Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From Mud Holes to Motorsports: Brockton Packard’s Journey Through Racing, iRacing, and Everything In Between
Transcript
- 0:00Break Fix Podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all
- 0:05over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors,
- 0:09designers, and everything in between.
- 0:11Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder how did they
- 0:17get that job or become that person.
- 0:19The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
- 0:27Like I've always said, you gotta start 'em young.
- 0:29You're right.
- 0:30Mountain man, Dan and our guest tonight is a prime example of that exact sentiment.
- 0:35Much like myself, he comes from a military family background with no real
- 0:39history and motor sports apart from the recreational ATVs that they owned.
- 0:43His love for the sport was sparked at a young age when his mom would sit
- 0:46him in front of the TV on Sundays for NASCAR races 'cause it was the only
- 0:49thing that could get him to fall asleep.
- 0:51Fast forward many years and Brockton Packard finds himself racing go-karts.
- 0:56He's the team lead for iRacing at Niner eSports, part of the
- 0:59University of North Carolina at Charlotte's eSports organization.
- 1:03He's been part of an underfunded NASCAR truck team, Raum Brothers
- 1:07racing and co-hosts, the Press Box Motorsports podcast, and he's here
- 1:12tonight to share his journey and thoughts on the world of motorsports
- 1:16for other aspiring enthusiasts.
- 1:18So welcome to Break Fix Brock.
- 1:20Hey guys, it's good to be here and, um, excited to have a great show tonight
- 1:24and like all good break fix stories.
- 1:25Everybody has a superhero origin.
- 1:28So let's dive deeper into your Petrolhead origin story.
- 1:31Tell us about the who, what, where and when of Brock expand on the
- 1:35family life part of our introduction.
- 1:37How did you get into cars and what made you into a petrol hood?
- 1:40I grew up in Southern Central Florida around Daytona, Miami, all
- 1:45those dig motor sports locations.
- 1:47The NASCAR season would start and end in Florida.
- 1:50We'd always go around those kind of races.
- 1:52We had Sebring, U S A International, which you iRacing fans out there
- 1:55are very familiar with through the rookie street stocks programs.
- 1:59Like Dan was saying in the intro, my mom would put me down on Sunday
- 2:03afternoon in front of the TV and I'd watch the cars go around.
- 2:06The V eights had a certain sound that my brain would just shut me off.
- 2:10For four or five years probably.
- 2:12That's how I'd be able to fall asleep over the weekends.
- 2:14And then eventually I'd start watching those races, collecting the die cast,
- 2:18getting to know who was my favorites and who were not my favorites, and then kind
- 2:23of formed my own opinion throughout that.
- 2:25In the motor sports world, like was also mentioned, we went to what
- 2:29was called the mud hole in Florida.
- 2:30It was about a couple hundred acres of just Florida swamp.
- 2:34Everybody would run their Jeeps, their trucks, their motorcycles, all that
- 2:39stuff through the woods, and we'd go through that, just rip through it hours
- 2:43and hours and hours day after day.
- 2:45So that's kind of where it started.
- 2:46And then working with my dad on his Jeeps, he had old eighties and nineties Jeeps.
- 2:51His seal of approval was if it was a manual transmission and if it had
- 2:55the stamp on it, that would be his best case scenario for his Jeeps.
- 2:59But we'd work a lot on those because they were old Jeeps in Florida, so
- 3:02there's rust and stuff would break and we, we weren't nice to 'em, but
- 3:06that's when I kind of got my first like mechanical hands-on experience.
- 3:10Having lived in the Southeast, I know that working on the Jeeps a lot and
- 3:14while I was in Southeast my share of Offroading and there's a lot of sand
- 3:17mixture in the mud down there and it's really hard on a lot of components
- 3:20such as your bearings and stuff.
- 3:21So I know there's a lot of upkeep to be able to go play in the mud down there.
- 3:24Yeah.
- 3:25And.
- 3:26That Jeep was not the, uh, finest running Jeep in the world by any means.
- 3:30There was one day that we had just finished working on it, getting a
- 3:33couple parts and pieces in there, and my dad drove it down the road and I
- 3:37went inside for a couple minutes and all of a sudden we heard this big pop.
- 3:41We walked outside and the muffler was skidding down the road.
- 3:44He blew the whole muffler and the the exhaust off of it.
- 3:47That we just like put on there.
- 3:48So there were lots of breaking and fixing moments with those Jeeps and that
- 3:53kind of progressed throughout my life.
- 3:55So in all of our stories, there's usually a common thread, right?
- 3:58Even if we were like you, or we were placed in front of the TV
- 4:01and exposed to it, or out there turned wrenches in the garage.
- 4:05There's always that one time, that first time when a car or a truck or
- 4:10something got your attention and it was out of the ordinary because you
- 4:13were so used to just seeing Jeeps or just seeing whatever it was.
- 4:17What was that one vehicle that really got your attention?
- 4:20We were in the epicenter of.
- 4:21American Motor Sports in Florida, at least at the time, we were part
- 4:25of a racing church group that would go to Sebring for the Porsche B M
- 4:31W, Audi Owners Club, and we'd do a thing called Kids Racing for Life.
- 4:35We'd go down to Sebring, it'd be a week and a half-ish, couple weeks maybe,
- 4:40and it'd be essentially a make-a-wish.
- 4:42For racing, there'd be these kids there and we'd set 'em up in Porsches, Ferraris,
- 4:47BMWs, Audis, all of this kind of stuff.
- 4:49And I think it was at that moment, was one of those moments that just
- 4:53sparked something inside me that racing was what I wanted to do.
- 4:57I always liked racing.
- 4:58I always liked nascar, but being able to go around Sebring in a Porsche or
- 5:02something like that is just a different.
- 5:04Experience That's hard to explain to somebody who hasn't
- 5:07been in a race car before.
- 5:08And it was funny because we had the hand signals, you know the the go
- 5:11faster, the go slower, the thumbs up, thumbs down kind of thing.
- 5:14'cause you didn't have radios and I was the only kid that just kept going.
- 5:18Thumbs up, thumbs up, thumbs up every lap.
- 5:20'cause I just wanted to go faster, wanted to feel the
- 5:23G-forces going around the corners.
- 5:25And the sea brings such a fun track.
- 5:26The bumps, the corners.
- 5:28It's not a lot of elevation, but it's so fun.
- 5:30So I think that was by far.
- 5:32One moment that really sticks out in my head, maybe another moment that
- 5:36relates more of why I am a NASCAR kid.
- 5:38My first Daytona 500 was the 50th anniversary 500 that we went to, and just
- 5:43the atmosphere and the crowd and the, the smell, the noise, it, it kept pulling me
- 5:47back in, over and over and over again.
- 5:49There's definitely something about the smell of race, fuel in
- 5:51the air that just gets you going.
- 5:53My American ethanol and Goodyear tires.
- 5:54You can't get much better than that, which actually leads to a
- 5:58great pit stop question, right, Dan?
- 6:00Yeah.
- 6:00So being into motorsports and stuff like are you Chevy Ford, Mopar?
- 6:05What is your preference when it comes to manufacturer?
- 6:07You know, the red and blue flames and that neon yellow 24 on the
- 6:11side of Jeff Gordon's car always drew me to the Chevrolet side.
- 6:15Of course, I have a soft spot for the Jeep because of my father, but I love
- 6:19myself some Chevy Camaros and Corvettes.
- 6:22They look mean to me.
- 6:23They sound mean.
- 6:24They always run well and uh, it's never a bad combination, I suppose being a
- 6:29GM guy, there's common ground there.
- 6:31So you're in good company.
- 6:33Yeah.
- 6:34We'll leave the square bodies for another episode.
- 6:36All right guys.
- 6:38All jokes aside, let's talk about racing.
- 6:40In the introduction, we talked about how you dabbled in it in various ways,
- 6:44carting remote control cars, and obviously iRacing, which we're gonna talk about
- 6:48a little bit more here as we go along, all of which are very, very different.
- 6:52Where do you see yourself with this experience taking a next step as a
- 6:56driver, or do you even wanna be a driver?
- 6:58What are some of the barriers to the entry and what are some interesting
- 7:02alternatives that you've explored?
- 7:04Driving has always been a number one priority for me.
- 7:06I love the feel and the kind of senses you get from driving a race car, whether
- 7:10it be virtually from above on a driver's stand with an RC car or in a car.
- 7:15That's definitely what I want in the future, but the sport is very money
- 7:19driven and very uh, opportunity centric.
- 7:22My mom, I, I love her a lot, but she always made me have
- 7:25plans, plan A, B, C, and b.
- 7:27Plan A was always to drive a race car.
- 7:29That was number one.
- 7:30Plan would always want to do that.
- 7:31Plan B was to work on it in some shape or form, which we'll get into a little
- 7:36bit later with some of the R V R stuff.
- 7:38And Plan C was to be a, a spotter.
- 7:41That's something that in I racing, you're able to do.
- 7:43You're able to spot and crew chief and strategize and all of these different
- 7:47things and I found a love for it.
- 7:49Actually pretty late on.
- 7:50I've only been high racing for about five years now, and that's when I
- 7:54got my first real sense of spotting, being able to call the runs out,
- 7:58call high, low, middle, et cetera.
- 8:00Being able to do that kind of thing, seeing what was gonna happen before
- 8:03it happened, and also being able to do a little bit of math in there with
- 8:07fuel mileage and stuff like that.
- 8:08That was always something that I knew I was good at, but I didn't
- 8:12know how to put it into motion.
- 8:14With iRacing, I was able to find that and then my Plan D would be, uh, broadcasting.
- 8:19I do a lot of broadcasting with L SRT V with their main sim racing series.
- 8:24I help out with the Press Box Motorsports podcast.
- 8:26I'm very media forward so I can talk to people.
- 8:30My mom's a communications major.
- 8:31I can talk your head off all night long.
- 8:33Where I see myself taking the next step as a driver is I've gotta get in a real car.
- 8:37As much as you can learn from sim racing, that's not gonna cover everything.
- 8:42I don't know how a race transmission shifts.
- 8:45I don't know how the clutch feels.
- 8:46I don't know how all those things work inside the car, so I need
- 8:50to get in a car eventually.
- 8:51Hopefully that opportunity will rise soon.
- 8:54Like I said, the barriers right now are definitely the, the money involved, and
- 8:58I, I don't wanna use that as an excuse because it's just part of the game.
- 9:02It is what it is and we all accept that when we try to do this sport.
- 9:05So which discipline do you see yourself starting in?
- 9:08Do you see yourself going down a path of dirt, oval, asphalt, round rounds?
- 9:12Are you thinking sports car?
- 9:14Are you thinking spec Miata?
- 9:15There's a lot of different gateways into motorsport, whether
- 9:19it be oval track or road course.
- 9:21What are you thinking?
- 9:22You know, if you asked me this question a year and a half ago, my answer would
- 9:26be very straightforward and very simple.
- 9:28I'd go into the asphalt oval.
- 9:30The late models, limited lates, pro stocks, that kind of stuff.
- 9:33The short track feel.
- 9:35I like that.
- 9:36It's fun racing and it would eventually lead into what I want to do, but recently
- 9:40through a a team that has partnered with niner eSports, it's called Beaver Block.
- 9:45We've run the Daytona 24, the Bathurst 12, and will be running the
- 9:50Sebring 12 here in a couple months.
- 9:52I've kind of shifted gears into that sports car kind of Miata realm, and
- 9:56I've found a new passion for that and it's fun because, You're not having
- 10:01to worry about everybody around you.
- 10:03You gotta worry about your race and the different teams and stuff like that.
- 10:06So it's not as cut and dry as I would've hoped, but I'd be okay with running a
- 10:12Miata or something in the IMSA realm.
- 10:15The endurance racing is a fun challenge for me because NASCAR has
- 10:19our long races, the Coke 600, Daytona 500, but 12 hour races where you're
- 10:24running six or more hours is just a.
- 10:26Different level of challenging.
- 10:28I'm one that likes to go for the more challenging events.
- 10:32So I don't know.
- 10:32That's a good question and unfortunately I don't really have an answer for it.
- 10:36Let's take that a little bit further.
- 10:37What are your thoughts on the big races like the Rolex 24 or even Lamonts?
- 10:42Oh yeah, I would love to run those.
- 10:45I did my first virtual Daytona 24.
- 10:48This year, and that was just a different experience.
- 10:51I've never run my first lapse in a race three hours into a race already.
- 10:56That was just such a foreign field to me to get in the car that already had damage.
- 11:01The field was already spread out, and I did 26 or 27
- 11:05practice hours before that race.
- 11:07About five or 600 laps to get prepared mentally and physically for that race.
- 11:12And we streamed that whole thing and we went through the paces and
- 11:15we finished 10th in our class.
- 11:17So we ran the B M W hybrid, that new B M W, and we finished 11th overall
- 11:22because we had a bit of a struggle.
- 11:24It was just such a fun experience because I didn't take it as we had to win.
- 11:27I knew we weren't going to, I took it as a learning experience, and
- 11:30then next year we're gonna win.
- 11:33When you were asked like, which discipline or direction you'd like to
- 11:35go, you opened a a key aspect there.
- 11:37Motor sports is such a wide spectrum and so many young people like yourself
- 11:43initially you think one thing's what you want, but as you've come to
- 11:45experience other things, it's opened your eyes like, Hey, I also like this.
- 11:49That's a big thing that I try to promote with kids, like, don't pigeonhole yourself
- 11:53into one discipline or one thing that you like because that makes the whole
- 11:57motor sports world rather cliquey.
- 11:59I think as a whole, motorsports we need to work together to get
- 12:02experience out there for people who've never been into it and everything.
- 12:05And then a big thing I wanna give your mom kudos for is the way
- 12:08she had, you have multiple plans.
- 12:10So many people don't realize without successful planning, you're
- 12:13gonna set yourself up for failure.
- 12:15But you've had not just one backup at three backup options, which allow you
- 12:19to still be involved with motor sports, which is a great path forward for you.
- 12:22Yeah, there's always.
- 12:23A lot to motor sports and people always think it's either you're driving the
- 12:27car, you're spotting the car, or you're crew chiefing, and that there's nothing
- 12:30else in between, which is kind of why I went into the mechanical engineering
- 12:34realm and all this kind of stuff.
- 12:35You both bring up very valid points.
- 12:38One that's overarching here is that a lot of people fall victim
- 12:42to chasing just one dream.
- 12:44They have this dream, I wanna be a pro driver, I wanna be this.
- 12:46I wanna be that.
- 12:47Life is full of twists and turns and every pun and cliche that you
- 12:51can come up with along that journey.
- 12:53But what's important is that you're already recognizing there's
- 12:56alternatives along that that you may or may not be more interested in.
- 13:00And that leads into what Dan was saying about motorsports is people don't realize
- 13:05that there are sub-disciplines inside of the greater sanctioning bodies.
- 13:10Let's just look at Formula One or looking at W R C or Sports
- 13:14Car and Endurance Racing.
- 13:15You can start to just dissect that.
- 13:17I'm a big Rally fan.
- 13:19But when I talk rally, what am I talking about?
- 13:20I'm talking about, you know, group A, group B.
- 13:22Mm-hmm.
- 13:23That type of stuff, versus T one raid or Baja.
- 13:26And you know, again, there's so many other things you can get into that you don't
- 13:30have to hyperfocus on just one of them.
- 13:32So the doors are always open, and I'm glad you're situationally where
- 13:36as we say, you know, in coaching, your eyes are up, you're looking
- 13:39ahead and you're thinking ahead.
- 13:40If this doesn't pan out, what's next?
- 13:43But you've already dabbled a little bit in the racing world, right, Dan?
- 13:46Yeah, so let's talk about your experience as part of the R B R team.
- 13:49Like how did you get into it?
- 13:51What were some of your responsibilities with them and how long did
- 13:53you participate with the team?
- 13:54Getting involved with them is kind of a funny story.
- 13:57It was 2021 my freshman year of college.
- 14:00I was a band kid in high school and I did a a, a year of band in
- 14:04college and I just happened to get covid on our first game week.
- 14:09For our, our home opener for football.
- 14:12So I was stuck in a quarantine room, kind of just scrolling through Twitter
- 14:16and Instagram and stuff, and I saw a post pop up from R B R saying
- 14:21interns wanted and how to apply.
- 14:24So I called my mom and said, Hey, you think I should go for this?
- 14:27It's not paid.
- 14:27It's experience only, but it's experienced.
- 14:30She told me to go for it, so I filled out the information and I think within
- 14:35two or three days they called me back to have a phone interview and then they
- 14:39had me up at the shop a month later.
- 14:41I was on board for that, and that was right around.
- 14:45November, so it was kind of the end of the season, so we just kind of cleaned
- 14:48the shop when I was first there.
- 14:50And then beginning of 2022, everything kind of started to ramp up.
- 14:54We had the fad Moffitt deal with the 43 s t P, the Richard Petty
- 14:59colors on our truck, and then everything kind of snowballed.
- 15:02I had just about every responsibility you could think of from going
- 15:06to Food Lion, the local.
- 15:08Grocery store to buy Gatorades and sodas for the race weekend to sweeping the
- 15:14shop, to ripping stuff off the truck when they didn't come back in one piece.
- 15:19Lots of cleaning though.
- 15:20Something that you have to kind of get through your head is, everything's
- 15:22important no matter what you do.
- 15:24That was hard for me at first because I was like, man, I want to build stuff.
- 15:28I want to do things.
- 15:29I want to go, and I had to remember that I'm a 19 year old kid that has no
- 15:33experience on a race team, so I need to chill out and learn from everything.
- 15:37We went to Dinos, we did chassis pull downs.
- 15:40I learned so much and I was only there for six or seven months.
- 15:45From being an interior guy to them taking me to Texas Motor Speedway
- 15:48for the summer race there, having my family and girlfriend there during that
- 15:53race, my first race on a crew, that was just another worldly experience.
- 15:58You know, you always have those dreams of doing what you wanna do and then
- 16:01it happens and you're like, holy crap.
- 16:03I'm here, I'm doing this, I'm living out a dream.
- 16:06So just being able to do everything essentially on that race team has
- 16:11fulfilled so many bucket list items, but has also helped me continue my career.
- 16:16I got a feeling it's created many more bucket list items as well.
- 16:19Plans.
- 16:19E, F, G, right?
- 16:20Yeah.
- 16:21There's a, there's a few more backups now.
- 16:24Tell me about your experience there in the pits during the race.
- 16:27Like how was that for you?
- 16:28For someone who's never seen it, only seen it from tv, like explain that to people
- 16:32and the thrill that there was with that.
- 16:34That was a wild weekend.
- 16:35So the truck race was on Friday, so we flew out Thursday at midnight.
- 16:40From Charlotte and landed in Dallas at about three, four o'clock.
- 16:45So it was late.
- 16:46We were all tired as all get out and we fell asleep.
- 16:49Woke up at like seven, 8:00 AM went down to the track and
- 16:52walked through those garages.
- 16:54We all see those Bob Ris tweets where it's, you know, sea of mechanics and
- 16:58engineers walking through the front gates.
- 17:01And I was like, okay.
- 17:02This is literally every crew chief and everybody who's important, all in
- 17:06one little gaggle around the garage.
- 17:08We all walked in, we went to our holler, unloaded all the pit equipment
- 17:12first, and then we unloaded our two trucks, the 43 and 33 for that weekend.
- 17:17Got everything kind of set up.
- 17:18Getting ready for tech.
- 17:19Tech was wild.
- 17:21I've never actually gone through tech before and it was just, you know, a
- 17:24long line with a bunch of people and you just kinda sat there and people would
- 17:27walk around, talk to you, say hi, and then you had to push the truck up like.
- 17:3125 degree incline to get it up on the second inspection.
- 17:35But like all good things, we failed the first time.
- 17:38We failed tech inspection the first time for a few different
- 17:41reasons, which we expected.
- 17:43You know, if your car doesn't pass the first or second time,
- 17:46you got a little bit of an issue.
- 17:48But if you failed the first time, you know it's something
- 17:50good, you got something going on.
- 17:51'cause if you're not cheating, you're not winning.
- 17:55We pushed through tech and then we kind of just chilled for a little bit.
- 17:58Texas Modus Speedway is a bit of a monster for the cruise because going from
- 18:03the garage to pit road, there's a hill.
- 18:06We don't turn the cars on for anything unless it's on track, so you can't
- 18:09just drive the car up the hill.
- 18:11We had to push that thing up 20 feet, the hill, and it's just
- 18:15a steady, kind all the way up.
- 18:17So they're not the heaviest things in the world as fast as they go.
- 18:20A brick and a half for sure.
- 18:21So we went through practice.
- 18:23Unfortunately, our 33 truck wrecked in his first lap of practice, and
- 18:27then our 43 truck had an unimproved adjustment that got disqualified.
- 18:31I think I'm not a hundred percent sure on that.
- 18:34So basically as soon as we were done with practice, we were all thrashing, welding,
- 18:38beaten body panels, straight rebuilding, basically the whole rear end of that race
- 18:42car to have at least one car in the race.
- 18:45We're all running on two, three hours of sleep, maybe a little
- 18:48more if you slept on the plane.
- 18:50It's Texas during the summer, so it's 110 degrees out.
- 18:54We're all sweating.
- 18:55We're just destroyed by the end of this thing.
- 18:57But we finally get it fixed.
- 18:59We get it going, and we run the race, and I think we finished like
- 19:0233rd or something, but it was such a sigh of relief when the car rolled
- 19:06off for the first time and we saw.
- 19:08Everybody just go by checking the speed stuff.
- 19:11There's so many things you miss on TV and there's so many things
- 19:13you miss when you're at the track.
- 19:15Being behind the scenes, having a crew shirt on, having those
- 19:18credentials, you see so much and it's something that I never want to
- 19:22forget and I want to continue to do.
- 19:24From your time with R B R, what would you say was one of the biggest things
- 19:28you learned from that experience?
- 19:29Just the never give up attitude of that whole team.
- 19:32They're an underfunded team.
- 19:33They had seven full-time employees when I was interning there, and they had
- 19:38eight interns, so the interns outmatched everybody who actually worked there.
- 19:43Since then, that's kind of changed and they've gone through some ups and downs.
- 19:46I've learned a couple things that I won't say on air because there are a
- 19:49couple things I like to keep to myself.
- 19:51See, you know, he is a car guy because once we figure out what that little thing
- 19:57is, we're not gonna share it with anybody.
- 19:58Yeah.
- 19:58Until we've beaten him six ways from Sunday to the next
- 20:01race, then it all gets exposed.
- 20:03Right.
- 20:03There's a few things that I've learned here and there a
- 20:06few things of what not to do.
- 20:07A few things of what to do, like team dynamic.
- 20:10Always be close to your employees and even if they're below you
- 20:13can't act like they're below you.
- 20:15Having that family atmosphere is just so important because I.
- 20:19I woke up on Saturday morning and I could not stand up, and I was like,
- 20:22how the heck did I get through it?
- 20:24And it was just the positive reinforcement from everybody.
- 20:27Like, get up and go do your job and do it right and get rewarded type things.
- 20:31They were awesome guys, and I, I love every single one of them to death
- 20:35because they're the ones that gave me my first shot and never gonna forget that.
- 20:39Somewhere in the mix of all this, based on your time with R B R and you
- 20:43had aspirations of being in nascar, now you're choosing maybe plan.
- 20:47C.
- 20:47D, or E, somewhere along those lines.
- 20:49You've also changed the courses that you've taken there at
- 20:53the University of Charlotte.
- 20:54So let's talk about your university life a little bit.
- 20:57You mentioned that you're in mechanical engineering, so how's that going?
- 21:00Is that still plan C?
- 21:02Yeah, right now it's still plan C.
- 21:04I'm gonna beat the horse to death on Plan A until it doesn't go anymore.
- 21:08But you know, having that engineering degree, and I'm also going to dual enroll
- 21:13as a communications student as well, be an engineer that can talk to people.
- 21:17That's a very important thing, especially in the NASCAR and motorsports world.
- 21:22Being able to communicate what you wanna do and being able to.
- 21:27Also have the know-how to do it is something that is insurmountable
- 21:31when it comes to any motor sports, but especially nascar.
- 21:35So what's the good and the bad of the ME E program?
- 21:38It's a hard program.
- 21:40Not a lot of people get in it.
- 21:41It's one of the highest contested programs at U N C C because we're
- 21:45all here for the same reason.
- 21:4620% of NASCAR engineers, NASCAR crew, and NASCAR crew chiefs.
- 21:50Come from U N C C.
- 21:51If you have a degree from here, you're most likely going
- 21:54into a motor sports program.
- 21:56Having that good G P A getting through the classes, you gotta
- 21:59be pretty darn good at math.
- 22:01It's pretty math heavy.
- 22:02I think I get all the way up to calculus four or something like that.
- 22:05It's kind of ridiculous.
- 22:06There's math that looks more like English sometimes, so having that
- 22:10competitive attitude, not taking a failure as a failure, but a
- 22:14learning experience, and then.
- 22:16Finding ways to make a really hard degree a little bit easier is
- 22:19definitely advice and the good and bad.
- 22:22Well, I'm sure especially with NASCAR there in North Carolina, that's like
- 22:25the heart of where NASCAR began, so I'm sure that's why everybody wants to be
- 22:28involved in that flocks to that areas.
- 22:30Mooresville is known as nascar.
- 22:32U Ss a, right?
- 22:33Yeah.
- 22:33Motorsports, U Ss a Mooresville, Concord.
- 22:36Even Statesville.
- 22:37There's shops all over the place in North Carolina.
- 22:40It's like you can't go.
- 22:41More than 20 miles without seeing a, a little interstate sign with
- 22:45a Motorsports facility somewhere.
- 22:47I mean, you've got Hendrick Motorsports, track House, and Rush
- 22:51Fenway Klowski, all within about five or 10 miles of the U N C C campus.
- 22:56Charlotte Motor Speedway's five miles.
- 22:58Then you go to Mooresville, junior Motorsports, Joe Gibbs,
- 23:02RBR R's in Mooresville as well.
- 23:03Further out in Welcome North Carolina.
- 23:05You've got your RRCs, your Petty G m s.
- 23:08Wood Brothers is in Mooresville too.
- 23:10So there's a whole bunch of teams, both Truck, Xfinity Cup,
- 23:14even late models and legends.
- 23:15They're all over the place here.
- 23:17I grew up watching a lot of Monster Truck stuff and I know Dennis Anderson
- 23:20has hit his shop for the Grave Digger down there in North Carolina.
- 23:22Is that anywhere near Charlotte?
- 23:24It's about six hours from here.
- 23:26It's funny you bring that up 'cause I've got a couple Monster Jam stories as well.
- 23:30Growing up in Florida.
- 23:31They would go to Raymond James Stadium, it would always rain.
- 23:33The best mud shows of the year would happen in Tampa and year after
- 23:38year after year for my birthday.
- 23:39It would always happen around the same time.
- 23:41So we'd go watch the Monster Jam show and then one year.
- 23:45For some reason we came up to North Carolina and we went to their shop
- 23:48up in, I think it's Kitty Hawk, and we walked in and this is, I don't
- 23:53know, 2010, maybe 2009, and there's a smaller version of Ryan and Kristen
- 24:00Anderson and Adam Anderson all.
- 24:02Out front running this RC car all around and we walk in and Dennis is just sitting
- 24:07there and we had lunch with all of them.
- 24:08It was just one of those weird meeting your hero moments because I,
- 24:12I absolutely loved the grave digger truck and I continue to follow that,
- 24:16but I'm more of a son of a digger now.
- 24:17I like that blue paint scheme.
- 24:19That blue paint scheme's got a special place in my heart.
- 24:22But no, the black and green wrecking machine bad to the bone all the way
- 24:25through gotta be some of the best moments.
- 24:28And there was a point in time where I wanted to be a monster
- 24:30truck driver, and then I realized those hits are pretty hard, so it
- 24:34might not be the best case for me.
- 24:38So that is not a plan on the list of plans.
- 24:40That is not a plan.
- 24:41It would be a cool experience, but definitely not something that
- 24:45I'm going to actively pursue.
- 24:47So what are your thoughts on programs like Formula S A e I was part of Formula s a e
- 24:52last year and a little bit of this year.
- 24:54I love those guys too.
- 24:56Great hands-on experience, building more open wheel type cars, but there's
- 25:00still some things that definitely transfer over and it's a huge resume
- 25:04builder saying that you were part of a S A E program, being able to.
- 25:08Continue with that program, be a team lead, even a driver.
- 25:12It gives you so much more notoriety than somebody with a piece of paper
- 25:16saying they know how to do math.
- 25:17Kind of broadening your horizons throughout college, finding things
- 25:20that you might not think can connect to the world that you wanna be in.
- 25:24You wouldn't think an open wheel race car would connect to a NASCAR team, but.
- 25:28Building that race car.
- 25:30They now know you have fabrication skills, the mechanical engineering needed
- 25:34for it, and the communications and team working skills to be able to work with
- 25:37the team and also help build a race car.
- 25:41Are you aware of formula Baja?
- 25:42I am aware.
- 25:43Unfortunately, U N C C doesn't have a formula Baja.
- 25:47Right now they used to, it seems like every meeting we have, somebody calls out,
- 25:52bring back Baja, so it might come back.
- 25:55I'm not sure, but I do know of it and I've watched some
- 25:58wild YouTube videos of it too.
- 26:00So what types of motorsports organizations or clubs are you involved with currently?
- 26:03Right now it's a little bit of that s a E program and then.
- 26:09Majority focus is managing the iRacing team for the Niner
- 26:13eSports program that we have here.
- 26:15Being in Charlotte have, have you been to the NASCAR Hall of Fame?
- 26:18Oh yeah.
- 26:18It seems like I'm there every other month.
- 26:20I love their simulators.
- 26:22I love the history of it, and every time somebody's visiting here,
- 26:25I always wanna take 'em there.
- 26:26It's like my Disney World.
- 26:28It's that feel that you're surrounded by history and it's also kind of a goal.
- 26:32You know, not a lot of people get to go into the NASCAR Hall
- 26:35of Fame and be inducted and it's always that Shoot for the stars
- 26:38and you'll hit the moon type deal.
- 26:40Say you're going into the Hall of Fame, maybe you might end up in a seat.
- 26:43You never know, but I.
- 26:44I always like to tell myself walking through the doors one day I'll be
- 26:48there for a different reason, but for now, I, I enjoy it as a tourist
- 26:52and a motorsports connoisseur.
- 26:55Well, it's time we switch gears and we need to talk about one of your other
- 26:58favorite topics, which is sim racing.
- 27:01Thanks to Covid Sim racing in all its different forms, quickly became 10 times
- 27:07more popular than it ever had been, and it still seems to be on the rise.
- 27:12So let's get some of your thoughts.
- 27:14That kind of explosion in 2020 and 2021 was a weird.
- 27:18Shift in the iRacing world, we were always big and we always had our big events.
- 27:23You know, the Koch series, which used to be the peak series and the
- 27:27NASCAR realm of iRacing always had big prize pools and stuff like that.
- 27:31But once they did the Pro Invitational and nationally televised it, All of
- 27:35these cup drivers, indie car drivers, all these guys were getting on the sim.
- 27:40It really made it less of a game for the general public and made it
- 27:45known that this isn't something you just mess around with on a Sunday
- 27:48night because you think you can.
- 27:50This is something that people use and people are able to do as a tool, and
- 27:54it gives you that experience without actually having to do anything.
- 27:58Personally, iRacing is still the best sim out there.
- 28:00The quality of their updates and things like that.
- 28:03Second to none in my book.
- 28:04I like how the physics work, how it feels, how it drives, what I can feel
- 28:08through the steering wheel and pedals.
- 28:10I like their NASCAR program and their road course stuff as well.
- 28:14But I know there's a couple things that we don't have.
- 28:16We don't have rain, we don't have flat spotting tires.
- 28:19We know those are coming and we know that they'll be top class once they get here.
- 28:23There's a whole bunch of different avenues to go, but I try to stay away from things
- 28:27like Ran Ismo or Forza, and I know that might hurt a little bit for some people,
- 28:32but I don't like that arcade feel anymore.
- 28:35I like being able to feel the car and understand the car and not
- 28:38just slamming the joystick left and right or not being able to feel
- 28:42through the steering wheel for me.
- 28:43iRacing is definitely still number one on my list.
- 28:47We're still.
- 28:48Skyrocketing in players and new accounts, rejoining accounts, and laps turned.
- 28:53I think we turned the 5000000000th lap on iRacing a couple months ago, and that
- 28:59number is just gonna continue to rise.
- 29:01With our most recent update.
- 29:03We had the, I think a Reno Cleo.
- 29:05A Formula Ford 1600 and then the new late model stock car just came down, so
- 29:12I know there's gonna be a lot of people running it at the point of recording.
- 29:16Having been in motorsports for a long time and coming up through
- 29:21the video game generation myself.
- 29:23Pretty much born with a controller in my hand.
- 29:25I've seen the evolution of video games, and we've had other people on
- 29:29the show to talk about that and where the future is, and they're like, all
- 29:31right, old man screaming at the clouds, you know, what do you talk about?
- 29:34I'm like, look, I've been here since the beginning.
- 29:37I think the biggest complaints, those of us that have experienced on track
- 29:40with sim racing say, is, It doesn't translate driving with your eyes,
- 29:44despite even the best, most expensive rig doesn't feel like being in the car.
- 29:49You don't have the G-force, you don't have the lateral forces.
- 29:51You don't have any of this kind of stuff.
- 29:53And you see some of these extremely complicated rigs where they're bouncing
- 29:56up and down and doing all this gyroscopic stuff and you're like, cars don't do that.
- 30:00They just, they don't, Eric, I know how technically minded you are and having
- 30:05the amount of experience you have in cars, like I do it myself and I'm not
- 30:08near as experienced on track as you are, but I'll notice playing certain
- 30:11simulators or games, it's like, yeah, that doesn't feel like it would in real life.
- 30:15So I wonder if a lot of the young guys your age, Brock, that haven't
- 30:18had much seat time in real cars aren't able to pick up on that and what
- 30:23you guys consider to be more legit.
- 30:24I'm curious if you would get more seat time if you would start to be like,
- 30:27That's not actually how this happens.
- 30:29That's kind of how it would work.
- 30:31If I had actual experience behind the wheel of a car, I could feel what
- 30:34the car is supposed to feel like.
- 30:36And like I was saying earlier, I don't have experience behind
- 30:39the wheel of a real race car.
- 30:40I have go-kart experience, but we don't have go-karts, so I can't say.
- 30:44Yeah, that's exactly like the go-kart.
- 30:46I'm driving a cup cart.
- 30:47I don't know what that feels like.
- 30:49I know what it looks like.
- 30:50It feels like.
- 30:50I know what that independent rear suspension should do based off
- 30:54of working on it, but I don't know what it actually does.
- 30:58So I'm sure that there's a difference in the real versus sim, and I'm sure that
- 31:03with more real world time behind the wheel of a race car, any race car, I'd
- 31:07be able to pick up on those differences, whether subtle or drastic, and go,
- 31:12Hey, that's not at all what that feels like or, Yeah, that's pretty similar.
- 31:16With more time behind the wheel, I'd maybe lose my rose colored lenses, but right now
- 31:23it's the best thing since sliced bread.
- 31:25'cause I don't know any better.
- 31:27But it brings up a real life question.
- 31:29I'm sure you've raced Seabring many times.
- 31:32I racing, but you've been at Sebring in a race car.
- 31:36How does it really compare?
- 31:38Memories are a little fuzzy, but I do remember a lot of the bumps and a lot of
- 31:41the corners and a lot of stuff like that.
- 31:43Unfortunately, iRacing doesn't have a street spec, Porsche nine 11 that
- 31:47I can just rip around there, but it does a pretty darn good job.
- 31:51Yeah, the graphics of some of the peripherals aren't great.
- 31:55And the people look like they're from a Nintendo 64 game.
- 31:58The drivability of the track, the aggressiveness of those curbs that
- 32:02are there, they're pretty spot on.
- 32:04In my opinion.
- 32:05Sunset is the Bumpiest corner in the world in real life, and it's
- 32:08the Bumpiest corner in I racing too.
- 32:11Most of my experience at Sebring is in a hypercar or a hybrid, so it's a little bit
- 32:16of a different world just in that sense.
- 32:19Personally, I was able to jump in sim and know my lines and know my
- 32:22breaking points and know things like that just based on that experience
- 32:26I had, you know, 10, 15 years ago.
- 32:28The upside is when it comes to training guys that have been on simulators, you
- 32:32know where the turns go, so I don't have to tell you that the next turn at v i R
- 32:37is a left to be like, wait, it's a left.
- 32:39It's very different when you're training people that haven't had
- 32:42the lapse, but the one thing.
- 32:44I've experienced with people that have come from simulators, they learn quickly,
- 32:48but when they get out of the car, they're like, that's nothing like what I expected.
- 32:52That's usually the response I get from my students that have never
- 32:56really driven on track before.
- 32:57I try not to take everything literal when I'm driving the race car, I try
- 33:02to know the line in a little bit of the tendency with the physics engine,
- 33:05but I know it's not real and I know that air moves how air wants to
- 33:08move, and it's not something that.
- 33:10We can code to move how it should because it's not always the same.
- 33:15So I think learning the tracks that I've never driven before,
- 33:18like I'm in Charlotte, I've never lived in Virginia, so I have no
- 33:22idea what Virginia looks like.
- 33:23And I don't know what V R R looks like.
- 33:26But I ran a hybrid race at V I R a month ago, so I know what the track
- 33:30looks like and I know how to drive it, and I know that I should be set
- 33:34up on the wide side coming and turned one so I can get a good run into turn.
- 33:38Two.
- 33:38It's knowing the feel of the track so you can go on there and not have that.
- 33:43Oh my gosh.
- 33:43Oh my gosh.
- 33:43Oh my gosh.
- 33:44I'm driving a race car on a racetrack, driving a race car.
- 33:46Don't mess up.
- 33:46Don't mess up.
- 33:47You can be confident in having the mental stability so you can work on the physical.
- 33:51There's a give and take even in real life, you know?
- 33:53Absolutely.
- 33:53I wish I could do what I do in the sim world, but you can't.
- 33:56Right.
- 33:56Some of it is, it feels like cheating physics and whatnot.
- 33:59That actually begs the question too, about the discipline of motorsport
- 34:04you're focused on in the sim world, and I think it's an overarching
- 34:08conversation about the most popular.
- 34:11Disciplines inside of iRacing and that I still think is asphalt oval.
- 34:16Right?
- 34:16Absolutely.
- 34:17The NASCAR and the short track community in iRacing is one of the biggest
- 34:21in any form of motor sport because it is so limited everywhere else.
- 34:26You've got the NASCAR heat games in the NASCAR ignition games that
- 34:31are coming out, which are widely.
- 34:33Dislike.
- 34:34I hate to say it because I know people spend time and money and work on those
- 34:38as their blood, sweat, and tears, but they're not what they used to be.
- 34:42And people are starting to see that and starting to search for something
- 34:45to really figure out what they want.
- 34:47If they want to go into a sports car realm or a dirt realm,
- 34:50or stay in the asphalt realm.
- 34:52So I think they come to iRacing, they see that we've got almost every
- 34:56generation of stock car from the 1987.
- 34:59For Thunderbird Buick and Chevy Impala, or it's the Monte Carlo, excuse me.
- 35:04And then you've got the old cots, the gen sixes, and now the new next
- 35:09gens with the Xfinity Series, the Cup Series and the Trek series.
- 35:14And then you've got all of your short track stuff, your legends cars, your
- 35:17silver crown cars, street stocks.
- 35:20We've got all those different.
- 35:22Professions of oval racing, people start to go to that because, oh,
- 35:26it's the car I run in real life.
- 35:28At the track I run in real life.
- 35:30Let me go work on that.
- 35:31I know there's a few guys that are going to Southern national that are
- 35:34running southern national with this new late model car because they can't
- 35:38get practice time at the actual track.
- 35:40There's a lot of exclusivity with the oval racing side of it because
- 35:44we can't really go anywhere else.
- 35:46A c C doesn't have any oval stuff.
- 35:48There's no outlet for us.
- 35:50So we all come here and we all have fun and bash and wreck and
- 35:54flip and all that kind stuff, but we also take it very seriously.
- 35:58The money's good in here.
- 35:59If you can get to the top 40 in the NASCAR side, you can join the Coke series, which
- 36:03has a hundred thousand dollars prize pool at the end of the season, plus you get a.
- 36:08Big trophy at the end of it too, so that's pretty good.
- 36:10It all comes down to how much time are you willing to spend on it, and how
- 36:13much time do you have to spend on it, because it takes a lot to get to that
- 36:17point, and it takes a lot of effort to get good enough to get to there.
- 36:21For people that are looking to get into it, is there a used market out there?
- 36:25Would you tell them to potentially go buy something used or, or do you
- 36:29recommend buy a new right off the bat?
- 36:30Especially if you haven't done it before?
- 36:32So iRacing can be a monthly, yearly, bimonthly try monthly subscription
- 36:37if you're gonna try iRacing.
- 36:39You buy the $13 monthly subscription for one month.
- 36:43You go out to your retro gaming store or eBay or something and you find
- 36:47a cheap wheel that has some force feedback with pedals, and you slap that
- 36:52sucker on your desk and you download Ira saying, You got a 50 to $60 piece
- 36:57right there and you understand what you like about it, what you don't like
- 37:00about it, and then figure out if that's something you want to continue doing
- 37:03and continue working on throughout your, I guess, career we can call it.
- 37:08But I wouldn't go full bore and just dump a bunch of money into it.
- 37:11Money doesn't necessarily buy performance and buys comfort in this realm.
- 37:15Of course, there's things that will help you.
- 37:17A direct drive wheel helps, and the vibrating pedals help being able to catch
- 37:22things that you wouldn't be able to do.
- 37:23Through your head and headset and through looking at the screen, but it's not
- 37:27something you need right off the bat.
- 37:29That's something you need after you've perfected your racecraft,
- 37:32your lines and kind of understand the race engine that you are using.
- 37:36If you don't get totally frustrated and cancel your
- 37:38subscription before that point.
- 37:40Yes, exactly.
- 37:43There's another side to this.
- 37:44It's kind of an interesting side.
- 37:45When you look at eSports as a whole, sort of, as a, either a profession
- 37:49or even as a sport itself, there's an actual debate as to whether or not sim
- 37:53racing is even considered an eSport.
- 37:56Because motor sports, a lot of times is not considered a sport.
- 38:00So when you look at the list of the top 10 in 2023, eSports,
- 38:05I'll read off the titles here.
- 38:07None of these, in my opinion, are sports at all.
- 38:09We've got things like League of Legends, go to two Counterstrike, Fortnite, call
- 38:13of Duty, Overwatch, Valant, rainbow Six, rocket League, and Hearthstone.
- 38:17Nowhere on that list.
- 38:18Is iRacing.
- 38:19Why?
- 38:20You know, it's such an interesting question because just in our experience
- 38:25at Niner eSports, our iRacing program is our youngest program.
- 38:29We didn't have an iRacing program up until November, so this is all a very
- 38:34new program for them, and it was a new world that they didn't know about.
- 38:37Most of that is just look at your mainstream media.
- 38:41It's Call of Duty, Valant League of Legends.
- 38:43Those are your more widespread known titles.
- 38:47There's skill involved with it, but it's less of a learning curve and
- 38:50more of a point and shoot, or there's strategies that everybody knows.
- 38:54I racing or sim racing in general is something that takes time to understand
- 39:00and time to learn, rather than picking up a controller and playing through a
- 39:05couple levels and then knowing what to do.
- 39:07I racing and sim racing in general is a hundred percent in eSport.
- 39:11We've got some of the bigger competitions.
- 39:14We've got some of the bigger traction when it comes to what we're aligned with.
- 39:19But I will say, I don't know if you guys saw this, so they came out with this E
- 39:23Olympics and there's nowhere on there.
- 39:25Is any of those 10 games?
- 39:27There's no League of Legends, no Call of Duty, no Overwatch, no Valant.
- 39:31In those E Olympics.
- 39:32Well, why is that?
- 39:33Because they're doing all these sports titles.
- 39:36Of course, they have to choose Grand Primo as the SIM racing representative, which
- 39:41I was a grand tri kid growing up, raced a lot of that, and I love the titles, but
- 39:45they're not as good as a set of Corsa or.
- 39:47I racing.
- 39:48So they could have probably done something with iRacing or a set of Corsa, but
- 39:53we're represented in the e Olympics, which, who knows how that's gonna be?
- 39:56So I think we're getting more and more recognition and representation.
- 40:01Covid helped, wasn't a great point in our history, but it definitely
- 40:05helped a lot in the sim racing and the eSports world in general.
- 40:09So hopefully one day we'll be up there.
- 40:11But I think there's just such a saturation of those 10 games.
- 40:15You can say, call of Duty and everybody's played a Call of Duty game.
- 40:18You can talk about that with a bunch of people.
- 40:21So I think it's just there's so much saturation of those.
- 40:24Titles out there that it's hard for other titles like iRacing or a
- 40:28set of Corsa to kind of catch up.
- 40:30So you mentioned something earlier about getting ready for these races,
- 40:34and we had this conversation back in season one when we had Tucker
- 40:37Boner, who most people may know and recognized from Twitch as Jericho.
- 40:42He was also on chasing the crown on Amazon Prime.
- 40:44And so we discussed this with him and he said, you know, going
- 40:47into eSports and doing this professionally, there's a lot of.
- 40:51Actual conditioning and training that has to occur.
- 40:54So what do you do to physically prepare for some of these races?
- 40:58I mean, a lot of people will say that there's 90% mental and a 10%
- 41:01physical attribute to sim racing because you are staring at a screen
- 41:05knowing that there's no physical thing that's going to happen to you.
- 41:09But you know that if you do one wrong move, your entire race is over.
- 41:14Physically, we just run laps constantly.
- 41:16I'll use, for example, our Daytona 24.
- 41:19Attempt that we did for about a month and a half.
- 41:21I did nothing but the Daytona Road course in that B M W V eight hybrid.
- 41:26That was the only thing I ran for a month and a half on iRacing, putting in
- 41:30laps and laps and laps, understanding the car, understanding the track,
- 41:33understanding how to deal with traffic, both getting past and passing slower cars.
- 41:37Physical side of it is just muscle memory.
- 41:40When you're driving a race that long, or any race, you don't
- 41:43wanna second guess yourself.
- 41:44When you fly into the bus stop or when you go around turn one at Bristol,
- 41:49you don't wanna second guess yourself.
- 41:51That should be second nature.
- 41:52You want to be able to think about what the person in front of you is
- 41:55gonna do, what the person behind you is gonna do, where are you
- 41:58on the track, that kind of thing.
- 41:59So physically it's.
- 42:01Learning the track, learning the car, being comfortable enough that you can
- 42:05put yourself in some sticky situations.
- 42:07Kind of that mental aspect is just putting yourself in those
- 42:11mentally strenuous places.
- 42:12When you're three wide, on the bottom in Talladega, or three wide in the middle
- 42:17at Talladega, you've gotta put yourself in some really crappy positions and
- 42:20you've gotta make a lot of mistakes.
- 42:22To be able to trust yourself enough to go three wide, go four wide, go around
- 42:28the outside, do random moves that would help you win races and stuff like that.
- 42:33And that's something that comes with time.
- 42:35I'm not even going to lie to you guys.
- 42:37I'm not there yet.
- 42:38I second guess myself all the time because I've done some bonehead
- 42:42moves and wrecked a bunch of people.
- 42:44There's always that doubt.
- 42:46You've kind of gotta quiet those inner voices of doubt and be able
- 42:49to lock in and just focus solely on your car and understand that
- 42:54you can only control your race.
- 42:55So most of it's a mental training, I guess reaction times.
- 42:59Just throw a ball around every once in a while.
- 43:02I don't know it.
- 43:03It's sim racing.
- 43:05Well that's funny you say that.
- 43:06'cause back in our day, us old guys here, Dan and I remember, you know the
- 43:11land parties and we would get our case of balls guana, remember that stuff?
- 43:15So there's a whole nutrition aspect.
- 43:18Back to this too.
- 43:19And there's a lot of things you have to look at in terms of repetitive
- 43:21stress conditions, fatigue, you know, mental duress, things like that.
- 43:26And so what do you do again, on that physical side?
- 43:29How do you change your diet?
- 43:30Do you work out, you know, how do you get prepped for these longer races?
- 43:34I try to work out every other couple of days.
- 43:37I'm not a huge gym rat.
- 43:39I'm five foot four and 125 pounds, so there's not much of me to go around
- 43:43in the physical side of the world.
- 43:45Go to the gym, lift some weights.
- 43:47Your arms are gonna be just dead by the time you're done
- 43:50with a couple hours of racing.
- 43:52For our Daytona 24, I ran the second most out of our six drivers,
- 43:57and I ran four and a half hours.
- 43:59I think by the end of that, my legs were shot, my arms were shot, and
- 44:03I didn't have everything turned up.
- 44:04I had everything kind of turned down to where I could
- 44:07be comfortable for that long.
- 44:08So just putting yourself in an uncomfortable position, like holding a.
- 44:1210 pound dumbbell in front of your face for five, 10 minutes.
- 44:15Just having that endurance, not necessarily raw strength,
- 44:19but the endurance, getting as much sleep as you can.
- 44:22The team that we ran with, their team captain and I stayed up
- 44:26basically 12 hours each for that.
- 44:28We didn't take care of ourselves as well as we should have, but being able
- 44:32to just push through the tiredness, not make those mistakes, and just.
- 44:36Be able to understand what your body is telling you and what you
- 44:39can do, because if you push yourself too hard, you're gonna start making
- 44:42mistakes and you're gonna cost not only yourself, but the team, an
- 44:45opportunity monster or Red Bull, neither.
- 44:47Actually, I'm not a energy drink guy.
- 44:50I try to stay away from the caffeine just because my body decides that
- 44:54it's gonna go on a huge spike.
- 44:56Like five minutes and then it just plummets within 10 or 15.
- 45:00So it doesn't work for me.
- 45:01I try to just stay hydrated.
- 45:02Gatorade, right now we're drinking the body armors.
- 45:06Those are pretty good, but I can't drink a lot of them.
- 45:08Basically two bottles of water and a Gatorade for when I'm not in the car.
- 45:12And then I'll have a, a water bottle with a hole poked in it when I'm driving.
- 45:16If we wanted to get somebody convinced to come over to SIM racing, to get
- 45:20away from what we call the Sim Cs, like Forza and Grant Smo and some of the
- 45:24other games, how would you convince someone to become part of eSports?
- 45:29How would you tell them that it's just not another video game?
- 45:31I wouldn't say a darn thing.
- 45:33I'd put 'em in front of the wheel and tell 'em to.
- 45:35Try and drive it.
- 45:36That was the fun thing for me.
- 45:38We announced the iRacing team to the Niner eSports programs and the U N C
- 45:43C, and then we had a LAN event two or three weeks after, and I brought my sim
- 45:47ring and my computer and all of that.
- 45:49I brought everything there.
- 45:50I ran laps and people said, oh, I could do that.
- 45:53And I said, really?
- 45:54Go right ahead.
- 45:55And every person that said, I could do that, couldn't do it.
- 45:58Proving somebody that it's more than just an arcade game, that
- 46:01it's harder than you think.
- 46:02The guys that go, oh, I played Forza and I played Grand Tribo, that's great, but
- 46:07you haven't run a simulator yet, so come on down, sit in the sim and experience it.
- 46:12If it's something that you laugh at or have fun with,
- 46:15then you're hooked from there.
- 46:17Explaining it is such a hard thing to do when somebody already has it
- 46:20in their head that it's just a video game, that they don't understand
- 46:24that these are broadcasted events, that there's leagues, that there's
- 46:27cash prizes involved with this.
- 46:30They have to do it themselves.
- 46:31They have to try it, and I'm not saying going out and spending
- 46:34that money or maybe spend a small amount of money for it by yourself.
- 46:37The Daytona and the arc of car, if you're a NASCAR person and run that.
- 46:42Those are great cars to run on that track.
- 46:4413 bucks, run it and see if you like it.
- 46:47If you're in the Charlotte area, go to the Hall of Fame race,
- 46:50iRacing at the Hall of Fame.
- 46:51They give you that opportunity.
- 46:53It shows you what iRacing can be.
- 46:56You can't explain it because it's something that is so skewed in the minds
- 47:00of people that don't know about it.
- 47:02It's just fake news basically.
- 47:05When somebody who hasn't tried it talks about it, so.
- 47:07Go ahead and try it first.
- 47:09See what you can do with it.
- 47:10See if you like it, and if not, then it's not for you.
- 47:13But if you do like it, then you found yourself a fun little sim to run on.
- 47:18When we spoke to you originally and you sent over the link for the Twitch stream
- 47:22that you guys had for the race just prior to that, I went on watched it and with the
- 47:26exception of the graphics being obviously, you know, very video game, it was
- 47:30seriously like sitting in front of the tv.
- 47:33Watching a NASCAR race on a Sunday with the commentating,
- 47:36with watching the different views from the different cars and stuff.
- 47:39I was very impressed with how well that was done.
- 47:41Everybody on iRacing tries to treat it as more than just a game.
- 47:45If you say it's just a video game, bro, on the iRacing chats, people will start light
- 47:50you up because it's not a video game.
- 47:52Never say it's a video game to somebody who is a hardcore I racer.
- 47:56'cause you will never speak to them again because it is not a
- 48:00video game, it's a simulator.
- 48:02As a generalization, it is a video game.
- 48:04It's something that you play on a PC with video game materials, but it's a tool
- 48:10to help simulations and stuff like that.
- 48:12But we try to keep it as professional as we can, especially on the
- 48:15broadcasts and things like that.
- 48:17So having that professionalism, that TV feel like you're watching a late
- 48:21model stock race on a Wednesday night.
- 48:24That's what we're trying to do.
- 48:25So for the podcast that you co-host, uh, press Box Motorsport
- 48:28Podcast, what's it about?
- 48:30How often do you guys release it?
- 48:31Why should people tune into it?
- 48:32And are there any upcoming spoilers?
- 48:34The Press Box Motorsports Podcast is a podcast that is hosted by
- 48:39Charles Wooten and I from L S R tv.
- 48:42We mostly talk about the sim racing world and we dabble a
- 48:45little bit in the real racing.
- 48:48People should tune in to see the news and the.
- 48:51Different leagues and events that not only L S RT V is hosting, but also iRacing
- 48:56itself, myself, being not only a team manager but also a racer will, you'll
- 49:01get inside scoops on different types of leagues that my team is running in.
- 49:05And then also some special guests.
- 49:07I think our next guest, uh, is a Coke series driver, so a professional driver
- 49:12who got his first win on Daytona, so be on the lookout for that one.
- 49:16He is also a team member of the Niner eSports program as well.
- 49:20So we do a thing or two about the real world stuff, but it's
- 49:24mainly a sim racing podcast.
- 49:25Well, speaking of which, what is next for Brock?
- 49:28Yeah, so it, it's funny you guys ask that because I'm actually going
- 49:32up to the Jordan Anderson racing shop up in Statesville, which we've
- 49:35been in talks for a few weeks now, and most likely working with them,
- 49:40working with their 31 Xfinity program.
- 49:43Which is another reason why Chevy's, my favorite manufacturer,
- 49:47being able to work with them.
- 49:48I'll, I'll take more of an engineer role, higher data, keeping everything sorted at
- 49:53the shop, uh, making sure everybody knows their inventory and things like that.
- 49:57And then working closely with their crew chief for the 31 on Race notes
- 50:01setups throughout the weekend.
- 50:03Well.
- 50:03Brock, it's come to that point in the show where we've run out of plans and
- 50:08we need to know if you have any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you'd
- 50:12like to share that we didn't cover.
- 50:13Yeah, of course.
- 50:14I've got a shout out my mom and dad for always supporting me and
- 50:18getting me to where I am now.
- 50:19You can find me at Brockton P on Instagram.
- 50:23On Twitter, it's Brockton Packard, and then on Twitch, it's Brockton P 24 for all
- 50:28the weekly racing and stuff that we do.
- 50:30Follow Niner eSports on Twitter, Instagram.
- 50:33Facebook watch NASCAR on Sundays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
- 50:37If you want to keep up with Brock and all of his progress, be sure to
- 50:40follow him, as you mentioned on social media at Brockton P on Instagram,
- 50:44or at Brockton Packard on Twitter.
- 50:47Tune into his podcast, the Press Box Motorsports podcast everywhere.
- 50:50You listen to all your podcasts or chat with him on the GTM Discord
- 50:54server and tune into his races via live streams at Twitch tv slash.
- 50:59Brockton P 24.
- 51:00Brock, I can't thank you enough for coming on Break Fixx, having
- 51:03a healthy debate about sim racing and eSports, but also sharing your
- 51:08plans for your future with us.
- 51:10They're very well thought out and we wish you the best of luck.
- 51:12And I hope one day you look back like Hannibal from the A team with
- 51:16the cigar and your mouth and say, I love 'em when a plan comes together.
- 51:22Hey, man, it's, it's been a great time and I'm so thankful for you guys having me
- 51:26on here and yeah, it was super fun, guys.
- 51:28That's the plan, and he's sticking to it.
- 51:30Yeah, man, I, I got a plan for everything.
- 51:39That's right listeners.
- 51:40If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for
- 51:44a follow on pit stop mini episode.
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- 52:24Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here.
- 52:26We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
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