Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Touring Car Tactics: Jim Jordan’s Road to SRO Leadership

Transcript

Touring Car Tactics: Jim Jordan’s Road to SRO Leadership · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Break Fix Podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all
• 0:05
  over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors,
• 0:09
  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder how did they
• 0:17
  get that job or become that person.
• 0:19
  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
• 0:25
  The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their
• 0:28
  partners at AWS CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School.
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  Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.com or take a
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  shortcut to GT America us and be sure to follow them on social at GT America, on
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  Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook, and catch live coverage
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  of the races on their YouTube channel.
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  At GT World
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  with a career in motorsports that spans everything from working for
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  a major auto manufacturer to time behind the wheel of a race car.
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  To finally team ownership, Jim Jordan brings a wealth of experience to
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  his role as the SRO Motorsports GT America Touring Car Series Director.
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  In this week's episode of Break Fix, Jim explains his role and how his previous
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  experiences have shaped his outlook as he helps to guide SRO into the
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  latest golden age of sports car racing.
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  So please join us in welcoming Jim Jordan to break fix.
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  Thank you very much.
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  It's, uh, great to be here.
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  So like every break fix episode, we love to get into the details around
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  people's origin stories because let's face it, everyone has a story.
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  So let's talk about Jim, the Petrolhead.
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  How did you get into cars, into motor sports?
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  Do you come from a racing family?
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  I don't come from a family that raced, although I will say, uh, first
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  race I ever went to is the Trenton Speedway in Trenton, New Jersey, which
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  was the old New Jersey fairground.
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  So I'm showing my advanced age now where I saw Mario Andretti in the Dean Van
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  Line special win, the Trenton one 50.
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  My dad liked racing, so my dad was a racing fan, so he took my brother and I to
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  Trenton Speedway, took my eldest sister to Trenton Speedway while it still existed.
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  He was a fan of the TransAm series during its huge heyday.
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  He owned a 65 Mustang JT convertible and that was his, you know, the car he loved.
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  And, uh, so I went to First Road Race as Watkins Clan.
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  And it was a combination SCCA National TransAm race and saw Mark
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  Donahue win in a Penske Camaro.
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  So, you know, just a great time TransAm racing and just kind of became a huge fan.
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  And you know, as a kid there's pictures of me in a Halloween costume that my
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  mom made as a race driver with the traditional Goodyear stripes on the side.
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  So been a fan for a long time and been very fortunate to have turned
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  into a career that kept me and my family going for a very long time.
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  So I hear rumor that in your early days of racing and getting into motor
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  sports, some of the grassroots racing that you did, that you raced a pinto.
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  Yeah, that's exactly right.
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  My first real race, I had done some SCCA driver schools and I had a
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  clapped out MGBE production card that I was trying to get my license
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  with and met a guy named Rich Gano.
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  So Rich Gano, if you're still around.
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  Hey buddy.
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  Thanks, you put me on a nice path.
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  And Rich bano had a Ford Pinto that was built for the IMSA RS series, which
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  again, most people now have no idea what the heck it was, but it was a,
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  a racing series ancestry, very close to what I'm doing now, where you had
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  small compact sedans racing around.
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  So I raced a Ford Pinto in a three hour, I think it was BF Goodrich Radio
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  challenge at that point, but IMSA Race, and that was the first race he ever did.
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  And yes, it was Ford Pinto Race.
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  Ford Pinto for several years.
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  Again, met people such as Alan Marsh, who, uh, the huge guy early in my career.
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  'cause he gave me a job at his gas station, let me pump gas at at
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  night, work on my cars a little bit, paid my, my early racing career.
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  Again, my family didn't put money to my racing.
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  Whatever I did, I had to do it myself.
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  So, working at a gas station, Ford Pento was about all I could afford.
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  I completely sympathize with racing on a budget.
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  The budget is yours.
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  It's very, very challenging.
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  So I wonder, while you were racing the Pinto, were you racing against Lynn St.
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  James in her Pinto?
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  Actually, no, because she was running a showroom stock Pinto,
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  and I'm good friends with Lynn.
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  So we did share a few weekends at the same track, but never in the same class.
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  And it wasn't until just a few years ago.
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  It's a program that, uh, John Dunan, who's now head of IMSA Dean Case who
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  works with us at the SRO and myself put together, uh, we put together a deal
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  at the 25 hour long whatever NASA calls their 25 hour race at Thunder Hill.
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  We thought it'd be fun to have 25 drivers.
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  So every driver drove one hour.
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  And Lynn St. James and I both drove our hour.
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  I tease her just a couple weeks ago when I had dinner with her that
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  we actually co drove a race, Lynn.
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  Uh, we were hours apart in our stints, but it's been some great
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  people came outta racing Pintos.
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  'cause a Pinto was a, uh, it was a very competitive car in that
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  type of series back in the day.
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  It's sadly become a joke now.
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  But Pinot is just a good handling car, you know, in some ways,
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  like a Miata, no horsepowers, you had to keep cornering speed.
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  So it's, it was a good car to learn on.
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  Like the American GTI?
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  Yeah.
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  Well, no, GTR is far better than a pin, but yes, when it comes to momentum and not
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  a whole lot of power, but that's honestly in my opinion, how you learn how to drive.
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  And that's one of the reasons, and that so many good drivers
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  come out of classes like.
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  You know, currently like spec Miata because you have to maintain mins.
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  It's all about men's speed.
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  As long as you go as fast as possible to the corners, the
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  straits take care of themselves.
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  It's just that, you know, the highest possible minimum
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  speed of any corner is that.
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  That's why driver like Pat Long is so good because his men's speed's
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  higher than virtually anybody else.
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  We're gonna transition a little bit and we interviewed Dean Case a while
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  back and he spoke about his time on the design team at Mazda, and we
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  came to find out that you were also involved with Mazda for many years.
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  Do you wanna go ahead and expand on that?
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  It was Mazda North America, although I had a couple different names when I was there.
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  As Mazda went through, uh, three organizations and the rest, but really
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  fortunate to work for Mazda for 26 years.
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  Had some really good bosses during that timeframe that.
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  It taught me a heck of a lot about the car business.
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  And while that whole time was going on, I was still involved with racing,
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  at least at one level or another.
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  Generally club level stuff, but occasionally helping other
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  people on some pro stuff.
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  But start out with Monson technical training.
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  I responded to a classified ad. Want to add?
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  In the uh, LA Times and it was for Mazda corporate that they wanted
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  someone who had teaching experience and understood the rotary engine.
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  A couple years previously I'd been a special ed teacher.
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  That's kind of what I did right out of college.
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  My dream of being a professional race car driver took over and I had my own shop for
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  a while and we specialize on Mazda Rotary stuff like, uh, lots of young enthusiast
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  people that shop couldn't pay the bills.
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  I met a woman I wanted to marry.
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  So all of a sudden, well, I better get a real job.
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  And, and, and so just applied for a job at Mazda, my resume.
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  I typed it up and just mailed it with a really good cover letter.
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  I'm a decent writer, so a great cover letter.
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  The funny thing about that was I looked at everything after I sent it and realized
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  that I forgot to put my phone number on my resume because I wasn't really
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  planning on, you know, sending a resume.
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  But here's this job that describes me.
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  So I said, ah, there's no way I'm ever gonna get it.
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  Two days later, there's a letter from Mazda saying, oh, Mr. Jordan,
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  we're quite interested in you.
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  We forgot to give your phone number.
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  And I'm thinking, well, you know, this had to be fate because in
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  most people's world, that would've been instant disqualification.
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  I will say though, that I got the grammar right and I must have
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  spelled everything correctly.
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  So I worked there, technical training, I went out to the field.
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  'cause in general at that era, I dunno what it's like now, but if you're gonna
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  go in any kind of executive position, they want you to have some field experience.
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  And when we say field experience, they're talking about going out
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  to dealers and, and interfacing with the customers directly.
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  Two types of customers.
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  One a dealer, of course the other customer is, uh, the end user,
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  the person that buys the car.
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  So.
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  I had that role as a district service manager, which meant
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  that I would be yelled at by customers who weren't satisfied.
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  And that's a skillset I take to this day of not getting too
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  upset when people yell at me.
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  'cause if you're in a position of responsibility in any sort of
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  job, people are gonna yell at you.
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  So I used that quite effectively just a few weeks ago at an SRO race.
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  But also just how to, uh, motivate people, uh, how to fight for shelf space and
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  honestly that fighting for shelf space.
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  At that time, Mazda was a smaller brand, still not a big brand, but
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  a smaller brand where we shared dealerships with other brands.
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  So you're constantly fighting for the attention of the dealer and
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  then the attention of the customer.
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  So, worked my way through all the field jobs.
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  Possible.
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  Did parts, parts service, then ended up in sales.
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  I was a district sales manager in both, uh, Northern California
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  and Southern California.
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  Then moved into the corporate environment.
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  But for about the last eight or 10 years, motor sports
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  marketing was my responsibility.
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  So I worked in the corporate marketing department.
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  I basically had sponsorships, special events, placements in
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  movies, some real fun stuff there.
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  But Motorsports was my passion and so was in just a wonderful position
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  with some really good people too.
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  And we just accomplished really great stuff and Dean was absolutely
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  part of that by that time.
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  Uh, he came back in after we were a little bit on a roll, but we had so few people.
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  We had engaged top management, our CEO and a senior vice
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  president named Robert Davis.
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  They believed in what we did.
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  They supported what we did.
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  As long as we can make an argument and show how it would help the company,
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  they let us do just amazing things.
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  And I still look back on that.
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  The one story I'll tell and, and it's one of my favorite stories, it was
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  24 hours of Daytona, I think it was 2008 or 2009, Savon tro and a uh, uh,
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  three rotor RX eight won the race.
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  So we ended up with the trophy and it was, uh, John Dunan again, uh, head
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  of him, uh, myself, head of TC America over at the SRO Dean case who works
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  for us in the SRO and a guy named Steve Sanders, who's now retired.
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  That was Mazda Motor Sports.
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  There were basically just four of us, and we're driving out
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  of the paddock at Daytona.
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  And we see all these Porsche trucks.
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  It's just like trailer after trailer after trailer, which was
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  Porsche Parts, Porsche engineering.
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  We looked at the entry list.
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  Every good Porsche driver in Germany had been cleared out
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  and was over at Daytona to run.
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  And we just started laughing hysterically with how crazy was it that
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  we were driving out with the trope.
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  And again, it's fun for me to just see, uh, the success that John Dunan had.
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  It's so much fun to be working with Dean Case.
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  Again, Steve Sanders, I don't talk to enough, but talk to him a little bit now.
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  And then Robert Davis, who I just mentioned, he's now
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  also working for the SRO.
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  He's now one of our race steward.
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  Just amazing quality people.
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  Timing was right that we got a lot of, a lot of the right people at
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  the right place at the right time.
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  Again, you look at all the things we accomplished with the Maza Road to Indy
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  winning Championships in Grand Am, which is now sort of what IMS has become.
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  Winning races, the Amex five cup, the Mazda Motor Sports Ladder, all
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  that stuff that, just a small group of really motivated people sharing a
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  vision and some just amazing executives.
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  Jim o Sullivan, I miss you man.
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  Robert Davis too.
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  They just help us, uh, make some very special that I'm very proud of.
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  So there's a question I asked Dean that I'm gonna ask you, because I'm going
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  to find the answer one of these days.
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  We're talking about your time at Mazda.
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  Are you responsible for Zoom?
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  Zoom?
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  No.
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  No.
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  I do know the story though.
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  Would you like the story?
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  Absolutely.
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  We'd love it.
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  Please.
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  Yeah, so I was in the marketing department, so I
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  do have some insight there.
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  Mazda was going for a pitch.
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  You know, we want a new ad agency.
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  So whenever you do that, you bring in several different agencies to
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  do a pitch to do their best work.
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  A smaller agency outta Detroit that didn't have a car account that I know
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  of at at that moment, but they did have some Ford Regional work, so they
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  were very automotive focused, but the donor people were actually the ones who
• 13:19
  came up with Zoom Zoom and was part of the initial ad pitch for the company.
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  And it's one of these things.
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  They did this video that was just so emotionally moving and it really
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  captured the spirit of Mazda right then.
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  But Zoom, zoom was originally an ad pitch.
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  It wasn't even, you know, that's how Donor got the business, honestly
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  was the whole Zoom, zoom thing.
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  And, and at that point I was out at the region doing marketing and I still
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  remember just seeing the video just going, oh my God, this, you know, makes me cry.
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  It was just extremely well done.
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  That was a really fun time to be part of Mazda because, you know,
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  we had a new agency and we were really working to define who we
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  were and where we were going.
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  We had some challenges and I think we did a great job of turning things
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  around and, you know, Mazda tends to be successful today, but I think
• 14:08
  part of that's left over from Zoom.
• 14:10
  Zoom Donor Agency eventually got replaced with agency that's now Garage Team.
• 14:14
  Mazda obviously a great agency, but uh, zoom, zoom has basically gone away.
• 14:19
  But that you even bring it up, it just shows how powerful that messaging was.
• 14:25
  At the time how appropriate it was for Mazda.
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  It was just really special.
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  That was one heck of a pitch, I must say.
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  Oh, I know, absolutely.
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  It's like reminiscent of mad men, right, where it's just like the one scene.
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  That's the only thing I could, right, exactly.
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  Exactly.
• 14:40
  Since we're talking about Mazda and the business side, one of the things we
• 14:43
  haven't really explored yet on the show is the business side of motorsports.
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  Many people often forget that there is more to this than just cars going around
• 14:53
  in a circle or around a road course.
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  Can you tell us about your experiences as a driver and a team owner from the
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  business perspective, not necessarily the racing perspective in motor
• 15:03
  sports and, and I think there's a good story for Mazda within that too.
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  If you look back, the history of Mazda, and again, I've been.
• 15:11
  Racing Mazdas, I guess since, uh, 1981 was the first time I raced a Mazda,
• 15:16
  Mazda Rx three, but Mazda was always very supportive of grassroots racing.
• 15:21
  Even back then, the guy who was head of Mazda Motor Sports, when I'd
• 15:25
  be at a race, come over, shake my hand, thank me for racing a Mazda.
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  Uh, Damon Barnett was a gentleman's name.
• 15:31
  When Mazda would get big and have big factory programs, they'd end up
• 15:36
  getting too excited, spend too much money and then cut everything off.
• 15:39
  But they always kept the grassroots program alive and to this day, they
• 15:43
  have an outstanding grassroots program.
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  We had a small committee within Mazda, and this is pre John Dunan.
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  And we would, we would have meetings and it was people that were enthusiastic
• 15:53
  about motor sports, but we had these meetings that we'd always put a fake name.
• 15:57
  It was sort of like fight club.
• 15:59
  First rule of these Mazda Motor Sports meeting is, there is no Mazda
• 16:02
  Motor sports meeting because the grassroots program was doing well.
• 16:06
  And they were staying alive and we, you know, you almost kept your head
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  down because they were doing fine.
• 16:11
  They were a profit center, so you don't want to touch them.
• 16:14
  But how do we get Mazda back involved with racing again?
• 16:17
  And so that eventually built into the various programs that I talked
• 16:21
  about before, from pro level racing and the old Grand Am and then into
• 16:26
  IMSA and, and all that sort of thing.
• 16:28
  And early world challenge.
• 16:29
  So the Mazda proteges and Mazda Sixes and World Challenge.
• 16:33
  But again, they were all based out of a very quiet, small
• 16:36
  group of people within Mazda.
• 16:38
  As we had a little bit of success, we could talk about
• 16:41
  a little bit more and more.
• 16:42
  And I will say though, that one of the reasons we were allowed
• 16:46
  to do what we did, especially early on, was the, uh, competition
• 16:50
  parts sales were quite profitable.
• 16:52
  So Mazda set up an early program that allowed Mazda racers and you have to
• 16:57
  produce results and things like that, but Mazda racers to get discounts on parts.
• 17:01
  So you basically get parts at it, roughly.
• 17:03
  Dealer cost, maybe a little bit over.
• 17:06
  Depending on your deal, and you also get technical support.
• 17:09
  There's guys and, uh, uh, not any women yet, but hopefully there will
• 17:13
  be soon on the, on the telephone that will help you build your race car,
• 17:16
  give you advice, that sort of thing.
• 17:18
  And because of that strong grassroots support program, it made money, the
• 17:22
  executives allowed us to take the profits out of that and put 'em into racing.
• 17:27
  And, and you look at, you know, the, uh, the direct connection
• 17:30
  program was parts program for Dodge and Plymouth, and that program's
• 17:34
  actually back, and I think they're building some turnkey race cars now.
• 17:38
  So there are other brands that had similar things.
• 17:41
  I will say career wise, one of the moments I'm proudest of, at least from
• 17:46
  the Motorsport side, was when I got a phone call from Honda and HPD and
• 17:52
  Honda basically said, look, when we.
• 17:54
  Wanna do better at something, we benchmark a company and see if they'll
• 18:00
  share with us some of their learnings.
• 18:02
  You know, Honda called MA and said, your grassroots program's better than we are.
• 18:07
  Will you help us?
• 18:08
  Will you teach us?
• 18:09
  And again, another name I've already mentioned went to Robert Davis,
• 18:12
  who by that point was a senior vice president, said, Hey, Honda
• 18:15
  called and they wanna know what we know and, you know, can we do it?
• 18:18
  Because again, the whole Japanese philosophy of a rising tide
• 18:22
  lifting all boats is very strong.
• 18:24
  And he said, yes, give them 98% of what, you know, the really tough 2% they're
• 18:29
  gonna have to learn on their own.
• 18:31
  We, uh, uh, had a really good relationship with Honda.
• 18:35
  I think they still do, but again, I've, I left Mazda almost exactly 10 years
• 18:39
  ago, July 1st, 2012 when I left Mazda.
• 18:43
  You know, I, I, I talked to those people, but my relationship's not nearly as close.
• 18:48
  And Robert Davis isn't there anymore, and John Dunan isn't there anymore.
• 18:51
  Seeing cases in there anymore.
• 18:52
  They have a lot of good people there that I communicate with now, but I
• 18:56
  don't have that type of relationship.
• 18:57
  But again, to have a company like Honda reach out and say, Hey
• 19:00
  Mazda, you're doing a better job.
• 19:01
  I feel like I'm one of the lucky and few and fortunate people at
• 19:05
  Mazda have ever had that happen.
• 19:07
  So listeners, if you've been filling your backpack with all the names that
• 19:12
  Jim has been dropping, it's getting full really, really quick to the,
• 19:17
  to that end, the motorsports world can often feel very, very small.
• 19:22
  But it's not uncommon for many of us to rub elbows with celebrities.
• 19:26
  Why don't we just take a moment here to diverge for a second and talk about some
• 19:30
  of the time you spent with McDreamy, I mean Patrick Dempsey and others at famous
• 19:36
  places like the 24 hours of Lamonts.
• 19:38
  I tell people all the time, and I'll say this publicly on on this podcast,
• 19:43
  that most of the great things that I have in my life are directly attributed
• 19:47
  to Mazda and my time at Mazda.
• 19:49
  And the Dempsey thing is that way too racer, who I actually
• 19:54
  helped him start his career.
• 19:55
  He lied, but is check cleared.
• 19:58
  So back when I was a team owner, he started driving our race cars and
• 20:02
  he's gone on to a great career, but a guy named Charles Espen Love, who,
• 20:06
  if you're a racer, you know him.
• 20:09
  Not exactly a household name, but just really good driver, really great guy.
• 20:13
  So Charles Espen Love was working at the old Panos School.
• 20:17
  Patrick Dempsey had been to the Panos School.
• 20:20
  Charles Mond Love and Joe Foster, another great driver.
• 20:24
  Those two, uh, kind of said, Hey, Patrick wants to go racing.
• 20:27
  Let's see if we can figure something out.
• 20:29
  First off, is Patrick okay?
• 20:31
  You don't wanna embarrass him and you don't wanna embarrass us.
• 20:34
  So is Dempsey a good driver?
• 20:36
  Yeah.
• 20:36
  Yeah, he's good.
• 20:37
  And he is getting better.
• 20:38
  Okay.
• 20:39
  So I put together a deal because again, I was now in the corporate
• 20:42
  marketing department, put together a deal where Patrick Dempsey did
• 20:45
  voiceover work for Mazda, and by that we paid him with race cars, race
• 20:52
  car parks and money, a combination.
• 20:54
  And it was the craziest contract I've ever done in my life.
• 20:57
  But it worked and it was great.
• 20:58
  And Charles, because he had driven for my team, understood that I was
• 21:03
  pretty good at race car strategy, especially in endurance racing.
• 21:07
  What was good for them was they couldn't pay me 'cause it would've
• 21:10
  been a conflict of interest.
• 21:12
  Can't favor one race team over another.
• 21:14
  But I love race car strategy.
• 21:15
  So again, my conflict of interest statement that I'd put together for
• 21:19
  Mazda every year was several pages.
• 21:21
  And one of 'em was explaining my relationship within Motorsports.
• 21:26
  'cause everything, like you said, it's a small family.
• 21:29
  I'm gonna add Incestuous family to that.
• 21:32
  So I would call strategy for Dempsey's team.
• 21:35
  I spent several years on the radio with Patrick.
• 21:38
  One of the stories I love to tell is 20 Fairers of Daytona again.
• 21:43
  Fantastic race by that point.
• 21:45
  Running an RX eight.
• 21:47
  And Patrick's gotten pretty good.
• 21:48
  He's now very, very competitive, very quick.
• 21:51
  But he also didn't have a ton of experience, especially at the front.
• 21:56
  We're out there and I'm calling the race and all of a sudden
• 21:58
  he goes into the league.
• 21:59
  Someone else has a problem, all of a sudden he's leading.
• 22:02
  But I'm not gonna tell him he is leading 'cause I know he'll get very
• 22:05
  excited with leading and it may or may not be what we wanna happen.
• 22:09
  So basically he was in the lead for about an hour and you know, all the TV
• 22:13
  reporters are coming up, how's it going?
• 22:15
  You know?
• 22:15
  Yeah, yeah.
• 22:16
  Everything's good.
• 22:17
  I call him and I go, okay Patrick, it's gonna be a full service pit stop.
• 22:22
  We're gonna do fuel tire and driver change.
• 22:24
  And he goes, well wait a second, wait a second.
• 22:25
  Do I need to wait for the wave by?
• 22:27
  And the wave by is a procedure where the lower class cars get waved by.
• 22:32
  So you know, so you stay on the lead lap.
• 22:34
  They try to keep everybody on the same lap.
• 22:36
  And I said, Patrick.
• 22:37
  You are not getting a wave by.
• 22:39
  'cause they don't give a wave by to the leader of the class.
• 22:42
  So you're good.
• 22:44
  You just sit there, you just, you've been doing great.
• 22:46
  And I, the rea he was like screaming over the radio and it
• 22:50
  was, uh, it was just very fun.
• 22:52
  It's a race.
• 22:52
  We almost won.
• 22:53
  We ended up third, we had a technical issue and lost a few laps, but
• 22:57
  came back and finished third.
• 22:58
  And so that was Patrick's, uh, first podium in imsa, or, well,
• 23:02
  it was Grand M at the time.
• 23:04
  Grand M msa.
• 23:04
  We'll use them a little interchangeably.
• 23:07
  We had a strong enough relationship when they decided to do a documentary,
• 23:11
  which is on Amazon since Amazon Web Services is a great partner of the SRO.
• 23:15
  Made sure to rush over to Amazon and look for Patrick Dempsey Racing Lamont.
• 23:19
  And we did a great documentary, and that was Patrick's journey to Lamont,
• 23:24
  and that's where I ended up in the box.
• 23:26
  They'd switched to Porsche for the whole World Endurance Championship.
• 23:30
  So they had a German engineer, Patrick Dempsey couldn't understand
• 23:34
  him, his accent was strong and Patrick couldn't understand him,
• 23:38
  so they decided to bring me in.
• 23:40
  So I spent two years in the box at Lamont, just basically
• 23:44
  taking, uh, German engineers and translating it in a way that.
• 23:49
  Patrick could understand and do, and that whole experience of
• 23:52
  Lama, it's in the documentary.
• 23:55
  Again, just a wonderful time.
• 23:57
  I will say it was better when we finally got on the podium several years later.
• 24:00
  But the documentary, what I admire is how honest it is.
• 24:04
  There were certainly moments of it where we all looked bad.
• 24:07
  Patrick just allowed that to happen.
• 24:09
  He wanted it to be an honest portrayal of what it's like in
• 24:11
  racing and trying to get sponsors.
• 24:14
  You're trying to put together deals you end up with, uh, interesting characters.
• 24:18
  Uh, I, I heard one interesting character was edited out of it,
• 24:22
  but that story for another day.
• 24:24
  So Patrick and I are still friends today.
• 24:26
  I had lunch with him last week.
• 24:28
  He is.
• 24:29
  Starting to think about getting back into racing again.
• 24:31
  So we'll see.
• 24:33
  We're trying to make it happen.
• 24:35
  So there was a lot there.
• 24:36
  But I, we love Patrick Dempsey around here.
• 24:38
  I think he's a great guy.
• 24:40
  You know, I've been following his, he's a great guy, you know, following
• 24:42
  his, uh, career a little bit, you know, watching the Lamont race is always rooting
• 24:45
  for him and his teams and everything.
• 24:47
  What he meant to say was watching Grey's Anatomy.
• 24:50
  That's what he Yeah, exactly.
• 24:52
  I have a story there too.
• 24:54
  Uh, uh, I'd love to, I would like to invoke my Fifth Amendment rights,
• 24:59
  but diving into that a little bit, I think you mentioned calling race strategy.
• 25:03
  Can you talk a little bit more about what that is, what that means?
• 25:07
  You know, the role that you played in calling race strategy for the
• 25:11
  Patrick Dempsey and the, the various races that you were involved in.
• 25:14
  With race strategy, you obviously wanna have the fastest driver in at
• 25:19
  the correct time and, and honestly, you're just trying to stagger drivers,
• 25:23
  stagger pit stops in such a way to give the team the best opportunity to win.
• 25:28
  What I say when you're calling race strategy, you're just running thousands
• 25:32
  of what if scenarios in your head?
• 25:34
  Like, what if the trek goes yellow?
• 25:36
  Now what do we do?
• 25:37
  You're paying attention to how much fuel the car's using, what lap
• 25:40
  times are because you're trying to.
• 25:43
  Check for tired degradation.
• 25:45
  Really as race strategist, you're just running what if
• 25:48
  strategy after what if strategy.
• 25:49
  So that's on the more engineering side.
• 25:52
  The other thing you're doing is you're being a psychologist because
• 25:54
  you're talking to the driver, you're his communication piece.
• 25:59
  And so depending on the driver, some of them want lots of information, some of
• 26:04
  them don't wanna be talked to whatsoever.
• 26:06
  But it's my job to make sure when something's important to
• 26:10
  give them that information.
• 26:11
  You're part engineer, part psychologist.
• 26:14
  You just try to give the team the best chance of winning.
• 26:16
  I hear a lot of like talking about internally being a psychologist and
• 26:20
  giving information to your driver.
• 26:22
  How much of what you do in calling race strategy is predicated on
• 26:27
  what your opponents are doing?
• 26:28
  Like how much are you looking at what the other guys are doing and how much
• 26:33
  are you thinking psychologically?
• 26:34
  Okay, like a chess match.
• 26:36
  If I move my pawn, are they gonna move their rook?
• 26:39
  Are they, you know, stuff like that.
• 26:40
  Yeah, that's very true.
• 26:42
  And the analogy of a chess game's just dead on.
• 26:45
  You're playing chess and obviously you're trying to do everything possible to, uh,
• 26:50
  put yourself in the best position and when possible, put people in a bad position.
• 26:54
  I will say that great 24 that we led for so long that we are just talking about.
• 27:01
  What I liked was, you know, Patrick's an extremely likable guy.
• 27:05
  The whole team, I think we were pretty likable.
• 27:08
  It came down to us and another car just battling for the lead.
• 27:12
  While there's certainly no villains in the paddock, let's just say we
• 27:15
  were a much more liked team than team.
• 27:18
  We were battling, and I still remember, it's probably 2:00 AM and we're slow.
• 27:24
  I, we had a car that was three quarters of a second per lap, slower than
• 27:29
  the Porsche we were battling with.
• 27:31
  But by strategy, by timing, pit stops by just doing.
• 27:35
  A little bit out of the ordinary stuff sometimes.
• 27:37
  I managed to keep the Porsche LA down basically all night long.
• 27:41
  We're not as fast as a Porsche strategy, and some luck got us into the lead.
• 27:46
  But I still remember Will Turner, who's just a great BMW team owner coming to
• 27:51
  the pits at 2:00 AM and just saying, you just keep doing what you're doing.
• 27:55
  You keep that guy a lap down.
• 27:57
  Because again, just our, the personality of our team, Patrick and everybody
• 28:01
  else was, you know, they, they were all cheering for us and they were
• 28:04
  probably almost as heartbroken as we were when we had the technical issues.
• 28:08
  And, but again, we fought back and finished on the podium.
• 28:10
  So very proud of that.
• 28:11
  But, but you're right, it, you hear it once in a while in some of the
• 28:15
  NASCAR races, if you're not fast enough, you can't do what everybody
• 28:19
  else does 'cause you're gonna lose.
• 28:21
  You're just looking, uh, to be opportunistic and whether that means
• 28:25
  not stopping when everyone else does.
• 28:28
  If you're the last car on the lead lap and you get a full course
• 28:32
  yellow, you always stop for fuel.
• 28:33
  'cause that's gonna give you a much longer window.
• 28:36
  You know, you fight for track position.
• 28:38
  You, the other thing about race strategy is you basically, you're
• 28:40
  calling the race backwards.
• 28:42
  Uh, and what that means is, you know when the race is gonna end, it's all timing
• 28:46
  and you have a rough idea of laughs.
• 28:48
  But yellow flag, the stuff I did was all timing.
• 28:50
  And so you're racing to that final.
• 28:53
  Stop and you're trying to time the final stop such a way that you get an
• 28:57
  advantage, but you run the race backward.
• 29:00
  Everything at the start of the race is aimed to get yourself hopefully
• 29:04
  into the lead for that final stop.
• 29:06
  And when you make that final stop, you're putting pressure,
• 29:10
  like you said, on everybody else.
• 29:12
  If they're watching what you're doing and you've done some stuff.
• 29:14
  So you're in a position where you only have to make one stop
• 29:17
  and they have to make two.
• 29:18
  It's fun to watch their horror, uh, when you realize that.
• 29:22
  How many times during your experience in races and everything have you had to call
• 29:28
  an audible, or you've had a game book, you've got your plan, and you just take
• 29:32
  it and you toss it right out the window because something has happened either
• 29:36
  to another team or to you, and tell us some experience that you had like that.
• 29:40
  Every race, there's not a single race that goes to plan.
• 29:43
  So again, that's why the what if strategy, you know?
• 29:46
  You know, in essence, Carl got sego 55 minutes on a load of fuel.
• 29:50
  When we were running the Michelins and Michelins, you
• 29:52
  could generally double stint them.
• 29:54
  So that was great.
• 29:56
  You know, you're watching the weather report, you're watching
• 29:58
  the temperature, you have a plan, not a super detailed plan, but a
• 30:02
  basic plan of how it's gonna go.
• 30:04
  Every race within three laps that goes out the window, so, so then you're
• 30:09
  just adapting, you know, you get hit on the start, get a tire puncture,
• 30:14
  your main competitor blows a motor, and that just changes your strategy.
• 30:18
  I worked for other teams also, and CJ Wilson, who was a baseball player,
• 30:23
  owns a Porsche dealership up in Fresno.
• 30:26
  Great guy.
• 30:27
  He had a young team and he's trying to make a name for himself.
• 30:30
  And so I would always ask the team owner, what are you trying to accomplish?
• 30:36
  Because at the end of the day, they're the ones paying the bills, so they
• 30:39
  may have a different agenda, you know, and he said, I want TV time.
• 30:43
  Okay, I'm gonna do everything in this strategy to get you
• 30:46
  as much TV time as possible.
• 30:48
  So we're like 10 minutes ago in the race, it was full of yellow flags.
• 30:52
  At one point we led, overall we were in a smaller class.
• 30:54
  'cause you know, I was gonna keep the car in front of the class as long as I could.
• 30:59
  But there was so much yellow flags.
• 31:01
  I basically could have gone the whole race without stopping for fuel,
• 31:04
  which is of course against the rules.
• 31:07
  So with about 10 minutes to go in the race, I just have a couple
• 31:11
  of IMSA officials just standing there giving me the evil eye, like,
• 31:14
  when the hell are you gonna pit?
• 31:16
  And I knew as soon as we pitted, we threw the race away.
• 31:18
  But again, CJ told me he wanted TV time.
• 31:22
  And you watch the race on tv, they kept talking about this
• 31:26
  car and kept showing the car.
• 31:28
  I got him so much TV time.
• 31:30
  Another example that was early in Patrick's career.
• 31:33
  Joe Foster was a great coach for Patrick, did a really good
• 31:37
  job of bringing Patrick along.
• 31:38
  And so again, what's our objective, Joe?
• 31:41
  And he says.
• 31:41
  Let's get Patrick out in front and let's let him have pressure of
• 31:45
  leading a race for the first time.
• 31:47
  And so we're in New Jersey Motor Sports Park again with yellow flags and how you
• 31:52
  pit, not pit you can make things happen.
• 31:55
  First thing, a yellow flags, it was far enough in the
• 31:57
  race that most people pitted.
• 31:59
  And I left Patrick out.
• 32:00
  So all of a sudden Patrick's leading the race and he was under intense pressure
• 32:05
  from a bunch of drivers, but he, he held firm and it took, you know, it was, uh,
• 32:09
  I can't remember the driver, but someone you've heard of spent like four laps
• 32:13
  just trying to get by him into the lead.
• 32:15
  And we're sort of thinking, well, I hope he gets by him because he's
• 32:18
  gonna lose patience really quick.
• 32:20
  That gave Patrick the experience he needed to, uh, be successful at Lamas.
• 32:24
  So.
• 32:24
  So, I hate to say in my career as a strategist hasn't been
• 32:27
  always about winning the race.
• 32:29
  Been a lot of strategies, trying to accomplish something different,
• 32:33
  whether it's a driver development long term, you know, or team development.
• 32:36
  Long term.
• 32:37
  If you want publicity, I can get you publicity and I'll still
• 32:41
  remember a guy named Jay Schafer.
• 32:42
  Now we're back to my own team.
• 32:44
  We were lucky enough to be sponsored by the late Great Circuit City.
• 32:47
  They sponsored our car and World challenge and we had a mod protege
• 32:51
  we were running, and Jay Schaeffer's advice before the start of a race
• 32:56
  is, well, if you can't win crash.
• 32:58
  So at least I'd get lots of coverage.
• 33:00
  And so we didn't crash on purpose, but let's just say if we weren't having a good
• 33:05
  day, we'd try to do something exciting that we knew we'd get a little bit of
• 33:09
  time for Circuit City at a NASCAR level.
• 33:12
  Of course, it's all about just winning, but at the level I was, uh, I was
• 33:16
  racing at, it's a little bit of, uh, trying to accomplish other goals.
• 33:20
  I'm, I'm assuming you, you're familiar with F1 and you
• 33:23
  watch F1 racing and whatever.
• 33:24
  Yeah.
• 33:25
  So this question is really simple.
• 33:26
  Christian Horner or Toto Wolf.
• 33:28
  Oh, I would probably do Christian Horner only because he has a lot
• 33:34
  more experience of not being the fastest car early in Patrick's career.
• 33:39
  Before he got fast, I, I had a lot of experience in getting laps back.
• 33:43
  You know, I used to joke, that was my specialty was how
• 33:45
  are we gonna get laps back?
• 33:47
  By the time Patrick got fast, that was never an issue, but
• 33:50
  early in everyone's career against that level, that just happened.
• 33:53
  So Horner, you know, the Red Bull team's obviously very good, but
• 33:57
  it normally doesn't have quite the pace in the Mercedes, and he had
• 34:01
  to just enjoy so much earlier this year when they lack Lewis Hamilton.
• 34:05
  That just, yeah, you know, again, so I'm gonna just see Horn because of that.
• 34:09
  I know Eric's rolling his eyes 'cause he's a huge F1 fan.
• 34:16
  My time has passed for F1.
• 34:18
  That's all I'm gonna say.
• 34:21
  I think I'd probably be embarrassed to share my racing strategy with Jim,
• 34:25
  although listening to his upbringing in Motorsports world, he might approve of it.
• 34:29
  It's very simple.
• 34:30
  Step one, check for loose nuts behind the wheel and on the car.
• 34:34
  Step two is pray.
• 34:35
  And step three is if all else fails, drive flat out.
• 34:39
  Yeah, exactly that.
• 34:40
  That's good.
• 34:40
  And to be honest, you in a few words basically said what took me
• 34:45
  half an hour now to talk about.
• 34:48
  Um, but yeah, your philosophy's dead on.
• 34:50
  Dead on.
• 34:51
  Well, with that said, we should probably.
• 34:54
  Get back to talking about your involvement with SRO, talking about
• 34:58
  the, the present and the future.
• 35:00
  So you're now in charge of the touring car portion of the program.
• 35:04
  Yes.
• 35:05
  So when I had Greg Gill on, I asked him to please define what
• 35:10
  exactly a touring car is in 2022.
• 35:14
  Would you care to share with our audience Sure.
• 35:16
  What exactly that means?
• 35:17
  Sure.
• 35:18
  And I'm just gonna say up front there is a little asterisk, but fortunately right
• 35:21
  this very second, there is no asterisk.
• 35:23
  Basically how I define touring car is a sedan or coop comes from the factory
• 35:28
  with a back seat that, you know, we go out and we do sprint racing with.
• 35:34
  In the SRO world, we obviously came out of the world of exotic cars.
• 35:38
  So you know, the, the top GT three class cars are Ferraris and
• 35:42
  Lamborghinis and those sort of things.
• 35:44
  And then the GT four class, which is a fantastic class in the SRO
• 35:48
  world, it's kind of in between.
• 35:50
  'cause you've got some McLaren's and you've got some Porsches.
• 35:54
  Audi, RH and Mercedes-Benz, but you also theoretically have Mustangs and cama.
• 35:59
  So it's kind of a nice tweener class.
• 36:02
  And then the touring cars, again, the cars have back seats for the
• 36:06
  most part, no asterisk needed.
• 36:07
  Right now.
• 36:08
  The cars come with a backseat, sometimes four doors, sometimes
• 36:10
  two doors, sometimes three doors.
• 36:12
  They're basically every person's car.
• 36:15
  So you look at the brands that are racing in TC America, BMW and Honda are the
• 36:20
  two biggest ones in terms of numbers.
• 36:23
  But we have many very successful, A Mazda will show up now and then and and
• 36:29
  is showing some really good potential.
• 36:31
  Hyundai is a great supporter of the class.
• 36:34
  For the most part, come from factory built.
• 36:36
  Brian Herder Racing will build you a Hyundai Elantra N four R series.
• 36:41
  They send out tech support and it's a turnkey race car.
• 36:44
  So same thing.
• 36:45
  Honda HPD will happily sell you either a, uh.
• 36:49
  TC level civic type R or TCA level.
• 36:52
  They have their new Honda four-door Civic, which just came out.
• 36:56
  And so these are the cars that everybody drives On the street.
• 36:58
  You fell asleep when you were younger with pictures of Lamborghinis and
• 37:03
  Ferraris, uh, on the wall, but mom or dad took you in the carpool and
• 37:07
  a Honda or Toyota or a or a Mazda.
• 37:10
  And so those are the cars that race in touring, car racing.
• 37:13
  Now, touring car in Europe is slightly different, BTCC, the STCC, and even
• 37:19
  the touring car stuff that happens in Italy and France, you see a lot more.
• 37:22
  The TCR stuff, you see a lot more hot hatches, right?
• 37:25
  With names like Ciro and in Renat and Volkswagen and Skoda
• 37:29
  and Sayat and things like that.
• 37:30
  So same, same but different.
• 37:32
  There's more cars available in Europe than there is here in those types of classes.
• 37:37
  British turn card is a really cool series.
• 37:40
  I will say though, it's a spec series.
• 37:42
  I mean, they're all now basically using the same engine.
• 37:45
  There might be a few little variations, but it's a spec series.
• 37:50
  You know, the BOP is very easy because if you're all running basically the
• 37:53
  same power train, it makes it easy.
• 37:55
  Uh, TCR is a very cool series.
• 37:57
  We actually tried it.
• 37:59
  The problem with TCR is the cars are relatively expensive to run and for us.
• 38:06
  You start looking at what A TCR costs versus a GT four car.
• 38:10
  And since, uh, the SRO owns GT four worldwide, we create
• 38:14
  the class and we own it.
• 38:16
  And TCR we have to pay licensing fees on.
• 38:19
  It just became apparent that as soon as the price point of TCR gets on
• 38:22
  top of GT four and it almost is, it just didn't make any sense for us.
• 38:27
  So we let our license from.
• 38:30
  TCR laps.
• 38:31
  And again, I love TCR cars.
• 38:33
  They are badass, really cool cars.
• 38:34
  But we saw that our place in the world is entry level.
• 38:38
  So I call our TCA class the gateway drug.
• 38:42
  If you're someone that wants to go pro racing, you can go to mini, you can go
• 38:46
  to Honda, you can go to Hyundai, you can, uh, get a, one of the new Subaru B Zs.
• 38:52
  You can get one of those cars.
• 38:53
  You buy the car, it's fully ready to go, ready, race, ready, and you go
• 38:57
  racing and you have all the, the car's well engineered and you have the tech
• 39:01
  support you need and you go racing.
• 39:03
  Again, it's a relatively affordable way to go.
• 39:06
  Most parts you'll ever need, or at the racetrack with the, the brands
• 39:10
  doing it, you know, Hyundai and Honda both have engineering people
• 39:14
  on staff that come to all the races and do it, and everything's relative.
• 39:18
  So TCA is, it's a relatively cheap way to go.
• 39:22
  And then we had people that worked their way up through TCA to TC and TCX.
• 39:27
  And you know, I look at the GT four field and now in the GT three field
• 39:31
  you have someone like Samantha Tan, an outstanding young woman racer.
• 39:35
  When I started at my job with the SRO, she was racing a Kia in TCA and then she
• 39:42
  moved her way up to GT four in A BMW.
• 39:44
  And now this year she's running a GT three BMW, and she's running that both with us
• 39:48
  plus some of the international series.
• 39:50
  That's not uncommon to see someone when they're starting their career run
• 39:55
  R TC and we teach them what it's like to be a professional racer because
• 40:00
  we're FIA sanctioned the license that we have and the races that we do allow
• 40:05
  them to build a resume with the FIA so they can race anywhere in the world.
• 40:10
  It's a good place to be in and, and one thing I'm proud of, you
• 40:13
  talked about all the cars in Europe.
• 40:15
  So what's happened in the SRO world again?
• 40:17
  Stefan Ell, who's the SR of the SRO, saw what we were doing
• 40:21
  in the US with TC America.
• 40:24
  A couple people worked for them, said, Hey, let's bring that
• 40:26
  concept to Europe, to France.
• 40:28
  Last year, for the first year, there was TC France.
• 40:31
  And so TC France is very similar, although I will say that their
• 40:36
  advantage and disadvantages in Europe, there's so many manufacturers
• 40:40
  that have had one make series.
• 40:42
  Like every manufacturer has a one make series.
• 40:45
  And so then what happens is those make series, they decide to do away with them.
• 40:49
  So all of a sudden these people have cars and no place to run.
• 40:52
  So what TC Francis has done is they've taken those cars, they BPD 'em to
• 40:56
  basically a TCA level and a TC level.
• 41:00
  They've done BOP.
• 41:01
  So all those cars, those were no twins or you know, sea Os and whatever those cars
• 41:07
  are, we've given them a place to run.
• 41:09
  And so first year they average a little bit over 20 cards a
• 41:13
  race, and it's great racing.
• 41:15
  And it was at the front.
• 41:17
  I think it was a real fast Reno kind of semi TCR type car versus
• 41:21
  A-B-M-W-M two, similar to what we did, and it was just great racing.
• 41:26
  So that's just kind of something I'm proud of, is they've taken TC America
• 41:30
  to the world and so we're in France now.
• 41:33
  There are some inquiries about other things.
• 41:35
  Our level of tcs, just a lot less expensive.
• 41:38
  TCR.
• 41:39
  So Jim, it's actually really great that you brought up all the other SRO series
• 41:44
  that are available, especially in Europe.
• 41:45
  And I'd like to remind our audience that if you're interested in learning
• 41:48
  more about those, obviously check out the SRO motorsports.com website.
• 41:52
  There's also of great YouTube feeds and things like that, but I happen
• 41:56
  to catch most of those races on motorsport.tv and so that's how I
• 42:00
  stay plugged in with TC France and all those races, and they're awesome.
• 42:03
  You can watch, you know, Reno Cleo's running around Zol
• 42:07
  and Belgium, it's fantastic.
• 42:08
  You're not gonna get that on s ESPN eight, the OCHO or whatever, you
• 42:12
  know, whatever the latest, you know, subscription is that we need to have.
• 42:15
  But Motorsport tv, if you wanna learn more about touring car and see how
• 42:18
  it's done around the globe, because there's even Asia series and things
• 42:22
  like that, you can check it out there.
• 42:24
  I feel like TCA, that lower class in touring car might be the stepping stone
• 42:30
  for somebody that's coming out of, let's say Spec Miata or spec E 36 or
• 42:35
  something like that and want to move on to something else, would that be a
• 42:39
  great avenue into the SRO program for somebody that's used to running A-B-M-W-A
• 42:43
  boxer, a Miata, something like that?
• 42:46
  Yes, definitely.
• 42:47
  If you could run upfront in something like a spec Miata, a little bit to
• 42:52
  the boxer, but I'm just gonna use Spec Miata because there's so many of 'em.
• 42:56
  If you could run upfront and spec Miata, you could climb into one of our
• 43:01
  TCA cars, you'll be in the top five pretty quickly just because all the
• 43:06
  skill sets that you learn in the lower club racing classes are all applicable
• 43:12
  to what you see on the pro level.
• 43:14
  I will say though, if you think you're gonna come in and and be on
• 43:17
  the podium, the first race, no, it's much tougher than people think it is.
• 43:22
  A level of competition is much tougher.
• 43:25
  When I owned my own race team back in the day, we would jokingly call these people
• 43:30
  the, uh, local heroes, local champions.
• 43:34
  They won every race at the track in a similar car, so they just
• 43:37
  think that they're gonna get.
• 43:39
  You know, just kill everybody.
• 43:40
  And you know, they don't know me from Adam and you know, I'm not a MR of
• 43:44
  the epitome of health or anything.
• 43:46
  So, you know, even at that point I probably was carrying 20 pounds too many.
• 43:51
  And without fail, we'd smoke 'em just because, you know, you rise
• 43:57
  to the level of your competition.
• 43:58
  In the TC America class, we have some of the best turn car racers out
• 44:03
  there, but even some, like Kevin BM who's leading the TC class right now.
• 44:08
  Kevin was a multi-time SCCA national champion, and he came in and it
• 44:13
  took him half a season to get to the pointy end of our series.
• 44:17
  And again, these are people that aren't household names to anybody except
• 44:21
  other competitors in that field, but you certainly learn great Racecraft.
• 44:25
  Someone whose career I really enjoyed watching is Sally McNulty.
• 44:30
  Sally McNulty came in from the time attack world and she was very fast in
• 44:35
  time attack, uh, had, you know, one of these 600 horsepower Subarus and
• 44:39
  go out there and just run really fast.
• 44:42
  She came in and her first race, I remember watching her at Circuit
• 44:46
  the Americas and going, oh my God.
• 44:48
  Oh my God.
• 44:48
  Because she was, she went from a 600 horsepower car to a 200 horsepower car.
• 44:54
  Takes a lot more finesse.
• 44:55
  And I'm not gonna say skill, but it, it carry momentum through turns.
• 44:58
  It's a different skillset.
• 45:00
  So, but now I look at Sally.
• 45:03
  She's gonna be on the podium this year.
• 45:05
  She's gonna be fighting for wins, thinks she'll be fighting for the championship
• 45:10
  all year, but it's taken her three years.
• 45:12
  This is her third kind of full-time season with us.
• 45:14
  And so again, it, it's a great place to start again, there's lots of people that
• 45:19
  have moved up and great place to start.
• 45:22
  So many of the GT four top teams came out of TC America.
• 45:26
  I gotta add my little jab in here.
• 45:28
  I think the great equalizer is all these folks that have to come over and
• 45:32
  suddenly relearn how to drive, because now they're in front wheel drive cars.
• 45:35
  Not that there aren't real wheel drive cars in touring car, but it is
• 45:40
  an entirely different animal when you get behind the wheel of a front wheel
• 45:44
  drive and that are asked to go fast.
• 45:46
  I, I just gotta say it.
• 45:48
  But that does lead us into kind of a sideways segue into a topic
• 45:52
  that I talked to Greg about on his episode, which was balance of power.
• 45:56
  How do you level the playing field, these folks coming out of different
• 45:59
  other branches of local motor sport into touring car, and suddenly our
• 46:03
  behind the wheel of a Hyundai, a Honda, a Volkswagen, or something
• 46:06
  else, and go, uh, how is this fair?
• 46:08
  How does this work?
• 46:09
  I wanna get your take on BOP, on the balance of power, balance of
• 46:14
  performance, blame other people.
• 46:15
  I've heard a million different ways to just dissect this acronym.
• 46:19
  Get your feeling on that and what it means in the touring car arena.
• 46:23
  Yeah.
• 46:24
  So balance performance, as I call it, is very much misunderstood.
• 46:29
  What it really does is it gives every car an opportunity at
• 46:34
  one race or another to win.
• 46:37
  And the whole point of BOP is, as I say, the last race of the last lap.
• 46:42
  We want the best teams with the best drivers to be fighting for the
• 46:47
  win no matter what car they're in.
• 46:49
  Whether you have a Honda, whether you have a Hyundai, whether you have a
• 46:52
  mini, whether you have a Subaru and TCA, whether you have a Honda, a Hyundai,
• 46:57
  a Mazda, and TC BMW and tc, they're gonna change the weight of the car.
• 47:04
  They change ride height.
• 47:06
  They change horsepower level.
• 47:07
  'cause you know, I used to hate turbo cars as someone who
• 47:11
  competed against turbo cars.
• 47:12
  I used to hate them.
• 47:13
  Now I love turbo cars because with the turbo car.
• 47:17
  We can give them whatever horsepower we want it.
• 47:20
  It's like Honda HPD, they've done a great job.
• 47:23
  We have five different horsepower settings and we could say, okay, for this track
• 47:27
  you need to use setting number two.
• 47:29
  And that's because we know where the Honda's fast, we know where it's not
• 47:34
  fast, we know where its strengths are.
• 47:35
  It's the same thing with the Hyundais.
• 47:37
  It's the same thing with many, it's a balance of how much horsepower we give
• 47:42
  them versus weight versus ride height, so that the potential lifetime potential
• 47:47
  per car ends up being very, very close.
• 47:50
  It's all data driven.
• 47:51
  I would like to say that Mr. Wizard goes in and finds the right
• 47:55
  settings, but it's data driven.
• 47:57
  We know how each car accelerates.
• 48:00
  I talked about min speed earlier, so we know, uh, what the cornering speed
• 48:04
  is, depending on the type of corner for every car we play with, factors
• 48:09
  that affect all those horsepower.
• 48:12
  Ride height and weight are the three biggest things.
• 48:15
  We just vary those to make sure that no car has too much of an advantage or too
• 48:20
  much of a disadvantage at, at every race.
• 48:22
  Talked about front wheel drive.
• 48:24
  The challenge that we had previously was we always had to make front wheel drive
• 48:29
  cars a little faster than the rear-wheel drive cars because as the race went on,
• 48:33
  the front wheel drive cars would use up the tires, and so then it became.
• 48:38
  If we don't have any yellow flags, you know, last five laps, they'll be perfect.
• 48:43
  'cause the real world drive car will be a little faster, but it's gotta
• 48:46
  get around the front wheel drive car.
• 48:48
  What's happened though?
• 48:49
  P Ellis developed such a great tire now that that's sort of gone out the window.
• 48:53
  Uh, the degradation that we see is much less than it used to be.
• 48:56
  So now it's actually made Joe Ligan who's, uh, the guy that does BOP
• 49:01
  for us here in, uh, TC America.
• 49:03
  It's made his job a little bit easier 'cause he doesn't have to try to
• 49:06
  extrapolate how many yellow flags we're gonna have and that sort of thing.
• 49:09
  To add another crazy element to BOP people and racers always think that I'm gonna
• 49:15
  get the best car and that, I mean, I did the same thing when I was a younger racer.
• 49:20
  I will say for the most part, that doesn't exist anymore.
• 49:23
  The best car is who's got the best support in the paddock, who has the best
• 49:28
  contingency program because our job as an organization is to make sure every
• 49:32
  car, uh, has an opportunity to win.
• 49:35
  So isn't that where we see the convergence of the business side of
• 49:38
  this equation, kind of overriding the technological engineering side of it?
• 49:42
  You talked earlier about Formula One and the heyday, and I look at
• 49:46
  the heyday of Formula One as the pre V 10 era where they all became
• 49:49
  basically the same car at that point.
• 49:51
  And I mentioned this to Greg when we spoke, you know, you had the six wheel
• 49:54
  rolls and the chaparrals of the fans underneath and all this crazy stuff
• 49:57
  where folks like Lotus were pushing the boundaries of engineering because they
• 50:01
  were breaking rules that didn't exist.
• 50:03
  And then suddenly rules were written to, to stop them from doing things.
• 50:07
  That's the charm, that's the allure.
• 50:08
  That's the mystique behind racing is what new crazy thing
• 50:12
  are we gonna come up with next.
• 50:13
  And that trickles down to our road cars.
• 50:16
  So when I look at balance of power, it makes for great television, but
• 50:19
  it doesn't make for great racing.
• 50:21
  Or does it?
• 50:23
  I think it makes for great racing because you have a variety of cars
• 50:27
  going, you know, nose to nose.
• 50:29
  And I also think it highlights the driver.
• 50:32
  Everything you're talking about highlights the engineer.
• 50:35
  So if you're someone who likes absolute cutting edge engineering, then the
• 50:41
  current Formula one is where it's at.
• 50:44
  And, and you know, I would say the craziest that I was experienced was a WEC
• 50:50
  in about 2015, uh, when as Porsche versus Audi Toyota was just starting to come in.
• 50:57
  And those cars were insane with the technology.
• 51:00
  But what happens is, you know, technology costs a lot of money and our whole.
• 51:05
  Focus for us is customer racing.
• 51:08
  So we want it to be attainable, affordable, reliable, and we'll give
• 51:13
  up some engineering in order to make it more accessible and easier to drive.
• 51:18
  That's one of the challenges, uh, that we're working our
• 51:20
  way through with GT three.
• 51:22
  But a GT three car is very technological.
• 51:26
  Uh, so for a lot of drivers, if you didn't grow up with a ground
• 51:29
  effects car, car with a lot of arrow.
• 51:32
  It becomes hard to drive because the faster you go, the higher the cornering
• 51:36
  speed because you have more downforce.
• 51:38
  You can go around, pull more Gs in the corners.
• 51:40
  That doesn't apply to TC America because we do have some aerodynamics, but
• 51:44
  it's much, much less, our cars become much more accessible to drive where
• 51:49
  GT three car, the pros love it because it's easy, it's taken a while for the,
• 51:55
  uh, the Pro-Am drivers who have jobs outside of motorsports to figure it out.
• 52:00
  And, and they do.
• 52:01
  The best ones do, but I think that's why GT four is also so popular because the GT
• 52:06
  four cars are much less arrow dependent.
• 52:09
  So I don't think I'm going to give you an answer that's gonna satisfy you because,
• 52:13
  uh, again, I, I love the technology that I saw, the Porsche prototype card.
• 52:19
  2015 was just one of the most amazing cars I've ever seen.
• 52:24
  But it got too expensive, and again, it was unsustainable.
• 52:27
  And we're all about sustainable racing.
• 52:30
  We're all about putting a race show together where as many people
• 52:33
  as possible can participate, and it's just enjoyable for everybody.
• 52:38
  And there's a reason Porsche and Audi are no longer running in WEC right now.
• 52:42
  Probably 'cause it was getting too expensive, especially to be at the front.
• 52:46
  Yeah.
• 52:47
  And even the, the new cars that are coming out, because we're gonna start seeing
• 52:51
  some of the, um, the hybrid systems back.
• 52:54
  But even the, the hybrid system is a one size fits all system.
• 52:59
  So whether it's Porsche or whether it's, uh, peo, it's the same hybrid system.
• 53:04
  So it's not like in those crazy days when Audi was, uh, racing so hard
• 53:09
  against Porsche where they had completely different systems and different fuels.
• 53:13
  You had Audi diesels running against Porsche with tiny gasoline
• 53:18
  motors, boosted the heck out of 'em with crazy hybrid systems.
• 53:23
  That's all really fun until the bills all come due and then all of a sudden,
• 53:27
  you know, someone in uh, Germany had to justify how much money they were spending.
• 53:31
  It's just not sustainable.
• 53:32
  Our whole business model is based upon sustainability.
• 53:35
  It means close competitive racing.
• 53:37
  It means the manufacturers understanding that they're gonna have a fair fight,
• 53:41
  that we're gonna make sure that they have an opportunity to win.
• 53:44
  And the manufacturers compete on customer support and customer
• 53:48
  service as much as they compete on everything on the racetrack.
• 53:51
  It's a completely different business model than I grew up on.
• 53:54
  It's a much different business model than when I was at Mazda.
• 53:58
  I will say though, that everything I learned about customer
• 54:01
  racing at Mazda is applicable.
• 54:03
  Today it's just, it's at a higher level than it was then.
• 54:06
  Although I will say our, our RX eight program is pretty prototypical to
• 54:11
  what we're now doing in the SRO world where you had customer cars all racing
• 54:16
  out there, all helping each other.
• 54:17
  So it's a good business model, but it's not quite as sexy as six
• 54:20
  wheel materials, unfortunately.
• 54:23
  I don't think there's anything sexy about a six wheel tear.
• 54:27
  We can agree on that, that's for sure.
• 54:30
  We may never agree on balance or performance, but we can agree on that.
• 54:35
  To bring the conversation back to, you know, the, the TC class and the, the small
• 54:38
  cars, we often joke on our drive through about small cars, like for example,
• 54:43
  the Chevy Spark, which, you know, a spoiler alert is finally on its way out.
• 54:48
  I mean, we hear a break fixer fans of small cars, especially front wheel
• 54:51
  drive, but we've asked many of our guests and, uh, other drivers during
• 54:56
  our pit stop, uh, portion of the, the episodes, would you drive one?
• 55:00
  And the answer is generally of.
• 55:02
  Flat out resounding no.
• 55:04
  Followed by an awkward pause.
• 55:06
  And then, but if it was B spec, I would, and you had some
• 55:11
  involvement in B spec racing.
• 55:12
  Would you care to expand on that and talk about what you hoped the series would be?
• 55:16
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 55:18
  So back in the day, Mazda was contacted by Honda about our grassroots
• 55:24
  program between the two companies.
• 55:26
  We were looking for a program that we can kind of do together.
• 55:31
  So at that point, the Mazda two was coming out.
• 55:33
  The Honda Fit had just come out in the automotive world.
• 55:36
  That's the B segment.
• 55:38
  So the guys from HPD and the guys from Mazda sat down, Hey, why don't we try to
• 55:43
  put together a kit for these B segment cars and let's go race them and let's
• 55:49
  invite anybody who's got a B segment car to come and join us, and we'll
• 55:53
  all see if we put the series together.
• 55:55
  So that's what we did and we, uh, Mazda and Honda debuted it at the NASA 25 hour.
• 56:01
  These, uh, Mazda two versus Honda Fit, no BOP had been done at that
• 56:06
  point, but we just wanted to do it.
• 56:08
  I still remember Simon Pau sneaking into the Honda Fit and just embarrassing
• 56:13
  everybody because you think you're really good till someone like
• 56:17
  Simon Pau gets into a, a Honda Fit.
• 56:19
  And he was so much faster than anybody else.
• 56:22
  Always loved Pau because of just that he's willing to get to a B spec car.
• 56:27
  But we ended up getting a bunch of manufacturers on interested.
• 56:30
  We did a BOP test at GRAT and outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• 56:35
  And the manufacturers were all totally transparent and we all just said,
• 56:38
  okay, this is it, blah, blah, blah.
• 56:40
  And we created B Spec.
• 56:41
  We were just so excited about the class and ran a little bit of pro racing.
• 56:46
  World Challenge had it when I started TCB, we just loved the concept,
• 56:50
  cheap entry level, that whole thing, but it just kind of sat there.
• 56:54
  It wasn't really widely accepted up until maybe four years ago, and all
• 57:00
  of a sudden people rediscovered, plus the cars had got cheap by this point.
• 57:05
  You buy a, uh, you know, now a seven or 8-year-old Mazda two or Honda Fit,
• 57:10
  and all of a sudden the cars are cheap.
• 57:12
  Or you know, it was a Ford focus and uh, the Minis came in and so
• 57:17
  you could buy the cars pretty cheap.
• 57:18
  And they were so fun to race because at that point they were.
• 57:22
  Factory engineered chassis.
• 57:24
  You know, the, the suspension was all done by real engineers.
• 57:28
  We get back, and they're not quite 6-year-old te olds, but they were real
• 57:30
  engineers, uh, made sure that these cars had the ultimate performance
• 57:34
  for what they had, and they are just an absolute blast to drive.
• 57:37
  So the B Spec class, honestly, was created by the guys at HPD and the guys at Mazda
• 57:43
  Motorsports looking for a way to work together for the better of motorsports.
• 57:48
  And, uh, we created B Specs.
• 57:50
  So at the runoffs, I think they have like 60 something SECA runoffs.
• 57:54
  Last year they had so many, and again, uh, John Doonan and I are texting each other.
• 58:00
  Well, it took a little while, but it was a good idea after all
• 58:03
  because it's like any good idea.
• 58:04
  Sometimes you question and, and a lot of my good ideas, it turned out
• 58:08
  to be not good ideas, but that one, it took a little while, but it, it
• 58:12
  turned into quite a success and it's really fun to watch those guys and.
• 58:16
  I was actually looking at some SCCA data a few days ago, and I think B
• 58:19
  spec right the second, the fourth or fifth biggest class in SCA.
• 58:23
  So it just shows that a fun, affordable car always will find a market eventually.
• 58:28
  Amen to that.
• 58:30
  Yeah.
• 58:30
  So Jim, let's talk a little bit about the future of touring car racing within SRO.
• 58:35
  What are some of your thoughts and your plans going forward?
• 58:37
  Right this very second?
• 58:39
  TC and TCA are both healthy classes.
• 58:42
  Brands are introducing second or third generation cars built to the SRO rule set.
• 58:47
  So the challenge I have right now is building a new class, and that's
• 58:50
  the TCX class, the the BMWM two.
• 58:54
  Any BMWM, anything is the ultimate sedan if it's in that classic car.
• 59:00
  So we built TCX to be a place where.
• 59:04
  Brands that compete against the BMWM two in the showroom, give them
• 59:09
  an opportunity to compete versus, uh, BM BMW M two on the race track.
• 59:14
  So TCX we're trying to build the ultimate Tour car championship, and so far BMW's
• 59:20
  just had the race all to themselves.
• 59:22
  We have a big 9, 10, 11, 12 car, looks like a spec class.
• 59:27
  Although I will say because I come from the retail automotive world, being a
• 59:31
  district sales manager, I look at cross sale reports like crazy to determine who
• 59:36
  my customers are looking at and how to compete against that brand, that car.
• 59:40
  So to me, the BMWM two is a benchmark for every single sports sedan.
• 59:46
  So let's get, uh, the best from.
• 59:49
  Acura, Lexus, Mercedes, Cadillac, any of those cars should
• 59:54
  be competing versus EM two.
• 59:55
  In TCX.
• 59:56
  I think I have one brand that's extremely close.
• 1:00:00
  Hopefully both on this airs, there'll be a second brand.
• 1:00:03
  That's my challenge, is to make it the ultimate turning car class where
• 1:00:07
  the best sports sedans sports in motor sports are the same best sports
• 1:00:13
  sedans competing in the showroom.
• 1:00:15
  'cause that just gives better justification for manufacturers to build
• 1:00:18
  great cars for our customers to race.
• 1:00:21
  So Jim, any other shout outs, promotions, or things that you'd
• 1:00:25
  like to tell our audience that we didn't cover in this episode so far?
• 1:00:28
  Really excited for a new program, uh, that Toyota just announced.
• 1:00:33
  As part of SRO Toyota has announced that they're gonna run in 2023, the GR cup.
• 1:00:39
  And what the GR Cup initially is, and I'm not, I'm saying initially I can't give you
• 1:00:45
  what it may even look like down the road.
• 1:00:48
  That'll be up to Toyota to talk about.
• 1:00:51
  But the GR Cup, it's a single make series.
• 1:00:53
  It's gonna run on SRO weekends, it's all gonna be for the first
• 1:00:57
  period of time, GR 80 sixes.
• 1:01:00
  They're developed and built by TRD.
• 1:01:03
  So TRD builds the cars, services the car sells the cars, and they're
• 1:01:07
  gonna be doing sprint racing within the SRO race weekends next year.
• 1:01:12
  So 2023, really excited.
• 1:01:15
  And for me personally, I spent a good part of my life, I haven't talked about
• 1:01:20
  it much, but the M Road to Indy, the Mazda Motor Sports Ladders were programs put
• 1:01:24
  together that I was a big part of where we gave opportunities to young racers.
• 1:01:29
  And so when.
• 1:01:31
  Toyota contacted us a year ago about what they wanted to do.
• 1:01:36
  I was so wanting it.
• 1:01:38
  I wanted the program so badly.
• 1:01:40
  Obviously, there's other groups that wanted the program too, but from my
• 1:01:44
  perspective, it's a program that lets me take everything I've learned in my
• 1:01:48
  career and put it into a great series.
• 1:01:52
  The whole focus is giving young drivers a place to race.
• 1:01:56
  Toyota's putting good prize money in every aspect of tds involved in this.
• 1:02:01
  So the, the, the people that are involved in recruiting and finding
• 1:02:06
  the next talent, Jack Irving, this is their baby, and that they've trusted
• 1:02:11
  us at the SRO to help them manage this.
• 1:02:15
  Just a huge program for us and just really excited to be a part of it.
• 1:02:19
  And again, I feel like, uh, my whole life has led up to,
• 1:02:22
  uh, creating another series.
• 1:02:24
  I did create the Mazda MX five cutback in the day.
• 1:02:27
  That was my project.
• 1:02:28
  Helped Mazda take over the Atlantic Series back in the day
• 1:02:32
  where we took it over from Toyota.
• 1:02:34
  Again, Dean and John Dunan and I were all working really hard together
• 1:02:38
  on both the Motorsports Ladder.
• 1:02:39
  So, so now a new chapter with Toyota.
• 1:02:43
  I'm just so excited for the new program.
• 1:02:45
  You know, the information's coming out in little spurt, so, uh, either come to
• 1:02:49
  the SRO website or go to TRD website.
• 1:02:52
  We'll have a ton of information on buying the cars.
• 1:02:55
  If this is the first time you heard of it, I would be contacting
• 1:02:58
  Mike at TRD immediately because, uh, the biggest problems, I think
• 1:03:02
  there's gonna be a bigger demand for these cars, uh, than availability.
• 1:03:06
  So, uh, if this interests you, then reach out to the guys at TRD immediately.
• 1:03:11
  Go to the TRD website, get your deposit in on one of 'em.
• 1:03:14
  It's gonna be a great series.
• 1:03:16
  It's been fun working with Toyota and the TRD people because they
• 1:03:21
  figured out who the SRO is their involvement with SEN nascar.
• 1:03:26
  They understood those programs really, really well, but they really didn't really
• 1:03:30
  know about the SRO when they super came out and was successful in GT four and
• 1:03:37
  they sold a bunch of cars over in the SRO.
• 1:03:40
  They all of a sudden got excited about it and that's led us to the position
• 1:03:44
  now where we were selected to help them with their, uh, GR program.
• 1:03:49
  This is who, uh, the SRO is.
• 1:03:51
  These are the opportunities, but you know.
• 1:03:54
  IMSA is a fantastic place to race For many people, IMSA is better than we are, just
• 1:03:59
  depending on what your objectives are.
• 1:04:01
  We've carved out a really nice spot for us in the Motorsport world, a growing spot.
• 1:04:07
  The same can be said about WEC in IMSA too, even though there's a
• 1:04:11
  weird marriage going on there too.
• 1:04:13
  If you're an imsa, people go, well, WCS better than NI imsa, so,
• 1:04:16
  but they're all stepping stones.
• 1:04:17
  Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  It depends on, yeah, where you want to go as a driver, right, at the end of the day.
• 1:04:21
  So I think, I think some of that stuff is irrelevant.
• 1:04:24
  If you're a fan of GT and prototype racing, all three of the series
• 1:04:29
  combined makes sense because that's where all the action is, right?
• 1:04:32
  There's nothing else like multi-class racing.
• 1:04:35
  I, I'm disillusioned with Formula One.
• 1:04:37
  I'm still a diehard WRC fan, but I'm like the only person, right?
• 1:04:41
  I think in the DMV that's a rally fan, so whatever, I'll leave it where
• 1:04:44
  it is, at least in our organization.
• 1:04:46
  I know I'm the only one, but when it comes down to it, I've personally converted
• 1:04:50
  a lot of people that were either NASCAR fans, indie car fans, or Formula One fans.
• 1:04:55
  I'm like, you need to come check out GT Racing.
• 1:04:58
  And they see their first Rolex or whatever it is, and they're like,
• 1:05:01
  I didn't know this was a thing.
• 1:05:02
  And I'm like, you didn't know this was a thing.
• 1:05:04
  It's been around for like 60 years.
• 1:05:05
  Where have you been?
• 1:05:07
  Well, it, I it's enthusiasm from you and people like you and these
• 1:05:12
  podcasts that will educate the fans.
• 1:05:14
  Absolutely.
• 1:05:15
  I, I think all of Motorsports right now is really seeing surprising growth.
• 1:05:20
  Uh, I mean, I look at.
• 1:05:21
  The, uh, number of spectators and emphasis has been getting a number of
• 1:05:25
  spectators in our events so far this year has been significantly higher.
• 1:05:30
  You know, you always wish you had the magic button for why
• 1:05:33
  it's gotten so much better.
• 1:05:35
  Yeah.
• 1:05:35
  You know what I attribute to, it's two things.
• 1:05:37
  It's, one is accessibility, which you cannot get anywhere else anymore
• 1:05:41
  unless you're going to like World of Outlaws or something like that.
• 1:05:44
  You can't get in the paddock, you can't meet drivers, you can't get
• 1:05:48
  close to the cars and anything else but GT or prototype racing.
• 1:05:51
  It's just, it is what it is.
• 1:05:53
  One of my favorite stories since I took over this job, it was
• 1:05:57
  in our paddock at Road America.
• 1:05:59
  There was just a family wa looking at the TC cars as they were lining up
• 1:06:04
  ready to go, and a mom is saying to her daughter, look, they're racing our car.
• 1:06:11
  You know, they drove to the track in a Honda Civic and there was a Honda
• 1:06:15
  Civic ready to go on the racetrack.
• 1:06:17
  And just to see probably a 5-year-old young girl's eyes just wide open.
• 1:06:21
  That's mommy's car that's racing.
• 1:06:23
  Yeah.
• 1:06:23
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:06:24
  And so it's accessibility at both levels.
• 1:06:27
  It's it's accessibility.
• 1:06:29
  The paddocks are wide open that you could talk to drivers, talk to
• 1:06:32
  teams, talk to mechanics, but it's also the accessibility, especially
• 1:06:35
  in TC America, of course, that we're racing the cars that everybody drives.
• 1:06:40
  So I say in our paddock, you have the dream cars that everyone always
• 1:06:43
  dreamed of driving the Lamborghinis, Ferrari, Porsches, but you also
• 1:06:47
  have the cars that everyone drives.
• 1:06:48
  The Hyundai, the Mazda, the Honda.
• 1:06:51
  And I think the second part of it, well, let's put cost and
• 1:06:54
  all that kind of stuff aside.
• 1:06:55
  You said it best, it's the circus part.
• 1:06:58
  It's that spectacle of racing that you go to an F1 race and there's like this
• 1:07:03
  Olympic village that they create, right?
• 1:07:05
  And you're like, eh, but everything's super pricey and
• 1:07:08
  out of reach and you know, you're like, okay, well I'll buy the.
• 1:07:11
  It's bougie.
• 1:07:12
  Yeah, I guess I'll buy the new cleric polo, but it's like $900.
• 1:07:15
  You're like, you don't wanna do that.
• 1:07:16
  It's harder to be a fan of a driver in GT racing.
• 1:07:20
  'cause you're not sure, is it Rob Holland?
• 1:07:22
  Is it Andy Pilgrim?
• 1:07:23
  Is it this is it that?
• 1:07:24
  Who is it?
• 1:07:24
  But you go Ferrari Mini BMW, Porsche, you can associate with that, right?
• 1:07:29
  Again, that accessibility.
• 1:07:30
  But there's still that spectacle.
• 1:07:32
  You've been to Petite LeMans, you've been to Salan.
• 1:07:34
  There's always that village.
• 1:07:35
  There's the games, there's that whole family feel to it.
• 1:07:39
  That doesn't exist at an F1 race or a NASCAR race anymore.
• 1:07:43
  When you look at who did it right, I think everybody's still trying to emulate IMSA
• 1:07:48
  because they've got the formula down.
• 1:07:51
  They're able to repeat it everywhere they go.
• 1:07:52
  And I thought it was really telling Matt Marelli, he runs the Mint 400,
• 1:07:56
  which was originally the oldest off-road race in the us, older
• 1:08:00
  than Baja, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:08:01
  So they took that over and when I met with him, he greets me and
• 1:08:05
  he is like, so what do you think?
• 1:08:06
  I'm like, wow, this is the only other race I've been to that feels super familiar.
• 1:08:12
  And he, and he is like, and, and I'm like, I feel like I'm at an IMSA race.
• 1:08:16
  And he goes, we did that on purpose.
• 1:08:19
  What?
• 1:08:19
  And he goes, yeah, we copied a lot of what they do because we see
• 1:08:23
  that the type of pull they have and the audience that they built.
• 1:08:26
  And so when you go to the mid 400, these off-road races, you're
• 1:08:29
  like, this is eerily familiar.
• 1:08:30
  Right?
• 1:08:31
  And I think you guys are working towards that.
• 1:08:33
  But as that builds out, I think SRO will become more of a household name.
• 1:08:37
  And I will say the crazy thing as an organization right now is, uh,
• 1:08:42
  Valentino Rossi's running our, our World Challenge in Europe.
• 1:08:45
  And that's taken a whole new level of engagement.
• 1:08:49
  And I know s so wanted him bad.
• 1:08:51
  So, and again, Dunan ISS a good friend, but that Rossi's running with us and that
• 1:08:55
  we're running the GR series, I'm very.
• 1:08:58
  You know, I'm competitive too, so Nice.
• 1:09:01
  Love you, John.
• 1:09:02
  But, but I'm very happy that we have Rossi in the GR series, so we're,
• 1:09:07
  we're happy you have Rossi too.
• 1:09:09
  This season, we'll see more than a hundred races run under the
• 1:09:12
  SRO Motorsports group banner.
• 1:09:13
  And you can follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.com or
• 1:09:20
  taking a shortcut to GT America us.
• 1:09:24
  Be sure to follow them on social media at GT America, on Twitter
• 1:09:28
  and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook and at GT World on YouTube.
• 1:09:35
  If you have questions about touring car, what it's about, how to get involved or
• 1:09:38
  drive in the series, be sure to reach out to Jim at jim.Jordan@sromotorsports.com.
• 1:09:44
  And remember, all of this information will be posted alongside this episode in our
• 1:09:49
  follow on article on gt motorsports.org.
• 1:09:52
  Well, Jim, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show and telling us about
• 1:09:56
  your corner of the motor sports world, and we wish you the best of luck as
• 1:10:01
  you continue to grow out the TC America Program under the SRO Motor Sports Banner.
• 1:10:06
  Also, we will be seeing you on site this year at several of the SRO races.
• 1:10:11
  So for our audience out there, look for more from us and from Jim Jordan as
• 1:10:16
  we visit with him at these SRO events.
• 1:10:18
  And if you wanna come and check them out as well, be sure to check out
• 1:10:21
  the calendar on SRO Motorsports.
• 1:10:23
  Thank you.
• 1:10:24
  Had a absolute pleasure.
• 1:10:25
  Great time.
• 1:10:26
  Thanks.
• 1:10:27
  Thanks, Jim.
• 1:10:32
  The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their
• 1:10:36
  partners at aws CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School.
• 1:10:42
  Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting
• 1:10:45
  www.sromotorsports.comortakeashortcuttogtamerica.us and be sure to follow them on social
• 1:10:54
  at GT America, on Twitter and Instagram at SRO gt America on Facebook and
• 1:11:01
  catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT World.
• 1:11:07
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to
• 1:11:10
  check us out on www.gt motorsports.org.
• 1:11:14
  You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports.
• 1:11:17
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows.
• 1:11:21
  You can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at
• 1:11:27
  crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.
• 1:11:29
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:11:31
  Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:11:34
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
• 1:11:37
  to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal
• 1:11:43
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• 1:12:15
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• 1:12:19
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