Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Steve Paladino: How Sim Racing Has Changed NASCAR | Lights Out With John Roberts

Transcript

Steve Paladino: How Sim Racing Has Changed NASCAR | Lights Out With John Roberts · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:00
  Friends, when we look back at the modern era of NASCAR, the
• 0:02
  one thing that may have had the most impact is SIM racing.
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  Some of the top drivers in NASCAR's top series right now
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  got their start electronically at their house.
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  And what this means is you no longer have to have hundreds of
• 0:16
  thousands of dollars to get a start in racing.
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  And believe it or not, the premier place to get one of
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  these high tech simulators is in Lavergne, TN And we got an
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  opportunity to speak with the man behind it all and it is time
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  to go lights out with Steve Palladino, owner and Co founder
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  of Podium One Racing. Steve, how did this whole thing
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  come about? I mean, right now in NASCAR, the
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  SIM racing is so huge, it's how so many people have gotten their
• 0:49
  start. But how did you get your start
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  into building these simulators? I think it's great question.
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  I think it's very similar with how a lot of the world is in
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  particularly America got into racing in general was through
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  COVID, right during COVID we were tracking cars and Drive to
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  Survive was on on Netflix and there's really nothing else
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  going on. And so in the offseason, as you
• 1:14
  know in Nashville at times snow. So I'm not tracking and I got
• 1:18
  into SIM racing and initially it was just as little, just a
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  little thing, just this little toy that I really didn't like
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  it. I used it.
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  It didn't feel right to me, it didn't feel real.
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  However, the amazing thing is that there'd be times where I'd
• 1:31
  still be up till two or three in the morning chasing one more
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  time, right, 'cause I knew I could go a little faster on a
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  lap, right? And so I started looking into it
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  and you would mention like NASCAR.
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  So I noticed that there were NASCAR drivers talking about SIM
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  racing. I remember I'd be at the gym and
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  I'd see NASCAR races or MSA races, but they weren't actual
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  cars. They were being done on iRacing
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  or on SIM and they were being broadcasted, right?
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  And I'm watching this and I go, what are they using?
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  What's Max Verstappen and Lando Norris 'cause they were talking
• 2:01
  about Sims and such. I go, what are they using?
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  So I found out about iRacing, which then meant had me go down
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  the path of I had to get APC and I'm like, OK, if I'm going to go
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  do all this for this, I might as well go and step it a little
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  further. And I did so and what was cool
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  is, I'm sorry, I'm just kind of talking here already and kind of
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  going in front of the story. But what was so cool is I then
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  started showing some of my track buddies and some of my friends
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  what we were doing. And the next thing I know I was
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  still up till two or three in the morning chasing tents.
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  However, this time I had 12/13/15 of my friends who are
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  all track guys. Some of them are MCA drivers and
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  champions and stuff. And we're all on together racing
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  tooth and nail and we're like, dude, this is incredible.
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  And that's, that's where the idea of podium one came up.
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  But it was all about the, the, you know, Jimmy Broadbent says
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  the, the cars are fake, but the racing is real or something
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  along those lines, right? And that's exactly what we
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  found. So Steve, you guys, once you
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  founded that thing, we had an opportunity to come out for our
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  charity event at the facility. That is a wonderful, amazing
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  place. You guys have a tremendous
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  collection of cars. But those different simulators
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  that are there, how are they built?
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  What is the process? Because one of your workers
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  there was telling me that if there's a Pebble on the
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  racetrack, that these simulators are picking it up, that they're
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  that realistic. No, that's exactly it.
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  So again, a loaded question and for a lot of different ways
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  because it's it's so many different parts of the puzzle
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  that come together to make this happen, right.
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  So let me start first, I guess going back a little further,
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  because you mentioned the facility and I think this is
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  kind of important to understand just how big SIM racing has
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  gotten and kind of where it's going.
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  Because when we started this, like I mentioned, I just went
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  through my journey as far as how I personally got into SIM
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  racing. But that wasn't the start of
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  podium one. The idea was we were doing, like
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  I mentioned before, you've seen the cars, we were tracking
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  various cars on tracks. We'd be doing car meets and
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  doing cars and coffee. And then especially again during
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  COVID and that whole time period, those couple years, we
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  were doing a lot of like underground garage meets and
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  stuff, right? Where cars would show up and
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  it'd be 10/11, 12:00 at night, but you know, we'd have 2000
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  supercars show up and then all of a sudden cops show up.
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  So what we said is like, look, we need a place for the
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  community to be able to come and, and experience SIM racing
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  and racing in general 'cause we'd also do these watch
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  parties. And you know, no place is
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  showing F1 at 8:00 in the morning where you can have a
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  cocktail and, and food and stuff, right?
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  So we said let's go out and create essentially a Top Golf,
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  but all things for Motorsports, right?
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  So we wanted to have a giant facility where we had members
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  where we had, we were going to do 84 rigs and bays so you and
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  your friends could rent a Bay, have a handful of rigs and get
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  to play and stuff full food and beverage bar.
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  And then the cars that you mentioned, the idea there was
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  this. Let's get our guys that mod and
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  service all of our super cars for tracking and for racing.
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  And let's get them in the building with us together so
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  people can walk around and see all the different cars while
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  they're also drinking and watching F1 and hearing The Sims
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  going. Just make it like this cool
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  collective for the car community, right?
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  And so we found a building in Nashville that was about 165,000
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  square feet that we were going to that we were looking at
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  getting into so we could build it out and then make this kind
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  of Mecca, if you will. And the idea was to go out and
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  make a whole bunch of them. Well, we were spending about six
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  months on this building going back and forth and going through
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  things. And ultimately it just, it
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  didn't end up working out. We had to peel out of the
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  building. It wasn't the right one for us.
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  And in doing so, we said, OK, look, we've already kind of
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  started this process. We've already started talking to
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  the manufacturers, saying here's what we're doing.
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  We already had a little satellite office where we were
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  going to be running things like we might as well start selling
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  Sims so we can learn this, because people are going to come
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  into this establishment and they're going to fall in love
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  with them themselves, right? Well, just like we did.
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  So we started selling Sims online in January of 2023.
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  We redid the website cause the website used to be all about the
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  restaurant, bar, experience center and things along those
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  lines. And then we redid the website
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  and the rest is history, right? We just kind of took off and it
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  went with Matt from Obsessed Garage to Tom Segura to Joe
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  Rogan to Katt Williams to Michael B Jordan.
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  But then real racers got into it.
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  Tony Stewart has one of our rigs.
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  Carl Edwards has one of our rigs.
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  Tony Kannan was just here and now he's getting one of our
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  rigs. And those are just to name a
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  few, right? It's it's just kind of keeps
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  going and going and going, which is awesome.
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  Now on to The Sims. As far as I'm sorry, Gary, go.
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  Ahead. Go ahead.
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  Go ahead, Steve. Go ahead.
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  Well, I was going to go back to your initial question.
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  It's like as far as The Sims, you know, we, we range in our
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  Sims, we sell some that are around 2 to $3000 depending on
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  how the person configures it all the way up to $125,000, right?
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  And you're getting a different level of immersion of experience
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  and they're just used for different things.
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  For example, the two $3000 systems, we find that those are
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  getting put into Airbnbs for people just kind of have and
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  hang out. Whereas the, you know, 9000
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  hundred and $25,000 Sims, those are much more for our pro
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  drivers and who are looking to actually use these for tools to
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  practice when they're not actually on track, right?
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  And so to to build those. My point is, is that they very
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  different of the amount of detail and time and effort that
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  it takes to build them. But we have some Sims that we
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  can knock out in three to five hours.
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  There's other Sims that'll take 5 to 10 days depending on the
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  different level of Sims and such, right?
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  And that's just building out the hardware.
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  Now the software side of it I mentioned earlier was iRacing,
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  and this is really cool with iRacing and other Sims that are
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  out there. Now what they do is they
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  actually go out and laser scan the circuits or for example,
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  Flat Rock and some of the other circuits around.
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  They'll obviously laser scan their own circuit once it's done
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  being built. And then they can have that and
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  sell that or provide that to iRacing.
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  And then iRacing then takes that and digitizes it and puts it
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  into the SIM to where now you have literally within like
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  millimeters. The track is identical to what
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  it really is, right? So I've been to multiple
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  different circuits in real life that I'd start on the SIM 1st
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  and by the time you get to the track, it's like it's
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  unbelievable how much you already know the track, right?
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  I was mentioning to your team recently, for example, in June,
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  Chandler and I, we did a 14 hour endurance race at Daytona and an
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  NPO one like prototype style car, right?
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  It was our first race ever at Daytona, a track that I've never
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  driven in real life, and we only had 20 minutes of practice
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  because there was car issues and weather issues.
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  When I came out of the pit and I turned and it came around turn
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  three, I was like, I've been here 1000 times because of how
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  much I've been on the SIM. And it was just so cool that I
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  didn't even have to worry about the break markers were the same.
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  The way the turns felt where you're going to lose suspension
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  and traction and all this different stuff.
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  The bump before the kink, the bus stop, everything was just as
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  it was that I didn't even have to think about it 'cause I've
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  I've ran that so many times. I could do it in my sleep.
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  Which allowed you to focus on the race craft and I want to
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  touch on this as well because in SIM racing a lot of people say
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  OK, well you can memorize the track that's great, but realize
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  you're going against real skilled players as well.
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  Again, Tony Kanan and Max Verstappen and all these people
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  are using iRacing. So as you progress and you get
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  good enough, you are actually racing against these people or
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  this type of people on the SIM. Which means that when I get on
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  the track and I'm going three wide into the bus stop and I'm
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  in the middle and I'm and I'm like, I'm not going to stop
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  because I know these other people will because you've seen
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  it happen on the SIM. It's just it's incredible,
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  right? There was moves that people were
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  trying to make and they were setting up turns a certain way
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  that I'd seen in eye racing 1000 times.
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  So I knew how to how to break later or how to take the inside
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  or whatever it may be and how comfortable I was because of how
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  much time I've spent on the SIM. And that's just me.
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  Get alone. And like you mentioned earlier,
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  like before this before we started recording or you kind of
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  mentioned how all these different people are getting
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  into real racing from SIM racing or real racers are using the SIM
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  when not actually on track to keep their edge and constantly
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  improve. I think Steve, one thing that's
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  pretty cool about this, our good friend Felix Savatis once said
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  years ago, the easiest way to make a small fortune in racing
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  is to start out with a big one. Racing a real car, especially
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  for a young person to get developed, is very expensive and
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  has been very expensive over the years.
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  And when you look at the likes of William Byron, Bubba Wallace,
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  Josh Berry, these top tier drivers right now who got their
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  start on SIM racing, I think it opens up a whole new alley in
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  terms of getting racers that may not otherwise have an
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  opportunity to enter racing as a career.
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  It's 1000% and I'm in meetings with the manufacturers, the
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  brands I racing and other SIM developers all the time from
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  across the world. And that's kind of the
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  objective, right. The objective is to realize
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  that. Well, let me let me say what I
• 11:04
  used to say all the time when we started this business is if we
• 11:08
  were born in Europe or in the UK in certain areas, right?
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  It seems like you can be born essentially with the steering
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  wheel in your hand. Carting is prevalent.
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  It's everywhere. There's tracks everywhere.
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  Doesn't mean that it doesn't cost a lot.
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  From what I'm told, it costs a lot less still.
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  But when you go here to the United States, where do we have
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  carting? Like for most places, there's
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  not a professional cart circuit or anything like that.
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  It's not easy to get into. You're going to some back, you
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  know, country parking lot or something to get started in in
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  the beginning with weeds going everywhere and you might have
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  you and a couple people that are doing it, but it's SIM racing is
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  really I think going to find talent that was never ever that
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  was not going to be able to be found before.
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  I think about like during the Music City Grand Prix that we
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  had here, the first one during the trophy truck session, I
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  think the kid that won it, right, he's launching these
• 12:00
  trucks off these ramps and stuff.
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  I think the kid that won it, he was thirteen years old.
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  You can't drive yet, right? But you're driving these trucks
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  on the racetrack and launching them.
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  And was that from simming? You know, I, I don't know.
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  But I guess what I'm saying is that there, I'm, I don't know
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  what I'm saying. There's a lot of different
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  things here. Bottom line is that to your
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  point, it is very expensive to get into racing.
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  And for $1500, you can go from nothing to having a basic wheel
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  pedal set, a little stand, ATV and an Xbox and you can kind of
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  get started in the racing. And then from there you can
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  continue to develop it. And I'm, I know you want to get
• 12:39
  a word. I'm so sorry.
• 12:40
  I want to say this last thing is that with iRacing and with some
• 12:43
  of these other brands that we're working on, the objective right
• 12:45
  now is to start finding SIM racers and bring them into real
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  racing again. You see Max Verstappen with
• 12:51
  Redline, he's doing that himself with his SIM racing team.
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  He's now getting these people and bringing them into real
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  cars. One of the teams that we
• 13:00
  sponsor, one of the drivers that we sponsor who works closely
• 13:03
  with Aswelli Alameda, he started from SIM racing, ended up
• 13:07
  selling, winning this competition, created this online
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  SIM racing course. It got huge.
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  All these people started buying into it.
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  And then we took the proceeds and went and bought himself a
• 13:17
  Radical SR3 last year in 2024. And then he went and joined the
• 13:21
  Radical Cup, which is a World world racing organization,
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  right? He's in Dubai, he's all over the
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  place doing all the stuff and he wins.
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  I mean, the, the team on the final race at Sonoma hired 2 WEC
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  drivers to try to, to battle with him so they, the other guy
• 13:38
  could get in first place, right? And here's a kid that barely has
• 13:41
  any experience, spends most of his time on SIM racing and he
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  wins the Radical Cup series. Now he's in EMSA this year.
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  It's incredible. It really is, Steve, and also
• 13:52
  what I thought was so incredible when we were out for our charity
• 13:55
  event, we had three of NASCAR's best out there with us and Nick
• 13:59
  Sanchez, Chris Buscher and also Josh Berry.
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  But they were able, like you said, to compete against one
• 14:06
  another. And it was so realistic that
• 14:10
  even as they drove the cars, not only did it simulate the the
• 14:15
  Nashville Superspeedway, the bumps, the nuances and
• 14:18
  everything like that, but but you guys actually, they have
• 14:20
  these cars that they'll go away if somebody is abusing their
• 14:24
  tires or if, if cars get better and worse throughout the course
• 14:29
  of the race. That to me is just eye opening.
• 14:32
  Incredible technology. Yeah, again, you got to give
• 14:35
  shout out to Eye Racing and then of course the development the
• 14:38
  other software companies out there developing.
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  But for those that don't know, again, like they're there are
• 14:45
  video games of racing and then there's simulation racing.
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  And so for example, I keep bringing up I racing, so we'll
• 14:50
  focus more on that. But when you start a race and I
• 14:53
  racing or even a practice session and you come out of the
• 14:56
  pits, you have cold tires that are under inflated, just like in
• 14:59
  real life. You have cold breaks, just like
• 15:02
  in real life, you have a full tank of gas and you have fresh
• 15:05
  tires. And as you progress, your gas
• 15:07
  goes down, your car lightens up the spring and everything
• 15:10
  changes. You've got your tire wear
• 15:12
  happening. So if you lock up, you're going
• 15:14
  to have flat spots and you're going to feel it.
• 15:16
  If you spin out, you're going to make your tires hot in area.
• 15:18
  So for the next couple laps, you're going to be a little
• 15:20
  slippery, or in the beginning, as I mentioned, when they're
• 15:23
  cold and underinflated, you just got to realize you got to let
• 15:26
  off the throttle a little earlier, brake a little earlier,
• 15:28
  get on the gas a little later. What's cool with that is you're
• 15:30
  also going to find different style of driving.
• 15:33
  You might have some drivers that are very aggressive and hard on
• 15:35
  the tires at first, so they'll pull up, but a handful of laps
• 15:39
  into the race, their fire, their tires are going to start to fall
• 15:41
  off and then all of a sudden they either have to pit or
• 15:44
  they're going to start to pay the price, right.
• 15:46
  So it's it's, you still have the undercut strategies, the overcut
• 15:49
  strategies, all the different types of stuff that you see in
• 15:51
  real racing is now being done in the simulator with these, with
• 15:55
  these drivers. Has this concept, Steve, grown
• 15:58
  beyond your imagination when you first started this thing to have
• 16:02
  the likes of Max Verstappen and Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, all
• 16:06
  those guys coming to you right now, has it grown beyond your
• 16:09
  wildest dreams? It seems like it's just so huge
• 16:11
  right now. Or, or was this where you wanted
• 16:14
  to be? Was this what you expected it to
• 16:15
  grow into? So without getting too much into
• 16:19
  like my, my background with other things, right, when we
• 16:22
  started this, it was it was because we saw it, we enjoyed
• 16:26
  it, we loved it. But also it's like any venture
• 16:28
  you're going to go into, it has to make sense, right?
• 16:31
  Yeah. I wouldn't want to go into this
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  and spend all my time, energy and life and money and sacrifice
• 16:36
  away from the family and all the different stuff that we do just
• 16:39
  so we can barely get by, right. And so I, when we were looking
• 16:44
  at this and I saw the excitement that the track guys that bought
• 16:47
  their own rig that we were racing with together that I
• 16:49
  mentioned at the beginning, we would go to Daytona and we bring
• 16:52
  rigs and we set it up on the infield and would have thousands
• 16:55
  of people waiting around and watching was so cool.
• 16:58
  And then went to PRI and we went to Seema.
• 17:01
  This is when we were just kind of figuring out if this is
• 17:03
  something we wanted to do. And we brought Sims and there
• 17:05
  would be lines like when we were at Seema, the show would end at
• 17:09
  4:00. They would close the auditorium
• 17:12
  at 6:30 and turn off the lights. We would still be there at 6:30
• 17:15
  with a line of people. Obviously at 4:00 we cut the
• 17:19
  line off, but people were waiting for that long just to
• 17:21
  get their five minute shot on the SIM, right.
• 17:24
  And so we knew that there was something special there.
• 17:26
  Now, I did not expect it to go as fast as it as it is.
• 17:31
  And at the time, I probably myself didn't realize how useful
• 17:36
  of a tool that it is. And what I mean by that is I, I,
• 17:39
  you know, there's times where we'll play Call of Duty on our
• 17:41
  Sims and you're using a controller and you're running
• 17:43
  around and they can move. All right.
• 17:45
  You can feel the guy walking and shooting all this kind of cool
• 17:47
  stuff if you want it. But I'm not learning how to go
• 17:50
  pick up an AR and, and go shoot it or something like that,
• 17:53
  right? Whereas in a golf SIM, you can
• 17:56
  actually be learning good or bad habits on a golf SIM.
• 17:59
  And it's exact same thing on the racing SIM.
• 18:01
  And so once we realize that and you see that parallel and the
• 18:04
  world is starting to open up to that parallel.
• 18:06
  Like when we were at PRI on December in 2024, there was we
• 18:13
  had just big display, right? 20 by 80 section, a whole bunch
• 18:17
  of Sims. I think we had like 15 Sims and
• 18:19
  TV display walls and all this kind of stuff, and we've been
• 18:22
  there for multiple years. But this is the first year where
• 18:24
  all these drivers and pro teams and managers and owners came by
• 18:29
  and they were blown away by how accurate and how real these Sims
• 18:33
  feel. We had Chris Forsberg, we had AP
• 18:35
  Racing, we had Motor Trend. Tony Kanan, who had already
• 18:38
  mentioned Laguna Sake of the track came by Sonoma.
• 18:42
  I mean, there's so much cool stuff and people that were there
• 18:46
  and just blown away by what these can do.
• 18:48
  So Steve, you guys also get into some other areas, flight
• 18:52
  simulation and things like that. You're, you're not just serving
• 18:55
  a racing community. You guys go into some other
• 18:58
  lines of work and professions, don't you?
• 19:00
  Yes. So to go back to your last
• 19:02
  question, did I expect certain things?
• 19:04
  This is one of those things that when we started this, I at the
• 19:06
  time did not expect, right? So we have flight Sims, whether
• 19:11
  it's a Cerus SR22G6G7, Honda Jet Vision Jet, Cessnas that we
• 19:17
  build, we're building helicopters, Robinson R40,
• 19:19
  fours, MD5 hundreds and others. And now they're FAA rated.
• 19:25
  So on these Sims, for example, you can actually log up to 70
• 19:29
  hours BATDAATD flight hours that are FAA certified with flight
• 19:33
  instructors on these rigs. And so now we have flight
• 19:37
  schools coming in next week. We have the FAA coming in.
• 19:39
  The government's been coming and looking at it, seeing how we can
• 19:42
  assist and do other things with them.
• 19:45
  And then it's really started opening the door.
• 19:46
  Now we, we have, for example, a formula yacht racing company.
• 19:52
  I don't know exactly the term, but we've all seen like those
• 19:55
  big fat yachts that are racing on the on the on the ocean as
• 19:58
  teams with Oracle and Red Bull and all that kind of stuff,
• 20:00
  right? That one of their, those
• 20:03
  companies has developed this SIM for that, but they don't know
• 20:06
  how to build the, the actual hardware and The Sims
• 20:09
  themselves. So they're coming up to visit
• 20:10
  us. They've already sent us the
• 20:11
  software, we've already got it to move with all the motion
• 20:14
  systems and now they're going to send us fuselages and stuff and
• 20:17
  we're going to start building out that.
• 20:18
  So when I look at this, it's like, first it started with
• 20:23
  racing and then you like, OK, now we get into flight, but we
• 20:28
  could be doing bus training and CDL training and Caterpillar
• 20:31
  with earth mover training. We've got ship companies
• 20:35
  reaching out about ships trainings.
• 20:37
  We've got, I mean, you think about it, drones.
• 20:40
  Imagine now that instead of someone sitting in a in a
• 20:42
  tractor in the middle of nowhere, maybe they're in a
• 20:45
  trailer in the middle of nowhere.
• 20:46
  But the trailer is AC and they can sit there comfortably and
• 20:49
  get work done. But now they can be on their SIM
• 20:51
  controlling the earth mover outside and moving it.
• 20:54
  Or they can even do it much further away, right, If someone
• 20:57
  decides as the technology progresses and we get there.
• 20:59
  But I see this where it can be not only can it be for fun and
• 21:03
  for learning, but it also can be very productive with other
• 21:06
  things. And it's keeping people in an
• 21:08
  easier environment. So at the risk of
• 21:11
  oversimplifying it, Steve, you just simply have to have a lot
• 21:15
  of really smart people to put this technology, to get all the
• 21:19
  technology together and to funnel it into this area that's
• 21:23
  helping so many people and really making for a lot of fun,
• 21:26
  but also making some of the best race car drivers we have now and
• 21:30
  how they can get their start. Yeah, it's it's again.
• 21:34
  It is remarkable that you can sit on a computer now.
• 21:37
  I mean, I'm 45, I've been playing games since I was 5.
• 21:41
  My dad bought me an Atari when I was five years old playing
• 21:44
  playing with Q bird and stuff, right.
• 21:46
  Who would have thought that today I can actually get into a
• 21:49
  SIM. I can say, you know what this
• 21:51
  for this track. The setup doesn't feel right and
• 21:53
  I can go and adjust all the settings just like I would in
• 21:55
  real life on my cars and then and go right.
• 21:59
  And to your point, it, it, it takes an astonishing amount of
• 22:04
  work. I think people don't realize
• 22:06
  what goes into it on the hardware side, on the software
• 22:09
  side, on the engineering side, I'm just thinking through and,
• 22:12
  and all the time and testing that it takes to go from real
• 22:15
  life to the SIM. But it's what's so cool now is
• 22:19
  that the world is waking up to it and I see it, I see in the
• 22:22
  next 5 years it's really going to explode and, and, and be a
• 22:26
  huge thing overall. Yeah, I can see it only growing
• 22:31
  from here. Steve, we can speak first hand
• 22:35
  that we came out to your facility for our charity event.
• 22:39
  It is absolutely mind blowing the kind of things you have
• 22:42
  around there. You guys must be pretty proud of
• 22:44
  what you put together there. Yeah, What's so cool about it is
• 22:48
  it was, it would be one thing, like when we first had our first
• 22:50
  little office set, it was Sims. And that's what we do is Sims,
• 22:53
  right? But as I mentioned, we wanted to
• 22:55
  have the car involvement with real cars because that's where
• 22:58
  this started is our passion for real cars and tracking and
• 23:00
  stuff. And, and, and when you walked
• 23:05
  into our building, for example, and you walked down that hallway
• 23:07
  and you came out and all of a sudden you see The Sims, you see
• 23:09
  the big screen, the, the, the, the wall that we have, the LED
• 23:13
  wall. And then you turn to your right
• 23:15
  and what 506070 supercars that are there of all various shapes
• 23:19
  and sizes. And so when people come in to
• 23:21
  visit, they're, they just blown away.
• 23:24
  And you're kind of in this again, car Mecca where all they
• 23:27
  want to do is look at cars, get on The Sims and feel the cars.
• 23:30
  And then like they, everybody's just so excited.
• 23:33
  And that's what we wanted to create, right?
• 23:35
  And, and selfishly to a degree, I guess if you will, it does
• 23:40
  help validate what we're doing. That shows that how real it is
• 23:43
  and how good it is. I guess I mentioned earlier
• 23:46
  about Daytona that Chandler and I did, we'll do more races later
• 23:50
  this year, but to to further go in on that, like I didn't come
• 23:55
  up SIM racing. I didn't come up go karting.
• 23:58
  My family has nothing to do with racing.
• 24:00
  Cars were never a thing. I've never even been to a race
• 24:02
  until 2022. I think it was at Daytona for
• 24:05
  the Rolex. So my point is like, I got into
• 24:09
  the SIM racing and tracking because there was nothing else
• 24:11
  to really do during COVID. We got into this and now I have
• 24:14
  a Radical among other cars that we that we track and we're out
• 24:18
  there ripping with literal pros and they're absolutely blown
• 24:22
  away by how we can keep up with them.
• 24:26
  And that's how we got invited to be at this Daytona race was we
• 24:29
  were driving with some guys that are winning in their series with
• 24:32
  Radical and other cars and they saw how fast we were keeping
• 24:35
  pace at NCM and they said we saw you driving that.
• 24:39
  We have open seat in this car. If you can drive the Radical
• 24:42
  like that, you can drive this car like this no problem at
• 24:44
  Daytona, right? And here we are.
• 24:47
  It's kind of crazy. Yeah.
• 24:50
  Hey, Steve, congratulations on your success, man.
• 24:52
  The facility is beautiful, the technology is great and you're
• 24:55
  helping out a lot of up and coming racers.
• 24:58
  Keep up the good work man, and thanks for your time today.
• 25:01
  No, thank you so much for inviting me.
• 25:03
  I hope I wasn't boring for sorry for talking so long, but I
• 25:06
  really do appreciate the time. I appreciate that you guys use
• 25:09
  this for the the charity and the event.
• 25:11
  We love doing that. That's very important to us and
• 25:14
  we look forward to doing a lot more with you guys.
• 25:16
  Really appreciate it. Alright, Steve, we'll see you
• 25:18
  very soon. Thank you.