Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Doug Yates Talks NASCAR Engine Building | Lights Out With John Roberts

Transcript

Doug Yates Talks NASCAR Engine Building | Lights Out With John Roberts · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:05
  And it is time to go live with the boss man at Roush Yates
• 0:09
  Engines, that is Doug Yates. Doug, it is so great to see you
• 0:12
  man. And you guys are in such a
• 0:14
  performance based business. But you guys are boasting the
• 0:18
  engine for the last champion and the engine for the last race
• 0:22
  winner. When you're in a such a, you
• 0:24
  know a business is based on that performance right now, that's
• 0:27
  got to be a real good sign. Yeah, John, we, well we're
• 0:31
  fortunate to have great teams like Team Penske and, and the
• 0:34
  other guys we supplied just for the Roush Fenway and front row
• 0:37
  and, and most of all the great supporter of Ford Motor Company.
• 0:39
  So they've been behind us from the beginning when, when my dad
• 0:43
  and I had Robbie Yates Racing and when we put together our
• 0:47
  partnership with Jack Roush and Ford Roushates Racing engines,
• 0:50
  you know, Ford Motor Company has been behind us the whole time.
• 0:54
  So their support and encouragement and everybody here
• 0:56
  at Roush 8 Engines, we have 200 and 30 employees now with the
• 1:00
  engine piece and the other manufacturing activity we we do,
• 1:03
  but it it takes a lot of great people and a lot of great teams
• 1:06
  and we're really blessed to be part of this NASCAR and probably
• 1:10
  this great sport. Doug, I read some pretty cool
• 1:13
  quotes from Jack Roush when you guys got together, when your dad
• 1:17
  and and Jack got together, that that Jack and your dad were kind
• 1:21
  of going at each other competitively for a while and
• 1:24
  then when you got together, you got the best of two worlds.
• 1:26
  How much changed for you guys and the whole Ford engine
• 1:30
  department when Roush and Yates got together?
• 1:32
  Wow, that's a yeah. It was, you know, Jack Roush was
• 1:36
  racing his Fords and and my dad and and myself were racing at
• 1:40
  Ralph Rob Yates racing and trying to beat each other
• 1:43
  probably more than anybody else, which was good to a point, you
• 1:46
  know, very competitive. But also we saw the future was
• 1:49
  changing, you know, in 2003, we, we knew that the landscape was
• 1:53
  changing. A Toyota was going to come in
• 1:55
  that we're going to do things different and we wanted to get
• 1:57
  stronger and with the encouragement of Ford Motor
• 2:00
  Company said, hey, let's do this together.
• 2:02
  So it was true. My dad and Jack didn't really
• 2:04
  care for each other that much. They were super competitive and,
• 2:08
  and, but Jack and I met in the early 90s and did a project
• 2:12
  together. So we had a little bit of time
• 2:14
  together. And so at the end of 2003, we,
• 2:17
  we met, we talked at Atlanta back when it was a almost one of
• 2:22
  the last races of the year, went to Jack's motorhome on a
• 2:25
  Saturday afternoon in between practices.
• 2:27
  And, and the three of us met and, and basically Jack looked
• 2:31
  at my dad and said, Hey, look, you know, we've had our
• 2:33
  differences, but I, I really like Doug and I believe in his
• 2:37
  future and, and I think we should put our deal together.
• 2:40
  So at that point we started working towards forming Roush 8
• 2:43
  Racing engines. At the end of O3, Jack actually
• 2:47
  won the championship with Matt Kenseth that year, but decided
• 2:50
  that this was the right thing for him to to move his effort to
• 2:54
  Mooresville, partner with us and try to build the best Ford
• 2:58
  racing engine. So they had very different
• 3:01
  philosophies on building engines.
• 3:03
  My dad and I were always about making the most horsepower.
• 3:07
  Some people even accused us of our cars were kind of a
• 3:09
  glorified engine stand, which we which we took a lot of pride in.
• 3:14
  And then Jack was really about the best performance for the
• 3:18
  car. So what that meant is running
• 3:21
  the engine hotter, turning it more RPM, just doing different
• 3:25
  things than what we were doing. So when we combine those two
• 3:28
  efforts in 2004, you know, it was really a special time where
• 3:32
  we made a lot of progress combining those two
• 3:35
  philosophies. It was not easy.
• 3:37
  And we sat here at this desk that we're talking at right now
• 3:40
  and, and my dad and Jack would sit across me and, and compare
• 3:44
  notes and, and debate what was the right thing for the engine
• 3:47
  or what the right thing for the car was.
• 3:49
  And get a, get a piece of printer paper out and said, this
• 3:52
  is the clearances I want on these cylinders and, and go back
• 3:56
  and forth. And so, you know, a lot of
• 3:58
  people at our company said, hey, you know, there's a lot to do.
• 4:00
  Why don't we just run your dad's engines for a while and his cars
• 4:04
  and jacks and his cars. And they said, no right away.
• 4:07
  We're going to have a Rao Shades engine at Daytona and everybody
• 4:12
  got behind that effort, went to the Daytona 500 set on the front
• 4:16
  row with Jack's car with Greg Biffle and my dad's car with
• 4:19
  Elliott Sadler. And that was really a proud
• 4:22
  moment for me to to help bring that together.
• 4:25
  And then went on to have a lot of success and win the
• 4:27
  championship in 2004 with Kurt Busch.
• 4:29
  And it wasn't easy, but, but we had great cars and great support
• 4:34
  and great people and, and, and a lot of effort and, and that's
• 4:38
  how Ralph Shapes was formed. Well, Doug, I think it would
• 4:41
  probably be an understatement to call your dad incredible.
• 4:45
  I love talking to him anytime possible.
• 4:48
  The the knowledge and the intelligence and the innovation.
• 4:52
  What was it like growing up with Robert your your dad?
• 4:55
  How much? How cool was it, for lack of a
• 4:57
  better term? Yeah, well, thank you for saying
• 5:00
  that, John. He loved people.
• 5:01
  You know, he was the son of a Baptist preacher that just love
• 5:04
  hot rod and cars and, and, and but he appreciated people.
• 5:08
  But growing up with him was it was, it was tough.
• 5:11
  I mean, we worked all the time, whether it was, you know, around
• 5:15
  the house, the chores, cutting the grass.
• 5:18
  He was going to the shop with him as as a young boy when he
• 5:22
  worked for Junior Johnson, you know, he'd come home for dinner.
• 5:25
  We lived on the same Rd. as Junior and Flossie there at his
• 5:28
  race team right down the road and he'd come home after, you
• 5:32
  know, work, grab dinner, go back to work.
• 5:35
  He did all his machine work during the day.
• 5:37
  At night he like to assemble engines and I would go to work
• 5:40
  with him and hang out with him as a 5 year old kid and then
• 5:43
  later when he moved to back to Charlotte.
• 5:46
  When we moved back to Charlotte. Worked at Dygard as a young kid.
• 5:50
  My job is to clean the shop on Saturdays and Sundays top to
• 5:54
  bottom. So when they got back from the
• 5:56
  racetrack, they were ready to go again for the next week.
• 5:58
  So eventually got to tear down engines and wash parts and home
• 6:02
  blocks. But you know, we, we worked and,
• 6:05
  and that's, we worked a lot, but we enjoyed it.
• 6:07
  We had a lot of fun together, spend a lot of time together.
• 6:11
  If we weren't going to church, we were at the shop working or
• 6:15
  driving to a racetrack and, and spending time together that way.
• 6:19
  So a lot of special moments. And then as we, you know, went
• 6:22
  on, he encouraged me to go to school and get an engineering
• 6:25
  degree and, and that turned out to be a, a great decision.
• 6:30
  And then when he bought the team in 1988, I was in college at NC
• 6:35
  State, my mom called and said, Hey, would you come back and
• 6:38
  work for the team? When I graduated in 1990, came
• 6:41
  back robbery Yates Racing. The time was, you know, we had
• 6:45
  Davey Allison and Texaco Abilene as a sponsor and Ford Motor
• 6:48
  Company and and we were on a mission to to the go win races
• 6:52
  and and it was a lot of fun. So Doug, I know the the whole
• 6:57
  world of racing since those days, since those early 2000
• 7:01
  days have changed so much. But what has changed in your
• 7:05
  realm? What has changed in your world
• 7:07
  in terms of building these engines, making these
• 7:09
  horsepowers? And obviously the the job hasn't
• 7:12
  changed any in terms of how much you guys have to work.
• 7:15
  But but has that changed a lot? Is is the idea still the same
• 7:19
  and in terms of making a durable engine that has a lot of
• 7:22
  horsepower? Yeah, John, it's, it's changed
• 7:23
  tremendously. You know when I started in 19,
• 7:26
  90 we own 3 engines, we have one dynamometer.
• 7:30
  There was 5 or 6 people in the engine shop in total and maybe
• 7:34
  15 on the team, single car team and, and, and so we just we just
• 7:40
  tested and we we, you know we really just worked hard.
• 7:44
  I tried to always be innovative, but it was a seven day a week
• 7:47
  mission just to get to Daytona and race for the Daytona 500.
• 7:51
  But probably the biggest change throughout the years, years are,
• 7:55
  you know, back then we had one car to build in just four.
• 7:59
  We went to two cars in 1996 with Dale Jarrett, which turned out
• 8:02
  to be fantastic with a Ford quality care car when the
• 8:07
  Daytona 500 right out-of-the-box and then ultimately under the
• 8:09
  championship. And then we started building
• 8:12
  more and more Ford engines, building all of pretty much
• 8:17
  everybody except for Jack's engines.
• 8:19
  And what that allowed us to do is when we built this facility
• 8:22
  here in Mooresville, we're sitting in a 75,000 square feet
• 8:27
  state-of-the-art engine shop that has text engineering
• 8:31
  capabilities, design development, a simulation to
• 8:36
  predict engine performance. But probably the biggest change
• 8:39
  of all is the testing capability.
• 8:41
  You know, back when we were first starting, we had one
• 8:44
  dynamometer that could a water break dyno.
• 8:47
  It was probably a $20,000 dyno at the time.
• 8:49
  And today we have, you know, a handful of AVL transient Dinos
• 8:55
  that are, you know, 5 to $10 million test cells that you can
• 8:59
  do anything on. You know, obviously you do your
• 9:02
  engine development on there, it's very accurate.
• 9:04
  You can measure, you know, lots of sensors.
• 9:07
  We use that information to for simulation, but once we find a
• 9:12
  combination we like, we can load that engine up on that down at
• 9:15
  monitor and then we run a full race.
• 9:17
  You know, you pick a racetrack you want to go to like Michigan
• 9:20
  this weekend, a driver profile because now we have all the data
• 9:24
  from the cars and you go run the race and then you take the
• 9:27
  engine apart and make sure that it does everything that we
• 9:29
  predicted it to do. So the testing capability today
• 9:32
  is changed tremendously. And probably the other piece of
• 9:35
  this changed through the years is the the manufacturing
• 9:38
  capabilities that we have in house.
• 9:41
  You know, back then every set of cylinder heads was made from
• 9:44
  scratch. Every engine was a little bit
• 9:47
  different in performance and you tried to build them as close as
• 9:50
  you could, but you just didn't have the machining or the
• 9:53
  manufacturing partners that we had today that make these parts
• 9:57
  so precisely. So the tolerances were not as
• 10:00
  close as they are today. And obviously we've we've
• 10:03
  refined that. But back in 1991, NASCAR said,
• 10:07
  hey, Robert, you can't have that cylinder head because it doesn't
• 10:11
  look like all these other Ford heads.
• 10:12
  And by the way, it's about 50 horsepower better than anybody
• 10:16
  in the field. And so at that.
• 10:18
  And we want you to give give every 14 that head, submit it to
• 10:21
  NASCAR, but we also want you to make every head.
• 10:24
  And that's it was AC-3 head. A lot of people in the industry
• 10:28
  referred to the Yates head. That was a robbery Yates head.
• 10:31
  And my dad looked at me and says, how are we going to make
• 10:33
  these? Back then it took about 3 months
• 10:36
  to make a set of cylinder heads. He said, I got an idea, what if
• 10:39
  we buy ACNC machine and myself included, looked at my dad said
• 10:45
  what are we going to do with that?
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  And one of the guys, a very famous machinist we had, his
• 10:49
  name is James Luter. He, he'd done everything, worked
• 10:52
  in the Navy shipyards. He, he can make anything.
• 10:55
  He said. He looked at my daddy and said,
• 10:57
  boy, that thing's going to put you out of business.
• 10:59
  And, and so we carried on. We bought that first CNC machine
• 11:04
  and today we have a manufacturing facility, about
• 11:08
  135,000 square feet of manufacturing capabilities that
• 11:13
  we make cylinder heads, all of our valve train components, all
• 11:17
  of our accessories as well as NextGen parts and aerospace and
• 11:21
  defense parts. So that one moment in 1990 is,
• 11:25
  you know, do in large part to a lot of things we do today, not
• 11:29
  just building engines, but also manufacturing components for
• 11:32
  other other people in other industries.
• 11:34
  Yeah, Doug, I'm glad you brought that up.
• 11:36
  But first of all, on 2 separate occasions, you were kind enough
• 11:39
  to invite us into your facility. And I was absolutely blown away.
• 11:44
  I thought it was about the coolest thing I'd ever seen, and
• 11:46
  we learned so much by being in there.
• 11:48
  But I'm glad you mentioned doing some other stuff, Doug, because
• 11:50
  that's something I wanted to ask you.
• 11:52
  A lot of teams, we heard, you know, when, when, when things
• 11:55
  changed in NASCAR, that some teams were farming out their
• 11:59
  paint booths. They were, they're producing
• 12:01
  stuff for other industries. And if I'm, if I'm not mistaken,
• 12:05
  you guys did a lot of that, didn't you?
• 12:07
  For for aerospace and and things of the light because you had the
• 12:10
  technology. Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:13
  You know, we, we, when we moved in this building, we had our CNC
• 12:16
  equipment here and we very quickly ran out of space.
• 12:20
  And so we moved into another facility 30,000 square feet and
• 12:25
  and then we ran out of space there.
• 12:27
  And, and So what we decided to do is, hey, we have great
• 12:30
  people, great capabilities. We could do this for other
• 12:33
  industries. So, so we expanded into defense
• 12:36
  was the very first industry that we diversified into making the
• 12:41
  radio devices that go in Humvees all over the world.
• 12:45
  And so that was a big learning for us and, and eye opening.
• 12:49
  It's like we can, we can make really high precision parts and
• 12:53
  there's a big need in the US for great manufacturers and, and we
• 12:57
  want to be amongst those manufacturers.
• 12:58
  So that was a start. During COVID, the manufacturing
• 13:03
  facility and, and activities turned to be turned out to be
• 13:06
  great because, you know, racing kind of took a pause.
• 13:10
  We were deemed essential based on all the military components
• 13:13
  we were making at the time and really kept the company going
• 13:17
  and, and gave us activities to do.
• 13:20
  You know, we made Shields and water jet, you know, face
• 13:24
  Shields and all those other things.
• 13:26
  But you know, this industry, NASCAR has so many skilled
• 13:29
  people and so much talent to offer to other industries.
• 13:33
  You know, the challenge is just trying to blend that into your
• 13:36
  normal racing activities. And I think we've done quite
• 13:39
  well at that. It's in a separate facility,
• 13:41
  it's dedicated, we're ISO certified and ITAR registered.
• 13:45
  So there's a lot that goes into it.
• 13:47
  And you know, we're always trying to build a stronger
• 13:50
  company, trying to provide opportunities for our employees
• 13:53
  to grow and and flourish. And and that's what we've done
• 13:56
  with Rauch Hates Manufacturing Solutions.
• 13:58
  So, Doug, it seems like these days, whether it's teams, engine
• 14:01
  builders or really anybody involved, a shareholder in the
• 14:04
  industry or stakeholder, that NASCAR seems to be listening to
• 14:08
  what people want and what people say.
• 14:10
  From the perspective of the engine builder, what would you
• 14:13
  want from NASCAR to be able to change that you think would
• 14:16
  improve the product? But John, the the biggest thing
• 14:19
  we're hearing right now, you know, you hear from our fans,
• 14:22
  you hear from our drivers, you hear it within the industry and
• 14:25
  NASCAR is now starting to to talk about in our meetings is
• 14:30
  like, what would we, what would it take the, to have more
• 14:33
  horsepower as an engine builder? You know, it's, that's really
• 14:37
  exciting, right? Because you know, we've, we've
• 14:39
  gotten to where we're at. Obviously we have a 510
• 14:42
  horsepower chart package at Daytona, Talladega, Atlanta.
• 14:48
  The power levels for the intermediate short tracks and
• 14:51
  road courses is somewhere around 670 horsepower and all that is
• 14:56
  an airflow limited based on the taper spacer.
• 15:01
  It it really, you know that that's what controls how much,
• 15:05
  ultimately how much power you can make.
• 15:07
  I mean, you can make as much power as you want.
• 15:09
  NASCAR provides those taper spacers and we work hard to to
• 15:13
  fill that curve and make as much power as we can.
• 15:16
  So the talk of having more power is exciting.
• 15:19
  I think that that's something that, you know, NASCAR with John
• 15:22
  Probst and his team at the R&D center are working hard with the
• 15:26
  OEMs and the engine builders and and everybody involved to see
• 15:30
  what's possible there. So at the end of the day, we
• 15:32
  just love NASCAR. We love whatever power level we
• 15:35
  want to go their track with advantages and try to win those
• 15:38
  races and, and work with our teams to get that.
• 15:41
  But I think right now the, the hottest thing going is what
• 15:44
  would it take to to have more power?
• 15:46
  There's a huge debate on what that is.
• 15:48
  Is that 750 or is that 900 or or more?
• 15:52
  You know, I, I don't know. I think that those things are
• 15:55
  all the topics that we'll discuss, but that's that's
• 15:57
  probably the hottest thing in our world today.
• 16:00
  Doug, I don't know if people quite really understand the
• 16:02
  racers of the world and how they how they work, what your work
• 16:07
  schedule can be, how long it can be and how hard you have to work
• 16:10
  to keep up with other people that you're racing against.
• 16:14
  But it is it the competition that keeps you going after all
• 16:17
  these years because you guys have a whale of a travel
• 16:19
  schedule, an incredible work schedule.
• 16:22
  And if you're not fully in it, it, it can get you.
• 16:25
  But is that what keeps you going?
• 16:26
  Is the competition and that part of this whole whole good job?
• 16:31
  Yeah, 100%. I mean, this is this is we get
• 16:34
  to compete every Sunday, you know, and we get a report card
• 16:37
  every Sunday and, and we want to make sure that we're doing our
• 16:40
  homework and, and, and putting the work in and really trying to
• 16:44
  find those advantages to go win those races.
• 16:46
  And, you know, this year at Talladega, we just captured our
• 16:50
  200th Cup points win with Austin Cedric and Team Penske.
• 16:54
  That's something that at Roush Yates.
• 16:57
  So it's something I'm very proud of.
• 16:58
  Excited for our team. We had a lunch and celebration
• 17:02
  about a week ago for that. Austin brought the flag and, and
• 17:07
  we have that in our facility. So, you know, it's, it's really
• 17:10
  a lot about what's, how do we win that next race And, and we
• 17:14
  love being able to compete in this sport.
• 17:16
  And, you know, probably things for me, I have 4 kids, but I
• 17:21
  have two daughters that just graduated high school and one of
• 17:25
  them is super into to racing and the excitement of win that race,
• 17:30
  getting that high 5 and, and getting a call from your mom and
• 17:34
  your uncle and text and, and, and just the team.
• 17:38
  And it's, it's really all I've ever known.
• 17:40
  And, and, but, but it is exciting and it's, it's way
• 17:44
  different than, you know, I've never had another job, but I, I
• 17:48
  can, a lot of my friends come to the races and, and they're
• 17:51
  excited about it as well. And, and it's really just cool
• 17:55
  to be part of the sport. You know, my dad and I talked
• 17:57
  about it growing up. It's like, man, just want to be
• 17:59
  part of the part of the club or in the, you know, amongst the
• 18:04
  Pettys and The Wood Brothers and, and the Earnhardt's.
• 18:09
  And you know, we, we just want to earn our way and earn our
• 18:12
  respect and, and, and hopefully we've done that through the
• 18:16
  years and we want to keep going into the future.
• 18:19
  So Doug, you're one of those guys, especially with the last
• 18:21
  name like Yates, people know what you do for a living and
• 18:23
  you're around the racing, around the tracks.
• 18:26
  It just seems to me like this season there is a really, really
• 18:29
  good, really positive buzz around these race tracks and a
• 18:33
  good feeling there. But, you know, it just seems
• 18:36
  like it wanes. It comes and ebbs and flows over
• 18:38
  the years. But it seems like right now
• 18:40
  there's a great upswing. Now the the tangible things are
• 18:43
  going up. You're seeing higher TV ratings,
• 18:45
  you're seeing more sellouts and more rear ends and seats.
• 18:49
  But do you get a feeling right now that there's just a real
• 18:51
  good buzz around NASCAR? Yeah, well, absolutely.
• 18:55
  You know, I think, you know, a lot of the credit goes to Jim
• 18:59
  France, Lisa, Ben Kennedy, you know, their vision and, and you
• 19:05
  know, Steve Phelps, Steve O'Donnell, all of the leadership
• 19:07
  team in NASCAR has been open and willing to try new things.
• 19:11
  You know, I mean, you think about it, we went to the LA
• 19:13
  Coliseum and and put on a soccer race.
• 19:16
  I mean, who, who would have ever thought that would happen?
• 19:19
  Bowman Gray was was a great event coming back to the roots
• 19:23
  of NASCAR. Rockingham You know, I was so
• 19:26
  excited about Rockingham. My daughter and I didn't really
• 19:30
  have a lot to do on Easter weekend.
• 19:31
  We, we, we went down there and, and camped out for the weekend.
• 19:35
  In fact, I think that was one of the the greatest things for me,
• 19:38
  the massage of driving down there, thinking about the
• 19:41
  memories of riding down there with my dad racing many, many
• 19:45
  years ago and the success that we had had there.
• 19:48
  And to be able to have her at 18 years old, she'd never been to
• 19:52
  rocking him. And, and we had a great time on
• 19:54
  the way home. We were listening to SiriusXM
• 19:57
  radio, listen to youth taking callers and, and it was really
• 20:00
  positive, I thought. And and so I think NASCAR's
• 20:03
  willingness to to try things, the close competition, the
• 20:08
  fierce competition we had today. I mean, the world 600, I mean,
• 20:11
  Charlotte was an amazing race. And you know, William Byron LED
• 20:16
  a lot of laps, but there was so much passing.
• 20:19
  I mean, you think about the battle between him and Denny
• 20:21
  Hamlin. Ross coming on there at the end,
• 20:24
  I mean, as a racer, you know, normally I would be
• 20:28
  disappointed. We didn't have a very good
• 20:29
  night. But as a fan, I'm like, this is
• 20:32
  awesome. And I was actually, you know,
• 20:35
  pretty excited about it because I'm a race fan and we all want
• 20:39
  to see great races. And, and so there's so much good
• 20:42
  stuff going on right now. I just applaud and thank the
• 20:45
  France family for what they're doing and just continue to try
• 20:49
  new things. I mean, the Amazon broadcast,
• 20:52
  you know, to me, I, I watched the pre race show and the post
• 20:55
  race show and the, you know, just, you know, streaming is one
• 20:58
  part of it. But but the fresh energy to me
• 21:02
  is really the, the win with the Amazon piece.
• 21:04
  And, and I think that it it challenges the other networks to
• 21:08
  to continue to work on their program and, and competition is
• 21:12
  good on the track and it's good on the TV.
• 21:15
  And, and I think, you know, there is a lot of positive
• 21:18
  energy in the sport. You can tell I'm excited about
• 21:20
  it and looking forward to what's next for NASCAR.
• 21:24
  So Doug, would you guys go to the racetrack?
• 21:26
  I think sometimes, you know, I like the fact that you brought
• 21:29
  up the TV because we always kind of joke in TV that there's no
• 21:32
  real barometer. You know, there's no stopwatch.
• 21:34
  People either going to like you or they're not going to like
• 21:36
  you. And therefore, you know, it
• 21:38
  becomes so subjective. But when you're objective out
• 21:40
  there in in your business, is that something you really like
• 21:44
  about that? Is there pros and cons or or
• 21:46
  mostly pros about knowing that? You mentioned earlier you called
• 21:50
  it a report card, and I love that because it is.
• 21:52
  You guys find out right away what you've done.
• 21:55
  There's a stopwatch and there's a finishing order that tells you
• 21:58
  guys right away how you did. Right, Yeah, I think our world's
• 22:03
  pretty, pretty clear and that and you're coming from college,
• 22:06
  I kind of always related to a final exam and we have a final
• 22:10
  exam every every Sunday and, and, and the whole world's going
• 22:14
  to know, you know, we're not going to be able to to change
• 22:17
  the grade for our parents. So the whole world's going to
• 22:20
  know how we did and, and, and that's the pressure that we feel
• 22:24
  and the privilege that we had to go compete and and try to win
• 22:26
  those. I think that's the same thing.
• 22:28
  You know, TV, obviously the ratings and and a lot of
• 22:32
  different metrics today with social media and and and younger
• 22:35
  audiences or our current audience, you know, so there's a
• 22:39
  lot of things out there that I'm, you know, probably not as
• 22:42
  I'm definitely not as up to speed as you are, but I think
• 22:44
  that I think the sports on a good trajectory, I think the
• 22:48
  networks are are doing good. And yeah, so I have great
• 22:51
  memories of of you guys pre race shows and and things like that.
• 22:55
  And I love, love what you're doing right now.
• 22:57
  And, and I think just continue to try things, continue to mix
• 23:01
  things up and fans will respond. And this is a tough fan base, as
• 23:05
  you know, I mean, it's, it's racers are racers are racers,
• 23:08
  race fans are racers. I mean, they, they want to win
• 23:11
  too. And they they know what they
• 23:12
  like. And, and some of them different
• 23:15
  in those opinions, right? But at least if you're getting
• 23:18
  that response, you know, it's sometimes good press or bad
• 23:21
  press, it's just just press is good, right?
• 23:24
  And keep that fan engagement going.
• 23:26
  And and I think we're heading in a good direction.
• 23:29
  Well, Doug, I never got a chance to tell your father this, but I
• 23:32
  want to tell you this now because we have the opportunity.
• 23:35
  I don't want to miss it. You guys at Roush Yates, a lot
• 23:39
  of your employees, you and your father, especially dating back
• 23:42
  to the mid 90s, you guys were always open, always friendly.
• 23:46
  You guys meant a lot to my career with the, with the
• 23:50
  guidance you gave me and the friendship and everything.
• 23:53
  And Doug, I just really, really appreciate it.
• 23:56
  Oh, that that means so much. Thank, thank you for saying
• 23:59
  that. I'm I know my dad will be
• 24:00
  smiling right now. John, he he he loved hanging out
• 24:04
  with you and spending time with you and and and and so do we
• 24:07
  and, and we look forward to doing more of this in the
• 24:09
  future. I did want to tell you that we
• 24:12
  put together a heritage center to honor my dad and his team,
• 24:16
  Robbie A tracing Roush Yates, our partner Jack Roush.
• 24:21
  And I'd love to invite you to come up and see that really
• 24:25
  never done any of that stuff. And I'd love to have you there
• 24:28
  sometime in the near future. Well, Doug, we got to talk more
• 24:31
  often. Love the chat man, Really
• 24:34
  enlightening. And I thought I'm sure the fans
• 24:35
  will love it as well. And we also want to see more
• 24:38
  Fords and victory lanes and also hoisting that championship
• 24:40
  trophy in the end. There you go, That's we're going
• 24:44
  to Michigan, one of our favorite places, trying to win the
• 24:46
  Heritage Trophy for Ford Motor Company and looking forward to
• 24:50
  hopefully having another shot to compete for a championship at
• 24:52
  Phoenix this year. Thanks, Doug.
• 24:55
  Thank you.