how bad you're doing and how much better you should be doing. And then we get you there. We want to make sure that you can get to the performance that you need to achieve. And then if after that you want more, then we'll have the actual racing team with all the crew members that we have to support you to do SRO or all the endurance racing that we've been doing this year.

So then how many cars have you had in any given one spot?

The maximum probably in our shop, which can probably normally hold about six cars. I think we had about nine or ten at once. So we sometimes had to store the cars in trailers as well.

And then how about at like a track day?

Track day, the maximum we supported was four. Four.

And you were able to support that many?

Correct, yes. Yeah, it's not that bad. After that, I wouldn't really allow it, because it gets very thin, and then you would have to require more equipment, more people, more managers. We want to make sure that we don't look too bad. And everything that we do is coordinating with everybody, including the drivers.

Correct. It has to be a quality thing at the end of the day. Okay, I like that. So overall it will be just a good brand. So then what does your day to day look like currently when there is no track days?

Right. Well, we always try to go back to the track as much as possible. For us, it's still like the more we go, even if we find issues or whatever, it's never a bad experience. It's a good experience all the time, whether it's a successful weekend or not. So we have a few members actually at Spring Mountain right here in Toram, which is about 45 minutes away from here, which is a great quality racetrack. And they also hold some club races. So only for the members, they can do those, I think, about 35 to 45 minutes races. And it's every month.

Wheel-to-wheel races?

For members only. So you see different types of cars, and we're actually preparing for one next weekend. And then there's also the 25 Hours of Thunder Hill showing up. I don't think we'll make it this year, unfortunately. I wouldn't say that we're ready just yet. Again, this is one of the big races that we can do, with this kind of cars. So we want to make sure, in the country at least, so we want to make sure we're absolutely ready for that. The other races actually we can do worldwide would be the Creventic Engine Series with Hankook. So those are between 12 and 24 Hours races all around the world. So you even go all the way to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait, Spa-Francorchamps, Barcelona. They used to have one even here in Kota, but it hasn't been happening for the last few years for some reason. But hopefully it comes back.

So what brought you out to SEMA?

Well, I was actually in town, which is rare. I'm usually somewhere on a racetrack, somewhere around the country. But I was in town this year, and we had a partner, a brand actually, Crytex that does ceramic coating that needed a special car for display. And yeah, I did talk to a few people, and we were connected to them. So I was like, yeah, you need a special car? We have. We can provide that. And it's here, it won't cost that much to get it transported there. So yeah, we have a car exposed here in the North Hall. And yeah, it's great to actually, it's my first time doing SEMA. Since I'm in the US, and even the fifth year I'm here in Vegas. So it's good to see a good amount of people that I've seen quite around the country too, and connect with new people too. I think it was great.

Yeah, what do you think of the overall scale of the event?

It's huge. Well, I was told, and I was seeing by the video, it was also the different halls. It looks like it's a few different events in one. So I've been here for probably a couple days now, and I know I haven't seen everything just yet.

Absolutely.

There's so much more.

So what would make this a successful week for you here at SEMA?

Just probably more brand awareness, like people seeing the cars, seeing that KTM does not make only motorcycles, but also some wonderful race cars. That's always a success. And make sure our partner here, Crytek, gets the attention that they need. The attention, sorry, that they need. And then I was actually wondering, seeking and looking for manufacturers and partners here that could maybe help on getting more options to the car. There is actually a company that won an award here a couple years ago that created some active aero system. And I was quite interested on that. Because it's already such a different car, but why not even make a few steps further? And also, like I mentioned earlier, the hybrid system, whether it's batteries or motors, I think SEMA can regroup all this kind of people and manufacturers and companies. So, yeah, I think for me that will be a successful weekend at SEMA.

Yeah, it almost seems like everybody who's somebody is here.

Yes, in a way. There's so many faces that I've seen a million times. I can't name, I can't put a name, maybe like a car brand or something, but a name I can't. But yeah, I see those people here. And it almost makes you feel like, you know what, I think I'm at home here. This is where I belong.

Yeah, I mean, it's all car people. We're all here for the same reason, just to enjoy what we enjoy, which is just crazy to me. So, okay, so one question I had more so on you personally. So did you have any mentors along the way that kind of guided you towards becoming what you are today?

Not at the beginning. But recently, I want to say for the past three years, since actually I worked with Team Primad at one of the customers that we had there, you know, became a friend and kind of a little bit of business mentor and then helped me keeping my head up on the toughest time. And I always think that everything happens for a reason no matter what. And if you go to a racetrack and you're trying to do something and put so much effort, and if it's a failure, well, it happened for a reason. You'll come back stronger. And it still drives with me and it's actually coming next week. But that's about it. As far as like a racing mentor, not so much, but a business mentor, yes. Just about recently, other than that, I've always been inspired by stories or even just like a personality that is Carl Shelby. I know it's really different from what I'm doing now, but I think his story is quite very interesting. Performance is his business. It's kind of like how he presents himself. And I feel like I'm about to follow the same path. Like maybe the AAC Cobra that he had or all my KTMs now, I'm trying to make them better. I really do believe in them, and I want to make them, not necessarily with my sauce, but if we can make something even better out of them, with or without KTM and create our own name in that route, that would be pretty crazy. That's a pretty crazy goal.

So when you say with or without KTM, does this mean, so you would almost like a dealer option, so you kind of add your own things on top of it to make the car perform better?

Well, you know how Shelby did their own thing without Ford? Kind of like in that path in a way.

I see.

Because there's so much that KTM can do, and there's just so much that can be done with race cars, whether their focus is hill climb or time attack or endurance racing, club racing, aim size or you name it.

It's more purpose built based on your customers or what you want your customers to do. For example, there was a partnership with McLaren and Ford way back when where they would basically, the Ford would go to American Sunroof Company and then it would basically become a McLaren. Kind of like in that regard?

Could be, yes. It's kind of like so open, right? It can be in so many ways. The Carl Shelby story, it's kind of that inspiration I want to say I have and passion in a way.

So that kind of makes me wonder, what was your poster car when you were a kid? What was the car on your wall?

That's a very good question. Probably not a lot of people would believe me that they know me just from recently, but it has to be an R34 Skyline GTR.

Really?

Strange, isn't it? It's very different from where I'm at right now, obviously. But I grew up a lot with the GDM crowd, and I used to import cars from the UK to France. Because we didn't have great models over there. And in the UK, you can find cars that are straight from Japan, being right-hand drive and being obligated there. So that was our source for all the Honda engines, the B-Series and also the Skylines, the RB25, 26 engines, Supras as well. So yeah, I kind of grew up in that route. And after racing school, even though the goal was to try to touch a few bases in NASCAR, I was actually not able to make it. And I kind of changed the route after starting, you know, working on the, you know, supercars and race cars, Porsche, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, DTM cars. I kind of staked it out. And that's probably what makes me, it will probably open up my passion about cars in general. Like, you know, I was really just after Japanese cars, but I actually lived in Japan for a year as an exchange student when I was 17. And mainly because of the cars. People were asking me, why did you go there? I was like, because of Tokyo Drift. Like, this was me at 17. This is my story, you know.

Did you experience a lot of fun stuff in Japan then, car-wise?

Yeah, it was actually pretty incredible, like the car community or scene that you'd see there. It's pretty frequent. You see cars that are exceptional everywhere else. Every car is always like the sport model, the S or the R. You know, it's always been something like that over there. And I remember being, you know, as a student, I was actually in a little town in Tochigi, about two hours, two hours and a half north of Tokyo. It was in the middle of nowhere, but I could hear overnight, like cars at night, you know, being in the hills and stuff, and I could almost recognize, like, which engine it was, just by the sound of it. There was just nothing else, just the sound of the engines. From far away, sometimes we're really, really far away. But those kind of moments, like, oh yeah, I'm a car guy. You know.

Did you ever consider to get into drifting?

I actually started drifting before driving. Really? Yes. Back when I was, yeah, 14, 16, I had a Volvo 340, which was a 4-cylinder, real-world drive car, and well, actually, a total neck on the racetrack. But the one after was the Nissan Cedric, which I don't think we had those here in the US.

I don't believe so.

Also, was that Volvo basically your first car then?

It was, yeah. It was not even street legal at all. It was a car that was supposed to go to the junkyard, but it went to a school, and the school didn't really decide whether they could do anything with it or not. So I got away with it, and I just wanted, as I told them, I just wanted to put it on the racetrack, and they allowed me to do that. But at the time, the racetrack I was putting on was an Oval in Belgium, and the kind of racing was contact permitted. So I actually imagined that the car did not last that long. We did about three races, and then, yeah, we couldn't do more than that.

I thought those Volvos were built like a brick house, though.

Oh, yeah, they were. Three races was actually the record for any cars that could make this kind of races. No, it was the smaller version of the Volvo you would see usually, but nonetheless, still a pretty good car. But yeah, second car was actually a Nissan Micra, and the third one was a 1984 Nissan Cedric. So it was like a saloon on wheels. It was a big sedan, six-cylinder diesel, it was an LD28 engine, probably 75 horsepower, a little bit of torque, but with the slippery road that we had in North of France was raining basically 360 days a year there. Lots of roundabouts. Yeah, it was a good playground for me to learn how to drift. And then after that, when we started importing cars from the UK, I had everything from Skyline GTSDs and RX8s, 350Zs, Supras, so, you know.

Oh, really?

Drifting around was always something that I liked a lot. And I discovered later on when I actually did racing, like driving racing school in South of France for a few months that actually had great car control. Like, I could push the cars to the limit a lot quicker than any other novice drivers, because I knew how to control it whenever I would lose it. And I was like, oh, you know, f****** around when I was young actually helps.

So here's my real question then. Have you ever considered adding a hydraulic brake to one of the KTMs?

Why not? I've never considered that. That's to answer your questions right away. I mean, those cars are made for so much grip.

Sure.

And even the steering angle is really not there for that at all. But why not? I've had a couple people asking me, like, are you interested in making a drift build? I was like, oh, come on, I can't do that.

Just get a big angle kit in there.

Yeah, but why not? If someone really wants to do it, I'll help out. I'll be in that project no matter what.

Well, after our ride alongs with RTR, I feel like we should be the first customer to ask for that and be serious about it.

Yeah, there's so much we can do. The suspension geometry can be edited, you know, can be set up to so many different routes. So it's, yeah, I'm sure we can make something pretty special.

So what's the most custom design that you've had to do or adjustments that you have had to do?

As far as right now, we designed most of the onboard equipment, whether it's radio, V-Box, you know, camera system, drinking system also, and driver cooling. So by experience, most race cars that come from factory with an AC system is actually not that great. It's just there to be homologated in a way because the manufacturers have to have AC now on the race cars. So, yeah, we worked with a company called Chillout Systems. So they're a company that makes those boxes that cool down some fluid, and that fluid goes into a shirt and cools the drivers down that way. So that comes with some plumbing, and you have to cool down that box as well, and it has to be secured sometimes somewhere in the car where it doesn't interfere with all the electronics of the car, and also it will be great if you can still have a passenger with you. So all that, we're trying to design that this whole year and make sure everything works properly. We have also a lot of ideas and projects on route right now, either to make more power or being more reliable. We actually also created a first dry brake system for those cars for quick refueling. So we changed a little bit of the way the car gets fueled normally. It's a regular capless system you can use at the gas station, but this time we had a two dry brake system on either side of the car, one side for venting and the other side for fueling. So that was really successful this entire year for all the endurance that we've done, to the point where even KTM has been asking us to provide a little bit of our information on that experience. Because it's not just adding to our outlets or inlets, it even goes inside the tank. The best way to fill up the tank is actually from the bottom. So on the fuel side, we'll have a tube with a stacker on the bottom to make sure that the fuel goes well and then this person inside the tank to increase again efficiency. And all that with flaps and rollover valves to make sure that it's nice and safe in case of a major accident. Other than that, we have more projects that I won't be able to talk just yet.

Of course.

But more power, I want to say, is coming. There's downforce stuff also that are coming soon. And yeah, it's just going to get better and better right now.

So who's doing all this engineering and design work?

A few partners that we have. I wish I could do it all, but there's some stuff that my knowledge doesn't allow me to do that. But we actually 3D scanned the entire car last year, or this year, sorry. And we worked with a few engineers and designers to do a few projects that we're working on right now. So it's a little bit everybody. We have a few people around the country that helps us, and they're jumping in those projects. They also share that passion, I want to say, of the new car type, I want to say. So yeah, it's good. It feels good to be a part, but also helped by some really good people.

So I'm curious, what goes into getting a car 3D scanned? Do you have to take the entire car apart or what?

It's actually, yeah, I didn't expect that, but we actually did not even take the car apart. Like we brought it and we had this gentleman from San Francisco that came with a big box, and then for about an hour, he just went into every single corner of the car, including the wheel, under the diffuser, under the front splitter, under the wing, and he had a full-scale, I think the accuracy was like 0.2 of a millimeter. I mean, what we're talking about, a nail. And he was able to, from there, we're able to design what we want around the car. Yeah, that's how we started after that. For any applications that are more specific, let's say we want to do an intake or something that we'll have to design, or 3D scan something specifically, or take apart a part that we want to replace or change and 3D scan it from there and design something new on it.

Okay, so you did more so with an external 3D scan.

As far as run-on, yes.

Okay, you're not getting into taking apart, disassembling the entire engine and stuff like that.

We're getting a little by little. As far as run-on, we only have exterior 3D model and a little bit of underneath, obviously. We're getting to the insides, I want to say, in the next few months or so.

So this is kind of a two-part question. The first part being, where do you see CGA Motorsport going in the next few years?

Well, the goal is really to be a D-KTM company, in a way, with our partners, obviously. But the difference that we have compared to the other dealers and racing teams here in the country is that we only do KTMs. So all of our experience, all the equipment that we have is not being shared with any other platform. So we can have something that's really made for that and for one purpose and never neglect the accuracy or quality of the work that we're putting on there. So we can spend more time, I want to say, to do always better with those cars. And we have shared already a few of our experience as far as like setup, for example, with other teams. So they can benefit a little bit of that. And on the other hand, we can benefit also of whatever issues or performance gain that they get from doing anything. We share all that to try to go faster, obviously.

And then the second part of that question is, how do you see the relationship with KTM getting better over the next few years?

I think we kind of like all grow there together, meaning like they're still very small, just not as small as we are, because they're a manufacturer. But I think the goal is to actually have a KTM sports car USA, you know, happening at some point. And they already know we want to be the first one on the line for that. So, yeah, eventually, if we can have the proper name, and I don't know about Sigier Motorsport, you know, it could probably be just the race team on the side. I'm... Whatever happens to make me more involved with those cars, I'll take it. And that's also one way I sell those cars in a way. It's like I, you know, I take people on a ride, and if I see that it's really interesting, I was like, well, you know, you won't find anybody on earth that loves this car more than I do. So if you buy one, you know, you won't find any problems to get them, you know, the love that it deserves.

And I don't know if we asked this question earlier on, but how did that initial KTM relationship form?

So it was actually quite funny, because when I try to convert my ex-customers to become my new customers with the KTMs, so I've received the first one. I didn't even have a shop or anything at the time. So I rented a part of a shop somewhere at the Speedway here in Las Vegas to start taking up that first car, and then the second one showed up, third one. And then at some point is the general manager of KTM that calls me. Oh, actually, I'm sorry. Before that happened, the KTM that's at Dream Racing was facing some issues, and I was just getting into those cars, and I just went there to fix it. Like, no one asked anything. I just went there, boom, boom, boom. I connected the computer. Here's your problem. And next day was fixed. And KTM called, Dream Racing called me. He's like, oh, how much do we owe you? I said, don't worry about it. It's like, I want those cars to run no matter what. And it was nothing, honestly. It was probably an hour of my time, and everything was fixed. And a couple of days after that, the general manager of KTM called me. He's like, hi, you're Simon, right? I said, yes. I heard a lot about you. He's like, oh, really? So yeah, I'm going to come and visit you in January. And then we'll talk about doing more stuff. And by the time that that happened, I had sold two more cars, I think. And even before he came, he already nominated me to be a dealer. So he can give me the full support of KTM, the access of parts and some cars also to my disposition. So yeah, that's kind of how it happened. Really by just love of the brand and the car they've done and passion, obviously, in general. That definitely helped out.

So obviously we want to be respectful of your time. Since we are at SEMA, we want to, of course, enjoy everything that we have here. So one thing that I do at the end of every show, there is a question that I ask every single guest. The question goes like this. If you've heard the show before, you probably already know what it is. But essentially it goes like this. You have an unlimited budget. You have an unlimited imagination. But you have to choose three cars. Those three cars are going to define who you are as a person right now, because you have to choose a daily, a track car, I think I know this answer, and a show car. Now, with the unlimited imagination part, that's where people tend to lack, because they can modify it in any way possible if they would like. I see. Yeah, usually daily is the toughest one though.

It's crazy. I kind of already have an answer even though I was not prepared for this. But before I answer that question, it's also one of the things I say to a lot of people. People are asking me, you've been in motorsports for so long, or for this amount of time, and you've seen a lot of different cars. You were in a GDM, and then also the German cars, English cars, Italian cars, American cars. You've seen it all. You've put your hands on a lot of stuff. Like, if you had unlimited money, what would you do? And I told them I would create my own race car. And if I create my own race car, it will be something super close to a GT2. So now to answer that question, the daily will be a GTXR, the race car GT2. And where's the last one? The show car?

Show car. You're just going to say a bagged GTXR or something?

That's a very good question. I'm getting new to the show car stuff, to be honest. I went from motorsports to more car community, obviously now, and being involved with street cars. Show car has always been something I kind of left on the side. Because some of the stuff we see here at C-Mail, or cars that are not even running, for example, are just show cars. Tough question.

I wasn't going to fall to you if you said just another GTX.

Another GTX. We had a GTX, a GT2 and a GTX.

Would you do anything JDM, perhaps?

I would love to, yeah. There's so many good stuff from probably an R34 GTR.

We went to a lot of car shows with that.

What color?

There is that bronze color that I love from this car. I don't think it's a factory color, but I think the color you see on the spec 2 Nur, or a silver bronze color. It's kind of like an indescribable one. That color comes straight from Japan. One of the guys that I met there, Drifter, had made this color. We used to play video games together on Forza. It was always a blend between brown, green and silver. But it was never either or. It was quite tough. I'm sure you've seen this color before on the R34. I was actually fortunate enough before I started my career to work in a German company called Japo Motorsport. Their line of work was to get a better version of the Z-Tune. If you know about the Z-Tune, it was the craziest car that Nismo have made from the R34. They actually used to buy out R34s from owners that didn't use them that much. And it would strip them apart entirely and make them back to new with all the Z-Spec performance parts from Nismo for the street. So you had a built engine, you have different fenders, a better interior. And so X-Bow Motorsports took all those parts and make it even better. It was a better interior. You had Alcantara inside. The Alcantara that was used on Aston Martins. They used the Tomei engine. More cooling, more turbos, more everything. But the car was pristine, brand new, brand new, brand new. All the hardware under the car was titanium. It was the most expensive R34 you could buy. And unfortunately, it was kind of like the wrong market, so they didn't do too well, I want to say. But the passion is still there, and I'm still in a really good relationship with the owner. And if, as the values of those cars are getting up, I think we may see a new market for that eventually. But yeah, it was that company you can buy, basically a brand new R34. That's zero miles to anything.

This is news to me.

Yeah, I wish it was more popular. I think they tried to make it to SEMA. Again, that was, I'm talking about 13, 15 years ago. And they also had some time attack build with an R34, I'm sorry, a Lancer Evolution, full tub car. It was quite a crazy project as well. But I was at the peak of the JDM scene for me, was to see the build and also see them on the racetrack. But yeah, probably as far as a short car, an R34 is still a great car.

Yeah, I think that one wins. That takes the cake. That's a very cool one. And then last question before we ask for the design.

I'm enjoying this.

Yeah, so I guess the question is, how do we get into one of your race cars?

Are we talking physically or financially?

Let's do physically.

Physically, you guys can come as, anytime you want to my shop.

How's 20 minutes from now? We'll catch an Uber.

Yeah, we can get to my shop in 20 minutes. No problem. I can get you in one of the cars, at least the experience of being on board. There's actually one way right here that I can get you in if you want. That's no problem at all. As far as driving, the first easiest way will be drum racing, obviously.

What's the cost over there to do it?

I think it's $599 for the first three laps. And after that, it gets cheaper by the lap, obviously.

Which variant is that?

The GTX.

The GTX.

The GTX is basically a GT2 with 100 horsepower less. So you still have 500 horsepower. So it's money, trust me. It's still a lot.

Well, it still weighs what? 1,000 kilograms?

Yeah, 1,000 kilograms. 1,048 to be exact. That's dry, so if you had drivers and fuel, you close it to the 15.

Would I fit? Because I'm 6'4.

Yeah, you will fit.

I would fit just fine?

Yes. I had people that are 6'7. The only thing that changes or that could be difficult is the size of your torso. So if you have a long torso, that might be a problem. Long legs is no problem at all, because the pedal box can be moved, and the range is actually pretty crazy. Some people cannot reach the pedals back if they've been set all the way to the back. Yeah, they're just too far for them to get them. You have to get them by hand, which is good. You can put a lot of people, but you'll see also probably in Germany and Austria, you will see a lot of very tall people too, so they had to make sure that a car was adapted for that.

Yeah, that's just, I mean, about half my family is fairly tall, just because, so I'm Bosnian, so it's like, yeah, that's my heritage there. No, so do you guys have like a ride along sort of event or no?

Not exactly. I try to invite people to do ride alongs whenever the occasion shows up, when it's possible. Right here at Spring Mountain, because that's the closest for us. I wish we could do more of that. Maybe it's something I can try to talk to Dream Racing about. I think that we might be able to make that happen.

Yeah, even if you had somebody as a driver over there that's not necessarily a full-blown pro, but somebody who's just skilled.

Instructor, yeah.

You know what?

I'm pretty positive that they already make that happen, if you ask. Because as mentioned earlier, I was an instructor at Speed Vegas, which is their direct competitor. They're basically in the South, and Dream is in the North now. They actually provide that. You can just do the ride along. You just want to have the experience on a racetrack. And for most people, it's actually better. I've heard that actually this year or last year. Even if I wanted to drive the car, I won't be able to push it to the limit. Most pro drivers or even instructors would do so. They enjoy way better being on a ride along than driving the car. So that's some of the stuff they're proposing for sure.

There's something to be said about being in the passenger seat with somebody who can really drive. I mean, it's out of this world.

I agree. Even if I drive a lot of stuff right now, I was fortunate enough to go on the passenger side with Alexander Primat, my ex-business partner, who, for whoever doesn't know, used to be the teammate for Lewis Hamilton right before they showed up to Formula One. So he was actually also a Formula One driver, and you could see a few pictures of him even ahead of Lewis Hamilton. So definitely one of the quickest drivers I ever worked with, even up to this day. You could give him any car, any setup, any tires, he would put it in front. It's quite insane. It's like not human. But again, I was fortunate enough to be a passenger and actually do a lot of simulator sessions with him and learn a lot about driving, adapting to different cars. And that's actually what makes a pro driver a pro driver. It's the ability to adapt to a car that's whether understeering or oversteering. You have to drive a different way, different lines, and it's that speed of adaptation that makes a better driver. And that's what I was able to see through him and learn a little bit through him. I'm not near what he's able to do just yet, and I don't think I will ever be, but it's quite astonishing and crazy to see.

But I imagine your understanding of motorsport and just all the experience you've had, you're still probably pretty good, I'd imagine.

I'm not doing too bad, I guess, for myself. Don't be too humble. I still really enjoy it, and for different purposes, I would either drive myself, but if I want something to get done to the maximum potential, I'll put someone else in it, for sure. I'm aware of that. I know where my limits are. Again, there's some people that do that for a living. They drive every single week and every single day for some of them, and they're just really, really good at it, and that's where they belong, so we'll reserve that for them. And I have a huge respect again, because even though we all want to drive at a certain level, it doesn't become as enjoyable as we think. There's so much pressure that you have to deal with and danger at the same time. You're putting your life at risk every single lap, even though our cars nowadays are a lot safer. I mean, it's sometimes not the life, like the physical life, it's all the financial life that you're dealing with if you crash some of those cars.

You're stuck with it for a while, so very true.

Yeah.

So, where can people find you?

We're mainly active on social media right now. We do have a website, sigiermotorsport.com, that needs a little bit of update right now, but most of the information is there. Pricing-wise as well, options that we can get on those cars. But that's something also I'm still working on, try to get more exposed. And also, what do we need to expose the most as far as what we do? Is it more the race team, the experience, or just the information of the car? So that's what we're still working on right now as far as what needs to be exposed the most and where it needs to be exposed.

Perfect. We can certainly talk about that after as well here. And then, Dan, where can people find you?

You can definitely find me on the CarMunity app at DanTheMan. Otherwise, you can of course follow CarMunity socials at CarMunityUSA, or feel free to add me on Facebook.

Yeah, that's one thing that I was very happy with. CarMunity this week, it performed really well. About halfway through the week, I started adding everybody. So the nice thing about the CarMunity app is... Let me backtrack here. When I go to an event like this, that's out of state, far from home, I want to add some local people, I want to talk to some local people, because I want to meet up with people I never see. The problem when you go on Facebook is you only have mutual friends, right? You can't find somebody that's in Vegas, that's going to be there during SEMA. Whereas when I came into town on Wednesday, I went through the CarMunity app, and I'm like, all right, here's somebody three miles away from me. No, five miles away from me. Just hit follow, just so I at least know some locals in the area. That's one of my favorite parts about the app so far.

More so you know about them by what they drive.

More so about what they drive, yes, exactly. And then potentially a conversation or whatever. But nonetheless, as you all know, from the last few episodes, I'm out here because of CarMunity. So make sure to install the app, check it out and add me, add Minnoxide. Otherwise, you're on my show. You can find me on Minnoxide everything. So thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank you so much for joining us, Simon. And see you all next time.