Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From Moped to Motorsport Legend: The Andy Pilgrim Story

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From Moped to Motorsport Legend: The Andy Pilgrim Story · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  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, how did
• 0:17
  they get that job or become that person?
• 0:19
  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
• 0:25
  The following episode is brought to you by S r o Motorsports America and their
• 0:28
  partners at a W s CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School.
• 0:35
  Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.com or
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  take a shortcut to GT America us and be sure to follow them on social at
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  GT America, on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook.
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  and catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT World.
• 1:01
  The 12 Hours of Sebring, Petit Le Mans, the Rolex 24, the 24 Hours of
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  Le Mans, GT races on five continents, the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, and NASCAR.
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  What do all these have in common?
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  Well, they have a British born racing driver who has competed in all of
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  them, won many, some more than once.
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  Some of you might know him best from his days with Team
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  Cadillac and Corvette Racing.
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  That's right.
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  Our guest on Brake Fix tonight is the legendary Andy Pilgrim.
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  So welcome to the show, Andy.
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  Thanks, Eric.
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  Wow, what an introduction.
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  Thank you.
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  So like every good Brake Fix story, we always love to start with an origin.
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  So let's talk about a little lad named Andy back in the UK.
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  Were you always interested in cars?
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  Yes, absolutely.
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  I was always interested in cars.
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  It was quite befuddling to my parents who had absolutely
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  no interest in it whatsoever.
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  According to my mother, she was ironing and I was in my crib, supposedly.
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  I hadn't said anything, mommy, daddy, nothing.
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  Listening to the radio, apparently there was a race on the radio,
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  probably Formula 1 or something back in, this would be the 19, late 50s.
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  Mike Hawthorne was a racer back then.
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  According to my mom, she said suddenly from nowhere I was
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  sort of standing in the curb.
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  I started like jumping up and down.
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  My first words, I said my Hawthorne, my Hawthorne, my hor, my Hawthorne.
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  Over and over and over again.
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  Now I kind of worried my father because he was a little
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  concerned, you know, about this.
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  You know, she assured him that she didn't know my callthorne and that
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  apparently was my first words.
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  So it's pretty much been downhill since then, mate.
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  So, were there any cars that inspired you as well outside of the formula One.
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  Well, it was a radio, you know, radio, we didn't, we didn't actually have a TV,
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  honestly, back then, and the noises, I started making car noises, and it was
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  just fascinating to me, as a child, I just liked the cars, and I was fascinated
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  with cars, I would follow cars, I would look at cars, I would jump in people's
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  cars, if they came to visit, I would, like a dog, you know, the dog goes out,
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  it jumps in a car, I was the kid, I ran out, I went, jumped in the car, when
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  they were leaving, And it's like, you know, let's go for a ride type of thing.
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  You know, if someone had a car, we had a car.
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  I don't know where it really came from.
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  There was no racing or anything in the family.
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  The local racetrack had motorcycle road races.
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  My dad liked motorcycle.
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  He never was interested in cars at all.
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  He did take me to watch motorcycle road races when I was very young.
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  You know, that's probably the only connection with racing that I have.
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  So is that where you got interested in motorcycles?
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  Because that's another passion of yours is the two wheeled variety of vehicles.
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  Yeah, definitely that became an interest just in the sense of listening to the
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  bikes, uh, having friends when I was old enough to think about getting a moped
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  or something very, very inexpensive.
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  Secondhand transportation, the moped was the way to go 50 cc's, zero to 25
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  miles an hour down a cliff in a week.
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  It was pretty ridiculous.
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  The mopeds were.
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  Very, very, very slow, but it was anything with an engine
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  fascinated certain young lads.
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  I was one of those young lads.
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  And if somebody had a something with an engine, you just stand
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  around and look at it, you know, and see, when's it going to start?
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  Can I have a ride?
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  And it was usually at that point, of course, early days mopeds.
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  So we've talked to other guests on the show that came from the UK and they
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  said turning wrenches wasn't a passion.
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  It was part of the lifestyle, right?
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  Cause a lot of the cars were, let's say unreliable and things like that.
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  So did you find yourself turning wrenches at an early age, maybe
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  working on your family car?
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  No, my dad didn't like cars.
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  He was sort of a chemist.
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  His brain was sort of more a chemical brain.
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  He had no interest in the car aspect.
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  He was engineering based.
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  He would build furniture or he would do some scrap metal
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  sculptures for fun and stuff in his garage, but not the car stuff.
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  I only got involved in cars once I had a paper round and then I had a bicycle.
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  And then I sold, eventually I sold a bicycle to buy a very cheap moped.
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  Literally it was 3 to buy this thing.
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  And it had to be rebuilt.
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  So I had to try and learn how to rebuild the engine to make it run.
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  And that's essentially where it started.
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  But turning wrenches was something I had to do.
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  Once I did try to start racing something that then I had to work on it myself.
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  Of course.
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  Yes.
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  So at what age did you find yourself beginning to race?
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  Was that in your teenage years or?
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  No, not at all.
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  I ended up out of college.
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  I went into computer programming, but I had no wheels to speak of at that
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  time, except a secondhand motorcycle.
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  And I ended up taking that bike with the money that I started earning as a
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  programmer, stuck some numbers on it and found myself at a local racetrack
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  and ended up entering some races.
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  This was mortifying to my parents.
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  I mean, they were like, what on earth are you thinking?
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  This is crazy.
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  It's dangerous and all this stuff.
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  But I was on the street riding a guy that I knew who was the
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  manager of the Kawasaki dealership.
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  He saw me riding like a moron on the street and when he saw me at
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  the dealership, he basically, you know, stuck me up against the wall.
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  And if I see you riding like an idiot, you're going to kill yourself.
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  If you think you're fast, get yourself on the racetrack.
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  I don't ride like a moron.
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  That's sort of stuck with me because I was scared of him and I ended up
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  trying to get my bike on the racetrack.
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  It wasn't particularly reliable.
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  It wasn't new.
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  It was a seven, eight year old thing.
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  I ended up wobbling through some races and early, fairly early
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  on, I ended up winning the class.
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  It was a lower class bike, but I ended up scrapping with guys.
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  And I was quick, quick enough to win, you know, win races from very, very, very
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  early, just because I was probably nuts.
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  I mean, because 55 percent of the races are in the wet.
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  So it was an interesting beginning, but that's how it started was when
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  I had enough money, had a job, earned money, spent the money on
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  the motorcycle to try and race.
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  I didn't have a truck trailer, nothing.
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  I either wrote it to the races.
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  Which was nuts because then you were just standing around in the wet and cold.
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  Then you'd race it and then ride it home if you didn't crash it.
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  If I was lucky, a friend with a van who had a bread round at three o'clock in the
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  morning, he was done with his bread round.
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  He'd come to the house, pick up the bike.
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  I'd pay him gas money and drop me off at the racetrack.
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  I had the best smelling motorcycle in the paddock.
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  It smelled like bread.
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  Everyone come by like, who's baking bread?
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  It's like, you know, so it was pretty funny actually.
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  So this is the, let's say late seventies at this point, right?
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  Late seventies into 1980, into 1980.
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  I ended up getting sponsored after a year, year and a half.
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  I was in the British production bike championship in the second year.
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  I basically bought this.
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  Newer bike, and was in the British 500cc production championship, ended
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  up finishing second in the British championship, very competitive,
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  and that was sort of into 1981, and then I got a job offer to come to
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  the US as a computer programmer.
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  That's where the switch happened over here.
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  So.
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  After less than two and a half years racing stuff and working
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  full time in England, and then I suddenly found myself in the U.
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  S.
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  I'd always wanted to come here.
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  Always wanted to come to the U.
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  S.
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  Offered the job, you come over here and you start with a one year contract.
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  And I had an older friend of the family who was probably 10 years older than me.
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  He was like an older brother, if you like.
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  He went to California, had stories of the sunshine and warmth.
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  And I hated cold weather.
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  I still can't stand cold weather.
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  I'd always had this, probably from eight years old, I'd had this
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  dream watching American shows on television in England when we had,
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  you know, when we got TV and stuff.
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  Um, it was just, uh, it was just, I'd always wanted to come here.
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  And little did I know at the time when I got into computer programming, that
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  was a, almost a direct ticket to the U.
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  S.
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  because there weren't enough.
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  Programmers coming out of the U.
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  S.
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  education system that still aren't.
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  So I was one of those very lucky early ones to come in with the, uh, trade,
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  if you like, to be a programmer.
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  And that's how I got to the U.
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  S.
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  So you hit the shores and you quickly realized America
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  is huge and you need a car.
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  So what was the first car you bought when you got here?
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  I was at Pontiac in Michigan as a computer programmer, GM Pontiac,
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  which was kind of strange.
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  And I ended up back there as a racer years later and stuff.
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  One of the people in the office, her husband was selling their car, a 1972
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  Chevy Malibu Classic, and it had done a lot of miles, but it had done long runs.
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  I guess it was an hour trip to work and back or something.
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  And they said the car was pretty good.
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  And I paid a thousand, I think, no, 500.
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  I paid 500 for the car.
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  And it lasted me 45, 000 miles.
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  It was amazing.
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  That car was great.
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  All I kept to do is put tires on it and brakes occasionally.
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  But, uh, yeah, second hand tires.
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  Couldn't afford the new ones, but it was, uh, I was on first name
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  basis with the local scrap yard and I go to look for tires for the car.
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  Yeah.
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  And I went from Michigan to El Paso after a year, Michigan
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  winter just about killed me.
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  So I ended up going down to El Paso for my next contract.
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  There was no racing or anything at this point.
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  So it's kind of funny if our listeners were paying attention, your history
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  with GM goes way back and we're going to dive into that a little bit more.
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  If you think about it, yes.
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  Sure.
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  The part of your story that really engaged me that I found endearing and it speaks
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  to me on a level growing VW Porsche Audi family is that when we first met many
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  years ago, you told me the story about how you did get into racing in the United
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  States and you started in two things.
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  A autocross and B with a Volkswagen GTI.
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  Yeah.
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  The first go around in the Volkswagen GTI.
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  So I was in El Paso.
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  Everything was, uh, looking interesting and the Chevy Malibu classic was
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  getting a little long in the tooth.
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  And so eventually I thought, you know, a Volkswagen GTI was like, it was a
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  Lamborghini as far as anything from a kid from the UK could even dream about.
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  And even though the US GTR wasn't as light and it wasn't as powerful as the
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  European version, it was just wow to me.
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  This 1983 car that I bought probably at the end of 1982 in El
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  Paso, and it was a brand new car.
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  And I was like, Oh, I couldn't believe it.
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  So I run around on that thing for a while.
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  And one day going down I 10, I saw a C 3 Corvette flying across a parking
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  lot at Silla Vista Mall in El Paso.
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  And I thought, what the heck?
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  And I looked, and I saw cones, and I saw this car.
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  Parking lot was pretty much empty.
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  I just went, what is that?
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  So I got off the freeway, went around and, and looked.
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  Sure, sure enough, it was an S C C A autocross going on,
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  literally that by luck going by.
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  And I didn't know what A C C A was.
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  I didn't know what autocross was.
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  I had no idea that this was the local chapter of S E C A and their,
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  their autocross was going on at Cali.
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  I joined S E C A and the next time they had an autocross, I showed
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  up with my Volkswagen Rabbit, and that's how Autocross started.
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  And that was 1983.
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  Yep.
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  And that was so much fun.
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  Great people.
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  I still remember those, those people from there.
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  They were wonderful.
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  So you got all your car control under wraps.
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  You learned how to go fast in a front wheel drive.
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  How do you move from, let's say the grassroots world of autocross to the
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  larger stage, not jumping all the way forward to endurance and that, but how did
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  you make that progression from autocross to becoming a professional driver?
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  The autocross availability for space in El Paso is limited.
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  So you go further afield.
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  Roswell, New Mexico was one of the places, you know, alien
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  central UFOs and all that stuff.
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  And I didn't know about that connection when we went to Roswell,
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  but it was a couple of hours drive out of El Paso to Roswell.
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  10 people would make these treks out to Roswell and Clovis Air
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  Force Base, which was further away.
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  So we went to Roswell Pettengill.
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  Jim Pattengill wrote for Grassroots Motorsports, the magazine, great magazine.
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  He saw me at Roswell.
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  Now the thing with Roswell was it was a triangle of a disused old airfield
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  from Second World War training base probably or something like that.
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  They had about seven cones.
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  And they have this triangle, like half a mile, literally speaking, it was a hundred
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  mile an hour slalom and another 80 mile an hour slalom and 120 degree corners
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  at each, each point, it was just stupid.
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  So I'm in this 90 horsepower rabbit screaming along going
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  through the autocross on three wheels and all this stuff.
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  Jim Pattengill came up to me and said, you know, you're pretty quick.
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  You should try racing.
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  And I said, well, you've got any money.
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  I'll be happy to do that because I don't have any money.
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  We had a nice, really nice conversation.
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  And he said, well, you know, just keep doing what you do.
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  It's great.
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  You know, you're coming back.
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  And I did come back three months later to another event.
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  They, we've got, they had another event three months later and we trucked back up.
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  I didn't think really, I didn't think about Jim Pattengill in the meantime, he
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  came up during that event and showed me a thing in grassroots motorsports where.
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  A guy was selling a Renault cup and he took the time to explain this is
• 13:41
  an IMSA series, Renault Cup, Renault Alliances on the west coast and
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  Renault Encores on the east coast.
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  Renault supports it and these cars are street legal and this car
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  is second hand for 6, 500 bucks.
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  Because I told him I said I don't want to race for trophies.
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  Got to race for money.
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  If there's any chance to do anything with racing, you know, we had to
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  chat and I said, I didn't, I wouldn't want to race for trophies and things.
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  I need to, if I'm any good, I want to learn as fast as possible.
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  If I'm any good and not waste my whole life or money doing it.
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  So he gave me the ad.
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  I called the guy, I was in Nevada.
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  Long story short, I borrowed some money off a bank manager in El Paso.
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  I only had 3, 500 in savings, I remember.
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  This guy lent me 3, 000 for furniture for my apartment.
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  It was the other half of the car, essentially, and gave me a bit of
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  spare money for the first race.
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  And so I figured if he ever came to the house and checked the car, I'd take the
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  seats out of the race car and put them in the living room and say, furniture.
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  So that's what happened.
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  And I got this Renault Cup car, drove it to the races, and that's how it started.
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  Essentially, the first race was Riverside, California, in 1984, was the
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  first round of the West Coast Series.
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  51 cars entered.
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  It was actually on ESPN.
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  Believe it or not, that race was on TV.
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  Crazy.
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  I ended up qualifying 18th out of 51, and I finished 9th, and I won 500.
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  I mean, I was sleeping in the car or we'd have like 12 of us
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  in one hotel room or something.
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  Cause you know, there was a bunch of guys that were just, we didn't
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  have the, you know, a lot of money and where we could save money.
• 15:16
  We would, I mean that 500, I thought I won the Indy 500.
• 15:19
  Honestly, it was like 146 for a set of four tires for that car.
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  I still have a receipt.
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  So 500 was tremendous and I didn't crash the car.
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  Otherwise it'd be taking a bus home.
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  And that would have been it.
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  But I managed to make it through that year with the car, got a
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  couple of podiums in that year, one rookie of the year with that car.
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  That was the end of 1984.
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  85, I did a couple more Renault Cup races, but sold the car for 3, 000.
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  And that money, having sold the car was the money that I put
• 15:50
  into buying two weekends in a Firestone Firehawk car in 1986.
• 15:57
  And that sort of was that transition because the rental car series died
• 16:01
  and I was like, Oh, well, that might be it for racing did a bit of NCCA
• 16:05
  racing with a Mustang, a dealer out of Texas, sort of had a car
• 16:09
  and he said you can drive my car.
• 16:11
  That was 85.
• 16:13
  Met somebody who prepared that Mustang, who was also preparing
• 16:17
  Pontiacs in the Firestone Fire series.
• 16:19
  I knew nothing about that.
• 16:21
  At the end of the season, he said, you know, blah, blah,
• 16:24
  what are you going to do?
• 16:24
  You've really done quite well in that Mustang.
• 16:27
  And I said, well, I've got 3, 000.
• 16:29
  And he called me and said, that'll buy you two races at the beginning of 1986.
• 16:33
  Season in a fire some fire if you want to do it.
• 16:35
  And that was all savings.
• 16:37
  I had nothing outside.
• 16:38
  Nothing else.
• 16:38
  That was all my savings.
• 16:39
  That's how I got into that series.
• 16:42
  I'll stop there instead of just dribbling along the whole way.
• 16:45
  Well, it brings up a very good segue, which is did you practice
• 16:49
  your craft on your own back then?
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  There was no data.
• 16:51
  So you're obviously driving by feel or did you have coaches?
• 16:54
  Did you have people helping you along or was it all 1 race at a time?
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  School of hard knocks.
• 16:59
  I mean, there was no coach motorcycles.
• 17:02
  And I had an idea about apexing, but I didn't even call it an apex because
• 17:05
  I was, you know, you go from outside to inside to outside and you've,
• 17:08
  some corners are different to others.
• 17:10
  And no, I didn't know anybody to do anything like, you know, I think most
• 17:14
  people guys back then they did, they just learned, they just were quick and.
• 17:18
  They got quicker and they learned and it became more structured over the years.
• 17:22
  It became way more structured, as you say, with data and
• 17:24
  coaches and things like that.
• 17:26
  So did you find yourself following anyone using them as like a
• 17:29
  lead follow as an example?
• 17:30
  Oh, 150%.
• 17:32
  If someone caught me up, instead of trying to block them, I'd let them by and
• 17:36
  try and learn where they were quicker.
• 17:38
  And that's exactly what I did.
• 17:40
  And that wasn't like I was the fastest guy out there.
• 17:42
  Immediately.
• 17:42
  I had to learn how to handle the car fast corners in those
• 17:46
  cars, kind of like a Mazda Miata.
• 17:47
  You just kind of, I want to say, throw it in, but you drifted in.
• 17:51
  You want that very slight drift angle all the way through these fast corners.
• 17:55
  That takes a little bit of understanding because you can over over rotate
• 17:58
  the car and crash it and I'm done eventually by following figured it out.
• 18:03
  Guys that I knew were quick.
• 18:04
  And I would ask people who's, you know, you'd look at the timesheet and
• 18:08
  you'd, you'd slowly progress up the timesheet, figure out how to get there.
• 18:12
  If you could.
• 18:13
  So at this point, you're deeper into the racing world.
• 18:16
  Did you have any heroes or idols or even anybody you looked up to as
• 18:19
  a kid that you were still looking up to in the larger kind of circus
• 18:22
  that is the motor sports world?
• 18:24
  It's funny.
• 18:25
  I didn't relay anything sort of.
• 18:27
  I don't know why it was a separate, there's maybe a separation.
• 18:30
  Yeah, Mike Halewood was a motorcycle rider.
• 18:33
  Giacomo Agostini was a motorcycle rider that I would see at the racetrack where
• 18:38
  my dad taught me when I was young.
• 18:40
  So obviously they were people well known to me.
• 18:42
  I know a ton of names because I was young in the 1960s, not so much from the 70s
• 18:48
  and 80s and onwards, except, you know, Valentino Rossi and some of the guys now.
• 18:52
  It wasn't that I had heroes, but looking now, later, When I was
• 18:57
  in 90s, out in Senna, of course.
• 19:01
  Senna, absolutely staggering talent, uh, but that was probably the
• 19:06
  driver who his focus, determination, competitiveness, that was probably
• 19:13
  the more modern person that I, I sort of thought, you know, there's a lot.
• 19:18
  There that you can learn from a person like that.
• 19:21
  So let's step back into the timeline.
• 19:22
  Here we are in the late 80s.
• 19:24
  You're in a Ford.
• 19:25
  So what happens next?
• 19:27
  Well, the Ford was SCCA 1 year deal with the dealer out of Plano,
• 19:32
  Texas, which I have now moved from El Paso to Plano, Texas.
• 19:35
  I've moved into the quote unquote management world.
• 19:38
  The dealer there wanted to run this Mustang and I was.
• 19:41
  Lucky enough that he said, Hey, you can run this Mustang.
• 19:44
  I was kind of growing around, seeing if anyone wanted a young
• 19:47
  race car driver to race anything, just like you do at that time.
• 19:51
  After that, like I said, I still had the Renault Cup car, but
• 19:53
  the Renault Cup series ended.
• 19:54
  I sold the Renault in 86.
• 19:57
  A guy called Jeff Beitzel, the late Jeff Beitzel, actually he
• 20:00
  passed away a few years ago.
• 20:02
  Jeff was the guy who said, you know, you've got 3, 000, I will
• 20:06
  buy you two weekends in this team that we're putting together.
• 20:09
  It was sort of related to Pontiac because one of the guys on the team worked
• 20:13
  at GM Pontiac and that didn't hurt.
• 20:15
  Those two races, I bought those two races, co driver was Bill Bailey.
• 20:20
  We didn't win, but Firehawk back then was so competitive.
• 20:23
  You'd have a hundred car fields.
• 20:25
  You'd have 50 cars in the grand sport class, massively competitive.
• 20:29
  And we ended up with like top five finishing fairly quickly.
• 20:32
  Bill wasn't a bad driver, gentleman driver.
• 20:35
  And I was managing to help lift us into that top 10, uh, and he wasn't
• 20:39
  doing bad himself, but between us.
• 20:42
  Uh, we got some reasonable finishes and I enjoyed working with the team.
• 20:45
  He was a nice guy after those two races.
• 20:48
  It was, I was done.
• 20:49
  I said, it's been a pleasure.
• 20:50
  Thank you very much.
• 20:51
  And all the rest of it.
• 20:52
  And I, and Bill said, well, we'll see you next week.
• 20:53
  I said, no, that was it.
• 20:54
  I've only got the 3000.
• 20:56
  Jeff was kind enough to bring me in and he said, okay, all right.
• 20:59
  Well, Andy, it's been great.
• 21:00
  Thanks very much.
• 21:00
  And off I went the next week.
• 21:02
  He called on the phone and said, look, you can't afford to keep
• 21:07
  going at the rate what you pay.
• 21:08
  I understand that.
• 21:09
  He said, Can you get yourself to the races?
• 21:13
  And I said, Yeah, sure.
• 21:14
  I think I can do that.
• 21:15
  Yeah.
• 21:16
  He said, Okay, well, I'd like you to drive mid me for the rest of the season.
• 21:20
  And that was, that was huge, because otherwise my career,
• 21:24
  you know, would have been.
• 21:26
  Well, it would have been over until I saved enough money to
• 21:28
  try again or something like that.
• 21:30
  Yeah, but that's what literally got me to Firestone High.
• 21:32
  We finished probably third in the championship.
• 21:35
  We won two races in 86.
• 21:37
  We won Sonoma and we won Portland.
• 21:39
  It got me noticed on a bigger stage because there were a lot of Trans Am
• 21:43
  drivers, even IndyCar drivers that would race in that series for fun.
• 21:48
  And we loved it.
• 21:49
  I mean, when somebody like the answers showed up or the Andretti showed up,
• 21:53
  whether it was the world challenge series, the old playboy series, we loved
• 21:57
  it because our showroom stock based cars, they weren't really faster than
• 22:01
  the quick guys, but it was so cool.
• 22:04
  You know, Scott Pruitt, other people would be in there and you're running against
• 22:07
  guys that, you know, really famous guys.
• 22:09
  And it was, it was, it was great fun.
• 22:11
  So is this then the precipice of your journey with GM, or is
• 22:15
  there something that leads up to you becoming part of that?
• 22:18
  Because I know our listeners are dying to learn more about your
• 22:21
  experience with Team Cadillac and Corvette Racing, and we'll get there.
• 22:24
  You know, I want to kind of go through the chronology here a little bit.
• 22:28
  The Firestone Firehort series, at the time, there was the
• 22:30
  Bridgestone Supercar series, there was the Firestone Firehort series.
• 22:34
  There was the World Challenge slash, you know, series as well in the
• 22:37
  early 90s, late 80s, early 90s.
• 22:40
  I was running in all three of those series, but I didn't have a full time
• 22:44
  ride all the time after 1990, 91.
• 22:47
  But people will call me and say, Hey, we need you for these races,
• 22:50
  or we need you for those races.
• 22:51
  And I got to do all three and they were running on showroom tires, shaved street
• 22:57
  tires, whether they were the Bridgestones, whether they were the Firestones,
• 23:00
  whether they were the Goodyears, Goodyear actually had a sticky tire that they
• 23:03
  ran in, in the world challenge series.
• 23:05
  And that was more like a race tire, but it was still, they still weren't slicks.
• 23:09
  Early nineties.
• 23:10
  I got into Sebring and the Daytona 24 hours with Morrison Motorsports.
• 23:15
  With a car with slicks, and that was a big deal to run a Corvette with slicks.
• 23:20
  Wasn't the very first time I was on slicks.
• 23:22
  I had a bit of sponsorship in 1988 or nine, and I did four barbershop
• 23:27
  races in a, in a formula car.
• 23:28
  This guy came and said, you know, Hey, would you race?
• 23:31
  You know, I got four races in that.
• 23:33
  So that was my first time on slicks.
• 23:35
  But then I ran that Corvette from that Corvette and the Lotus 1994 five, I got
• 23:44
  my first opportunity when somebody who used to run Larry Schumacher who used
• 23:48
  to run the Firestone Fireholt series.
• 23:50
  He said, Hey, would you like to run in a Porsche with me?
• 23:54
  He was running now in the IMSA series, the one that does the
• 23:58
  Daytona 12 hours of Sebring.
• 23:59
  And my first time in a Porsche was with Larry Schumacher
• 24:03
  at the 12 hours of Sebring.
• 24:05
  And I think that was 1995.
• 24:07
  That was a huge thing.
• 24:09
  I mean, wow, to get in a Porsche now, it was like the other cars were showroom
• 24:14
  stock based, but the Porsche was a proper right now based on 911, of course.
• 24:19
  But it was still a proper race car and it was, wow, it was like a huge move.
• 24:25
  I was, I remember it well, you know, that was great.
• 24:28
  And I was getting paid during this time.
• 24:30
  You actually earned money, a thousand dollars for the weekend
• 24:33
  or 1, 500 for the weekend.
• 24:35
  You could actually make money.
• 24:37
  Basic business wise, I was still had a full time job.
• 24:39
  In 1989, I had to make a decision because I was getting rides in three different
• 24:44
  series, not consistently, but gosh, it was like 30 races a year, 30 weekends a year.
• 24:49
  The people I was working for were really good, but it was difficult.
• 24:55
  So I took my 20, 000 in savings and said, okay, I'm quitting
• 24:59
  this job for 90 grand a year.
• 25:01
  And I was earning maybe 45, 000 racing.
• 25:04
  And of course, you quit the job where you're earning twice as much, right?
• 25:07
  With possibilities and everything.
• 25:10
  I said, okay, I've got 20 grand in savings.
• 25:12
  I started a little IT consulting company because that was the business I was in.
• 25:15
  Because then I could concentrate on trying to grow this racing
• 25:19
  career if there was a chance.
• 25:21
  Luckily for me, I won't bore you with going through all of that, but
• 25:25
  I hired four key people in the first three or four years of that company.
• 25:30
  They ran the company for me, which allowed me to try to race.
• 25:35
  I had to still sign paychecks and do all the rest of it was still all on me.
• 25:39
  They gave me the opportunity while keeping the business
• 25:41
  going and growing to a degree.
• 25:44
  If I'd have spent more time in the business, it might've been a really bigger
• 25:46
  business, but the bottom line is they knew what my goal was when I hired them
• 25:51
  and they were quite happy to do that.
• 25:53
  So in 95, getting into Porsche's 95 also was my first pro championship win.
• 25:59
  I'd been second or third in other championships, but I never
• 26:02
  won a pro championship and they Speed vision cup series with
• 26:06
  Pontiac, still with Jeff Weitzel.
• 26:09
  That was my first opportunity running with Joe Vardy.
• 26:11
  Vardy's still around, brilliant driver, great teammate.
• 26:15
  And I managed to win that championship running with Vardy.
• 26:18
  We got split up during the year, which is why I won the championship and he didn't.
• 26:21
  But that 95 was a big year.
• 26:23
  Getting to run in Porsche and some of the endurance races.
• 26:26
  And also running with Vardy in that when I'm winning an actual pro
• 26:30
  championship and then 96, 7, 8, I won championships every year for those
• 26:35
  4 years and the winds kept coming.
• 26:38
  I'm going to put this in perspective for people.
• 26:40
  You're a winner of the 12 hours of Sebring, 2 wins in the Petit Le Mans,
• 26:44
  3 wins at the 24 hours of Rolex.
• 26:46
  One overall and two GT class for Rolex.
• 26:50
  Yeah.
• 26:50
  And five podiums at the 24 hours of LeMans.
• 26:54
  I mean, yeah.
• 26:54
  Holy smokes.
• 26:56
  Yeah.
• 26:56
  So let's talk very fortunate.
• 26:58
  Let's talk about all these races, especially LeMans.
• 27:02
  How about some of the more memorable moments throughout all those huge races?
• 27:07
  Yeah, and again, you get an opportunity to go to Lamar.
• 27:11
  Of course, it was a dream 1996.
• 27:14
  I was sort of on the notice board as far as Porsche at the time, I
• 27:18
  wasn't a factory driver, but I was driving with teams that were sort
• 27:21
  of associated with the Porsche team.
• 27:24
  And I was given this opportunity to drive with the new hardware
• 27:28
  guys out of New Zealand.
• 27:31
  And they had me come in there.
• 27:33
  So you're at Le Mans and you're in this GT car.
• 27:36
  The cars run about 188 miles an hour down the straightaway.
• 27:40
  Porsche has always had really good aero, slippery car.
• 27:44
  And they were, you know, not high downforce cars.
• 27:46
  They were GT cars, but they'd run well.
• 27:49
  You'd have the prototypes that you had to watch out for, of course.
• 27:52
  So during those times, learning the Lamont track, which of course,
• 27:57
  you know, there's no videos to look at or anything else, really.
• 28:00
  You go there and you walk around a bit and it's like, well, you're
• 28:02
  going to go walk the track.
• 28:03
  We'll be back next Thursday, because it's, you know, 8.
• 28:05
  2 miles.
• 28:06
  So you run a car on the public road portion, but there's nothing like
• 28:11
  actually being out there with everybody and then trying to figure it out.
• 28:14
  Where can you actually break on the straightaway?
• 28:16
  Where, you know, how quick can you actually go through the Porsche curves?
• 28:20
  And it was just.
• 28:22
  Baptism by fire.
• 28:24
  And then I'm in my first night stint in 96 and it's pitch black
• 28:30
  going down the back straight away.
• 28:31
  You're overdriving the lights by 80, a hundred miles an hour.
• 28:34
  The lights are, you know, that you have lights, but they really don't.
• 28:38
  And it was pitch black and there was an orange glow before you come up the
• 28:42
  hump to turn right into Molson corner.
• 28:45
  And I came over there as I was coming up the hill, there was a corner work in the
• 28:51
  middle on the white line with a flat.
• 28:54
  Well, my lights were garbage and I was kind of like coming on left side of the
• 28:58
  road because I could see this orange glow, but the orange glow was like.
• 29:02
  It was making the guy and the flag disappear.
• 29:05
  I couldn't see it.
• 29:06
  I finally saw it at the last split second, moved right, went flying over the top,
• 29:11
  started to hit the brakes, of course, and there was a Porsche GT1 on the left
• 29:16
  side, completely engulfed in flames.
• 29:18
  And it was like, good grief.
• 29:20
  I almost hit the guy.
• 29:21
  I mean, I can still see it.
• 29:24
  The corner workers are nuts.
• 29:25
  I mean, they'll get on the track with the flags.
• 29:27
  It was just one of those things.
• 29:28
  And I'm like, this is crazy.
• 29:30
  Later on, like at three o'clock in the morning, I'm going down towards
• 29:34
  Indianapolis, long straight away with a curve and it's a fast curve.
• 29:39
  And then you just arc into Indy towards Indianapolis corner before the break zone.
• 29:43
  And I saw some grass in the air.
• 29:47
  I didn't see lights ahead of me, but I saw some grass in the air and I thought,
• 29:51
  well, something must've happened.
• 29:52
  And there was a freaking prototype right online.
• 29:57
  Sideways really bent.
• 29:59
  I mean, really bits all over and the worst corner workers, but around the corner
• 30:05
  and again, they weren't in the road.
• 30:07
  Thank goodness.
• 30:07
  But I had hex on job, just getting the car under control, pulling it back to the
• 30:12
  right and just missing the whole thing.
• 30:16
  And it's like your heart is in your mouth.
• 30:18
  It's like, what am I nuts?
• 30:20
  This is crazy.
• 30:21
  But it's like, it was amazing.
• 30:24
  It's amazing doing that race.
• 30:26
  I'm so glad I got the opportunities to do it, you know, six times.
• 30:29
  Uh, but the first year was something else.
• 30:32
  It was something else.
• 30:33
  You know, those early moments stay with you, you know, crazy, crazy.
• 30:39
  So you have a reputation of being probably one of the nicest people in
• 30:42
  racing, and I'm not trying to over inflate your ego, but it's true.
• 30:46
  But during this time period, there was always this concept of rivalries.
• 30:51
  I mean, they go back right hunt versus louder center versus promise.
• 30:54
  So did you have any rivals in racing.
• 30:57
  Well, yes, of course, everybody that's ahead of you in a championship or a race
• 31:01
  is a rival per se, but there were no, there were no specific people that I got
• 31:06
  to beat that guy or anything like that.
• 31:08
  No, not really.
• 31:09
  Friends became, many became friends.
• 31:11
  Randy Popes.
• 31:12
  And I would run against each other many times.
• 31:15
  Of course, Johnno, you know, and I, gosh, there's loads of them.
• 31:18
  You know, the loads of guys I completely respect.
• 31:22
  And then absolutely get into the European stuff or the international
• 31:25
  stuff, or the big races you end up with guys that were in Formula One, I mean,
• 31:30
  you know, Bob Wallach, Terry Boots, and Ish, uh, max Papas, max Angeli.
• 31:35
  These guys are Oliver Gavin.
• 31:37
  They've done things in Formula One, and you're like, This
• 31:39
  guy's Formula One driver.
• 31:40
  You compare your data to a guy who's been in Formula One.
• 31:43
  And I mean, I was in awe.
• 31:45
  I was old when I started.
• 31:46
  I was 27 when I got into a factory team in factory Corvette.
• 31:50
  I was 40 years old when I got that opportunity to get into Corvette racing.
• 31:53
  I think because I started so late and because it wasn't easy to get in.
• 31:57
  I think I still have almost like a childish view of this in the sense of
• 32:02
  like, these guys are working on this car.
• 32:04
  It's not my car and I'm getting this opportunity.
• 32:08
  It doesn't matter if it's a Mazda Miata, somebody wants you to test
• 32:11
  around a racetrack or something.
• 32:12
  When I get in the car, I respect the fact that guys have spent money on it.
• 32:17
  It may not be, they may not have all the money and they want me to test or set
• 32:21
  up the car or help them set up the car.
• 32:23
  And it's a genuine privilege.
• 32:26
  It's gratitude and it's excitement.
• 32:28
  I love getting in different cars that I've never raced before.
• 32:31
  And I think, you know, the rivalries for me, maybe ended up with friendships.
• 32:35
  Some of the guys, yeah, some of the guys don't want to be friends
• 32:38
  with the people they race against.
• 32:39
  I respect that too.
• 32:40
  That's fine.
• 32:41
  I don't try and go out of my way if you don't want to be friends.
• 32:43
  It's fine.
• 32:43
  Our friend Lee, that's fine.
• 32:45
  I get it.
• 32:46
  That's a psychological thing for some of the guys.
• 32:48
  I've just been always so grateful for being there.
• 32:51
  I'm generally happy most of the time when I'm in the paddock, you know?
• 32:54
  I would be remiss if I didn't ask a series of Pit Stop questions before we transition
• 32:59
  on to the later part of the story.
• 33:01
  So of all the cars you've raced and driven over the years, is there a favorite?
• 33:06
  Or is there a least favorite?
• 33:07
  I know it's like picking amongst children, right?
• 33:09
  Is there really a favorite?
• 33:10
  And in that same vein, are there favorite and least favorite tracks?
• 33:14
  Definitely tracks.
• 33:16
  Definitely tracks.
• 33:17
  I got an opportunity in 2017 to drive with Charlie Partman and
• 33:23
  Charles Espenlav and Joe Foster.
• 33:26
  in some races, international races, and they ended up taking me
• 33:30
  to Bathurst and the Nürburgring.
• 33:32
  That was such a privilege to do that and go to those tracks.
• 33:36
  And also some of the other tracks in Europe, I'd been to some
• 33:39
  of the other tracks in Europe.
• 33:40
  Monza in Italy was another one that I got a chance to go to in 1999.
• 33:45
  Those tracks and those opportunities were wonderful.
• 33:48
  But in the US, Elkhart Lake, all day long Elkhart Lake.
• 33:52
  I think every pro driver has it in their top three.
• 33:55
  If it's not the number one for me, it's number one for sure.
• 33:57
  But there are some great tracks in the US.
• 33:59
  Road Atlanta.
• 34:00
  I love Sears Point.
• 34:02
  Laguna Seca.
• 34:03
  Polder's actually a great track to drive.
• 34:06
  Mid Ohio's fun.
• 34:07
  I wish there were more overtaking points in it, but it's still a very
• 34:10
  technical, challenging racetrack.
• 34:12
  There's so many great tracks in the U.
• 34:13
  S., for sure.
• 34:14
  So no, no favorite car?
• 34:15
  Cars.
• 34:16
  Yeah, cars.
• 34:18
  No, there's no favorite, but so many good ones.
• 34:20
  I mean, the Corvette C5R, the Corvette C6R, I drove a little bit with Ron
• 34:25
  Fellows in a C6R, which was a lot of fun.
• 34:27
  The BMWs, the PTG cars with Bill Oberlin and Boris Sedd, having a chance to drive
• 34:34
  that car with those GT2 and the GT3 cars, versions of those was a lot of fun.
• 34:39
  Gosh, there's so many, so many great cars.
• 34:41
  Even the old Pontiac Firestone Firehawk car was, was actually fun.
• 34:44
  Outside of all the race cars, is there a sexiest car of all time?
• 34:48
  Something that really gets you excited?
• 34:50
  Mmm, I'm not going to say what I normally say, which would be a Kia Soul.
• 34:55
  Because I kind of like boxy cars and I'm a big fan of the Pontiac Aztec.
• 35:00
  So the fact that most people have just turned off the broadcast.
• 35:05
  I do like funny, weird looking cars, but in all seriousness, probably the
• 35:10
  Aston Martins, the style of the Aston Martins and the style of the Ferraris
• 35:14
  is probably, they're just beautifully designed cars, beautifully designed cars.
• 35:18
  And I'm like, I'd love to look at those cars.
• 35:21
  I have some weird taste in street cars.
• 35:23
  Not to stereotype, but I would have put money down if you, to guess, to
• 35:27
  say that you would have said the E Type Jag, but you know, whatever.
• 35:31
  E Type, yeah, well, that's well, iconic design to say the least, but
• 35:35
  I was put off somewhat that car.
• 35:38
  I never had an opportunity to drive one, but I was told by a friend of
• 35:41
  mine who used to race historic racing.
• 35:43
  He said, they'll basically wander all over the place at a hundred
• 35:47
  miles an hour plus because of the terrible aerodynamics from the design
• 35:50
  of the front that causes the lift.
• 35:52
  Yeah.
• 35:53
  And so it was a car that I was not at that point because everything when you're
• 35:56
  younger, you get in it, you want to go flat out, but he, uh, he basically said,
• 36:01
  do you ever get a chance to drive an e type, whether it's a historic race or
• 36:04
  just on the streets, it'd be careful.
• 36:06
  He said, you might be testing the top end of the car, but they're
• 36:08
  not the most stable cars, but yeah, beautiful cars to look at.
• 36:11
  Another question I'm sure people want to know, what does Andy Pilgrim daily drive?
• 36:15
  Well, at the moment I'm driving a new Toyota Supra.
• 36:18
  Actually, the uh, carbon fiber edition.
• 36:21
  Yeah, I managed to get one.
• 36:23
  I go through cars fairly quickly these days.
• 36:25
  I liked the Supra when I tested it for Automobile Motor Trend 2020 and
• 36:30
  I thought this is a great little car.
• 36:31
  When the CF came out, They were asking crazy money for it and I
• 36:35
  managed to find one in South Carolina for just a shade under M Ss r P.
• 36:39
  And I thought, oh, I'm gonna go with that one.
• 36:41
  So that's what I'm actually driving at the moment.
• 36:43
  And I have a Honda Ground.
• 36:44
  Yeah, Honda Grand Motorcycle, which is just so much fun on
• 36:47
  the Kentucky Back Road series.
• 36:49
  So, well, a horsepower is all I should try to handle these days.
• 36:53
  , any desire around the Nissan Z?
• 36:55
  The new one?
• 36:56
  Yeah, I've saw a video and I, I saw, saw a drag race video
• 37:00
  of the card, you know, like a.
• 37:01
  quarter mile run.
• 37:02
  Seems like it's certainly got some 400 horsepower, nice car,
• 37:06
  and apparently rivaling the Supra.
• 37:08
  So I'll look forward to testing, hopefully test one at the Motorsports racetrack
• 37:12
  here in Bowling Green at some point.
• 37:14
  All right, one final pit stop question.
• 37:16
  Andy, is there something still on the bucket list, a race that you
• 37:19
  haven't been able to get to yet, or a track that you still want to drive,
• 37:22
  or even a car, a race car that you want to get behind the wheel of?
• 37:26
  Having been to so many great tracks, Suzuka, Fuji, I have never raced anything
• 37:31
  in Japan, so there's Bucket List there, and also Spa, but the team I'm with
• 37:35
  right now, I'm helping young Anthony Bartone this year, and Anthony had a
• 37:39
  wish to go to Spa to do the Fun Cup, so I would say that that in July is
• 37:46
  going to be another, hopefully another thing off the Bucket List if it all
• 37:50
  comes to pass, so I will race at Spa because that was the other track, the
• 37:53
  only other track really that I haven't.
• 37:55
  Race that, that I really wanted to race, you know, Monza, like I said,
• 37:59
  Bathurst, you know, having gone to Bathurst, having gone to the Nürburgring
• 38:03
  race there, just being at those places that they were definite bucket list
• 38:07
  and Spa was a little bit lower down, but they're going to get a chance.
• 38:10
  It looks like so.
• 38:11
  Yeah.
• 38:12
  Alright, so let's get back to it.
• 38:14
  So as part of your time with GM, you've been involved for many years with the
• 38:18
  National Corvette Museum Motorsports Park and known to many of us as just NCM.
• 38:22
  GTM has been there several times and I actually learned the track in a funny way.
• 38:29
  I showed up and Pat Sullivan grabs me by the shoulder and he goes,
• 38:32
  you're getting in that car and your instructors waiting for you.
• 38:34
  For you and I jump in, not paying any attention to look over and it was you.
• 38:40
  So you were in Pat's borrowed ZR1 and about 20 minutes later, I'm like,
• 38:46
  okay, I got this and you had no fear in just showing me the race line and
• 38:50
  saying, here it is, have a nice day, you know, go about your business.
• 38:53
  We had a lot of fun over those weekends, but one of the things I get asked a
• 38:57
  lot by people that haven't been to NCM, and it's one of the things that
• 39:00
  you told me is NCM is not a racetrack.
• 39:04
  It's a test track.
• 39:05
  So do you care to explain the difference and why that's important
• 39:08
  to people that might be wanting to go there for the first time?
• 39:11
  Yeah, I mean, it is a race track, but when I say the testing track, meaning
• 39:15
  that it's a track to learn, it's one of the best learning tracks I've ever seen.
• 39:20
  Because it's got every type of corner and the way that they have
• 39:23
  it usually is NCM Motorsports Park.
• 39:25
  So we kind of call it the MSP, the Motorsports Park.
• 39:28
  Because NCM is actually the National Corvette Museum.
• 39:30
  With that being said, the track at the MSP, 3.
• 39:35
  2 mile 23 turn track, is magnificent learning track.
• 39:40
  It's great.
• 39:40
  They don't have official racing there, but they do have some NASA races
• 39:43
  there, some SCCA type races there.
• 39:46
  It's a brilliant track to learn.
• 39:48
  I mean, if you are within 500 miles of this place, it is great.
• 39:52
  And I consult here.
• 39:53
  I've been sort of consulting here for about four years now, very much enjoying.
• 39:57
  So I decided to move from South Florida completely.
• 40:00
  I sold my IT business in 2018.
• 40:02
  And so I'm very much enjoying my time here in Bowling Green.
• 40:07
  And so, yeah, it's a great place.
• 40:09
  And we've taken like, well, the guy I'm with Anthony right now, he's.
• 40:12
  He came 11 months ago, he'd never been on a racetrack, never been on ATV, never
• 40:18
  done go karts, never done anything.
• 40:20
  And we just did our first SRO GT4 race last weekend.
• 40:24
  And he did very well in the sense that he kept a nose clean.
• 40:28
  He was right in the middle of the AMS and did a super job, but he learned all of the
• 40:33
  basic skills at the NCM Motorsports Park.
• 40:36
  Yeah, it's a great, great learning journey.
• 40:38
  Now, one of the things I distinctly remember about NCM that you had told
• 40:42
  me, and I will never forget, and I try to pass this on to everybody that goes
• 40:45
  there, at least for the first time, or that I've instructed now many times
• 40:48
  after these many years that I've been going there, is that you actually have
• 40:52
  to learn the track in three pieces.
• 40:54
  And I remember you were like, and this turn is like this track, and this is
• 40:57
  like the Glen, and this is like here.
• 40:59
  And for me, I was able to put that puzzle together, but you had specifically said.
• 41:03
  You need to learn this in three pieces and then stitch it together.
• 41:06
  Otherwise it doesn't really work because the rhythm is different than a track
• 41:10
  that has natural terrain, like summit point or Watkins Glen, where it was built
• 41:15
  in to the earth versus something that was specifically designed to test the
• 41:18
  Corvettes and the Corvette race cars.
• 41:20
  Yes.
• 41:21
  It's a very challenging technical track and it's a very long layout.
• 41:26
  And they, they managed to get 3.
• 41:28
  2 miles out of it.
• 41:29
  And, you know, certainly the Corvette race team came at the very beginning to
• 41:33
  test there and, you know, they wanted to incorporate corners where race teams,
• 41:38
  like the Nissan team came there before they went to Lamar because they have a.
• 41:41
  Turn one, AB, is just the same shape as the first chicane at Le Mans.
• 41:47
  And so, and the, the cars were reaching within two miles an hour
• 41:50
  on the long straightaway there, the long layout straightaway,
• 41:53
  not the regular straightaway.
• 41:55
  They got within two miles an hour of the top speed at Le Mans there.
• 41:57
  So you can test aerodynamics and things like that.
• 41:59
  So.
• 42:00
  It has been used for testing by teams that end up going to Le Mans.
• 42:04
  But yes, it's like Elkhart Lake.
• 42:06
  Elkhart Lake is a long track and I learned that just generally because I split it.
• 42:10
  Turn one through to five, then five through to Canada Corner
• 42:14
  and then Canada Corner back.
• 42:16
  It was just the way that I learned it when I first went there in the 1980s, late 80s.
• 42:21
  It just seems to help because you learn little bits and just put them
• 42:25
  together and it becomes more natural.
• 42:27
  So having driven many different types of Corvettes at NCM MSP, what do you think
• 42:32
  about the classic front engine rear drive Corvettes versus the new mid engine C8?
• 42:37
  This is a great, great question, really, because we have C7s there
• 42:40
  that kind of tow the C8s around.
• 42:43
  The obvious thing is the Tremec transmission in the new C8.
• 42:47
  So the launch, you know, you've got a sub three seconds, zero to 60,
• 42:51
  which is no way can you match that with a automatic or stick shift.
• 42:56
  C7 when you've got such a little weight on the back wheel, you're going to get the
• 42:59
  wheel spin, uh, which is fairly typical.
• 43:02
  The cars are fairly similar on straight away performance because
• 43:07
  the power of the C7 is a little bit less like 20 or 30 horsepower less,
• 43:11
  but the, uh, C8 weighs about a couple of hundred pounds more than the C7.
• 43:16
  But the actual driving, of course, the greenhouse in the C8 is kind of like,
• 43:21
  you know, a lot of mid engine cars.
• 43:23
  You can see so well out the front, you get a great view of the track.
• 43:27
  And I think that's what most people that come and try the car doing
• 43:30
  touring laps and things there.
• 43:31
  They come in their C7s or C5s or 6s and then they get in the C8.
• 43:36
  It's like I felt like I was sitting in the road.
• 43:38
  There's nothing in front of me and it takes them a while to get used to it
• 43:41
  and then they really, really like it.
• 43:42
  And it's an exotic, it's more of an exotic shape of course.
• 43:45
  There's a lot to be said for that design in the sense of how far you can take it.
• 43:50
  So the guys that are now modifying the C8s on the tracks, and they're going
• 43:56
  really quick, putting sticky tires on, doing a little bit of suspension work,
• 44:00
  changing the brakes, and they don't have to do too much, but the chassis, what
• 44:04
  I'm hearing from those guys is that the chassis stays with you, and that chassis,
• 44:09
  it'll handle more power, which we know is probably going to happen down the road,
• 44:13
  and it'll handle the braking, it handles the stickier tires, very, very well.
• 44:18
  And so I think you've got a car that's, uh, the potential of that
• 44:22
  chassis is very, very, very good.
• 44:25
  And it drives so nicely, but they do drive different.
• 44:27
  They do drive different as you drive a front engine and mid
• 44:31
  engine race car slightly different.
• 44:33
  You have to watch your hands, speed.
• 44:35
  So do you think that the C8 will benefit from a hybrid system like an NSX?
• 44:41
  Yeah, I think any of the hybrids, and I've driven a lot of hybrids because
• 44:44
  I've been working with CNET cars and also with automobile for a long time.
• 44:49
  So I've done quite a bit of work with electric Porsche.
• 44:52
  Taycan came over there.
• 44:54
  I've had some opportunities to deal with a Draco 1200 horsepower for electric motor.
• 45:00
  Vehicle.
• 45:01
  I do some test driving for them.
• 45:03
  And so I'm quite familiar with the way some of the electric stuff works.
• 45:06
  Now it's very heavy.
• 45:07
  I've also taken the NSX around the motor sports park as well.
• 45:11
  The weight comes with the hybrid setup, but then you've got that all wheel
• 45:16
  drive and there's once they have the brain, the CPU sorted out that makes
• 45:22
  the seamless transition with the motor.
• 45:25
  And a hybrid power.
• 45:27
  Once that gets sorted out, you can use those motors to help turn
• 45:30
  the car help really balance out the difficulties when you have a
• 45:36
  high powered two wheel drive car.
• 45:38
  And that's what I've noticed.
• 45:40
  with working on traction control systems and stability control
• 45:45
  systems with the electric vehicles.
• 45:48
  The ability to tune the computer to really help drive out of corners,
• 45:56
  help to allow more aggressive.
• 46:00
  Turn ins to the corner and how it can actually help stabilize
• 46:04
  the car in various aspects.
• 46:06
  I think over the next five years, once they become more popular and
• 46:12
  common in basic higher end performance sports cars, I think it's going to be
• 46:18
  unbelievable how quick the cars are going to be able to go around racetracks.
• 46:22
  You've always going to have the extra weight, but I think the potential
• 46:25
  is going to outreach what we have now, whether that's good or bad.
• 46:31
  I'm a technology person.
• 46:33
  I don't mind all electric vehicles.
• 46:35
  I'm totally happy using a PDK over a manual transmission.
• 46:40
  I'm not one of these journalists that like, Oh, you got to have a stick shift
• 46:43
  or that, you know, it's like, okay, fine.
• 46:45
  I don't care.
• 46:46
  It's not just because it's faster, but I'm fine if I don't have them.
• 46:49
  The cars are so good, there's so much grip in some of the street cars now,
• 46:53
  actually trying to manipulate the gear lever like going down turn four to five
• 46:57
  at Road Atlanta in a car that's got a ton of stick and downforce like a, you
• 47:01
  know, imagine an RS, a GT3 RS or the ZL1 Corvette, and you're trying to manage,
• 47:07
  you're not, you're in a street seat.
• 47:08
  You don't have a six point harness on, you're rattling around
• 47:11
  like a bowling ball in a jar.
• 47:13
  It's very difficult to make quick, precise shifts.
• 47:17
  Why not have a transmission that actually makes it very much easier to manage the
• 47:22
  car or even let the car do it themselves?
• 47:24
  I like technology, I like history, I like stick shift
• 47:26
  vehicles, but I don't get stuck.
• 47:28
  Whatever I've got is good.
• 47:30
  Then I guess your feelings on the alleged E Ray are quite positive then,
• 47:34
  which of the all electric Corvette.
• 47:36
  Well, yeah, supposing there is such an animal.
• 47:38
  I think having driven the Draco, which is all electric with four motors,
• 47:43
  and the way that I've worked with an engineer to help their drive controls.
• 47:49
  I think people are just going to be stunned if you
• 47:52
  haven't driven a Tesla Plaid.
• 47:55
  And the zero to 60 and two flat or two one or whatever it is in actuality,
• 48:00
  it's actually uncomfortable for most people, you can get whiplash, you can
• 48:05
  cause a passenger, you don't like the passenger, you can, you know, you can
• 48:08
  basically upset them and very easily.
• 48:10
  I think the the performance is going to outstrip people's ability very
• 48:16
  quickly with these electric vehicles.
• 48:18
  So much performance that race cars can't even match in a straight line drag cause.
• 48:23
  I mean, these cars are being sold on the street and you'd have to have
• 48:26
  a full harness system parachutes.
• 48:28
  If you were going to the local drag strip for a car that does 150 miles an
• 48:33
  hour in a quarter mile and a low nine.
• 48:36
  I don't have a problem with it being there, but you wonder sometimes whether
• 48:40
  these cars should come with a, a bit of training rather than just sales
• 48:44
  training to know how to use the wifi.
• 48:46
  You may need to actually have someone trained in some of this stuff,
• 48:50
  because you can get to 100 miles an hour in five seconds, then you are
• 48:55
  in something extraordinarily fast.
• 48:57
  And I don't think the average driver is going to be expecting this.
• 49:03
  Or they'll just never use it.
• 49:04
  Any electric vehicle, any electric sports car, once they get a handle on
• 49:08
  how to use the motors and how to do the TC, any sports car, that's all electric
• 49:13
  is going to be devastatingly fast.
• 49:16
  You touched on a couple of important things here, and it's a great
• 49:18
  segue into maybe passing on some knowledge to aspiring drivers.
• 49:23
  And one of the things you mentioned early on is that you
• 49:26
  drove by feel and by instinct.
• 49:28
  And obviously data came later because you grew up through the digital era,
• 49:31
  through the data era of race car driving.
• 49:34
  So now do you find yourself still driving by feel?
• 49:38
  Do you use data?
• 49:39
  Is it a combination?
• 49:40
  I know people get really religious about this particular question.
• 49:43
  You know, it's all data or nothing.
• 49:45
  And some people are like, yeah, whatever.
• 49:46
  What are your thoughts on that?
• 49:48
  I've been on race teams where the data was king.
• 49:51
  And the engineers would not necessarily listen to a driver in the sense that
• 49:58
  I see what I see on the data, and even though you're telling them something
• 50:02
  that might contradict that, there's a tendency to just like, yeah, okay,
• 50:06
  but the data is telling me this.
• 50:08
  I definitely think that as far as the data is concerned now, I utilize
• 50:14
  everything I can because one, I'm old.
• 50:16
  I mean, shoot, I'm in my mid sixties now.
• 50:18
  I'm basically running in a series, you know, GT four is a series where
• 50:23
  you've got some absolutely stunningly quick young guys helping Anthony.
• 50:28
  We go over data religiously and then Danton is learning from me.
• 50:32
  So I have to be able to translate that data and sometimes I will learn
• 50:36
  like Johnny O'Connor, Johnny O'Connor, O'Connor and I drove together for five
• 50:40
  years, Johnny and I drive differently.
• 50:43
  He likes a car that is off the front.
• 50:45
  I like a car that.
• 50:46
  Is loose on the way in.
• 50:49
  If I have a car, that's an understeering car, I don't particularly like it.
• 50:53
  And I don't trust it, especially on a street course.
• 50:56
  If you're having to drive it into a corner with an understeer to get
• 50:58
  it to go quick, I don't like that.
• 51:00
  I will prefer to let me feel the rear and I'll steer it through the corner,
• 51:04
  you know, on the rear of the car.
• 51:06
  That's something that you need an engineer to listen to you and give you
• 51:10
  what you want, whatever the data is.
• 51:12
  Something like that.
• 51:13
  So data is absolutely useful for sure.
• 51:18
  When you're trying to train someone.
• 51:19
  And I learned from Johnny, I learned from Alan McNish on data that
• 51:23
  was in the late nineties, 99, 98.
• 51:25
  And my God, how can I not learn in a prototype slash GT
• 51:28
  one Porsche from Alan McNish?
• 51:31
  I learned a tremendous amount.
• 51:32
  One that.
• 51:33
  Alan was able to drive the GT1 Evo like he was driving a rental Cadillac, you know,
• 51:40
  going into turn 10 at Sears Point, he would lose the car twice before the apex.
• 51:46
  He would like throw it in.
• 51:48
  Oh, it wasn't quite right.
• 51:48
  I throw it in again, all while just going to the apex now.
• 51:52
  And I thought to myself, well, I'm not going to try that this session, but
• 51:57
  I worked my way up to trusting to me.
• 52:00
  That was like, it was more than anything I'd ever driven.
• 52:02
  I hadn't ever driven any, but you know, a GT three car at that time.
• 52:06
  And this Evo thing with 800 horsepower.
• 52:09
  Because we were running against full prototypes, so they uncorked the engine,
• 52:13
  you know, no ABS, no traction control.
• 52:15
  Learning from Alan in that car taught me that at that time, that
• 52:20
  was the most sophisticated data.
• 52:21
  And since then, I have a tremendous, now I'm a computer programmer, right?
• 52:25
  So that's data, I respect data anyway.
• 52:28
  But learning, I learned to learn from the data.
• 52:31
  Ron Fellows or Oliver Gavin or Max Angioletti, you know, Alan would
• 52:35
  have different ways into a corner.
• 52:37
  And I might be quicker.
• 52:39
  You'd look at the pluses and the minus on the way in, but we drove
• 52:42
  differently from what my own experience, not many pro drivers
• 52:45
  like to have a car that's more loose.
• 52:47
  Most of them want to drive off the front tires.
• 52:49
  I don't know whether that why necessarily, but that's just been my experience.
• 52:53
  You can learn from that.
• 52:54
  And sometimes you blend what's your natural style, some corners you might.
• 52:58
  No, if you drive off the front, you're going to be quicker.
• 53:01
  And then you still in the other corners where you can just lose
• 53:05
  the back end, like faster corners.
• 53:06
  If you can just control the back, you can maintain more speed through and
• 53:10
  you don't have to adjust the steering because if you're going too quick to
• 53:12
  a fast corner, you're running off the front, you just have to wait a little
• 53:15
  bit because if you get a sustained understeer, you can't get back.
• 53:18
  But if you can rotate it.
• 53:20
  Another two or three degrees on the way in, you can fly
• 53:22
  out, get NOLA last weekend.
• 53:24
  I was pretty quick through the faster back section corners.
• 53:28
  And I love those types of corners, you know?
• 53:30
  Yeah.
• 53:30
  So it brings you back to your days of your GTI.
• 53:33
  That's all.
• 53:33
  Yeah.
• 53:35
  Yeah.
• 53:35
  Right.
• 53:35
  You know, three wheels, of course, always be open, never be closed minded.
• 53:40
  Always think you can learn something from a teammate, you can learn something from
• 53:45
  following some folks, try their line, never be closed minded about anything.
• 53:50
  I think I've always been open minded and tried to change and learn as I go.
• 53:55
  And I'm still learning.
• 53:56
  I'm still learning.
• 53:58
  So one of the other questions that comes up is how do you prep for race?
• 54:01
  Is it just, you know, spending time at the track?
• 54:04
  You've been to so many tracks.
• 54:05
  It's just experience.
• 54:06
  Is there any sort of, let's say regimen you go through workouts, do you use
• 54:09
  simulators or anything like that?
• 54:11
  I mean, that's like the hotness right now, right?
• 54:13
  Is everybody's on iRacing now?
• 54:14
  Yeah.
• 54:15
  My teammate Anthony is on sim.
• 54:17
  He's never been to most of these tracks.
• 54:19
  He's never seen any of them.
• 54:20
  So he's doing sim work and he gets there and it's got him to a point
• 54:24
  when he gets there that he's already.
• 54:26
  Got an idea where he is going.
• 54:27
  It's not like when I first went to tracks.
• 54:29
  Nothing else.
• 54:30
  I don't use a simulator.
• 54:31
  I do work out.
• 54:33
  I continue to do that because you have to, some of the races I do with the
• 54:36
  Ferrari, it's a, Jen wants G T three car.
• 54:39
  Some of those races are not, are 75 minutes.
• 54:42
  Just long enough stint that, and it doesn't have a, it just
• 54:45
  has sort of a fan in the car.
• 54:46
  It gets very hot in there.
• 54:47
  So yes, I have to continue to work out and be prepared in that sense.
• 54:51
  Don't do simulator work.
• 54:53
  I did before I went to the Nürburgring, I basically bought a PlayStation
• 54:57
  essentially, and learned as much as I could from the Nürburgring, because out
• 55:01
  of respect for that place, I had to.
• 55:03
  And also I learned before I went to Bathurst as well, for the same
• 55:07
  reason, just to get more of an idea.
• 55:09
  And it did help.
• 55:10
  Unless you have a 5 million simulator, the topography is not there.
• 55:13
  So that's the biggest difference.
• 55:15
  But I think simulators are useful.
• 55:16
  Data is useful.
• 55:17
  Working out, absolutely, you should stay as fit as you possibly can.
• 55:22
  And I still try to do that.
• 55:23
  Absolutely.
• 55:24
  I want to be as good as I can be for the whole time I'm in the car.
• 55:27
  Before we move on to the last part of this episode, I want
• 55:30
  to ask you one more question.
• 55:32
  You know, we talked about how you...
• 55:33
  Looked up to drivers when you were younger, and now you find
• 55:37
  yourself in that position yourself.
• 55:38
  There's plenty of people out there listening to this now that are looking
• 55:41
  up to Andy Pilgrim going, he's one of my heroes, what advice, what golden
• 55:47
  nugget would you pass on to these folks?
• 55:49
  Maybe some sort of inspiration to say, you can do it too.
• 55:53
  In the sense of the money aspects, I do get a lot of people either emailing
• 55:57
  me, messaging through social media, or just talking to me at the racetrack.
• 56:01
  And they tell them just a little bit like, look, I didn't have money.
• 56:04
  I'd started at 27.
• 56:05
  That's the one that gets them because it's like you got into factory
• 56:09
  cars when you're in your forties.
• 56:10
  And it's like, yeah, I had a factory GM contract up to
• 56:13
  2018 when I was 61 years old.
• 56:15
  The point being that you have to have a plan.
• 56:19
  You have to have focus.
• 56:20
  There are things in life that come up, don't add to the trauma that will come in
• 56:26
  life anyway, do your best to stay focused, have a plan, if it's racing related, if
• 56:32
  you don't have a lot of money, try and pick a series, try and save some money
• 56:37
  to at least get yourself into a series where you might get good experience,
• 56:41
  any spec series, I tell people any spec series, that is going to be a good way
• 56:45
  to learn, You can't necessarily afford to get into a pro series like the Mazda
• 56:50
  pro series now is pretty expensive.
• 56:52
  You may get a year or two of club racing under your belt with a something
• 56:57
  like a Miata, get some results.
• 56:59
  And if you feel that you are doing reasonably well, you don't
• 57:02
  have to set the world on fire.
• 57:03
  Try and buy some races.
• 57:06
  Out of track, you know, with some teams, there's some great teams out there.
• 57:11
  I know Shea Holbrook runs a team.
• 57:12
  I think she's got five or six cars and people rent cars from her.
• 57:16
  You can rent the cars in certain series or a reasonable amount of money.
• 57:21
  Give it a shot.
• 57:22
  Try at that pro level.
• 57:23
  And it lets you know if this is the way to go.
• 57:26
  And of course, if you can try and get sponsorship, there's guys that
• 57:29
  are really good about raising money.
• 57:31
  I never did that.
• 57:33
  And I got lucky, if you want to call it that, or, and when I got an
• 57:37
  opportunity, I didn't make a mistake.
• 57:39
  And I ended up at this age now with this long career.
• 57:44
  Don't let anyone say you can't do it.
• 57:46
  Stay focused.
• 57:48
  And when you do get an opportunity in maybe a car that somebody
• 57:52
  says, yes, you're a test.
• 57:54
  Don't overdrive the car.
• 57:57
  You don't have to set the world on fire.
• 57:59
  If I can tell you one thing, I know there were 10 guys in the 80s that were super
• 58:03
  quick and into the 90s and they would get.
• 58:06
  Opportunities maybe to drive a GT car or another level up from a known
• 58:12
  factory operational factory linked operation, and they would overdrive
• 58:16
  the car and they would crash the car.
• 58:19
  And this happened over many years.
• 58:21
  I know at least 10 guys that have these opportunities.
• 58:24
  They messed them up.
• 58:25
  Don't overdrive.
• 58:27
  If you get an opportunity, be smart, do the best you can, but don't overdrive it.
• 58:32
  And, you know, you'll probably get there.
• 58:34
  Enjoy it.
• 58:34
  Enjoy every time you get on a racetrack.
• 58:38
  It doesn't matter where the, what kind of racing you do, if you
• 58:40
  love it, you'll do it anyway.
• 58:41
  And you'll spend the money you can on it and you'll do club racing forever.
• 58:44
  And that's great.
• 58:44
  Or what's across whatever, and that's fine.
• 58:46
  I wanted to try and do it.
• 58:49
  I didn't want to do that.
• 58:51
  I wanted to see if I was any good.
• 58:53
  And I tried to get into a pro series lowest possible cheapest level.
• 58:57
  I could, I would advise to do the same thing and work on your fitness.
• 59:02
  work on understanding setup.
• 59:04
  I still have a beaten up moth eaten book called how to make
• 59:08
  your car handle by Fred Poon.
• 59:11
  If somebody gave me an old secondhand copy of that, and I digested that
• 59:16
  because I made myself understand car setup, whether it's aero, whether
• 59:21
  it's mechanical, on the cars.
• 59:25
  And learn to drive it.
• 59:27
  And if you work on it yourself, you know, you can make a great difference to a car
• 59:30
  in lap times by understanding setups, just really work at your craft, really work
• 59:35
  at your craft, just keep a good attitude and learn from anyone that you see out
• 59:39
  there who might be better than you.
• 59:41
  And there's plenty of friendly guys.
• 59:42
  Anyone is welcome to come and talk to me.
• 59:44
  You know, I'm pretty much an open book.
• 59:45
  I always have been.
• 59:46
  And so if I know anything or see anything, just come by.
• 59:49
  And there's plenty of great guys out there that would do the same thing.
• 59:52
  Sage advice from one of the last great grassroots drivers.
• 59:55
  I'm going to leave it there as we move on to our final segment here.
• 59:59
  A lot of folks also don't know that you give back to the community at
• 1:00:03
  large through something known as the Traffic Safety Education Foundation.
• 1:00:07
  We want to give you an opportunity to explain what that is to our listeners and
• 1:00:11
  what it's all about and where it's going.
• 1:00:12
  It's simply put in the, in the...
• 1:00:14
  Late eighties started the business and the bit 89 and the business
• 1:00:19
  took off like a single engine Cessna with a misfire dragon and alpha.
• 1:00:22
  And for the first two years, it was hand to mouth, very difficult.
• 1:00:25
  I was literally living off the racing and not taking anything out of the
• 1:00:29
  business, trying to grow the business.
• 1:00:31
  After a couple of years, it finally cleared the trees
• 1:00:33
  at the end of the runway.
• 1:00:34
  And it wasn't making loads of money, but at least it was paying
• 1:00:36
  for itself after two years, probably five years in six years.
• 1:00:40
  And it was actually, we had some contracts.
• 1:00:42
  We had some people on billing and it was making a little profit, but it was
• 1:00:45
  at least stable, never a big business.
• 1:00:47
  Sometimes we'd have about 50, 75 people on billing.
• 1:00:50
  You know, you'd make a little bit of money at the end of the year.
• 1:00:53
  So at that point, like 1995, I lived in Fort Lauderdale area.
• 1:00:59
  I actually saw four kids in the car driving very, very quickly, no
• 1:01:03
  signal, flew off a freeway, went down to a traffic light and just kind of
• 1:01:08
  blew a red light on a right turn, didn't even come to a full stop.
• 1:01:11
  And I just happened to be watching this thing and I thought, man,
• 1:01:14
  maybe traffic safety is something.
• 1:01:16
  I was looking for a give back project.
• 1:01:17
  My mother and my godmother were very charity minded.
• 1:01:20
  You know, as a young kid, my mom would, we lived in a smaller town, my mom would...
• 1:01:24
  Go and do laundry for older people.
• 1:01:27
  We knew that we're in the house.
• 1:01:28
  I get dragged along 8, 9, 10, 11 years old one day a weekend.
• 1:01:31
  I could play soccer with my friends and then the other day I didn't
• 1:01:34
  like it at the time, but it stuck.
• 1:01:36
  My godmother was the same way.
• 1:01:38
  Very charity minded business was going.
• 1:01:40
  Okay enough and racing was going well.
• 1:01:43
  It's time to give back.
• 1:01:44
  So I went to the local high school and lo and behold, unbelievably.
• 1:01:48
  The lady at the front said, well, we, anyone to do with traffic
• 1:01:50
  safety, this gentleman in the auto shop down Sorrentino and I walked
• 1:01:55
  in the auto shop and he said, hi.
• 1:01:57
  And he said, oh my God, you're Andy Pilgrim.
• 1:01:58
  Unbelievable.
• 1:01:59
  Mid 90s.
• 1:02:00
  The guy was a Sebring Daytona Endurance.
• 1:02:04
  Says, what are you doing in my shop?
• 1:02:06
  He gave me the opportunity to talk to his students and other teachers at the
• 1:02:10
  school, big school, 3, 500 students.
• 1:02:12
  It was literally half a mile from my house.
• 1:02:14
  And that's where it started.
• 1:02:16
  Traffic safety, understanding.
• 1:02:18
  I talked about distracted driving.
• 1:02:19
  I have notes from the mid nineties, actually with the
• 1:02:22
  term distracted driving on it.
• 1:02:23
  Started with talking to the high schools.
• 1:02:25
  Then I started talking to driver education teachers.
• 1:02:28
  By sort of 2010, 11, I was talking at conferences, I made
• 1:02:34
  a video actually with Dale Jr.
• 1:02:35
  I asked Dale Jr.
• 1:02:37
  to help me and we made this little video was actually aimed at parents.
• 1:02:41
  And it was kind of early for that distracted driving early for that to 2005.
• 1:02:47
  And it didn't particularly take off very well.
• 1:02:50
  But lo and behold at a conference, two or three of the teachers there said
• 1:02:54
  we use your video in our classrooms.
• 1:02:56
  Thank you.
• 1:02:57
  And I was like, you do said, Oh yeah, it's great.
• 1:03:00
  That three, two, one go and focusing and grabbing the keys and all that
• 1:03:03
  stuff and getting your mind on driving.
• 1:03:05
  Oh yeah, we use it.
• 1:03:06
  It's great.
• 1:03:06
  It's great.
• 1:03:07
  I was like, Oh, cool.
• 1:03:09
  About 2011, 12, I made a proper video for driver education teachers.
• 1:03:14
  Cause I said, look, you've got curriculums this thick, you get six or
• 1:03:18
  eight hours to teach in the classroom.
• 1:03:20
  So what do you do?
• 1:03:22
  Well, we basically, it takes about an hour to be quite honest, to
• 1:03:25
  teach them how to pass the test.
• 1:03:26
  And then we try to add things that are going to help them survive out there.
• 1:03:30
  I said, so if I make a video with survival stuff in it, you
• 1:03:33
  can add it to your classroom.
• 1:03:35
  You can do it.
• 1:03:36
  Yes.
• 1:03:37
  That's where the driving zone 2 came from.
• 1:03:39
  Cause the first one in 2005 was driving zone.
• 1:03:41
  Driving zone 2 came from that 35, 000 of those videos were requested DVDs.
• 1:03:46
  Requested by driver education teachers and just believe it or not, driver education
• 1:03:52
  teachers, 80 percent of them still want a DVD because when you're in the
• 1:03:56
  classroom, the firewalls at the schools, you can't stream, even though everything
• 1:04:01
  on my website is streamable, they want DVD because they can't stream it live.
• 1:04:05
  It's very difficult, the connections and everything else.
• 1:04:07
  So that sort of started, I've made five full length videos to do
• 1:04:13
  with traffic safety and five PSAs.
• 1:04:15
  They're all on this website, I can tell you it's www.
• 1:04:20
  tsef.
• 1:04:20
  org.
• 1:04:21
  Everything's free, even shipping and handling the DVDs.
• 1:04:25
  It's a, just a give back project and it's just, I get so much wonderful feedback.
• 1:04:28
  It's great.
• 1:04:29
  I've got stuff for parents.
• 1:04:30
  I've even got stuff for parents of newborns because people with
• 1:04:32
  younger children, they don't realize once you turn that child's safety
• 1:04:35
  seat around a face front, that's when your child starts picking up
• 1:04:38
  your driving habits and behaviors.
• 1:04:40
  And if you just start thinking about this when they're 14 or 15
• 1:04:43
  before they get a permit, you're about 12 years, 13 years too late.
• 1:04:46
  Everything they've seen you do is now cement in their head.
• 1:04:50
  And they are going to do the same thing.
• 1:04:52
  And it's not enough to say, now, don't drive distracted.
• 1:04:54
  Now don't take some drivers.
• 1:04:55
  Like I've been watching you do it for the last 13 years.
• 1:04:58
  Uh, so hands free phone use.
• 1:05:00
  Absolute.
• 1:05:01
  No, no.
• 1:05:01
  Manufacturers will tell you hands free is better safer.
• 1:05:04
  No, it's not.
• 1:05:04
  Absolutely not.
• 1:05:06
  The mind concentrating on a phone call hands free or not.
• 1:05:10
  It's a major, major distraction.
• 1:05:13
  And so talk at conferences, I've spoken at Quantico, spoken at Air
• 1:05:17
  Force bases, Army bases, groups of younger people that want the message.
• 1:05:23
  And it's, you know, machinist union, annual safety conference, 750 union
• 1:05:28
  safety officer from all airlines were there and of course, schools.
• 1:05:32
  And to parent groups, things like that.
• 1:05:34
  It's great fun.
• 1:05:35
  And most recently, I believe you were featured on a Motor Week special as well.
• 1:05:39
  Yes, that's true actually.
• 1:05:40
  Motor Week TV came to the M S P and, uh, shot it there.
• 1:05:43
  And, uh, very grateful to them.
• 1:05:45
  And it just, it aired actually a couple of weeks ago.
• 1:05:47
  Yeah, we got some great feedback from that.
• 1:05:48
  Lots of video requests from people and everything Streamable on the.
• 1:05:52
  For regular folks and students, they go onto the website and they stream things,
• 1:05:56
  but driver ed teachers still request DVDs.
• 1:05:59
  So it's like, okay, no problem.
• 1:06:01
  We'll make another 10, 000 then.
• 1:06:04
  So now we're going to play.
• 1:06:05
  Where are they now?
• 1:06:06
  So where is Andy now?
• 1:06:08
  Let's talk about your involvement with SRO in GT3 and GT4 racing, what kind of
• 1:06:13
  cars you're driving, your international campaigns, anything else that's going on
• 1:06:17
  right now that people would be able to follow you on the racetrack still today.
• 1:06:21
  Just outside of the racing environment, I'm working with CNET Cars now.
• 1:06:25
  Automobile sadly went kind of out of print a couple of years ago.
• 1:06:29
  I'm still very good friends with Matt Morrison, who's the editor of Motor Trend.
• 1:06:32
  I told the Mac that, you know, I've got this opportunity at CNET Cars as
• 1:06:36
  it is now, it used to be CNET Roadshow.
• 1:06:38
  And we are still testing cars at the motor sports park on track with a hot lap.
• 1:06:42
  And that's a lot of fun.
• 1:06:44
  So I enjoy doing that.
• 1:06:45
  As far as the racing goes, I got a call from Anthony's dad 11 months ago
• 1:06:49
  and saying that, you know, Anthony's interested in learning to drive on track.
• 1:06:53
  Lo and behold, that ended up with Anthony and I having a, you know, we've got used
• 1:06:58
  GT4 MRs, good cars, not the new ones.
• 1:07:02
  And so he's been doing some different type of racing, like SCCA slash I
• 1:07:08
  international GT, and I've been doing those races with him in a separate car.
• 1:07:12
  Again, pulling him around the racetrack.
• 1:07:13
  And now, you know, now he's chasing me sometimes at some of the
• 1:07:16
  tracks where he, where he knows.
• 1:07:18
  And so this whole year we'll be helping him in GT four.
• 1:07:21
  And now we just did our first SRO race.
• 1:07:23
  We hope to do another two of the SRO races before the end of the year in GT four.
• 1:07:28
  Uh, we may do GT for America at Nashville to give him a taste of the street course.
• 1:07:32
  So that'll be fun for both of us to do that.
• 1:07:34
  Also the ski auto sport guys, which I've been running their
• 1:07:37
  first generation Ferrari GT3.
• 1:07:40
  For the last couple of years, they are doing some SRO GT America races too.
• 1:07:44
  They're again, limited schedule.
• 1:07:46
  They'll do two or three SRO races.
• 1:07:48
  Johnny O'Connell's also running with them, you know, which is fun.
• 1:07:51
  Johnny's doing some stuff with them.
• 1:07:53
  So they're basically giving old age pensioner race car drivers like us a
• 1:07:57
  chance to get out in the racetrack again.
• 1:07:59
  So we'll do some SRO races.
• 1:08:01
  I think we do VIR in the Ferrari, Galecourt Lake in the Ferrari.
• 1:08:05
  That's about it.
• 1:08:05
  I think with SRO this year with the Ferrari and we'll do Sebring with the
• 1:08:10
  GT4 car and we'll do Nashville and we've got quite a few other races.
• 1:08:14
  The whole point of this year is to give Anthony a look at a lot of different
• 1:08:19
  racetracks in the US as many as we can.
• 1:08:21
  So we're doing different series to get him to see the tracks.
• 1:08:24
  So it's essentially a really busy year this year.
• 1:08:28
  So I think I know the answer to this next question, which is racing is still in your
• 1:08:33
  future until you can't anymore, right?
• 1:08:35
  Yeah.
• 1:08:36
  And again, like I said to Tony, Anthony's dad, I said, look,
• 1:08:40
  I can pull Anthony around.
• 1:08:42
  And I saw he has talent, even the very first time he went on track.
• 1:08:47
  You know, he's not chasing me around at that point, but I could
• 1:08:49
  see that he has some natural car skills and he's very smart and
• 1:08:53
  he sees the way around the track.
• 1:08:55
  Not always perfect yet, of course, you know, I can help him.
• 1:08:58
  But I said to Tony, I said, look, Tony, I love to race bits and pieces where I can
• 1:09:03
  now, and it's fun, but this is serious.
• 1:09:06
  But when Anthony gets to that point.
• 1:09:08
  That he's running well enough, I will try to point him in the right direction.
• 1:09:13
  Then I can, you know, I can just look from the side and cheer him
• 1:09:16
  on and that'll be perfectly fine.
• 1:09:17
  I, this is such a great cause I've really never been in this position to,
• 1:09:21
  to sort of coach someone like this.
• 1:09:23
  And I don't think many drivers do get in this position where they
• 1:09:25
  still give you a car to race as well.
• 1:09:27
  And so I feel very grateful to that.
• 1:09:29
  And it's a.
• 1:09:30
  Pleasure to see this lad grow into this and work with him.
• 1:09:34
  Plus he's a really, he's a nice kid to be around as well.
• 1:09:37
  We'll be looking out for him and we'll be rooting for him as well.
• 1:09:39
  And we'll probably be cross crossing paths at many SRO events to come in the future.
• 1:09:44
  So I'm looking forward to it.
• 1:09:44
  Yeah.
• 1:09:45
  I look forward to seeing you, mate.
• 1:09:46
  Absolutely.
• 1:09:47
  So Andy, as we wrap up any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you'd
• 1:09:50
  like to mention before we close out.
• 1:09:52
  No, I just want to thank you so much for your time.
• 1:09:55
  Honestly, it's been an absolute pleasure going down sort of memory lanes.
• 1:09:58
  Andy Pilgrim, racer, educator, journalist.
• 1:10:02
  Andy is currently based in Bowling Green, Kentucky, along with his
• 1:10:05
  traffic safety education foundation.
• 1:10:07
  He continues his work in traffic safety, professional racing in series like SRO
• 1:10:12
  motorsports and consults to the national Corvette museum and NCM motorsports park.
• 1:10:17
  He also writes vehicle test articles and creates video content for CNET cars.
• 1:10:22
  If you want to catch up with him, be sure to check out www.
• 1:10:26
  andypilgrim.
• 1:10:27
  com for all the details or follow him on social at Andy Pilgrim
• 1:10:31
  on Facebook and YouTube or at Andy Pilgrim the number eight.
• 1:10:35
  So that's Andy Pilgrim eight on Instagram and Twitter.
• 1:10:38
  And remember.
• 1:10:39
  Kids emulate us, so be sure to check out his Traffic Safety Education Foundation
• 1:10:44
  and learn how you can create the next generation of better drivers at www.
• 1:10:49
  tsef.
• 1:10:51
  org.
• 1:10:51
  And I have to say, Andy, I cannot thank you enough for coming on Brake Fix.
• 1:10:56
  What an incredible resume, what an incredible story, and what an
• 1:11:00
  incredible all around great guy.
• 1:11:02
  So thank you.
• 1:11:03
  Thank you very much.
• 1:11:05
  Thank you.
• 1:11:05
  Thanks, mate.
• 1:11:06
  Thank you very much.
• 1:11:12
  The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their partners
• 1:11:16
  at AWS, CrowdStrike, Fanatec, Pirelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School.
• 1:11:22
  Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.
• 1:11:26
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• 1:11:28
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  at GT underscore America on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook
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  and catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT world.
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  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:11:49
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:11:53
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• 1:11:53
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• 1:11:53
  You can also find us on Motorsports.
• 1:11:57
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• 1:12:01
  can call or text us at 202 333 4000.
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• 1:12:08
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• 1:12:09
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• 1:12:11
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:12:13
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
• 1:12:17
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• 1:12:59
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