Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / SRO Motorsports - GT America (Greg Gill)

Transcript

SRO Motorsports - GT America (Greg Gill) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

0:00
Break Fix Podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all
0:05
over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors,
0:09
designers, and everything in between.
0:11
Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder how did they
0:17
get that job or become that person.
0:19
The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
0:24
The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their
0:28
partners at AWS CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School.
0:35
Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.com.
0:41
Or take a shortcut to GT America US and be sure to follow them on social
0:47
at GT America, on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook and
0:54
catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT World.
1:01
With more than 25 years of experience at the forefront of a
1:05
continuously evolving industry.
1:08
SRO Motorsports Group is the established international leader in GT racing,
1:13
best known for the development and.
1:14
Implementation of the GT three and GT four regulations.
1:18
SRO promotes and organizes championships that embrace
1:21
professional and amateur competitors.
1:23
It's a portfolio of highly regarded series, including the Continental GT
1:28
World Challenge, powered by AWS with categories in Europe, American Asia
1:33
SRO continues to play a key role in shaping the future of international
1:38
GT racing, and with us to explore the history and evolution of SRO Motorsports.
1:43
In the United States is President and CEO of SRO America, Greg Gill.
1:48
So welcome to Break Fix, Greg.
1:49
Great to be here.
1:50
Thanks.
1:51
So let's talk about the who, the what, the where, the why of SRO and why
1:55
don't we start off with what does SRO stand for DE and RATTEL organization?
2:01
Not standing room only.
2:02
Darn.
2:03
I like the second one.
2:04
Yeah, so it's really great.
2:06
The US organization's actually slightly older than our namesake organization.
2:10
We celebrate our 30th year this year for the SRO and this
2:15
season as we go into 2022.
2:17
Actually marks our 33rd season.
2:19
So, uh, we're excited about that.
2:21
And there's a little bit of explanation that has to come to mind, doesn't it?
2:24
Yeah.
2:24
So was it always called SRO?
2:26
No, it wasn't.
2:27
We got started and I think people have always heard of different things.
2:30
Well, was it the Playboy Endurance series?
2:32
Was it the Speed World Challenge?
2:34
Was it the Passport Endurance series?
2:36
What, you know, what, where is it So the World Challenge that people
2:40
know and love in North America?
2:42
Has been an always evolving series.
2:44
That did start right at now 32 years ago, and when it did, it was a focus on really
2:51
your original idea of sports car racing, but a real emphasis on grand touring
2:56
and looking at cars for the first time.
2:58
Acura's, et cetera, are getting out on the track.
3:01
And that had not been something people were seeing.
3:02
They were normally used to a Ferrari, Porsche type of mentality in that
3:06
era, and suddenly they saw a blend.
3:08
What's really fun, and you see in, in everything that you guys
3:11
do in the Motor Sports Club where.
3:13
You mentioned about being about all things automotive.
3:16
In a lot of ways, that's what drove us as well.
3:18
You know, it's way overused by racers, for racers and every series
3:23
uses it in one form or another.
3:25
I worked on a series that used it in the tour GAR space and the Tuner
3:29
Market and so, you know, we get it.
3:30
We understand that, but the reality was is that what is World Challenge today
3:34
in the US was reformed by a group of racers that saw the SCCA Sports Car
3:40
Club of America was looking at going.
3:42
You know, it's money losing speed's, pulling out.
3:45
We're not really getting the money we wanna do, you know, I think
3:47
we wanna do something different.
3:48
And a group of our racers got together and said, let's form World Challenge,
3:52
or in this case WC Vision and create a new marketing group still working
3:57
with the SCCA and put on these races.
3:59
And that, I, I kind of think of us having various decade breaks.
4:03
And that was a, a real change for our company about 2008.
4:06
They looked at all forms of it and at that point we were running maybe.
4:09
20 cars when we run at Sonoma in April, we'll be having probably 120, 130 cars.
4:16
So, you know, a lot of growth over that period of time.
4:18
And because of that.
4:20
Really the global leader in GT racing, A man named Stefan Rotel, who went to
4:24
San Diego State as his name would sound.
4:26
He is from France and very much a world resident.
4:29
He's lived all over the world, but always talks about how much he loved
4:31
San Diego and, and the car culture of of America, and really regretted as
4:36
much as he briefly worked for Bernie Eckel Stone for seven years and put
4:40
on a lot of different races around the world, he always felt like, gosh, I'm
4:44
missing something in North America.
4:45
He is, as you noted.
4:47
Uh, the introduction, uh, a partner in the development with the FIA of GT three,
4:51
uh, and is considered in a lot of ways the, the godfather grandfather of GT
4:55
three racing in Europe and in the world.
4:57
And in a lot of ways people often say that Stefan Rotel saved GT racing.
5:02
And I think there's a lot of truth to that and it really become.
5:04
Really small.
5:05
So about 2015 an opportunity came up for Stefan to invest and then
5:10
eventually take over and become the majority shareholder in 2018.
5:13
And what was World Challenge?
5:15
Four of those same racers are still there today and part of the ownership group, but
5:19
we're majority owned by Stefan Ell, that's then's the name Stephan Rael organization.
5:24
So if I remember my motor sports history correctly, and, and please
5:28
correct me if I'm wrong, this would've.
5:30
Been born in that kind of gray period after SECA ProAm TransAm started
5:37
to disappear in my formative years watching drivers like Lynn St. James
5:42
and Hurley Haywood and Willie t Ridge Oh, and Houck running the ITU
5:46
at GTO cars and things like that.
5:48
Watkins Glen and Summit Point were on the schedule in those times,
5:51
but you're like, what happened in the, the mid to late nineties?
5:55
And there was still touring, car racing, but I think a lot of us maybe
5:59
turned our attention to BTCC and even, you know, the Swedes and the
6:03
Australian Supercars and all that.
6:05
And it's like, well, what happened to gt racing in America?
6:08
And so this was almost born, let's say, out of necessity to to Exactly.
6:12
She, yeah.
6:13
And, and it became natural.
6:15
I joined the company in 2012.
6:18
And at that point we had done, I came in in October.
6:21
In August, we had done a demo of the Audi R eight, uh, at
6:25
Sonoma, and it was already home.
6:26
This might be better than our own built GT cars.
6:30
And of course, that sounded a little bit like blasphemy at that point
6:32
because the culture still was, Hey.
6:34
I'll build all of this and then we will get the series to home
6:37
alligator and then we'll do it.
6:38
And it wasn't really practical and, and many people were already
6:41
thinking, well, what about this GT three stuff that's going on in Europe?
6:43
So we were the first to adopt it.
6:45
SSA came along and adopted it about three years later and
6:48
went full bore into it as well.
6:50
And I think it's been good for the whole industry.
6:52
And when you look today about how many GT three cards there are, you can see it
6:55
as a really successful global platform.
6:57
And at that time, that would've been also when a LMS was very
7:01
popular here in the United States.
7:02
Correct.
7:03
And it, well, A LMS was having the challenge of working against, and I
7:06
know one of the things I always get asked in these interviews is, what's the
7:09
difference between you and the other guys?
7:11
And I'm sure you'll come to that when you want ask it, but, oh, we
7:13
can have, we can talk about it now.
7:15
Let's go.
7:15
But, uh, A-A-L-M-S was awesome, Dr. Pan's point of doing it for
7:20
the fans as opposed to what we talked about by racers for racers.
7:24
Was really awesome.
7:25
And on the same token, you could not argue with the corporate strength,
7:29
just presence that the NASCAR organization could bring to Grand Dam.
7:33
And yet they really fell into something that was just a constant battle and
7:37
a constant argument about who was bigger, who was better, and I don't
7:41
think the sport really benefited.
7:43
Stephen Rotel has an saying that I absolutely love.
7:45
I think all of us can take it to heart for business.
7:47
That is, he likes to say, I don't wanna res slice the pie.
7:50
I want to grow it.
7:51
I love that.
7:52
I love working for someone like that.
7:53
It's a great attitude to have and a great way to work.
7:56
If you're always thinking about how are you gonna grow the business?
7:58
You know, stealing market share from another person, okay, we can do that.
8:01
Is it really growing?
8:03
Is it making to your goal as you talk about for your site and what you guys do?
8:06
Of getting more people were, you know, understanding about mobility,
8:09
transportation, motorsport, the excitement of all of this.
8:12
You know, that's much better than let's fight and take something off of so and
8:15
so not realizing what things had become.
8:17
I'll be honest, I reengaged this story along with a LMS, but at the same time,
8:23
that Speed channel became really popular.
8:25
You know, my dad kind of grabbed me and said, Hey, check this out.
8:28
Audi's back with, you know, GTI running the S fours and the S sixes, and then I
8:32
was suddenly hooked again because again, this was the weird dark ages of imsa.
8:36
It wasn't Can-Am anymore.
8:38
It wasn't this, it wasn't that.
8:39
Nobody really knew what was going on.
8:40
There was all these little pockets of touring, car racing
8:44
going on, and you needed.
8:45
Special access to watch them or you know, cable feeds from
8:48
overseas, all this kind of stuff.
8:49
So now I like the fact that we've kind of homologated all this to
8:53
use a racing term and that we have a platform we can jump to.
8:56
Hopefully this name sticks.
8:58
And that's part of the reason why we're talking about this, is to reintroduce
9:00
people to the many name changes that we're SRO from Speed World Challenge
9:05
to Pelli, world Challenge, et cetera.
9:06
But the World Challenge part, as you said, sticks.
9:08
Yes.
9:09
And now used globally as well.
9:10
But I also think we wanna take a step into history and talk about.
9:14
Greg Gill, the Petrolhead.
9:16
So how do you get involved with SRO?
9:18
What's the story there?
9:19
Well, it was part of a work release program with the judge and the parole
9:22
officer and, and just, uh, it really, you know, they, they were trying
9:25
to find things that would keep me off the streets and out of trouble.
9:28
Probably more true than I want to admit, but truthfully.
9:31
Growing up in Southern California, 1960s and 1970s, everything was about
9:37
two things, really, surfing cars.
9:39
You couldn't grow up in that culture without a love for the
9:42
outdoors and a love for everything.
9:44
Automotive, my stepfather was a huge sports car fan.
9:48
He really wasn't too thrilled with our displacement passion
9:51
that we had as a family.
9:53
The sixties and seventies, but he also got us interested in sports cars and
9:57
would talk about racing jaguars and restoring jags and doing different
10:00
things that we had in projects.
10:02
We were dragging home and I was dragging home all sorts of
10:04
falling apart race cars that never really made it back to the track.
10:07
But you know, I had a dream like every teenager does.
10:09
So.
10:10
Amen.
10:10
Um, that was fun, but a lot of it was enthusiast driven.
10:13
What came out of that while working in the family business
10:16
of architecture and construction management, a friend of mine was.
10:20
A big enthusiast, publisher, and a real second tier publishing company.
10:24
It wasn't hot rod, it wasn't CarCraft, it wasn't names that you knew, but they
10:28
were names that were really nichey, street Rodder and Trucking and VW Trends
10:33
and you know, these magazines later.
10:35
Sport Compact Car, this enthusiast base.
10:38
I ended up just, you know, I would say luckily, grace of God.
10:41
Showed up and got an opportunity in it, and there I was in automotive.
10:45
At every aspect of automotive, you were dealing with restoration, you were
10:49
dealing with hot rods, you were going to Bonneville, you were still talking about
10:52
major events like Long Beach Grand Prix.
10:55
And I did that for almost 20 years, and it was absolutely wonderful to just always
11:01
be, even though I worked on some kind of highbrow magazines during the same and
11:04
got bought by a company that published things like 17 and Modern Bride and Power
11:09
and Motor Yacht and Automobile Magazine.
11:11
So you could, but at the end of the day.
11:13
I worked with hardcore hands-on enthusiasts.
11:17
Dean Case can always tell you about D Sport and the great guys there.
11:20
I got to work with them.
11:21
There were a lot of that type of really put, you know, another part
11:25
on to make the vehicle go faster, to make the vehicle look better.
11:30
So the transition from what we might say in the British world,
11:33
bits of kit and go fast Bits.
11:36
Was really probably the biggest thing for me.
11:38
I loved media, I loved communication, and I knew the brand name World Challenge
11:42
until I got over to working with Racer Magazine, which in the printed motor
11:46
sports world is pretty much everybody's holy grail at North America of the highest
11:50
quality, greatest standards of journalism.
11:53
And, you know, just a dream job.
11:54
And I got that opportunity in 2010.
11:56
Out of that though, I realized that my hands-on experience, I'd always
12:00
been the business guy, and I was suddenly signing checks for people
12:04
who had Jackie Stewart on their phone dial and, oh, if you wanna talk to
12:08
Bernie Stone, this is how you do it.
12:10
I'm thinking, no way, I'm not, this is not right.
12:13
And I literally resigned.
12:15
Loved the position, loved the magazine, but I went to the folks at National
12:19
Autosport Association and said, you said you wanted a vice president of marketing.
12:22
I think I'm your guy.
12:23
And God bless 'em for about 11 months.
12:25
They let me do that.
12:26
I got to go hands on and start at HPD, start learning how to drive a
12:30
car, get the experience on track.
12:32
Still, definitely not a racer, nor will I ever act like one, but
12:36
at least I could say I started to understand the terminology and
12:39
actually had been behind the wheel.
12:40
Driven at speed.
12:42
Understood the things that I'd been selling and part of for so long, but
12:46
didn't have that hands-on experience.
12:48
And so during that time period, I got recruited by World Challenge,
12:51
I think because they were looking for that same identification area.
12:55
We were doing it with nasa, we were changing things up.
12:58
We created Speed News, came out with connecting with the both
13:01
the readers and the participants.
13:03
And that's very much where World Challenge wanted to go.
13:05
And that's.
13:06
Opportunity.
13:06
That's how I got there.
13:07
So that's that long, painful story.
13:09
We talked about the when and the how, but let's talk about the what.
13:13
SRO, as I understand it, is broken into multiple racing programs.
13:17
So let's expand upon that idea.
13:20
Let's talk about each one.
13:21
Types of cars, is it all just road racing in North America?
13:25
We are.
13:25
We run our tour car series, our GT four series, and our GT series.
13:30
Globally though, in the SRO umbrella, as you know, we're in Australia,
13:34
we're in Africa, we're in Asia, obviously started in Europe.
13:38
Because of that, we have really a good relationship with growing and doing
13:43
new things, whether it's the Motorsport games, which will go on again in Marse.
13:47
Second annual, and that's on behalf of the FIA.
13:49
We'll produce that for them.
13:51
So that's exciting.
13:52
And that is just like, it sounds like the Olympics, but this time now with first
13:55
time we did it, I think it was 12 or 14 categories, now we'll have 23 categories.
13:59
So really excited.
14:00
And again, that speaks to that whole importance of transportation
14:03
and how things are changing.
14:05
So we're excited about that.
14:06
We also do something called GTX, which is a, again, spend
14:10
from our grand tour heritage.
14:11
And if you know, as you look back, automotively, the whole
14:14
concept of the grand tour was.
14:16
Could we take a vehicle a hundred miles without breaking down in the X
14:20
of GTX is talking about your high-end Rolls Royce, Porsche, Mercedes,
14:25
et cetera, that are creating these full electric powered vehicles.
14:29
Can we take 'em from Paris to Berlin?
14:31
What does that look like?
14:32
And, and take care of it.
14:33
We do something called the Ven Dome Rally.
14:36
Uh, we'll be having another one in Italy, all thematically done.
14:39
Did one as a salute to the eighties.
14:40
The next one will be the Dolce Vita sixties.
14:42
All done in Italy.
14:44
Really, really cool.
14:45
So we do some things that are, speak to that enjoyment
14:48
of the automotive experience.
14:50
We also have something called Curb Stone.
14:52
That's our version of Edge Attic Chin, David Murray, insert
14:56
your track day company here.
14:58
It is the most expensive track day series, but on the same
15:01
token, it's the absolute best.
15:03
And because of that, we have something called the GT one Sports Club where
15:06
you're running the Lamborghinis, ani, et cetera, and people are
15:10
just having a great experience.
15:11
It's not really racing, it's still on track.
15:14
And they're getting that experience typically right
15:16
after one of our race weekends.
15:18
So they can tell their friends, they were at spa, they were at Al Silverstone,
15:21
but they were not, or God willing at Indy, but I'm the same token.
15:24
They weren't there driving an A world challenge, eight hour racing.
15:27
And SRO has also expanded into eSports.
15:29
Am I correct?
15:30
Yes.
15:31
That's something we're super excited about.
15:32
I came to our board in 2017 after seeing Ericson at the CES show demonstrating 5G.
15:40
I'm a bit of an early adopter and I, I just got so excited.
15:42
I walked into the boardroom, actually it was a board meeting
15:45
that served Americas, and so you can kind of get the context of it.
15:47
I said.
15:48
Gentlemen, this is the future.
15:49
We're gonna be on track here and down in the media center.
15:52
Guys will be racing against us in real time.
15:54
They didn't throw me out of the room, but I wasn't exactly warmly received.
15:58
I don't think they really thought that was possible.
16:01
Fast forward now to the Fantech being one of our signature sponsor
16:04
and GT real challenge power by AWS.
16:07
When you look at it, what Fantech has done, we now have a fantech arena.
16:11
We require our GT world challenge, European competitors to nominate
16:15
one of their regular drivers, not a ringer from someone who's Billy in
16:19
their bedroom, or Susie, who's been playing for, you know, eight years.
16:22
But no, these are people who are, or their day job is racing a,
16:25
you know, a, a car on track and they're required to qualify and run.
16:29
At SPA as an example, the team that got pulled, they were within one 10th of a
16:34
second in the game as they were on track.
16:36
That's how close we are now with eSports.
16:39
We do a global eSports championship.
16:40
We have rounds in Europe, rounds in Asia rounds here in North America.
16:44
And again, thanks to Fantech, also thanks to Honda HPD, able to do
16:48
some really cool things with that.
16:49
And when the pandemic hit like a lot of others.
16:52
We were already mindful of this, I think in either two weeks time or
16:56
three weeks time, God bless Robbie Ola, our Vice President of marketing, he
16:59
put together a great program and our partners were interested in it 'cause
17:03
we have a great relationship with AWS and CrowdStrike and we're able to get
17:06
right out and go into virtual racing.
17:08
And again, not too much patting ourselves in the back.
17:10
I know the rest of the Motors sports professional world did the same thing.
17:13
I think we were kind of first to market 'cause we were already
17:15
passionate about doing it.
17:16
But we have our own game set of cor do com ceiling.
17:19
That's a very cool game.
17:21
All branded up running GT cars and now the new BMW is in it and I'm happy
17:24
to say with one of our racers Livery, Samantha Tan, so that's pretty cool.
17:28
What about SRO and imsa?
17:31
How do they compare and contrast, you know, the GT cars and IMSA
17:34
versus the touring GT cars?
17:36
SRO, how does that work?
17:38
Especially now starting in 2022?
17:40
We're on the same platforms, not on LMDH.
17:42
Obviously, when you come down to their GTD Pro and GTD, they are GT three cards.
17:47
Same thing we're running in GT World Challenge.
17:49
That can be both confusing and a blessing because on one hand, people,
17:52
but wait a minute, but on the other hand, it really is apples and oranges.
17:56
If you think about it, NASCAR and imsa.
17:59
Is a amazing part of American culture and history.
18:03
They own racetracks.
18:04
They have a focus on that because of their own personal pleasures and pride.
18:09
They also have some of the amazing races at Daytona, Sebring, Atlanta.
18:13
These are all endurance races.
18:14
We, on the other hand, are a focused customer racing and pro
18:18
racing series using the same cars, but focused on sprint racing.
18:23
Their attitude might be a little bit of, you can do all these here
18:25
and you might get to La Monk.
18:27
Our attitude is you can get to LA Mall through our Asian LA Mall
18:29
series or you can get to the 24 hours of spa through our series.
18:33
You know, I always tell people we're like the little brother, the nephew, the
18:36
cousin, you know, whatever you wanna say.
18:38
I never wanna put us in a competition.
18:40
Light.
18:41
Back to that example we talked about.
18:42
We want to grow the pipe bigger.
18:44
The more people enter I ssa, that can be good for us.
18:46
The more people who enter our series, that's good for ams a and
18:49
it's good for the whole industry.
18:50
At the end of the day, we wanna grow that pie bigger for everybody.
18:53
I always thought the bigger difference was the fact that the
18:56
World Challenge Series allowed for the inclusion of fun wheel drive.
18:59
I mean, front wheel drive vehicles, as well as all-wheel drive vehicles with
19:03
penalty, unlike the rear wheel drive and mid engine biased, you know, series.
19:08
No, and, and we, and we have an outright ban of the Confederate
19:11
flag, but that's really true though.
19:12
You're right.
19:12
10, 15 years ago, and especially when we were running all-wheel drive, Volvos and
19:16
some other things that didn't run an imsa, you could say that, but now with when
19:20
they're running TCR, we don't, they're in that, that world definitely with
19:25
their Michelin pilot serious challenge.
19:26
So there's a lot of similarities.
19:27
I think a little bit more of a, as much as we've got world-class racers that
19:32
people recognize the names of sports car racing globally, that race with us.
19:36
We also really look for the opportunity.
19:37
Again, part of that growing the business for everybody, bringing new people in.
19:41
And that's the great thing about TCA TC and, and now TCX people can come in and
19:46
you're not looking at a 1 million, 3 million, $5 million budget to go racing.
19:51
People are coming in and the low to mid six figures or less, and
19:55
they're having a successful fund.
19:57
Pro racing experience, that is a difference there.
19:59
That there's probably a lower barrier to entry in the SRO than
20:03
there is, and that's across the board, operating costs, et cetera.
20:06
And again, that's by design.
20:07
But also I'm not carrying the overhead of, you know, running racetracks and doing
20:11
all the other things that IMSA does in their leadership role that NASCAR has.
20:15
I think it's very important for all of us in North American motor sports to remember
20:19
the weight that these local racetracks carry on their shoulders, whether they're.
20:23
Part of the Penske organization.
20:25
In the case of Indy, the independent operators who, who race around the country
20:29
for IndyCar and other places, or the small mom and pop tracks, if we don't
20:33
support these people, they're a part of an economy and they give us a place
20:35
to enjoy our hobby and our passions.
20:37
So it's important to do that.
20:38
Again, God bless the folks in Daytona for, and they have the courage
20:42
and building things and like what they just did at the Coliseum.
20:44
That was amazing.
20:45
So I don't know if our listeners were paying close attention or not,
20:48
but if you go back about a minute or so, Greg just dropped a bunch of SRO
20:54
classes on you, T-C-A-T-C-X, et cetera.
20:57
Now you might be scratching your head going, well, what happened?
21:00
TCR.
21:01
Wait, I thought, does that belong to SRO?
21:04
Is that so?
21:05
Can we clarify this a little bit?
21:07
Certainly.
21:07
The WSC owns the TCR name and they've started a lot and done a tremendous
21:12
amount that they've done in that space over the years and just, uh, again,
21:16
have worked with the SRO and others.
21:18
They gave us the opportunity to license and work as a sub license to imsa.
21:22
So we did run TCR cars for a period of time.
21:24
But because we were running in a sprint format and, and very much we had to
21:29
run under a certain BOP and we always hear that term balance of performance.
21:33
It really made it hard to be competitive for our customers.
21:35
Whereas in the same token, TCR in the Michelin pilot series had
21:39
more room because they had an allowance of changing things.
21:42
'cause they had to be competitive with the GS cars, in this case
21:46
GT four cars that were running.
21:47
So there, there was a little bit more flexibility.
21:48
So it really.
21:49
As much as we love TCR and still do, it just wasn't practical for
21:53
us to keep it because it couldn't be competitive in our fields.
21:56
It was really a difficult decision.
21:58
So did away with TCR, uh, passed on, renewing a license on it.
22:02
We brought out something called TCX, which is a pretty cool category that's growing.
22:06
I think we'll have 10 cars in it this year and continued to grow.
22:09
Right now it's predominantly driven by BMW, but there's some, uh.
22:13
New cars coming and Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and others Subaru, uh, et
22:18
cetera, are all part of our TC field.
22:20
You mentioned something really, really important here.
22:22
BOP Balance of Power.
22:23
It comes up all the time.
22:24
You see it in the headlines, especially after the last Rolex where Team
22:28
Corvette was nerfed by the BOP.
22:30
And if you're not in the motorsport world or you're just learning
22:32
about this, what does that mean?
22:33
What does that mean exactly?
22:34
All these terms.
22:35
Remember, it does mean blame other people.
22:38
Just to understand.
22:39
Just Yeah.
22:40
Just to be clear what that stands for.
22:42
It could be balance of performance and like driver rankings.
22:46
It's something in the SRO that we started first, and like driver rankings.
22:50
There may be times that we scratch our heads and say, what were we thinking?
22:52
But it is the best way to take.
22:55
A wide variety of cars when you have to balance a Bentley against a Carrera, you
22:59
know, how does that work and what you know, what are the good ways to do it?
23:02
And the same thing when you look at back to our friends at Hemsa and
23:05
you're trying to balance Lamborghinis, BMWs, and Corvettes with GM's
23:09
normal way of doing business and how aggressive and competitive they are.
23:13
Ferrari, the same way, none of 'em wanna.
23:15
Right.
23:15
The series then has to find that balance of performance where they evaluate
23:20
everything and we're talking from not just how fast did you go into that corner, but
23:25
you know, what was your breaking pressure?
23:27
Where are you at?
23:28
What was your exit speed?
23:29
How much fuel were you carrying?
23:31
What's the flow rate of the fuel that you were getting on your refueling?
23:34
It goes on and on, and then you're always gonna deal with interpretations of it,
23:38
and different engineers are gonna argue.
23:40
No, no, no.
23:41
You're interpreting that data completely different than I think
23:44
you should in interpret that data.
23:45
But at the end of the day, if you look at balance of performance, and again,
23:48
back to the SRO and the leadership on it, we brought it out so that people could
23:53
not just have all spec series racing.
23:55
'cause that's where it was heading.
23:56
You were gonna have one dominant brand that was gonna do well and no
24:00
one wanted to compete against them.
24:01
Now, when you have a balance of performance, you have the opportunity.
24:04
Sometimes it works out great.
24:06
But if you look at it, when I first started hearing the word BOP.
24:09
In 2012, you know, 10 years ago it was stated, this is a true story.
24:14
If you can get 10 cars within two seconds of each other, you are
24:17
doing really good on your BOP.
24:19
Oh my goodness.
24:20
Here we are now with sometimes 20 and 30 cars within a 10th of each other.
24:25
As much as any one team on any one weekend is gonna tell you
24:28
that BOP is a terrible thing.
24:30
You have to look at those overarching stats and say.
24:33
If I can take again, we'll the say a minimum number of 15 world class drivers
24:38
and get them within tenths of a second of each other in different platforms.
24:42
VOP works and is here to stay.
24:44
Yeah.
24:44
And there's different arguments to that idea, and I think we all
24:49
understand it and appreciate it.
24:51
You know, back in the eighties.
24:52
Audi got slapped with the unfair advantage, which was
24:55
kind of the genesis of BOP.
24:56
Yes, because they were running all wheel drive and all these kind of things.
24:59
So what did they do?
25:00
Sandbags in the trunk.
25:01
Just keep adding weight to the car, reduce the power to weight ratio.
25:04
You know, they were only making 600 horsepower with a single turbo
25:08
against a big massive V eight.
25:09
I mean, you know, whatever.
25:11
But that's a history lesson we learned from that.
25:13
But I do also appreciate the simplicity in that because Audi and
25:19
VAG kind of turned around and said.
25:20
Why don't you guys build a better car?
25:22
Stop, you know, punishing us for having cutting edge technology.
25:27
And by the way, we are making less horsepower than you We're on a
25:30
production chassis, not a tube frame.
25:32
We're on all these things.
25:33
Build a better car.
25:34
The argument goes both ways.
25:36
If you went back to simple, to power to weight ratio as a balance of power.
25:39
If you're behind by five seconds, build a better car.
25:42
But I get it, some of it's politics, some of it.
25:45
You know, whatever.
25:45
Yeah.
25:45
And Eric, I think the other thing you have to, to look at too is the fact that
25:49
we have one thing, again coming from the era that I came up in and you know, when
25:53
million dollar payouts, and I always like to talk about the fact that people woke
25:57
up from the tobacco hangover and just this amazing amount of money and the merchants
26:01
of death were throwing at Motorsport.
26:02
And so those were grand times and it was great for people.
26:06
When that went away, you couldn't just say, Hey, I need a bigger engine.
26:10
I need to figure out how to more creatively cheat.
26:13
Well, I'm sorry, creative interpretation of the rules.
26:16
People don't cheat.
26:16
Then manufacturers had to go to customer racing, and so you know, that happened.
26:20
But on the same token.
26:22
What it did, and you really touched on it when it was Audi, Porsche,
26:24
and others that led the way saying, okay, great, we're gonna do this.
26:27
Now here's the problem with that, though.
26:29
It's an arms race.
26:30
Now we're in GT one again, you mentioned history lessons.
26:33
Now we're talking about, oh, look how great this is.
26:35
But pretty soon you have got one dominant manufacturer.
26:39
When they're charging people for building their program and they want someone to
26:42
buy their car something, oh, well, we're not site manufacturers always do this.
26:47
The history for the last 30 years has shown this and you, we
26:50
mentioned British Terrain Car.
26:52
You can look at the same thing as Supercars and Ossie V eight.
26:54
You allow the manufacturers come in, they get excited, they wanna win, they're
26:58
there, they wanna dominate, and they build more and more and more expensive
27:02
vehicles, whether they're a straight manufacturer like General Motors in the
27:05
Cadillac program or Corvette program.
27:08
Then you say, well, let's go customer racing, wanna have more people buying it?
27:10
And then you talk to 'em and say, well, how much is your engine?
27:13
Well, that's $5 million.
27:14
Now that's not really gonna work.
27:16
But that's the same thing we see in the evolutions of GT three, which
27:19
is why we brought out GT two, which is why we have GT four, which is why
27:22
we continue to believe in turn car.
27:24
Because if we go the normal way of that arms race approach.
27:28
Every year, the EVO and the GT three will be even more precise,
27:33
only able to be driven on that 10 10th edge by the absolute most
27:37
professional person in Motorsport.
27:38
Then that's gonna take the driver who is funding those programs.
27:42
The term we use obviously is gentleman driver.
27:44
He or she.
27:45
Is out there and, and they're paying for the program, but they may not be
27:48
able to drive that car at that level.
27:50
What happens then?
27:51
They say, you know what, I think I wanna go sailing instead, I
27:53
think I'm gonna go horse racing.
27:54
Instead, they put their money in something else.
27:56
We don't want that.
27:57
We want 'em enjoying motor sports for a long, long time.
28:00
And you know, this actually segues into my next question, which comes from basically
28:05
a very simple question, which is, what is the definition of a touring car?
28:10
And I have to lead into this, right?
28:11
We, we can very simply say, well, what kind of.
28:13
Vehicle brands run in this series?
28:15
Are they factory teams?
28:16
Are they private tier, but more important to that is kind of this
28:19
ethos behind what is touring card?
28:21
Because the definition of vehicles, right?
28:24
We kind of slice it like music.
28:26
It's all these genres, right?
28:27
You have the hypercar, the supercar, the luxury car, and the
28:29
grand tour and the sport compact and all these kind of things.
28:33
But when you go to the dealership, you don't walk up to the salesperson
28:36
and say, I'd like to buy.
28:38
Tory car.
28:38
What is a Tory car?
28:40
Yeah, but it's a two-door sport coop.
28:42
But that doesn't really put that way, and it's very hard for people to relate to it.
28:47
And then you have the same thing.
28:48
The series looks at it and says, well, wait a minute.
28:50
Keo wants to run, but the car only has four doors.
28:52
Oh, okay.
28:53
We're gonna make allowances so it gets really confusing fast.
28:56
Or in the case of our.
28:57
Okay.
28:57
It's always gonna be front wheel drive.
28:59
Well, except for these cars.
29:00
'cause they're okay.
29:01
'cause they're rear wheel drive so they're running.
29:03
So the, the definition gets very hard.
29:05
So what we do is really kind of keep to a power to wait ratio
29:08
in our De Terrain car class.
29:09
So we start at 200 in TCA and we are gonna say you're gonna be 150.
29:14
We've gone as low as a hundred with TCV.
29:15
That was kind of exciting, but not practical.
29:18
There are TCV cars still out racing today, but uh, it wasn't really good for us.
29:22
So we have TCA, which one's in that?
29:24
Power to weight?
29:24
200 horsepower.
29:25
Then you go up to our TC cars and you're in 300.
29:28
And then you're at TCX, where you're 400 being throttled back.
29:31
It works out really well for us to have kind of a horsepower and a power
29:34
to weight ratio that we deal with.
29:36
And you, and you touched on earlier about those, you know, make a better
29:39
mousetrap, you know, build a better car.
29:41
You didn't really touch on rewards weight.
29:43
And I came in as we were killing rewards weight.
29:45
What a negative term.
29:47
Hey, you won.
29:47
Now you're gonna have to carry some ballast, you know?
29:49
Right.
29:49
Exactly.
29:49
Work harder.
29:50
Or in the cases of like when we had Hyundai running in TCR, they're like,
29:53
do you know how heavy 90 kilos is?
29:56
And what we're having to do to compensate for that, you know, on a, on a Hyundai.
30:00
And yeah, they did great.
30:01
They did very good.
30:02
But my goodness, what kinds of brands do run in the SRO America Series?
30:07
So we're really proud that we have 20 different brands and you
30:11
literally start, you know, and, and you can, you can read through and.
30:14
Say Aston and Audi and BMW and you know, you just keep going through
30:19
the alphabet and you'll find the cars that are appropriate there.
30:22
I no longer try to count them off like Pokemon because I
30:25
inevitably miss people and then feel really bad after an interview.
30:29
You know, like we have BMW, um, we have many, it's a constant additions
30:34
all the time as we bring new people in, as we homologate new cars.
30:37
I would say every year there are one or two marks that are
30:40
being added to the series.
30:42
I think I've been as high as 24.
30:45
Different marks running in the series in a year, and as low as I believe, as 17.
30:49
So it can vary just on what people's programs and like I say, there are the
30:53
standards, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari that we're used to, but, and again, you look
30:57
at Aston Martin, then you start talking about, well, what about a jeanetta?
31:00
Uh, what do you do about a KGM crossbow?
31:02
And, you know, there's all these other, other brands that have become GT four
31:06
Homologated or in some other category.
31:08
They're homologated and running with us, the Julia and TCR, the Alpha
31:12
Romeo, you know, interesting to see the, the different cars that can run.
31:15
I'm still upset with the 1 47 GTA rear wheel drive hatchback that Alpha
31:19
Romeo brought over, teased us that they were gonna sell and never did.
31:23
I'm still really mad about that.
31:24
Yeah.
31:24
But that, that's a whole discussion for another day.
31:26
But there's a lot of cool cars in Europe that I wish we had.
31:30
Yeah, lots of French cars in touring car racing too.
31:33
Oh my goodness.
31:34
Yeah.
31:34
I would love to get some CI drones over here, but, uh, Cleo Sport would be the
31:38
first one on my list, but that's okay.
31:40
Oh, boy.
31:40
Absolutely.
31:41
Absolutely.
31:42
Yeah.
31:42
If our audience recalls, not long ago we had an SRO series driver on break fix
31:49
by the name of Rob Holland for broTECH racing, and so he came on and shared his.
31:53
He talked about SRO, which got us clued in in doing a little bit of investigative
31:58
work ourselves to say what's SRO, and obviously we covered that earlier.
32:02
Are there other drivers, are there other names in the SRO, especially
32:06
in the GT America series that people might recognize or not know that these
32:10
drivers are running in the program?
32:11
You know, it's, we can't ever release before we hit the entry list or release.
32:16
You know the drivers that are well-known racing around the globe.
32:20
John Halen, Robbie Foley, Ron Ell, bill Berland, you know,
32:24
again, you know, awesome.
32:26
Uh, driver Corey Lewis.
32:27
People know that name.
32:28
That's a name that again they see in both paddocks I mentioned earlier,
32:31
no longer racing the series when Al Rent managing for the series.
32:34
Jack Baldwin, one of those Trans am great scholars of Vac Camel GT days.
32:39
Two names that I love being part of the series are Aaron Vogel.
32:43
And Michael Cooper.
32:44
Michael is somebody who came up through our tour car, went through GG four,
32:47
went through GG three races around the world, raced with the Cadillac program.
32:51
Michael was just down racing in Daytona.
32:53
So that, you know, those, those are some of the names of that.
32:55
And then again, I'll say Rob Holland is somebody who knew that world
32:59
challenge in those, in the quote early days or in the glory days.
33:02
And then came back in after racing at BTC and doing the different
33:06
things in Europe and adac and all the different areas came back in,
33:09
said, Hey, I wanna change things up.
33:10
Let's make some differences in motorsports.
33:12
I am so grateful to be running with Rob and working with him on just making
33:16
the paddock a more inclusive space, creating more opportunities for people,
33:20
and it's just an honor to work with him and some other great people too.
33:23
Samantha Tan, who I mentioned earlier, Samantha is really no
33:25
stranger to coming up through our touring car ranks through G two four.
33:29
Now in GT three and there's a good example of somebody where in their
33:32
family they've said the goal is LA Mall.
33:34
I imagine we'll see them a couple more years in GT World Challenge, and then
33:37
you're gonna find them over in GTD and GTD Pro as their goal is to get to LA Mall.
33:42
Now maybe they'll go through Asian LA Mall series and and go in that way,
33:46
or maybe they'll go through the 24 hours of spa and head out that way.
33:50
In Europe, who knows what their path will be.
33:51
But we have people who have been racing with us like GMG and
33:54
James d have been with us for.
33:56
Over 20 years and racing it and then mixing it up against the Johnny
34:00
O'Connell's and Jan Halen's and others, you know, for those 20 years.
34:03
Uh, so it's been really a great com in combination of people.
34:07
Tony v Lander was one of our regular styles.
34:09
Tony's now been out for a year, but you know, again, names that
34:12
people would say like Jordan Pepper and Elli, and these different.
34:15
Global sports car stars evolving racers with us.
34:18
You actually mentioned something really important, which was the progression from
34:21
SRO to a series like lamonts, the WEC.
34:25
How does your aspiring ProAm driver, somebody in SCCA or
34:30
NASA make their way into SRO?
34:32
What does that progression look like?
34:35
What are the qualifications?
34:36
How does somebody get involved if they're at that level and maybe to your point,
34:39
looking to mix things up and do something different, grow out of spec Miata.
34:43
Into SRM.
34:45
You know, again, you look at the people in the momentum space and there are
34:48
some of the best racers out there.
34:50
You watch a spec me auto field and you know, and either NASA or SCCA, it is
34:55
hard, tight, some of the best of the best, absolute grinding, fast racing, and
35:00
I love watching it and I love the people who participate, the detail they put in.
35:04
Along the way, people sometimes get a bug, and I think it's the transition
35:08
when people are looking, at the end of the day, they just wanna
35:11
be able to tell their country club friends that they raised a Porsche.
35:14
Okay?
35:14
So they go to PCA, they do that for a period of time.
35:17
They maybe go on the Cup series and they may be very, very happy there.
35:20
But along the way they start hearing about, oh, well I heard the Ferrari did
35:23
this, I heard the Lamborghini did that.
35:25
And they start thinking, what can I beat them?
35:26
You know, you talk to people about the, you know, putting 'em in a GT four Supra.
35:29
We'll tell 'em, look.
35:30
This is an awesome vehicle and it's really that very small evolution.
35:35
When you look at all of the great enthusiast groups out there and and racing
35:39
groups out there, there are literally hundreds of cars on any given weekend that
35:43
could be running and many of 'em qualify to run in our series or an IMSA in terms
35:47
of there are GT four, there are GT three car there, they're in the TC classes.
35:51
The difference is a lot to do with how good are you and
35:55
how hard do you want to push?
35:56
If you want to be a pro racer at the very entry level with us at TCA.
36:00
Or in GT World challenge, you're gonna have to have a ton of
36:04
time to do it and you're gonna have to really push hard for it.
36:07
Could Chris go better race with this comfortably?
36:09
Yes.
36:09
Chris is a good shoe and he could do a great job and I can guarantee
36:12
you he would do very, very well.
36:14
Chris has run and and run long things before.
36:17
But it also might be the case where Chris would go, man, that is just too much.
36:20
That is really too much of a commitment.
36:22
It takes too much time and training.
36:23
Is Chris qualified?
36:24
Absolutely.
36:25
But on the same token, he may just not have the mindset and
36:28
temperament for it to do that.
36:30
A great example was said by George Robinson, which is Gar Robinson's
36:33
father, who, uh, just did so well in LMP three down in Daytona.
36:38
Obviously his co-driver was Jack Baldwin years ago.
36:41
He said to Jack, do you understand why I race Jack?
36:45
Do you know why people like me who have private jets and live in that
36:48
type of lifestyle, why we race?
36:50
And Jack said, well, you know, 'cause it's competitive because the prize money.
36:53
He's like, no, no, Jack.
36:54
Not that at all, because we want to and we can't.
36:57
And if you take away either of those interests, then it becomes less likely.
37:01
At the end of the day, you've gotta allow that people who want to
37:05
and can, and some absolutely want to, but they can't time, money.
37:09
Other reasons they can't.
37:10
Or at the end of the day, they're just looking at and go, you know,
37:12
I'd like to do that, but I don't know if I, you know, one thing that
37:14
we all acknowledge that entry level.
37:17
NASA, HPDE, it's expensive to go racing.
37:20
It still costs you some money and time, even if you're just taking
37:23
your bone stock streetcar out and HPDE is still gonna cost you in fuel.
37:27
You're gonna still put some tape on the car, you're gonna
37:29
have to get some lessons.
37:31
And if you get hooked, like most everybody does, it's you know,
37:34
the beginning of a very expensive drug habit and we realize that.
37:37
So I think you have to look at, there's an economic driver to all
37:40
of this too, and that's why we push so hard to keep the touring car.
37:44
You know, we can very nicely say gateway drug so that people can
37:47
look at it and go, okay, I got that.
37:48
I got these skills.
37:50
And I wanna be on television.
37:52
And there's some other aspects of it that in pro racing that become
37:55
a big deal is it's a bit of a fraternity of like-minded individuals.
38:00
People are there, they're part of something special.
38:03
And when they go to St. Petersburg to race with IndyCar, when they're out in
38:07
Sonoma, yeah, they're at wine country, but they wanna be able to tell their friends.
38:10
If they're old school, they'll say they're at Sears point, they're
38:12
gonna wanna be able to talk about it.
38:13
You mentioned about Watkins Glen.
38:15
We know the F1 history there.
38:16
We know James Hunt at Watkins Glen.
38:19
Why wouldn't you want to be there?
38:20
You know, I'm so happy to be from my first time racing at Sebring.
38:24
I had attended Sebring, but I'd never been part of the promotional group
38:27
putting together a race at Sebring.
38:29
You're at Sebring, for Pete's sake.
38:30
This is this historical place you're looking at the track service.
38:34
I mean, it's a nightmare, but you're thinking about.
38:36
Races you've seen, think of all that water stacking up years ago.
38:40
You know, you're, and there's this amazing experience.
38:42
You are there.
38:43
You earn the right to be there.
38:45
And that's the, I think, kind of the excitement in that transition.
38:47
You name drop some tracks, the Glen Sonoma, Infineon, Sears Point, whatever
38:51
you wanna call it, depending on your era.
38:53
What tracks does the SRO America series run at?
38:57
Obviously it's nationwide, but what are some of the, the
38:59
keystone events that you're at?
39:01
You're looking at roughly for our classes of racing, there's probably
39:04
about 22 to 25 tracks in North America.
39:07
We're very excited to have our, our season finish at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
39:12
There's something very magical about that place and kick the year
39:15
off this year, um, outside of some special IndyCar appearances in St.
39:18
Petersburg, in Nashville, where we run as a support series with just
39:22
one of our racing groups There.
39:23
Our other ones are what we call standalone weekends.
39:25
So we're at Sonoma, then we're at Ozark International Raceway,
39:29
which is just the coolest place.
39:31
We've been following along with those guys since they were literally
39:34
blueprints in December of 2017 and, and a dream and an intention.
39:38
We'll be back racing there five years later.
39:40
Very excited about racing there.
39:41
It's gonna be, it's a very technical track and, and really a cool deal.
39:45
So from Ozark International, we head to VIR Virginia International Raceway.
39:48
You and I were just talking about that from VIR.
39:51
We go up to Watkins Glen.
39:52
From Watkins Glen, I unfortunately jump on a plane outta JFK and
39:56
go to the 24 hours of spa.
39:58
Well, somebody has to do it, so a group of us are gonna have to suffer and do that.
40:02
But then afterwards we'll be back to Nashville with the, uh, IndyCar
40:05
race and doing the street race there.
40:07
Followed up by Road America, just one of the most iconic,
40:10
beautiful places to race at.
40:12
We go from Road America to Sebring, and as I mentioned, we'll finish the
40:15
season there at Indianapolis in October.
40:17
Those are some great tracks.
40:18
I mean, these are names that people should recognize and should
40:21
be excited to watch races at.
40:23
Which brings up my next question.
40:24
How does one go about watching an SRO race?
40:28
There's so many different providers now.
40:30
I mean, I think we're all overwhelmed.
40:31
We begged for years.
40:32
A la carte television and cable service, and now everybody's got a platform.
40:37
Everybody's got an app.
40:38
So how does one go about tuning in if they can't be there live to an SRO race?
40:44
Well, if you have a dial up modem, you go to a OL.
40:46
Um, you know, I started with a company and we were doing streaming,
40:50
and it really looked like that.
40:52
It was just.
40:53
You know, it was difficult, but here we were, a speed world challenge
40:56
and everybody knew where we were and it was so cool, but speed went
41:00
away and so we were struggling.
41:01
We did NBC sports.
41:03
We were really happy to go to CBS sports.
41:05
It's been a great relationship.
41:06
So that's our quote unquote broadcast partner.
41:09
So we love being on CBS sports.
41:11
All of our races in highlights packages.
41:14
A few live on CBS sports and our global races are as well, or on CBS sports.
41:19
So for folks we can say politely that are over 70 and watching
41:23
TV that they watch on a wall.
41:25
They can go to CBS sports and it's in almost every cable package.
41:28
I think it's like 90 million households or some crazy number.
41:31
I don't know who really does it, but nowadays I think we're all more
41:35
inclined to do same way that I watch any other racing around the world.
41:39
You know, we run through our global YouTube channel GT World,
41:42
which is a great way to watch and we love that and especially helps
41:45
for people at all hours and times.
41:47
We keep all of our races there, so that works.
41:50
We also are on Twitch, we're also on Facebook.
41:52
We're on MAP TV afterwards too, so we have a week after the race.
41:56
You can find us at CVS sports.
41:58
The day of the race on our live stream.
42:00
You can find us on our website, you can find us on YouTube, and I want to give
42:03
a quick shout out to the folks over at Motorsport tv because I catch a lot of
42:07
the overseas SRO races on that platform, and a lot of people forget about that.
42:13
It's awesome.
42:13
You can watch European Touring Car and Asian Tour, all
42:16
that stuff on Motorsport tv.
42:17
So if you haven't checked that out, it's actually free to get into and
42:20
then you know it goes from there.
42:22
You know how it is free to play, right?
42:23
Yeah.
42:25
The first hit's always free.
42:26
I,
42:28
you said it, not me, Greg.
42:29
You know, we talked about what this year looks like.
42:31
We talked about where to find the program.
42:33
Obviously, you can buy tickets online and show up at VIR or the Glen and come
42:37
check it out in person, which is always the best way to experience a race.
42:41
But let's talk about the future.
42:43
I mean, none of us have a crystal ball, but you mentioned some things that you
42:46
wanna do short term for the 22 and 23 season, some changes that are coming.
42:51
Not only that, what does the next five years look like and what's
42:54
your tenure outlook look like for SRO and SRO America specifically?
42:58
It's interesting you asked that question 'cause I'm gonna a presentation to
43:00
our board tomorrow about that very program and where are we gonna be
43:04
three to five years and 10 years out, and what does that look like?
43:07
And we know.
43:08
And especially all of us as petrol heads, there's a fear of that.
43:11
What does that mean?
43:12
What does alternative fuel mean?
43:13
Or Ross Braun said some really intelligent things about over a
43:17
billion vehicles that are fossil fuel powered on the earth right now.
43:21
You know, that's probably not gonna go away overnight.
43:23
As much as we see these radical changes in some amazing things happening with
43:27
All fuel and, and all fuel racing vehicles, autonomous racing vehicles, the
43:31
Electrify expos will have five of those.
43:34
Running around the country next year.
43:35
They did three this year.
43:36
The founder and promoter of that event is a good friend of mine.
43:39
I enjoyed going out to his event at Circuit Americas and seeing people who
43:42
are looking at all electric future.
43:44
And what does that look like?
43:46
Uh, we're gonna be mindful of that.
43:47
We're very active on it in Europe.
43:49
We'll bring it over to the states as we see that go on.
43:51
And I think that engagement in the automotive experience and
43:55
the transportation experience.
43:56
It's gotta be more and more inclusive.
43:59
There's an an expression that hit me at an AWS event called Reinvent.
44:04
They sat down and talked about diversity, inclusion, what did that look like?
44:09
And those are really, uh, interesting buzzwords.
44:12
But the lady who headed up the panel, she had a very good comment.
44:15
She said, uh, after a couple years ago, we had a reckoning in this country.
44:19
Rather than looking at it was for this reason, it was for this reason,
44:22
it was, there was a reckoning.
44:24
A lot of us faced it.
44:25
And that was something for me as a chairman of the League of Old Fat
44:28
White Guys that I could look at.
44:30
You know, when I started in the SEMA show in 1983, I was probably
44:34
one of the youngest people there.
44:35
Now I'm like the average age and.
44:38
That's old.
44:39
So you know, we all want more people in.
44:41
But when we look at it in that time period of almost 40 years of going to
44:45
the SEMA show, does the SEMA show and our automotive world, does it reflect
44:50
what our neighborhoods look like?
44:51
Does it reflect the communities look like Not, doesn't really.
44:54
Before we all want to hold hands and sing kumbaya.
44:57
Why I love motorsports.
44:58
It's like anything competitive.
45:00
You don't get there based on who your daddy was.
45:03
It, it helps if Daddy's rich, you know?
45:04
That's great.
45:05
Mama's got a big checkbook, that's awesome.
45:07
But at the end of the day, you get there by your talent.
45:10
You get there by what you work and the passion on it.
45:12
And I think America as an experience has been a melting pot.
45:16
And an opportunity for all of us to work together to get something done.
45:20
I had mentioned to my board a year ago when we were starting some of
45:22
these programs that said, Hey, look in Motorsport, all of us got a hand.
45:26
In my case it was, oh, please don't do that again.
45:29
But you know, I mean it was still a hand, it was someone doing something that was
45:32
absolutely unsolicited going, I'm gonna save you from either getting run over by
45:36
a car right now or driving off the track.
45:38
Let me help you.
45:39
That's how this works.
45:40
So we wanna give people who maybe wouldn't have that first opportunity, an
45:43
opportunity to be involved in Motorsport.
45:45
And to see it.
45:46
And so we're working with Rob Holland, working with Samantha
45:49
Tan, working with Sally Ulti.
45:50
These would be people I know will be on your show in days and months to come.
45:53
They're just great individuals that are speaking out for the communities.
45:56
They serve that passion.
45:58
And I think one of the things that we wanna, with our GTX series in Europe, but
46:02
particularly here in the States, 'cause we view a lot of times that SRO America.
46:06
It's kind of an incubator.
46:07
We were a rebel thing away from the mothership in around 1776 or so.
46:12
So you know, we still have that spirit.
46:14
Our Ossie division is even more so that way that they don't do it
46:18
like they do it in Asia and Europe.
46:19
It's Australia, and same way here in the States.
46:21
But we think that sometimes that we take best practices from Europe or we also
46:25
bubble up things go, Hey, you know, we've had some really good luck with this.
46:27
Look.
46:27
Look what we're seeing here.
46:29
And again, that's what Motorsport does.
46:30
It bubbles up, it brings new things in.
46:32
Like everybody talks about disc brakes, seat belts, all these other things that.
46:35
You know, came to be because of, you know, realizing the importance of a motorsport
46:39
so that, you know, that's gonna continue.
46:41
And, and again, it's a fun time to see it.
46:42
So that's what you're gonna see with SRO.
46:44
That's the five year plan without telling it.
46:47
You know what, Greg, we're gonna follow up this conversation on our pit stop mini.
46:51
So where we talk a little bit more about the balance of power when it
46:55
comes to EVs and other things like that.
46:57
Oh.
46:57
So let, let's let, let's hold that thought.
46:59
Safety and safe and many other things.
47:01
Let's put a pin in that.
47:03
But I wanna give you the opportunity here as we close out the episode and we kind
47:07
of wrap up our thoughts for any shoutouts promotions or anything else you'd like to
47:11
share that we didn't cover in the episode Thus far, veterans support is very, very
47:15
important to us and we have Veterans race with us and it's something that
47:19
we support operation motor boats, both individually and corporately and, and so
47:24
if there's things that are in that area, particularly if there's veterans groups.
47:28
That's either you just know, even a small group, Hey, could you help these guys out?
47:31
Can you do something for 'em?
47:32
Don't hesitate.
47:33
As far as I'm concerned, they have cart blanc for anything they need with us.
47:36
They'll be my guess and and so anything that we can do to help
47:40
that, we'd like to do that.
47:41
It's a team, it's a team.
47:43
I'm incredibly uncomfortable being the figurehead for this team.
47:45
I was given this opportunity by our board of directors.
47:49
It was an amazing opportunity.
47:51
You don't turn down an opportunity like this.
47:53
I get to go to work every day doing something that people
47:55
dream of doing, and yes.
47:56
Is it hard?
47:57
Is it difficult?
47:58
On some days, yes, but on the same token, it's because I have a great team.
48:02
The shout out goes to the super staff that I have from Susan Stacy.
48:06
Robbie, Brian, Dean, Natasha Ray.
48:10
I mean, I can go on and on of all the great people I get to
48:13
work with, Jack, Jim, et cetera.
48:15
But then, you know, you always have to go back to, as we talk about
48:18
a figurehead, Stefan Mattel, a guy had the courage to follow his
48:21
dreams and put something together.
48:23
I get to play with her because that man had the courage.
48:25
And when we looked at the pandemic and a lot of people were saying,
48:28
well, should we shut down for a year?
48:30
And Stefan and I had that conversation.
48:31
He says, Greg, I've never stopped.
48:33
I've never bankrupted a business.
48:34
We've taken people's money.
48:35
What do we do?
48:36
I said, Hey Stefan, I think we race.
48:38
Let's find a way to race.
48:39
And he did.
48:40
I love that spirit of competition.
48:42
Again, it comes back to it.
48:43
So I give the shout out to my team.
48:45
I give the shout out to our teams of sponsors.
48:47
Certainly Pelli, we wouldn't roll without them.
48:50
But on the same token, you can look at AWS.
48:52
CrowdStrike, VP Fuels will be a new announcement, a new partner returning to
48:56
us down through the list of just great companies, Fantech that we mentioned.
49:00
These are all visionaries.
49:01
These are all people who are committed to motorsports and they're
49:04
committed to the success of the drivers that are participating in it.
49:07
So it's something that I'm just, again, incredibly blessed.
49:09
Very thankful.
49:11
Can't believe you gave me over an hour to talk with you guys today.
49:13
It was a great honor.
49:14
Appreciate it.
49:15
I hope we'll have a chance to follow up and talk more again.
49:17
Absolutely, Greg.
49:18
And you know, I wanna thank you because what's really important here,
49:21
and I hope people have grasped from this particular episode, is that your
49:24
passion for Motorsport has come through in the stories that you've told and
49:29
the way we've been talking about SRO.
49:32
But more importantly, it's organizations like yours, like
49:35
SRO America, that reinvigorate.
49:38
The motor sports base, every one of us can tune into the next NASCAR race or the next
49:42
Formula One race and go, yeah, it's great.
49:44
It's highly polished.
49:45
It's a great product, but it's just that it's a product.
49:48
It's lost.
49:49
Mm-hmm.
49:49
That grassroots, mm-hmm.
49:50
That we have all either are still in or have come from.
49:54
And I think SRO brings that back.
49:56
And so I think this is a great.
49:57
For people to return to their roots.
50:00
Look for that touring, car racing.
50:01
Look for that door-to-door competition, even though there's
50:04
some balance of power in there.
50:05
But it's still, it's fun.
50:07
It's family.
50:08
It's all of the things that we miss about racing, and I
50:11
wanna congratulate all of you.
50:12
For perpetuating that, for keeping that going and, and continuing to
50:16
bring that enthusiasm to the table.
50:18
So best of luck this season, and I'm sure we'll hear from you more.
50:23
But as we close out the 2022 SRO America season, we'll see more than a hundred.
50:28
Races under their banner.
50:30
You can follow all of the racing action by visiting
50:33
www.sromotorsports.comortakingaquicklittleshortcutovertowww.gt america.us To hone in on
50:43
SRO America specifically.
50:45
And remember, just like Greg said, be sure to follow them on social media
50:48
at GT America on Twitter, at SRO GT America on Instagram at GT one World.
50:57
On Facebook and they're awesome YouTube channel where you
51:00
can watch all the races live.
51:02
And remember, all of this information will be posted alongside this
51:07
episode in our follow along article on gt motorsports.org.
51:11
So if you wanna learn more about SRO America, go ahead and hop
51:14
over there and check all that out.
51:16
So again, Greg, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show.
51:19
This has been an absolute pleasure.
51:21
Thank you.
51:26
The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their
51:30
partners at AWS CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School.
51:36
Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.com.
51:43
Or take a shortcut to GT America US and be sure to follow them on social
51:48
at GT America, on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook and
51:55
catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT World.
52:00
If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to
52:04
check us out on www.gt motorsports.org.
52:08
You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports.
52:11
Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call
52:15
or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.
52:23
We'd love to hear from you.
52:25
Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here.
52:28
We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
52:31
to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal
52:37
is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge.
52:41
As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon
52:45
for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.
52:50
For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers,
52:54
writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of
52:58
Fig Newton's, gummy bears, and monster.
53:01
Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports.
53:09
And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you,
53:13
none of this would be possible.