The Smoking Tire

Our Race Recap w/ Tommy Kendall and Mateo Siderman

100 min
May 7, 202623 days ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Tommy Kendall and Mateo Siderman join the hosts to recap their recent endurance racing weekend at Road America in the WRL series, discussing car setup challenges, driver development, and the technical nuances of high-performance racing. The episode covers everything from wastegate failures and seat ergonomics to racing lines, tire management, and the value of learning from experienced drivers.

Insights
  • Proper seating position and ergonomic setup is critical for driver consistency and energy efficiency in endurance racing, often overlooked by amateur drivers but essential for reducing fatigue and improving lap times
  • Learning racing craft through observation and instruction from experienced drivers accelerates skill development far beyond what solo practice can achieve, particularly for understanding car capabilities and track limits
  • Endurance racing reveals performance limitations through component failures and degradation that wouldn't surface in shorter races, making reliability and diagnostics as important as raw speed
  • Modern race cars with road-car-derived electronics (traction control, fuel management) create additional complexity in pit procedures that requires muscle memory and practice to execute efficiently
  • Track configuration and surface details (grass crete, planter boxes, rain lines) significantly impact driving lines and require adaptive technique rather than one-size-fits-all approaches
Trends
Increasing complexity of driver aids and electronic systems in amateur/club racing requiring specialized technical knowledge and diagnosticsGrowing emphasis on driver development programs and mentorship models in grassroots racing seriesTrack safety infrastructure evolution (grass crete, planter boxes) changing optimal racing lines and requiring driver adaptationEndurance racing as a proving ground for identifying component weaknesses and reliability issues before they become systemicImportance of proper ergonomic setup and seat customization for driver performance and injury prevention in motorsportsBalance of power regulations creating interesting technical challenges and limiting power through throttle restriction rather than engine modificationsMulti-generational family involvement in motorsports as a bonding and mentorship opportunity
Topics
Endurance Racing Strategy and Pit ProceduresDriver Ergonomics and Seat SetupWastegate and Turbo DiagnosticsRacing Line Optimization at Road AmericaTire Management and DegradationBalance of Power Regulations in Club RacingTraction Control and Electronic Management in Race CarsDriver Development and MentorshipTrack Safety InfrastructureMulti-Driver Coordination in Endurance RacingBrake System Performance Under Extreme ConditionsFuel Management in Pit StopsRain Line Technique and Wet Weather RacingVehicle Dynamics and Suspension SetupRacing Incident Analysis and Recovery
Companies
WRL (World Racing League)
The racing series where the hosts and guests competed at Road America; praised for professional operations and fair r...
BMW Motorsport
Supplied the turbo component that was later installed to fix the wastegate issue in the race car
Swift Engineering
Founded by R.K. Smith, a Formula Ford expert mentioned in Tommy Kendall's 1990 Beretta Trans Am race story
Cars and Concepts
Company that owned and operated the Beretta GTU racing program in IMSA, doing body kit and aftermarket fitting
TC Cline Racing
Team running a heavily modified C8 Corvette with balance of power restrictions in the GP1 class
Ginger Racing
Competitive team in the WRL series that had mechanical issues during the Road America event
Open Throttle
Driving instruction facility where Mateo coaches; uses M235i R as a training vehicle
Homestead Miami Speedway
Track where Mateo was coaching when he sustained a testicular injury during a driving demonstration
Bring a Trailer
Online auction platform where vintage Chevrolet Beretta GTU models have sold for $12,000-$30,000
Nissan
Hosted a Nismo Z launch event where the host received driving instruction on carousel technique
People
Tommy Kendall
Legendary racing driver with 40 years of Road America experience; guest providing technical racing expertise and ment...
Mateo Siderman
Fast driver and coach who competed at Road America and Barber; shared injury story and racing insights
Zach
Co-host who competed in the WRL race at Road America; learning driver gaining experience in endurance racing
Sergio
Organized the Road America racing weekend and provided hospitality; father of Mateo Siderman
R.K. Smith
Historical figure mentioned in Tommy Kendall's 1990 Beretta Trans Am win story; brought in as third car driver
Bob Varsha
Referenced as having run a 2:20 marathon in his collegiate days; provides F1 commentary context
Denis Lind
Super Trofeo driver who set a lap record at Laguna Seca on his first visit to the track
Daniel Ricciardo
Featured guest on Jim Farley's 'Drive' podcast discussing racing and what drives success
Jim Farley
Ford CEO who hosts the 'Drive' podcast and races cars on weekends; mentioned as example of CEO involvement in motorsp...
Tony Hawk
Referenced in discussion about how younger athletes learn from pioneers; invented the 900 after 10 years
Quotes
"I have to hold it in the air. I build a little ramp usually if I can get that in a car so I can slide it. In this car, I didn't have it. And so I'm literally just hovering it in the air."
Tommy KendallDiscussing his ankle mobility limitation and driving technique adaptation
"The secret is to drive with people that are of similar size. The compromise is, you know, you work through all that stuff and there are still compromises."
Tommy KendallOn shared seat setup in endurance racing
"My right nut was hanging out of my sack. And it was like a hole the size of like a big ping pong ball."
Mateo SidermanDescribing his testicular injury from a racing incident
"You don't want to have to fuck with shit while you're racing."
Tommy KendallOn adjusting seat position during a race
"If you get your eyes going through there I mean there's no absolutes depending you could theoretically have a bus stop that was designed where it was fast enough through the middle that you would have to break until you move your eyes."
Tommy KendallDiscussing braking technique through chicanes and bus stops
Full Transcript
What up everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire podcast. Today's episode is brought to you as always by Off The Record. We love Off The Record here at the Smoking Tire because they're looking out for us just like they're looking out for all of you. And how do I know they're looking out for all of you? Because not a week goes by that I don't hear from two or three of you folks that Off The Record saved your bums. What does that mean? It means you didn't plead guilty. You got Off The Record at OffTheRecord.com slash TST. They fought the ticket for you and they won. And everyone else out there, you can do it too. If you get a moving violation, don't plead guilty. Get Off The Record. That's OffTheRecord.com slash TST. They will fight that ticket for you in the vast majority of times. They will win. And then you'll be emailing me that screenshot of the dismissal that we are all looking for. One more time, OffTheRecord.com slash TST. All right, on this episode it's the Race Recap Show. Two weeks ago, Zach and I went racing with our friends at Road America in the WRL series. And today, those friends, Mateo Siderman and the legend himself, Tommy Kendall, are in studio to recap. The good, the bad, the stories, everything in between. The boys are in town. It's the Smoke and Tire podcast. Let's go. Two things and then all of a sudden, every one of Tommy Kendall's stories, he's like, and then he found his other option that nobody saw. And that's why you're the best. That's why your career has peaked with racing with a kid and a loser. Ten or eleven days removed from race car. We find ourselves in the studio doing the Racing Wrap-Up Show, which we didn't do last time. It's been just long enough to forget everything important and interesting that happened over the week. Exactly. I was doing a little mental inventory before. Exactly. What happened? There were, I mean, the highlights were mostly... Hold it, I'm just preparing. Preparing? Are we starting already? Well, sometimes he rolls right in. Oh, okay, guys. That's my strategy. I love that. That's fantastic. But usually Zach gives me the fucking what have yous and he hasn't yet. Why is that? It's just taking longer than usual, but it's going. That's very weird. It's going. It gets unsettling, but now we're left. Are you sure? Yes. Speeding. Exactly. All right, we're good. They, yeah, when you're hanging out, like, I have to film all my own stuff on these press launches. So I'm like standing around a bunch of other people just going, Slate, what? You know, like, you're like, Fuck is this guy doing it? But it makes Zach's life a lot easier. That's great. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the show. Never mind. We got Tommy Kendall in studio. We got Tato Sider in studio. And along with now, with now fast Zach over here. Fast Zach. Fastest out of five drivers, would we say? There's like 10 people a weekend. Top five. So exactly top five. Top five. You didn't, you didn't stuff the car into the inside wall of the kink on lap two of practice. Did not. So you were definitely not, not the worst driver of the weekend. Someone else did that. I think he listens to the podcast. He did a great job. Sorry, man. No, Zach was awesome. Zach was awesome. Yeah, tough luck for the guy who left. Yeah, I was unfortunate. Team eight. I broke the news of that. Because it was our other, our team's other car. They come back and be like, hey, you guys noticed someone's missing? Yeah. There was a fucking. Two men enter one. There's a yard sale on the back straight. Um, but, uh, yeah, first, you know, Tato, uh, you know, you and your Sergio, your old man, I mean, it's a real treat for us to get to go racing with you. And, uh, in exchange, we, we come back and tell everybody how fast you are. Um, which we don't have to lie about exactly. Go look at the time sheets, bro. Like they're, they're legit. Um, but thank you for taking us racing with you. Thank you guys for coming, man. It's always, it's always such a treat having you guys at the track and, you know, trying to share a little bit of speed and trying to learn a little bit from Tommy every weekend is, it's awesome. We, uh, we're only there because of WRL limits drivers to three hours max per race. Otherwise, otherwise he would come in for a sip of water and fucking be like, all right, see you guys in two more, two more texts again. Yeah, it's, it's a real treat to have you guys. And I think that the, uh, the team really loves it. The series really loves it. And you know, bringing everybody together and having fun on a race track is the best thing you could do, right? Well, and for me, uh, being out of it for a long time, this is a really nice way to come back, not just with you, but also I've been really impressed with WRL, the way they, RJ and his group operates things. Um, there's a lot of elegance to some of the simplicity. They treat you like adults, but they're also firm. Yeah. Uh, and so, which is preferable to them barking at you and then never pulling the trigger with the penalties. And that just leads to chaos. So what they're doing is works pretty well. You don't always maybe agree with the rulings and so forth, but, uh, were we penalty free this year? We were penalty free. Yeah. No penalties. We were penalized by BMW. Yeah. We were a little unlucky. Not by the racing series. Yeah. We didn't even have a warning. Oh, we did. For the car being, uh, in limp mode and the Mustang, remember when I went out and I had to talk to the race control? Oh, yeah. That was, that was the dumbest shit. Yeah. It was really interesting. You were, you were, you were a broken car. Yeah. And then the Mustang was like, he's off the pace. Yeah. I know. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, helpful. You know, I'm just missing my turn and that's why I'm off the pace. It has nothing to do with the car being broken. Yeah. You know, uh, uh, Road America is, is, is so long that like there are like actually sometimes needed like exit roads and then the track. So we became very familiar with the turn five. So long when I, when I looked at our lap times and we can talk about later cause I found the whole export CSV file, but I was like, what happened here? I'm like, Oh, limp mode. The lap would go from 238 to like four minutes. Yeah. Four mile track. Yeah. Man, it's, that's, it's that would, what a crazy place to, to race a car in general. It's one of those, it's like it's narrow. It's long. It's hilly. It's very fast. How, uh, how far back do you go there? TK? Well, the first time I went there was as a spectator with my camera. I was, I think 14 or 15 years old watching my dad race there. And then my first time driving would have been age 18 in the showroom stock, uh, which is kind of what WRL is, but these cars can drive hard on the brakes. These, the cars back then it was a 300 ZX non turbo and there was about a lap and a half of hard braking. Like Z 31's. The squared off. The squared off. The squared off. Yes. squared off. Yeah. That was the first car I drove there and then the turbo car in firehawk and so forth. So that goes back to mid eight. So 40 years. I've been going there as a driver for 40 years. And what's cool about Elkart, wrote America, I always call it Elkart because that's the town, uh, is it's one of the few tracks that continues to race in its original configuration. I was just going to ask how, if the configuration has changed. So Lyme Rock, you can still run it. So original configuration, they don't because they run that chicane, but Laguna sake is different. The Glenn's different. They're all, you know, you have to reset the leaderboard when they change the configuration. That's right. Or if you have a record, it lasts forever, at least on that one. And remind me, because you told us at dinner and I was shocked. What was your fastest lap there ever at Lyme Rock? It was the fast lap at Lyme Rock was a 44, which is a look up any lap at Lyme Rock. Yeah. 44 is faster than that by a lot. And now that it's faster than you should go. What was your fastest lap that wrote America, if you remember? I don't. It was in the GTP car, same car. It had to have been in the 40, minute 40 something. Which is like, you know, almost a minute faster than we were going. Yeah. It was crazy. Was your first big win in 1990 you won with a Chevy Beretta? That was my first Trans Am win. Wow. The Beretta. But the Beretta was like a NASCAR underneath a Beretta Bob. Yeah. But yeah. Bob Riley, he was the second gen Bob Riley Trans Am car. We ran a V6. The Elkhart Lake race was an interesting one because we had a splayed valve cylinder head V6 four and a half liter. The oldsmobile also ran the same 4.5 liter V6. But as we, they started adding weight to us before we even won a race because the car, you know, had shown us potentially had one yet. And they started adding weight. By the time we got to road America, we weighed exactly the same as the V8 Roush cars. And they just kept stacking on tied to that cylinder head. And we had brought in R.K. Smith, who was a Formula Ford, you know, guy that founded Swift Engineering. And for a third car, and he was running the 18 degree with a carburetor and he wasn't familiar with the heavy cars. And I got in the car in practice. He said, just get in this thing. Make sure it feels right. And I got in it. And it was 175 pounds lighter and ran the carburetor. And it showed up. That was wooden weight in braking. Really, the light went on for me. And I came in and I told my crew chiefs that I said, I'm racing this car. And so they put R.K. in the other one. And it was one of the easier wins I had going down into turn five. It had about the same straightaway speed. And then at the break at the other end, it was just wasn't even funny. I just look at the guy next to me and say, I don't even need to check the brake marker. Wherever you break, I'll just go a little further. And so that was that. And I actually own that exact chassis. I have that Beretta. Seriously? Yes. I got it in my next Chevrolet deal. And I've had it ever since. I've never driven it while I've owned it. So it needed in mothballs and needs to get going again. Yeah, it would need that. That is definitely like every other Beretta I have seen. Just like the road car. That is so cool. They don't even try to make that shit look like a Beretta. That looks like a fucking NASCAR. We ourselves fully convinced that look just like a Beretta. From the front, one of the cool things was the rally cars. You sat just off the center line of the car. So you weren't quite in the middle like a McLaren, but you were closer to the center of the car. So, yeah. Just for comparison, can we have a photo of a 1990 Chevrolet Beretta road car? I mean, it's really uncanny the resemblance between, especially the dish in the rear wheels. Yeah. The dash, the dash, the drag, something that really is. This thing is like a NASCAR in the front and a dragster in the back. Wild looking. And the exact same, virtually the exact same livery as the Williams of the year. ICI was a sponsor on the Williams back then and also all of that. Yeah, I mean, that's the race car, right? Yeah. They just painted a different color for that race. It's a squint. It's the same thing. You can't tell the difference. You should do suspension. You're there. White seat belts. That's actually the Zoomy one. What model is that? There was a, I think they did a GTZ. GTZ. There was a GTU. Oh my God. You get that for $4,000? Which was tied to the prior program. I gotta say the wheels look dope. We debuted it in IMSA GTU. Yeah. So, $88,000. I drove the Beretta GTU. The team was owned by Cars and Concepts, which was the company that was like a Rausch or a ASC that did the retro fitting or the after fitting of the package, you know, the graphics, body kit, wheels. I didn't realize that was like a full-on like after package. That's funny. It was a significant program. You saw it in Bradwood once in a while, killing it. Yes. Yes. I saw one on Bring a Trailer because I always, because I have two of those Berettas as well. And I kept thinking it would be cool to have the road. But one sold on Bring a Trailer for some ungot, it was a $12,000 to $14,000 car. And one sold recently for $30,000. I mean, that's fucking just cocaine. I know. Because that's very problematic. I can kind of see the like $45,000 Civic SI for the perfect one. But I don't know about the Beretta. I don't know. I don't know. But, so, okay, let's go back to the actual race at hand. We had success with the first place trophy. The last time we got in this car. And it actually looked pretty good. First race, we were on a pace to P2. Car breaks P4. Yeah. Pretty good. We should talk about that. A little bit, because we qualified sixth. That's where we stacked up piecewise. And Teo did what Mateo does when the green flag drops. He went forward and passed the quicker cars and we were settled into second. And we're looking for, and then we started having a couple minor. We had two limp mode situations. Did you have one? I didn't have one. You had a limp mode and then it was laying down on me at the end. It wasn't full limp mode, but it was pulling power. Yeah. I had to pit for 10 minutes and they cleared the codes and all that stuff. That's how we got to third and then it was enough. Yeah. Yeah. So, still finished fourth, which we were thinking, okay, we get rid of those little problems, but that's not exactly how it was. I really wanted to send that Corvette though. Oh, we were so close. The car that ultimately passed us for the podium was that C8 Corvette, which I forget if we talked about on the show. The TC Cline Corvette. The TC Cline show. Do we talk about it here? I don't think so. That car was so impressive. Yeah. Some of these guys, they're all sort of related to GM somehow, bought a shitty C8, like a beater as shitty as any C8 would be, and turned it into a track car. And we talked about it because we saw the car at Coda where it had a round Cadillac steering wheel on it. And I was very excited because it like, A, I knew that would work and it was better. And by the way, they're racing with that steering wheel still, which is hilarious because you'd think that even in racing where it's really just here to here that the square wheel technically might be better, but like, no, round is still better. That's funny. But this thing is really limited on power because of the balance of power rules for GP1. I was shocked when it was on our cars. And then so I guess they're, they're running a two thirds throttle limiter. So even if they floor it, it only ever gives two thirds throttle. So it can go to red line. It's just like takes a long time. It's just caught perennially coasting is what it's doing. Oh my goodness. That's why it was so fast through the kink because it already had the speed going through and it just went back to that three quarter throttle. And then it's like, yeah, you could probably not lift. Yeah. You could probably just take that shit flat. Oh my goodness. It had a giant zero one wing. It had a huge wing. It had a big wing. It had lightweight wheels. It had huge brakes and good tires. And it's a fucking C8. You know, so it's like, it was going to be good. It just didn't have the power. So, uh, we want, I wanted to beat that car. Yeah, me too. The shitty thing is, are we allowed to cause on here? Yeah. Okay, cool. The shitty thing is that I think they won day two. Did they? I think they got first or second. Once they figure out how to win, they were kind of relentless because it's hard. It's hard to BOP that because it will show the performance, but it's just, it's probably going to fall off less and so forth and so on. Cause it's just, uh, you know, much more modern. Imagine limiting a fucking LT one motor to two thirds throttle. You do 24 hours just on the four board. Sure. And it's got the traction systems and it's got, uh, an ELSD. Like it's got all this really good technology that helps all those tiny things a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I would be in the higher class if I'm honest with you. Like it, it's, it's very, very fast. Yeah. But I'm not sure why they wouldn't want to be in there. I don't know. Maybe they wanted to. We raced against that same team in Kota and it was the exact same color, exact same BMW that we had. Yeah. Just a real fancy looking one way back there in the field. And so I think that the, the idea with the Corvette was, hey, let's, uh, let's get ourselves a real good car, start winning some of these races and then start thinking about other things. But they're in the process of winning the races right now, feeling good. And then once they kind of get in trouble for winning too many, then they'll, then I think they'll move up because that car is, it's so capable. Like it for sure can be breaking near that three marker at the, uh, at turn five and it can for sure be breaking very minimally for turn one, but they didn't have the, uh, it seemed like they didn't have the drivers in it that wanted to push the car. And at the start, when I was kind of close to him, uh, going into turn three, they completely backed off of the corner. They really didn't want to scratch the car. Um, so they're really in that kind of early phases of building this thing. And they're already getting double podium weekends on the first weekend of the thing being in action. I'm a little more cynical than that. Folks taken a quick break because support is coming in from aura frames. They are the perfect mother's day gift to capture the chaos you put your mom through and the memories that come along with it. Listen, I had to put my mom through a lot. I did a few things. I did some stuff with cars, uh, that were funny then that aren't so funny now. Uh, I paintballed my neighbor's house because I tried to slingshot paintballs onto the roof of their house and missed. And now we all laugh about it. And actually there's a photo, uh, that my mom has of the paintballed wall and it's one of my favorite photos. Really. And, uh, my mom has the aura frame. I got it for her when we first started working with aura frames and I am regularly sending photos of Hannah and I's travels to her now, not to mention my sister got her the aura frame. She's the one with the kids. So they've got two aura frames, one for me and Hannah having fun as adults with no kids and then another one that's all kids from my sister. They're keeping those moments alive. All we got to do is drop those photos in the online folder. They go straight to mom's aura frame and these things come with free unlimited storage. So you can add as many photos and videos as you want. You can preload the photos before they shift and it comes in a gift box. Perfect for mom with no price tag for mother's day. Aura frames are named number one by wire cutter and you can save on the gifts mom's love by visiting aura frames.com. That's a u r a frames.com. Use promo code Tire for $25 off the best selling Carver Mat frame. Code T-I-R-E. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout with code Tire for 25 bucks off the best selling Carver Mat at aura frames.com. Support is also coming in this week from Hymns, Hymns hair specifically because that thinning when it starts doesn't stop. It's relentless. 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See website for full details, restrictions and important safety information. Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and oral monoxidil and finasteride. I know TC client is a serious operation, so I'm guessing they're finessing things and just building slowly. Seeing what breaks, they did have some kind of issue. And try not to get further restricted. So work up to it. Yeah, they have a small gas tank. They're running the regular tank for now. Did they run out of gas going into the pits and that's why they stopped in the pit road or did it break there? I think so. Because when it ran out of gas, it then locked it into gear. No. They couldn't get it out of gear to drag it back in. So I don't know. If you need a tow during a WRL race, can you then get back in and get a podium? You can. Yeah, you're really lucky. You're not DQed if you get a flatbed. But that car is fiberglass too, so I imagine they don't want to bend it because it's not bending it. It's ripping the panel. Although I have to say, back from my Sherm Stock days, I guess it would be the C4 Corvette's absolute tanks. They would be in these hellacious crashes in these 24-hour races. Next thing you know, it's running again, no back window. And the body still, I mean, they... It looked all right. Oh. It looked great, but it was still in place and so forth. I mean, you drag it down a tire wall. You literally... It seemed you could not kill one. Okay. Yeah. Maybe I need to learn more about how fiberglass disintegrates on contact. I thought it would shred. Yeah, I think... Those cars didn't. Somebody hit my C5 Corvette when I was a youngster. And just like yours. And the front quarter panel, shred it. Shred it. Shred it. But like, you know, maybe they make a matter of... Maybe from C4. Or C5. They're like, maybe this is overbuilt. Yeah. Yeah. Decontending things. Yeah. Very possible. Someone said about the C4 Corvette, this car is too well built. For perhaps the first and only time ever. Yeah. So, speaking of well built, you know, I put on Instagram as no secret. We had a rough day on day two. The car basically didn't run. I got, you know, I got a DM on Instagram from the technician who ultimately fixed it. Not on the race. Later they sent the car. And it's real. The guy sent me photos of the car. Okay. And what was it? Here we go. And I printed out the fucking screenshot and I apologize. I forgot to print out the homie's name. So if you're listening... In Landon? Huh? In Landon? Maybe. I don't know. Okay. I'm sorry. I forgot your name. No, I do not. Okay. Well, I'm sorry I forgot your name. It's not written here. But you know who you are and thank you for the email. The wastegate coin on the turbo was worn out. The linkage from the wastegate actuator to the actual coin flapper had play in it. So the wastegate actuator thought it was fully closed but could get blown open by the boost. That's why it would only make three PSI and go into limp mode. The turbo looked relatively new so it must have been something that happened pretty quickly and prematurely. It has a proper BMW Motorsport turbo on it now. So I said, was that... That wasn't something that they were going to actually fix during the race, right? And he said, oh, hell no. Definitely not during a race. There's no way they could have fixed it. So don't... They said, don't fault the team. They did their best. They wouldn't have been able to fix that. The tracks with... When I was saying it felt like it was pulling power. So it just was... But it was intermittent. It wasn't consistent. Sometimes it was making boost. Sometimes it was just a little bit off. So... Bomber. My takeaway was you need a BMW expert diagnostic person if you're going to race that era BMW road car, I think we learned. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they were also... I mean, they had a tablet. They were looking at the codes but it wasn't showing that. Correct. So, you know, there's no code, I guess. The name is Shoah Code. Yeah. And it would limp. And that's fun. Yeah. So... And even when it was working, like during COTA, when you'd pull... Every time we would change driver or fuel, you'd have to turn the car off to fuel it. That's a rule. So you fucking turn the car back on and you have to do the same... Like the same traction control bullshit dance you do in a road car. You have to do in this car. Except you're wearing gloves. You're fucking visors fogged because it's been closed. Very fogged. And you're trying to pull out and merge into a race quickly and you would do it and then you'd floor it, you know, as soon as you passed the cone gate to go onto the track. And the traction control would come back on and you have to now do it again while you're driving fast. So, like, that was a little... That's part of why my pit outs were so slow. What are you about to say? I was just going to ask Zach, what was it like... There was a lot going on. What was that like for you that has so little experience doing all this? Well, it was challenging because there was just added things. You know what I mean? In lemons we do pit in, we do pit out, we do driver change and still, like, you get in and it's like, oh my God, so much adrenaline and you got to pay attention. Tying the belts, mirrors, all that stuff. But then in this car, they're like, when you get in, you got to hit the fuel reset button to reset the fuel counter, which I did and it didn't work. It didn't reset it. And so I'm sitting there hitting this button and Zach, you know, our crew chief is on the radio. Hit the button. I'm like, I'm hitting the right button and it's just not changing the numbers. And so finally he goes, okay, that's fine, just go out, like, we'll keep track of time. So I'm worried about that. And then I also, in my brain fart of stress, forgot that you can just adjust traction control on the fly. So I thought I was trying to do it while they were fueling and I was stopped. But basically I was just killing time in pits. And so after day one, Zach comes up to me and he's like, the only thing I need you to do is leave pit when I tell you it's okay to leave pit. Your times are fine, but you're burning like 30 to 40 seconds. And I totally was because I was just trying to like process all this new stuff. I hadn't, I regret in hindsight not sitting in the car longer and going through everything. I did do it once, but, and I thought I'd committed it. And, but just like going through it over and over and over again until it's just muscle memory and asking those questions, like, can I hit these buttons on the fly or do I have to do it while sitting there? I think that because we were so limited with our practice time on Friday, we didn't get to do those things. Like we were supposed to do a bunch of driver change practice. We were supposed to do kind of the pit lane, you know, procedure a couple of times. We were supposed to switch drivers at the pit lane and, you know, practice like it's a real race. But the, the, it seems like the problem was happening to everybody. Did you have the, the lit mode in practice? No, I only had like two laps, right? Well, I didn't need to do much. I mean, you know, you know me, I can figure out the car pretty quickly, whatever the car is, and I had driven it before. So it was just a matter of, you know, how does it feel on this track? And I can register that pretty fast. And so I wanted to give the time to the people that it would benefit more. And I had a Hellcat Durango, which by the way, a shout out to the homie. They used to work on the SRT experience who told me, they fill those with dot three brake fluid, by the way. So if the brakes boiled after two stops, like that's definitely why. I was like, yep, yep. Yeah, it was sketchy. There were some sketchy brakes. So yeah, I mean, the problem didn't happen to me, but I did experience it, you know, at the very end when I was asked to go test it. And I was like, oh, this is fucking stupid. Yeah, sorry again about that. That was just, I was getting in and out so many times. No, no, no, I didn't mind doing it, but like that's what it was and it was dumb. But the outside of, you know, that issue, Zach, I thought, did really well. I learned, you know, at Kota, I learned a similar thing. I got the, don't fucking slow down until you're like at the gate for the pit. Like you're still racing even in the, and I was like, oh yeah. Cause like on a regular like track day or at fucking, you know, a slower series, they would slow you down much, much further. Totally. Yeah. I mean, and I did that during the race and you know, I'm coming up that you come out of the last turn going up the hill to the pit and then I don't know, 82 miles per hour, like slamming on the brakes. And I was like, oh, I'll have plenty of time to stop. And then I just watched the speedo going down and like the gate getting closer. I was like, oh, fucking, fucking, fucking fucking. And it was like, I got to like 35 and a half miles per hour. And for people listening to speed limits, 35, like as I crossed the gate, I went, Oh, all right. As much as I thought. That's a breaking point. You have to work out and you see it and for me. The one you see it everywhere, the in-lapse and the out-lapse are often. And so someone either has a better one worked out in any car. It's leaving on new cold tires and it says wealth. The one has the tire blanket. So they're leaving on hot stuff. But you're that's the riskiest. And that's often where, where it's just the races are decided when everyone's rehearsed and the cars are running so equally. So, yeah. But you probably didn't even think about it until, until the race about where, where is the break point to get to 35 by that car? Yeah. Yeah. Very, very true. Because during, you know, they'll put breaking boards there. There's no breaking board there and we can practice it. And during practice, I was coming in gentle, just trying to think of all the other things. And then I remembered what you guys had all said. So I just came in hot and, you know, got it down to speed. But then leaving, you know, leaving pit, I was like going 31, not 34.9. And just stuff like that, like trying to be careful and not get a penalty, but just a little too careful. Now, if we were studying it a little harder, they don't do like the big series do where they have timelines embedded and they're, and they're doing average speed at everything. They've got guys with guns. Yeah. So I did look to see if there's a guy with a gun at the start. So the reality is, I mean, you're, you're rolling the dice, but if there's no guy with a gun at the start, you don't have to be at 35 at the cone. You need to be at 35 when the first. This is Tommy Kendall's third car. Well, I saw two guys with radar guns. Third door here is completely accurate. Cause I was going to say it's not a laser beam there. It's a guy. Yep. And so if you're slowing and you cross the beam at 46, but you get to 35 by the time he turns around, you're golden. That's a good point. Yeah. The fact that our pit stall was the very first pit stall came in extremely handy in that regard as well. Um, that was, that's a pretty money pull in that, in that case. Yeah. I remember them saying like, if you drive past our pit, I'm going to yell at you. That's a great point. Fair. It was down to the far end. Dakota was hard to find actually. Yeah. What, what band radar gun is that? Do we know what brand? What band? Oh, I don't know. We should put a V1 in the car next time. That's gotta be probably K. I think a handheld is probably going to be K, but I don't know. I don't know if they'll let you buy a K. Well, it's a MPH industries, speed gun pro K a band held handheld stationary radar. Oh yeah. So that it? Uh, I tell a lot of brands, but I saw a photo of it. This is, this is a different looking one, but you know, I bet they all just put it in a different package. We need to know when you know the response time, the accuracy percentage. Tom is not like a scientist. He wants to know if we can put a radar detector in the race car. A jammer that will send a signal of 35 to 39. Yes. But a jammer's in the race car is the proist move. Right. Yeah. They'll never suspect us. Yeah, they're not looking for that on track. Is there a rule it says in the book? No jammers. Guys, one more break from the show because support is coming in from true work, working outside in the springtime means you're dealing with chilly mornings, hot afternoons and everything in between. That was me today. I drove through a rainstorm this morning. It was about 20 miles an hour on the mountain in the middle. And then when I got home, it was hot. Plus, if you're in certain parts of the country, mud, rain and whatever else the weather decides to throw at you, that's why you need work wear that can keep up with the changing conditions and true work has you covered. Because most work wear is made from cotton blends, which can restrict your movement and get soaked after just a few raindrops. True work uses advanced performance fabrics to build products designed specifically for work on the job site. Springtime is the perfect season for the T2 work pant, which keeps you comfortable over a wide range of conditions. 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No matter what the day brings, get 15% off your first order at truework.com with code tire. That's T R U E W E R K.com code tire true work built like it matters because it does guys taking a break from the action because support is coming in fast like Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, who's now got a podcast. And you're always asking me what I'm listening to when not recording this show. And right now it's this, the new season of drive with Jim Farley. In it, the Ford CEO talks to some of his favorite people about what they're driving and what drives them to succeed. Like Formula One driver Daniel Ricardo. Listen, there is a well-worn trope about racing drivers not being interesting to listen to, but if there is one that is interesting to listen to, it is Daniel Ricardo. I think this guy's takes on stuff and life are great. And look, Jim is a racing driver also. I personally raced against him like two months ago. And for me, a CEO that drives race cars on the weekends is about the pinnacle of CEO DUM when it comes to car companies. So the two of them together obviously have a lot of things to discuss on Drive with Jim Farley, which you can get on your podcast app. Very easy to find. Drive with Jim Farley. Check it out. I don't think so. There will be now. There will be. There will be now. At least it's just us talking. The 2026 Rags are going to come out updated. That's why you race with Tommy Kendall. And oh, by the way, he's also fast as it turns out. Yeah. Yeah. When I was looking at this spreadsheet, I was like, oh, I got really consistent here. And then I looked back up and I saw the driver change. Like, oh, that's Tommy. I was like, wow, I started clicking off 36. He's like, no, no. I mean, yeah. So. You know, what was your best lap? Do you remember 33 flat? That's fucking crazy. Zach was like a middle 37. My best time was a 37. Seven. OK, I was a 37 one. And then you were 30. Huh? Were you? What? Why? I thought I saw. I thought it's 37 for. But I could be wrong. Oh, maybe I was looking at the screen in the car and haven't looked back since. So if there was if it was for Tommy's was a 36 three point. A preface, though. Is yeah, Tommy's on the same tire after eight hours. And I get the freshies. Yeah. Which, by the way, pretty good on that tire. Yeah, man. That's like, yeah, pretty impressive, pretty impressive. We should have those conches or so. Are they conches? Everyone runs them, right? Everyone in the GP classes. Yes. Yeah. I don't know what the the model they run in the GTO classes and Gtu, but it's they use a lot of tires. They're using every pit stop they use tire and in those classes, they're doing tire changes every stop. So that's kind of a big budget job. I didn't realize that. Yeah, all I guess is I'm not watching their pit stops. I didn't think about that. I saw some tire changes. I didn't know they were doing them every stop. The Mercedes was every stop. The BMW was every stop. So the cars that were in the front, it was every stop. The Mustangs that were not really in the front. Every other stop, maybe. Maybe just, you know, front left, maybe. Oh, my God, that poor team that had to do fucking bump starts every pit stop for a whole day. Yeah. Fucking every two hours. Okay. Bump, bump, bump, bump. That wasn't great. That's a bummer. I felt like going out and helping, but like, oh, that was that's tough. Yeah. But the feeling went away, didn't it? Yes. And then I didn't. Yeah. They did a big race trailer. Maybe a coffee, I don't know. Yeah, that was a lot of. It's a crossfit. Yeah. It was, that weekend was a lot of showing of endurance with the, you know, with the cars. And like at Coda, we got really lucky. Same exact same times of racing, but much, much, it was colder in Texas, right? In the morning. The very first half hour and then it got real hot. So it was very similar conditions, but you know, we had zero problems with the car. And then the car went to barber with me and the team and three other pretty fast drivers. And we won the second race at barber and it was real hot. And then we, we come to Wisconsin and we got pretty unlucky there with the, the, the release, the wastegate release valve. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. So I mean, that's, that's endurance racing, right? Like things go wrong randomly and this was our one, you know, off weekend. And the team is, you know, they, they, they, they worked their cheeks off. They, they put the car together. They, they had a rough weekend starting off and, you know, I really hope that we were going to get that, that first race podium. But the idea was the first race is a practice race. We didn't even get enough practice for everybody. That was the idea. Right. Yeah. And so fourth place is amazing for a practice race. Okay. That was the idea at dinner. We're like, all right, we didn't get a lot of practice today because the car broke basically the whole day of practice. Then it rained. So everyone's like, great in the rain, by the way. Yeah. Just didn't crash in the rain. No, you was fantastic. I don't give a fuck what I'm not looking at the clock. I'm just like, whoa, whoa. How fun is that thing? It's a road America rain line though. It's legit, right? Thank God we had talked about that. Like on a whim, I was like, yeah, how does the rain line work? And you guys explained it and that helped everything. I ran the rain line in the Durango with fucking traction control fully off and it was good. The rain line was sticky. Yeah, awesome. It was fine. That's awesome. It was okay. In general, you're kind of doing that everywhere you go. I do it on pace laps is I try to plot the grip with the brake pedal on the pace laps. And so you search around and you see how quickly it locks. And like it wrote America, it's dramatic between rain line and not. And so you don't get a perfect plot, but you start seeing, okay, wow, offline braking quite good online, really bad. And then some of these other things and you have to criss cross over that. So outside of the carousel quite good, quite good until the line joins. And then you got a tiptoe. You got a tiptoe slide of slide of death. If you're dyslexic, rain line is perfect because it's just the opposite. I want to say what was very funny is we all were like, all right, first race day is going to be practice. We're going to go for the win on Sunday. You go out, Tato starts cooking and Matt walks up to me. He goes, I think we're racing. And I was like, fuck. He's like, yeah, I think we're racing. Okay, that's what we're doing. It's practice unless you're looking at a podium. Then you're racing. Yeah, you need to hedge your excitement, but also be ready to fucking go racing. Can we talk about that seat and the hit? Oh, I was fucked up for a couple days. Same. This seat was a little small for TK and myself. And then I was small, the same one it coated. It just hit me up the same way. But something, the pad underneath, the ramp that's supposed to support your legs underneath had come undone Velcroed and it was slid all the way before it was pushing against my calves. And so I was rex. Well, you already, I mean, because of your injury, the way that you drive is fucking crazy. Yeah, that's pretty nuts. To hover your foot effectively in the air for an hour plus stint is a wild feat of athletic endurance, even in a comfortable seat. Good isometric. Now, if I was super fit, it'd be one thing. Even if you are super fit, that's a fucking lie. Try to do that. Try to sit in a chair and hold your foot up for five minutes. And to explain to people that are listening, because I have no, my right ankle doesn't bend at all. And so the more you bend your knees, the more your toe is tipped forward. And so most people just plant their heel and then articulate at the ankle to work the throttle. I can't do that because my foot to be on the floor, the toe is, or the heel would be way far back. So I have to hold it in the air. I build a little ramp usually if I can get that in a car so I can slide it. In this car, I didn't have it. And so I'm literally just hovering it in the air. If you have your ramp in an act, is it made of aluminum or something or whatever? Okay. Do you then, because driving shoes typically have a grippy ball on the bottom because people roll, do you then put like a gaffer tape to like lube up the ball to move easier? No, it's sloped. I've never had an issue with that. So I just innovated for you. Yeah. Maybe you can call us the ramp. You might gain a couple of times. Then the bottom you have of it is sliding if it gets to you. If you make it a track. Yeah, like a V type channel. But like when you told me you did that, I was like, I'm sorry. What? Because like normal driving is exhausting at a race. Like that's crazy. But I think we can put the race, because you have done it in cars you shared with standard drivers and it's not a thing that comes into play. If you have regular mobility in your right foot, right? True. Yeah. Yeah, let's put the ramp in this thing. Let's go. Yeah. There's got to be one that like we basically take a BMW floor mat. Right. And that's your bottom shape. Right. And you build, you mold the ramp on that and then you can just like plop it in and it'll just like stay. Yeah. I've done it with it when it was just under my throttle foot, but there's no reason it couldn't be a false floor all the way across so that it feels normal to you guys with your, you know, I don't think you would even notice it. And you left foot brake then? It depends. If the seat supports me long enough, I left foot brake in this car because of the seat. I was right foot. You were doing right foot just now. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, you must have been fucked up. And the seat, I don't know why it was worse for me this time than last time, maybe just because of the arrangement of cushions, but like my hips were bruised for a couple of days. Yeah. So, Tommy, you've done endurance races with a wide variety of people. So this is probably an ongoing challenge for any team. You know, you're a very tall person. You race for the short person or whatever the size differences are. Is the secret to this stuff where you just, everyone gets their seat mold done or, you know, how do you find that compromise? The secret is to drive with people that are of similar size. The compromise is, you know, you work through all that stuff and there are still compromises. It's why I've always liked it because of my size and the special needs of the feet. You know, in TransAm, I love that so much because the seat was so perfectly tailored to me and I didn't have to make any compromises. That was super comfortable. But yeah, that's what you do is you end up, you know, having inserts. This seat moved, which I didn't remember that it moved. So I think I drove too close also on my stint. So it was kind of a perfect storm the wrong way. I'm so used to the seats not sliding. I drove a little, I got in the car a little too close and I moved it back during the race and then had to tighten it up. Talking about the terrifying, it's hard so far. If you do that, you go back too far and then you can't go forward because the belts won't let you go far enough forward. Hit the brakes and then hold that lever. You don't want to have to fuck with shit while you're racing. Well, if the seat goes on and the seat moves up, we could have a second injury like the one that, right? This would be a good time to talk about it. Tato's balls. I want to get into that because that's a more interesting, we've sliced up a pretty uninteresting race a lot so far. Speaking of injuries that might limit how you drive a car. Speaking of sliced up. Same tune for that. Just seating position is something I don't think a lot of drivers, as you're getting into it, you really should work on it. I learned it halfway through my career when I drove that GTP car, how much I was moving around, how much I was energy I was using to brace myself with a dead pedal and with my hand. And so if you get someone that knows seating and works with you, you can really reduce the amount of energy you spend. And it also makes you more consistent because you're not moving around in the seat. So that's one thing Matt and I complain about with road cars. If it's a sports car, super car, and the seat bolstering is not there. Now I'm holding myself with my arms or my leg. The first time I drove this Ranchero in Lemons, the seat, we have a variety of people on the team, and it was like an unpadded, quirky seat. It was very open. So I was holding myself with my arms and also my left leg against the door. But I did six hours of driving. My whole IT band, the whole next two weeks, was on fire. I was like, what did I do? I went, oh, I held my body weight with the hip extension, whatever. So it was terrible. Well, which is a segue to Matteo. The thing we've kind of been tiptoeing around, Matteo had an injury. I talked about it on the race broadcast when I went up to the booth. But a week before, two weeks before. No, the Friday right before. Friday before we drove. He was right seating. Do you want to tell us? Do you want me to tell you? Yeah, I can tell the story. OK. So I'm driving at a, or no, sorry, I'm coaching at a. Morning, this is fucking gruesome. They're not going to see the video though. No, but like just even hearing about it, this is normally. It wasn't great. Fair warning. We're still reeling from the injury. No, so the, I was coaching at the driving club at Homestead Miami Speedway. Two, or one Friday right before the qualifying. So get there like eight in the morning and it's some guy's birthday. And it's like they rented out the whole track. And so it's me and like five other coaches and we're just there to show them a good time. They rented out a two race cars. One was a semi, you know, race ready Porsche GT3 RS. It had kind of everything you need except it was on the street tire. And there was a license plate in the back. So it might have not been a race car, but it looked like a race car and it acted like a race car. And then the other one was the exact same car we use at Open Throttle is the M235 IR. And they show up in the morning and the guy who's running the thing is like, hey, who was experiencing this thing? And I was like, I just came back from Alabama. I won the race and I did three hours of driving. I know. And it was only one seat. And I was like, this is great. I'm just going to tell them how to drive it. They're going to drive it. And then that'll be my whole day. Yeah. And then the birthday group shows up and sorry, the birthday group shows up. And the first thing they do is they put us into a big van. And I'm the one who's standing in the van kind of pointing out what's going on in the track. And I thought that was going to be the most of my adventures of the day, other than doing the shakedown of the BMW to start with. But then the people, they go over and they see the car as only one seat. And the dad said, hey, this is unacceptable. Like we need a coach in the car. And I was like, I mean, you don't really need a coach in the car. Like there's data. I can bring my computer. We can actually learn how to race. And he was like, no, it's not as fun. So they called in the mechanic shop or whatever. They brought a seat down. And then 30 minutes later, they're putting in the seat. Long story short, the seat doesn't fit me all too well. But I was just doing the first couple laps to show this random guy kind of how the track is supposed to go. I didn't go fast. I just kind of emphasize what we're supposed to do in the brake zones and how to exit the brake properly. And that was kind of the whole thing. Two laps, show them what's right and left, show them how to use the left pedal. And this person had race experience. None of them had race experience. So that was it. Just drive very smoothly, very slowly. All we want to learn today is the brake and we want to master the brake. We switch seats and I get into the seat and I'm like, man, this is not fitting right. Like the pedal, sorry, the pedal box is too far away. My legs don't reach the seat belt. The actual clipping belt was pressed right on my family jewels. And it was a six point harness. So it was on both sides on the lap. And then, no, it was five point harness, I guess. Yeah, five. So one, one summary. Yeah, one little belt buckle guy and then two straps on the right and left side of the hips. And those were real tight. So I was like, you know what, I'm super secure. If anything happens, it'll feel like a punch right in the gonads. But if, you know, I'm not sure that we're going to be able to get anything, you know, crazy happening here. First two laps, amazing. We go slow. The most that we feel is like, oh, traction control kicks in when you try to get to the gas too early. Leaving turn, turn six. Great. Then I'm giving him like a high five. Great job. Cool down lap. We're going to go around one more time, not get into the brakes too much, not get into the gas. Just want to cool everything down and we'll talk again when we park up. He's like, okay, cool. And then secondly, cross start finish line slams on the gas. And I'm like, whoa, what's going on? And then we go into turn one. There's a very big change of the track from the banked NASCAR track to the infield. And so we take that full speed, huge bump, and I'm like, oh my gosh, we're going into this full speed. So I reach over to grab the wheel while screaming, brake, brake, brake. None of that worked. And we ended up getting a little bit of a yaw. And while I grabbed the wheel to try and counter steer, he slammed on the gas. It was a lot of new inputs that weren't expected. But long story short, we ended up in the inside wall turn two. And the initial impact, I was like, man, that really felt like a punch right in the gonads. And the corner worker comes over and we see the red truck and he's like, what do I do? And I turn the car off and I'm like, it's all good. Like everything's okay. Everybody's safe. You know, I think people make mistakes, but that was our cool downlap. So let's just, right, let's just relax and we'll talk to the corner workers. That's way too nice. Way too nice. And so the corner workers get out of the truck and they're like, hey guys, are you guys okay? And I was like, yeah, I just got hit in the nuts really hard. And I'm like still going like, ah, like the stomach thing still hurts. And so they're like, okay, just jump out of the car. We'll check you out. And I was like, all right. So I reached down to unbutton the belt and I unbuttoned. I'm like, man, that was such a relief. And I looked down. It's like a little speck of blood on my khaki pants. I'm like, oh man, that's weird. It's probably from like my belly button or something. Like something got caught with the seat belt. And then I stand up and I'm like, oh my gosh, that is a fair amount all on like my pants. And so I said, hey, I got to make sure everything's still there. Like jokingly, right? And then I turn around and looking at the wall and I'm like, I'm just going to make sure everything's still good. Move my underwear over. And my right nut was hanging out of my sack. And it was like a hole the size of like a big ping pong ball. I've already heard this one before. It doesn't get better. It's eating shrimp cocktail right now. Dude. And so I'm looking at it. I'm like, oh my gosh. And I still have my gloves on, still have my helmet on. And I like turn around my pants off and I'm now looking at the driver and like the corner workers. I'm like, guys, what do I do? And they're like, oh my gosh, you got to put it back in. Yeah, there is no flag for that. The meatball flag means something else. Yeah. So I look at them like, I don't know what to do. And they're like, you got to put it back in. I was like, I don't know how to do that. I have gloves on. I don't know what to do. I have my helmet on. And they were like, you just got to put it back in and close it. And I was like, OK. So I threw my gloves off and I like pushed it back in and then pinched the hole together. And then right after. Drove himself to the hospital. Well, the EMS guy showed up and he was like, hey, is everything OK? And then looked down and he's like, oh, no. And then we get into the EMS truck. And I'm like, man, are you guys going to fix it? What's going on here? Like, oh, we can't do anything. We could drive you to the hospital. I was like, OK, let's go. And then he says, oh, we got to drop this guy off and we need your wallet. We got to find out where you are. I was like, OK. So we park up right at the garages. And he's like, OK, go grab your wallet. And I was like, really? Like I'm holding my nuts together and like I'm bleeding everywhere. He was like, yeah, you're right. I could probably go get it. I was like, no, that's fine. I'll let me see. So I stand up and I had so much, I got shocked and adrenaline that I didn't even feel any pain. It was like, oh, the hole is closed. All good. So I went over, grabbed my wallet. And while I'm walking back to him, I was like, you know what? You guys can look at it. But I'm just going to drive myself. It's five minutes away. I got my car here. I got a flight tonight at 7. So drove myself and I show up to the hospital and never had faster service in my life. I'm writing my name down and then immediately the nurse that comes out is like, hey, are you OK? And then, oh my gosh, runs away, gets three nurses with like a wheelchair, and then sitting down before Matteo was written. And then I get into this room. There's a lesson in this. If you want good service at a hospital. You rip your nuts in half. That's what you do. Yeah. And then I went into this hospital room with 12 doctors, 16 nurses, an entire grad. 40 people. It was wall to wall. I couldn't see a single wall. It was just facing. Guys, is the stadium room open? The call went out over the radio. You've got to see this. Yeah. We got code. You won't believe this. It's going to code. You won't believe this. Code house. Los Drescher, they stitch you up and all as well, other than you tested two days later. Yeah. So I ended up not going on the flight that night. They said it wasn't going to make it. So I get 11 stitches. That hurt a lot. That was the most painful part of the whole thing because they didn't put me asleep. They gave me oxy something, but apparently not the good oxy. And you need to get the good. You need the light. It came. That's exactly what I needed. I said, when can I ask for morphine after like stitch five? And he's like, oh, you could have asked at the start. I was like, my gosh, what horrible medical care you had? I mean, they got you in there quick. Like the EMS people are like, yeah, hold your arm in place. Go grab your own wallet. You know, this was home said Miami. Yeah. Oh man, that's like. It's not Miami. It's not my it's my home. My heavy Miami. So he was driving when he was talking about getting out of the car. I mean, pretty extensive care. That was seven days earlier. And so the seat for practice was amazing. Zach and he's the same little cushion seat. But then for the race, I get there a little bit earlier than they do. Since I start the race and we're looking for the seat and it's not there. Zach had put it behind his helmet because like, of course, it's his thing. Well, there's there's like four cars. Right. And like we don't want someone else to take them. Exactly. Yeah, it's perfect. I was like, let's keep these for us. But I didn't tell you. Yeah, it's all my bad though. And so I'm at the car and I'm like, man, where's the like it's empty down there. I'm not going to be able to see. And I go, okay, let's grab a thing cushion. And so we we had Dylan, I think it was, grab two cushions and they were rather, rather small cushions. And the other one was the exact same thickness and it was big. It was filled out the whole seat. These two were like backpads that we put on the bottom of the seat. So the seat belt was like going through the hole in the seat. And then the the butt pads had like two inches of where they're actually lifting my butt up. And then it was just like a flat hole. And that flat hole had like a lot of leeway. And so whenever I hit the brakes, I'd slap onto the front. And whenever I hit a bump and slap onto both, it was a painful. Dude, the kink was not easy. And so well, it was it could be a kink. And at this point, these fucking getting your fucking nuts, slapping the back of the seat. So that's why I ended up not using a whole lot of the kink. And we're looking at video that night. I was like, so we want to use this much. And Zach was like, why aren't you using it? I was like, it hurt a lot. I didn't want to. But he was altering his line for comfort. Yeah, he's all stay off the road. So really, they're fine. I don't know. The pens. I just impressed you were so unbothered. Like the text thread is like, hey, guys, you know, here's a video, by the way, of what balls look like. But no, we're going to test. We'll be at the race. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's all good. It's all good. I mean, we were fast. Like everybody drove amazing that weekend. Like if we didn't have very unlucky situations with the car, I think we walk away with, you know, second place, maybe, maybe we fight for first in day two because the grace ginger racing car, they had some big problems. They were out. They were out of race for 10 years. Day one, not finished day two. They finished on the podium. Oh, they did. But not. I don't think they won. That's why I think TC clown cars. The car was very, very fast. Very fast. Yeah. According to them, they had less horsepower than us. But then I saw them on straight away and no, with more arrow, they were still pulling. That was pulling on the straight away. Yeah. I mean, maybe they, I don't know, maybe they have cars way lighter than ours and or something. But like according to. This is a very fast E46 with like full arrow. Yep. It was a fasty. Yeah. And they were. And they drove well too. They drove really well. No, I don't. I mean, no, I don't suspect. But like, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Yes, we're making it up all up in the corners. Making up a bit in the streets too. No. The world's most suspiciously quiet Corvette, yes, was making it up in the corners. Yes. But still sounded really good, that Corvette. It sounded okay. I thought they. Compared to everything else there. Could have been louder. True. They told me that they took the cats off it, but then they have this like, this like center exit exhaust thing. And I was like, you probably just like leave the cats. I mean, you're running two thirds throttle. Like why even bother taking the cats off? And it seems like that could like cause more problems than it would solve. Because you don't need more power. Right. Well, I think they also said they were limiting the timing. So I wonder if that would send a bunch of fuel to the cat. And eventually. Fowl it up or something. And then maybe. Maybe. Load. They probably know what they're doing. Yeah. Bunch of GM guys. Yeah. It was very quiet. It was. It was weird. It was probably like a diesel. Yeah. Wasn't there a diesel? I think there was a BMW 335. No, I talked to that guy. He had the D badge. But I was like, is this a diesel? And he started laughing. And he's like, everybody, and he had an accent, but I forget what it was. He's like, everybody asked that. It's definitely not a diesel. But I just put it on there because it fucks with everybody. It was like, it was a fast 335. And it had a really loud and unique kind of sounding exhaust. And I was like, it doesn't quite sound like a diesel, but it also doesn't quite sound like a normal BMW. So I was like, yeah, maybe. I don't know. I wasn't really paying that close of attention. I just thought it was interesting. Yeah. It was fast on the streets, but it didn't have the big wing. That was an interesting choice being out there. And there are teams that had big power. Yeah. Take the wing off. That weird E92. Versa. Either way. Oh my gosh. Passed me like I was staying at steel. All power. He reached 160 on the straight. Do you? Yeah. I believe that. That's faster than some of the GTO cars. Yeah. Well, I drove that E92 at Kota for the practice day. Oh, Paul. I went like 15 miles an hour quicker on the straight than we went in our car. But it was also a real handful in the corners. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It was heavy and slighty. Mm-hmm. Yeah. With no arrow, that thing is not easy to handle. And it's really hard to keep that thing in contention and start of the race. I mean, they qualified super well. I don't know what was going on in qualifying. And then in race two, they ended up getting down to a 32 also. So I could do that. They really well. They figured something out. But the thing I was really hoping for was coming out of turn three. I really wish they would have caught ginger racing and been able to hold them up a little bit because then we would have been fighting for the lead at the start. But they went for the smart choice on the brakes in turn five. And then right after that, it was not easy for them. We got hosed a couple of times in that first race by full course yellows that bunched up the field after we had made a pretty solid gap on everyone behind us. I did a lot of. When I was looking at my stuff, I was like, you know, the number of laps I did versus the time. But I realized I had a lot of full course yellow laps which are quite long. Zach also had a real pants shitting moment where he was the fucking car behind the pace car in the other side. I was hard in the line. The entire field that bunched up behind him. Amazing. He's going to have fun with this. The rear view camera gets very busy. And then a lot of cars just pass in the right. How does a yellow flag restart? What? How does the yellow flag restart? I mean, I'm sitting there going, I should have read the world book four times. I forget. And then the two cars in front of me go, but the radio, they're still saying, hold on for a second. But then there's like the, you're allowed to drive 80% pace in the full yellow. It's like, well, which car is 80%? Are we judging this on? Some of these cars are passing the other. And everyone just takes off down the street and I'm full. And then I, but I knew where, where I was and what was coming. So I just stayed left and I watched, you know, AMG GT go by on the right, three Supras go by on the right, all the GT O class cars, just haul ass and just carry through turn one and they're gone. And just try not to touch anybody. Cause everything, that was a big thing. Everything around me is expensive. You know, so I was just really aware where my edges were. No, it was fun. I love the traffic. It's exciting. It's so much fun. It's also, it's the best. It keeps you right on your toes. Yeah. No, especially not being, you know, it's, it's fun to be in a fast car and weave through slow cars, but it's also interesting to be trying to go fast in a slow car and have people like just humming by you. Yeah. People passing in the kink after the driver's meeting is like, don't pass in the kink. Everybody cutting across the front straight into the pit lane, exiting. Oh yeah. Don't cut across and cut back like 95% of people did that exact thing. And track limits Tommy found a new way through 14. Very nice. Unlike Kota, they were, there was no mention of track limits. And so I used more curb than I've ever used in turn 14. And this car really didn't like to, to go in too deep in turn. So you had to turn it. The, it was kind of predetermined where the car wanted to turn. And so you either needed to wait a long time or balanced throttle to get around it or turn it and go back to throttle and then left sides, barely on the pavement, everything else through the grass. Yeah. And I just kept doing a little bit more. I kept waiting for the call on the radio. There's an L-Cat in line. Here we go. Yeah. Yeah. I did the same thing. I mean, God, you know, Sunday, the old, when we're not racing, the only thing that saved my mental state was God bless the Honda Grom. Is the most wonderful invention in the history of track side inventions, especially at a place like road America. It's huge. And so I wrote that goddamn thing around all day long. And I watched the race from a variety of different angles and stuff. And I realized that my line through turn seven is a big old cut compared to what everybody else. You know, there's like the curb and then that concrete. My right tires are like to the right of that concrete, of that light concrete. Everybody else isn't even getting on the curb. And I didn't realize that until I got out of the car. I thought that was just the way. But no, apparently it's not. Apparently that's a big cut that no one really cared about doing. But fun times. Hey, it helps. Whatever works. Whatever works. It didn't make me as fast as you, but we were working there. We're trying. I mean, close. Yeah. So and not embarrassing. Road America, it's four miles. Generally the gap is close to double. Like so if you cut that in half on a two mile, normal track, it's right there. It's such a long place. And like every little thing has such a exaggerated consequence as a result of it. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's I haven't been to Road America since I think it was 12 was the last time I was there. But it drives. It drives the same. And so and it's amazing the difference that makes just with muscle memory and the rhythm and so forth. But now there's so much more on the exit curves. Yeah. Well with the planter blocks. Oh yeah, everything. The turn one is now like a parking lot out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. No. And that actually that that I don't know what the stuff is that the grass grows through the outside of the curb. Yeah, they call what do they they called it something and I like grass creed. They called it grass creed. Okay. Which is not it's not catchy. I liked long creed because it sounds more like concrete. Right. And it does have long. We ultimately settled on calling it the planter box. It's essentially that right there. Yeah. Typical traffic. It's that the traffic. Grass creed. It's called fucking grass creed. That's the bro. It's a brand. Oh shit. It really is. It's like imagine you turn cinder blocks on their side so the holes are facing up right and then plant grass in them. And so you've got a surface that's like 50% concrete and 50% grass. And the idea is it's got half the grip. So it's you have the vibratey curb and then on the outside of that like yeah you can use it and it you're not going to you know get caught in the grass and get sucked into the wall. But you also don't have full grip there. Interesting stuff. Yeah. Can use it. You can use it. I've like at the kink is where it came into play and I've been in the grass in the kink at speed and not crashed. And so that is a serious pucker moment. That's the scariest. You don't want to do that. You're so close to the wall. And so close. But so this it took me a while to have confidence. I only did it a few times but you know to pick up the throttle earlier carry more speed knowing that you had that extra margin on the outside. Now because it's only half grip you use the ground up twice as fast. So if you think I'm only going six inches over you know you're going foot over. You're going foot over you're going two feet. And so that took some some confidence. You know because again at this point there's you know there's no there's no one scouting for a pro ride and so the risk reward. Yeah. Just don't don't crash the car. I don't have balls to use it there. I use it on the exit of 14 out of the front straight. A lot. Yeah. I'll deep deep into it. Every time super wide. Oh my gosh. That was like luxury luxury corner exit. But like without you know Tato to say this car is capable of doing this. Yeah. And this and this. There's no way I would have not used brakes at all before the kink. Right. No way. I would have just come up with that. Right. There's no way I would go flat up over. What do you fucking call it? Billing Mitchell. Billing Mitchell. No way. And there's no way I would have done at least one other thing without him going oh no you could do this. Using all that using all the extra road. Yeah. Yeah. So thanks buddy. Yeah man. Well it helps kind of that's the idea with like all the program series. Like in Super Trefao 2 the whole point of even if you're like a younger pro and a pro pro pairing. You want to get that experience pro driver to show you hey this is what you're capable of and this is what this car is capable of. Yeah. And that's it's really nice to be kind of on a bigger team that you have so many different pro drivers that we have three right now on TR3. We have Dennis Lind who is a you know super experienced DXD driver from the WC. Elias Dillatory who is I think third year in Super Trefao. Also single make Carrera cup I think he did a year and a half. So he's really experienced than me. So we all get to see like hey this is what's possible here is what's possible here. And then if someone has like an incident this is what's not possible here. And then you find out without doing it yourself. Someone has an incident. Yeah it's kind of it's human nature whether you're snow skiing. You see it in extreme sports until Travis Petrona did the back flip. It was not possible. Yep. She's on right under two hour fucking marathon last weekend. Really. Oh wow. I did a 159 something marathon. Oh man. Isn't that crazy. You just fall over and die right after. 159 30. What is the average what does that work out to a mile average. It's it's it's it's got a stonest thing. Same. What's 24 miles. 26 miles. 26 miles. 26.2 I think. Like seven minutes a mile. 13 miles an hour. That's a fast clip. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. And then I just saw a video of like a nine year old kid landing three nine hundreds in a row on a skateboard and it took you know Tony Hawk 20 years to figure out how to do that. Right. Crazy. So I was running four minute 35 second miles. Four. Wow. What after 25 26 miles. And there you know there was a time eight years ago like the four minute mile was thought to be impossible. Yeah. Sprint and do it once. But like all the sports progress because especially like the younger people see what the older people do especially with extreme sports. And they're like oh I want to try that. And now you've got I saw a great video of Tony Hawk skating with like a 15 year old. And he and Tony Hawk says how long did it take you to learn the 900 and the 15 year olds like two hours. And Tony's like it took me like 10 years to figure it out and show that was possible. And then you know you get a kid who has no fear of dying and is super fast and mobile and they just go for it. What are you going to say before. No I mean that's that's kind of how human nature works you know. But like on the physical and the mental like that's a pure physical. And that's not pure physical. I mean that's a huge physical barrier. I was going to say for those race fans if you remember Bob Varsha who's an announcer. Bob Varsha was a collegiate marathoner. I want to say Bob Varsha has run a like a 220 marathon. Seriously. Yeah Bob Varsha back in the day. No way. Awesome. With all that with all that. With all that. With Bob Varsha. Little random trivia. You probably put it up. You know what I mean. Yes. That's amazing. I was really grateful to have you guys you know. I mean Tato we did two sessions of sim which was essential. Like I you know I would have been far more lost than Matt because I haven't been to road America in 10 years. So that was like the theory of where I could break and stuff and just trying to get it right was enough. But then I feel like I learned a lot here. Kind of having the faith to have let the car do what you said it could do. You all guys you all say do this speed through here and this speed through here. And like I was letting the car move and kind of bounce over stuff more than I ever have. But knowing that it's just going to keep the trajectory it's on. And that was a huge educational experience. If you'd been turned loose on your own without Sims or anything you could have spent probably a couple days driving and you would have figured some of it out. But some of it you wouldn't have figured out even in a couple days. Definitely. Yeah. Very true. Yeah. There's there's stuff I wouldn't figure out ever. Yeah. I was at Sonoma yesterday. On the Nismo Z launch the manual and I can't talk about how it drives yet. But honestly you can fucking guess. But they had some you know some some instructors there and they were mainly doing lead follow and Nissan was kind enough to not force me into the follow the lead follow. But but I did on the on the warm up lap. I did do a lead follow and the guy over four up over the hill three to the car. Carousel. He went way to the left whereas I traditionally had brought it back to the right to turn it down hill. And I had him like explain to me his and after that I was like oh shit this guy is fucking right. And so now I'm now I'm changed now. I'm doing it in the carousel and I'm going to be careful. Tighter from the left instead of going moving back to the right at the top of the hill and coming down right you get a better exit up the hill. I think. I think this guy was right. Yeah. I mean it's. It's. You definitely don't want to arc it in. Yeah. You want to be in tight relatively soon. If you can get if you can get back to the right and straighten it up you could theoretically carry a little more speed over that unweight. But you want to be heading for the inside. I think so. Shortly after it's like left middle. Yeah. Yeah. The left third. It's not all the way left side. If you're carrying enough speed through the right you're not going to be able to get that's all the way back. That's what he was saying. And I was like I think I put too much emphasis on getting back right to the detriment of the pace. If that was a 90 degree corner you would want to do that because it's a 180 no matter what you do on the entry it gets canceled out by halfway around the corner. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Neat stuff. Should we go to the people. Do we have some things. We can talk to the people of course patreon.com slash the smoking tire podcast. It's where you ask questions for the live show. Watch the live show. Get the show the same day it was recorded. Get the show without ads. Get access to collabs and things that we that we make here along with like partners. And you get the satisfaction of supporting your favorite car podcast. Let's keep it mainly to things that are racing related in bill of shit car advice stuff can stay for the next show. Ted theologian says favorite corner at road america. Do you have a favorite corner. You know I mean that carousel kink is a great combo. But the challenge of being quicker than everybody getting into turn five. I love psyching yourself up and because there's the road bends a little bit as you approach. There's a crown to the road. There's a bunch of little nuance to that corner that I think is it's a lot more complicated than just going to this point. So I love I love turn five like road Atlanta also has a downhill breaking into a 90 degree left hand corner. But it's not nearly as interesting as the one at road america. I like I like the really hard break zones you know if you get so that's something that road america has several of you know Canada corner is also that way. And also not you know it's it's just it's a flow tracks got really hard breaking. But you know if you're not careful and you're so focused on breaking you can over slow in a lot of places. So there's just so much flow to it. I mean the whole place is awesome. But my find a pick my favorite I love racing people in a turn five. Tato do you have a favorite corner for sure Canada corner. Like it's just all about floating speed. And the more you can keep it smooth and the faster you can get back to the throttle the happier the car is going to be. And it's interesting because that there was a baby wreck turn turn Canada corner on lap one. And so it kind of made that whole left side of the the exit curb just unusable because it was to be on it the whole time. There was a bunch of trash. Yeah. That was some guys car. So yeah it kind of limited us to not using all of it. But with this car the BMW it was happy to not use all of it. Like you just want to use a little bit of it the more you use the worst exit is. But with the Lambo it's completely opposite. If you don't use all of it you're just completely over slowed to the entire corner. And then Billy Mitchell Ben becomes an interesting lifting and turning because in the Lambo you really have to use a break there. Otherwise you're just going to fly away. Yeah. It's just scary. In the BMW you can send the exit of that corner extremely wide. And it's quite luxurious even. Oh yeah. Yeah. Queer shift in gears at the Mid Ohio Lemons race my teammate blew our transmission at the start of day two and got us stuck in fourth gear. Ended up running faster for all drivers. Any similar experiences where you improved in a weird situation. Well it's funny. Like if you sometimes if you exactly that or if you have to save fuel or if you have to save brakes you find out again you were probably over they were probably over slowing in a lot of places. And we we dealt with this where in practice where if you're between gears the lower gear always feels faster but oftentimes it's your over slowing and it's holding you back on your exit. And so it's worth playing around. I told Matt explicitly I said it will feel slower. You were right. In some of these places. Both you and Tato were like no gear higher in Canada corner gear higher in turn eight was a scary one. The gear higher in eight. Which usually ran. It worked in the beginning of the race with the fresh tire but then with the older tires it would start to get looser on entry and so for Tommy's it was almost impossible to run fourth gear. But you were in like kind of the mid stages of where it's starting to feel exactly where sometimes it worked and sometimes it did. Yep. Yeah. No but tire degrading. But it did it did feel slower. A thing like that is whenever you do a 24 hour race I've always found that you learn certain bits about the track running in the dark and then when it gets light it's so easy to go fast with without pushing the cars. Sure. You know it's it's almost like your eyes are just confirming you know the the the seat tells you if I clip this there's a bump here and I know I'm going to have six inches on the exit and then your eyes are like yep six inches on the exit you really learn. It turns up all the other senses. Yeah. Yeah. Neat. Just Jay what would you point to as your proudest most exhilarating on track single moment. A ballsy successful pass. Yes. You know there's a pass that's been brought up recently in the 95 Road Atlanta Trans Am Race. It was wet. It was drying out. I was quicker than the two and fellows and Jamie Gallis and and I had to talk myself into it because the place it was going to happen was on the outside of the kink before it turns 10a and 10b were in offline in the wetter part of the track and I just said this is I don't want to do that I don't want to do that as the race went on I'm like if it's going to happen it's going to have to happen exactly there and so I talked myself up to it and then I passed both of them on the outside in the wet amazing through the dip and so that one was just massive pucker and and in hindsight massively satisfying. I think that the send at the start of race two for Texas was pretty awesome. That was from seventh third and that was right behind the ginger racing guy. But I think the most exciting exhilarating proudest moment was winning the third race in a row in Italy. That was the first time I'd actually like by just pure pace beat this the championship leader he's been ahead of us all year and they like had the pace on us all year and then we go into Indy and they get pretty unlucky in race one. Car shuts off in race two and then we go into world finals and they're like oh you know the car's finally going to work let's see how you do with them and then I passed the first driver and then we do the pit stop and then I have a single driver line up so I have a three second longer pit stop and they get right behind or right back in front of me and then I come back out and I pass the second driver and then I won by like I think 15 seconds and that was really impressive for me. And this is super true failure in Italy. Yep. And you won three races in a row. That was the third win in a row. Oh they're wow. Double Indy. Chasing them down that's amazing. That's a pivotal moment in a career as a young driver because there's the thinking I can win and knowing I can win and the confidence boost that comes from knowing head to head listen I can handle this guy and you're going to deal with that at each step along the way when you move up now. I've found a new guy to be chasing. Yes you've got some new guys to choose. It's the same number and the exact same car but it's now a new pro in the car and he has won I think six pro-pro championships three world finals titles. He is one of the best super true failure drivers to ever do it. And you know it's I think the bar is perfectly set because right now we're sitting we're sitting forth in the championship but if we can find out how to beat this guy all the eyes are they're looking that way. You know it's it's exact competition we need. Danny Danny from all fours you guys following along so you're going to school every time you're behind him and saying oh wow okay and so exactly he's doing this a little bit here so good for you. That's exciting. That's fun. Thank you. My most exciting moment is not that exciting but using your line at Coda to pass like multiple people on multiple occasions when nobody else seemed to know to put their car there was an incredibly helpful bit of racecraft that resulted in like multiple planned passes. That's awesome. Like when someone like me like sets up planned passes that worked at work out the way that I envision them like that's like oh shit that actually worked like wow. Real life chess. Yeah that was that could have been it. Yeah don't break for the kink says if you have the opportunity to take any road legal car around road america for the afternoon what would it be. T-50. T-50. Yeah good choice. Hard to beat that. Hard to beat that. I mean a ZR1 would be pretty you know pretty extraordinary in in that regard. Like a shit my pants in a zero one at road america. Me too. I think it's so fast. Yeah you'd be going like 160 every straight away. I think it's not more. Yeah I think I'd want to do probably the the Z06 the new one the one the Z-51 track package. Oh yeah. I heard that it's just like the Super Trefail and if it's anywhere close I'm down. That's a good call too. Fari sounds but mm-hmm. For that dynamics. Exactly. Uh Johnny E. V. Gearberman says Tato and Tommy is an ever faster to go throttle break throttle break through bus stops or chicane's rather than doing the coast on the sim. I feel like the more I master coasting the faster I get but it seems counterintuitive. I think what you're dealing with here this is this is eye work. This is you know his eyes aren't moving and so if your eyes aren't moving ahead and looking through it you're going to want to break until you move your eyes and so if you get your eyes going through there I mean there's no absolutes depending you could you could theoretically have a bus stop that was designed where it was fast enough through the middle that you would have to dab the brakes for the second part but the ones that I know of generally you're rolling so much through it's basically like one long corner it's not a chicane and a straight and a chicane usually. Yeah with the sim especially I think that the brake throttle break throttle break and the the kind of coasting happens both ways you know like for Watkins Glen at the bus stop you do need a big break then you lift and then sometimes I even do a second little break just to tuck that nose after that first jump then it's straight back to throttle but then for tracks like Kota you're I was barely touching you know any type of brake or any type of gas going through the s's but the thing is it's just trying to keep that minimum speed up like it's all about carrying the momentum through those corners and not trying to make any make any momentum it's just can't it's surviving with that speed you brought in and surviving with it all the way out. Sounds like he's he's fit he answers his own question yeah he's more he gets comfortable with it the faster he gets yeah yeah. Matt Farrah's million mile legonda if you could try every race car from a certain series of any era which would you choose and which would you be the most excited to try well I mean those are probably the same thing. With guaranteed safety I would drive you know the Sonoco 91730 maybe you know the Can-Am cars. Can-Am cars I would try all the group B cars if I could have an open an open area to not get any trees and die. Big open stage rally open desert type stuff. Was I blocking that camera? It'd been shuffling right. What was that DTM Mercedes it was uh like the 190s. Yes that car. That's funny I rode in the most extreme later generation DTM Mercedes and they're awesome but they have they don't have a lot of power. Well the 190 Evo IIs are like slow yeah like they're actually they're great chassis and stuff but like they're like 225 horsepower. Which is why they attack the curbs the way you see those old videos of Klaus Ludwig and Berns Schneider just you know just eating as much curve as they can sparks flying so yeah group B GTP the era I drove I'm really stoked that I got to drive that era car I mean F1 stuff also. Safety though with any of the old stuff is just it's so sketchy. Pat Long talks to me about the vintage F1 races he drives and he says they are so dangerous like you can't believe how shady the cars are. Yeah I mean I would they just had the historic Monaco and Adrian Fernandez is driving and the Euros when they vintage races you see the Goodwood they go they go hard. Lacey had a huge crash uh at Monaco Historic so yeah that's that I mean you're rolling. Terrigas a good wood man. Yeah you're rolling the dice so but I mean hey if you're scared get a dog as they say right. I don't know if we have an answer to this one but but Tommy commentates on F1 so recently Italy has launched a tax evasion investigation against the entire 2020 to 2024 F1 series for tax evasion as people who have raced internationally is this a case of F1 teams dodging taxes intentionally or Italy having tax laws to apply to foreign workers. Do you have any idea about this. I haven't seen any of it I mean it I'm guessing the argument is similar drivers. Oh see okay yeah this is what they do in the major leagues now where states all the athletes live in you know Florida in the offseason in Nevada and so I think Pennsylvania was the first one that says we want if you play two out of you know whatever we want five percent of your salary yeah in withheld for our tax so the pro ball players have to file tax returns well in almost every state and yet some guys saying I'm going to have a sore hammy that game and you know so I'm guessing this is there's a great documentary that I think is called broke that's there it's about athletes who make a huge amount of money and go broke very fast right and and and and the one of the stars the documentary is an athlete who earned tons of money and went broke and now he's a financial advisor for athletes and and he was talking about yeah you got to be filing tax returns in every state you play in otherwise like a lot of these guys will get some crazy tax bill yeah later in racing there's a way around this if they get if they go after these guys what'll happen is they'll break it into two contracts and you'll have the contract for driving the race car which will be significantly lower and then the the contract for doing personal appearances or testing or commercial shoots will be through the roof so they'll adjust if if they get too aggressive on that breaking benjamin's lap record says growing up what were the race cars that really caught your eye oh what a great shout that's z32 that is such a pretty car bam says z32 that's very proud that was a very pretty car that's that clayton cunningham the twin turbo uh-huh yeah those were huge i racing in those cars those uh those were big big cars uh those cars carry a lot of weight had huge power clayton cunningham designed water cooled brake calipers oh wow they were uh water cool in the brake caliper in that car um was there actually like a water pump and a radio yeah holy shit that's not yeah that seems like more trouble than it's worth but yeah yeah that is a pretty car look at the front steve millen johnny o'connell yeah shout out to steve millen we love him steve millen and johnny i started racing in the jim russell series with johnny o'connell we both went on to do stuff we so in 93 i ran the Mustang roush Mustang against those cars and uh came on up top nice jpio nice yes so but yeah i mean and i drove for clayton cunningham the arc seven that i drove at the very start of my mccareer was uh what clayton got his start in before he did he took over the factory i mean that's that that whole year of car you had the uh roush cougars you had the outies uh the mustangs what else was there was there was an f40 that john lacy drove during that year the f40 race car was sick yeah you gotta say that not only does the beretta not look like a beretta this does not look like a Mustang this is not so bad this is a Mustang race car yours from the 93 the the the 80s Fox the wheels you were racing yeah so and then partway through this season we developed a car that actually had a transaxle it had a it had a hybrid tube frame but it had bonded carbon panels to the tube frame to stiffen it up oh and they even had a stiffener because of my legs were so bent they actually ran a carbon kind of rib under my legs that tied the bottom together to make it make it extra stiff yes so um that car i don't know of anyone that knows where the whereabouts of that exact chassis is that that's on my list to try to run down that's a fine ed ed to pretty one leon needs a challenge that's where you the c5 r yeah c5 r the delan car not your car i want a yellow corvette just because there was a guy back in the day in in my neighborhood in new york that had a yellow c5 zero six and did the delivery the full the full amazing bless his heart oh it wasn't as bad as it really is it could have been on american hero two in the ruby one in the stars says i heard that the 911 cup cars are actually mid-engine for better performance but they wanted to keep the 911 body versus using a cayman body is it true they actually move the engine position forward or they use gt4 architecture for the 911 race cars no they move the engine position it's a different thing well but but not in the cup cars the cup cars the same as a gt3 engine position i i believe so they had the r they ran they ran that one rsr in gts where it was actually true mid-engine where they flipped it but i think all the ones now are back to yeah it's i think they just move the rear axle further back to get it more mid-engine but it's not actually mid-engine it's rear engine yes yeah yeah no it's not gt4 architecture although the next i've been told the next 911 gt4 you know the gt4 car is a 911 now the new one oh no it's not going to be a cayman it's gonna be a 911 gt4 well that's a narrower body than a smaller wing and stuff like that yeah because they don't have a they've discontinued the gas cayman for the time being oh wow and i think we've we've covered that one you uh you had me at holotas that's very good what would everyone's pick be for the best spec racing series to pursue uh you guys have both raced in spec races and i've not raced in any so you've raced in spec boxter and spec mea and spec mea and super sure fail i'm a big super java i'm a big fan of you know of spec meata as an entry level way to get as much seat time and as many reps for as cost effectively as possible spec boxter looks good but there's something about the sheer numbers of spec meata is where you can have big big fields and so forth um i mean super trafaios is sex as it gets for a one for a one make i mean those things and if you're like a dude that's r-side or a gal or whatever that's r-sized to me like uh spec e46 is a much more comfortable race car for a larger driver and they're fun as shit they're very fun they're a good time i know that basically you want even competition and cost per mile in terms of best you know if you're looking for thrill then obviously for our challenge or for our challenge is great if you want to hang a photo on your office wall that's you and your red suit with your actually i'll throw out this will this will make people mad but uh indy car is a great spec series it is we know it is yeah they're there they're the same you've ever heard of the ark series yeah yeah a nas car yeah um a little bit of tangent but it's getting a lot of talk uh with the the new f1 rules being such a dud indy car is working on a new package there's a lot of people saying listen scrap what you are working on and steal f1's thunder and do a ripping v10 yeah with no hybrid yes and just all the people that miss that make it sound good this is what we do it's a good idea i'm going to the 500 this year you're gonna hell yeah first time i'll be very excited that'll be super cool incredible yeah incredible um and oh by the way i can't believe that i hadn't thought of this legends legends cars yeah you buy a brand new legends car $25,000 and some of the most competitive racing there is as long as it's in your region have you driven one on a road course i just drove on a short oval no we just did we did drove it at 10 tenths oh oh wow it fucking ripped yes dude yeah it was it was wild i was i was wiped at the end of my hour well on the right scale track which sounds like you were on you know motorcycle engine fan the gears sequential gearbox would be a thrill road america would be the wrong place yeah street to streets of willow 10 tenths you know a lot of these club type tracks thermal v are unbelievable in a car like that it has like go kart one to one steering yeah that's mad twitchy great fun and the nasa has a pretty good field with the e30 spec series oh yeah there's a isn't there a new spec e30 series as well i'm not sure new e30 series that just got started that has kind of like a catchy name it seemed i just read about it somewhere it seemed cool um did anything come up very rapidly quickly when i i mean nasa specky 30s there uh had a had a catchy name shit if you know what i'm talking about get in the comments if not specky 30 yeah uh those are those are genuine to regeneral car advice we'll save those for later tk tato thank you thank you podium blessed weekend to talk to you and super trafeo so congratulations thank you that is we had a little bit of unlucky misfortune there at race two but what is it what is a uh what's a fast lap in a super trafeo at laguna so the fastest lap i was able to get down to was a 24 uh three nice um their teammate denis lind who's just first time ever at laguna seca 228 i think wow first time ever there first time ever there lap record for super trafeo yep he's a quick study wow yeah he's 28 that's what the zinger did with the 21c fold down that is unbelievable do they have fans attached to that car not no fans um but uh tri motor hybrid yeah unbelievable 13-ohr horsepower and a lot of a lot of wang big wang yeah we got minimal arrow yeah no that's i mean to be running that kind of number in a in a rear wheel drive lamborghini albeit on slicks is fucking which is faster than what was the gtd so the gtds are running 19s oh they are yeah they're real good ones are i mean in testing denis was faster than all of the other gtg d cars there that's and in testing i actually passed the uh uh what was the black and yellow uh it's the not stopping the thing uh it's the corvette it's not it's the privateered corvette oh dx does it not dxd they were pink and green this weekend but i passed that guy going into the corkscrew amazing oh wow that was so cool sick for master what was fun i was up there as part of the rooting contingent for super trafeo it's a fun you know Sergio ran into this big air bnb it's like six or seven bedrooms and so the the camaraderie which was what was so fun about going to rhoda america hanging out in the same house with everyone and the dinners and the stories and so forth and so on so uh and everyone from matthew's grandmother uh merta who and if you see the butterflies on his suit she is a i think a four-time five-time cancer survivor so the butterflies are team butterfly for merta that's on matthew's suit and so you've got uh all these generations that are coming out to root on root on the boy yeah amazing yeah it takes a village man and sponsorship is still open if anybody would like to jump on board we we're a family here we'd love to welcome you uh tato thank you very much for coming down yep thank you uh and tk of course thank you for joining us today let's so let's do it again soon huh yeah yeah and hey go get a notice watch they're real comfortable notice driver yeah how about that yeah which one is that this is the deep but the sector exactly but i'm gonna be getting a canyon pretty soon the pink canyon exactly you need to be wearing that sounds good someone else's fucking no there are yeah shout out to us out there um we are going to be uh they didn't get totally wiped out by the patreon which is totally fine so i think we've got like 25 of them that are going to go to the public sale and i'll announce it when that's left we're doing a hundred of them awesome so awesome limited edition um all right that's our show thank you to our patrons for such good questions today thank you for tato for braving traffic and and tk for coming down as well and of course uh Sergio for fucking hooking it up and inviting Zach and I down and being part of the family and uh whoa charity car show charity car show charity car show yeah at the fucking riff raff garage in agorah it's going to be on june 7 7 yeah it's an barren automotive oh it's a barren it's a barren share space with rick roll's podcast studio so um and it's benefiting autism some interesting classes that if you want to enter we've got best everyday driver i'm into that i got my c5 in there super car and redwood redwood cars oh yours oh yeah okay uh i will be there uh you'll be there uh others other friends of ours will be there i'll put the link uh in my ins they just sent me the fucking invite this morning so i'll put the uh i'll put the the link in the instagram so if you're in la on june 7th come out and hang uh for a good cause thank you everybody we'll see you next time goodbye