81. Track Day Prep, 10 Things To Prepare For Your Road Course Track day w/ Michael Petersen

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast, the podcast where we go beyond the meat. I'm here with my co-host, Dan.

Yep, how's it going?

And today we're doing a little something different. It's still gonna be kind of like your traditional podcast, but since we do have our upcoming track day with the Brainerd, what's the driving school? That's the best way of putting it.

Performance driving school.

Performance driving school. Since we do have that coming up here in a few weeks, we thought it was a good idea to get together with Michael Petersen, instructor extraordinaire, and just kind of talk about something that will help prepare the newbies, but also good reminders for people who've been on track days. Because some of the people that are coming have 40 track days or 50 track days under their belt. They know what they're doing, but it never hurts to get more instruction. Does that describe it pretty well?

I think that describes it really well.

Yep, so today we kind of have a list of 10 things that we want to go through, but it'll probably be more. It'll be some fun conversation back and forth. But I think, yeah, if you suck at the track, this is your episode.

Well, and the other thing just on top of that, there's more people that own sports cars or high-performance cars that don't go to the track than those that do. And so for those people that have actually taken the time to say, you know what, I'm gonna brave up and go to the track, I just think that's marvelous. I would rather see somebody out there with an average car having a lot of fun than the people who are, have spent a quarter million on their car and are afraid to take it out of the garage. And so I just think it's great when people do it. I think for the vast majority of people that show up to the track, especially those that are over 30, right? If you're under 30 and you don't have the fear of God yet, people just say, hey, I'm in, let's go, let's go, let's go. You get over 30 and you get to a certain point in your life and you go, well, I don't really wanna crash my new car or get injured, and you can have the fear of God. And then you're actually at the point where you look at something like this and you go, well, there's, I could get injured, very, very low risk, but I could break something, this could be a really expensive day, my insurance. People have natural fear of doing things they haven't done before.

A mountain of worries.

A mountain of worries. So the fact that they've said, you know what, I'm gonna overcome some of these fears, I think is just marvelous. It's like anything in life. Trying something new can be nerve wracking. Some people embrace it, some people are a little more reluctant. So for anybody that signed up to say, hey, I'm gonna go check the box and give it a shot, I just applaud them. I applaud them.

Yeah, and before we even get into the list, so just so people know, right out the gate, so the dates are May 20th at Brainerd, which is a Monday. You're gonna have to take a day off work, unfortunately. But, and I believe we're doing a short track up there, so you're not gonna necessarily be doing crazy top speeds down to straight, which some people get nervous for. And honestly, I've heard from a number of people now that they like that infield a little bit more. I forgot what the small course is called.

Between the short course and the long course, 80% of it is the same.

Yeah, yep.

And I personally prefer the short course much better from the people that I speak to. Most people do. If you own a Hellcat that's souped up to 1400 horsepower and you just wanna hit the top speed, there are people that like the long straight. But quite frankly, we've had cases where people are so focused on just what's the biggest number I can see on my dashboard that you almost put a piece of cardboard over their speedometer so they stop watching their speed and start focusing on the driving. So people don't overcook that turn number one. So anyway, they're gonna have more fun, I think, for the vast majority of people out there. They're gonna have more fun on the short course.

Before we get into the specifics of it, I'm actually curious because a lot of driving is feel, right? And since I've only got one road course under my belt, one thing that I kind of learned is you're looking for those breaking points, like the numbers on the side. I'm not sure what the official name is.

Breaking points, the numbers on the side, yeah.

So if you were to put a piece of cardboard over somebody's dash so they're not hunting or paying attention to their miles per hour, would you just be basically instructing on that? Coming out, floor it, this number, stomp on it.

Yeah, it's interesting. We'll actually talk about some of these elements. One of the things that we're going to talk about is tunnel vision. And your human brain is set up that if things are coming at you very quickly, it's just like the processor on your computer. You can take a lot of stuff in slowly or a very narrow amount of information and very rapidly. So the more anxious you are, you tend to take in a lot of information in a very narrow gap. And for that reason, you will find that you really don't have time to look at your dash. Now, that sounds silly, but quite frankly, you're focused on where you are, where the car is, what's the car doing, how you invest in your time. Looking down at your speed is, quite frankly, not going to be a very natural thing to do. So to answer your question directly, because you're after very repeatable laps, is those braking points are the things that you're going to gauge to say, I know under normal conditions that my braking point is brake point four. And using that to gauge and adjust. We'll kind of go through all of that stuff, but quite frankly, following your speed, not that important. We want to drive more by feel than by looking at metrics on our dashboard.

Yeah, I noticed that being on the track that I hardly ever looked at my dashboard. I actually had to, I smelled things getting hot. I had to look down and look at my gauges at one point in time, go, well, maybe I should pull off and let the car cool down a little bit, because I didn't even know that until I could smell the oil, and I could feel my tires getting greasy.

Just Ford things.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, just normal Ford things. Well, even when you're racing, I think one of the general best practices is that you're going to do your, many courses have one long straightaway. That's the time where you take a moment to breathe, collect your thoughts, and actually take a moment to look at your gauges, and just make sure that you're not running too high of oil temperature, coolant temperature. But because the rest of the lap, you're not looking down at your gauges, to your point. And so if you're going to check the gauges, just check it on the straightaway when you have a moment to breathe, because that moment is going to go away quickly, which is why we're on the track to begin with.

I actually managed to download Brainard for one of the simulators. They use this called Assetto Corsa, and it's not as accurate as iRacing, depending who you ask. That's a very controversial topic. But yeah, it was fun to at least... Those are some very poor laps. But I took a similar car to mine, and I'm like, all right, let's try to get a feel for this, because I've never been on the Brainard Road course. So this is going to be a first for me as well. So I'm excited.

I think it's... You've been on multiple tracks. I've been on multiple tracks. I think the Brainard course is a very nice course.

I've heard a lot of people enjoy it. And I think it's one of the longest straights in the country too.

It is one of the longest straights. I think for the time being, their claim to fame, it was the fastest turn won in North America.

Will that still be in play? That's that bank turn, right?

It is, and we will not be on the drag strip, which is the long straight, which leads you to the major turn one. But we're going to come in on turn one, just from a shorter distance, so you won't have the same top end coming through that bank. But I promise you, most of the guys out there are going to hit, guys, people, students, you're going to find times to hit 120, 130, 140 miles an hour. And you're going to have a lot of fun. The lack of speed is not going to be your biggest issue. There are some very fast corners out there, even on the short track. Yeah, very fast corners.

So should we jump into the list?

And so let me kind of set this up just a little bit, because I think one of the problems when you're learning anything new, you're going to go online, and I promise you, you'll get a thousand points of view, right? And there's books written about this, which is all wonderful. I've been on tracks off and on for my entire life. I've taught racing school with motorcycles. I've taught racing school with vehicles. I know vehicle dynamics. I've studied vehicle dynamics. I feel like I know enough to be dangerous in this thing. I've also trained probably hundreds, maybe thousands of students over the years. And you start to notice kind of patterns. And so we have tried to assemble just, I think, a good way to go look at training in general and track schools in general, so that you can compartmentalize it enough that you can wrap your arms around it. And in general, there's three things that we look at. The first one is you've got to get your car prepped, right? So we're going to talk about what you need to do to make sure that your equipment is ready for the track. The second is about focusing your mind and your attitude and your body. So what can you do to your car? What can you do to you? And then the third is actually driving intelligently or proper driving. And they all work together. And the first two, preparing your car, preparing your body are things that you can do before you show up to the event. So it's tough. If you're going to go out there, you can start thinking about this stuff now and actually doing some of this stuff now. So I want to put it in those three categories, and then we'll talk about each one. Somebody is going to get on this and they're going to say, hey, you forgot about X or you forgot about Y. Yes, I'm sure if you speak to Nigel Mansell, he's going to have more than 10 points on how to drive a Formula One car.

Yeah.

So we recognize that. But I think these, for the first timers or even seasoned veterans, they're really good buckets, just a way to think and attack the problem.

I think to touch on that as well, when we do put out the highlights or this episode, come back in a day or two and take a look at the comments section, because some people, actually, every single time, there's even more things people like to add, or they might correct you and be like, well, you forgot this. There's really so much you can cram into a digestible format. But I highly advise, because we are going to put out highlights from this episode within a week or probably within the first week, take a look at the comments and see what else you can learn.

So why don't we just jump into it?

Yeah, let's let her rip.

And the first one is preparing your car. So you can start working on this now already. The first one is you need to prepare your car for friction. And I think every time we're on this podcast, somehow we talk about the slip curve under one former or another. But it's beyond the slip curve. Your car, to optimize your car, it's all about optimizing friction. Right? And so the big ones are the first one is you want good tires, which is the core of that. And it doesn't mean you have to have racing tires. But if you have tires that are aging out, is they have significantly less performance than a new set of tires. So make sure you have proper tires. The second one is make sure that you have good brake pads. And there are advantages to putting on performance brake pads. But it's not a necessity. What I don't want people to do is to go out there and they have 30% of their brakes left, because I've seen it happen before. You'll use up that 30%, and now you've just lost a 30% of your track day because your car is down, because you don't have any brakes in it, because you've worn the brake pads out.

Yeah, we saw somebody do that at Road America this last event.

Yeah.

Brake pads are cheap, man. Put some fresh pads in there. Or just make sure you have adequate supply in the brake pads. You will notice there's a bunch of really good aftermarket pads as well. There's a trade-off between aftermarket pads and street pads. Street pads are designed to do kind of everything that you need. Racing pads or high-performance pads have more grip. And so what you'll find with performance pads, they wear a little faster. They tend to squeak when they're cold. But when you stop on them or use them on the racetrack, you just don't have to push as hard because there's just fundamentally more friction there. And I've had situations where I was running to actually track tires on stock pads. And I used my brakes aggressively enough that I touched the ABS once or twice a lap. I blew out the ABS unit because I failed the ABS unit on my Porsche because I was running stock pads on this thing, and I was just working it too hard. And so don't underestimate that. The third is I want you to put fresh brake fluid in your car if it's aged. And this is one of the number one problems that we see out there. Brake lines, brake fluid is a hydrophonic process.

Is it hydrostatic? I can't remember. Somebody corrected us on this.

Yeah, I think it's technically a hydrophonic process. But if somebody in the comments can correct me on this, I didn't look it up recently.

It's hydro-something.

It's hydro-something. It's a really important hydro. But it takes on water. So if there's moisture in the air, it absorbs that naturally. And then once it absorbs the moisture from the air, you reduce the boiling point. So instead of your brakes boiling at 400 degrees, maybe they boil at 350 degrees. And that happens naturally in time. And so the reason it's so important before we get on the track, if it's old, is if your brake fluid starts to boil, that's brake fade, and you just start to lose braking performance. The best thing to do, almost everybody on this call has either DOT 3 or DOT 4 recommended for their vehicle. There's also a DOT 5.1, which is backwards compatible. Not DOT 5, but DOT 5.1. It's backwards compatible, and that elevates your boiling point up to over 500 degrees. If you put it on there, you will have zero issues with brake fade. It's a great, easy, small insurance policy, and I bet your brakes will probably do for a brake flush anyway.

I'm just curious, what's the trade-off if you go from 3 to 4 to 5.1?

None that I'm aware of.

Is there anything to do with, for example, a street car? If you're driving it in the winter or anything like that?

Just raises how much heat it can take is really all it does.

That's really all it does. So it's a little bit like, do you want to run conventional oil or synthetic oil? Synthetic's better on just about everything. It has a wider operating range. It's kind of the same thing. They've just increased or widened the operating range. There are no trade-offs that I'm aware of other than it's a little bit more expensive, but not astronomically so.

And if you think that you've seen hot brakes and you've never been to a track, I've seen plenty of pictures of rotors glowing red hot on the track.

Oh, yeah.

So they get, I mean, it gets hot.

Well, something's got to stop that heavy a** Mustang.

Yeah, yeah. I think it makes for a really cool picture, and they look really awesome.

That's a buckyless photo I've yet to get.

And most people have never gotten their brakes or their tires actually warm. If you haven't been to the track, you've never had your brakes or your tires warm. So your car is going to handle differently under high temp. So your brakes are perfectly fine if it's an older brake fluid driving down the highway. But let's get it cleaned up before we go to the track. So that's the first one under prepping your car. The second one is a hell of a lot easier under prepping your car, and that is get rid of the clutter. I can't tell you how many people I see get to the track, and then they have s*** in the trunk, and they have a pop can stuffed under the seat and whatever it may be. All that stuff is getting flung around. You increase the weight of the car. There's the risk that under heavy braking, something's going to end up under a foot pedal, and quite frankly, you probably have an extra 50 pounds of junk in your car anyway. Just get rid of all of it. In fact, most of the folks that are on the track, I don't even have floor mats in my car. I don't have floor mats in my car. I don't have a spare tire in my car. I just take care of all that. I get rid of all of it because the lighter the car, the quicker the car. More importantly, what we don't want is that stuff floating around all over the car when you're pushing at the limit. So take the time to get rid of all the junk in your car.

I really got to say, I don't appreciate the intervention right now.

Does this sound like I'm attacking you?

Yeah, the cameras aren't even on. I'm getting attacked personally.

Well, normally when we're doing track stuff, it's on a rally, and we're living in the car for three or four days. So when we go to a track event, there's always a pile in the pits.

That's one of the funniest things.

We have totes and stuff. You got your bags from your hotel room. You got all this stuff just piled in the pits.

Like 200, 300 pounds of just everything you bring on a rally. It's the funniest thing. Every single rally, just the paddock and then everybody's suitcases. It's the best thing ever.

And so when you go up there, that's a great point. But when you go up there, bring your own helmet. There's helmets up there, but most people prefer their own. Brainerd is not super finicky on Snell ratings or Shell ratings, but just bring up a comfortable, modern helmet with you.

I think I have it also in the Facebook listing on what the restriction was, because I think we asked Joe about that, who's helping us coordinate the event. But it's definitely not like you need the latest and greatest.

No, you don't.

You just want to make sure it's DOT rated at very minimum.

And I don't think you can really get many helmets that aren't DOT.

Yeah, probably not.

I don't know. But if you have a decent helmet, you're going to be fine. Bring it up. Some people just bring a duffel bag, and so when you kind of park your stuff in the pit, you don't have stuff flying all over the place. You can easily grab your stuff and take it out of your car. So anyway, those are the two big keys on preparing your car. Are there anything else that you guys can think of that really falls into this category when you guys show up to events where you see people with problems with their vehicle?

God, the biggest one is I think that brake pads. That guy had a really bad day.

He had a really bad day, but he was also, he did I think three sessions more than everybody else.

Oh really?

Yeah, but also like he was really sending it.

And those were his rear pads. I mean, I know 90% of your braking is done with the front, but check your rears too. Yeah.

You're spot on.

I think that's what it was. I think he did do his fronts, but I think it was the rears.

It was the rears that went out.

He figured that it would have just been fine. I can't remember the exact conversation.

Don't wreck your day. Put fresh pads in there.

Because your day is over, right? You have to think.

You're not going to get new pads in there in time. A, you're going to need to let it sit for 45 minutes to cool down. You probably don't have the right tools there. He did. Anyway, the point is...

Oh, yeah. Because the Volkswagens have this stupid... What is it?

The twist-in ones. Some of the 90s Fords had that too. You got to twist and push at the same time in the rear. The caliper.

Didn't have that tool.

So anyway, it wipes you down. The second one though, which I think is often overlooked, is focusing on your mind and your body. And yes, we all probably could afford to lose 20 pounds, myself included, for sure. That's not what I'm talking about though. I'm talking about preparing your mind and your body while you're on the track and before you go to the track. We talked about it at the opening of the hour a little bit, which is even the issue that we bump into, which is tunnel vision, right? And when you get nervous, what happens is instead of having a wide peripheral vision, you get vision down that's just, you know, this. And a great proof point of that is there's flag stations all around the track. There's probably eight or nine flag stations around the track. And if they're trying to get you off the track, they'll black flag you or wave the meatball flag, or say you got oil coming off, and they'll point right at you. They'll get to the edge of the track, and they'll point right at you with the flag, and people will miss it all of the time. They'll miss the checkered flag. And in our case, it doesn't mean you win. It means your session's over. They miss it. They don't know. Because they're so focused on the track, they don't see somebody 10 feet off the side. And so part of this is about controlling our brain so that we have a wider perspective of what's going on. But within that, before you go in, here's my number one goal is, first, just get your anxiety under control. And for anybody, if you're a first timer and you think, oh, I'm not going to have any anxiety, yeah, you're probably not being totally straight with yourself. Talk to performers before they go on stage. They have a little bit of stage anxiety, and they say, this is actually good for me. You'll have a little bit of anxiety before you go on a track, as you should, right? You're doing things you have never done before. Get yourself under control. The best exercise I have found is what the Navy SEALs do. Do you guys know what the Navy SEALs do to control their focus?

No.

It's called, they call it the four-step breathing exercise. And it's fairly widely known, which is they look at the world kind of through this box, and each box, I think, is four or five seconds. So it's a four-second inhale, and then a four-second hold, and then a four-second exhale, and then a four-second hold.

Is it also called box breathing, I think? Maybe.

Maybe called box breathing. I know that's box breathing what the Navy SEALs use. And so you do that, and you do that, go around that box just visually about three or four times, and you'll find your anxiety goes down, and your focus is better. And so even when you're sitting on that paddock, waiting for your turn to go out there, just take a moment, just breathe. Just breathe.

Welcome to the yogi section of the episode. Some woo-woo. But it's so true.

It is so true. Get your mind in the right spot, and then you'll eliminate some of this tunnel vision. You'll focus on the stuff that's the most important. And I think it's a great exercise every day if you're trying to just slow down a little bit. You've had a stressful meeting. But it's a great one before you go on to the track. Now, once you're on the track, I'm not going to tell you to go step, focus on four-step breathing exercises.

Too many numbers going on.

Too many numbers going on. But I think it's a good exercise when you're going to go on.

Maybe the straightaway, though. That's a good, again, like you said, it's a great spot to reset, especially after going through a bunch of stairs.

I don't know if I do box breathing on the straight.

It's too long. You don't even have 12 seconds, man.

The point being, though, it's like a deep breath as you're entering the straight. I mean, again, not the same, but on the sim, you got to do it as well.

Yes, exactly. The second one, though, is when you get in the vehicle, is when we talk about the body, I want your body in the right position. And that is a more athletic position than how we typically drive a car. If we look at how we typically drive a car, we find a spot that's comfortable, and you probably haven't moved your seat in four years, right? You get in a spot and you go, you're comfortable. When you're on the track, though, I don't want you comfortable, I want you athletic. The best way to do that is a couple of things. I want you in general, I want your seat about a half of an inch further forward than what you typically would be. Have you ever looked at people wrestle, of course, you know, high school wrestling? When they come up, they don't come standing tall. They come in, and they're kind of in this crouched, ready position to attack, right? To do something very active. Most athletes, when they get into sort of this ready position, they're crouched down a little bit, their arms are kind of out front of them. I want you to think about that same position when you're seated, right? And that means I'm a little bit closer to the steering wheel, I'm a little bit closer to the pedals. When I think about the steering wheel, I don't want it out here, I want it in here a little bit. We're going to pull the steering wheel, we're not going to push the steering wheel. We're in an athletic position. But when you do that, we're going to combine two things. The second one is I'm going to put you in that seat as firmly as I can. When you get on the track, you're going to get thrown around. To prevent that, we have in most cars what's called a dead pedal. It's that pedal off in the left-hand side. The reason it's there is you can take that dead pedal, push on it, and you're pushing yourself back into your seat, and you're holding yourself in position. And that keeps you kind of in the right position. But when you're racing, you're constantly moving around, so you don't want to be doing that the entire time. So what people do instead is you instinctively hold on the steering wheel to keep yourself up. I don't want you holding your body up with the steering wheel. I want your arms focused on steering, not staying upright. So the easiest trick, if you have a five-point harness, which is there for safety, but you buckle that thing down, and now you're fixed in the vehicle, and your body's not going to move. Most people that are going to be out there do not have five-point harnesses. I don't know, do you have them in your Mustang?

No.

You don't, right? The best trick for this is when you get in the car, move your seat all the way back. Take your seatbelt and extend it. Click it and then extend it as far as it goes. And then when you release it back, it latches. They do this for like baby seats, right? And it latches. And then move your seat forward. And that seatbelt's going to get really tight, and it's going to stay. It will feel almost too tight, but that's good. You're going to forget about it. I promise.

That's actually a really good tip. I never thought of that. That's probably your best tip so far.

That's my best one is how to use your seatbelt. That's not bad.

I'll take it. I never even thought of that to really secure yourself. I didn't even consider that. Because again, that's one of the things. My seats are good in the GTI, and I'm a bigger guy, so I'm a little more firmer in there. But at the same time, though, there's going to be some wiggle room.

Correct.

And I never even thought of that to latch it in, lock it in place.

And then move your seat forward, and that tension will keep that thing locked in.

Yeah, it's not a five-point harness by any means, which that's a snug feeling. It's the only hugs I get. But I like that. That's a good one.

And I'm sure we can... We might even want to do something for the webinar, I mean, for the podcast to actually show people how this works. But you can do it on an understanding vehicle. Some of the more modern vehicles, the electronics have become so advanced, it won't allow those to do it, because it's an electronic release. It's not the mechanical release. But it works on about 80% of the cars out there.

Interesting.

They kind of tighten up. If it's an electronic release, it probably is doing what it's supposed to be doing. They usually tighten up a little bit, too, as you're going along. When the car's got Gs, things like that, they'll...

I don't know if they do or not. They might. I'm not sure.

Yeah.

I'm not sure.

I've never... I have pretty big bolsters and Recaro seats in the Shelby, so it doesn't really...

I don't move around too much. You'll find even with that, though, is the more you can lock yourself in, because we have a lot of mass up here, especially men, right? I mean, we tend to get skinny legs and bigger in the chest. And so when you're getting around, that's just all getting tossed all over the place. And the tendency is to grab your steering wheel to prevent getting tossed. But the only thing I want your hands focused on is turning the car, right? And so it should be very loose. I don't want those things tight where you're trying to use yourself for stability. So those are the big things. So preparing your car and then focusing your mind and your body. Other things that you guys can think of being track addicts a little bit?

You're up, Dan.

I'm a goldfish.

No, no, I can't think of anything. It's hard, like you said, when you're out there, because there's a lot of other things that I'm thinking about and not necessarily how I'm sitting in my seat. All these things are great. What you're mentioning is things that you kind of overlook or don't think about when you're out there. I'm solely concentrating on not crashing my car.

And so everything that we talked about, Dan, is all the stuff you want to do before you get on the track. Once you're on the track, all of that stuff that we just talked about literally disappears.

You're just going to fall to your training.

At that point, you shouldn't be thinking about clutter or brakes or focusing on your mind or your body. All of that stuff, you've kind of done as much as you can. The next stage, though, is actually driving intelligently.

Well, before we get there, I do want to touch on a seating position, because I actually talked about this with Sean when he was in town the other day. When you say you want your seat closer, what does that look like? Because I'm a big guy. If I get closer, my leg's at a 90-degree angle.

So do you run your seat all the way back?

As far as it can go.

You might already be closer than...

Yeah, but there's two things that I've learned, and then you kind of tell me what you would change here. First of all, the first thing is, what angle do you want your leg at? Right.

I think it so depends on the vehicle and the individual.

What's comfortable for you, probably.

Yeah, I just find my general rule is, if you are a short guy like me, where you have as much flexibility, I can put that seat in any position I want. I get in a particular position, I go, okay, this is comfortable for me. When I race or drive or performance driving, I'm about a half inch forward from that.

I move up when I get on the track, too. Just to keep me from... Like you said, you drive in a more comfortable position. If I'm hitting some Gs, it will tend to push me away from all of my controls a little more than it would if I'm just driving on the street.

But to your point, you may already be in a more athletic position because your long legs got to put you there.

Yeah, and I can already see G-wise, how that would make sense. I'd probably still move up a half inch, inch or whatever. And then what about arm position? Because you don't necessarily want to be like this... We've seen those people on the road that are really far up there in their seats. You don't want to be to that level, but what is your arm?

First of all, you should get to a point where you're the most comfortable. You shouldn't be too close to your steering wheel, although I have found for most people if you have a telescopic steering wheel back and forth, I bring it in as close as reasonably possible. So if you normally drive out here, I'm going to bring that in a little bit. But think about that wrestler. When they come in, their arms are kind of bent at about 90 degrees in this athletic position. You should kind of look like that when you're in the car itself. You don't want to be splayed out like this. Not that many people drive splayed out, but you're a little bit tighter than you would be in a pure comfort driving position.

So catch the rabbits, George, kind of situation?

Yeah, catch the rabbits.

Yeah, very few people will get that reference.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but yeah.

Not a book reader over here.

Nope.

Just pet the rabbits. But anyways, so up for the next section.

So the next one is probably the most important. It's what you're going to do while you're on the track. You're going to drive intelligently. And that's where the bulk of things kind of kick in. The first one is, we talked about focusing your mind, but the top one on driving intelligently is your attention. And there was a great book that was written by, oh no, I think it's Keith Code. And he was a motorcycle racer, so I read some of his work early on when I was racing motorcycles. And he had some really good tips in there. If you ever get the book, it's an easy read, it's kind of fun. But he talked about managing your attention like a budget. So assume your total attention span is a $10 bill. Where do you spend in your $10? Because you will run out of attention very quickly. Are you focused on your line? Are you focused on your braking points? Are you focused on your power out position? Are you focused on the car next to you? Are you focused 20 feet down the road, 100 feet down the road? Are you focused on the side markers, your braking points, the flags? There's so much going on, we tend to focus on just one thing or two things. I would ask you when you're on the track, think about what you're thinking about. Like right now, I'm looking at you, what are you thinking about? You're like, well, Mike's looking at me, he might ask me a tough question, I don't know, whatever it is, right? But think about what you're thinking about. And then be mindful of how you're investing that mental energy, right? There's no right answer, but you recognize there's a lot of things going on. We talked about checking your speedometer and checking your oil pressure. You spend a lot of time thinking about that? Probably not, right? Maybe on the straightaway. But just be mindful of where your attention is, because what you'll find is by doing so, you won't miss the flag person off on the side when they're telling you to get off the track. You won't miss some of these other subtleties. You want to be a little bit more complex in your thinking. And I think this one is even applicable to life, right? Which is, when you're going through your day, what are you focused on? Are you focused on short-term stuff? Are you focused on your long-term life objectives? Are you focused on family relationships, whatever it is? Just be mindful of where you're spending your mental energy. So, easier said than done, but spend some time to at least think about what you're thinking about.

All right, I'll get a CPA in the passenger seat.

Yes. Great, another thing to think about. Yeah. Thinking about thinking about stuff.

Yeah, you're like, God, I think it's enough the way it is. Now you just added something else.

Well, how about rally drivers? I was watching some rally footage the other day. Imagine that you had to tell somebody in the passenger seat, you just have to focus on driving, and the guy next to you is like, all right, right, you know, six feet. You know?

Yeah, and I think their code is also, like the number is roughly the radius.

Yeah, I did that on...

Right 42, or I can't remember the exact code, but they're doing that just because you don't have time to think about much, so they're taking that auditory input to just give you the right information at the right time.

It's so huge. We did that at the... I probably shouldn't admit this, but we did this at the Tail of the Dragon, I think three or four years ago. What's the... Damn, I forget what the actual term is. Either way, it's been long enough to where it's not an issue, but we did it at the Tail of the Dragon, so my buddy is driving his GTR, and he's cooking. I mean, he did get a ticket as well, but I was calling out the terms on the GPS, and I'm like, yep, this is, you know, like hairpin, whatever, right, left, and then the difficulty of it. I can't remember what I was saying, but... Yeah, we'll be to that level. We're not going to be that intense.

No, no, but this kind of goes to... This actually is a very good transition to the next on the list, which is learn the line, right? When you're in a rally, you don't have the luxury of learning the line because it's one shot. You know, it's a hundred mile course. It's one reason that Nordischiff in Germany is such a hard track because there's so many corners. Or the Isle of Man is so difficult because it's 132 corners, whatever the number is.

It's like 34 miles or whatever, I think.

I actually had the luxury of attending the Isle of Man once. It was a great experience. If you ever have the chance to spend a weekend...

Tim Cesarow has been. He says it was amazing.

It's one of the craziest things in the world, especially when you look at the guy that's on the back that has to transition the weight and the level of...

They call them the monkeys.

Yeah, the monkeys. There's a great video I saw made by Driver61 on YouTube. It was a very good, perfect video describing the whole thing. It's so cool.

And they obviously run the tandems or the duels, which are the monkeys. They run the regular, just traditional super bikes and super sports. But these guys, it's fast. But it's so hard because there's 132 corners. It's hard to learn the course. And the people that typically win in that race are locals and people that specialize in that race.

Oh, yeah.

You don't find people like the number one super bike champion in the US coming in and just rolling in and winning the Isle of Man.

The risk is too high.

Isn't it also the world's deadliest race?

Oh, yeah, by far.

Every year, by far.

I think this year, somebody can check me on the facts. I think this is about the 112th year of the Isle of Man in a row. They did not do it during the war, World War II. It was the 112th year of the war, and they've been averaging 2.2 deaths per year. Crazy. Now, imagine the Indy 500, and only 2.5 people died per year. I mean, that would have been shut down 75 years ago.

Yeah, it's crazy. I think the fastest car, and it may have changed, but when I watched the video, I think the fastest car there was a Subaru.

The Isle of Man?

Yeah.

Well, the Isle of Man is only motorcycles.

Right, right, but I'm saying somebody who actually ran it.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, some series or whatever it was.

Yeah.

It's a challenge.

But the bike speeds, I mean, they're averaging a buck 40.

I think it was a buck 20 or a buck 40 or something.

With 132 turns. Yeah.

Yeah, stupid numbers.

Stupid.

In fact, we were standing one day, we stood on the finish line in some stands, and these stands were probably 100 yards away from the actual track. And I had this big camera at the time, and with a big zoom lens on this big white Canon zoom lens, and these guys come past the start-finish line on one of three laps, and they come past at 220 or 225, and you forget how fast 225 is until you try to take a picture. It's almost impossible.

225 kilometers or miles?

Miles.

Really?

And so when they're at those speeds, you can't even hardly, you can't get a picture of them, because you can't time it to get it in the frame, you can't follow them, it's just, it's hard to even get a picture of these guys.

It's crazy. Well, if you think about even 20 years ago, 30 years ago, how photographers had to do their photos, they had to seriously plan that stuff. It's not like nowadays where I have immediate focus. Even 10 years ago, the focus just couldn't keep up with a car like that. Because the difference between it being a quarter mile that way and right in front of you, it's a completely different perspective. It's, again, I went into a rabbit hole on this. Every time I research cameras, it's a rabbit hole. But yeah, crazy.

Autofocus and the capabilities of the modern SLRs versus what people were shooting 20 years ago before modern digital.

Well, there was a crazy photo that was circulating on Facebook recently. A guy had like, I think it was like 10 or 15 photos. This is in the 80s. Or not photos, cameras. So he had like 10 or 15 cameras on this crazy rig, and he's taking photos at the same time at different perspectives. And this is like in the 80s or the 90s or just crazy.

Just trying to find one then.

Just trying to find one. But the other thing is a trick, and I did this back when I used to shoot autocross before I got better, I guess, at shooting. It was like first or second event. And what you would have to do is you'd have to pick your focus point where the car is going to be. And you just pray to God you get it timed perfectly.

Click the button at the right time.

Because then you have to also, panning shots, you have to follow it at the exact same speed of the car. So if it's doing 30, 40 miles an hour and you're short 10 miles an hour, theoretically, it's going to come out blurry. It's a little side tangent.

No, doing moving photography for vehicles is very difficult.

It's so much easier nowadays, but man, even 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it was a different skill set.

But it kind of all comes back to point six on our list too, which is when you're driving, first was attention, the second is learn the line. There is a race line. I want you on that race line, whether you're driving half speed, 70%, 80%, 90%, 99%, always stay on the line. By the end of the day, you should be able to play that lap back in your head on the line from memory without question. You should be able to lay down at night and close your eyes and see that entire line, because predictability, predictability, predictability. So unlike rally drivers where every corner is new, right? These corners are not new. You've seen them a hundred times. So you're trying to optimize those corners. And so early on, learn the line. And I say that, and I want to be clear, there is no actual line on the track that you get to follow. This is not like Gran Turismo. You have to understand and learn what the line is. And one of the easiest way to do that is you're going to just follow somebody who knows the line, right? And just follow them. And people will be surprised. It should be obvious what the line is, and I won't go into the nuances right now, but you'll find yourself on the wrong side of the track. You're like, don't you want to be on the left side of the track right now, not the right side? And because they're so overloaded with all this information, they'll go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. And they'll get to the other side of the track. But number one, learn the line, everything else becomes easier. If it sounds complicated, it just means there's really three points on every track that you want to learn every corner that you need to know, which is your braking point, your turning point, and your apex. The braking point is what you alluded to earlier. It's the point where you say, I know at marker four, I'm going to start getting on my brakes aggressively. The apex is the inside corner. It's where you know I want my front inside tire to go touch the edge. And in the middle point is your turn-in point, which is how far do you brake before you turn in. So you have your brake point, your turn-in point, and then your apex. So if nothing else, you can just connect the dots. You go, okay, I know I'm at my brake point. When you get the brake point, now you go, okay, I know my turn-in point is there. I got that nailed. Now I'm looking for my apex. And so if you connect those three dots on every line in the corner, you're going to be 80% of the way there. So learn the line.

Before you continue on, and I'm not sure if this is one next point, but also exiting, too. Like, the other thing is you don't want to just stomp on it getting out. I mean, it depends on the car, of course, you know, and like how well it can take it, but you don't necessarily want to be 100% throttle right after the apex either, do you?

Did you read the list?

It's been a couple minutes.

It's actually the next piece, though. And so the line is actually where you want your car and when. The next one after line, though, is your pedals.

Gotcha.

Which is what are you doing with your pedals and when? Now, the first one is let's first talk about the throttle. And your point was, OK, you're coming out of the corner. When do I start giving it juice? And it will change car to car and, you know, corner to corner. But in general, I want you on the gas sooner rather than later. A general rule of thumb is once you hit that apex, right, where your inside tire touches the inside of the track, I want you back on the throttle 100 percent. And I want you powering out of that corner. You're going to bring the weight transfer back, and you're going to just run up and kind of brush the curb as you exit or get close to the curb as you exit. But I want you back on that corner about 100 percent when you're exiting. Now, some cars, and you have massive horsepower on your Mustang, you may not be able to do that as soon or as aggressively. But for most cars out there, you'll be able to safely open it up to wide open throttle coming out of the corner at the apex. But most people give it gas too late. I want you to hit that gas very early in the process. Apex is a good rule of thumb.

Yeah, turbo cars, maybe just before the apex. Get that spool up. It depends.

It depends, exactly.

And that's the other thing too, is you don't want to just... This is something you figure out throughout the day. I mean, it's a long day. We basically have to track. We do have to track for the entire day. Some with instructors at some point, you know, kind of go do your own thing. But you can get a lot of practice in. And realistically, I mean, you'll probably get how many laps in an entire day? 50?

Oh, more than that.

Yeah.

Most people find that they run out of energy before they run out of hours on the track.

Yep. Bring some coffee.

I quit before sessions. I've quit and had another session or two left and be like, man, it's exhausting.

It's exhausting.

Yeah.

So you'll get as much track time realistically as you can as you can pack. But the second side of pedals is your Excel. We talked about the accelerator. The second one is your brakes. The biggest problem. This is hard to believe. But I think one of the biggest mistakes in the track is people don't use their brakes aggressively enough.

I think that's my problem. And I'm excited to get an instructor in my car to see what I'm doing. Because I can almost guarantee you, I'm not getting on them as much as I should be.

Then you're just part of the other 99% of the drivers out there. And so within that is... Well, what happens is you're not accustomed to using all your brakes. And in a perfect world, I want you wide open throttle as late as possible into that braking zone. And then I want you to transition from wide open throttle to maximum braking until it's time for you to turn in. Now, there's a little bit of subtlety to that, but you want to be on the throttle as long as you possibly can before you transfer the braking. And then I want you to slow down as fast as possible. When was the last time in your Mustang that you went from 130 down to 30 miles an hour?

Lowery Tunnel.

Road America. Road America last year.

Maximum braking.

I can't tell you if it was maximum braking or not, I don't know.

That was only on a track. When did you do it in real life? I mean on the street.

Never on the street, yeah.

I've never done it on the street. Why would you? And so we always just, I think most people underuse their brakes because we're used to using, slowing down at.2 or.3 G's at the most. And so I'll get on the track and go, okay, man, I want you to really slow this thing down. Really slow this thing down. And the average person will go in and they'll brake, and I'll go, I mean, they're using 40% of their brakes. I go, just show me what these brakes can do. They'll be at 40%. I want you to get to the point when you're on the track that you're finding the ABS once or twice somewhere on the lap.

That's super fun, too. It's a different feeling. I did that a handful of times doing autocross last year. It's unnerving.

When you find the brakes, and I'm not saying just stamp it and let the ABS do all the work. Once you find the ABS, back off a little bit. I don't want that ABS to run 100% of the time, but if you're not finding the ABS, you probably aren't braking hard enough. Now, it doesn't mean every corner you're going to be under maximum braking. Some corners have a lot more subtlety, where you're just going to try to scrub off 15 miles an hour. You're not going to go from full throttle and then maximum braking and scrub 15 miles an hour and then back on the... That's not realistic. You're going to throw the car all over the place. You're going to desettle it. But there are points where you're going to do maximum braking, and don't be afraid to go do so.

I think that's actually a great point, because you're not going to be full braking all the time. Sometimes you give it 20 percent, scrub some speed, and then on the throttle, you're half on, not fully on, depending on the corner. Again, depends on the track.

Yes, and so none of this is absolute. But on Brainerd, for the short cursor, it will be one, two, three, four, maybe there's a fifth. But there will be four corners where I will expect to be at full braking.

Oh, wow, okay. That's pretty good, actually.

Yeah, there will be four corners where you're going to be full braking, and one that you're going to come down from 120 down to 60, or 140 to 60, whatever the number is, depending on your corner. And so it's a good chance to go test your brakes out. We're going to warm them up a little bit. So that's the pedals. Number eight is your eyes. And we talked about this kind of before we opened up the list. Is within your eyes, I want you to look down the track with peripheral vision. If your whole world is just focusing on things that are five feet in front of you, you're going to get reactive. Because you don't know what the hell is around the corner. You're going to get reactive, and you get jerky, and it does not make you smoother if you're focused on short-term stuff. You see people in life like this. We call them reactive. They can't get anything done because they're just responsive from this to this to this to this. You're like, dude, come on, think forward a little bit. Wayne Gretzky has this famous saying, which was, I don't go where the puck was, I go where the puck is going to be. He's trying to read the ice and play the game, what's going to happen three to five seconds in the future, not what's happening now.

Baseball is a hell of a game.

Baseball is a hell of a game. I think that's what Wayne Gretzky played.

Yeah, he sliced it.

But the point is, you want to focus further down the track. And what will happen is the stuff further down the track is maybe three seconds away, as opposed to the stuff that's 50 feet away or one second down the track. When you do that, you're going to calm down, right? You're going to lower your blood pressure. We're going to get back to I have some control. And once you know, okay, I'm going to hit my marker here on my exit. I want you to get your eyes down the track to the next corner. So you're thinking one or even two corners ahead. It will lower your anxiety and your drives matter, and you will smooth out your driving. And when you're more calm, you're going to open up that peripheral vision a little bit, and you're going to focus on more of the attributes that are going on around the track. I want to be clear with everybody here is we have limited passing on track days, because that's typically where accidents happen. And so there's only a couple of zones where people are going to pass, and we group people together kind of by their, you know, their capabilities. So you're going to be with very light drivers on the track itself. But I promise you, when you're full throttle and you're going on the track and somebody passes you or you pass them, it's a little, you know, it's not like passing somebody on the highway.

I've seen helmets thrown at almost I'd say about half the rallies I've done, because there's usually a track day associated with it. Somebody will pass really aggressively and it's just or just driving beyond their means or the person that they're passing isn't expecting it because it's a varying skills of drivers. I've seen that as well, too. Some people get overconfident. Just be mindful of that, like even on rallies and Mark's Mustang, when we're passing people on those dotted yellow lines, he's like, hey, just be careful. You're going to scare me over here. It's a loud car. You know, and he always would take his throttle or his foot off the throttle, you know, get up the speed pass and then off the throttle. So you don't scare me on to a ditch. You know, that's kind of how I see it is just don't scare the guy next to you.

Don't don't be a dick.

Well, do you do do you do point buys there or no?

I don't know what we'll have for this session. It depends on the group that you're in. And what he's and what Dan's alluding to is normally you'll get in and different groups do it different ways, but you can't pass in still unless the person in front of you kind of gives you the go ahead.

I know you're here. Go ahead.

I know you're here. You kind of give them the wave.

And that's the other thing. So we're me and Piero, who's been on the podcast before, we were talking about doing grid life in the future, which is, you know, there's people on the track and he's doing some wheel to wheel racing coming up here, I think in his BRZ or FRS, whatever. But he says, it's a completely different sensation when you see somebody right on your bumper, and that's getting ready to pass you, it's not going to be to that level. But again, doing crazy speeds next to other people, it's a lot different than on the street.

It's a lot different than on the street. And the last point I would make on eyes is I talked about peripheral vision and looking further down the track. The most important one is you go where your eyes go. And so if you're on the track and somebody goes off, don't focus on the car that went off the track. Focus on where you want to be.

Huge.

Yeah, you don't want to be falling.

And this is very applicable on the street. You see how many videos have you seen on YouTube where somebody crashes into the state trooper on the side of the road because they have somebody pulled over.

Oh, yeah.

All the time, right?

Yeah.

There's hundreds of videos like that because somebody's driving down the highway and they go, Oh, look, you know, flashing lights and they watch the state trooper and they drive right into them. I know it's crazy as it sounds. Listen, when I was driving motorcycles, I had to laugh at the time, but it makes sense now is when we would race motorcycles and road racing, if there's an accident where they have to send an ambulance on the track, that's a local yellow. They don't stop the race. They just send out the ambulance and they pick up the driver and they haul them away. So you'll be racing around the ambulance. I don't know of another race, another course event where you race around the ambulance. But the rule was for all the racers, don't look at the ambulance because all of a sudden there's this big red and white ambulance with flashing lights on and you're racing around. Don't look at the ambulance because every year, it evidently somebody hits the damn ambulance. You go where your eyes go, put your eyes in the right spot, focus on your marks and everything will fall into place.

Another thing I want to add on that, because it's applicable to this to some degree, is drag racers, right? They try to teach them like, hey, know where your parachute button is because the last thing you want to be doing is 180 miles an hour. And, you know, being like, oh, is that the button? Is that the button? Same thing applies. It's like, you know, don't be looking for your can't imagine many people to use their actual shifter unless their manual. But no, be comfortable with what you got to touch because you don't like if you're doing one hundred thirty, one hundred forty, you know, just a little nudge at a wheel and wall. You know, so just be familiar with where everything is.

The last one, the second to last one is nine and don't nobody laugh at this. This is my coffee cup rule.

That one got some good engagement last time we talked about.

Did I talk about coffee cups last time?

Yeah, this is I think that was the first time you were on.

So at least I'm consistent. The coffee cup rule, I think, is one of the most important.

And here we go. Get the jocco again. Well, I'm going to get the jocco. Last time it was a blue one. And I remember that. That was a fun one to edit. I'm going to get the mic closer. Don't lose it.

And the rule, though, is that when I'm on the track as a passenger, if I have a hot cup of coffee that's full almost to the brim, I want you to have the ability to take me around the track at nine tenths, and I'm not going to spill a drop of coffee. And what you'll find is if we were down the track and you take a hard right turn, it goes like this, and a hard left turn, it goes like this, and braking is going to go like this. You can keep this thing perfectly level by me just doing this with my cup of coffee. And if you're smooth, I can do this all day long, and I won't spill any. What happens if you jerk the wheel?

That transition of the weight of the whatever coffee?

Exactly. It's going to create this unsettling effect in the suspension as well as the coffee cup. And I guarantee you, I'm going to end up with hot coffee on my ball sack.

McDonald's lawsuit, baby.

It's going to be a lawsuit coming. But your passenger should be able to hold that cup of coffee and do this in concert with your driving and not spill. And that's one of the ultimate tests. And I think it's easier for people to visualize that. I even saw many years ago somebody had a race school, and they put like a giant bowl and a ball on the hood. And then they'd have to drive around, and you could see the ball kind of shift. But the objective was not to let the ball fall out of the bowl on your hood. Now, we're not going to be attaching any bowls to anybody's hoods in this event.

That would make for good content.

But it would make for great content. But just think about the coffee cup. Be smooth. We've all heard a hundred times fast is smooth. I mean, smooth is fast. And it's true. And I won't go through all the physics and everything else. I know we've talked about that before. But if you just follow the coffee cup rule, it will force you to be smooth, and I promise you'll be faster.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, there's a direct correlation between the coffee and the car. Because if you want to settle something that quickly and you jitter left to right, it's just the car isn't prepared to transfer all that. I don't know. I keep bringing it back to sim racing a lot, because I've learned so much about how a vehicle reacts. It's just crazy.

Yeah. And I think within that is there's this rule, I would rather see somebody at 98% consistent and 80% speed than the other way around.

Every day of the week. And they'll be even faster.

You will be a lot faster if you just say, I want to focus on 98% consistency and 80% speed, you will end up becoming a much faster driver, a much faster than if you invert them, right? So smooth is fast. The last one is the point, almost what you were mentioned a minute ago, is I call it leadership. Be a good leader on the track. And what I-

First is last, if you ain't first, you're last.

Yeah.

Is that what you mean by leadership? If you ain't first, you're last?

Either you're the first or you're last. I suppose that's a good model. It wasn't exactly what I was going for. I was trying to say, be a good leader, don't be a dick. Which I do see on the track. You talked about somebody who just tries to be, after they go past, they let off a little bit, so they're not being noisy as they pass people to scare them. But there's a lot of good things you can do on the track to be a good sports person. Listen, nobody, this is like golf, nobody gives a s*** about your score. We're not competing for a slot on Númena Haase's team. When you're on the track, be respectful of the other drivers. Give them room. I've done it myself. I'm like, oh, I can make this pass. I can get them. Nobody cares. At the end of the day, we're going to go home, we're going to hug our wives and kiss our kids and pet our dog. There's no hero in this whole thing. Be a good leader on the track. And sometimes it's a man of just coming past them, giving them a friendly wave. You can tell if they're a little uncomfortable on the track, give them some extra space. Don't try to cut them off too close and kind of show off that you have a faster car than they do. It's not going to make you a better man. I was on the track the other day, not the other day, no, I guess, a year or two ago.

Well, Dan has an argument for it the other day.

But I was out there with, and I see this sometimes, guys get out there with really fast cars that maybe aren't great on the track as a whole. And it was a gentleman with a Dodge Charger, and I think Dodge Chargers are great. He had a Hellcat, it was wonderful. He would come past me on the long straightaway, like my car was tied to a tree, right? I couldn't touch them. But then I would catch him by turn two. And then I would have to follow him all the way around because I can't technically pass in a corner, it's a track day. And there's no way I can pass him on a straightaway. And so he just plugged up the track. And I approached him afterwards and I said, hey man, that's a great car, I love your charger, it's awesome. Hey, next time if you see me near you, if you would just let me come around and I promise you won't see me again, right? You can have the rest of the track.

That's a great way of putting it.

I'll come around, I'll just leave you alone, but your car is too fast, I can't get around you in the straights where I can pass. And I asked him so politely, and he's like, ah, man, he kind of... And the next time I was, he did exactly the same thing. And to this day, I'm talking about him on a podcast show, you know, that he was such a... That's not the person you want on the track. I would have a much more favorable view of him and anybody that drives a Hellcat, if he would have just said, hey, man, I get it. And he gave me a little bit of breathing room out there so I could get past him, because most of the track is corners. And Hellcats are not... They're fine in corners, but it's not a...

Fine is a stretch, but yeah.

Yeah, it's not a course, they're corners. You're not much better at your 4,000 pounds, buckaroo.

Hey, a corner's better than a Hellcat, I can guarantee you that.

And so on the whole leadership side, just in the very final point, if you're a good leader out there, it's about good sportsmanship, and then it's also practice, practice, practice. If you want to be better on the track, practice. What you're doing on the sim is amazing, because guess what? That's practice, practice, practice. And I bet your skills, even on the sim, have increased substantially.

Well, it's just, again, does it transfer to real life? That is yet to be found out, but the understanding of how a car will react and just overall vehicle dynamics, I mean, it's there. What does overcooking a car look like? What does blowing through a corner, or what does braking too early look like? And I know what to look for now, too, looking for those braking zones or coming up, all these different things. It's just practice. I mean, even if you have a classic PlayStation 2 with a controller, you could still get a general idea of what you should be doing. Because when I was a kid, I was just like flatfooting through corners doing NASCAR. You know, it's like, it's very different now.

It is. The simulations that we have out there today, even the consumer grade stuff, it's so remarkable.

Oh, it's ridiculous.

It's ridiculously good.

Next time we go to Chicago, we definitely need to go to Camille's facility. Oh, absolutely. That's what the motion rigs that are $60,000 rigs is crazy. But so we burned through to 10. Now, a number of various topics have come through here, and we won't make this too much longer. But is there anything that you've thought of that could be an excellent bonus round? I mean, there's a million things you could talk about. What about three don'ts?

Three don'ts. What are the three don'ts?

Yeah, I'm gonna put you on the spot. We're gonna do a little reversal here.

You know, I think, I don't know the average age of the people that are attending. What I find with some folks that maybe might be have a little bit more testosterone than we do in our 50s is you think you're faster than you are, and your ego exceeds your skill set. And I've seen a number of younger individuals go out there and make dumb mistakes on the track because they're over driving their skill set, and they end up, you know, spinning the car and putting it into a wall, and then they end up with a $50,000 a day. Don't be that person, right? It doesn't make you cooler. It doesn't make you stronger. It just shows some, manage your emotions and learn to be good first and fast second.

Well, this is a training day, right? This isn't, like you said, we're not here. There's gonna be no winners, no losers. Well, you're gonna be a loser if you put your car in the wall.

Yeah, speak for yourself, Dan. Whatever you say. I'm just saying, if the GTI walks a GT 500, it's gonna be a bragging rights for a while.

So I guess, so I think that's one. If you were out there and you go, man, I know this thing, I'm a good driver. The people that generally think they know the most don't. So my wife once told me, there's this old saying, right? Better to be thought the fool than open your mouth and prove the world right. The same thing.

Fantastic saying.

When you're out there, just be a good sportsman and don't think you're better than you are, because you're not.

Well, I'm bringing a lot of old guys with me. My dad who's in his 60s is bringing a car, and then my uncle who's in his 50s is bringing his car. So perfect, perfect.

Good for them for getting out there. They're gonna have a ton of fun, and they recognize after you're 50 or 60 years old, you're gonna love them no matter what. It's not like all of a sudden they're gonna shave us two seconds off a lap time, and all of a sudden they're at the top of the world. It's not gonna change their life. I think it's very analogous to golf, and I love to golf. I don't golf a lot because I don't have a lot of time, but if I pick friends that are measuring me on my golf score, I've picked bad friends. And so I'll go out with friends and golf with them, and if I break 100, I'm having a great day, and I'm having a ton of fun. But they're not measuring me on my golf score, they're measuring me on my character. And it's the same thing when you're on the track. Nobody's measuring you by your lap time. They're measuring you by your character. Be a good person.

Yeah, I try not to have friends that golf. I got a few, yeah. Caleb got some clubs. We're never gonna see him again. Yeah, he's trying to get good again. Yeah, he's probably driving in his truck right now laughing at that. But we can continue on that rabbit hole. But one thing I really wanted to talk about is a lot of people are worried about damaging their car or costs or my tires or whatever.

We have talked about crashing a lot or like doing things, but it really track isn't that scary.

It really isn't. The odds of you because first of all, you're not gonna hit anything at 100 miles an hour ever, never ever. Because, by the time you realize like, oh, something's coming up, you probably have scrubbed more than enough speed anyway.

I can't, I can think of maybe two accidents that we had on the track that were because the driver was being a dummy. One of them was because that they were just they were over driving their skill sets.

Right.

Right.

And that's what the instructor is going to be there for us to kind of be like, this was late in the day.

So the instructor was out and they're like, Oh, look at me.

So they're getting confident towards the end of the day.

And they were young too. So I'm not criticizing young people. That's not it. I'm saying I will don't let your I will too.

I'm young.

Don't let your testosterone get the best of you. And so unless you're out there being stupid, your actual risk is very low. I've had days where we've had sent three or four cars home on the truck because they had mechanical issues.

And Ford's. Yep.

We've had I've seen Dodge Durangos, what's the hot Dodge Durango?

The Hellcat?

The Hellcat Durango?

Yeah, well, they have an SRT Durango too.

I don't know which one it was. And we sent one of those home. One day we had that. We sent an M5 home.

Oh, well.

And that had some mechanical issues with the and I think it was little things like they threw a fan belt, I mean, sometimes you send things home because if there is a weakness in your vehicle, we're going to find it.

Oh, yeah.

Right. That's where stuff breaks. You're hitting maximum tension, maximum forces, but I've blown an engine up on the track.

But that's not a concern for most people, I imagine, either. Yeah.

So actually, this is a great point, the probability of you damaging your vehicle is very low.

Well, make sure your fluids are top top because I've seen like, oil is a big one, right? If you don't have enough oil in there and it's sloshing around and you're taking a corner at high G's, I don't know if brands a super high G track, but they all are super high G tracks.

I mean, yeah, to be speaking. Yes. That's the idea.

Right. Exactly. So it's like, just make sure you're like, oil is top top. Something as simple as that because it's a great point. Yeah.

I mean, I would always recommend having relatively fresh oil in the car, making sure that it's topped off. Absolutely. But the wear and tear like tires, for example, are you going to take your are you going to wear your tires out? You're not going to wear your tires out. It's not going to be a $2,000 day of tires, right?

Most likely.

Will you lose? Are you going to lose 5,000 miles of mileage out of it for the day? Yeah, maybe, maybe. But some of this also comes back to how you drive. The track tires that I have in my car, and you've seen them, I run their slicks on the street right now. I don't run it in the rain and I don't run it in the, I mean, it's just I run it and I just leave the slicks on there because it's easier. And they're now like, I ran them for like two seasons, the same set of slicks. Now I have a lighter car. It doesn't have as much horsepower, but I did 20 track days on those things. But I also don't take the car and go way over the slip curve when I'm overcooking it. We keep talking about the slip curve and I'm always trying to keep it right at that peak so I don't have huge slip angles on this.

If you're going 70%, you will have plenty of life. Yeah, very, very few people will be driving at 10 tenths. No, maybe like one or two people. Two people I know will 100% be driving at 10 tenths.

If you're trying not to wear your tires out at all, don't bring it to the track. But you're not gonna, you're taking 5,000 miles off the tires. You're not taking out 50,000 miles.

What about wide open throttle? I had one person I was concerned about that and they're gonna go do autocross this weekend instead, and they might join us for that. I'm still trying to nudge them that way. But is there much of a concern of going wide open throttle for a long period of time? I can't imagine there is.

Well, depends on what you're driving and are you boosted, are you, you know?

NAV10.

Oh, that car is designed for that stuff.

That's what I think.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I just drive the car. I mean, these things are engineered to run at wide open throttle for extended periods of time, right? Now, even when you're on the track, you're not wide open throttle the whole time. You're wide open throttle probably 60% or 70% of the time, because you have to brake, and there's some corners where you're modulating. So you're at wide open throttle 60% or 70% of the time. We're going to keep an eye on your coolant temperature and your oil temperature and whatnot. But if you drive a sporty car and you're worried about the engine blowing up on a wide open throttle, you really didn't buy a sporty car.

Yeah.

And the testing that you do at the manufacturer's level is so much more severe than the average person can imagine.

They just put a brick on the pedal and then walk away for an hour, right?

Not quite like that, but it's pretty darn high. Yeah, it's pretty darn high, absolutely. You know, one of the tests that Ford does, and I think they still do it, I'm not sure, where you would fail the cooling system on the engine and then drive it to the point it locks up, and then the car still has to restart after it cools down again. Now, I'm not suggesting anybody try that on their vehicle, to be clear, but the testing they do on engines is quite severe.

Well, one of the, I think it was the tuner here at Ratified, it said it's like, if a car's gonna blow up after a fresh build, like a built motor or whatever, it's probably gonna do it right out the gate, because, for whatever reason.

Yeah, and if you're driving a fast car and you don't trust the build, well, you got a bigger problem. Why are you building a high-horsepower engine that you can't trust?

Yeah, well, exactly. And some other people I've seen on Facebook, some really reputable people in the community, have been like, yeah, we're just gonna go throw it on a dyno the next day. We don't have to deal with the whole break-in miles of 500 miles or whatever, but yeah.

There's some value in break-in, but I think quite frankly, for most engines, it's a little bit overrated.

For those Chevy guys, they need the break-in.

Well, and have you re-honed the cylinders? Are there new rings in it? So a lot of it depends on what you've actually done on the rebuild versus just, we often say rebuild, and there's a wide range of what's in a rebuild.

Hey, that's true.

Yeah, exactly. And so I think it really depends. But for most engine builds, they're pretty good to automate out of the gate. If it was a brand new vehicle, I would follow a 500 or 1000 mile break-in before you start tracking it. But I doubt we have many people out there with new CA's.

No, we had somebody break one in on a rally once, but.

Most of your brand new stuff is some, they're electronically controlled until break-in's over.

I think they are. And I don't think we're gonna have many people out there.

No, very, very few.

I don't think we're having an issue.

If you're running a stock engine, your risk of blowing up a stock engine is effectively zero.

Yeah, I don't think it's an issue at all. Well, that said, we did pass over to One Hour Mark. We're pretty, we're right on schedule though. I yammered a little bit there towards the end, but nonetheless, I think we covered pretty much everything.

Any other questions that you've been getting back from kind of your community on this?

The biggest one, I more so just like to call people out on certain concerns like wear and tear, right? Like let's not oversell like just how much wear and tear you're gonna do. Autocross, I think you, maybe you can correct me on this. I think you probably get more tired wear on that because you're just so much aggressive turning. I don't know, I might be wrong.

But no, I think there's some truth in this. When you're driving slow, and I call autos, I mean, you hit 50, 70 miles an hour on autocross, but you'll have 20 mile per hour corners on an autocross, very tight. And you're coming out on the track generally with fairly cold tires, right? Which means that you're trying to drive heat into those things quickly. So you're just moving a lot, you're moving the car a lot more on an autocross than you are gonna be on the track. Go look at the average guys on the track for any road racing. They're not drifting the cars around. They're trying to get that car on rails. Where on autocross, there's just, there's a lot more vehicle movement and vehicle rotation and sliding.

More turning rather than braking and acceleration, I think.

That'll wear your tires out faster.

It's super aggressive. Like I remember, I got, I mean, again, I'm far from skilled. I only had one autocross session, but it's like, I was fighting that wheel.

You're moving it quickly.

I mean, you're going from full right to full, well, not full, but.

Absolutely. It's very different, yes.

Yeah, super. Some hand over hand.

No. But it's a very different experience on autocross than you're gonna find on the track.

Yep. So I don't think people should be too worried on that front. But yeah, so we'll put together an article after this. We're going to have a ton of highlights on this as well. I think a lot of people are excited to come on out.

Listen, for anybody who's gonna come and join us, it's gonna be a great day. Weather's out of our control, but generally it's favorable.

What about rain though? Because I have one of my friends, he loves rain. Like he, I think it's, I mean, as long as you're not on Cup 2s, that'd be a different story. But if you're like on PS4s or like a normal street tire or a summer performance tire, you should generally be fine if you have tread. Cup 2s, you're in the wall. Sorry, game over. But.

Yeah, if it's a rainy day. Now, if it's a huge downpour, we're gonna call the session until the heavy rain stops. But there's a probability, if it's raining, you have a wet track. Now, wet tracks, they race at them all the time. And it's different. You have a lower coefficient of friction on a wet track. I actually like practicing on a wet track. It just kind of slows things down a little bit. And for any of you that live in the north, when it's snowing out, how many people have not gone off and thrown their car around in the snow? It's fun, right? But everything slows down, because you don't have to come into that corner at one and a half Gs to get in the slide.

It's a different skill set, and you understand your car better too, I feel.

Totally agree. And a little bit of that happens when it's wet out, where it slows things down, the car's gonna break loose a little bit faster, a little earlier, and you're going to manage within that. I think the harder part when it rains is that sometimes you get these inconsistent surfaces, because the race line will dry out much faster than off the race line, and so you're gonna have to learn to read your tires a little bit, whether you're under a wet surface or a dry surface.

I can't imagine a track's gonna rubber in for a school circuit, because that's the other thing I've heard, is sometimes you want to go off the racing line because the rubber can get slick, but I can't imagine we're gonna be dealing with that.

Well, listen, these tracks are so well used because we're on a Monday. The reason we don't do these on the weekend is that track is being raced all weekend long for other events.

Yeah, it's gonna be right after Power Cruise, which actually, before you finish your point, I do want to say for this being the weekend or the day right after Power Cruise, I highly recommend, why not go out to Power Cruise and spend the night and just...

Just so you know, I booked my extra camping site. I contacted BIR. They're letting... I'm staying. I'm going there Thursday night. I'll be there all through the weekend for Power Cruise. And then I asked them for an extra night so that I could be there Monday morning. And that was absolutely not a problem. So I will be camping there Sunday night. So I will be there bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning on Monday.

And for a lot of people, I suspect we're getting a lot of people from the Twin Cities area. Yeah. Up there. A fair number. It starts at a point... If you just get up early and drive up there from the cities, I always turn this into a day trip. So I leave at 5 a.m. or whatever the time is, and I'm up there at a reasonable time, and I have a fun day driving and head back that evening. I'm back at 7 or 8 in the evening. So if you want to turn this into a day trip and not get a hotel room, it's viable. I will tell you, when you're driving home, you're going to be tired. So if you need to pull over and take a nap for 20 minutes or have a cup of coffee or whatever it is, just be safe.

Yeah, do a classic motley crew. Whatever you got to do to get home.

But it's a very doable day trip, if that's something that interests you and avoids the hotel room.

And you can dip out early. Most people will. If you want to get your feet wet, this is a great opportunity to do so. You're going to get some track time if you want to experience it. And if you get out there and do a couple laps, you're like, this isn't for me, you're going to still be hanging out with like-minded people. The camaraderie and all this stuff, it's going to be a blast.

One thing that we also didn't mention is we're going to be doing a ton of content up there. We're going to be doing some podcasts up there, some before and after experiences. We might... We have yet to figure out the specifics of it, but the goal is to get a couple of interviews with drivers and instructors before and after their session, maybe even during. We'll see what happens there. There's some things I have to play around with. But nonetheless, the goal is to document and showcase the experience. And if this track day goes well, which, I mean, the Brainer does their performance school all the time throughout the year, but this is our first time collaborating with them in order to just kind of promote the event for first timers or just people who want to get some additional skills.

Well, and I think the part that I find exciting about this is Brainerd is a great track. It's been around for a long, long time. For anybody that's been up there, they can attest that it's wonderful at a bunch of things. They don't spend much money on marketing. I would press you to go find an ad for Brainerd on Facebook or Google. They don't spend a lot of money in those particular areas. I think what's special about what you guys are doing collectively, the community, the Minnoxide community, is a great community, and they're stitched together, and they're talking, and they enjoy the sport. And so really by bringing together Minnoxide and RaiseAHood and our organization and BIR, and bringing those things together, you're mixing together two very complimentary things, which is people that are into cars and people that are very good at holding track events and hopefully one plus one equals three. So I know BIR is equally excited about having all the Minnoxide listeners up there. They're excited about the broadcast that you're going to do from up there. So it's the first time. This stuff is fun. It's not going to be perfect. We're going to learn a few things.

Oh, yeah.

But that's the stuff that always keeps life a little spicy.

Yep. Well, I guess on the content creation front, we're going to learn a few things. The instructors and everybody up there, they know what they're doing.

So yeah, the instructors, I mean, they've been holding this track school. I think it's they're on probably the 25th year, maybe the 30th year.

Which, by the way, is older than me.

I have to bring you out of every episode. You were born, they started the BIR performance school.

They're like, we got to be ready for Harris in 24 years.

Yeah, exactly.

We better get started now.

And so it's a very seasoned set of drivers and instructors in the program, and so that is very well-versed. But I think it's the first time that we've ever done a podcast up there like this.

Yep, it's going to be very interesting to structure. We're going to be discussing that in the coming weeks as well. But they're very excited to have us up there. I think it's going to be a great way for people to document what they're doing. And then if this goes well, which I honestly, it will, we will be doing more of these. Maybe not this season, but we'll see. We'll see how late we get into the season and promotion and all that dumb stuff.

Well, I think the fun thing about these, I like trying new things where you bring two things together. And so when I say we'll learn a few things, it's a very unstructured, natural, authentic event. And that's the part that I find exciting about this thing. And you always learn a few things, and that's, you know...

All of these great things had the very first one at one point in time, right? Yes, absolutely. Somebody said, hey, we're going to do this thing called SEMA. At one point in time, there was the number one.

And just to alleviate any fears, the track school has been going on a long, long time. So that is set, safe, predictable, structured. It's going to be safe and highly educational and a ton of fun. We've never brought it together with a community like this before, so that's the part where there's a new variable. But it's good to get some of these younger people. I do find with tracks, sometimes you end up with maybe a slightly older generation that are out there.

I think our demographic is going to be anywhere from mid-20s to 50s or 60s in your case.

I think your demographics of Minnoxide are a little bit younger.

You would think not. 30s is pretty spot on.

I think if I look across the wave of people that are typically at our track schools, I think it's more in the 40s and 50s.

Yeah, 30s and 40s is pretty reasonable for the people that will be attending this. A handful of younger guys, again, mid-20s. But you have to also think, who can afford to go to a track day? Who wants to go to one? And then also it's on a Monday. Right now it's final season. We're not going to get any 18-year-olds over there.

Don't skip class or skip finals to come to this.

It depends on the class. If it's health class, F*** it. Worthless. Just Google a TikTok education. But that said, there is a code. You can either use code RaiseAHood or code Minnoxide for... What was it? Was it like 12.5, 15% off? Something like that. I think it was 12.5% off. I don't know. It takes the edge off. Regardless, you can either call in or you can go on the website. I do have a Facebook link. And then I'll also be sharing the link quite frequently on my social channels, and you will as well. And Dan, Mr. Gun and Garage, will be as well. Yep. So we'll be sharing the link all over the place. Otherwise, just basically go to the... I think it was... Let's find out. Let's find out together. I think it was birmn.com, but we will find out.

I think I just Googled bir Performance Driving School.

That's the easiest way to do it. Yeah, birmn.com, and then you should find a driving school in there. Otherwise, on social media, all that fun stuff. Yep.

You'll find us.

Use code Minnoxide or RaiseAHood, whoever you like more, whoever you like to listen more here.

Oh, don't make this a popularity contest.

I'm going to be full disclosure. I used the RaiseAHood one. Did you?

Yes.

Yes, I did. All right.

Well, Dan is in the camp of this.

My marketing KPIs will be better than your marketing KPIs.

Well, with that said, I am also now looking for a new co-host. Send you back to the agency.

Hey, I got to make sure the sponsors stay sponsors, man.

Well, sweet. We've already done the pick three with you, I think, three or four times. I can't imagine it's going to change much. So we will probably skip that for the first time ever.

Sure.

Yeah, I think because...

First time ever.

Yeah, well, I think it's fair enough because you're consistent with that. If we can reward you for anything, it's consistency. And then on that note, I know a lot of you guys got the hats. I thought the Minnoxide hats. I got to give a quick plug. Facebook really hurts on sharing things. Whenever it's a link, whether it's promoting an event, hats, episodes, whatever, people don't see it for whatever reason.

Well, unless you pay them. This is all part of their plan, too, right?

Yeah, they have a monetization policy.

Well, at least when it comes to sharing links and such. So all the people that bought half this previous round, the same amount of people reached out saying, wait, what? I didn't see this. So I will be doing a round, too, so I figured I'd at least shout that out. So if you are interested, shoot me a message. I'll add you to the wait list because I am not in the inventory game. But anything else that you would like to add, Mike?

Thanks for the opportunity, man. I'm really looking forward to this, and I'm looking forward to meeting a lot of listeners of Minnoxide face to face. It's going to be a fun day.

Yeah, it's going to be fun. I'm really excited.

We're going to go from purely digital to very, very analog.

It's going to be very real. Well, thanks again for coming on, Mike. Dan, thanks for existing. Well, actually, no, people can find you at raiseahood.com.

raiseahood.com.

Yep, be sure to check that out. Add your car to the... Is there anything exciting you want to share on that front? I'm a squirrel right now. I'm sorry.

No, no. So just RaiseAHood... There's a bunch of transitions going on that I can't publicly disclose right now, but I'll just say that the business is taking some very interesting growth trajectories that we're excited about. And I think our broader idea, and our broader idea is just very simple, which is how can we use modern technology, including artificial intelligence, gig economy, and lower the cost of ownership of vehicles for everybody? And it's easier said than done, but our original charter on this, which was to put power in the hands of the end consumer so they can make smarter decisions and reduce their cost of vehicle ownership, plays for virtually everybody. The thing I think we forget because we're a bunch of car enthusiasts is we all spend way more on a vehicle than we probably should, because it's a passion on one level or another. The average American right now is driving a 13-year-old vehicle. The average American right now is not thinking about going to track school, but when their car breaks down and they're handing an $1,100 bill to fix their alternator, they don't have an extra $1,100 in their bank account this much. It's like a major challenge.

Or $70,000 to buy a new vehicle.

Or $70,000 to buy a new vehicle. And so we're helping customers directly to make sure that they can properly maintain their vehicle and lower cost of the ownership. The other thing that we do, which has really played well, not played well, but there's a sincere need, is for the mechanics that are out there. And the average mechanic is making $40 an hour, right? They're doing really hard work. This is not fun stuff. They're standing on a concrete floor eight or ten hours a day with grease and water and sweat and cold and everything else. But when you bring your car to the average dealership, the dealership is not charging you $40 an hour. They're charging you $195 an hour, $160 an hour. I heard discussion on the West Coast right now. They're pushing it up to almost $300 an hour for service.

Thanks, West Coast.

And so our long-term objective is, how do we create this intermediation between the people in need to the experts that are really providing the service, right? And cut out all the layers of stuff in between, and you just run on a much more efficient overall platform. And what makes it complicated is the world, listen, the world of cars is hard. Lots of different parts, lots of different parts that go wrong, a lot of them are makes and models and generations and everything else. So it's not like we can just snap our fingers when we spit out one product and we're done. But our broader objective is how do we make it better for the experts on the one end, better for the customers for the other end, and make the entire ecosystem work more efficiently.

Yeah, I'm really excited with everything. That's, again, things we can't talk about on air at the moment, because there's a lot of exciting developments in the background. But I'm very, very excited. So for those of you that haven't yet, go to raiseahood.com, add your car to the, what's the word I'm looking for? The garage.

In the garage. Register, add it to the garage.

Yep, because as the AI gets smarter and better, and all the other various aspects of talent mechanics and all that, as that continues to grow, it's going to be very helpful for the Hooptys and the Dailies off Craigslist out there.

Well, and it's funny, one of the things that we pick up is, I hope people, I've been on your podcast a couple of times now.

Fourth or fifth time now?

Fourth or fifth time now.

You're my Neil deGrasse Tyson, man.

But I think most people recognize that I'm fairly authentic. You told it, said it before, consistent. I'm a fairly boring, kind of buy the book type of guy. And I think most people, when they listen to me, they go, okay, this guy is not a poser. He knows what he's talking about.

It's hard to be a poser in a three hour podcast.

It is. But I mean, we're very genuine that we're trying to make it work better for consumers. It's interesting when we do some limited social media advertising, you know, one of the push backs that we get, we get a push back. People go, oh, it's just a scam. They're just trying to take your money. They're trying to kick you when you're down there.

You know, and you're like, I haven't seen that.

I'm not. But the problem, I think, Harris, is that there's so many bad players in our ecosystem that they've been classically conditioned to go, well, if I bring it to this shop, they're just going to try to oversell me or replace air cleaners that don't need to be replaced. Or do I really need that much service on my vehicle right now?

Which is the complete opposite of what you're trying to do.

Which is the complete opposite of what we're trying to do. So we just get bundled into kind of this broad, because they don't know us.

Yeah, and one final note I'd like to add, and my favorite feature on there is it tells you what are the odds you could screw something up, which is very important to somebody like me because I'm clumsy and stupid. I'm the complete opposite of my brother. I'm overly cautious. For whatever reason, whenever I'm under a lift, like with a car on the lift, I'm hunched over as if that's going to save my life. I'm very cautious. So it's very cool to have that on the site. It gives you statistics of how easy it is to change this and all that.

And what you're saying is that people that are out there, if you talk to an economist, they define that as risk seeking, risk neutral, or risk avoidance. If you are, you're risk avoidance.

For certain things.

For certain things. You avoid risk. And so you're more likely to buy insurance. You're trying to protect yourself. There's people that are risk seeking, which is, if you're a gambler, you seek risk. The more you spend at Vegas, statistically, the more you're going to lose. We all know that, to be a truism.

Unless you're at the freaking hotel I was at, somebody won $12 million the night I didn't gamble.

But you're out there, people are chasing that dream. They know statistically they're going to lose, but they're like, I'm going to do it anyway. And so that person defined as risk seeking. Someone in the middle says, okay, I can do the odds, and I can calculate the probability of an accident. And they'll say, well, my break even point is such and such. And so therefore, it pays for me to take this bet or that bet. Not many people think that way. But most people fall into one of those two categories, risk seeking or risk avoidance.

And it's so huge at helping with that. So yeah, go to raiseahood.com, sign up, check it out. And then, Dan, people can find you at Gunn and Garage with two N's, I'm taking your outro. Oh, yeah. And as for me, just again, let me know if you guys want the hats. And I think, yeah, sign up for the track day. I think that pretty much covers it.

Covers it.

Thank you very much, Mike. Thanks, Dan, for existing, and we'll see you guys next time.

And we'll see some of you in Brainerd.

Yes, perfect.

Perfect.