Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Evening With A Legend: Tommy Kendall

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Evening With A Legend: Tommy Kendall · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Evening With a Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to
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  legends of the famous 24 hours of lamont giving us an opportunity
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  to bring a piece of LAMA to you.
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  By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance
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  to become part of the Legend of Lama with guests from different
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  eras of over 100 years of racing.
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  Tonight we have an opportunity to bring a piece of LAMA to you sharing in the
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  Legend of Lama with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing.
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  And as your host, I'm delighted to introduce Tommy Kendall, one of America's
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  most versatile and accomplished road racers who first attempted to take
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  on the 24 hours of LAMA in 2000, driving a Franz Conrad GT two Porsche.
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  Nearly a decade and a half later, Tommy made a celebrated return to LAMA in
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  2013 driving the SRT Viper GTSR with the factory backed team in GTE Pro.
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  Together, Tommy's two Lama's appearances illustrate a remarkable
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  full circle journey defined by skill, resilience, and a genuine
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  love for racing at the highest level.
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  And with that, I'm your host crew chief Eric from the Motor Inc Podcast Network.
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  Welcoming everyone to this evening with the legend.
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  So Tommy, welcome to the show.
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  Wow, thank you.
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  That was quite the intro.
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  I appreciate that.
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  And then actually, I, I gotta show you my t-shirt, which is, I
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  won't butcher it in French, but it basically says open 24 hours.
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  Clever t-shirt.
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  This was the next t-shirt on my stack in the closet today.
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  So it was, uh, lined up well, I said, or nearly, I'd put
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  a, maybe a collared shirt on.
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  I said, you know what, this is appropriate, so.
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  Wearing a little Lamar merch.
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  Well, we're gonna crank up the way back machine, which is eventually
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  gonna get us to how you got that shirt.
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  But you got started in racing at a very young age.
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  Your debut after carting was in IMSA in 1985 and an RX seven,
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  which if I recall, your dad got you into at the ripe young age of 18.
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  So at that time, was it on your mind?
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  Was it a dream to race at Lama?
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  Well, actually it goes even before that I found a loophole.
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  Back then you couldn't get an SCCA or an EMS a license until you're 18, but
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  I found out that the Jim Russell School series would let you in if you were 16 as
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  long as you'd been through their school.
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  So I ran the Jim Russell school series.
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  The year before when I was 17, but on some level I had these
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  grandiose dreams that included everything, formula One, et cetera.
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  My connection to everything back then was basically Autoweek and On Track Magazine.
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  It's hard for people, even people that lived through it, to really
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  remember what it was like then.
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  There was no cable tv, there was no internet.
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  And so the coverage was so much different.
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  You had three channels, network channels that had maybe two races a year on
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  Daytona and Indie tape delayed, and the magazines came out with a huge
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  lag from what was live or you know, so they weren't even really news related.
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  They'd have a little blurb on LA Mall three months later on Track
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  and Auto Week were my connection.
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  Once my dad started doing some racing, I was.
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  13, 14 years old and I was just a sponge, and so I literally
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  read those cover to cover.
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  So that was my only exposure to the European scene.
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  But I remember, you know, when Mario went with, uh, with Harley Clarkston
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  and that garage and, uh, or Mirage, and they got sent away at the last second.
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  And so all the drama.
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  So it was on my radar as, you know, one of the greater races.
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  But it was, pardon the pun, it was so foreign.
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  I mean, I, I couldn't really even imagine or, or grasp what it was like.
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  So what's fun about your story is started in 85 and we have 15 years
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  until your first attempt at Lamont, and then we got almost 15 years,
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  your second attempt at Lamont.
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  So in that gap in the first 15 years, a lot of folks know Tommy Kendall.
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  It's a name that is.
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  Synonymous with Trans Am racing in the United States, and then unfortunately
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  there was the crash at the Glen in 91.
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  We don't have to go there if you don't want to, but let's talk about
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  your road to Lama from 85 to 2000.
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  How did you put the deal together?
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  Why did it take so long to get there As such a superstar in American
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  racing now things are so good in terms of the US and Europe and
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  Lamar all being well integrated.
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  And commonality of platforms and all that.
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  It was exactly the opposite for basically my whole career.
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  And so 2000 is really after my career.
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  My career was 86 to 97, the serious part of my career where I was a factory
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  guy and just doing all kinds of stuff.
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  That whole era, there was very little American participation or
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  involvement, either as a team or a driver because they're just, they
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  didn't intersect from a tech platform standpoint, any of that stuff.
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  They diverged virtually completely.
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  It's sort of, I don't know if regrets, I guess it is a regret.
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  I don't like to have regrets, so I think things work out for a reason.
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  But you know, if things were different, you know, I was one of the main factory
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  guys here, so if there was any factory programs, I'd have been over there.
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  And so, you know, when I was with Chevrolet, that was always on her.
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  Officials radar.
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  He was trying to figure out how to get to Lamont 'cause he held it in
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  the highest regard, uh, right there up with all the big races of the world.
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  And so he was trying to figure it out when I was there.
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  And it eventually turned into the Cadillac program with, uh, Riley
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  did, and then the Corvette program also herb's doing so for me, it
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  literally just wasn't really an option.
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  You could always say it's on my list and I'm gonna.
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  Go outside of my sphere of influence and try to make something happen over there.
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  You had guys racing at Bering when it wasn't on anyone's radar, so you can do
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  whatever you want, but my focus was here.
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  All my opportunities were here, so, and that's kind of how it was.
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  So kind of a bummer in that regard.
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  It underscores how good things are right now, and I know it took a long
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  time to get there, but I remember.
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  Ironically, I was at Baltimore racing the Viper in 2012 when they first
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  announced that top class at IMSA and Lamar Europe were gonna converge.
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  And Robin Miller came up to me and said, what do you think?
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  I said, this is so great because it's like we race in parallel and uh,
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  everyone wants to see everybody the best go at it and full representation.
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  And so what's happened since then has been.
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  Been really awesome to watch.
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  So my career basically ended in 97.
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  I won my fourth, I guess, TransAm championship.
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  That was the year we won 11 races in a row, almost swept the table.
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  And then Ford was getting out of TransAm.
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  So that wasn't really an option anymore.
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  I was being pushed towards nascar.
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  I wasn't.
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  Uh, I, I, I actually had agreed to a deal to go to NASCAR racing with Roush,
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  and then they changed their mind at the last second, right before it got signed,
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  and ironically signed Greg Biffle.
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  And so, uh, worked out well for him and, and it worked out well for me, even though
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  it was the end of my serious race days.
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  So the 2000 thing, there's a really interesting story
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  about how I ended up there.
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  I guess it was in 19 end of 99, maybe.
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  I had signed a deal with Celine to drive the new S seven, and the
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  deal hadn't been announced yet.
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  They said, we want you to get some LAMA experience before we go back
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  with the S seven, but it hasn't been announced, so you can't tell anyone why.
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  So they actually arranged the ride in the Conrad Porsche.
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  So I showed up there four years after retiring, just in a plain white suit.
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  I couldn't tell anyone why I was there, so it was like, uh.
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  Well, I just thought I'd come rent a ride at LA Mall, and so it's
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  really, it was really unusual.
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  There were a few people that know there was a dinner the night before with Mark
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  Coghlan who was with Valvoline, and then he was the one that kind of broker the
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  deal to get me into that Celine car.
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  He went on to.
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  Big things, brokering the sprint deal for NASCAR and so forth.
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  And then Paul fan from Racer also was there, and he knew,
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  but they were sworn to secrecy.
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  And so that night they each indulged in plenty of wine.
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  I didn't the night before the race, but I crafted this story.
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  I said, you know what?
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  I've always wanted to do this story about, uh, an imaginary persona
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  and adopt that and go racing and just totally off the wall.
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  And it, we just kept spitballing and it turned into.
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  That I was gonna change my name to Fum four, who was this Salvadorian
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  racer that used to race at ims.
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  And I always thought it was so funny that his name showed up as one name,
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  like Madonna, on all the grid sheets.
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  It was Fum four.
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  I said, I'm gonna relaunch as FM four, and I'm not gonna speak
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  a word, I'm never gonna talk to anyone, and it's gonna be called the
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  Falmour Silent, that Deadly Tour.
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  And I'm gonna have beautiful girls on either side of me, and whenever I'm
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  interviewed, I'm just gonna make a hand motion, one of four hand motions, and
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  they're gonna answer the question for me.
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  So this whole spitball thing happened.
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  Paul fan wrote this up into a story and released it on the Racer website as
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  real in the middle of the Laval race.
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  It was up for a handful of hours, so just idol minds do fun things.
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  How do you feel being the inspiration for Franz Herman?
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  There you go.
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  And I mean, John Winter is a great story.
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  Lou Krauss, who I raced with in GTP, his family didn't want him
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  racing and he couldn't tell.
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  So he entered under the nom to drive, I guess you would say.
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  So let's talk a little bit more about 2000.
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  We'll get deeper into the details of the race itself.
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  But up until that point, you really hadn't done too much long format
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  racing, especially 24 hours at a track like lama, which is a whole nother
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  level of endurance racing out there.
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  So when you got there and you, you're turning your first laps,
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  you're learning the track, obviously there was a probably a ton of
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  preparation or maybe there wasn't.
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  How did it compare to what you were used to here?
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  Stateside?
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  Well, you said.
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  I hadn't raced on a track like Lamar.
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  Let me stop, stop you right there.
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  There is no track like Lamar, it's, it's its own league.
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  And that was the biggest impression.
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  And the way I explain it to people is obviously racing is speed and it's fast.
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  So we've got some fast tracks, but it's like Lamont, everything is just.
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  That much faster.
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  Everything is a gear higher, and so the medium speed corners are are
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  just faster medium speed corners.
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  The fast corners are faster than the fast corners, and so it's
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  really impressive and daunting.
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  Now, I'd been out of a car for four years, three years I guess.
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  I wasn't razor sharp.
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  I never drove the car before I showed up and never got a chance to.
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  I never raced a Porsche, never raced a range.
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  It was not ideal.
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  It's not how I like to go about those kinds of things.
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  You know, my whole career was kind of a study in the opposite,
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  total preparation, giving myself every advantage and so forth.
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  So, I mean, that was my first takeaway was just how fast the
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  track was and how daunting now.
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  If I had been there when I was super, super sharp, like in 97 and in a car I
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  knew and it was the only variable, it probably wouldn't have been as daunting,
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  but to be not as sharp as I was used to being in a car that I had never
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  driven before in a configuration rear engine that I'd never driven before.
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  Obviously I was still only.
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  30 something years old, young, and you know, I hadn't forgotten a
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  lot, but just wasn't as practice.
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  So I felt good, but I didn't feel, I was used to feeling like in full command
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  of everything and the guy to beat.
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  I didn't feel that way there.
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  It turns out that year, the, the vets and the vipers had sort of proceeded
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  beyond where that Porsche was.
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  It was a little longer than the tooth, but it was, it was the perfect way to learn.
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  The car ran well.
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  We had a little bit of an overheating problem.
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  Had to back the revs down at one point.
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  But we really had pretty much a trouble free run and I think we fin, we finished
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  either seventh or eighth in class.
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  And so that was a shock too because, uh, the last time I had run at Daytona in the
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  big V eight cars, I mean a decade, yeah, not quite even a decade, but either was
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  still a very much an element of pacing.
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  And saving the equipment somewhat.
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  And so that was the transition into the era where the cars were really getting
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  bulletproof and you could really drive 'em hard the whole time to have a trouble free
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  run and not be on the podium, I thought.
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  And that was a, that was an eyeopener to me.
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  And we were, we were seventh or eight.
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  Those were the main takeaways that year.
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  Coming from TransAm, which is considered sprint racing, even though it's
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  probably maybe the longest sprint race format that there is almost, you know,
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  nowadays it's almost a two hour race.
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  What was the physical demands like coming from that type of format or even from
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  NASCAR into lama where you, you're doing two, three hour stints, but it drags
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  on for the whole day and you gotta be up and be in the team and get the notes
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  and be in sync with the other drivers.
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  What was that like?
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  Fortunately, that aspect wasn't that foreign to me because 85, I
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  did several showroom stock, 24 hour races, and I did Daytona, the Rolex.
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  I did that I guess five times, and so that element wasn't that foreign.
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  One thing I learned early on after my first.
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  Uh, Rolex was you don't want to miss anything and you wanna
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  keep track of everything.
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  And, and as the driver, you don't have to do that.
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  That's not your job.
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  And so to learn to leave that to other people and go get your rest and
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  go do everything you need to do, I learned thankfully early in my career.
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  And so that's, that's a really important part that maybe a lot
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  of people don't fully appreciate.
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  There's like this part where you're like, if I close my eyes,
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  the world's gonna fall apart.
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  You know, I need to watch to make sure nothing happens.
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  You can't do anything about it, and you're not the guy that works on the car
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  anyways, but it's just get really good at the mental discipline of shutting down.
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  Getting your rest so that you're sharp.
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  That's what's so cool about those types of races.
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  Even if you do all that stuff, you're still short on sleep because you
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  know, with three drivers in Lamont, you're limited to three drivers.
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  At Diona, you can have four.
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  What you don't realize is say you're out of the car.
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  If everyone's doing two hour stints, that means you're gonna
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  be out of the car for four.
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  Well, of that four, there's 30 minutes.
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  You get out, you're cooling down, you're debriefing a little bit,
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  you're going to get something to eat.
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  You're getting outta your wet stuff, and then you can't just show
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  up right when the car comes in.
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  You've gotta be there ahead of time because if a yellow comes
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  out, might put them into too long.
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  So the reality is.
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  Even if you do it perfectly in that situation, you might be getting an
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  hour and a half of sleep sometimes.
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  I had some teammates before at Im SA, like Mark Martin was my favorite teammate.
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  Even people say, well, he's a NASCAR guy.
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  I said, yeah, but that guy has no problem driving three and a half hours.
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  I would drive three and a half hours.
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  The limit was four.
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  If you could get one more guy like that, now you're talking
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  seven hours out of the car.
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  So you clip an hour or two on either end.
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  You get some real sleep.
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  That's a, an element that I don't think people fully appreciate how hard
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  that is and why you're so drained.
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  And then Lamar also one thing because it started later in the day.
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  You kind of have almost a full day before the race starts
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  when it had a 3:00 PM start.
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  And so you're tired and so forth.
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  So it really is like a day and a half deal, which just exacerbates
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  it, you know, it, it really is an amazing challenge and that's why.
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  Even finishing there ordinarily, it's all about winning.
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  Even finishing there really, really does have a sense of accomplishment.
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  You really feel like you've been through the wars and you've done
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  something special, and there's a sense of bonding whenever you go
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  some through something really, really hard with a group of people.
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  It's, it's unlike anything else.
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  It's funny you say that, you know, talking about the war aspect of it.
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  One of our previous legends referred to LAMA as a British race on French soil
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  and kept referred to as a battle at LAMA between all the different teams.
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  And so what was that like for you coming over?
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  I mean, there's been Americans that have gone to lama, but it's.
• 14:56
  Always sprinkled over its history.
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  You were fortunate on the, the France Conrad team to be partnered with Charles
• 15:02
  Slatter, who's also an American, and then you had a German co-driver as well.
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  So how were you guys received?
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  You know, had you met each other beforehand?
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  How did the team dynamics and chemistry work?
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  We hadn't met each other before, so you have to form that rapport.
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  And that's one of the funny things is you, once the race starts, you don't.
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  Get a lot of time to hang out 'cause everyone's focused
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  on getting their your sleep.
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  And so you have this quick exchange when you're getting into that car.
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  There was no weirdness at all about being foreign.
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  It's such an international thing.
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  And I do remember explicitly that 2000 drivers meeting.
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  I sat by McKay Reto and I remember just looking around at this
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  incredible gathering of veterans like him that have been through
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  Formula One and now we're running.
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  Lama youngsters, guys like me that were somewhere in the middle
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  and you have a lot of drivers.
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  That many 54 cars with three drivers.
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  What's that?
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  162 drivers.
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  So it really is pretty cool in in that regard and it's my favorite
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  part of LAMA has to do with that.
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  They play the full national anthem, not a stiff, the full national anthem of every
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  country where there's a driver from.
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  And so, needless to say, this takes an hour, at least before in the runup.
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  And obviously the French anthem is the last one.
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  And uh, it's just, it's so cool.
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  It pageantry.
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  And that's the kind of thing, maybe when they did it, at first
• 16:20
  people thought, oh, this is hokey.
• 16:21
  I don't know.
• 16:22
  When, whenever someone starts new things, you're like, what's the point of this?
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  Well, that's, those are the things that become.
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  Such a part of the fabric, whether it's, you know, the seventh inning stretch
• 16:31
  in a baseball game, or you know, all these things with a hundred years,
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  a hundred plus years of history now.
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  At LA Mall.
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  All those things are just really cherished rituals, and so the parade
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  is unlike anything else, and you can explain it to people that they
• 16:45
  can't understand what it's like the parade through the town of Lamar.
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  Well, I'm glad you bring up the patriotism part of this, and I
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  keep going back to the year 2000.
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  Because it's important.
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  A lot of things happened that year.
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  Those are the years of the big reigns.
• 16:58
  You had Audi coming on the scene and kind of dominating and taking over, but at
• 17:01
  the same time, we had a previous legend on here name that is familiar to a lot
• 17:05
  of people running for Team Corvette.
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  We had Andy Pilgrim up on the podium representing the
• 17:09
  United States representing gm.
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  How did that make you feel to see that you're out there in a nine 11 watching
• 17:14
  Andy, you know, in the Corvette and that team was also comprised the
• 17:18
  guys when I retired and left Roush.
• 17:21
  The bulk of those guys.
• 17:22
  They did Craftsman Truck for a little while, but by 2000 they were overrunning
• 17:26
  The Corvette team from Doug Feehan, Dan Binks, Brian Hoy, Jim Durbin,
• 17:31
  Ross Jeffries, on and on and on.
• 17:33
  All those guys.
• 17:34
  And I've always been really patriotic.
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  My dad was that way and uh, passed it along to me.
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  And so that aspect of it.
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  I like healthy, patriotic rivalry, you know, and so I have an appreciation
• 17:46
  for all the different ones.
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  But there, there is an element A, the American stuff, the cars were
• 17:51
  just different, you know, the big thunder and so forth and so on.
• 17:54
  And I remember when my dad was racing, uh, Billy Hagen took the
• 17:58
  strata craft Camaro over there.
• 18:00
  And it was just, it seemed like it was unlike anything they'd seen before.
• 18:03
  Obviously if I'd thought about it at the time, I would've realized there had been
• 18:07
  other big ground pounding cars before, but just the American V eight aspect
• 18:11
  and it, it's sort of unapologetically American for better or worse.
• 18:14
  And it's funny.
• 18:15
  So there seems to be mostly good natured, but a little bit of a love
• 18:19
  hate with American stuff, you know?
• 18:21
  Parodies of Americans, I'm, I'm kind of that, you know, Ricky, Bobby, big hairy,
• 18:25
  American winning machine, you know?
• 18:27
  Um, and so, but that just adds to the cool part of it.
• 18:31
  And Americans were definitely underrepresented, very
• 18:34
  well represented now.
• 18:36
  Very well represented now.
• 18:37
  And that's a function of, like I said, how they've gotten,
• 18:40
  everything's worked out where the.
• 18:41
  Technical specs are well aligned, the classes, and it just really supercharges
• 18:46
  the involvement for everyone.
• 18:47
  It just makes it a lot easier to be involved.
• 18:49
  Well, you said Cabra, which opens the door for a one word or maybe two word question.
• 18:56
  Garage 56.
• 18:58
  Oh, yeah.
• 18:59
  Uh, you know what, I have to say, I was, uh, very pleasantly surprised.
• 19:02
  I know the Hendrick, a lot of the Hendrick guys, especially the special
• 19:05
  project guys that, that fell under.
• 19:07
  Jimmy Johnson's a, a very old good friend of mine as well.
• 19:10
  So I have to admit, when they first started down that road and I said
• 19:14
  they're gonna use a a cup chassis and weight is the enemy in cup
• 19:18
  racing, everyone weighs the same.
• 19:19
  So no one notices.
• 19:21
  And it's kind of an element of why the racing, I think is as different
• 19:24
  as it is, is is that weight.
• 19:25
  But I said if they go over there and they don't really do some work to
• 19:29
  get a big chunk of that weight out, everything else could be the same.
• 19:33
  I said it, it could turn out really not like they.
• 19:36
  Think it will, you can always pour power to it and get lap time, but if all the
• 19:41
  time was coming on the straightaway and you're just like a jam car in
• 19:45
  the corners, I said, you're not gonna make any friends and you're not gonna
• 19:49
  also have the effect from, but they nailed it because, I mean, has there
• 19:54
  ever been a more popular program?
• 19:57
  I mean, the reaction to that and they, they did a great job in terms
• 20:00
  of how, how they, the guys that drove it was a big piece of it.
• 20:04
  So it really was.
• 20:05
  A flawlessly executed from a marketing standpoint and from a
• 20:10
  product and technical standpoint, it was pretty damn cool.
• 20:14
  So you mentioned before the nine 11 was uncharted territory.
• 20:17
  You were basically building the airplane while you were in flight
• 20:20
  when it comes to experience with that car, and you had mentioned.
• 20:24
  Would've been more comfortable if it was something that you knew.
• 20:26
  So if you could have taken any one of your TransAm cars, the Beretta, the
• 20:30
  Ford, whatever it is, and gone to Lamont, if they could have made the full 24
• 20:34
  hours, which one would you have chosen?
• 20:35
  I mean, the all sport TransAm car, that was the longest I was in in one place.
• 20:41
  Ever in my career.
• 20:42
  Whenever you get to do that, you kind of get a level of refinement where you
• 20:45
  just understand what you're doing better.
• 20:47
  Everybody knows their role and you just get better and better at optimizing,
• 20:51
  you know, that car and the beauty of the TransAm one, when you don't share a seat
• 20:55
  with anyone, being a big guy tall like me.
• 20:58
  It supported me really well.
• 20:59
  There were never any aches and pains after races, which always happened for
• 21:03
  me when I shared a seat with anyone.
• 21:04
  So, and that would be the one, and that car was literally like an extension of me.
• 21:08
  I didn't have to think about controlling it at all.
• 21:11
  I had to think about what are we trying to do here, uh, what technique and what,
• 21:15
  what's gonna try to optimize and what can do to adjust the car to the track?
• 21:19
  So that would, that'd be the one without a doubt.
• 21:22
  So sticking with 2000.
• 21:23
  Before we move on, what was the big maybe oops, moment or eye-opening
• 21:28
  experience or something that happened that left a lasting impression on
• 21:31
  you after you came away from Lamont?
• 21:34
  Well, there wasn't a, anything huge in that one that's been that
• 21:38
  same question after the 20 th 2013 race, because there was, I will,
• 21:44
  I'll, I'll tease it a little bit.
• 21:45
  The worst stint of my life.
• 21:49
  So other than the one where I had my big crash in the GTP car.
• 21:53
  But the, yeah.
• 21:54
  Well, let's sort of fast forward our audience there.
• 21:57
  So you were retired in 97.
• 22:00
  You come back and make this all star cameo appearance at LAMA in the Conrad Porsche.
• 22:06
  And then the year 2001 happens in 2002 and 2003.
• 22:11
  So what happened between 2000 and your next return to Lamont?
• 22:14
  Yeah, 2013.
• 22:15
  Did you go back into retirement?
• 22:16
  Did you do some more racing?
• 22:18
  How'd you get the itch?
• 22:19
  How'd you get the call?
• 22:20
  Interesting thing.
• 22:21
  Well, let's talk about 2001.
• 22:23
  'cause that's sort of the, you know, I buried the lead there.
• 22:25
  I, you know, I was supposed to drive the factory saline, S seven.
• 22:28
  And I didn't.
• 22:29
  I drove it in its debut race at Laguna Seka at the end of 2000 after
• 22:35
  it had been announced and so forth.
• 22:36
  But then the deal fell apart before Sebring.
• 22:40
  You know, I won't get into all the details on that, but basically there
• 22:43
  ended up not being a full factory car.
• 22:46
  It ended up being a privateer factory assisted privateer car with Franz would've
• 22:51
  been fun in certain ways, but it was not what was sold to me on the front end.
• 22:55
  And so.
• 22:56
  I did that to prepare for 2001, and then 2001 never happened back into retirement.
• 23:02
  I got coaxed to drive.
• 23:03
  I drove the JAG in TransAm in oh four, so a full season, but all my
• 23:08
  racing post 97 kind of fell in my lap.
• 23:11
  I didn't pursue anything the Celine program did, and that
• 23:14
  was supposed to be a proper.
• 23:15
  Double throw down, go for it.
• 23:17
  Program, the TransAm one.
• 23:19
  TransAm.
• 23:19
  There was not a lot of factory support by 2004, but I enjoyed it a lot.
• 23:23
  It was fun to, in that, in my natural habitat, if you will, that I knew so
• 23:28
  well, but, so I was basically retired.
• 23:30
  And then two th the way the Viper deal came about is Brian Vickers, who's
• 23:34
  a good friend of mine, was racing in nascar and he'd had a series of issues.
• 23:38
  First it was a health scare where he had, he had blood clots and then open
• 23:42
  heart surgery as a result of that.
• 23:44
  Then he came back and then he was driving for the Red Bull team and Red
• 23:48
  Bull shut their operation down last minute and all the seats were taken.
• 23:52
  Everyone was pushing him to get into a, not a great car in nascar,
• 23:55
  'cause that's all that was available.
• 23:56
  And he asked me what I thought.
• 23:57
  I said, I wouldn't do it.
• 23:59
  He said, well, you're the only person telling me that.
• 24:01
  I said, well.
• 24:01
  I said, you've won in both cars, you've raced.
• 24:04
  I said, it's not like you're trying to prove you can do it.
• 24:06
  I said, if you were still trying to prove that, knock yourself out.
• 24:09
  But I said, chances are you'll only look worse, and if you're committed to
• 24:13
  this, when the good cars come available, you'll be committed to the bad one.
• 24:16
  And so he's like, oh, well that makes a lot.
• 24:18
  He said, well, what do I do?
• 24:19
  I said, you should do what?
• 24:20
  Every NASCAR friend of mine always says they wish they could do,
• 24:23
  which is race, all the other stuff that they never have time to race.
• 24:26
  I said, you could do a cool program.
• 24:28
  I'm gonna try to run indie.
• 24:29
  I'm gonna try to run Baja.
• 24:30
  I'm gonna do road racing.
• 24:31
  I'm gonna run Daytona.
• 24:32
  I'm gonna run Lamont.
• 24:33
  He said, oh my God, that sounds awesome.
• 24:35
  He started working on all this stuff, and so I had heard that
• 24:38
  the Viper program was coming.
• 24:39
  I was in New York with him.
• 24:40
  I said, let's go to the New York Auto Show.
• 24:42
  I'll introduce you to all the executives.
• 24:44
  And so I took him there, introduced him around to all the Dodge executives,
• 24:47
  to Bill Riley and so forth, and he ended up doing a deal with Rob
• 24:51
  Kaufman to race in a, in a Ferrari.
• 24:53
  And then three, four weeks later, bill Riley called, he says, what about you?
• 24:57
  I said, what do you mean?
• 24:58
  He said, you.
• 24:58
  I said, what do you mean me?
• 24:59
  He says, you wanna drive?
• 25:00
  I said, me.
• 25:01
  I said, I'm 46 years old.
• 25:02
  I'm outta shape.
• 25:03
  I haven't driven in, you know what?
• 25:04
  I guess that was eight years since Strand Am.
• 25:06
  He says, yeah.
• 25:07
  I said, well, it's funny you say that, 'cause I never said I would
• 25:10
  never do it again, but my conditions for doing it were always such
• 25:13
  that it was not likely to happen.
• 25:15
  Proper team, proper funding, all this stuff.
• 25:18
  And that was all that I said, well, I can give it a shot.
• 25:20
  And so he says, well, everyone has to test for this program.
• 25:24
  That was kind of an interesting deal that they did at SRT, I won't
• 25:27
  say the name, there was a Formula one world Champion that called,
• 25:30
  his agent called and said, Hey.
• 25:32
  So-and-so would like to do this, and they said, great.
• 25:33
  Have him come test.
• 25:34
  And they said, well, what do you mean test?
• 25:36
  He does, he won't test.
• 25:37
  They said, well, everyone's testing.
• 25:38
  And he says he won't test.
• 25:39
  They said, well, then he's not driving.
• 25:40
  It was kind of a Bill Riley filter for, is this person gonna be a team player?
• 25:46
  And, and so maybe it's not a perfect deal, but for him it was a go no go thing.
• 25:50
  So Ryan, hunter Ray, who was in that car, 8,500 winner, he had no problem testing.
• 25:56
  I said, I'll go to the test.
• 25:57
  And so I went to the test.
• 25:59
  And long story short got offered the deal and away we went.
• 26:02
  You returned to Lama nearly a decade and a half later.
• 26:05
  What was the first thing you noticed?
• 26:07
  What had changed since you had been there in 2000?
• 26:10
  Everything was getting bigger.
• 26:11
  I mean, this was an era of, it had been around for a long time, but
• 26:14
  I mean, it was now that you were getting American participation,
• 26:17
  it was much bigger in America.
• 26:19
  You had good TV coverage in America.
• 26:21
  And it was just as big everywhere else and bigger, you know, because this, you
• 26:24
  had the guys, the Audi run was going on, which was getting so much attention
• 26:29
  and it just, there was a lot of focus.
• 26:31
  So it's just how much bigger everything was, all the efforts, you know, to
• 26:35
  go behind the garage area and see the setups, you know, that primarily Audi
• 26:41
  at the time, the number of people, the, all the spares, the semis, the sleeping
• 26:45
  pods, the hospitality, the chefs, you know, it was just, it was, it was.
• 26:51
  You know, it become not just big racing events as big a
• 26:54
  sporting event as you could have.
• 26:56
  So when you left Lama the first time, you were a mid Corvette's
• 27:01
  journey to dominance, right?
• 27:02
  The C five Rs were kicking butt and taking names.
• 27:05
  You jump back in, the C six Rs are kicking butt and taking names.
• 27:10
  So it's sort of interesting because there was a Viper Corvette rivalry for
• 27:15
  a very long time and it, it seemed very real on tv, whether it was placated
• 27:19
  by the broadcasters or otherwise, you were there battling with them.
• 27:23
  Was the Corvette Viper rivalry still a thing at that time, or were
• 27:27
  they just running away with it?
• 27:29
  We weren't really on their level yet.
• 27:31
  So, I mean there there was, there was a lot of talk about
• 27:34
  it, you know, just because it's a natural rivalry, cross town stuff.
• 27:37
  My experience, you know, Detroit is a small town and they're all there.
• 27:41
  So when I was with Chevy Racing Ford, that was the most important
• 27:45
  thing, was beating the Fords.
• 27:46
  And when I was with Ford racing Chevy, same thing.
• 27:48
  Viper Corvette.
• 27:49
  So it's, it's just sort of the cross town rivalry, the bragging rights,
• 27:53
  literally I think executives that would run in each other around town.
• 27:56
  It was as simple as that.
• 27:58
  They're human and they, they wanted to be able to brag.
• 28:00
  But Corvette was kinda like we were in TransAm.
• 28:03
  They were a finely oiled machine.
• 28:04
  You know, even the best, you don't win all the time, but you're always in the hunt.
• 28:09
  And again, my crew Chief Danny was now firmly ensconced.
• 28:12
  I, at that point, I don't know how many wins they'd had, but they'd had
• 28:15
  a bunch of wins in all the big races.
• 28:17
  And so they were really the benchmark that particular year.
• 28:22
  Ended up being Porsche's year in gt.
• 28:25
  You know, it's, it's funny, I'm not a huge fan of BOP.
• 28:28
  You're not allowed to talk about it now.
• 28:29
  I think you're in, you're literally not allowed to talk
• 28:32
  about it, but I'm not there.
• 28:33
  So I can talk about it a little bit.
• 28:35
  I get why you have it, and everyone's doing the best job they can, and it's
• 28:39
  still really, really hard to win.
• 28:41
  But it's almost like.
• 28:42
  The thing rotates and they never get it perfect, and so you just want to
• 28:46
  be ready when it's in your favor.
• 28:48
  When I got there, I saw the back of all the grandstands had these huge Porsche
• 28:53
  banners and I think it was the 50th year anniversary of the nine 11, and I'm
• 28:57
  like, oh, this is the big Porsche year.
• 28:59
  I said, I'm pretty sure al one of those guys have been working overtime
• 29:03
  to make sure that they're at least.
• 29:05
  Even on the BOP.
• 29:06
  And so the reality is, as a team, we weren't ready to win the race yet.
• 29:11
  So even if we had gotten the ideal BOP, I don't know if we could have executed
• 29:16
  every single aspect of it perfectly.
• 29:18
  'cause even when you have that in your favor, you're either a little
• 29:21
  bit ahead of everyone or you're.
• 29:22
  Dead even with someone else.
• 29:24
  And then it, it comes down to all the things that win races and the
• 29:27
  margins have just gotten smaller and smaller and smaller in that regard.
• 29:31
  It used to be, like I said, if you did everything perfect in the s
• 29:34
  bell days, you'd win by five laps.
• 29:36
  And that just doesn't, it's just a different era.
• 29:38
  'cause you're not babying anything.
• 29:41
  There's pressure.
• 29:42
  Every single aspect of it, stretching stints on tires, the fuel windows, the pit
• 29:47
  stops of course are, are incredible now.
• 29:50
  So that, that's the framing.
• 29:52
  And so we weren't as strong as we would've liked to have been.
• 29:57
  Both our side of it and the VOP side.
• 29:59
  We, we also, or a little bit, but I mean, racers are racers.
• 30:04
  Even if you're the only person out there, you're racing really against yourselves
• 30:07
  and we all have pride in what we do.
• 30:09
  And so you're all trying to figure out how can I get more outta myself?
• 30:13
  How can we get more out of this and so forth.
• 30:15
  So that, that challenge remained, you know, again, after that race, the relief
• 30:19
  and the excitement and the celebration of Viper returning and being part of that.
• 30:26
  Him across some pictures the other day of all of us up on the wall.
• 30:29
  Here's a bunch of guys that have been racing for a long time,
• 30:31
  myself, done kind of it all.
• 30:34
  You're jaded about a lot of things, but uh, Lamar is just, is just different and
• 30:39
  it's special and so unfinished business would be getting on the podium there.
• 30:43
  It's the best podium in sports, period.
• 30:46
  Monza, F1 and Lama are the two greatest podiums in sports.
• 30:51
  I never got to see the view from up there.
• 30:53
  There aren't too many places I raced where I didn't win,
• 30:55
  or at least get on the podium.
• 30:56
  And safe to say, on the driver's side, that's, I never say never.
• 31:00
  That's probably not happening.
• 31:03
  Well, I promise I won't tell Mark Roff anything you said about BOP.
• 31:06
  All right.
• 31:08
  Let's talk about the Viper a little bit more.
• 31:11
  Compared to your TransAm cars and other cars that you've campaigned,
• 31:15
  is the Viper similar in a way?
• 31:17
  Is it still a little too much production car?
• 31:20
  I mean, it is much like the benzes of that era, big torque.
• 31:24
  And at that time they had big torque numbers in the Viper
• 31:27
  compared to everything else.
• 31:27
  Now by today's hypercar standards, maybe not so much, but was it similar to what
• 31:32
  you were used to or just a leap away?
• 31:35
  Nothing like it.
• 31:36
  Nothing like it for a number of reasons.
• 31:38
  I mean, the, the TransAm cars on my ear were not actually production based at all.
• 31:43
  They were pure silhouette cars, full tube frame, little piece, a joke.
• 31:47
  It was the windshield and the taillights were the parts.
• 31:50
  Those were, and so the Viper.
• 31:53
  GT racing TransAm as well.
• 31:55
  I mean, for a lot of these, originally they were production
• 31:58
  based, and then it got to where so much was being thrown away.
• 32:01
  They're like, well, why don't we just make 'em look like it?
• 32:03
  And then sports, car racing has gone back big time where obviously, you
• 32:07
  know, the homologation and everything, you know, has to be, they're allowed
• 32:11
  to move certain things with waivers.
• 32:13
  But that's one of the hard things is you, you don't get to go clean sheet
• 32:16
  of paper with stuff and you gotta optimize every single piece that way.
• 32:20
  So it, it didn't drive anything like it.
• 32:22
  Uh, like the TransAm car, the tire technology also totally different.
• 32:26
  You know, Michelin, uh, has, uh, become, they've kind of, I mean, there's other
• 32:30
  people that still nibble around, but Michelin has done such a good job.
• 32:34
  They've literally run everybody else out of town, and it's, it's not only
• 32:37
  do they grip, they rarely puncture.
• 32:40
  They don't fall off.
• 32:42
  I mean, and now they keep challenging themselves.
• 32:44
  Again, they're racing against themselves, but they're still challenging themselves.
• 32:47
  How can we make it so.
• 32:48
  The teams use less tires, there's less waste, they're more sustainable, all,
• 32:52
  literally all the things that matter to the consumer as well and and so forth.
• 32:57
  So whereas TransAm, you know, a hundred mile race, if you tried to,
• 33:02
  you could cook the tires in 40 miles.
• 33:04
  Easy yet, you had to make a blast a hundred.
• 33:07
  Whereas the Michelins, within few exceptions, you could run the
• 33:11
  Michelins as hard as you wanted the whole time, and it would eventually
• 33:16
  start to fall off some, but it was just, that was the nature, the life.
• 33:20
  It wasn't anything that you were doing.
• 33:21
  They would just work.
• 33:23
  So, did you like driving the Viper?
• 33:25
  I did.
• 33:25
  You know, it's a different, totally.
• 33:27
  It was a totally different challenge.
• 33:28
  I never got, I, I shouldn't say I, when I did well enough to shoot out,
• 33:33
  to get off the deal, I said to Bill Riley, I said, even though it looks
• 33:36
  like I'm super sharp, I said, I'm not.
• 33:38
  The shootout kind of played to my strengths, where I was always a
• 33:43
  really good qualifier, especially when there wasn't a lot of practice.
• 33:46
  I could ramp up fast.
• 33:48
  I said, I'm, I'm gonna need some time to get in race shape and racecraft.
• 33:52
  And he nodded.
• 33:53
  And the reality was in a multi driver setup and so forth,
• 33:57
  I never got the full rep.
• 33:58
  So I did four races in 2012.
• 34:00
  And I guess if we're telling the full story, I actually
• 34:03
  wasn't gonna drive in 2013.
• 34:06
  And then Ralph Gill said, you know, I, I went to Detroit.
• 34:08
  I thought I was gonna craft my separation agreement and what we were gonna announce.
• 34:13
  And he took me to dinner and he begged me.
• 34:14
  He said, please.
• 34:15
  Come on, how bad can it be?
• 34:17
  We're taking a Viper to Lamont.
• 34:18
  We really want you to part of this program.
• 34:20
  I said, oh, okay.
• 34:22
  And so, but part of that was because I wasn't, as, you know,
• 34:25
  bottom line, I wasn't as quick as I needed to be or wanted to be.
• 34:28
  And so they promoted Baer to the full-time slot and I was in the endurance slot.
• 34:33
  And so exactly what I needed was more lapse.
• 34:37
  I was getting less, 'cause I was only doing the four
• 34:39
  endurance races for the year.
• 34:40
  I, uh, went to 'EM mall that way, so I wasn't, I was getting few laps
• 34:44
  leading up to it, and so it wasn't my favorite memory because I just,
• 34:49
  I like being on top of things.
• 34:50
  I like having everything exactly how I want it.
• 34:53
  I mean, I guess I'm kind of spoiled, but.
• 34:56
  Never in my career wa was I not with that.
• 34:58
  You know?
• 34:59
  And a lot of probably really accomplished.
• 35:01
  Guys are probably li would listen to this and say, Ugh, that's part of the deal.
• 35:04
  But I was, I was lucky that I had always been.
• 35:07
  In the right deals, at the right timing, with the right support and so forth.
• 35:11
  And then I'd like to think I did my job well too, which helped
• 35:14
  put me in those positions.
• 35:15
  But the Viper program wasn't really that.
• 35:18
  It was a big ask, and we might as well, I don't know if you want to go into the,
• 35:21
  the stint that I'm talking about and you teased us earlier, so might as well.
• 35:26
  Yeah.
• 35:27
  So, uh, that was the year.
• 35:29
  Well.
• 35:29
  Oof.
• 35:30
  I mean that, this is intense because my wife wasn't happy I was coming back.
• 35:35
  She also knew that I thought Lama is just next level fast and hairy.
• 35:40
  And so she wasn't super stoked.
• 35:42
  But you know, once I was committed, we, we were doing it.
• 35:44
  So we're there.
• 35:46
  That was the year Alan Simonson was killed on lap four.
• 35:49
  And in our class we all heard about it.
• 35:53
  And so sucking it up there and my wife was, we didn't even talk
• 35:57
  about it, but she looked at me and I just gave her a look like, we'll
• 36:00
  talk about this when it's over.
• 36:02
  I said, I need.
• 36:04
  I, I'm not happy about it.
• 36:05
  So it was really intense in that regard.
• 36:08
  So now, so that's the setup they got.
• 36:10
  We had tons of rain in 13 tons of rain, uh, lots of guardrail, repairs,
• 36:17
  crashes that were knock on the, and they were long yellows and so forth.
• 36:20
  I got in the car in the middle of the night.
• 36:21
  It was probably 2:00 AM It was under one of these long yellows, which is actually
• 36:27
  kind of nice that you get in and you're not having to go 10 tenths right now.
• 36:31
  So your eyes are getting adjusted.
• 36:32
  You're waking up, you're doing all this, and you have a little bit of time.
• 36:35
  So we're behind the pace car and they're fixing a guardrail,
• 36:39
  and it had kind of dried out.
• 36:41
  Now it starts to sprinkle.
• 36:42
  And so I sat on the radio, I said, Hey, it's starting to rain.
• 36:46
  And the answer came back everywhere.
• 36:48
  I said, no, no, not everywhere.
• 36:50
  And they said, okay, let us know.
• 36:52
  Keep us posted.
• 36:53
  So pretty soon it's, I said, eh.
• 36:55
  It's raining everywhere now, and they're like, hard.
• 36:59
  I'm like, no, not hard.
• 37:01
  It's not.
• 37:01
  No, no.
• 37:02
  They said, well, let us know if it starts raining harder.
• 37:06
  And so meanwhile, everyone in front of me and behind me is pitting
• 37:10
  for rains, including my teammate.
• 37:12
  I said, it's raining hard everywhere now.
• 37:14
  They're like, okay.
• 37:16
  I said, are we gonna stop for rains?
• 37:18
  They're like, well, do you think you can do it on slicks?
• 37:21
  And I'm like.
• 37:25
  You could do anything.
• 37:26
  I said, it's a question of how fast you want to go and how
• 37:29
  much risk you want to take.
• 37:30
  And so I, I'm, I'm kind of like, what, what is, they say, well,
• 37:34
  we don't have enough rain tires.
• 37:36
  If it rains hard the rest of the way, that's not the answer you want to hear.
• 37:40
  But it's also, if you think about it, I mean, you could, you could blow your top.
• 37:44
  There aren't enough tires on the property if it rains the whole race.
• 37:49
  For everyone.
• 37:50
  You just, logistically, you can't bring enough tires for both wet and dry,
• 37:54
  all the compounds, all this stuff.
• 37:56
  So part of me is thinking in my head, I said, I don't, I'm
• 38:00
  guessing this conversation has never happened with Alan McNich,
• 38:06
  but now's not the time to litigate that So.
• 38:10
  Anyways, I said, yeah.
• 38:11
  And so basically they said, well, you know, if you can.
• 38:14
  And then it kind of petered off a little bit and it was, but it was,
• 38:17
  it was wet, it was proper wet.
• 38:19
  And so at Lamar you've got the three pace cars because it lapsed so long.
• 38:22
  And so you've got three pack ups.
• 38:24
  Well, now that everyone has stopped for rains, I'm at the front of my pack.
• 38:27
  I'm the car behind the thing.
• 38:29
  And then we had also been having some drive line vibration issues.
• 38:32
  And so they had made the decision going into the race to not run traction control.
• 38:36
  So we had no traction control.
• 38:38
  So I'm sitting here with a third of the field behind me on reigns.
• 38:43
  I'm on slicks, I'm in the front of the deal.
• 38:46
  Talk about suboptimal.
• 38:48
  I'm just like, every time the, you know, wheels would spin up, you know,
• 38:52
  on the re, your heart just jumps.
• 38:54
  And so it was just not.
• 38:57
  A lot of fun.
• 38:58
  I mean, I don't know how I was slow.
• 38:59
  I, I expected to be slow.
• 39:00
  I don't know if I was slower than I should have been, you know, but so huge chunks
• 39:04
  of time, but I didn't go off, I didn't wreck, I didn't do any of these things,
• 39:07
  which you see a lot of, a lot of good guys and, and none of us are immune to it.
• 39:11
  And the rain, all that stuff happens.
• 39:13
  So now it's starting to get dry, dry line, so forth.
• 39:16
  And finally, so I'm starting to get in a rhythm, get going, lap time's coming down.
• 39:21
  I'm feeling pretty good about things getting to the end of my stint.
• 39:23
  I think it's literally.
• 39:25
  It's a lap or two from when I'm getting called in, so I'm finally getting into the
• 39:29
  brake zones and so forth, and basically I lose a right rear, right as I touch the
• 39:33
  brakes heading into the Olson hairpin.
• 39:36
  And so it's doing a big tank slapper, and I'm thinking I'm crashing.
• 39:39
  No, I'm not.
• 39:40
  I'm going in the sand.
• 39:40
  No, I'm not.
• 39:41
  I got it.
• 39:41
  Yes.
• 39:42
  No, yes, no.
• 39:42
  Got into the sand, but not hard.
• 39:44
  Didn't hit anything.
• 39:45
  I'm pulled out.
• 39:46
  There's a yellow, I'm getting pulled out.
• 39:47
  Oh no, there was just a local yellow, they drug me out because I was out of
• 39:51
  the way and now I have to limp on a flat tire at night through the Porsche curves.
• 39:57
  And so I'm going, and I, I feel like I'm going as slow as I can go, but
• 40:00
  it was probably 40 miles an hour.
• 40:01
  And they're like, you gotta go slow or you're gonna rip the thing apart.
• 40:04
  The tire's gonna, you gotta slow down.
• 40:06
  You gotta slow down.
• 40:06
  So now you're going, whatever it is, it's 20 miles an hour and I'm having
• 40:09
  to go through the Porsche curves.
• 40:11
  It's green.
• 40:12
  Just not what you want to do.
• 40:15
  And so thankfully I made it through.
• 40:18
  No one hit me, handed the car off, but that was the worst stint of my life.
• 40:25
  I, I'm bitching, I'm venting, whatever.
• 40:27
  These are the things with a little perspective, things like
• 40:30
  this underscore how hard it is.
• 40:33
  Yeah, how hairy it is, how many things have to go right.
• 40:36
  All the stuff that you're managing, and even when you're in the middle
• 40:38
  of it, sometimes you don't realize.
• 40:40
  How much you're doing and how good you are at managing all this stuff.
• 40:44
  And that's why you see grown men crying when they win that race, or it
• 40:49
  slips away at the end and so forth.
• 40:52
  So would you say that's a defining moment for you as a driver?
• 40:55
  Because every legend that's been on, we sort of ask them the
• 40:57
  variant of the same question.
• 40:59
  Lama, is an education, it taught you something at that moment?
• 41:02
  Or was there a bigger takeaway for you?
• 41:04
  Well, I mean that whole race, the emotional rollercoaster
• 41:07
  literally, of a colleague dying.
• 41:10
  It's the only sport that not only do they not stop it, they keep
• 41:14
  going and nobody questions that.
• 41:16
  Or like, this is what we do, this is what we do.
• 41:19
  It's why it matters.
• 41:20
  It's why Hemingway said, you know, it's one of the only three real sports.
• 41:24
  The rest are games.
• 41:25
  So I mean, that whole, that race is kind of everything in a microcosm.
• 41:29
  It's, it's like your whole life in a microcosm, you know, it's just not
• 41:33
  exclusively a man thing, but men.
• 41:35
  Live for testing themselves against each other and against themselves.
• 41:40
  And it's one of these things everyone says, I don't, you know, if I'm up by
• 41:43
  myself and there's the rock, and I wanna see how close I can get to the edge of it.
• 41:47
  Like, well, that's not smart.
• 41:48
  You're like, no, it's not.
• 41:49
  But that's part of what makes you feel, you know, alive and, and you want to
• 41:53
  pursue mastery and all the, so it's, it's literally, you know, Laman McQueen
• 41:58
  movie talks about it, and it, it's real.
• 42:01
  I mean, it's, it's, it's a microcosm for life.
• 42:03
  It's as intense and experience as you can have.
• 42:07
  And so consequently.
• 42:08
  The lows are literally life and death and heartbreak, and the
• 42:13
  highs are the opposite, you know?
• 42:16
  So after you finally stepped away from the steering wheel and behind
• 42:21
  the microphone, just like tonight, you found yourself commentating on a bunch
• 42:24
  of different racing series out there and some long format races as well.
• 42:28
  Was there ever an opportunity, or was Lama on your radar to go into the booth and
• 42:33
  do commentating and return another time?
• 42:35
  Well, I did call, I don't know how many I'd called with speed channel, but this
• 42:39
  was un this seems to be a, a trend.
• 42:42
  I get there right after the best days racing.
• 42:45
  I don't feel that way racing.
• 42:46
  I feel like I lived in one of the great eras, but in my TV stuff, when
• 42:49
  I did IndyCar, it was the year after.
• 42:52
  The huge budgets and the a thousand dollars bottle of wine
• 42:55
  dinners and the Four Seasons.
• 42:57
  I was there right after the cutbacks.
• 42:59
  And so Laal was a little bit like that with Speed Channel, where I think
• 43:04
  the year I did it was the first year they didn't send announcers to Laal.
• 43:08
  So the only people on site were the pit reporters, which is why Justin, who
• 43:12
  everyone would rather work the booth.
• 43:14
  It's usually a better gig, but Justin says the booth's gonna be in Charlotte.
• 43:19
  I want to be in France, so I'm gonna be the pit lane guy here.
• 43:22
  Kind of a cool experience.
• 43:24
  They set up, it was almost like our own race.
• 43:26
  We had this tent with chefs and so forth outside of the Fox Studios in Charlotte.
• 43:31
  You know, you had guys, literally one guy brought a little tent into his cubicle.
• 43:35
  One of the production guys, it was like a race team.
• 43:37
  Everyone was trying to figure out their snacks and their food and so forth.
• 43:41
  And so I did.
• 43:42
  I did get to call the race, but it was.
• 43:44
  A little bit dissociated.
• 43:45
  In some ways that is actually better.
• 43:49
  You hate to admit it 'cause you want the executives to think they should
• 43:52
  always send you to the races, but in terms of everything being in one spot,
• 43:56
  logistics were a hell of a lot better.
• 43:58
  Everything was better in terms of the conditions for doing
• 44:01
  it, but you weren't there.
• 44:02
  So it was to get your information.
• 44:04
  You know, you're texting people on the other side of the world in
• 44:07
  the pits, you know guys that you know to get, you know, insight.
• 44:10
  But that, that's no different than at Daytona.
• 44:12
  You're detecting from the tower down to the pit lane.
• 44:14
  So I, you know, I've gotten to be a part of, I wanna say probably
• 44:17
  four or five Lamar broadcasts.
• 44:19
  Kind of back to front, Tommy, when you, you've been following lamas since you were
• 44:23
  a kid, like you said, at the top of the conversation, and you've seen it evolve
• 44:26
  just like I have watching the movies and looking back even further than our time.
• 44:31
  What does that say about the popularity of endurance racing with lamont still
• 44:35
  going on after a hundred plus years with the 24 hours of Rolex going 24 hours of
• 44:39
  spa, all these big race endurance races around the world, what does that say?
• 44:44
  It, it says it matters.
• 44:45
  It says it has meaning, basically.
• 44:47
  Because if this world's tough and if things are become sort of redundant
• 44:51
  or not special, they don't last.
• 44:53
  And there's a commonality with the ones you mentioned, spa,
• 44:57
  indie, Pikes Peak, Lamar, I la Man, they're, they're all hairy.
• 45:03
  And you know, one of my sort of filters is when everybody in the stands says.
• 45:08
  I could do that.
• 45:09
  You've lost some of the specialists.
• 45:11
  Now.
• 45:11
  There's always people in every stance that say they, I could do that.
• 45:14
  But when a bunch of people, then the allure and the mystique and the
• 45:20
  aspiration of, man, those people are doing something I wouldn't do.
• 45:23
  I think that's a key part of it.
• 45:25
  In racing, I explains the appeal of UFC fights.
• 45:28
  I mean, I watch those fights and I'm like, I mean, I've been hit in
• 45:30
  the face a couple times in my life.
• 45:33
  And so, you know, they might think I'm crazy for doing what I do.
• 45:36
  I think they're crazy.
• 45:37
  So the fact that it's been around for so long means that it, it has
• 45:40
  meaning and it, and it matters for all the reasons I talked about before.
• 45:44
  Then also, when it's existed for a long time, the layers of meaning
• 45:47
  get stacked on top of each other.
• 45:49
  You know, there's the tradition which adds to it.
• 45:51
  All these, uh, generational things with fathers and sons, and
• 45:55
  then grandfathers and so forth.
• 45:56
  That it gets passed down like you have with Derek Bell and Justin,
• 46:00
  all the rituals and so forth.
• 46:01
  So I think it just means there's a lot of meaning and the, and the longer it goes,
• 46:05
  the more layers of meaning there are.
• 46:08
  You gotta be careful because you know, marketing people get involved
• 46:11
  and marketing's important, but if they start tweaking what the
• 46:14
  formula too much or they cut out.
• 46:16
  The reason for it, then it can disappear in a heartbeat.
• 46:19
  So I feel glad that things seem to be in a really good spot in that regard.
• 46:24
  Um, they can always be better and, and you like racing every, you're always
• 46:27
  tweaking the setup to try to make it better, and some work and some don't.
• 46:30
  But generally speaking, you, you zigzag your way forward.
• 46:33
  Well, Tommy, it looks like we do have a crowd question here.
• 46:36
  Neil Smith writes, Daytona is coming up, and drivers who have
• 46:39
  done both Lama and Daytona have often said, Daytona is harder.
• 46:44
  What's your opinion about that?
• 46:45
  And let's throw Sebring into the mix.
• 46:47
  Is that harder than both of them?
• 46:48
  They're different, they're harder.
• 46:50
  I, I would say they're harder physically, both of 'em.
• 46:53
  Well.
• 46:54
  Sebring is comparable, but you know, the, the sleep deprivation
• 46:59
  adds an element at Daytona and Lama that Sebring doesn't have.
• 47:03
  That is the one thing about Lama because of the length of straightaway,
• 47:07
  there's more rest, less time under load.
• 47:10
  You hear in workout time under load or strain is, and so that's kind of
• 47:14
  the thing you deal with at Daytona.
• 47:16
  Your body's just under strained for longer, so even the banking.
• 47:19
  Because of the G load diagonally, it's part vertical and part horizontal.
• 47:24
  It comes in lower back, hips, all that kind of stuff, uh, work on you more
• 47:28
  so physically, Daytona is, is harder, I think, but the other side of that,
• 47:34
  mentally because of the speed and because you're threading the needle
• 47:38
  that much more in the really high risk spots, I would say the mental
• 47:42
  load at LAMA is higher than, than any of them, and it's high everywhere.
• 47:47
  But I would say a little bit higher at Lama.
• 47:50
  Looking to the future, you said there will always be unfinished business
• 47:54
  for you at Lama, so if you could go back today behind the wheel of
• 47:58
  any of the cars of the last couple years, what would you pick to drive?
• 48:02
  Oh boy.
• 48:03
  I would say dream, dream scenario, you know, the Audi 9
• 48:08
  1 9 era is the pinnacle for me.
• 48:10
  The 9 6 2 9 5 5 6 is, but knowing what I know now.
• 48:15
  I wouldn't get in one of those.
• 48:17
  Just, uh, from a safety standpoint, we have it better safety wise now, for sure.
• 48:22
  Still risk, but we have it better.
• 48:24
  So I would, I would say that that would be an incredible challenge.
• 48:26
  You ride on board, and I remember the year, I think the first year, the 9 1 9
• 48:31
  or the first year, they won one of those stints with Nick Tandy, uh, riding on
• 48:35
  board with him and just the commitment and the closing speed and all that stuff.
• 48:40
  Challenging as it gets.
• 48:41
  And so that's probably why it has the most appeal to me.
• 48:44
  Would you consider a LAMA Classic Drive?
• 48:46
  Would you go back and do a vintage version of lama?
• 48:49
  I would.
• 48:49
  I would, yes.
• 48:50
  And there's, there's certain cars, I think one of my GTP cars.
• 48:55
  Was eligible even though it never raced there.
• 48:58
  It was the spice, but it was of that era.
• 49:00
  Yeah, I would, I wouldn't drive everything there again, because of the risk,
• 49:04
  whenever there's risk on the table, it's like, okay, you can't be totally safe
• 49:09
  or you'd never leave your house, but.
• 49:11
  I'm at the point where I'm in a different phase now, so generally speaking, I
• 49:15
  try to de-risk everything I do, whether it's investing or not charging down
• 49:20
  the hill on a mountain bike, I tend to do more uphill stuff on a mountain
• 49:23
  bike for the fitness side of things.
• 49:25
  So I'm long-winded here.
• 49:26
  So I, I would definitely, uh, consider a Lamont Classic ride
• 49:30
  because that makes me wonder.
• 49:31
  So is that in the cards or is there something else?
• 49:33
  What's next for Tommy Kendall?
• 49:35
  I, you know, it's funny, I don't know what's next.
• 49:38
  Ever since I retired from driving my life has kind of
• 49:42
  been an exercise in serendipity.
• 49:44
  Even my TV work, all of the TV stuff literally found me.
• 49:48
  There's probably a middle ground there where you, but I, I find
• 49:52
  enjoyment, literally doing.
• 49:53
  Almost anything these days, and so, which is a nice place to be.
• 49:58
  I kind of say, let's see what the universe offers up.
• 50:01
  So I really don't know what's next.
• 50:03
  Well, Tommy, before we sign off, I wanna pass the microphone to our
• 50:07
  A-C-O-U-S-A representative David Lowe for some parting thoughts.
• 50:11
  Tommy, on behalf of the A CO. Endurance racing fans everywhere.
• 50:16
  And drivers.
• 50:17
  We've got Margie on tonight.
• 50:19
  I wanna thank you for a wonderful evening.
• 50:21
  Thank you.
• 50:21
  It was fun.
• 50:21
  Super fun.
• 50:22
  Cool thing you have going here.
• 50:24
  And that wraps up this evening with a legend where we explored Tommy
• 50:27
  Kendall's remarkable connection to the 24 hours of Lama, a story that
• 50:31
  began in 2000 and came full circle with his celebrated return in 2013.
• 50:36
  From the raucous TransAm cars he piloted to victory to the thunderous
• 50:40
  roar of the SRT Viper GTSR.
• 50:43
  Tommy's journey reflects not only his evolution as a driver, but also
• 50:46
  the enduring spirit of American endurance racing on the world stage.
• 50:50
  His perspective reminds us that passion, perseverance,
• 50:53
  and adaptability are timeless qualities that define true racers.
• 50:57
  To keep up with Tommy Kendall, follow him on social media.
• 51:00
  On Twitter or X and Instagram at Tommy Kendall 11 for news appearances and more.
• 51:07
  And with that, we hope you enjoyed this presentation and
• 51:09
  look forward to more evening with a legend throughout the season.
• 51:12
  And on behalf of everyone here, Tommy and those listening at home, thank
• 51:15
  you for sharing your evening with us.
• 51:17
  My.
• 51:30
  This episode has been brought to you by the Automobile Club of the West and
• 51:34
  the A-C-O-U-S-A from the awe-inspiring speed demons that have graced the
• 51:38
  track to the courageous drivers who have pushed the limits of endurance.
• 51:41
  The 24 hours of the LAMA is an automotive spectacle like no other.
• 51:45
  For over a century the 24 hours LAMA has urged manufacturers to
• 51:48
  innovate for the benefit of future motorists, and it's a celebration of
• 51:52
  the relentless pursuit of speed and excellence in the world of motorsports.
• 51:56
  To learn more about or to become a member of the ACO USA, look no further than
• 52:00
  www.laman.org, click on English in the upper right corner and then click on
• 52:06
  the a CO members tab for club offers.
• 52:09
  Once you've become a member, you can follow all the action on the Facebook
• 52:12
  group, A-C-O-U-S-A Members Club, and become part of the Legend with Future
• 52:17
  Evening with the legend meetups.
• 52:29
  This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports as part
• 52:32
  of our Motoring Podcast network.
• 52:34
  For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational
• 52:38
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• 52:44
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• 52:55
  Please note that the content, opinions and materials presented and
• 52:58
  expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has
• 53:01
  been published with their consent.
• 53:03
  If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators
• 53:07
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