Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Robb Holland: Former Pro Cyclist to BTCC Champion

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Robb Holland: Former Pro Cyclist to BTCC Champion · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the autosphere, 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 petrolheads that wonder.
• 0:16
  How did they get that job or become that person?
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  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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  Welcome everyone to another episode of break fix.
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  Our guest tonight is going to be Rob Holland, who is a former pro cyclist
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  who became the revelation of the speed world challenge in the early 2000s.
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  In 2012, Rob rebounded from the late demise of the Volvo factory C30 touring
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  car program to become the first African American in almost 40 years to race in
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  the British Touring Car Championship.
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  When Rob isn't racing, he spends his time at tracks around the world working as a
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  personal driving instructor, as well as other things for groups like Lamborghini,
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  Audi Club of America, and 3Z3 Motorsports.
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  Rob is currently the managing partner of Rotec Racing, which is based at the
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  legendary Nürburgring, and is also known for his grocery getter series on Jalopnik.
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  He does technical writing in grassroots motorsports and race reporting on speedtv.
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  com.
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  Currently, you can find him racing SRO World Challenge, powered by
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  AWS, in the GT America Series, driving the Ford Mustang GT4 as the
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  only American car in the paddock.
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  That's right, folks.
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  And joining me tonight as my co host is David L.
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  Middleton from MyRacing, who you might recall from a
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  previous episode of Brake Fix.
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  He also just so happens to be a personal friend of Rob's, where
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  they met at the Nürburgring.
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  So join me in welcoming Rob Holland from Rotec Racing to the show to tell us all
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  about his unique motorsports journey.
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  So welcome to the show, David and Rob.
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  Hey, how's it going guys.
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  So let's get into it.
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  Let's start at the top.
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  How do you go from cycling to cars?
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  Was there always a passion there?
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  Were you always interested in motorsports starting as a child, like David's story
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  is, or where did that passion come from?
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  Yeah.
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  You know, it's kind of funny.
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  Like that's probably one of the first questions I get all the time
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  is how did I make that transition?
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  And For me, I just like racing.
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  Doesn't make a difference what it is, whether I'm racing bikes or cars or,
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  you know, shopping carts in the middle of the parking lot, you know, you put
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  me in something I'm going to race you.
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  So that's kind of the genesis of it.
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  But the specifics of it is that I left the cycling world because.
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  I unfortunately came up during the nineties, which was the Lance
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  Armstrong era, and everybody kind of knows that story.
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  And for me, uh, the drugs and the sports just, just weren't me.
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  And I was an okay professional cyclist, but I was never going
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  to win the Tour de France.
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  I was never going to be this massive superstar.
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  And so the combination of having to put stuff in my body that I really
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  didn't want to, and the fact that I wasn't particularly good led
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  me to look at some other stuff.
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  And so when I left the sport, I still had a passion for racing and
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  I'd always been a gearhead in the back of my mind, I love fast cars.
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  You know, I had some sports cars back in the day.
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  And so I had done like one or two track days and someone was like, yeah,
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  dude, you should go to skip Barbara and, you know, and learn how to race
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  cars and maybe get your license.
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  And I was like, Ooh, that's a good idea.
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  I didn't know you could really do that.
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  And so I kind of found skip Barbara and went to the school
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  and went through the whole thing.
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  The long story short, I was actually better at racing cars
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  than I wasn't racing bikes.
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  And that was 20 years ago.
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  So just a weird random story that you really, you couldn't script if
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  you wanted to, like you put it in a movie and no one would believe it.
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  So Skippy School Miatas, they really got you going, huh?
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  Oh, no, it was even worse.
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  I had the Skippy Open Wheelers, which are like the worst car.
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  Like everybody's like, one of the questions I get is like, what are
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  the best cars you've ever driven?
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  What's the worst car?
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  The worst car by far is the Skip Barber Open Wheel cars.
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  Those cars are like.
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  50 years old and they've been wrecked and rebuilt and wrecked and rebuilt.
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  Weird aside, my two best friends decided to go to Skip Barber.
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  This is a few years after I turned pro and I knew all the instructors there.
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  And they were like, Hey, do you want to jump in a, you know, Skippy car and your
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  friends chase you around and do that?
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  I was like, Oh, cool.
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  Yeah, I'll just jump in.
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  And my first thought was.
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  Man, these cars were crap.
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  And I'm like, I was, I was probably not like a good driver back then.
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  Like, it'll be so much better.
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  And I jumped in the Skippy car and like two corners into Laguna Seca.
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  I'm like, Nope, these are the crappiest cars I've ever driven.
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  And that has not changed no matter what my skill level is.
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  So yeah, good old formula neons, right?
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  Yeah, there you go.
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  How influential were your parents in your career and how supportive were
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  they, where you said, okay, I'm going to switch from trying to be a pro cyclist
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  to, hey, I'm going to be a pro driver.
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  How influential?
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  Probably not at all.
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  My parents look at cars as disposable objects, the depreciating asset, you
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  buy it, you beat the crap out of it.
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  And then.
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  You sell it off in 10 years and you buy another one, you know, they weren't
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  this inspiration I could look to, but as far as supportive, I mean, that's
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  the one thing that I always say about my parents and this is within motorsports
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  and cycling and school and everything is that the biggest thing they ever
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  gave me was the ability to fail.
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  And what I mean is that I always had their support.
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  My dad was always like, if you give a hundred percent and you
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  fail, I've got your back if you give 99 percent and you fail.
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  You're on your own.
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  And for me, that one instills this, like, I know I always have to bring my
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  a game to everything I do all the time.
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  But the biggest thing is, is that especially growing up, you always
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  knew that your parents had your back and no matter what your choices were,
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  they had your back, like literally that that's the only reason I
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  could do, you know, you look at it.
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  I'm a black kid jumping into on the bikes and then jumping into racecars.
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  That's not a normal thing.
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  But the reason I was able to do that is because I knew that if
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  it didn't work My parents knew that I put a hundred percent in.
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  They got my back.
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  So since we're talking about your childhood and we're talking about
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  your parents, what was the one car poster on your wall as a kid that
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  your parents wanted you to tear down?
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  All of them.
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  I love Lamborghini.
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  So I, I had the classic red Lamborghini Countach up on the wall,
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  big wing and all, it cracks me up.
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  As a kid, I remember I was reading road and track magazine and, you
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  know, I was just really into cars.
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  I still to this day have no idea where I got it from.
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  Neither one of my parents are car people.
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  My sisters aren't car people, like nobody around is car people and it's just me.
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  And also like really none of my friends were really car people.
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  So I, I still don't know where I got that bug from, but yeah, I'm glad I did.
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  I'm going to remind our listeners that if you're a petrol head of a certain
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  age, the answer to that question is always Lamborghini Countach.
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  So that being said, coming from the cycling world, really curious what
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  bikes you rode, but we'll leave that maybe for another episode.
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  Cause I'm a big bike guy myself, always into French bikes and things like that.
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  Although I have an affinity for French cars too, but let's
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  not talk about that either.
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  Yeah.
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  Right.
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  Do you think understanding how grip on the bike works, preparing for cycling
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  and those kinds of races and things like that, did that prepare you for the car?
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  It has nothing to do with the dynamic of the bike.
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  Bikes and cars have nothing to do with each other.
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  Two wheels, four wheels, narrow, skinny tires, all of these things.
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  The biggest thing that I took away from cycling, and there's a lot
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  of it, Is all of the mental side of things, first of all, just the
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  mental preparation for any race.
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  You're going to like the mindset you get into.
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  And then on top of that, you're looking at spatial awareness within the pack.
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  I've got 200 guys around me and they're all doing various things
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  and be able to keep an eye on things and know where things are.
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  People are going to be all of those things that you don't get in a car.
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  Because when you're driving in a car, it's sedate, you're
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  driving to the grocery store.
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  You're, you're driving to your friend's house.
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  You're driving to, you know, whatever.
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  It's a completely different mindset that you're in.
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  So it's very difficult for a lot of people, especially new guys coming
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  into car racing to put themselves in a mindset of aggressively driving a car.
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  Whereas for me, like the mindset was, okay, I'm racing go.
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  The thing that I got from going back to skip barber was
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  the instructors were always.
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  amazed at me because they would say, okay, you're doing this and this and this wrong
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  in the corner, go do this differently.
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  And I would go and I would do it differently.
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  Whereas a lot of other people who were kind of like short on mental
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  bandwidth, because there's so many new things going on, they would just
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  make the same mistake over and over and usually faster and spin off.
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  And so the instructors were like, you're the, like the one student that we would
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  tell what to do and you would go do it.
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  Now you might not do it perfectly, but you would make the attempt to make the change.
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  And that was because I had that background experience and I wasn't so
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  overwhelmed with the concept of pushing something to the limit on the track.
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  Where I want to take this question though, and I think maybe the audience
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  might be thinking it too, going from two wheels to four wheels, as you
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  mentioned, was there a point in which maybe you were an impasse and said, I
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  should go into motorcycles and not cars?
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  Was that ever a thought?
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  Was that ever a consideration?
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  Did you dabble with that at all?
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  Yeah, I drove motorcycles throughout college.
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  That's how I got around.
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  I didn't actually own a car for a large chunk in college.
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  I was, I was a motorcycle guy.
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  But the one thing that you realize is that I'm six foot one.
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  You do not have six foot one motorcyclists.
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  And when I was cycling, I was at my lightest.
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  I was 4 percent body fat.
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  I was super fit, super light.
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  And I was still 170 pounds.
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  And the guys who are racing motorcycles are not my size.
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  And honestly, the weird dynamic of me getting into car racing
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  is, is that there's always this.
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  popular misconception that drivers are tiny little guys.
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  That's true.
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  If you're in the formula cars, any open wheel car, usually bigger
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  drivers don't usually make it.
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  You know, you look at maybe Mark Weber or somebody like that as an exception,
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  even a couple of formula one drivers currently going that are bigger guys
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  that in the, in the six foot range, but they're also 150 pounds, 160 pounds.
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  And I just could never get down to that weight.
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  That's also what steered me out of getting into formula cars was I did.
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  Some formula BMW stuff.
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  And I just remember getting out of the car the first time.
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  And it's like, everything hurt.
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  Cause I was just wedged up against the car all, all over the place.
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  And every time you, you hit a curb, it just like literally like
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  the shock of the curb would go straight through to your body.
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  And I was like, yeah, this isn't for me.
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  And then someone was like, Hey, why don't you drive a touring car?
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  Why don't you drive a GT car?
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  And it was like, Oh, I've got all this room and space.
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  And yeah, this is great.
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  I could do this all day long.
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  So before I ask you about honing racecraft and things like that, I want to ask you
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  one more question about your coming up in the transition from cycling to cars.
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  Was there, or is there still someone in the motorsports community that
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  you looked up to maybe a hero or an idol that you were like, I want to
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  be like that person that inspired you to help make that transition.
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  Yeah, Dan Gurney.
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  The funny thing is, is that I gravitated to Dan originally because
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  I discovered that he was six foot two.
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  Actually I think six foot three.
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  Like he's, Dan is a very, very tall guy.
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  Going back to what we said, I never thought tall guys
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  could be race car drivers.
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  And so when I found out, I was like, Oh.
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  So you can be tall in a race car driver.
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  And then after I kind of zeroed in on him because of his height, I then
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  saw all the things he was doing.
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  He went over and raced Le Mans and he did all of these brilliant things to me.
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  Then I was like, that's my type of driver.
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  Like he wants to drive everything.
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  Like he just loves driving.
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  And that's for me, kind of what I saw in him as a weird.
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  Aside, Dan is a legend and anyone who doesn't know who
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  Dan Gurney is, go look him up.
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  I mean, the reason that we spray champagne on a podium now is because
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  Dan Gurney sprayed champagne on the podium when they won Le Mans and that's
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  the level of guy, like that's the guy that you just look at in the sport and
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  you go, they will be talking about him.
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  For the next 100 years because he's that much of a legend.
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  So I went into British touring car and I'm sure we'll talk about that
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  at some point, but I was the first actually first American in 40 years
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  to race in British touring car and the American who raced in British touring
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  car before I did was Dan Gurney.
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  So when I went into registering car, all of the media was talking about, ah,
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  it's first American since Dan Gurney.
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  And I was tickled pink because, you know, here it is, like I'm being
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  mentioned in the same sentence of a guy who I grew up admiring.
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  I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world.
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  Circle back probably what four or five months after I made my debut, I was at
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  the 25 hours of Thunderhill and I was doing an interview just like this one.
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  I mentioned literally just this exact story.
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  And the guy in the middle of the interview goes, well, you know that our
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  PR person is Dan Gurney's granddaughter.
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  And I said, Oh, that's great.
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  You've got to introduce me.
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  This is tell her that, you know, your granddad's a hero, a legend.
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  I just want him to let him know that there's a guy out
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  there that's thinking of him.
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  And, uh, halfway through the race weekend, I hear my name called to the
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  paddock and it's his granddaughter.
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  And she runs over to me and she hands me a cell phone and she goes,
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  my granddad wants to talk to you.
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  And I literally spent an hour and a half in the middle of the paddock in
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  Thunder Hill talking to Dan Gurney.
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  And he just was talking about British touring car and all sorts of things.
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  And then I finally got a chance to go out to meet him.
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  And so it was just this great kind of like coming full circle for me.
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  So it was just, uh, it's one of my favorite stories.
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  So we talked a little bit already, Rob, about your dad, having a big influence
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  on you as far as preparing mentally.
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  But as a racing driver, you have to prepare basically every
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  single day to give your best.
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  How do you do that?
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  And combined with how do you hone your race craft and how did you hone
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  your race craft from coming from.
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  Humble beginnings at Skip Barber to becoming a professional driver.
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  It doesn't happen all the time.
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  Right.
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  So how did, how did that process come about?
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  In terms of the influence of my father and always being a hundred percent
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  prepared, that is a life thing.
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  I mean, that isn't just, Oh, it happens in cycling or Oh, it happens in motorsport.
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  You know, obviously I run road tech racing.
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  I moved over to Germany where I met you 2013.
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  I lived over there for five years.
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  I founded three companies in Germany, built a home, built a motorsport program.
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  So.
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  It's one of those things that I grew up pushing myself.
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  You know, there's, my problem is I don't say no often enough, but I also like
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  the challenges that life brings me.
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  And I think that's all part of what my dad instilled at me at an early age,
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  which is always give a hundred percent and you see the benefits of that.
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  Every single day.
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  So, um, so from that perspective, that's my dad's influence, but as far as the
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  race craft thing, I think a lot of it comes from going back again to cycling.
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  Cycling may not seem like it to kind of the casual observer,
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  but it's a very strategic sport.
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  And back when I was doing it, I know I'm dating myself, but they
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  didn't have any radios or anything that the cyclist could use.
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  So you literally had to be your kind of own team captain.
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  And you're obviously working with six, seven, eight, nine, 10 other teammates.
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  So you all have to communicate and you ought to learn how to read a race.
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  But you had to read it, not just sitting at your couch and looking at it
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  going, Oh, that guy's doing that guy.
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  You were 150 beats per minute heart rate.
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  You've been riding for a hundred miles and you, you still had to make
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  split second decisions on the fly.
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  And I think that that translated kind of into the motorsport thing, where
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  you just, no matter how much you're exerting yourself, you really have to
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  just be able to make good decisions time after time, after time, after time.
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  So Rob, you talked about in joking and in jest that the margin of error that
• 15:04
  your dad put upon you is about 1%.
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  That translated into your pro racing career.
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  How do you deal with that kind of pressure?
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  I mean, we all make mistakes all the time and how do you
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  recover from those mistakes?
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  I mean, when we're on track and doing.
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  Doing things that we're working with our students and whatever,
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  we're like, ah, there's another lap.
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  We'll get it right next time.
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  You know, we'll continue to work, continue to progress.
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  But when you're in a 25 hour race, like you were talking about, the
• 15:28
  margins become so small and you have to be perfect lap after lap after lap
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  on behalf of the entire team, because you need consistency across the board.
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  So how do you deal with that?
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  How do you manage that?
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  How do you manage the stress and how do you recover from
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  even the slightest of errors?
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  First of all, I don't stress.
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  Like that's, I think a big thing is, is that I learned very early
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  on that stressing is useless.
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  Like it doesn't bring anything.
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  And in fact, it exacerbates all of the bad things.
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  So when you look at it in that perspective, basically just have
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  to kind of take yourself out of the whole picture and go look.
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  At the end of the day, it's a car, it's a track and you have to go
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  out and just go out and run laps and, and just enjoy yourself.
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  Don't sit there and put all of this pressure on you to be this certain
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  thing or do this certain thing.
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  And everybody makes mistakes.
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  Like, yeah, sure.
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  My dad said, you know, you gotta be a hundred percent, but.
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  What he meant wasn't that I couldn't make mistakes, he meant that I
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  had to give 100 percent in effort.
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  I make mistakes all the time.
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  I mean, I'm hyper critical of myself.
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  I mean, David will tell you, like, I would sit down and look at data
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  and I'm like, I screwed up there.
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  I screwed up there.
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  That was terrible.
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  What am I thinking?
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  But it's all.
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  Positive looking at a mistake I made to correct that mistake.
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  So when I go out again, I don't make that mistake.
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  Now I'll make another mistake, but it won't be that one over and over again.
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  And that to me is the most important thing is don't make the
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  same mistake over and over again.
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  Make the mistake, learn from it and move on.
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  The old adage is the first thing you learn as a race car
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  driver is how to make excuses.
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  David knows I'm really good at that too.
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  So sometimes it's the car, sometimes it's you, sometimes you have a
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  day that neither one works, right?
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  And we all, we all know that it's part of just being human.
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  It's part of dealing with machines and things like that.
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  But do you often feel Sometimes it is more the car than it is you and
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  or is it a balance between the two?
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  And I think the other question I have is you were talking about data.
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  Data is extremely important.
• 17:20
  The more you move up is analyzing the data and achieving that consistency, right?
• 17:24
  These 2 kind of questions go together.
• 17:26
  What I want to glean from that is I've also learned that, you know,
• 17:30
  in teaching students like on an amateur level, it's all about.
• 17:34
  The speed comes later.
• 17:35
  Don't worry about that.
• 17:36
  Let's teach consistency.
• 17:37
  Want to be consistent, take the turn the same way.
• 17:39
  You know, maybe it's the safest line, might not be the
• 17:41
  fastest line, things like that.
• 17:42
  But what I've personally discovered is that the data is important,
• 17:47
  but I tend to drive more by field.
• 17:49
  So which is it, right?
• 17:50
  There's different schools of thought on that.
• 17:51
  And I know it's kind of a loaded question, but they're intertwined.
• 17:55
  Well, the first part of your question, I think everything's fluid.
• 17:59
  There are times when the car is just not there.
• 18:02
  And there's times when the driver's not there, and there's times
• 18:04
  when the driver might be there, and the car might be there, but
• 18:07
  they're not working well together.
• 18:09
  So you really can't sit there and say it's any one or the other.
• 18:12
  And this is actually where data very much comes into play.
• 18:15
  There'll be times, and David even knows from this year, We're, we've just been
• 18:18
  off the pace and it's been very, very frustrating to me because I, I feel that,
• 18:22
  uh, you know, with my level of experience, um, that we should be running at the front
• 18:25
  of the field on a fairly consistent basis.
• 18:27
  And there have been a few times this year where I'm just missing a second.
• 18:30
  I have no idea where it is.
• 18:32
  Like I'm out there.
• 18:33
  I feel the lap is good.
• 18:34
  Okay.
• 18:34
  I made a mistake or two here.
• 18:35
  That's a 10th or two, but I'm like, there's a full second.
• 18:38
  I left out in the track.
• 18:39
  I don't know where it is.
• 18:40
  And the thing that's really helpful is then going back and looking at the data.
• 18:44
  If you don't have the data to compare to you, you're just lost.
• 18:47
  You know, you're like, I drove my heart out.
• 18:49
  We were at VIR about a month ago.
• 18:51
  You know, I was struggling with the pace.
• 18:53
  We looked in the data.
• 18:54
  The end of the back straightaway, because I had been in traffic a lot over the, over
• 18:58
  the course of the practice session, I was breaking substantially earlier for the
• 19:01
  last corner coming off the straightaway.
• 19:03
  And there was, Six, seven tenths of a second right in that
• 19:06
  corner, because mentally you're focused on the car ahead of you.
• 19:08
  And there's some other things going on.
• 19:09
  You're not just aware that you're not at the limit breaking into that corner.
• 19:13
  And boom, there's your seven tenths right there.
• 19:16
  So it's things like that, where you, if you don't have the data, it's
• 19:19
  just a very, very frustrating thing.
• 19:21
  So not only do I think that it's valuable for drivers that are
• 19:25
  up the ladder and pro level.
• 19:26
  I honestly think that, you know, I use data for coaching, even the most novice
• 19:30
  driver, because it allows them to.
• 19:32
  Hopefully mentally get their head around where they can go faster
• 19:36
  or where they need to go slower.
• 19:37
  Cause a lot of guys jumping into the car for the first time, think that going
• 19:40
  fast means going the fastest you can through the corner and the car's all out
• 19:44
  of shape and they're hanging on to it.
• 19:45
  And they're just like, Whoa, that was fast.
• 19:46
  And you're like, Whoa, dude, you're.
• 19:48
  about to crash and you're five seconds off the base.
• 19:51
  And people don't get that.
• 19:52
  So when I can do a data lap for someone and do a reference lap, and then they can
• 19:56
  look back and go, well, wait a second.
• 19:57
  How was Rob so fast?
• 19:59
  A lot of guys get in the car when I give a ride along and they're
• 20:02
  like, that's not a fast lap.
• 20:04
  And I'm like, look at my lap time compared to your lap.
• 20:07
  That was five seconds quicker than your lap time.
• 20:10
  And we were just cruising and having a conversation.
• 20:12
  Why then you can look at the data and go, Oh, well, you tried to break a
• 20:17
  hundred meters later than I did going into this corner and you barely got the
• 20:21
  car stopped and then you were 20 miles an hour slower going through the corner.
• 20:25
  And then you couldn't get the throttle until well after I did.
• 20:27
  So that's the reason you were slow.
• 20:29
  And I think the only way you can really show that to someone is, is in data.
• 20:33
  Yeah.
• 20:33
  I agree with you.
• 20:34
  I think also that's your job.
• 20:38
  I think with novices, the breaking point, right?
• 20:40
  You have somebody new to racing and they're like, I broke at one 50.
• 20:44
  I know I broke at one 50.
• 20:45
  And then you check the data.
• 20:46
  It's like one 80.
• 20:47
  And I go, when did you break?
• 20:48
  Well, the minute I saw the one 50 sign, like, well, that's not one 50.
• 20:51
  Right.
• 20:51
  Right.
• 20:51
  And then to what you said about how they went through the corner, you show
• 20:55
  them the wheel slip and you say, well, look, this is what your car was doing.
• 20:59
  I mean, the good drivers do both feel and data, right?
• 21:03
  The prodigies.
• 21:04
  Probably only to feel, but the prodigies are few and far between,
• 21:07
  and then they get to a point where they have to look at data.
• 21:09
  I don't think there's anyone that I know out there that has gotten to the pro
• 21:12
  level that doesn't know how to read data and doesn't use it on a regular basis.
• 21:17
  I mean, you know, we, we come off track and we're in there.
• 21:20
  You, me and Brian are in there for an hour.
• 21:22
  hour and a half going over the data, you know, and these are GT four cars
• 21:26
  are relatively simple cars when it comes to, you know, all the setup stuff.
• 21:30
  There's not a lot we can, we can really do to them.
• 21:32
  If you're in a GT three car or prototype, I mean, your data session
• 21:35
  could be two, three hours easily, you know, looking at the, you know,
• 21:39
  all the damper pot stuff and all the stuff, all the feedback you're getting
• 21:42
  from, from every sensor on the car.
• 21:44
  I mean, you're focused on all the engine stuff and optimizing that.
• 21:47
  It's not something that you and I debrief about, but that is still
• 21:50
  something that's important to the The operation of the car, and it's also
• 21:53
  important in terms of getting a lap time.
• 21:55
  Let's kind of switch gears a little bit, because you mentioned very quickly that,
• 21:59
  you know, you ended up in Germany, but you didn't explain how you got to Germany.
• 22:03
  So, you know, is your story similar to David's in a way or.
• 22:07
  Just in a whole different realm.
• 22:09
  Yeah, no, my life is never simple.
• 22:12
  It there's never a direct path.
• 22:13
  It's I've always been very opportunistic, you know, something that opportunity
• 22:17
  comes along, not be so wedded to what I'm currently doing that I
• 22:20
  don't go, Ooh, that's interesting.
• 22:22
  I could go do that.
• 22:23
  The Germany thing came about.
• 22:24
  I was racing in world challenge and touring car.
• 22:26
  We had just finished the Volvo C30 touring car program as a factory program.
• 22:30
  And unfortunately the demise of it because the C30 was no
• 22:33
  longer being sold in the U S.
• 22:35
  And so I was out of a job.
• 22:36
  Kind of like, okay, you know, what do I do now?
• 22:38
  And, you know, I started looking around at other opportunities and that's kind
• 22:42
  of when the, the British touring car thing came about, but at the same point
• 22:46
  in time, two of my best friends, I had taken one of the, one of them was getting
• 22:49
  married and took him to Germany and the Nürburgring part of the bachelor party.
• 22:54
  They're also very much gearheads did the Nurburgring.
• 22:57
  We were going to do Lamar.
• 22:58
  We did spy.
• 22:58
  It was just a whole thing.
• 22:59
  It was fantastic.
• 23:00
  But when we got back, one of my friends was like, well, Hey, is there any business
• 23:03
  thing that we could do over there?
• 23:04
  It'd be great to do some investment over at the Nurburgring and,
• 23:07
  you know, have some opportunity to spend some more time there.
• 23:10
  Uh, and I said, sure.
• 23:10
  You know, you know, let's.
• 23:11
  Take a look around and see what's out there.
• 23:13
  And I happen to literally like the day I started looking a workshop and
• 23:18
  a house came up that was in moist bath, which is basically where the
• 23:22
  industrial center for all of the manufacturers that are at the Nurburgring.
• 23:25
  So if you ever see any of the spy photos of the camouflage
• 23:29
  cars that lapped the Nurburgring.
• 23:30
  All of those cars are based in the industrial center right there.
• 23:33
  And the first building that ever got built in that center is one
• 23:38
  Gottlieb Dahmer Strava drive.
• 23:39
  So it's literally the first building there came up for sale.
• 23:41
  But unfortunately the guy had passed away and his, his widow wasn't
• 23:45
  interested in doing anything anymore.
• 23:46
  And she put it up for sale.
• 23:48
  Nothing ever comes up for sale in the industrial center.
• 23:51
  Like it just doesn't.
• 23:53
  And it popped up and I caught to my friend and he's like.
• 23:56
  That sounds good.
• 23:57
  Let's go buy that and figure out what we're going to do later on.
• 24:00
  We ended up buying it with the goal of being the English speaking base at
• 24:05
  the Nürburgring for American drivers and for British drivers that were
• 24:08
  coming over that wanted to race over there, but didn't speak German, didn't
• 24:12
  know the ins and outs of everything.
• 24:14
  We had a 10, 000 square foot workshop, which the guy who owned it before
• 24:18
  Prior had passed away, had it literally equipped like your, your dream garage.
• 24:22
  Like there was every single tool imaginable, lays, then all sorts of just
• 24:27
  literally everything that you wanted.
• 24:28
  And we bought all of that equipment with the house.
• 24:31
  So we had three tool imaginable.
• 24:33
  The garage was immaculate.
• 24:34
  It was, you can literally eat off of it, but the house, they had built
• 24:38
  this and then they really never got much past the, like generally putting.
• 24:43
  Drywall up and it was just this absolute mess and it's actually two small houses
• 24:48
  that are right next to each other.
• 24:50
  So I had to go over there and literally we gutted both of the houses.
• 24:53
  We created a single entry.
• 24:55
  We did this whole thing with the thought process of building like it's the best
• 24:59
  way to put it as like a ski house.
• 25:00
  You know, if you ever go skiing with a bunch of friends, this was
• 25:03
  a ski house for the Nürburgring.
• 25:04
  So it was like nine bedroom house that could house not only the drivers,
• 25:07
  but also the crew mainly focused on 24 hour race and where we were
• 25:12
  was literally a kilometer and a half, maybe two kilometers away from
• 25:16
  the entrance for the Nürburgring.
• 25:17
  So a mile, a little over a mile.
• 25:18
  It's the perfect base because we're, you know, we can go testing there.
• 25:21
  We can do all of the tourist sessions.
• 25:23
  We could coach through there, but for the 24 hour race, it was spectacular because
• 25:27
  as the driver, you get out of the car.
• 25:29
  And we had a chauffeur, a chauffeur, a driver that would take you in
• 25:33
  our team car back to the house.
• 25:34
  And so you get out of your stint and then literally 10 minutes later,
• 25:37
  you're back at the house with a shower and a warm dinner and a bed.
• 25:41
  And it's not a normal endurance race where you're sleeping
• 25:43
  in the back of a truck for.
• 25:45
  For 12 hours.
• 25:46
  Yeah.
• 25:46
  So yeah, it ended up exactly.
• 25:49
  So no, it literally is, it's the way you want to do a endurance racing.
• 25:53
  So it was just the right place at the right time and just a phenomenal
• 25:57
  experience to be over there for five years and to start several companies,
• 26:01
  do the racing program and basically become part of, of German culture.
• 26:05
  Not so much like David who actually speaks German.
• 26:08
  I never actually got around to learning it very well.
• 26:10
  So, but still living there day in, day out was, was absolutely epic.
• 26:14
  Well, I beg to differ because once you become part of the like
• 26:17
  Nürburgring lore, you're definitely part of the German culture.
• 26:20
  Fair enough.
• 26:21
  I'm part of the German culture.
• 26:21
  I just don't speak the language.
• 26:22
  You just don't speak the language.
• 26:23
  It happens.
• 26:24
  It's happened.
• 26:24
  There's just a bunch of people from, from Norway and Sweden
• 26:27
  who, who are the same way.
• 26:29
  Speaking of that.
• 26:30
  So what were some of the cultural challenges in racing in Germany
• 26:34
  and in England that you went through or were there any?
• 26:36
  You know, it's really funny.
• 26:37
  I went in there with this.
• 26:40
  Thought process that it was going to be this big thing going to struggle
• 26:44
  and with everybody and it was just going to be like this constant battle
• 26:47
  was a little bit when you first get into it because it's just the racing
• 26:51
  is different the way they run things.
• 26:53
  The rules are all fairly the same, but the way they run things and how they do
• 26:56
  things is definitely a bit different.
• 26:57
  And Germans, when you get on their bad side, they could be a bit intense.
• 27:01
  So like the first couple of things, you're just like, Oh, Jesus guy hates me and
• 27:05
  I'm, I'm an idiot moon there and whatever.
• 27:07
  But you do it long enough and you, and you realize that, no, that's
• 27:11
  just kind of the way they are.
• 27:12
  Once you break through it, it all goes away and it becomes so, so much easier.
• 27:16
  Like I said, that was the reason we were over there because it's not just
• 27:18
  having the base for American drivers from the standpoint of trying to find
• 27:22
  teams to drive for whatever, it's more about saying, Hey, look here.
• 27:26
  Are the differences in racing in Germany and racing in the UK, then
• 27:30
  you experience in the U S far as being accepted, like, honestly, like to this
• 27:34
  day, I'm I look back on doing British touring car and it was just epic.
• 27:37
  The fans were just, they're the best fans.
• 27:40
  They literally embraced me right away.
• 27:42
  I actually, the Scottish fans, I'm huge in Scotland.
• 27:45
  Don't ask me why, but like I go up to Scotland and everyone's like Rob, Rob,
• 27:48
  Rob, Rob, and it's just this whole thing.
• 27:50
  And actually I also can't understand.
• 27:53
  Anything that anyone says in Scottish, everybody needs subtitles in Scotland.
• 27:57
  They're like, I know you're speaking English, but I know, I just, I don't know.
• 28:02
  So I really missed that.
• 28:04
  They did such a great job in taking me in.
• 28:06
  So I missed that.
• 28:07
  They put that trill in your name.
• 28:09
  It's like Rob, right?
• 28:10
  They gotta like, Oh, we gotta drag it out.
• 28:12
  It is.
• 28:12
  It's way beyond that.
• 28:14
  Like I, I did this thing.
• 28:15
  I like to try, when I go to various places, I like to go in and talk to the
• 28:18
  kids and try to be inspiring and whatever.
• 28:21
  And I did this thing with the Scottish Cub Scouts, basically.
• 28:25
  And I went in there and there's like 30 kids all trying to talk
• 28:31
  to me with a Scottish accent.
• 28:32
  And it just was the funniest thing.
• 28:34
  Cause every kid I was like, well, sorry, what again?
• 28:36
  What was that again?
• 28:37
  Can you say one more time?
• 28:39
  No.
• 28:39
  Can you translate?
• 28:42
  And so all the older guys would have to like translate and they'd
• 28:45
  have to enunciate everything.
• 28:47
  And it was just really good fun.
• 28:48
  And for me, that was a big surprise.
• 28:50
  Cause I always figured I was coming in as the big bad American.
• 28:53
  You know, I was the easy target.
• 28:54
  Everybody is like from Europe.
• 28:56
  It's like, Oh, America, America, America.
• 28:57
  It was the opposite.
• 28:58
  They really were just so excited that someone from America really thought
• 29:02
  enough about their series that they would come over and do it, which I.
• 29:06
  laughed at because I think British German car is one of the best series
• 29:09
  of racing anywhere in the world.
• 29:11
  They were honored that I would come and want to race it.
• 29:13
  So that was very cool.
• 29:15
  I got to ask a question from a professional perspective, because
• 29:17
  it sounds like you've driven pretty much everything under the sun.
• 29:20
  I mean, Rotec famous for their Audi's.
• 29:22
  Now you're in a Mustang right now.
• 29:23
  You talked about the C30, which Not sure if that was some fake me out rear wheel
• 29:27
  drive concoction, or if it was the all wheel drive C30 or the front wheel drive,
• 29:30
  but I'm sure you've been in everything.
• 29:32
  So let's kind of settle the debate from your perspective.
• 29:35
  What's the most fun you've had behind the wheel?
• 29:39
  Was it a front wheel drive?
• 29:40
  Was it a rear wheel drive?
• 29:41
  Mid engine?
• 29:42
  What do you prefer?
• 29:42
  Bit of hubris here.
• 29:44
  I'm going with front wheel drive, the big, big, big, big caveat to this.
• 29:48
  So everybody always complains about front wheel drive cars under steering.
• 29:52
  They're not wrong.
• 29:54
  I mean, when you're getting into a corner and you're trying to use the
• 29:57
  front tires to not only grip through the corner, but also accelerate off
• 30:01
  the corner tires can only do so much.
• 30:03
  So obviously, when you start to accelerate, you're going to, at some
• 30:06
  point in time, exceed the limit of grip.
• 30:08
  The tire has and the car is going to want to understeer.
• 30:11
  But I have to correct you.
• 30:12
  I like to call that unplanned track out.
• 30:17
  Fair, fair enough.
• 30:18
  Well, here's the thing is that, you know, you're going to have an
• 30:21
  unplanned track out plan for it.
• 30:23
  And what you do is, is that you set up the car to rotate on entry.
• 30:28
  Everybody always looks at the, like I said, understeering
• 30:31
  front wheel drive cars.
• 30:32
  But if you can get the car to rotate on entry, then you actually use the
• 30:38
  throttle to save the car from spinning.
• 30:40
  It's the most counterintuitive thing, but I call it pitch and catch.
• 30:44
  You pitch the car into the corner, the car starts to rotate, and then you use
• 30:48
  the throttle and you basically time the throttle so that you catch the
• 30:51
  rotation at the apex so that your wheels are straight, and then there is no
• 30:55
  understeer because all the front wheels are doing is driving the car forward.
• 30:58
  It's an art like as a front wheel drive driver.
• 31:00
  You have to do it.
• 31:01
  It's honestly I look at it at the reverse of driving a Porsche.
• 31:05
  I'm hitting all the marks apparently.
• 31:09
  Amen.
• 31:09
  But it is, it is that same style of how you drive a car.
• 31:16
  It's like if you look at Porsche drivers, they are really quick in Porsches and
• 31:21
  there's just no way you're going to catch them because if you don't have
• 31:23
  that seat time in a Porsche, it's the same way with front wheel drive drivers.
• 31:26
  It's that same thing.
• 31:27
  And.
• 31:28
  The funny thing is, is that when you get into a real world drive
• 31:31
  car, and I've gone back and forth, I mean, I driven literally everything.
• 31:34
  The real world drive car, you can't get the car to rotate on entry
• 31:39
  because if you do, you have no recourse to basically save the car.
• 31:43
  Going to throttle is just gonna create a spin and then, and you're done.
• 31:46
  Unless you're drifting.
• 31:47
  Unless you're drifting.
• 31:48
  Well, unless you're drifting.
• 31:49
  But drifting isn't necessarily fast and you're burning tires and there's a
• 31:52
  whole bunch of things that go with it.
• 31:53
  But the thing is, is that then if you have an understeering rear wheel drive
• 31:58
  car, it's really difficult to get that to balance out at corner exit.
• 32:02
  And you're just stuck with an understeering car.
• 32:04
  So I've had more fun in the front wheel drive Audi TTRS.
• 32:08
  It was an Audi factory car at the Nürburgring.
• 32:11
  I look back, this is at the 24 hour race and there's 350, 000 people,
• 32:16
  quickest lap I had ever done at that time at the Nürburgring,
• 32:20
  I look back at it and just go.
• 32:22
  That's the lap.
• 32:22
  If I stopped racing right there, I'd be happy.
• 32:25
  See folks.
• 32:26
  I've said it once.
• 32:26
  I've said it a hundred times.
• 32:28
  Fun wheel drive.
• 32:30
  You got to experience it for real.
• 32:33
  None of these rental cars.
• 32:35
  Listen to the man.
• 32:36
  He knows what he's talking about.
• 32:39
  We'll sidebar on that one later.
• 32:40
  Well, you mentioned the Nürburgring and actually, I think there's
• 32:43
  still footage of you driving around the Nürburgring on YouTube.
• 32:46
  Some really great footage.
• 32:47
  So you've done the Nürburgring 24 hour.
• 32:49
  Totally iconic, but you've also done 12 hours of Bathurst and you've done Macau
• 32:55
  and you set a record at Pike's Peak.
• 32:57
  How do you go from the Nuremberg ring to going to, you know, some of the other
• 33:01
  iconic, you basically have set the bar.
• 33:03
  I mean, what's missing?
• 33:04
  Maybe you need to do, uh, uh, Monaco.
• 33:06
  I don't know.
• 33:06
  I don't know if you're hitting on everything.
• 33:08
  And Lamont, yes?
• 33:09
  I have not done Lamont.
• 33:10
  Yes, we need, we need to do them off.
• 33:12
  Yeah.
• 33:12
  Yes, exactly.
• 33:13
  Yeah.
• 33:14
  Um, you basically several million dollars as a sponsor.
• 33:17
  That's right.
• 33:17
  But you hit some iconic races.
• 33:19
  How did that come about?
• 33:20
  It's an opportunity thing.
• 33:21
  Like I go back to how I ended up in Germany, how I ended up in motorsport.
• 33:25
  It was an opportunity.
• 33:26
  And I don't look at things and go, there's a barrier.
• 33:28
  People would normally go.
• 33:29
  Bathurst, that's Australia.
• 33:30
  Wow.
• 33:30
  That's so far away.
• 33:31
  And I there's, that'll never happen or Macau.
• 33:34
  I look to find opportunity where I can, and I just kind of go with it.
• 33:37
  The Macau deal happened because for a number of reasons, but when I did British
• 33:42
  touring car, struck up a friendship with Rob Huff and Rob at the time
• 33:46
  was FIA world touring car champion.
• 33:48
  A super great guy and he and I just got along well, and he opened up a lot
• 33:53
  of doors in British motorsport for me.
• 33:55
  And one of those was a relationship with some of the race teams over in China.
• 34:01
  So I basically got connected with the guys running the Ford
• 34:04
  factory program over in China.
• 34:06
  They had a program that they were trying to develop a TCR car.
• 34:10
  And so we had this connection through Ford.
• 34:12
  Cause I had been doing some stuff with the Ford war towing car program.
• 34:15
  And they were like, Hey, can you come over?
• 34:17
  And the first.
• 34:18
  deal was to go and race Thailand in Buriram.
• 34:20
  And that was the world TCR championships.
• 34:23
  And that's actually where I met our good buddy, Brian Ma was literally
• 34:26
  on the streets of Thailand.
• 34:28
  And I got introduced to him.
• 34:29
  We were having dinner, literally on the side of a road in the, in
• 34:32
  the middle of nowhere in Thailand.
• 34:33
  So quite an Epic thing.
• 34:35
  And so I'd worked with Brian through that weekend.
• 34:37
  Then the next bit of that deal was that if I helped them out with.
• 34:40
  The development of the car at Thailand, they had another car that
• 34:43
  I could drive at Macau and Macau.
• 34:45
  And I always wanted to do, I mean, it's not as well known over in the U S but
• 34:49
  over anywhere in the world of motor sports, it's one of the most Epic tracks.
• 34:53
  It's, I would say equal to Pike's peak in the Nürburgring as in terms
• 34:56
  of level of difficulty and, and also.
• 35:00
  Kind of almost penalty for getting it wrong for people who don't know Macau
• 35:04
  is basically part of China It's the Portuguese rule and it is literally
• 35:09
  three times the size of Las Vegas And that's what it is is it's the Las Vegas
• 35:13
  of overseas It's the most hedonistic place in the world and then they have
• 35:17
  a motorsport race right through it with streets that are literally The
• 35:21
  narrow enough for one and a half cars to get through and yeah, it's epic.
• 35:25
  And the crowds and the, the, what it is, the casinos basically
• 35:29
  sponsor all the drivers.
• 35:30
  I mean, it's the most insane thing that I've ever seen.
• 35:32
  So, so I got fortunate enough to go do that.
• 35:34
  And then Rob Huff again, had another driver that wanted to
• 35:37
  go over to go race at Bathurst.
• 35:39
  So we put a program with Rotec Racing to go over there and race an Audi over there.
• 35:43
  We had some issues with the car, but that's an Audi
• 35:45
  problem, not a Rotec problem.
• 35:46
  But yeah, so I, you know, got, got a chance to go do that,
• 35:49
  you know, and then because of that, then now I'm over in Asia.
• 35:51
  So I got opportunities to go do Singapore, you know, once again, it's just, it's just
• 35:55
  meeting people and, you know, obviously being competitive behind the wheel, but
• 35:59
  also I think generally engaging with people and not being afraid that, okay,
• 36:03
  I'm in China or I'm in France or I'm in Germany or I'm in wherever, you know,
• 36:07
  I go and talk to people and shake hands and I like to hear people's stories.
• 36:11
  So I think that affords me some of the options to go and do some other stuff.
• 36:14
  So I have to ask.
• 36:15
  Yeah.
• 36:16
  It's Marina.
• 36:17
  Yep.
• 36:17
  Have you driven it?
• 36:18
  I have not in a race, but I have gone and done.
• 36:21
  I've driven a couple of Porsches there.
• 36:22
  Like Coda.
• 36:23
  I think there's, you either love it or you hate it, especially for those
• 36:26
  of us that have never driven it.
• 36:27
  Our only opportunity is to virtual racing, right?
• 36:30
  Like things that David's doing.
• 36:32
  So I'm wondering since you've been there and you've seen it, I'm sure
• 36:34
  you've seen Coda as well, right?
• 36:35
  These newer design tracks.
• 36:37
  What do you think of a course like Yas Marina?
• 36:39
  I struggle with that because I actually like, and I also like to a degree, Yas
• 36:43
  Marina, like it's, it's a good track.
• 36:45
  It's got some good flow to it.
• 36:46
  It's got some good sections to it.
• 36:48
  You know, I like Bahrain.
• 36:49
  That's a fun circuit as well.
• 36:51
  The problem I have with any of the modern tracks is that there is
• 36:55
  no penalty for getting it wrong.
• 36:57
  You could get all crossed up, do stupid stuff and end off in the bleachers.
• 37:01
  And yet you just drive on two corners later and continue on your lap.
• 37:04
  I'm kind of an old school guy and that's kind of why I like Pike's Peak.
• 37:07
  Like I, I'd have no interest in dying in a race car, but at the same point
• 37:10
  in time, I like the fact that you have to be spot on everything you do.
• 37:15
  And it's an old school, big balls.
• 37:17
  You can't just go in there and be technical.
• 37:20
  It's not looking at doing sim racing and I love sim racing, but there's
• 37:23
  also that sim racing mentality where there's no penalty for getting it wrong.
• 37:27
  So let me follow this up with another kind of pit stop question.
• 37:31
  Taking away the big tracks, the Pikes Peaks and the Nurburgrings and even Spa,
• 37:35
  the legendary tracks, if you had to pick your like top three tracks in the U.
• 37:39
  S.
• 37:40
  and top three tracks overseas, what would they be?
• 37:43
  Well, let's expand that to North America.
• 37:44
  Cause my favorite track in North America is most port.
• 37:47
  The reason I like most port is the same reason I like all these other tracks.
• 37:49
  Like you get it wrong at most port.
• 37:51
  You're in the wall.
• 37:52
  Mid Ohio is next.
• 37:53
  I don't know why I've always gone fast there.
• 37:56
  I held the track record there for a number of years.
• 37:58
  I've qualified on pole there.
• 37:59
  Like it just has this great rhythm, this great flow that I've always
• 38:04
  just really, really enjoyed.
• 38:05
  I like to call it Ottercrossers paradise.
• 38:08
  Yeah, literally.
• 38:09
  Exactly.
• 38:09
  I think if you're a good autocrosser, you'll be fast at mid Ohio for sure.
• 38:12
  But then you kind of go to the position three and there's just, there's so many
• 38:16
  tracks that you could fit in there.
• 38:18
  You know, I love Sebring.
• 38:19
  Sebring is such a great difficult track.
• 38:21
  It's all the bumps and everything else is super tough.
• 38:23
  I also have a fondness for Laguna Seca.
• 38:26
  You know, I think we all have a fondness for Laguna Seca.
• 38:29
  I'll go with Sebring as my last and favorite track in the US.
• 38:32
  It is just so difficult to get right.
• 38:35
  I think if you talk to every driver that's ever driven Sebring for the history
• 38:38
  of the track, if you ever go, have you ever done a perfect lap at Sebring?
• 38:42
  A lap where you've gone out and just gone, yep, that was it,
• 38:44
  left everything on the track.
• 38:45
  To a person, they would go, nope, never done it.
• 38:48
  I don't care how many laps you have there.
• 38:49
  It is just so difficult to get right.
• 38:52
  It's just a great challenge.
• 38:54
  So I have to say that's a first on the show because we do always get, you
• 38:56
  know, the road Atlantas and the Watkins glens and all those kinds of things.
• 39:00
  Epic tracks.
• 39:01
  I rock all of them, all the above.
• 39:02
  Right.
• 39:03
  Kind of makes me wonder before you answer the European slash Asian question, or you
• 39:06
  can separate them if you want to, what are your bottom three tracks in North America?
• 39:11
  Then I'm just curious.
• 39:12
  If you're willing to name names, if you want to keep it innocent, that's okay.
• 39:16
  There are very few tracks that I hate that I'm like, uh, I
• 39:20
  really don't want to go there.
• 39:22
  Oddly enough, Sonoma is actually high on that list and it
• 39:27
  always is a surprise to people.
• 39:29
  We literally, we just won there like, what, you know, three months ago.
• 39:32
  You know, we're on poll, we won and it's not my...
• 39:34
  But I told the guys going in, I'm like, guys, you know,
• 39:37
  this is not my favorite track.
• 39:38
  I've never had good luck here.
• 39:39
  And, you know, the other thing is, it's funny.
• 39:41
  I ran world touring car race that I ran was Sonoma.
• 39:44
  And I'm like, God of all tracks you had to put me on is the
• 39:46
  one track that I don't like it.
• 39:48
  Why could you do it at mid Ohio or something like that?
• 39:50
  Just for whatever reason, it just is a track that doesn't.
• 39:54
  Click with me very well.
• 39:55
  That's probably it.
• 39:57
  Lime Rock is funny.
• 39:58
  Like, that was the first track I've ever raced on.
• 39:59
  It was actually when I was racing bicycles.
• 40:01
  It should be more fun than it is.
• 40:03
  I've also just never enjoyed it, which is very funny because then you turn
• 40:07
  around and the two of my favorite tracks over in Europe, the first is Knock Hill.
• 40:12
  Which almost no one in the U S knows about.
• 40:15
  You've seen my picture on Facebook with the, the two wheels in the air.
• 40:19
  I'm literally about to put the car in its roof that was qualifying at Knock
• 40:23
  Hill and Knock Hill is the bullring.
• 40:26
  Just YouTube British touring car at Knock Hill.
• 40:29
  It's the most Epic action.
• 40:30
  It's the tightest track.
• 40:31
  It's got curbing all over the place.
• 40:33
  You're literally flying the car through the air.
• 40:35
  You never have two seconds to rest.
• 40:37
  It is.
• 40:38
  It's epic.
• 40:38
  It's my favorite track.
• 40:40
  Is that part of the family of tracks, the Hatch and Olden Park and Snedderton all
• 40:44
  belong to or is it one of the standards?
• 40:45
  It is the Scottish track.
• 40:47
  It's um, Gordon Shedden, who's a three time British touring
• 40:50
  car champion, factory driver.
• 40:51
  He manages the track up there.
• 40:53
  I get a big grin every time I go up there, like literally, it's just
• 40:55
  the feel of Scotland and everything.
• 40:57
  I just, it definitely, if not my top of the not big tracks, it's up there.
• 41:02
  Brands Hatch would have to be the second one of that.
• 41:05
  Brands is just, it's the same thing.
• 41:06
  It's.
• 41:07
  Once again, I got to have caveats for both of these because front wheel
• 41:10
  drive touring cars, that's kind of where I made my bread and butter.
• 41:13
  I enjoy driving those cars.
• 41:15
  The GT four Mustang could be kind of fun, but other than that, like I
• 41:19
  wouldn't want to drive a GT three car.
• 41:20
  That's not that type of track.
• 41:22
  It is a touring car.
• 41:23
  Type of track and the battles that those types of tracks
• 41:27
  create are actually legendary.
• 41:29
  And I think it's the drivers and the cars, obviously, but I also
• 41:32
  think that the tracks themselves lead into a lot of those battles.
• 41:35
  They don't have super long straightaway.
• 41:37
  So you're always on the brakes because you're always on the brakes.
• 41:40
  You've got cars.
• 41:41
  They're going to try to stuff it up the inside because that's
• 41:43
  what touring car drivers do.
• 41:44
  We're not afraid of a little contact.
• 41:46
  So I don't mind pushing someone through a break zone or is
• 41:48
  diving a car up on the inside.
• 41:50
  And that is for me, I love it.
• 41:52
  I'm a happy guy.
• 41:53
  If you can give me all that stuff.
• 41:54
  That's awesome.
• 41:54
  So what, one thing before we transition back with all of these places you've
• 41:58
  been to in fabulous racetracks and not so great racetracks and everything in
• 42:01
  between, is there still something on your bucket list outside of Lamont's
• 42:05
  that you'd want to race at or try?
• 42:08
  Just Lamont.
• 42:08
  I'd like to have a go at NASCAR to tick the box.
• 42:11
  You know, I'd love to do one of the road courses in the new gen cars.
• 42:14
  I think it would just be fun and kind of see what it's all about, but Lamont.
• 42:18
  In your head, you have this goal of what you want your career to
• 42:21
  look like as a race car driver.
• 42:22
  And, you know, Le Mans has to be at the top of everyone's box.
• 42:25
  That is the best of the best battling for 24 hours on an epic circuit
• 42:30
  through the French countryside.
• 42:32
  For me, it is literally the one.
• 42:34
  I got to say, Rob, you had me at Pike's Peak, and the reason is, oddly
• 42:39
  enough, I find myself as one of the few people in our organization that
• 42:43
  actually appreciate World Rally.
• 42:45
  And now I'm dating myself.
• 42:47
  I grew up in the Group B era.
• 42:49
  So we got the flaming dragons of the Audis and the Lancias and the
• 42:52
  Renaults and everybody down the line.
• 42:55
  I remember countless times turning my father and saying,
• 42:57
  I want to be a rally driver.
• 42:59
  And I still to this day want to be a rally driver, but it's one of
• 43:01
  those things that in North America is hard to do except for the peak.
• 43:05
  Let's talk about the peak a little bit.
• 43:08
  And let's talk about your experience there.
• 43:09
  And let's kind of set the timeframe.
• 43:11
  Was this before it was fully paved and you could still run the race to the sky
• 43:16
  mostly on dirt, or is this post paving?
• 43:19
  Unfortunately, it was post paving.
• 43:21
  I shared your dream.
• 43:22
  Growing up, I got basically two forms of racing.
• 43:25
  British touring car.
• 43:26
  I don't remember, like, CBS Sports, I think, had some super
• 43:28
  touring car era racing on it.
• 43:29
  I just, I was captivated by it.
• 43:31
  But then, actually, the, the Group B rally stuff.
• 43:32
  Those guys were epic.
• 43:34
  And you just look at that and you're just, you know, still to this day, when you
• 43:36
  look at the old videos, you're just...
• 43:38
  Blown away by it.
• 43:38
  So I had this same passion for rally driving, but for whatever
• 43:42
  reason, my skillset doesn't quite overlap with the ride.
• 43:45
  I've got great car control.
• 43:47
  It's just commitment to memory of circuits that you've only seen once.
• 43:51
  I never thought I could be good at that.
• 43:53
  And I've never really tried it.
• 43:54
  So who knows, but it just didn't seem to be me.
• 43:58
  When I came to school in Colorado, Pikes Peak hill climb was going on and
• 44:02
  a bunch of gearhead friends of mine.
• 44:03
  So we went down.
• 44:04
  One year when it was still dirt and it was epic and it was fun, you come back
• 44:08
  covered in dust and just like feeling like crap, but it was an epic day.
• 44:12
  Like, I mean, to see the cars go up the hill, it was, it was mental.
• 44:15
  And this is before, you know, even long before I even inkling of a thought
• 44:19
  that I could be a race car driver.
• 44:21
  So this was me just being in all of these guys driving up
• 44:24
  the hill as the pure spectator.
• 44:26
  As I turned pro, there's always in the back of your head that like,
• 44:30
  Oh, I now have a skillset that I could probably go do Pike's Peak.
• 44:33
  And I'd always go.
• 44:34
  It's dirt and that's a really long drop off.
• 44:37
  I'm like, that's not the place to figure out if you've got the skills or not.
• 44:41
  So, no.
• 44:42
  So that went on for years.
• 44:43
  And then I remember reading that they were looking to pave it.
• 44:46
  And honestly, I felt really bad because to me, Pike's peak
• 44:50
  always was the unpaved road.
• 44:52
  It was Walter Raul and the Audi guys and the Peugeot guys just ripping it up the
• 44:57
  hill at insane rates of speed on the dirt.
• 44:59
  And with those drop offs and the views and everything, it was, it
• 45:01
  was, that was to me, Pike's peak.
• 45:03
  But when they finished paving it, I said, well, wait a second.
• 45:05
  You've now put that into my domain.
• 45:08
  I can do this.
• 45:09
  I made an attempt at it at 2012, I want to say.
• 45:12
  And unfortunately, there was massive fires in Colorado Springs that year.
• 45:17
  They had to push the race back to later in the year.
• 45:21
  And unfortunately, the date they picked coincided with
• 45:23
  my British touring car debut.
• 45:24
  I had to take the British touring car over Pikes Peak, but I had done.
• 45:27
  Testing on the mountain.
• 45:28
  They have a two test weekends prior to the race itself.
• 45:31
  So I got out there, I was able to get on the mountain
• 45:33
  literally like this first run.
• 45:36
  I'm like, Oh yeah, we're doing this.
• 45:37
  This is, I get it.
• 45:39
  I'm all over it.
• 45:40
  Once I came back from Europe, we've done it every year since we
• 45:42
  brought over the same Audi TTRS that we had raced at the Nürburgring.
• 45:47
  And we came out with the intent of breaking the front wheel drive record.
• 45:50
  The only problem is that we didn't have the time to convert the car from an
• 45:53
  endurance race car to a Pike speed car.
• 45:56
  And we also didn't.
• 45:57
  really know what we needed to do to do that because we'd never really
• 46:00
  gone and done the engineering side of things on Pike's Peak.
• 46:03
  So we just basically ran the endurance race car and overall it was pretty good.
• 46:07
  It was just geared for the Nürburgring, which is you're geared for 170,
• 46:11
  180 miles an hour and that clearly doesn't happen on Pike's Peak.
• 46:15
  So we were geared wrong and that was a bit of an issue.
• 46:18
  We didn't quite get the tires right because the surfaces
• 46:21
  changed so much up there.
• 46:22
  But even with all of that stuff, we still managed to break the front
• 46:25
  wheel drive record by over a minute.
• 46:27
  Us doing that.
• 46:27
  And then the publicity behind that, it started putting a
• 46:30
  target on that particular record.
• 46:32
  And so Acura fired up a program.
• 46:34
  And I think two or three years later, they managed to beat my record by six
• 46:38
  seconds, and I'm trying to get that back again, because it's my record.
• 46:42
  Exactly.
• 46:44
  But epic, epic, epic race, epic race.
• 46:47
  It's so unlike everything else that we do.
• 46:49
  I mean, even when you go to Macau, you're in the middle of Macau and
• 46:53
  Vegas and it's showgirls and it's this and it's narrow streets and
• 46:56
  it's all this crazy stuff and people speaking Macanese and all these things.
• 47:00
  It still doesn't compare to a day at Pikes Peak at all.
• 47:02
  Pikes Peak just is.
• 47:04
  So epically different from every other form of motorsport, to your point, the
• 47:07
  fans of all these different motorsports are drastically different too.
• 47:10
  And I mean, you mentioned earlier about, you know, being in England and
• 47:14
  visiting the kids and all this kind of stuff, traveling the world like this.
• 47:17
  What have you learned from the fans of motorsport?
• 47:21
  It's the most amazing thing.
• 47:22
  I mean, and I, very few people, I think that can get this perspective.
• 47:25
  I mean, you, you kind of go back to racing in America, racing up in Canada,
• 47:29
  racing in the UK, in Germany, in Macau, in Thailand, all of these things.
• 47:34
  And you have huge spectator counts at all of these events.
• 47:37
  And the one thing is, is that they're all.
• 47:40
  Gearheads.
• 47:41
  Every single one of them.
• 47:42
  And that's a universal thing.
• 47:44
  It's not like this universal language.
• 47:45
  I mean, that's kind of a silly comment to make.
• 47:47
  We still have a language barrier in communication, but someone's
• 47:51
  passion for cars is transcended to who they are as people.
• 47:56
  The same feeling that I have about cars is the same feeling that the
• 47:59
  guys in Thailand have about cars.
• 48:01
  We were at Spa Frankerschnapps one year.
• 48:03
  There's a little bed and breakfast.
• 48:05
  Really, really great up in Stavolo, like, you know, about five kilometers up the
• 48:08
  road from the track and they have a big outdoor, you sit down and you order food,
• 48:13
  everybody, but everyone shares this table.
• 48:15
  It's literally like the UN it's French and it's, it's Flemish.
• 48:18
  And it's this, and it's that, and it's other couple of bottles
• 48:21
  of wine in an hour later, all everybody's talking about is cars.
• 48:25
  That is just the conversation.
• 48:26
  It's this great feeling that, you know, that the passion that
• 48:29
  you have for cars is universal.
• 48:31
  So you picked basically to do two things cycling and motorsports
• 48:36
  were to be quite blunt.
• 48:37
  There's not a lot of African Americans.
• 48:39
  And did you find more or less African Americans participating
• 48:44
  in cycling or motorsports?
• 48:47
  Oh, motorsport for sure.
• 48:48
  Grew up in Europe, but then I came back to the U S and was living
• 48:50
  up outside of New York city.
• 48:52
  We used to do training rides out there, Saturdays and Sundays and
• 48:55
  all the local races and stuff.
• 48:56
  There wasn't like a massive amount of black riders, but there were more than
• 49:01
  a handful, far more than a handful.
• 49:04
  And a lot of the guys that mentored me coming up were black, but it
• 49:07
  was great though, because back.
• 49:09
  Then, you know, dating myself, we were the weirdo cyclists.
• 49:12
  We were the guys wearing spandex.
• 49:13
  And this is Greg Lamont time, not Lance Armstrong time when
• 49:16
  everybody was riding bikes.
• 49:17
  This was before all that.
• 49:18
  So we were this weird group of guys and I was a black guy in a weird
• 49:21
  group of guys, which is even weirder.
• 49:22
  The thing is, is that we all realized that we were all this just left of center.
• 49:27
  group.
• 49:27
  And so that all just bonds you together that never really had any issues
• 49:30
  being one of a few black riders.
• 49:33
  And that just, it just never was the thing.
• 49:34
  And then you go into motorsport and there's nobody, you know, on the pro
• 49:38
  level, there's a half a dozen guys in the world that are racing at the pro
• 49:41
  level, a few more at the amateur level.
• 49:43
  And I'm starting to see more and more diversity within the paddock,
• 49:46
  which is really great to see.
• 49:47
  And obviously that's, you know, one of the reasons our program
• 49:50
  is, is there is to increase that.
• 49:52
  The thing I find about motorsports is that it seems a lot of people that
• 49:56
  are involved are there for legacy reasons, meaning that their uncle
• 50:00
  raced or their father raced and their father raced and it's a family thing.
• 50:03
  And that brings in other people that, you know, maybe their
• 50:06
  friends or cousins or whatever.
• 50:09
  But obviously that group of people is all homogenous and it doesn't
• 50:12
  really look outside of that group.
• 50:15
  And, you know, whether it's their.
• 50:16
  Job to do it or not is, is kind of irrelevant.
• 50:19
  It's just that that's what has happened over years and years and years in
• 50:23
  the sport is, is that it all just tends to be homogenous because of the
• 50:26
  people that are attracted to the sport through their relationships, going to
• 50:29
  a question that you really didn't ask.
• 50:30
  But our goal obviously is to be that foothold within motor sports
• 50:34
  and going, Hey guys, We're here come, you know, the door's open.
• 50:37
  There's nothing stopping you.
• 50:39
  There's everybody here is great.
• 50:40
  And they're all friendly and you might not have seen the chance to
• 50:43
  have an opportunity to come here, but I'm telling you it's, it's there.
• 50:46
  So come on in, you know, exactly.
• 50:48
  This is what this platform is for, for you to, to talk about what you're
• 50:51
  doing to preserve your legacy, what you're doing to, to be inclusive.
• 50:54
  And going back when you first started as.
• 50:57
  One of the few, and maybe only well recognized African Americans in the sport.
• 51:02
  Did you ever feel that pressure when you used to meet, you know, young
• 51:05
  men and women who were like, Hey man, I can't believe you're a driver.
• 51:09
  Like, wow, that's awesome.
• 51:10
  Thanks for being out there for us.
• 51:11
  Like, did you ever feel pressure?
• 51:13
  No, I, you know, honestly, I never did.
• 51:15
  I mean, I, it's funny.
• 51:17
  I've kind of had this mea culpa.
• 51:19
  This is actually one of the genesis of our program.
• 51:22
  When I came into the sport, I came in not as a black driver.
• 51:25
  I came in as a guy who wanted to beat everybody else, not be the best
• 51:30
  black driver, but be the best driver.
• 51:31
  That's what it motivates me.
• 51:33
  But also I knew that, okay, I'm the only black driver there.
• 51:36
  And my thought process was, well, if I could be the only black driver there and
• 51:40
  I can Win races, if that is motivating to someone, then great, I'll be that guy.
• 51:46
  I'll be that role model or whatever you want to call it.
• 51:49
  And I thought that that would be enough.
• 51:50
  I thought that me just showing up and winning races and being
• 51:53
  black and people would see that would be inspirational enough.
• 51:56
  I've realized after a very long period of time that that isn't
• 51:59
  enough because motorsport hasn't become more diverse on my watch.
• 52:04
  And I realized that it's not enough to just go, well, I'm here.
• 52:08
  So be inspired.
• 52:10
  Like, that doesn't work.
• 52:11
  You know, the thought process is, is that I now need to make an effort.
• 52:15
  Reach out to people and go, I am here.
• 52:18
  Come on, let's walk through this door together.
• 52:20
  I'll show you all these things that I've learned, and I'll show
• 52:22
  you how to walk through that door.
• 52:23
  I'll show you that, you know, you might not have even known the door existed.
• 52:27
  I'm going to show you that the door exists, but I'm also
• 52:29
  going to hold it open for you.
• 52:30
  And I'm going to point you in the right direction.
• 52:32
  And hopefully we can use that to get enough people into the paddock.
• 52:36
  And the way I look at it is diversity is going to breed diversity.
• 52:40
  If there's people that look like me and I can go, Oh, he did it.
• 52:45
  I see that and I can now talk to him.
• 52:48
  I can understand his journey is similar to my journey, or it's completely different,
• 52:52
  but he still did it and he did it his way.
• 52:54
  I can do it and I can do it my way.
• 52:56
  And that is, I think the overall goal of what we're looking
• 52:58
  to try to accomplish here.
• 53:00
  This conversation about diversity is super important because we've
• 53:02
  talked about on the show before.
• 53:04
  The inclusivity of women in motor sport and other cultures and motor sports.
• 53:08
  So we're seeing it kind of across the board.
• 53:09
  It's almost systemic.
• 53:10
  We've also talked about, and part of our premise as an organization
• 53:14
  is the proliferation of motor sports enthusiasm across multiple disciplines.
• 53:19
  And so what you're talking about is awesome, right?
• 53:21
  Bringing people into the sport and being that shepherd and bringing
• 53:25
  them into touring car, bringing them into TCR or whatever it might be.
• 53:29
  I also think we have to make a concerted effort to start.
• 53:32
  At the lower ranks at the grassroots motor sports in karting in
• 53:36
  motorcycles and all of them because they funnel up to each other.
• 53:39
  Even I can't walk in the door and say, I'm here BMW.
• 53:42
  I want to run a formula BMW or formula three.
• 53:45
  It's not going to happen.
• 53:45
  Like you have to work your way up.
• 53:47
  You have to do your time in the trenches.
• 53:48
  So I think we need to walk in arm and arm somehow and figure out a
• 53:52
  way or devise a plan to make things more diverse across the board.
• 53:57
  And then.
• 53:57
  To your point, it will happen naturally.
• 53:59
  So I'm wondering, how do we do that?
• 54:02
  Well, like, what's the plan?
• 54:03
  What's your vision of how we make all this work?
• 54:05
  The first thing, and, you know, David will tell you, this is my
• 54:08
  philosophy is, is that the tough part about motorsports is it's expensive.
• 54:12
  Let's just.
• 54:12
  Be blunt.
• 54:13
  It's not a cheap sport.
• 54:14
  And, you know, obviously, as you know, the unfortunate facts are minorities
• 54:20
  don't have the level of disposable income that a lot of other people do.
• 54:24
  So when you getting into motorsport, the first thing people talk about
• 54:27
  is, is the driver side of things.
• 54:28
  And of course, cause that's the most visible side.
• 54:31
  I'm looking at it going, okay, look.
• 54:32
  I can go start a program to get my sponsors on board and go, Hey, guys, I
• 54:35
  want a program that I want to help fund a young black driver, young female driver,
• 54:40
  or whatever it is coming up to start increasing more diversity in the sport.
• 54:44
  But the problem is, is that as soon as that funding stops.
• 54:48
  That driver disappears.
• 54:49
  They're not there anymore.
• 54:50
  That then doesn't end up creating any sort of legacy platform for more and
• 54:55
  more people to come into the paddock.
• 54:57
  What I had to look at it is, well, how do you go and do that?
• 54:59
  How do you create this self sustaining diversity in the paddock?
• 55:03
  And the only way to do that is to basically get Black engineers,
• 55:08
  Black mechanics, Black PR people, Black officials, Black...
• 55:11
  People who are getting paid to be there, that whether or not it's their full time
• 55:15
  job, that it is still a job, they can then make a living at it, which means that they
• 55:20
  can be sustainable within the paddock.
• 55:22
  That is, for me, the only way I really see the possibility of
• 55:27
  getting sustainable diversity.
• 55:28
  The thing is, is that, and David will tell you this, is that.
• 55:32
  We've been searching around for people at the top level in motor sport that
• 55:36
  are diverse all across the gamut.
• 55:38
  You know, I don't want to say just black, it's Hispanic, it's black.
• 55:40
  It's women, Asian.
• 55:42
  I just want to see some diversity within the paddock.
• 55:45
  And we've looked very, very hard and literally our team has got.
• 55:50
  The best of the best when it comes to the guys in looking for
• 55:53
  diversity in their positions.
• 55:54
  So now we've got to take a look at going down to the grassroots level and
• 55:58
  creating a pool of people that we can then draw from to help draw them up
• 56:03
  to, to the top level of motorsports.
• 56:05
  And that's kind of what What David's project is, is to start getting kids
• 56:08
  that are more interested in getting them interested in STEM, getting
• 56:11
  them interested in motor sports and going, Hey guys, there's jobs here.
• 56:15
  The way I look at it is, is that for kids that are potentially excited about getting
• 56:19
  involved, whether even on the driver level, I mean, I know a lot of drivers
• 56:22
  that also work as engineers or mechanics or whatever to support their driving.
• 56:27
  And still stay relevant within motorsport.
• 56:29
  What I say is, is that if you go into motorsport, you look at like, say on
• 56:33
  a mechanic side of things, okay, maybe you can't get on with the teams at
• 56:37
  the highest level if you don't have the skill set or whatever, but you now
• 56:40
  have a skill, you are now a mechanic.
• 56:43
  You look at all of the major automotive manufacturers and they
• 56:46
  are begging for mechanics to come in.
• 56:49
  Mechanics are making six figures a year.
• 56:51
  Right now, you can go to a young kid that maybe is a little
• 56:55
  disadvantaged and go look.
• 56:56
  You could learn how to be a mechanic.
• 56:57
  You know, you're probably working on your own car already.
• 57:00
  Go to school, go to UTI, be a mechanic, go in and then have the opportunities
• 57:04
  in motorsport, wrench on your friends cars, honestly show up to the
• 57:07
  paddock and go, Hey, I'm a mechanic.
• 57:09
  Does anyone need some help?
• 57:10
  And I guarantee you, there'll be a dozen people there going, yep, sure.
• 57:13
  Come and wrench on my car because I can't do it by myself.
• 57:16
  And that I think hopefully we'll start feeding that motorsport ladder.
• 57:19
  And you're right.
• 57:20
  And I also think that folks.
• 57:23
  Sometimes I maybe don't know where to do the research to get in.
• 57:26
  And I think there are some motor sports that are cheaper than others.
• 57:29
  They all become expensive after a while.
• 57:32
  Let's be real.
• 57:33
  And you're right.
• 57:34
  But if you start in drag racing's inexpensive, even if you just run, I
• 57:38
  hate to say a shit box and you get used to the discipline itself, that's the
• 57:41
  important part, you said it before.
• 57:43
  It doesn't matter what you bring to the track, bring something
• 57:46
  and learn the discipline.
• 57:47
  So drag racing is cheap.
• 57:48
  Autocross is cheap.
• 57:49
  Carding is cheap in the beginning.
• 57:51
  So you want to go to shifter carts and all this crazy stuff, but people often forget
• 57:55
  about one of the oldest institutions in North America that helps foster young
• 58:00
  drivers and that's the SCCA and so I want to bring them up and not to take any light
• 58:05
  away from what Dave is doing because his program is right on point to help us get.
• 58:09
  Folks into those positions.
• 58:10
  And we talked about formula SAE on his show and things like that.
• 58:13
  But SCCA has a program for pretty much every discipline
• 58:17
  and you can work your way up.
• 58:18
  I mean, I remember sitting down and talking to like Andy Pilgrim and he
• 58:22
  says, I started off auto crossing a GTI and you're like, your mind is blown.
• 58:25
  It's like your team Cadillac captain.
• 58:27
  It's like, how the heck did that happen?
• 58:29
  You know, but it's because he started with an organization.
• 58:32
  Same thing, exactly.
• 58:33
  That they help bring these people up through the ranks.
• 58:36
  And so.
• 58:37
  If you're interested in you're listening to this and you're a younger driver
• 58:40
  and you're enthusiastic about cars, I urge you to take a look at the SCCA
• 58:43
  programs because they have something for everybody across the entirety of
• 58:47
  the U S and it's a great way to get in cheap and then build yourself up.
• 58:51
  And then maybe there's a scout out there.
• 58:53
  There's somebody who's looking, you're the right day at the right time.
• 58:55
  You're competing on a pro am level and that's your gateway into something else.
• 58:59
  And SCCA does continue to grow their programs to get people into.
• 59:04
  Organizations like yours where they're running touring car, you know, on the
• 59:07
  European scene and things like that.
• 59:09
  So again, a good jumping off block, but switching back to David, who I
• 59:12
  think has some follow on questions.
• 59:14
  Do you have any plans of running a team like Penske or Gnassi?
• 59:17
  What are your future plans?
• 59:19
  Funny.
• 59:19
  I used to get asked all this time here, Rob, what's your, what's your five
• 59:22
  year plan, what's your 10 year plan?
• 59:23
  And I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow.
• 59:25
  It goes back to how I got into car racing in the first place.
• 59:28
  Like you kind of just kind of go with the flow.
• 59:30
  Like I'm.
• 59:31
  Right now, the focus is, is Rotec racing in this program.
• 59:34
  You know, obviously we're, we're talking to a number of manufacturers to see
• 59:38
  what we can do for the coming years.
• 59:39
  And hopefully being involved with a manufacturer, you know, open
• 59:43
  some doors to go do other things.
• 59:44
  And sure, if I could obviously get to the level of Penske, that's a great thing.
• 59:47
  And to be able to be successful as a, as a team owner would be, you know, maybe
• 59:51
  not quite as satisfying as a driver, but it would still be satisfying.
• 59:54
  And, you know, it also gives me the opportunity to help increase the
• 59:57
  diversity directly by just saying, look.
• 59:59
  We're going to hire minorities and this is how we're going to go do it.
• 1:00:02
  That to me is, is hugely important.
• 1:00:04
  To be honest, I don't really know what the future holds right now.
• 1:00:06
  I'm really just really happy with the way Rotec is running and the impact that I
• 1:00:10
  think we've made so far and the potential impact we can make for the future.
• 1:00:14
  So I got to ask where'd the name come from and what does it mean?
• 1:00:17
  Yeah, very funny story.
• 1:00:18
  It's a lawyer story actually going over to Europe.
• 1:00:20
  We're coming up.
• 1:00:21
  And so my partner's Roland Pritzker and obviously I'm Rob Holland.
• 1:00:24
  And we were talking about names back and forth.
• 1:00:26
  And so we would throw like a pool of names at the attorneys and they
• 1:00:29
  would go scour everything all over the world and say, okay, you know, yeah,
• 1:00:33
  you could use this or no, you can't.
• 1:00:34
  And basically.
• 1:00:35
  Everything was coming back.
• 1:00:36
  No, you can't use it.
• 1:00:37
  It's too similar to this.
• 1:00:38
  And there's a conflict in this and that and the other, and this
• 1:00:40
  went on for two, three weeks.
• 1:00:42
  And we're just like, guys, come on.
• 1:00:43
  And what it turned out, it was just lawyers being lawyers.
• 1:00:45
  They're being like over sensitive and overcautious.
• 1:00:47
  So finally, Roland and I were just like, okay, it's Robin Rollins, a
• 1:00:50
  row and tech T E K kind of a German sounding thing, Rotec boom, done.
• 1:00:55
  And we're like, the lawyers are like, ah, but it sounds like it.
• 1:00:57
  We're like, Nope.
• 1:00:58
  Rotec and so we're Rotec racing and that's kind of what it's been.
• 1:01:01
  And it's funny because we have, we're not really racing at the Nurburgring
• 1:01:03
  anymore because we are leasing out our facilities to Miltec exhaust
• 1:01:07
  that are, have a base over there now.
• 1:01:09
  When I came over here to, to race and to start this program, thinking
• 1:01:13
  about trying to come up with another name and figure out something else.
• 1:01:16
  I realized that.
• 1:01:17
  Rotec Racing has been involved in everything.
• 1:01:20
  I mean, we have, you know, just, you know, once again, all the stuff that we've
• 1:01:23
  talked about that I've done, Rotec Racing has done that, but plus a whole bunch of
• 1:01:26
  other things with a lot of other drivers.
• 1:01:28
  So, you know, I wanted to take that name and that history behind the name and
• 1:01:33
  bring it into the U S so that when someone went out and, you know, we're like, Oh,
• 1:01:36
  it's Rotec is doing a diversity program.
• 1:01:38
  And it, I didn't want it to be this, like someone going, Oh, it's a small
• 1:01:41
  mom and pop team and, Oh yeah, great.
• 1:01:43
  You know, whatever.
• 1:01:44
  I want someone to Google Rotec and go, Whoa.
• 1:01:46
  They were at Macau where they were at Bathurst.
• 1:01:48
  They were at the Nürburgring.
• 1:01:49
  They were British touring car.
• 1:01:50
  They were okay.
• 1:01:51
  These guys are legit.
• 1:01:52
  They're one of the best teams in the country and huge international experience.
• 1:01:56
  All right, well, let's believe what these guys are trying to do.
• 1:01:58
  And let's take it seriously.
• 1:01:59
  On the auspices of this conversation about diversity and everything we've
• 1:02:03
  been talking about here brought to mind.
• 1:02:05
  A documentary that came out during COVID and I'm sure you guys have both seen
• 1:02:09
  it and I want to get your opinions on this because many of us on our side had
• 1:02:13
  opinions about the film uppity, the Willie T rib story and that and I was a big trans
• 1:02:17
  am fan as much as I was a big groupie fan because you had folks like Willie T
• 1:02:21
  and Lindsay James and early a wood, and all sorts of you know even hunched up
• 1:02:24
  and Walter world came over and ran in those pro am races back in the day, you
• 1:02:28
  know, Long Beach and so on down the line.
• 1:02:30
  Was that an accurate portrayal?
• 1:02:32
  Was that not so much?
• 1:02:34
  And what did you guys think of that story, even having
• 1:02:36
  lived through that era as well?
• 1:02:38
  It's a difficult question.
• 1:02:39
  I mean, obviously, like, and I don't want to undercut things because there
• 1:02:42
  are racist people within motorsports.
• 1:02:43
  There are racist people everywhere.
• 1:02:44
  So you can't just literally by percentages, there's going to
• 1:02:47
  be racist people in motorsport.
• 1:02:48
  And did he probably have to go through a lot of that racism?
• 1:02:52
  Absolutely.
• 1:02:53
  I think that there's no doubt about it.
• 1:02:55
  I do think some of Willie's issues were self inflicted.
• 1:02:59
  He is not known as the most pleasant person in the world.
• 1:03:02
  My singular interaction with him as a child was not particularly noteworthy.
• 1:03:08
  I struggle and also to some of the narrative and I No, I've been part
• 1:03:12
  of the process of doing TV shows or films and whatever, and I know how
• 1:03:16
  sometimes narratives are changed or skewed a little bit to fit what they
• 1:03:21
  want to portray the film as some of the things that came through.
• 1:03:23
  I just didn't quite agree with racism for sure.
• 1:03:26
  Did he go through it?
• 1:03:26
  Yes.
• 1:03:27
  But would Jack Roush blow up his own motor to sabotage?
• 1:03:31
  Willie's race because he wouldn't support Scott Pruitt in a championship.
• 1:03:34
  Now, why would you blow up a hundred thousand dollar motor when decreasing
• 1:03:37
  your tire pressure by five psi would probably accomplish the same thing and you
• 1:03:41
  come home with a clean car and a motor?
• 1:03:43
  Things like that, I think Willie's motor blew up because It blew up motors blow up.
• 1:03:47
  That's what happened.
• 1:03:48
  So there were a couple of narratives in there that I didn't quite buy into,
• 1:03:52
  but overall, I mean, the thing is, is I think that without trying to completely
• 1:03:56
  undercut things, I do think that the movie made some very important points.
• 1:03:59
  And it also, the bigger thing was, is that it made a lot of people in the
• 1:04:03
  industry think, you know, here's a guy who was clearly a very talented
• 1:04:06
  race car driver who had to battle much harder than his peers to win races.
• 1:04:12
  All that movie accomplished was.
• 1:04:14
  To make other people in the industry think about that, then
• 1:04:18
  I think it was well worth it.
• 1:04:19
  Would you say that helped or hurt the legacy that you're trying to build?
• 1:04:22
  You know, I, I don't really think it has an impact.
• 1:04:24
  Willie's still around and kind of at the periphery of a lot of things.
• 1:04:28
  He's, I think he's, he was doing, what is it?
• 1:04:29
  SRX series or whatever.
• 1:04:31
  Just jumped in that, you know, and, and obviously with uppity, his
• 1:04:34
  name has definitely resurfaced, but you know, I don't think it hurt.
• 1:04:37
  The thing is, is that like publicity, there's no such thing as bad publicity.
• 1:04:40
  I think if people are talking about.
• 1:04:42
  Diversity, that means that it's something that's aware.
• 1:04:45
  I think that's been the problem in motor sports is that it's
• 1:04:49
  just not a conversation.
• 1:04:50
  If you, if you're in a group of the current team owners and racers, 99.
• 1:04:55
  9 percent of them are white.
• 1:04:56
  The conversation versus he's not going to come up, not because people are racist
• 1:05:00
  or not because they don't care, but because it's just not something that you
• 1:05:03
  think about, it's not something that's.
• 1:05:04
  Present in your mind.
• 1:05:05
  Why would you, and I don't blame anyone for that.
• 1:05:08
  So there's not, I'm not pointing any fingers.
• 1:05:09
  I'm not saying anyone's wrong or whatever.
• 1:05:11
  I think things like this uppity, I think our program, and there's
• 1:05:15
  a couple other programs out there.
• 1:05:17
  I think the more people are bringing it to the forefront, it's at least in people's
• 1:05:22
  mind, what I want to see is, is that.
• 1:05:24
  You know, not only through our program, but we can only funnel so
• 1:05:27
  many people through our program.
• 1:05:29
  What I want to be able to do is make an impression on everybody else in the
• 1:05:32
  paddock so that the next time a black guy knocks on the door and says, Hey,
• 1:05:36
  I'd like to be your engineer or Hispanic guy or a woman wants to be a mechanic.
• 1:05:40
  One of the best mechanics I've ever worked with is in world touring car and Pippa.
• 1:05:43
  And she was.
• 1:05:44
  Phenomenal mechanic.
• 1:05:45
  And that was the first female mechanic I'd ever worked with.
• 1:05:48
  You go, why?
• 1:05:50
  There's no barrier to entry to be a mechanic.
• 1:05:52
  There's no reason that women can't be a mechanic, just like a guy.
• 1:05:54
  It doesn't take massive upper body strength or, you know, anything else.
• 1:05:58
  It's just, for whatever reason, we've not done a good job in
• 1:06:02
  nurturing that in motorsports.
• 1:06:03
  It's funny.
• 1:06:04
  Like when I have conversations about diversity with my white counterparts
• 1:06:09
  or people I deal with in the industry, people get noticeably.
• 1:06:13
  Guarded because they're afraid to say the wrong thing.
• 1:06:17
  I'm like, no, no, no, no, no say What's on your mind say speak your mind because
• 1:06:23
  if you're being guarded Then you're not really telling me anything you're
• 1:06:27
  regurgitating stuff that you know That will be palatable and i'm going
• 1:06:30
  to look I don't get upset About, you know, having diversity conversations.
• 1:06:34
  If someone comes in and says the wrong thing about being
• 1:06:37
  black or I don't I don't care.
• 1:06:39
  My job here is to educate you.
• 1:06:41
  I understand what your viewpoint is.
• 1:06:42
  Let me tell you what my viewpoint is.
• 1:06:45
  Maybe because you're now hearing me and talking to me that you'll go.
• 1:06:49
  Okay, I won't name names, but there are a couple of people within some
• 1:06:52
  organizations that I'm dealing with that weren't as open to diversity.
• 1:06:56
  And the more they sat down to talk to me, the more they realized that their pushback
• 1:07:02
  wasn't necessarily against diversity.
• 1:07:05
  It was against a whole bunch of things that they had built up over the
• 1:07:07
  years, what they thought that meant.
• 1:07:10
  And then when they realized that it didn't mean that we're
• 1:07:13
  like, Oh, we got to replace you.
• 1:07:14
  And it's just like.
• 1:07:15
  No, we're going to open up motorsports to a whole new market.
• 1:07:18
  That whole new market brings new fans and new sponsors and potential
• 1:07:22
  new media sort of like outlets.
• 1:07:23
  Like there's a whole bunch of positives that come with this.
• 1:07:26
  It's not going to replace you.
• 1:07:27
  It's going to help the sport grow hopefully far into the future
• 1:07:30
  because it can't be self sustaining based on its current audience.
• 1:07:33
  I live in the North Atlanta area and I've been here for about a year and Done
• 1:07:38
  several things and I've also run into a lot of African American businessmen.
• 1:07:43
  A lot, a lot of men, mostly men.
• 1:07:44
  I live 12 minutes from Rhode Atlanta.
• 1:07:46
  I live about an hour from Atlanta Motorsports Park and I've taken several
• 1:07:51
  people up to both those locations.
• 1:07:53
  And these are people who are lawyers.
• 1:07:55
  One guy is a doctor at Emory.
• 1:07:56
  And when I took him to both places, he's like, I never knew this existed.
• 1:08:00
  He had no clue.
• 1:08:00
  He said, I got kids.
• 1:08:02
  I can, you know, you can go carting here.
• 1:08:03
  I didn't know this.
• 1:08:04
  And it's about exposure.
• 1:08:05
  And this is a guy who, one of his cars is the brand new eight 50 BMW edition.
• 1:08:11
  You know, he just bought it.
• 1:08:12
  So, you know, and so he's got the money clearly has disposable income
• 1:08:15
  to come and read and probably has some level of desire to go do it.
• 1:08:19
  He's like, wait, I can drive at 150 miles an hour with my car on
• 1:08:23
  the backstretch that rode Atlanta.
• 1:08:24
  Yeah.
• 1:08:25
  He saw the radical pro program at Atlanta Motorsports Park.
• 1:08:28
  He said, I kind of wanted to come do it, but he just didn't know.
• 1:08:31
  And these are the people that we're trying to reach.
• 1:08:33
  And so we're saying, look, organizations, you got to reach out
• 1:08:35
  to these communities and especially these wealthy African American
• 1:08:39
  communities in my mind, bring them to the paddock, let them experience it.
• 1:08:42
  And then they're going to start spending money to be quite blunt.
• 1:08:45
  If you ask most black Americans, what is their sport that they feel
• 1:08:49
  that they haven't been allowed to do?
• 1:08:51
  They couldn't do it.
• 1:08:52
  It's between yachting and golf.
• 1:08:53
  And so that's like the first, those are the first two things they do when they
• 1:08:56
  get well, they go golfing and motorsports never comes into the conversation
• 1:09:02
  because they won't ever think about it.
• 1:09:03
  They all own nice sports cars and all sorts of things.
• 1:09:06
  And they all drive fast in the highways and don't know anything about driving.
• 1:09:09
  Yeah.
• 1:09:10
  No.
• 1:09:10
  So that's the thing.
• 1:09:11
  So road tech racing and this whole program has come together in partnership
• 1:09:14
  with the SRO series, which is the series we race in, which is the X
• 1:09:17
  world challenge series that I started off in, in my pro career, Greg Gill,
• 1:09:21
  the president of SRO has recognized the lack of diversity in a paddock.
• 1:09:26
  He's like, look, I can't tell you what the problem is.
• 1:09:28
  But if I walk into the middle of the paddock and turn around,
• 1:09:30
  I'd see people who look like me.
• 1:09:31
  And so he recognizes that lack of diversity.
• 1:09:34
  So that's where the genesis of this program came from is support
• 1:09:37
  with, from guys like Greg Gill.
• 1:09:38
  One of the things that we've tried to do, especially just recently at Nashville.
• 1:09:43
  And then when we go to Indy, we are doing that, David is, we are reaching out.
• 1:09:47
  To the communities there and the feedback that Indy has gotten, you
• 1:09:51
  know, and obviously Roger Penske has just taken over Indy, the
• 1:09:54
  track and the whole entire series.
• 1:09:56
  So you have a whole new fresh set of eyes.
• 1:09:57
  Now the Holman family has gone and the Holman family has run it for,
• 1:10:00
  you know, whatever, a hundred years.
• 1:10:01
  So I think that they kind of got that myopic view of, okay, we're just going
• 1:10:06
  to do our thing and keep doing it.
• 1:10:07
  And this is, this is fine.
• 1:10:08
  When Penske took over, he reached out to the local community and said,
• 1:10:12
  Hey, you know, guys, why aren't you spending more time at our racetrack?
• 1:10:16
  And this is obviously a prominently black community and they're like,
• 1:10:20
  we didn't think we were invited.
• 1:10:22
  Like literally that's what they got back from the black community
• 1:10:24
  surrounding the Indianapolis 500.
• 1:10:26
  Greatest event in motorsport and the community that lives across the street
• 1:10:30
  has for a hundred years not felt like they were invited at the Indy.
• 1:10:34
  That's something that we have to recognize.
• 1:10:36
  And I think then not only us as a program, but all of the series,
• 1:10:40
  track owners, whatever, they have to make more concerted effort, not
• 1:10:43
  to just deal with the status quo.
• 1:10:45
  They actually have to go out and say, Hey, let's do some outreach.
• 1:10:48
  Let's reach out to communities that we would not normally go ahead and talk to
• 1:10:52
  and try to get them interested in this.
• 1:10:53
  And I think that they can do that.
• 1:10:55
  And I think it can be successful.
• 1:10:56
  Back when Bentley was in GT3 racing, how many African Americans Own Bentleys.
• 1:11:01
  How many of those African Americans were ever guests of Bentley at
• 1:11:04
  a racing event where the dealer said, Hey, you're an owner.
• 1:11:07
  You know, we're having this event.
• 1:11:08
  Why don't you come out?
• 1:11:09
  You know, missed opportunity.
• 1:11:10
  A hundred percent.
• 1:11:11
  And I think the big thing is, is that, you know, you look at like, you know,
• 1:11:14
  brands like Porsche, you know, Mercedes.
• 1:11:16
  They've got a fairly large percentage of black owners.
• 1:11:19
  I mean, that's always been, but Mercedes, especially it's been an
• 1:11:22
  aspirational brand in the black community for, for years and years and years.
• 1:11:26
  So why not use the motorsport side of things to, to reach out
• 1:11:30
  to that community and get them involved, get them to the races.
• 1:11:32
  So I think it's coming, I think in this current climate, I think there's
• 1:11:35
  a lot of talk about diversity.
• 1:11:37
  A lot of the manufacturers and organizations are creating
• 1:11:40
  diversity boards so that that is a constant conversation and
• 1:11:44
  so that these ideas could be.
• 1:11:46
  Vetted through there and potentially brought out behind the scenes.
• 1:11:49
  I see a lot of things that are moving.
• 1:11:50
  Hopefully that we can kind of help be the Genesis to that and create something
• 1:11:54
  that not only is sustainable within the paddock, but also creates a whole
• 1:11:57
  new fan base growing up in motor sport.
• 1:12:00
  I never felt like you were saying, I mean, racism exists everywhere.
• 1:12:05
  Discrimination exists everywhere at the racetrack.
• 1:12:06
  It always felt like.
• 1:12:07
  Once the helmet went on, everything became very binary flagstations are
• 1:12:12
  either on or they're off and cars are objects and it's not Rob behind the
• 1:12:16
  wheel and Dave behind the wheel, it's Mustang and it's Porsche and it's Audi.
• 1:12:20
  And it's just, everybody's fighting.
• 1:12:21
  You're jockeying for position felt like once the flag dropped, a lot of
• 1:12:25
  that stuff just kind of disappeared.
• 1:12:26
  I guess my track experience.
• 1:12:29
  is, and I've talked about this before, is very similar to Eric Banas.
• 1:12:32
  Like if you've ever watched love the beast, his opening monologue, he talks
• 1:12:35
  about, he's driving it not at Bathurst, but one of the other tracks of Australia.
• 1:12:40
  And he's out there and he's just like, he's in the zone.
• 1:12:42
  And he talks about how just everything just disappears.
• 1:12:45
  And when you're behind the wheel, it's just.
• 1:12:46
  Everything's objective.
• 1:12:47
  It's just object to your car, their apex, their flag on flag off.
• 1:12:51
  And so I kind of operate the same way.
• 1:12:53
  And that was kind of my point of even driving by feel.
• 1:12:55
  There's a lot of data.
• 1:12:56
  There's a lot of input.
• 1:12:57
  There's a lot of sensory going on, but when you're behind the wheel,
• 1:13:00
  it almost becomes very primitive.
• 1:13:02
  And a lot of those things that you carry with you in the
• 1:13:04
  baggage just seemed to disappear.
• 1:13:05
  Now, granted you step back out of the car and reality sets in.
• 1:13:09
  I wish it was like that in everything, but I feel like in motor sport.
• 1:13:13
  Unlike a lot of other sports, maybe we are hiding behind the helmet
• 1:13:17
  in a sport like basketball or even football or whatever, where you see the
• 1:13:21
  opposition, see who you're up against.
• 1:13:23
  It's just, it's very different.
• 1:13:24
  Cause you are behind the mask.
• 1:13:25
  You are behind the windshield.
• 1:13:27
  I don't know, maybe, maybe I have a false interpretation of it, but.
• 1:13:30
  No, I mean, I wouldn't disagree with it.
• 1:13:32
  I think the, the harder part though, when you're looking at diversity and women as
• 1:13:35
  well in sports, you know, motorsport is kind of the paddock, you know, when you're
• 1:13:39
  in the paddock, it's a whole different scene and it's very much a boy's club.
• 1:13:43
  I've worked with a lot of women in motorsports, both coaching
• 1:13:47
  and kind of mentoring to a woman.
• 1:13:49
  They've all said the same thing, that it is probably one of the most inhospitable
• 1:13:53
  places for women, because it's guys being guys, it's testosterone, it's A
• 1:13:56
  type personalities, and that's not a comfortable situation for a lot of women
• 1:14:01
  to just drop themselves into, because now you've put yourself in with a bunch
• 1:14:06
  of A type personalities, and then now you're going to go race with them on
• 1:14:08
  track, and I think that that just creates this tension and this dynamic that
• 1:14:12
  just isn't the most comfortable place.
• 1:14:14
  And honestly, when I, you look at minorities in motorsport, you know, one of
• 1:14:17
  the other issues is obviously motorsport is especially on the upper echelon.
• 1:14:22
  There are a lot of very, very wealthy, very powerful individuals in motorsport,
• 1:14:27
  powerful in the sense that they've made their money in the business world.
• 1:14:30
  They're known CEOs are very high up in a lot of companies.
• 1:14:34
  If you're looking from a lower middle class perspective coming in.
• 1:14:38
  Being of a different color, being not of that same education level, being
• 1:14:42
  of not of that same income level.
• 1:14:44
  And here you're dealing with the Roger Penske's of the world.
• 1:14:47
  I mean, Roger's a great guy, but that level of person, that's the really
• 1:14:51
  intimidating thing on a constant basis.
• 1:14:53
  If you're walking in, dealing with these guys every day, day, day out,
• 1:14:56
  and you're just not prepared for it.
• 1:14:57
  I think that's another barrier.
• 1:14:59
  So I think there's all these hurdles.
• 1:15:00
  And I think that's the difficult part of motor sports.
• 1:15:03
  Playing basketball is easy.
• 1:15:04
  Playing baseball is easy.
• 1:15:06
  It's an easy thing to go do motorsport.
• 1:15:08
  There are a lot of barriers.
• 1:15:10
  And I think that in order to increase participation, you've
• 1:15:15
  got to figure out ways to remove them or at least minimize them.
• 1:15:19
  So Rob and Dave, we've gone deep.
• 1:15:21
  This is good stuff, right?
• 1:15:22
  And we're opening different pages of the book here.
• 1:15:25
  And we're really looking at this from different angles and I think it's great.
• 1:15:28
  And I think you've brought to light a lot of really important
• 1:15:30
  aspects with respect to motorsports, some things we need to consider.
• 1:15:34
  As the sport continues to evolve, because it's evolving right now, even
• 1:15:38
  on the engineering side of the house, as we transition away from petrol into
• 1:15:42
  Evie, we're seeing, you know, all female teams at the Indy 500, like there's
• 1:15:47
  a shift in motorsport right now and.
• 1:15:49
  I applaud the early adopters.
• 1:15:52
  I applaud the people that embrace this change like yourselves and want to
• 1:15:56
  continue to perpetuate motor sports.
• 1:15:57
  And again, that's what we're all about here is continuing that motor
• 1:16:00
  sports enthusiasm, but I want to leave the audience with kind of two
• 1:16:03
  fun ones as we wrap up here, because.
• 1:16:06
  You've been all over the world.
• 1:16:07
  You've been racing for a long time, you know, 20 plus years.
• 1:16:09
  Now you've been very successful and all that.
• 1:16:12
  I got to ask, there's lots of Audi's on the website right now.
• 1:16:16
  And I'm, I come from a VAG Porsche family.
• 1:16:19
  So I'm wondering, is that your favorite brand or something better on the list?
• 1:16:23
  No, I honestly, I loved outies for forever.
• 1:16:27
  I remember back in the day, my dad bought an Audi, uh, 5, 000 and I was really
• 1:16:32
  trying to get him to get a quattro.
• 1:16:33
  Like I was like in the dealership, no dad's a quattro.
• 1:16:35
  That's what you really want.
• 1:16:37
  And for whatever reason, I've just had this love affair with Audi over the years.
• 1:16:39
  And so I was very fortunate to connect with them in Germany, the Nürburgring.
• 1:16:44
  In fact, my Current cars and Audi RS6.
• 1:16:46
  So, and it's, it's my favorite car ever.
• 1:16:49
  So yeah, I'm, I'm an Audi guy through and through.
• 1:16:51
  So yeah, there's nothing else in the garage.
• 1:16:53
  And I'm glad you understand that Audi was created before the year 2008.
• 1:16:57
  So I know I'm, I'm dating myself again.
• 1:17:01
  So yeah, it used to be like nothing existed before the B5 S4.
• 1:17:05
  And now it's like, wait, they make cars before 2010.
• 1:17:08
  I'm kidding aside.
• 1:17:09
  But one other question, you've been all over the world, lots
• 1:17:12
  of tracks, you got your bucket list, but if there was one track.
• 1:17:15
  That you could drive for the rest of your life.
• 1:17:18
  What would it be?
• 1:17:18
  And why Nurburgring because Nurburgring Ends like that's it.
• 1:17:26
  No, uh, yeah, it's it's the greatest track in the world.
• 1:17:29
  If you've never been there, you have to go You don't understand how epic
• 1:17:33
  the track is until you're there.
• 1:17:33
  I, I'd always tell people that.
• 1:17:35
  I said, when I, when I went to the Nurburgring the first time, you know,
• 1:17:38
  everybody tells you when you go, you're like, Oh, it's a cool, it's so cool.
• 1:17:41
  It's so cool.
• 1:17:42
  You should go.
• 1:17:42
  You go see.
• 1:17:43
  So you go there and you get there the first day.
• 1:17:45
  You're like, why didn't anyone tell me it was this cool?
• 1:17:48
  It literally takes what you thought you knew about what cool was.
• 1:17:51
  Blows it out of the water.
• 1:17:52
  The track is epic.
• 1:17:53
  All the towns and villages around there are epic.
• 1:17:55
  They all support motorsports.
• 1:17:56
  It's like a big giant ski area for motorsports.
• 1:17:58
  Like everything in the region is there to support the track.
• 1:18:02
  So people love cars in the region because they're in the industry.
• 1:18:05
  So yeah, it's Nürburgring.
• 1:18:07
  Now, with that being said, I'm going to leave one for David, you know, to
• 1:18:09
  follow up with his episode, which is if there's any one video game that does the
• 1:18:13
  Nürburgring justice, which one is it?
• 1:18:17
  You better say iRacing because I was involved in the iRacing.
• 1:18:20
  I was going to say, to be quite honest, iRacing does it the best.
• 1:18:23
  People complain about the tire models, but to be honest, iRacing has come
• 1:18:27
  a long way and it's really good.
• 1:18:28
  And I think it does Nürburgring the best.
• 1:18:31
  And since we were talking about Pike's Peak, they just introduced
• 1:18:35
  that Mount Washington is being added.
• 1:18:37
  So they are starting to branch into hill climb and maybe
• 1:18:40
  rally in the future in iRacing.
• 1:18:41
  So that'd be pretty cool.
• 1:18:43
  The iRacing guys are great.
• 1:18:44
  I've known them for years and I consulted with them a bit on the Nürburgring.
• 1:18:48
  We were there.
• 1:18:48
  They had to track to themselves for three days to laser scan it.
• 1:18:52
  So it was a good fun taking those guys around.
• 1:18:54
  That's why I'm glad you said Nürburgring because that means I did my job.
• 1:18:59
  And on that note folks, It's been an absolute pleasure to have Rob
• 1:19:03
  and Dave on the show and having Dave back on the show here as my co host.
• 1:19:06
  But I want to leave you guys with some parting thoughts.
• 1:19:09
  Think about how we can foster the younger generations and get them incorporated into
• 1:19:14
  motor sports and continue to perpetuate.
• 1:19:17
  All this goodness that we have to offer.
• 1:19:19
  Not everybody can play stick and ball games.
• 1:19:21
  And there are a lot of petrol heads out there that are sitting behind the
• 1:19:25
  screen and would love to be on track.
• 1:19:26
  And to Dave's point, there's a lot of instances where I didn't realize
• 1:19:30
  I could go get out there and explore partner up with other people.
• 1:19:34
  Folks like Rob that are willing to show you the way and get into these programs
• 1:19:38
  and experience for yourself, even something cheap like autocross or cart
• 1:19:41
  racing or whatever, drag racing, whatever it might be, get out there and try it.
• 1:19:45
  Experience something new and enjoy the wonderful world of motor sports.
• 1:19:49
  So for more details on Rob and Rotec racing, visit www.
• 1:19:54
  rotecracing.
• 1:19:55
  com or follow them on Facebook and Instagram and follow Rob directly.
• 1:19:59
  At Rob Holland three, and don't forget to check out the episode we did with David
• 1:20:03
  about my and his e sports and STEM racing program, as well as checking them out on
• 1:20:09
  social media at M I E or my dot racing.
• 1:20:13
  So guys, I cannot thank you both enough for coming on the show and talking
• 1:20:17
  about all the things we went over.
• 1:20:19
  I think it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:20:20
  And again, I just can't thank you enough.
• 1:20:22
  Thanks for having me.
• 1:20:23
  Really appreciate it.
• 1:20:29
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:20:31
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:20:33
  gtmotorsports.
• 1:20:35
  org.
• 1:20:36
  You can also find us on Motorsports.
• 1:20:39
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call
• 1:20:44
  or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:20:51
  org.
• 1:20:51
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:20:53
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:20:56
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
• 1:20:59
  to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal
• 1:21:05
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