Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Driven by Purpose: The Remarkable Racing Journey of Ted Giovanis

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Driven by Purpose: The Remarkable Racing Journey of Ted Giovanis · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Break Fix Podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all
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over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors,
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designers, and everything in between.
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Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder how did they
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get that job or become that person.
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The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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Today we're honored to welcome a truly unique figure in
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the world of motor sports.
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Theodore Giovannis known for his tenacity, both on and off the track.
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Ted is not just a passionate racer, but also the driving force behind
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JKTG Foundation racing where he has competed in series like IMSA
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and endurance racing at some of the most iconic tracks in the world.
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His journey is one of determination and lifelong learning, balancing his
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career as a successful businessman, philanthropist, and author with
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his love for speed and competition.
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Today, we'll dive into his racing career, the challenges he's faced,
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the lessons he's learned, and how Motorsport continues to fuel his pursuit
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of excellence in every aspect of life.
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And joining me tonight is returning guest co-host Tom Newman, who
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you might remember from our Randy Lanier and Paved Paradise episodes.
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So welcome back to the studio, Tom.
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Thank you, sir. I'll be glad to be here.
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And with that, let's officially welcome Ted to break fix.
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How you guys doing?
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Glad to be here and looking forward to talking to you tonight.
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Excellent.
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Good to see you as well, Ted.
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Well like all good break fix stories.
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They all have a superhero origin.
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So let's talk about yours, your journey into motorsports.
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It's as inspiring as it is unconventional.
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So what drew you into racing and how did you take those first steps onto the track?
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I was always interested in cars when I was really young, you know, as a teenager, but
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never really executed it along the way.
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I bought a Corvette and I got into auto crossing, but never
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really did any road racing.
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Sold the Corvette.
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Then in 1991, I decided I needed to have another sports car and I bought one.
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It was a Mitsubishi 3000 GTVR four.
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I was driving home from the dealership after picking it up and went on
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an interchange and demonstrated to myself that I was not as good of a
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driver as I remembered myself being.
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So I scared myself.
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And then I went home and talked to my wife and I said, you know, what would
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you think if I went to a driving store?
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And she said, well, that would be, that would be cool.
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Why don't you go do that?
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And so that was what set me off on a trajectory of road racing.
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I went to a driving school.
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I bought a car, a, uh, 2002 that had one three horsepower on a good day.
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Started club racing from there.
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And so that's what started this whole trajectory.
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Describe your road to imsa though for a lot of folks, there's
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a lot of steps to get there.
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So what was that like?
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I raced in SCCA Sports Guard Club of America.
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I went, at the time the professional schools like
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Bonderant in places like that.
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They were not accepted to get a license at that point.
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The only way you could really assure yourself that trajectory to get a license
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in SCCA was to go to an SECA school.
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So I had to go and you had to go to two of 'em.
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So I went There was in SCCA for, I'm still an SCCA license driver,
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but I participated in that.
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Gradually progressing.
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I'm a progressivity kind of guy, so I went from 2000 twos to actually
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BMWE 36 ERs, which was the.
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Between 1990 and 1995 kind of platform.
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And so I, I raced those, had won, uh, regional championships, set track records.
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Then in 2006 I decided I might want to go into ssa.
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It wasn't really EMSA at the time.
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It was called Grand Am.
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It was a Grand America Road Racing series, which was a series that NASCAR
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put seed money into the Grand Am series and got Jim France to run it.
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After it grouped its base, it acquired that, and then that collided
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with, there was the American Lama series, which was run by Don Panos.
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That series was having some financial troubles, and so when
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Panos decided to sell that off.
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NASCAR bought both that and Grand M most 'em together with imsa, which
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was the prior sanction for A LMS.
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And then that's sort of where that wound up NASCAR was trying to put sports
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cars in their book of business rather than just rounding, rounding track.
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And when it bought a LMS, it also got Sebring, the hotel there,
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chat law and it got road Atlanta.
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And so that was my first participation in the sort of the Pro series in 2006.
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You touched on Grand Dam and that's where Tom comes into the equation here.
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So let's go back to those days and then walk a little bit more
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forward into your time at emsa.
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So any stories you wanna share about brewing with Ted and things like that?
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Ted left out, conveniently left out the part where we had a, about three
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pickup trucks in various trailers versus to, oh, how far he's come.
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And I remember one distinct experience.
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It didn't start off as a pleasant story or pleasant memory.
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Ted, do you remember when we were at Limerock and lost the motor in practice?
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I think I do.
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The paddock area was just a slog of mud.
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Yeah, we were down the other end.
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Yeah, that's right.
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Myself and another frequent guest on the, on the show, Matthew Yip.
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Were sitting on a tailgate after, uh, we had loaded everything
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back up for the trip home.
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We heard two beers crack.
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I'm not sure where Ted was at this point.
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I got a clap on the shoulder and Paul Newman said, you'll get 'em next time.
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And walked off without another word.
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Ted kind of introduced me to the world of big time racing and left me, you
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know, dumbstruck by celebrity fanboys.
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But, uh, that's true story and that was courtesy of Ted having me on his team.
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There was another thing that happened then with Yip.
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I don't know if that was the time, but it was at Limerock.
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Yep.
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It was, yip.
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We couldn't find the key to his car.
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Yes, that's right.
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So the, the trailer's all packed up.
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It's got everything in there including, you know, folding lawn chair things
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and everything that's in there.
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He can't find his key.
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We look through everything and then we basically looked at each other and says,
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I think we gotta unpack the trailer 'cause it's gotta be here somewhere.
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That's right.
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And we unpack the whole trailer.
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So you've got these folding lawn chairs and they're in these bags, you know, they,
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they're, they're so contained bags for whatever reason, we took the lawn chairs
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out of the bags and his key was in one of those net cup holders, how it got in
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there and who put it there having a clue.
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But we were like, how is he gonna get this car home?
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Ever since then I've been on the pro side.
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We were only running a part of a year back then, five six races.
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So half season just trying to get our feet wet.
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We landed on a BMW of three 30 because at the time in Grand Am you could build cars.
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You could build cars for the lower, slower class, which is called St.
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Street Tuner.
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And then Grand Sport was the upper class, so you could build those cars.
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It's not like that anymore.
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Speaking of BMWs, do you still have the Laguna SE Blue M three?
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Uh, no, that's, that's been gone for a long while.
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Uh, somewhere around 2010, I moved from Performance Car.
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I moved from the BMWs to a Porsche, and then I went that way, and I'm still in
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the Porsche family for a lot of cars now.
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Did you seek out Porsche or did Porsche seek you out?
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No, I, I sought out pushing.
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Okay.
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It was all on the street side as Thomas Wright.
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I ended Laguna Blue, a 2002 year model year and three.
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What I had done is, was, I mean, I went through this tailspin of investment.
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I, I put an exhaust on it, then I put a suspension on it 'cause I was
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tracking it too, so I put brakes on it.
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So I went through all of this stuff and I'm just like, why can't they just
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put all this stuff on it and charge us $15,000 more and hand us the key?
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'cause it'll all be kind of coordinated and matched.
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Well, it was just at that time when Porsche decided to offer a GT three
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Rs, that was my pretty much trajectory.
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So as I was doing this, I was kind of still the amateur.
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I was in a pro series, but I did other things professionally for, with my life.
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One of the things that I was doing.
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Was I had, I had my own consulting practice, which was sort of the
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centerpiece of racing because it allowed me the flexibility to do
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whatever I needed to do to be away.
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But one of the things that happened outside there in 2006, in my consulting
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practice, I found an error in how Medicare pays all the hospitals in the country.
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That led to a litigation, which took six years between 2006 and 2012.
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So I was racing the whole time except for calendar 12, but that led to me eventually
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getting some money out of that appeal.
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That changed the complexion of everything TGM did at the time, and so then that
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was when, in 2013, so I took 12 off.
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2013, I engaged a pro driver who was a previous A LMS driver to drive with me.
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That began my transformation as a driver because the illuminating moment
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was I found out that despite my prior performances on track, and I found
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out everything I was doing was wrong.
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So when you have a good benchmark and it's undeniable that they're in the same
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car on the same day, on the same truck.
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And you have data.
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It's pretty revealing.
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It's also, the good thing is you can figure out where you're doing wrong
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and try to work on fixing it, which I can tell you is the hardest part.
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Changing bad behavior is not easy.
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So when we ran into you earlier this year at VIR, you are behind
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the wheel of an Aston, right?
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So let's talk about some of the race cars you've piloted in the Pro series.
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What has that been like?
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Has it been a mixed bag or have you been able to stay loyal to Porsche Mixed bag?
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One of the guys that's in the series, will Turner told me a long time ago,
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he's at racing in the Pro series.
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Primarily because of the balance of performance adjustments is
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like Baskin Robs, it's kind of a flavor of the month routine.
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And so I decided in 2016 to move to GS from st. I had one of Turner's
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old cars in ST and then I bought one of Bimmer wheels S cars in AS team.
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But I decided to get outta that and go to gs.
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When we went to Gs, we went to Porsche, and so we ran Porsche in 16 and 17.
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Because we were trying to predict the balance of performance adjustments
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and what they would do and what, in 18 and 19 we went to Mercedes.
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Then in 20 and 21, which was during COVID, we made the decision to go to Chevy.
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Chevrolet had a a GT four platform.
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All of these are GT four platforms that was based on, you know, the Camaro,
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but it was built by Pratt and Miller.
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It was a race car and there were like 13 of them in the world.
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Good thing about that is it was a really good car.
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The band part about it, when you only have 13 cars, nobody did a lot
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of test miles with them, so we were, it break stuff and whatever, not
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because we were crazy, but because we were breaking stuff like Sebring.
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It is pretty bumpy and if there's something wrong with it, you'll find it.
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So in 2021 we were with them in 22.
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We went back to Porsche.
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Par was pretty sorted.
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Bad thing is there were like five teams in had.
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First race was Daytona, Porsche, Motorsport thinking BOP.
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They told all the teams run full wing at Daytona.
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In other words, your rear win otherwise slow at down.
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One team did car, got a BOP killed the car.
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So we had decided early on, uh, out of 22 to get out.
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And thereafter that's when we switched to Astons.
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And so we switched to Astons, what's called the 17 a chassis for 2324.
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And then in 25 we went to the Aston Martin Evo, which is the 40 a h Chassi.
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So it, it's got more dive planes and down force.
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It's got more aerodynamic effects on it.
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Well, you opened the door to talk about BOP one of my favorite subjects when it
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comes to sports, car and endurance racing.
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And I've asked plenty of pro drivers, there are feelings about it, some toe
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the political line, and some are more honest about how they feel about BOP.
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Do you mind if we go down that route a little bit and get your
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opinion on balance of performance?
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I'm actually a little more balanced and it's a hard job to try to
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equalize these cars, and so it takes a lot of effort and data.
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When it's complicated, they don't always get it right where I am.
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I understand.
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I don't like it, you know, I don't like what the answers are.
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But it's like anything else in life, you have to get your head around.
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You are gonna succeed and win no matter what they do.
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Try as they will slow you down.
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You gotta figure out a way to get better, faster.
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And however that is, you work with your manufacturer to try to change
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the BOP to get back something and to make the cars more reasonable.
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But at the end of the day, you work on setups, you try to figure out what
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anything that's wrong with the car, uh, you try to fix it, meaning we have
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two aspens and this year we thought we wanna work like a two car team.
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So you put one setup on one car and one setup on another
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car, and then you learn faster.
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You learn which ones faster.
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And it wouldn't work.
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It was always confusing.
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And so we got stuck going to a test day at Watkins Glen torrential rains.
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And so we were like, God, we should have just let, like not come.
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But what we did with our race engineer, who was a new guy to us, the cars
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stayed in the garage the whole two days.
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They took both cars pretty much apart side by side.
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And guess what?
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They found out?
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They weren't the same.
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They were different.
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That was fairly enlightening about what we needed to do for setup.
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And some of it's the mounting holes, it's how thick the splitters are
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on one side versus the other side.
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So it's all of this kind of stuff.
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So you try to work through it.
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So we work with, only the manufacturer can talk to the series about the BOP.
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And then the man, that's another level of complexity because the manufacturer
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has to represent all of the cards of your make, whatever that is.
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And so they're working to try to get the best average performance, but
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the way they do the BOP, what they do is they get data from the as in one
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highest placing card of each make.
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So the BOP is actually based on one car of Tom's car, whatever
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car Tom is driving of the BMW.
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And so the teams have different structures, whereas
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Tom is the paying gentleman.
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He brings you in as his pro.
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Depending on that relationship, Tom wants to win races.
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That's drives Eric's motivation and Tom's motivation to win races.
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However, winning races does not win championships, right?
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You can win a championship by hovering between third and fifth
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if you do that consistently.
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Our team is focused on winning championships, which is different.
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What that means is for a guy like, I'm just putting a bogey on you, Eric, a guy
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like a pro racer like you, you wanna win.
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But we gotta get you to hold the line because going as fast as you can is
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disadvantageous to your fuel mileage.
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So we are gonna tell you to run.
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To a number on the dash because we have fuel burn for per liters and
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it's between 2.6 and 3.9 or something like that, depending on the track.
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What we'll say is you gotta run this number because what we've calculated,
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the people in the pits have calculated that if you run that number from the time
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you got into the car, you won't have to stop again, but the other guys might.
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So once you get to a certain point, if we know you're good
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on fuel, we'll turn you loose.
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You see what I mean?
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Then you can try to win the, win the race, but uh, you're following a guy,
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you tend to want to get past him.
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But guess what?
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He probably wants to save fuel too.
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So if you don't push 'em too much and you wait till you're ready.
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Then you go.
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It's funny because this is the same dynamic in Formula One as it
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is in other disciplines of racing.
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Yep.
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I think the rub comes in for enthusiasts and fans sitting on the other side
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that may not know the intimate and intricate details as you just
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explained 'em about how BOP works and the strategy of racing as it is,
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you know, in today's era of racing.
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Because I think a lot of us look back to, I'll use Can-Am as an
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example, build a better mousetrap.
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You wanna be first and put a bigger motor in and that's
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gonna cause you to pit 10 times.
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Well, you know, if you got a 22nd lead, you know, so be it.
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The days of the Brian Redmonds and the David Hobbes and that type of
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racing is unfortunately long gone.
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And when I look back over the history, I unfortunately tend to blame Audi for this.
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BOP came into effect because of the quatros, because it
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was so unbalanced in imsa.
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They had to do something or the manufacturers were all
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gonna pick it and leave.
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It's changed the whole dynamic of racing and for those of us
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watching at home, were like.
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Just let 'em race.
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Like if the Mustangs faster, they had the advantage and they won it, you know?
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So, you know, having come up through the system after all these years, do you feel
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that racing is still as fun as it used to be, let's say, in the good old days?
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Or is it much more math, science and very, very intricate?
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It's fun in a different way, to be honest with you.
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That's the big similarities between racing and what I do in research.
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It's all about modeling.
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It's all about forecasting and figuring out how things work and what the relative
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strengths of a particular decision are.
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And you don't have this in sprint races and amateur races
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because you're only 25 minutes.
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You just put gas in it and put air in a tire and you go.
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But when you move to endurance racing, you're dealing with tire
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degradation, human degradation.
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If you're going longer races, it's all about arresting the derate of
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either human capital or the physical.
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If you're blinding lift fast and you burn tires off, you gain over
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here and then you lose back here.
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Or is it better to be like this and have a, a little slower ate out there
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where your average time is better?
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And so that's sort of what the game is now.
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And endurance racing, all of the rules are geared to trying to give each car and each
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driver pairing somewhat of a a chance.
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And back in the good old days, if you could build your car and you
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knew how to make it work and you had enough money, you could win.
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They're trying to change some of that, if you know what I
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mean, and try to balance it out.
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And so that's what driver ratings are about.
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You can't have too many gold people in the same car.
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The platinums are usually factories, so you can't have too many of them in the
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car, and you're trying to balance out.
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Because the easy thing is, is, I mean, if Tom's the fastest driver
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or the three of us, you just keep him in the car all the time.
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You just make 'em run the whole race.
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Well, they sit down.
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You can't do that if you're, he's paired with me.
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The minimum drive time is 40 minutes for the pair.
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One of us could drive 40 minutes and get out, and the other one can
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drive the rest of the two hours.
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Cool.
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That's still compliant with the rules.
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But they have these different driver time rules, so you don't just get
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all the super duper pooper drivers.
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'cause let's face it, if we got the biggest budget we can win.
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So we hire the best drivers, put 'em in a car and whatever.
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So in Formula One, that's what in theory, the budget caps are trying
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to do, trying to smooth that out.
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Because if somebody can spend 300 million, but Tom can only spend a
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hundred million, he's gonna lose.
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And so you, you have this allocation of resources, uh, wind, tunnel
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time, all that kind of stuff.
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So that's what they're trying to do with us.
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It's different pools.
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Our cars are supposed to be built to a GT four spec, the ones in, in
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the 24 of the GT three spec, and that's all sanctioned by the SRO.
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It doesn't mean that they're all the same.
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That means that they can achieve a theoretical similar
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lap time with a pro in it.
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But you can decide how big that gap is.
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That's what the SRO does.
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Can it be a second elap, maybe?
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Well, that's a big difference.
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And so when ISA went to, you have to have a GT four certified car from the SRO.
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Then ISA can make adjustments to slow it down.
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It can make you run different engine maps.
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It's that kind of stuff is, see what I mean?
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So there's a, yeah.
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Nuances.
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It is pretty technical.
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What's better, more torque or more power?
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The answer kind of is, depends on how long the straightaway you're going onto.
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I thought it was horsepower, was how fast you hit the wall and
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torque was how far you pushed it.
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Yeah, that's, that's same way.
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But if the straightaway is not too long, you want the torque.
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Right.
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So there are adjustments in our cars that give you the torque,
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lower end versus upper end.
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It just means you'll lose on top speed.
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Tom's car can get to 1 65, let's say, but most of the
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time the cars only get to 1 63.
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So why does he need the extra power to get him to 1 65?
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He needs the torque to get him outta the corner.
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'cause he can get to his max speed faster.
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So it's a gigantic trade off.
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It may not play well.
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We want to be out in front.
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We want everybody else to figure out saying, how can they be out that far?
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And the IMSA guys are looking at it saying, well, how do we
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get everybody at the finish line at the same time all the makes?
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Because each manufacturer has the following.
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I know drivers do too, but people come to see the Porsches and the Mercedes and the
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Fords and the whatever they come to see that the way the series looks at it, they
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want each manufacturer to have a chance.
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I'm not saying to win, but have a chance to win.
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And that's sort of what affects their metrics with balance of performance.
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You mentioned that the, uh, the BOP is based on the top performing
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race car of a particular chassis produced by a manufacturer.
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You are a true privateer.
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How much advocacy does the manufacturer give you when trying
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to adjust these balance of power?
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Clearly, because of the technical nature of this, you have tons
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and tons and tons of data.
23:25
Do they advocate for the privateers or are they mostly interested in those top teams?
23:29
They are generally advocating for the platform like Eston Martin, GT four Evo,
23:36
or the Porsche, GT four, or the Mercedes.
23:40
So they're advocating because that BOP is gonna apply to everybody.
23:45
Everybody that's got one of those makes, they're working to do that.
23:48
The manufacturers get data from all of the cars, all of our cars, all
23:53
of the Astons, Aston's got it all.
23:55
All of the Porsches, Porsche got it all.
23:58
So they can look at that across 'em.
24:01
Now, they're not supposed to be helping you versus Eric versus
24:05
me, if you know what I mean.
24:06
If we have the same card, they're not supposed to be doing that, and
24:09
they can help you in a little way.
24:10
They can give you baseline setups or something like that, but
24:14
pretty much you're on your own.
24:16
What they're doing is they're advocating with the series and the BOP committee.
24:22
To work on the data, and it's more of an argument about what that data means, and
24:29
the series has data more refined than us.
24:33
For example, Eric mentioned Formula One.
24:35
Think about it in Formula One, when you look at most of the Formula One
24:38
tracks, they have three zones, 1, 2, 3, of which they, they're tracking
24:44
data and all that kind of stuff.
24:45
Well, SA gets it for like 10, so they know within zone one what those segments are.
24:51
We don't, and the manufacturer doesn't get it that way.
24:55
So there's an advantage that they have, I'll say an advantage they have,
24:58
they have more data than we have.
25:00
Interesting.
25:01
If they interpret things in a certain way, you can't prove 'em wrong.
25:04
You don't have the same fidelity that they do.
25:06
Yeah.
25:07
So you gotta remember, the best thing to do is you need to figure
25:11
out how to make your car faster.
25:14
And it doesn't have to do with power all the time.
25:18
It has to do with handling.
25:20
Uh, sometimes your brake pad compounds are open.
25:24
They're not in the spec.
25:26
Anytime you want, you can use any manufacturer brake pad, so
25:30
you can use pad or anything.
25:32
Then you've got compounds within that.
25:34
So you, you use your connections with the brake pad manufacturers
25:39
to get the best pads.
25:41
You see what I mean?
25:42
Different compounds of pad front to rear.
25:44
Now tires we're stuck.
25:46
We all have to use whatever tires.
25:48
That's part of what IMSA does.
25:50
And so sometimes the manufacturer will advocate for like a, a heavier car
25:57
advocate for a wider front tire if the car's pushing a lot so they can do that.
26:03
You see what I mean?
26:03
They do basically, it's all of the segments around the track.
26:08
It's not just the straightaway, it's.
26:11
Quarter speed and then exit.
26:13
And the mid quarter, the mid corner is, is a key area to work on.
26:17
If you've been watching, uh, I don't mean to throw back to Formula One, but
26:21
if you've been watching the Formula One stuff and you hear or stop and
26:24
complaining about how the car's I balanced or whatever, forget about the
26:28
poring stuff, he'll talk about balance.
26:31
Well, balance is you are uncomfortable in the corners at what the car's doing.
26:36
It's not feeling right.
26:37
When you're not comfortable or confident, you can't put it on the
26:41
edge 'cause you're still feeling of what it's going to do in the end.
26:45
The most significant thing I learned when I started driving with a pro is one fact.
26:51
It's not about the pedals, it's about feeling the weight.
26:55
And if you feel the weight on each of the four corners, that's
26:58
when you're, you need to see what it's gonna do, where it's going.
27:03
And then your head tells your feet to do what with the pel.
27:07
You see what I mean?
27:08
So if you can't feel the front turn, you better not touch the throttle, because
27:16
what it's gonna do is pull weight off the nose and it's not gonna turn even more.
27:20
So it's counter what you're trying to do.
27:22
You're trying to get to the go pedal quick.
27:24
But if the car's not pointed right, that's why you need a bigger front
27:28
tire on some of these cars then.
27:29
And then you need to figure out how to drive them differently.
27:32
Because it's like, well, the Mercedes and the Aston, they're kind of similar cars.
27:37
You have to drive 'em differently.
27:38
So that's another complication where the driver comes in and a guy
27:42
that's like me, that's not really a, I wasn't born like a pro driver.
27:46
I didn't come up and that wasn't my destiny from the time I was a kid.
27:51
So you have to learn how to adapt, which is complicated.
27:56
If you've learned it a certain way, you're just reiterating what I've
28:00
told students for many, many years.
28:03
The most valuable sensor in the car is the seat of your pants.
28:07
That's what Hanok always said too, you know?
28:10
Yep.
28:10
But I think, actually this is a great segue, Ted, to talk about
28:14
some of the challenges you've faced coming up through the system.
28:18
Are there any stories you can share, maybe most challenging weekends, things
28:22
you learned from those weekends that have transformed you as a driver?
28:25
The key is to learn the good attributes or the good approach.
28:29
With me it was more, you know, learning about weight management
28:32
and not power management.
28:34
It's a philosophy of an approach.
28:36
Racing is actually a lot like life.
28:40
Well, certainly you have to want to do it, but you need to understand
28:45
you can be tested in what you think you're gonna achieve.
28:50
The year we, we went to Porsche in 2016 in Gs.
28:55
We were at Canada coming down the back straightaway.
28:57
It was a test day.
28:59
It was back in the, in the days when they used to let the track have a promoter test
29:04
day as a way to get some of the money back that they were paying IMSA to come there.
29:08
And so they got money from us in a test day, but he was coming down
29:13
the back straight as he went into, into brakes, and he lost brakes.
29:17
Car went into the wall and we were really worried about him.
29:21
So we lost a car for the race, but we had another car.
29:24
So I was in practice the very next day and I was coming into the last turn and
29:30
got tapped a little bit in the tail.
29:33
The car shot sideways, and I went right into a concrete barrier and severed
29:38
my achilles tendon, my right tendon.
29:40
I was done for the year.
29:42
I couldn't even walk, and we lost two cars that weekend.
29:44
Four and a half months later, I was back driving a race car because
29:48
I wanted to drive a race car.
29:51
And that drove my approach to my surgery, which I was told the only way
29:57
to be back a hundred percent is to get full surgery and have, have the thing
30:00
put back together because that's the only way it'll be a hundred percent.
30:04
So I did that and I went through all the therapy, did the thing, because
30:09
I wanted to drive race cars again.
30:11
However that happened, like July 17th or something like that.
30:16
The first weekend in August, Hugh and Cosmo were driving the car.
30:20
I was just sitting on the box watching.
30:23
We're always plugging different people into the team and we knew
30:27
that we were having the team, so we, we wanted to have them together.
30:31
To keep the energy moving in the right direction.
30:34
So that's sort of, kind of an example.
30:36
You, you don't let the stuff slow you down, and some of it's gonna be terrible.
30:40
It wasn't the most bled thing that I've ever done, but it's not the worst.
30:44
Okay.
30:45
But then I was racing in the, in the IGT series in that
30:48
series, erased only Porsches.
30:50
We were racing at Daytona.
30:52
I came through the kink, screwed up, crashed the car.
30:55
So I couldn't really continue.
30:57
And so we're like, what are we gonna do now?
30:59
At the time I needed a Porsche Cup car and I was racing a Porsche
31:04
Cup car in another series, but another team was doing it for me.
31:09
It wasn't our guys.
31:10
And so Hugh comes up with the idea.
31:12
He says, let's go get the other car.
31:15
So we're.
31:16
Who's got the other car?
31:17
Well, a CI had the other car, so we called Kurt who owns a CI.
31:22
This was on Saturday morning.
31:24
He happened to be at a funeral for his father.
31:27
Kurt hooks up with his guys in Chattanooga and our guys drove
31:33
10 or 11 hours to Chattanooga.
31:35
Met those guys at midnight, got the car, brought it back, and
31:40
then I was on track the next day.
31:43
So why don't we do this?
31:45
Because you're sort of driven to wanna succeed because
31:49
you've got a goal in in mind.
31:51
So there are disappointments, unpleasantries, but then you do it because
31:58
you want to, because you have a desire to succeed, you desire to improve, desire
32:02
to get, and that's sort of where I am.
32:04
So earlier you mentioned how your day job in medical research, some of the
32:09
aspects of that, the data crunching and the modeling have translated
32:13
into the world of motorsport.
32:15
Have any of the lessons you've learned in Motorsport translated
32:18
into your medical research work?
32:20
It's not necessarily my work, but it starts off in your world of that you were
32:26
talking about Formula One because those folks have huge mathematical models and
32:32
they have tons of data from their cars.
32:36
It's such where they can go in.
32:38
And change one piece of the data to change and affect a part in the car
32:45
and then rerun it for a whole race to see if the part's gonna fail.
32:48
We're not doing that, but in medical research we are.
32:53
Just think about it.
32:54
I'm pretty much settled in the cancer space and more specifically barreling down
32:59
in the metastatic breast cancer space.
33:02
So that's when cells get away and they go to a distant part of the body and
33:06
then they start making trouble there.
33:08
Imagine if there was a body part and we could simulate that part in a model.
33:16
And then let's say it was cancer, and we're getting the data inputs for the
33:22
models from how cancer responds in mice.
33:26
Then ultimately how it responds in humans by measuring people that
33:31
are in clinical trials, they're taking data from these sources.
33:35
It's, it's like the F1 guys with the sensors for their car.
33:39
We're using this other kinds of data to try to model this, and
33:44
then you can try to change the therapeutics to be more effective.
33:48
And so that's sort of how the two relate together.
33:53
And last year we started running the moniker on the car driving research,
33:59
and that comes from our research.
34:02
My goal is to drive research the way we do it in the United States in a
34:07
different direction than what we do.
34:09
Pretty sure you guys will understand this.
34:10
You know where the red zone is in football?
34:12
Oh yeah.
34:13
That's where the drug companies are.
34:15
Just before you score from the 20 back to the 50.
34:18
That's where NIH is.
34:20
I'm down the other end of the field trying to figure out how cells migrate,
34:24
how they split, what do they talk?
34:26
They talk to each other.
34:27
What the hell are they saying?
34:28
Why does your immune system when a cancer cell says, I'm okay?
34:32
Why is your immune system listen?
34:33
Why does it attack it?
34:34
So we're trying to find out how this stuff works.
34:37
And so if you knew how it worked, you could come up with strategies to get
34:41
down the field in a more effective way.
34:44
And the drug companies only want to jump in after things have been de-risked.
34:48
They're closer to the ROI, that's what their business is.
34:52
But I'm trying to say, well, how do we get people better, quicker?
34:56
And maybe it's through modeling and it's through a lot of the research
35:00
that's getting published now from a lot of our cancer researchers.
35:03
That's why I say we're, that we're driving actually came from
35:06
one of my cancer researchers.
35:08
He said, you're driving us somewhere.
35:10
Yep.
35:10
That's what we're doing.
35:12
And so what's driving about it is I'm investing down this end of the field.
35:16
Other people aren't because down our into the field, the risk of failure in the
35:22
context that the hypothesis, how we think it works is not how it works is higher.
35:28
So we might not prove our hypothesis.
35:31
Research is based on Tom proving his hypothesis and then
35:35
being able to get more money.
35:36
That's his sustenance in the research world.
35:39
While I say, well, it's okay if it doesn't work that way, as long
35:43
as we just tell everybody that.
35:44
So now we all learn something and it's no different than car racing.
35:48
What do you think we should do for a setup?
35:50
Well, we'll do this at this track on this day.
35:53
We go out and say, oh, that's terrible.
35:56
Well, we failed.
35:58
Now what do we do?
35:58
Well, we gotta do something else.
36:00
And so it's sort of crudely similar.
36:03
Absolutely.
36:04
Yeah.
36:04
There's a couple things I wanna pull on there to clarify for our audience.
36:08
You talked about investing in the research space.
36:11
You talked about, you know, using Thomas as an example to prove his hypothesis.
36:14
This sounds like the genesis of the JKTG Foundation.
36:18
Do you wanna explain a little bit more and elaborate on how that came to be
36:21
and what it's about and what it means?
36:23
I alluded to the appeal.
36:25
I was in between 2006 and 2012.
36:28
I had my own consulting practice and actually my wife was working with me
36:34
in the consulting practice in 2001.
36:36
Jane had, there was an initial finding of breast cancer.
36:40
They removed it and she got radiation and had some other surgery
36:44
and everything was fine until.
36:47
2008 when it emerged, it had metastasized to her bone.
36:53
Breast cancer likes to go to bone, lung, liver, and brains.
36:57
For whatever reason, we still don't know why it has a preference.
37:00
We're still working on that.
37:02
So she had it in her left hip.
37:03
That was in 2008.
37:04
Then she went through all kinds of of therapies.
37:07
December 31st, 2010, she's dead.
37:10
Two weeks later, we win the appeal.
37:13
So during 2011, I knew I was gonna get money out of it from the
37:18
appeal, and so I started to think about what I was gonna do next.
37:23
And emerging through 12.
37:24
The idea of the JKTG Foundation was born that I was gonna do something else.
37:29
What I wound up doing was at the end of 12, we started filing applications
37:36
for tax exemption with the IRS and they all, the legal eagles told me
37:40
I would get approved in nine months.
37:42
I got approved in nine weeks as a game one.
37:45
So the first part of 13 we worked in things I knew it's the Jane Kaus, Ted
37:52
Giovanni Foundation for Health and Policy.
37:56
And so we jumped into the health policy space, which is what I knew.
38:00
And then in the middle of 14 we moved into the cancer space and we
38:07
pretty much been there ever since.
38:09
So it was driven by Jane collided with me wanting to do something different.
38:15
What I, I'm doing with the foundation is I funded it.
38:19
I, I, I created an estate for it, which, uh, the foundation has, but it could
38:24
always use more money because if I had more money, I'd spend it on more research
38:29
and doing things that we can't answer.
38:30
But that's sort of where it all came from.
38:33
But it grew over a period of time.
38:36
It was purposed by events in my personal life.
38:40
Well, what I'm driving towards with this is we see all the time, logos,
38:45
sponsorships, graphics, wraps, all sorts of things on race cars.
38:48
And we wonder all the time, what is CrowdStrike really doing for that car?
38:52
Or what is Pennzoil have to do with this other car?
38:55
Whatever it is.
38:56
You know, if you look at all the iconic liveries over the years, whether they were
38:59
tobacco, alcohol, or whatever have you.
39:01
But in your case, it's something real.
39:03
It's something personal, and it's something extremely pointed.
39:06
Merging those two worlds, 'cause you've continued to race throughout
39:09
all of this time as you've been building the foundation and whatnot.
39:13
How has Motorsport helped Springboard the foundation?
39:16
How has it helped you gain exposure for the foundation?
39:19
Not as much as I want, let's put it that way.
39:21
But there's more people who are becoming aware of it.
39:25
I guess there's two aspects.
39:26
One is you want other groups and philanthropies or whatever
39:30
to put money into research.
39:33
It gets complicated because it's not any old research, but it's
39:38
funding totally differently.
39:39
I don't pick organizations, I don't pick big schools and I pick people.
39:44
So you pick the best researchers, and if they just happen to be at
39:48
Tom Newman University, it's cool.
39:51
I'm not going after Tom Newman University.
39:53
I'm going after.
39:55
Eric, who happens to have a lab there.
39:57
Then we cook up a project with them, which tends to emanate from
40:00
an unfunded idea that you had.
40:03
And good people tend to have really good ideas, and so we wind up funding them.
40:08
And what we do is we do it in a way, it's not necessarily what the university
40:14
wants because I'll tell you why.
40:16
In a project of any, any sort, there's always the direct research costs,
40:21
what someone spends in the lab for the postdoctoral students that are
40:24
doing the stuff and all that stuff.
40:26
And then there's the indirect cost.
40:28
It's called overhead.
40:29
What we do in working with the researcher, we take this embryo and idea, we evolve
40:36
it into some kind of project, which might look like a 10 or 12 page paper,
40:41
and then we, the foundation come up with an agreement with the university.
40:46
Then the project is an appendage to that contract.
40:50
Then we talk to the university and we don't allow much or any indirect costs.
40:57
That's where they make their money.
40:58
I'm interested in the researchers and not the university per se.
41:04
And so what we're trying to do is I got a really small glob of peanut butter
41:09
and I'm trying to spread it on this piece of bread without tearing it.
41:12
So I'm trying to get as thin as possible so I can do more
41:15
with the guava peanut butter.
41:17
'cause they got a lot of things to do, a lot of people to, to look after.
41:20
And so that's why I don't wanna blow it on indirect cost.
41:24
I don't care about the president of the university and their HR
41:28
department or their fundraising people.
41:30
I don't care about any of this.
41:31
Why do they need anything?
41:32
They didn't really do anything for this.
41:34
I brought the money, researcher did what he needs to do.
41:38
He has the ideas and stuff, and for us, if they get his direct cost funded, they
41:42
were gonna probably have to pay his direct cost if he didn't get this money anyway.
41:46
So what's the problem?
41:47
This tends to empower the researcher and de power, if
41:51
that's a word, the university.
41:53
And so that dynamic, it changes a lot of these researchers.
41:57
We've funded stuff for eight or so years and they're always coming
42:02
up with new and better things, and we're always expanding our bandwidth.
42:07
And so the more we learn, the more everybody learns, the more it becomes
42:11
an intellectual feeding frenzy where everybody wants to work on these
42:15
different kinds of modeling projects.
42:17
You know, some of it you can't see directly from here to the patient.
42:22
Like some guy came up with a new modeling grammar that allows all researchers
42:27
to get this software that he created and be able to see if their project
42:33
has any anything worth doing there.
42:35
And they can do it within having an hour of tutoring without having a
42:39
bioinformatics person on their staff.
42:41
So you get more people finding out more good or bad, it'll
42:46
work at Walmart, work faster.
42:48
So more faster leads to a progress.
42:52
Yeah.
42:52
And that leads to a really interesting question about the use of AI both
42:56
in your day job and in Motorsport.
42:58
So where do you see that playing a role in both cases?
43:01
Well, they're already using it in some of our cancer research projects, but it
43:06
needs to be managed by the right people.
43:08
But yeah, AI is emerging right now at being very good at certain dimensions of
43:15
healthcare, like reading radiology films.
43:18
AI is much better at determining whether cancer is present or not present.
43:25
It's like 95% accurate, whereas doctors are 65% accurate.
43:31
Don't take this hook and go out to see what my understanding of how
43:34
that comes to be is AI is better.
43:39
At determining what the good part of the film is.
43:44
I mean, my whole hand was alone.
43:46
There's one little.here that's bad.
43:49
So what the AI is seeing is all of this other space that it's perceiving that it's
43:55
very similar than it's not a bad part.
43:57
You see what I mean?
43:58
So it becomes more better at that, which makes it good at
44:01
identifying the bad stuff.
44:03
And so one of our projects is doing that same thing with
44:07
looking at biopsies of cancer.
44:10
And in order to do this AI, you need a supercomputer.
44:15
And so only so many people have it and it obviously it's all over the news,
44:19
gonna need a lot, lot of electricity.
44:21
And it's not necessarily to power the computer, it's to power the cooling
44:25
mechanisms you need to keep everything cool when you're running these babies.
44:28
So you can't just go.
44:30
Oh, the three of us are gonna start using ai.
44:33
We gotta have this little infrastructure, the whole reason pit race got sold.
44:37
But we'll leave that where it is.
44:39
The biopsy project's gonna take, probably it's gonna take a year and
44:42
a half to feed the biopsies in there.
44:44
'cause it takes like an hour and a half to scan one.
44:47
You get in there and then you can start to do some analytics of it.
44:51
You gotta have some baseline information.
44:53
So you gotta have a scan and you have to know something's wrong with the scan.
44:59
So then you can put this in there and then you can say to ai, Hey, look at this.
45:03
What's wrong?
45:04
'cause you know the answer.
45:05
It's sort of kind of like that.
45:07
So that's what we're doing with biopsies.
45:10
And so you'll see this emerge more on the diagnostics, x-rays,
45:15
whatever their diagnostics.
45:17
And then I think you'll see it emerge into more treatments or
45:21
more monitoring during treatment.
45:24
Once we know it's there and we decide on a certain therapy.
45:28
We have to go back and look and say, is the therapy working?
45:31
Are we doing good?
45:32
Are we doing not so good?
45:33
That's sort of where the whole thing, uh, will shake out first,
45:37
but it's gonna take a while.
45:38
You know, the limitations, the physical stuff, you know what I mean?
45:42
The supercomputers, the having the data to train it.
45:45
I'll ask you two, what idiot in their right mind would fund a project that
45:49
deals most of the cost is feeding data and scanning it into a machine.
45:54
The Department of Defense, well, well, that's me.
45:57
I'm paying for that, but you're right.
45:59
Could do that.
46:00
But I mean, it's like that's what you're trying to do, but, and we
46:04
don't have the stuff scanned in to be able to train this thing.
46:07
It's gotta have all the pieces together so it's the right people,
46:11
sort of the right conditions.
46:13
That's why I'm driving research with how we're picking people.
46:17
That's sort of the simple version of it.
46:20
Let's switch gears and get back into some more racing conversation, shall we?
46:25
In my experience, and certainly it's not anything that's approached yours.
46:28
We've seen some professional drivers move down from MS IMSA at the true professional
46:34
level, kind of like as a guest driver for some of the amateur endurance racing
46:39
teams and take a, a, a spin in their car, whether that's Randy Popes in the 24 hours
46:46
of, of lemons or other drivers coming down for the American Endurance Racing Series.
46:51
Have you thought about doing any of that if, uh, if you were offered a
46:54
seat or do you have some prohibitions based on where you're at now?
46:58
To be honest with you, it's more time availability.
47:01
More than anything else.
47:03
I mean, if I think about it, that was one of the factors when I was racing
47:07
IGT, I kind of ran out of time to do that and what we were doing, because what we
47:14
started to do as we purchased new cars, we tested more, and as we test it more,
47:21
that's sort of where your time goes.
47:22
So it's the question of what do you have the time?
47:24
So I consider doing that maybe more for fun.
47:28
But the reason those pros migrate down there, a lot of those guys, they
47:33
don't have rides in the other series.
47:36
And so they need to make money somewhere so they have driver
47:39
coaching done at the lower end.
47:41
Gotcha.
47:42
It's a different kind of definition of a gentleman.
47:44
Driver.
47:45
Yeah.
47:45
It's a person with money that doesn't really make their
47:48
living at driving race cars.
47:50
Right.
47:50
And I'm glad you brought that up, Ted, because there's a lot of people
47:53
that share the sentiment that there aren't gentlemen drivers left anymore.
47:57
You know, like the Graham Hills and you know, those types of back in the
48:01
day that to your point, they all had day jobs doing something else, but they
48:04
had the fortitude and they also had the fortunes to be able to go and do racing
48:09
in their, say, in their midlife versus these kids that are starting out four or
48:12
five years old and go-karts and working their way up to the pro ranks by, you
48:16
know, their 21st birthday kind of thing.
48:18
As someone who did start racing later in life compared to these other folks
48:22
as as examples, what message do you hope your story brings to other people?
48:27
What Can you share any advice.
48:29
First of all, whatever kids are coming up, they gotta do this because they love it.
48:35
They gotta really like to do it.
48:38
What was it the, the old quote that Richard Petty said, they said, uh,
48:41
Richard, what would you like them to say as your epitaph when you're gone?
48:45
And he said, I would like him to say he was a man who had a job,
48:48
who liked his job and did it well.
48:50
Uh, when you think about it, he didn't mention money, but
48:54
money came because he did it.
48:55
Well, the dynamic in racing now, it's very competitive to get in.
49:01
When you're driving, particularly in an endurance series, you
49:06
need a driver with discipline.
49:08
And a young driver that wants to prove themselves may get a little too
49:12
enthusiastic sometimes, which leads to crash damage, which who pays for that?
49:16
So you need to be in control of yourself when you're doing
49:20
stuff in more ways than one.
49:22
I'm pretty much a weird bird in that why do I race?
49:28
The series, which is arguably probably the most competitive series in the
49:33
United States, because I know when I'm driving, I'm gonna be close to laugh.
49:38
Why would I do that?
49:40
And it's because of the competitive pond I'm in.
49:44
It drives me and, and I'm sure if he were here, he would tell you, we do
49:48
better overall when I do better because I give him the car in a better position.
49:55
That gets us back to the, the pairings.
49:59
It's like we have to take the two mes and make them a we.
50:03
He knows he can't do anything to set up that I can't handle.
50:08
It's not demeaning to me what I just said.
50:11
It's just the talent.
50:12
But when I can do well on average, then he's in the top 10 all the time and that's
50:19
how we won the bronze and set simple.
50:22
And while you're in the heat of battle, you don't recognize what you're doing.
50:26
You sort of really don't.
50:27
And this year was like that.
50:30
We didn't do good at Daytona.
50:31
And then we sort of did a little bit better at the Seing, and then
50:34
we went for the next couple races.
50:36
We were like not so good.
50:38
And so we were behind in the points, but we won bronze.
50:41
And it wasn't until the end of the year, Hugh says, he said, well, you
50:45
know, we won bronze, we were dominant.
50:48
I said, are you kidding?
50:49
We, we won by 200 points.
50:51
That's like, like dominant.
50:52
And he said, and then when you look at it, I read the Yearend review.
50:56
We were terrible in Canada.
50:59
We were terrible at Watkins Glen.
51:01
Watkins Glen was on me, Canada was on the crew.
51:03
And then we started to come back and then we said, so then we go to VIR.
51:07
We won VIR for Broads.
51:09
Before that we had won Road America, and then we went to Indy.
51:12
We won Indy, and then we went to Road Atlanta and we won that.
51:16
And I was like, oh yeah, we were pretty dominant.
51:20
And so I didn't realize it until after everything was over.
51:25
And then like my experiences, I guess what the, the big takeaway
51:29
is do it because you love it.
51:31
Don't get disappointed because there's gonna be disappointments along the way.
51:35
Mine were just physical or crash or whatever.
51:37
And you need to have a lot of discipline and set your brain such that you are
51:42
willing to learn from anybody because the more you learn from the broader
51:46
the base, the better off you'll be.
51:48
The hard part for the younger guys now is getting in a car.
51:51
Because while talent helps to get you recognized, ultimately you're gonna need
51:58
some money to get you in a seat and get you in a right car, that kind of stuff.
52:03
Now, there's some scholarship programs now, but they're not big money.
52:07
They really aren't.
52:08
So I think a lot of the kids coming up are gonna be family funded
52:12
of some sort, but it's sort of competitive going to the, like the
52:16
GT four platform and the GT three.
52:19
But let's just talk about the GT four.
52:20
We used to be able to build a a GS car for 150 grand.
52:24
In order to buy a new car, you're gotta buy pay three 50 or three 30.
52:28
So the price of entry has gone in just to sit at the table.
52:31
You have to have so many chips.
52:32
For the younger guys, you get into a situation where, what
52:36
kind of an individual would I let drive my 350,000 car?
52:39
That's fair.
52:40
Yeah.
52:41
Three 50,000 cars consume brakes and rotors and gas and
52:45
tires and all that kinda stuff.
52:46
We're gonna be spending a thousand bucks a piece on tire texture.
52:49
When they went to this homologated platform, the cost of racing went up.
52:54
That's ultimately will be a, a limitation for people, I think.
52:58
I mean, how do you get in?
53:00
It's like Tom's saving money to buy a new car and now he
53:03
finally gets up to 25 grand.
53:05
Now he finds out the price of the car is 40 and you're like, God, I saved
53:09
all this money to get to this point and now I can't get the car because
53:13
you're always chasing it, basically.
53:14
Right.
53:15
And so that's part of the problem and that's what happened with the economics
53:20
of racing where the manufacturers.
53:23
Pay the series to be in the series.
53:27
Michelin pays the series to be the tire VP Fuels pays the series be in the series.
53:35
The tracks pay the series to come to the track.
53:39
You get a pattern here.
53:41
Oh yeah.
53:42
And so because of that, with tires, it's fine.
53:46
We have to buy the Michelins and everything was fine.
53:48
And then, oh, guess what?
53:49
They put tariffs on it because they're all coming from France.
53:52
Uh oh.
53:54
Uh, speaking of which for me, I have one last question for you, Ted.
53:59
Since you are at the pinnacle of endurance racing in the United States,
54:02
are there any future plans for Lamar?
54:05
And can I carry your suitcase if the answer is yes.
54:09
Well, I already considered Lamar and in 2020 he asked me that.
54:14
He said, have you ever thought about doing anything bigger and going to Lamont?
54:18
All that kind of stuff.
54:19
Despite my involvement, that was the first year.
54:23
This was 19 to 20.
54:25
That was the first year in January when we raced at Daytona, I
54:29
decided to stay over for the 24th.
54:31
I've never stayed for the 24th myself.
54:34
'cause we race on Friday.
54:35
I usually leave and watch it on tv like the rest of you.
54:37
I decided to stay over and it just so happened that we had passes
54:41
to get into the Cadillac suite.
54:44
We had raced with Chevy.
54:46
Chevy didn't have a suite but Caddy.
54:48
They got us in the caddy.
54:49
We were there looking at it and I was watching the 24 and I said, you
54:54
know, I could go to La Mall, which is a two or three year run 'cause
54:58
you gotta go to the road, to LA Mall.
55:00
You have to, I'm gonna go to a attract that's thousands of miles away that I
55:05
could only run on so many times a year.
55:07
Why don't I do this?
55:09
Why don't I do this 24 hours in Daytona?
55:11
And that led to me running the 24 in 21, 22, and 23.
55:17
And the first two were in Porsche.
55:18
The second, uh, last one was in Anas.
55:21
Probably not gonna go to LA Mall, certainly as a driver, but I probably
55:27
am gonna run to 24 as a Daytona again.
55:29
Very good.
55:30
The most likely time is gonna be in 27.
55:34
So that's sort of what's more in my racing future.
55:37
If there's a bigger thing with my other son in my world with cancer research,
55:42
I'm gonna figure out how change, how we think about research, and that's
55:46
sort of my other objective over there.
55:48
But no Tom, so I'm not going to the mall.
55:51
Probably be watching that on TV too with the rest of you guys.
55:54
Yeah, Daytona is interesting enough, let's put it that way.
55:58
The Advantage Daytona has is it has lights.
56:01
It's not light alone, Lamont, it's as we, a friend of mine used
56:05
to say, it's pretty dusky here.
56:07
It's like being at the back of BIR at night.
56:10
It's pretty dark back there.
56:12
Yeah.
56:13
But at Daytona it's a different kind of exhilaration.
56:17
You get similar talent pools 'cause you get people that won the Indy 500
56:21
there and Scott Dixon drives there.
56:23
They're in the prototypes, but you're all on the track with them
56:26
and everything's sort of works out.
56:29
The biggest problem with running the 24 is driver degradation.
56:34
And that's why they try to keep the gentleman drivers more in the
56:39
light than on the in the darkness.
56:41
'cause bad stuff happens in the dark and that's what they say at the 24.
56:44
If you make it through the night, you get a chance.
56:47
When we ran the Aston in 23, uh, we had a left rear hub that broke.
56:51
So that was sort of that, that kind of put a rip in our sail.
56:54
But they fixed it.
56:55
I mean, we were back out, but that's the only one.
56:58
The other year we finished like seventh or something like that.
57:01
And GDD.
57:03
Ted, you talked about doing a little retrospective
57:05
analysis over the 2025 season.
57:08
Let's take that a little bit further, and if you look back over your very
57:12
long racing career, what's your proudest moment and why does it stand out?
57:15
Can I pick three?
57:17
Sure.
57:17
Not in any particular order.
57:19
The first one would be winning the IGT Championship, my favorite, because there
57:24
are like multiple classes of Porsches.
57:28
It's basically an aggregation of points.
57:30
So you could be running against me in a GT three car, I mean a real GT three Porsche,
57:36
and it's how much we all make points.
57:39
And so it was actually winning against three different classes.
57:43
So whoever had the best, so that was sort of a big moment.
57:47
The other one would probably be this year, winning the two
57:49
bronzes this for the second year.
57:51
That would, that's sort of a big deal 'cause it's becoming harder to do.
57:56
But I would, I would almost say that the most significant thing was at the 2024
58:03
in some banquet when we were getting the awards was something that two guys said
58:08
to me from two different perspectives.
58:10
Uh, one was the series manager for our series and the other one was
58:14
a guy that's team owner of JDC.
58:17
They both at the banquet said, we noticed you are getting faster
58:22
because that's what it's about.
58:24
It's always about me versus me.
58:27
And if I am able to achieve that while I'm getting older, that's like a big deal.
58:33
It means I'm not losing it.
58:35
I'm doing something right.
58:37
I'm not doing everything right by no means, but it means that
58:40
compared to me, I'm getting better.
58:41
So that's a kind of a good thing.
58:44
And when that stops, that's when I'll do something different or recalibrate
58:49
and drive slower cars or something.
58:52
Achievements a one thing, but what you really want to achieve is about
58:56
improving yourself, and that's what the young drivers need to focus on.
59:00
Prove yourself.
59:01
That's what I've always said.
59:03
If I worry about fixing me, the me versus the other guys will
59:07
take care of itself eventually.
59:10
Advice.
59:11
Alright, Ted, well, we've reached that part of the episode where I like to
59:15
invite our guests to share any shout outs, promotions, thank yous, or anything
59:19
else that we haven't covered thus far.
59:21
This is not meant to be salesy, but for finding out more about
59:25
cancer research and what we're doing, go to jktg foundation.org.
59:30
It will tell you a lot of what we're doing.
59:31
Also, you can go and just search me ted gi honest.com.
59:36
That's my website, but that'll tell you the other dimensions, including
59:40
it'll get you to the racing site, TGM racing, and it will tell you a lot of
59:45
things that we're doing and I think for a lot of people that are either
59:49
in business or racing or whatever, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram.
59:54
Because when you find, see, my LinkedIn posts are all about helping people.
59:58
The posts are taken from things I've learned from racing, but
1:00:01
it's also in business and in life.
1:00:04
And so I'm not selling anything.
1:00:06
I'm trying to help people, trying to get through all this stuff
1:00:08
that we call life, you know?
1:00:10
And so it's not gonna be smooth, and it's not gonna be straightforward,
1:00:13
but, but you can make it through it.
1:00:15
Keep the face.
1:00:17
Keep going.
1:00:18
Well, folks that wraps up today's conversation with Ted Giovannis.
1:00:22
Ted's story proves that racing isn't only for the young, but for anyone with
1:00:26
the drive and dedication to chase their passion from competing in endurance
1:00:30
racing to leading groundbreaking efforts through the JKTG Foundation, Ted's story
1:00:34
is a reminder that it's never too late to chase your dreams and make an impact.
1:00:38
If you'd like to learn more about Ted's journey, his racing efforts,
1:00:40
or his foundation's important work in advancing medical research, be
1:00:44
sure to visit jktg foundation.org and follow along with updates from
1:00:49
JKTG Foundation on social media.
1:00:52
And with that, Ted, I can't thank you enough for sharing your
1:00:54
evening with us here on Break Fix.
1:00:56
And I have to say, if it wasn't said earlier, for those listening at home, Ted
1:01:01
is about to celebrate his 80th birthday proving that you're never too old to
1:01:06
get behind the wheel of a race car.
1:01:08
And if that isn't inspiring for all of us to get off the couch,
1:01:12
get out of the garages and get on track, I don't know what is.
1:01:15
So Ted, keep going.
1:01:16
As long as you can keep going.
1:01:18
This is awesome.
1:01:18
I will, that's, that's what I plan on doing.
1:01:21
So it's uh, it's really good.
1:01:22
I don't know what the future holds, but I'm going to be finding
1:01:25
out, let's put it that way.
1:01:27
I'm gonna be doing, doing it to the end.
1:01:29
All good.
1:01:29
Thank you for, for having me on.
1:01:31
Thanks for being with you too.
1:01:32
Thanks for hooking up with Tom again.
1:01:34
Thanks, Ted.
1:01:34
It was great seeing you as always.
1:01:41
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