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The Greatest Corvette Story Ever Told (Camoradi #4) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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  by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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  Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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  Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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  The following presentation focuses on the amazing history of the
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  Camerati Corvette that finished 10th in the 1960 24 Hours of Le Mans.
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  The panel of folks you're about to hear from consisted of Richard Prince, author
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  and official photographer of the GM Corvette race team, Dominic Testa, the
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  current owner of the car, Chuck Schroedel, who was a member of the Camerati team
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  at Le Mans in 1960, and a special guest appearance by Laura Clauser, the
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  GM sports car racing program manager.
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  Each member of the panel gave their insight into the history
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  of the Camerati Corvette.
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  Chuck's commentary from actually being there in 1960 was especially memorable.
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  Ms.
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  Clauser ended the presentation by taking us from Corvette racing in 1960 to the
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  2024 Corvette racing programs competing not only in the United States, but
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  in the race series around the world.
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  The audience consisted of a great, enthusiastic crowd of race fans, and
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  we extend our thanks to the Rochester Corvette Club, which had multiple
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  beautiful Corvettes parked outside of the IMRRC, adding to the fun of the event.
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  Please sit back and enjoy the following presentation.
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  Thank you everybody for joining us this evening and thank you, uh, especially
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  for your support of the International Motor Racing Research Center.
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  We're here, myself, Dominic, his wife, and Chuck, because we also
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  believe in the mission of the center and are happy to support it.
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  So thank you.
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  We're here to talk about a Corvette, but in a much larger sense, a way,
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  way bigger story than a single car.
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  I think many of you know part of my livelihood is writing
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  about and photographing cars for editorial publications.
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  My most recent encounter with this car came as a result of
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  a story that I did about it.
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  I knew the car for pretty close to 30 years because the prior owner,
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  the man who rescued it was an acquaintance of mine through the
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  National Corvette Restorer's Society.
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  So I crossed paths with the car many years ago on several occasions, but
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  I never really dug deep and came to an appreciation of the story.
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  I began writing in 1992, so it's more than 30 years now.
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  And I can say after considerably more than 2000 magazine articles,
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  This is clearly the most interesting story that I've ever come across.
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  That's what really inspired us getting together this evening.
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  It is really the greatest Corvette story.
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  It's just so unbelievable every step of the way.
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  A lot of that has to do with the incredible cast of characters
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  who are a part of this.
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  Dominic and Chuck, they are two epic characters in their own right.
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  Each one, uh, a part of the history of this car.
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  Dominic more recently, Chuck going back to 1960.
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  I'll let him tell you the story of how he came to be in Le Mans.
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  He went there as a spectator, as a Corvette enthusiast,
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  went home a crew member.
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  Obviously that's a memory that can be cherished for all these many years.
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  I'm going to summarize the story of this car and what
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  really makes it so incredible.
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  The story of the Camarotti team and the Camarotti Corvettes begins with
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  the gentleman Lloyd Lucky Kastner.
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  He was born in New York City in 1928.
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  Very bright guy, but above all else he had an unbreakable power to convince
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  anybody to do anything that he wanted.
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  Was alternately referred to as a genius and a consummate con man.
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  Was graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in business administration.
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  Decided he wanted to be an airline pilot.
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  The Got the training, got the license, and went to work for
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  Pan American Airways around 1950.
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  And he flew for them for four years.
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  Got interested in racing.
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  Did some SCCA club racing.
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  Pan Am changed his route.
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  He used to fly to Miami, to South America.
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  They wanted him to fly transatlantic, and he didn't want to do it.
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  So he quit.
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  It's a little gray how this happened, but he ended up a Cadillac dealer in Miami,
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  and he sold new cars, used cars, and that only exacerbated his interest in racing.
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  He got more and more involved, and unfortunately, his taste in race
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  cars far exceeded his ability to buy them, so he got the bright idea
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  to convince other people to pay for his Ferraris and his Maseratis.
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  In March of 1959, at a, an SCCA club race, on the Naval Air
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  Station there, in Opelika, he grabbed the announcer's microphone.
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  And he welcomed anybody who wanted to, to join him as a member of his racing
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  club to help fund his way to Europe so he could race at Le Mans, the Nürburgring,
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  Targa Florio, everywhere else.
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  And that was met with some scorn because he was talking to racers, any one of whom
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  would have gladly welcomed the opportunity to go to Europe on somebody else's dime.
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  But never underestimate again the power of Lucky Kastner.
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  You know, I'll tell you one super quick story about him that really
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  summarizes his persuasive powers.
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  At one point, later on, he convinced the Dow Chemical
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  Company to be his racing sponsor.
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  At that time, Dow Chemical was the world's largest producer of automotive antifreeze.
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  Lucky Kastner was racing air cooled Porsches.
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  One person at that race who, uh, didn't laugh at Lucky
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  was a man named Fred Gamble.
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  Fred was a young journalist, recent college grad and an avid racer.
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  And he thought this whole thing sounded like a grand adventure.
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  So he approached Lucky and said, Hey, I'm in, I'll fund my own way.
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  I want to go with you to Europe and service your PR guy.
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  I'll pay for everything.
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  And I'll just make my own way doing magazine stories about the racing.
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  Lucky took him up on his offer.
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  Instead of having him tag along as the PR guy, he said, we're going
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  to be essentially partners in this.
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  Fred Gamble took several weeks and crafted a beautiful sponsorship proposal.
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  He envisioned this as sort of like the American Olympic team of racing
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  because he knew Lucky Kastner that if anybody could sell it, it was him.
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  Lucky Kastner and Fred took the proposal and they, without that much
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  effort, landed Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company as a primary sponsor.
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  Goodyear promised money, tires, technical support.
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  Lucky Kastner then leveraged that.
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  He had Goodyear Tire, this must be a legitimate operation, right?
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  He had no money, no cars, no team, but he had Goodyear Tires.
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  That was in March of 1959.
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  By the summer, he had arranged a meeting with Ed Cole and Zora Duntov.
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  Ed Cole was then the general manager of Chevrolet, and Duntov
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  was not yet chief engineer.
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  I think his title at that time was director of high
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  performance cars for Chevrolet.
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  A marriage was made in heaven.
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  Chevrolet agreed to provide Camerati Racing with two Corvettes, two complete
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  competition prepped cars, Rochester fuel injection, four speed posi rear,
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  heavy duty brake and suspension, wide wheels, 24 gallon fuel tanks.
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  Those cars were delivered through Don Steven Chevrolet in Miami.
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  The dealership initially did the race preparation.
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  Those cars had a shakedown in Daytona Speedway.
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  From there, they got loaded on a boat and went to Havana, Cuba, for what was
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  called the Gran Premio de la Havana.
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  It was a major GT race in Cuba before trouble really broke out there.
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  Jim Jeffords drove one of the Camaradi cars to a GT win there,
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  and the team was very happy.
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  After the race in Cuba, the next event was the 12 Hours of Sebring and that
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  was another epic event at the time.
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  Then as now, it was America's premier endurance race.
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  It was the birthplace of American endurance racing.
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  By 1960, it was a major event that attracted competitors
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  from all over the world.
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  Fred Gamble was the team manager at that point, and he filled out the paperwork and
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  he put himself down as a reserve driver.
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  He told me it was really just for a laugh, he wanted to see his name in the program.
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  He never expected to drive.
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  The contractor driver for that car, Skip Hudson, didn't show.
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  So Lucky Kastner said to Fred, if you want to drive it, drive it.
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  Fred Gamble drove.
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  Jim Jeffords was in the other car in the opening hour.
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  Jim Jeffords car had an issue, probably a valve train failure of some sort.
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  It wouldn't rev over 5, 000 RPMs.
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  He was the star racer.
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  So he came in with a broken car.
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  Fred Gamble was ordered to bring his car in and turn it over to Jim
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  Jeffords, which was a crushing blow.
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  But the team's chief mechanic, Lee Lilly, said to Fred, Well,
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  the other car's still running.
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  If you want to mosey around until it blows up, be my guest.
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  So Fred got in that car, drove it carefully, and it just kept
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  on going and going and going.
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  End of that story is, that car finished the race with one driver, Fred Gamble,
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  and I believe it is only the second occurrence in Sebring history where
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  one person drove the entire 12 hours.
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  The car had one problem.
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  It had a fuel line fail.
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  They borrowed a fuel line off of a production Corvette, finished the
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  race, then removed the fuel line to give it back to the guy who owned it.
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  The next morning, a mechanic with the team went to move that car.
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  It had no fuel line on it.
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  He cranked it.
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  It sprayed fuel all over.
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  The car caught fire and it burned to the ground.
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  That Camerati Corvette, sadly, is no longer with us.
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  The other surviving car is the car that is here with us today, and that
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  went on to lead a most remarkable life.
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  After Sebring, it was entered in the Targa Florio, which was, by any
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  account, the most difficult, dangerous, treacherous race in the world at the time.
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  It was held on public roads in the mountains of Sicily, and
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  one lap took almost 45 miles.
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  They ended the race shortly after, because so many people
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  ended up getting killed there.
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  Drivers, spectators.
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  It unfortunately did not get to Italy in time for that race,
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  so it missed the Targa Florio.
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  And it's kind of sad to think it didn't have that race on its resume now, but it's
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  also probably a good thing because that race was so dangerous, and the Corvette
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  was relatively heavy and relatively powerful, and we might not be here tonight
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  if it got to the Targa Florio because it was probably better than a 50 50
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  chance that it would have crashed there.
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  After the Targa Florio, went to the Nürburgring, the only solid axle
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  car to compete at the Nürburgring.
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  And after that, it went to Le Mans.
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  Obviously there were very, very few Corvettes in the early days that
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  competed there, let alone finish there.
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  So that was a truly remarkable accomplishment and testament to, of
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  course, the good wrenching of our friend Chuck and the good driving
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  of, again, Fred Gamble and Lee Lilly.
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  After Le Mans, the car went to Sweden.
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  Where it competed in the Swedish Grand Prix.
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  I think Lucky Kasner drove it there and he actually won the
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  GT category there in the car.
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  The day after the race, Joe Bonier, he was Sweden's first Formula one driver and
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  the first Swede to win a Formula One race.
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  So he was quite a star at the time.
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  He drove the Corvette to several new national speed records for production
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  cars on public roads in Sweden.
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  And it was a great publicity venture for Camerati and for Chevrolet as well.
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  After that, the car's next stop was Goodwood for the
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  Tourist Trophy in England.
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  The team did not own a trailer.
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  They had a 59 Ford station wagon that they used to haul tools and spares, and the
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  car was driven from one race to the next.
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  So Fred Gamble was in the station wagon, and a man named Bob
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  Wallace was driving the Corvette.
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  Bob Wallace was an Australian who wrenched on the car.
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  He was hired as a mechanic before Le Mans and was to stay with
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  the team the rest of the season.
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  Bob Wallace was at the wheel of the Corvette.
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  They stopped for lunch and according to Fred Gamble, Bob Wallace maybe had
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  one or two many drinks and he fell asleep at the wheel and he crashed
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  the Corvette while still in Sweden.
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  He went off the road into a ditch and rolled several times, landed on
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  its It's wheels, but as you can see, it was very, very badly damaged.
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  Bob Wallace went off to the hospital, was okay.
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  The car ended up in a garage in the town where it crashed.
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  Fred Gamble and Bob Wallace removed the engine and transmission, which they deemed
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  to be the only pieces left of any use.
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  Because they were treated well by the local police, they simply gave
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  the car to the first policeman who showed up at the accident scene.
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  And they presumed that he would maybe keep a few pieces, maybe sell a few
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  pieces off of it because the car was sort of now famous in Sweden.
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  It was a new national speed record holder driven by a Formula One star.
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  Off they went, and that was thought to be the end of the Camaradi Corvette.
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  As an aside, the engine and transmission went back to the team's shop in Modena.
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  Fred Gamble and Bob Wallace quickly sold it to a guy named Hans Tanner.
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  Hans Tanner had a business called TechMac.
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  He was an American, and he had this agency that served as an intermediary
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  between overseas enthusiasts who owned Ferraris and Maseratis, and the factories.
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  So, if you were an American, or a Canadian, or a New Zealander, or a
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  Frenchman, and you didn't speak Italian, and you couldn't deal with the Ferrari
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  factory, you had Hans Tonner, and you'd send your Ferrari to him, and he would
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  bring it to the factory, and he would, of course, be paid for that service.
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  A gentleman sent Hans a 250F Maserati, a Formula One Grand Prix Maserati,
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  that was supposed to go to the Maserati factory to get rebuilt.
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  Hans Tanner decided the car really should have an American V8.
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  So he had Bob Wallace and Fred Gamble install the Corvette's engine
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  into this Grand Prix Maserati.
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  And then he sold the car to a guy in New Zealand.
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  It wasn't his car to sell, but he sold it anyway.
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  The Maserati was uncontrollable.
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  It had wrong weight distribution and too much power.
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  And it was wrecked.
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  The engine came out of the Maserati, went into an offshore racing boat, that boat
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  sunk and that engine, as far as we know, is still off the coast of Australia.
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  The, the engine is still there.
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  If anybody's ambitious and wants maybe to get the original engine for
• 14:27
  Dominic's car, you know where it is.
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  This was in August of 1960.
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  Fast forward 30 years.
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  There's a man named Loren Lundberg.
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  He lives in Glendale, Arizona.
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  He was a Corvette enthusiast.
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  And a friend of mine, a good guy and an epic character.
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  He got involved in organizing a race car display for an
• 14:46
  NCRS Southwest chapter meet.
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  He had a list of some people to call to ask if they would be kind enough to
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  bring their race cars for this display.
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  On that list was a man named Mike Pillsbury.
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  Mike Pillsbury, another character, one day was in a junkyard in Southern California
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  and he saw the remains of a 1960 Corvette and Mike Pillsbury was a Corvette expert.
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  Though the car was in very, very rough shape, he knew that he was
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  looking at something special.
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  It was a heavy duty brake and suspension fuel injected Corvette that at one time
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  had had a 37 gallon gas tank in it.
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  And Mike Pillsbury knew that the 37 gallon tank was not a production item.
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  They were made by Chevrolet.
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  About a dozen of these were made and they went to Briggs Cunningham's team, and they
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  went to the Camerati team for Le Mans.
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  The tank was made for Le Mans.
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  That car turned out to be the number two Cunningham car.
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  Mike Pillsbury took it out of the junkyard, researched it, verified it,
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  restored it, and Loren Lundberg called him to see if he would be so kind as
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  to bring his car to this NCRS display.
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  And in the course of the conversation, Pillsbury said, Hey,
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  you live in Glendale, Arizona.
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  You must know Bob Wallace.
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  And Lauren Lundberg said, I don't know Bob Wallace.
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  Who's Bob Wallace?
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  And Mike Pillsbury said, Oh, Bob Wallace was involved with Le Mans.
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  He was one of the mechanics with the Camerati team.
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  And he's got a foreign car shop in Phoenix.
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  So, Lorne Lundberg's ears perked up and he said, I'm going
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  to pay Bob Wallace a visit.
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  Bob Wallace, as I said, was an Australian.
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  He lived in Italy for more than 15 years.
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  After Camerati, he went to work for an Italian team racing Ferraris.
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  And in 1964, he went to work for Lamborghini, initially as a mechanic,
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  but quickly rose in that organization to become the chief test driver.
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  And a very influential person at Lamborghini.
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  So over the next 10 years, from 1965 until 1975, he profoundly influenced
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  every car that Lamborghini made.
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  In 1975, Ferruccio Lamborghini sold the company and Bob Wallace
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  didn't want to stay with new owners.
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  So he quit.
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  He and his wife considered going back to Australia, staying in Italy.
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  Just like that, they decided America's where they ought to be.
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  They had no connection, no reason to go any one particular place.
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  They wanted to go someplace warm, and they wanted to go someplace with a
• 17:06
  decent population, because he intended to open up an independent Ferrari shop.
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  They picked Phoenix, Arizona.
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  So the same Bob Wallace that wrenched on and crashed the Camerati Corvette
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  ended up in Phoenix, Arizona.
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  Lauren Lundberg was 10 minutes away, went to see him.
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  Bob Wallace pulled that photo out of his desk drawer and said
• 17:27
  this was the end of the car.
• 17:28
  And Lauren Lundberg questioned him, said is it really the end?
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  Maybe it survived, maybe somebody fixed it.
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  And Bob Wallace said honestly I don't know.
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  Told him the story, we gave it to the cop, last I saw of it.
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  But look at it, I doubt it survived.
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  Well, Lauren Lundberg became focused.
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  Let's just say that anybody see the John wick movies?
• 17:49
  Yeah.
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  Lauren Lundberg was the John wick of Corvette people.
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  He was determined to find out if this car survived and if
• 17:57
  it didn't where it ended up.
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  And again, this was 1990, no internet.
• 18:02
  He had to do with the old fashioned way.
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  He had some names.
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  He had a country, last known in Sweden.
• 18:08
  Bob Wallace said Fred Gamble was really the key.
• 18:11
  He kind of ran the whole operation, and he's somebody you should speak with.
• 18:15
  But he didn't know where he was.
• 18:16
  He hadn't spoken with him in 30 years.
• 18:18
  All he remembered was that Fred Gamble was involved with skiing in Colorado.
• 18:22
  So, Loren Lundberg contacted ski associations, ski magazines,
• 18:27
  trying to find Fred Gamble.
• 18:29
  No luck.
• 18:29
  Then one day, Loren Lundberg was putting away some old issues of Road
• 18:33
  and Track magazine and thumbing through them, and something caught his eye
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  in an old issue of Road and Track.
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  It was a letter to the editor from somebody named Fred Gamble.
• 18:43
  And it gave his city in the state of Colorado.
• 18:46
  Loren Lundberg called information, got Fred Gamble's phone number and address.
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  sent him a letter asking him six questions about the Camaradi Corvette.
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  Didn't know if he'd get a response.
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  A few days later, he got an eight page letter that started with, Well, you
• 19:01
  asked for it, you're gonna get it.
• 19:04
  Fred Gamble, who passed away only a few months ago, Had almost a photographic
• 19:09
  memory and this was his life.
• 19:11
  After Camerati, he went to work for Goodyear Tire and Rubber as
• 19:15
  their race operations manager.
• 19:17
  He set up their whole race operations in Europe and was intimately involved
• 19:22
  with virtually every form of racing in the sixties into the seventies, land
• 19:27
  speed racing with Craig Breedlove.
• 19:29
  He was part of Ford's effort at Le Mans, Carroll Shelby, Shelby
• 19:33
  American, all the Cobra racing.
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  He saved all his stuff and he remembered everything.
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  He didn't know where the car ended up.
• 19:40
  He like Bob Wallace presumed that it just ended up thrown away because look at it.
• 19:45
  Well, Loren Lundberg wrote scores of letters, he contacted the Swedish
• 19:50
  embassy, he got a map out, he looked at the most likely route from the
• 19:55
  location in Sweden where the car had raced to Goodwood in England, he wrote
• 20:01
  the Swedish consulate and asked for every police agency on that route.
• 20:07
  His brother was involved with the Chrysler Town and Country Club.
• 20:10
  Woody Station Wagons?
• 20:12
  His brother happened to know a club member in Sweden, gave Loren
• 20:15
  the guy's contact information.
• 20:17
  Loren contacted him.
• 20:19
  It took a while, but that man sent Loren information about the police agencies
• 20:24
  and about how accident reports are made.
• 20:26
  Ultimately, he wrote letters to every police agency that could have
• 20:30
  possibly taken the accident report.
• 20:32
  This is, at this point, it was about 32 years.
• 20:36
  Lucky Loren, one of his letters landed in the hands of a man named Stig Johansen.
• 20:42
  Stig was a car enthusiast and a police officer.
• 20:45
  He was determined to help Loren.
• 20:47
  It was the agency that took the report.
• 20:49
  The report was still in the files, complete with photos and a detailed
• 20:53
  account of what had happened.
• 20:54
  And the name of the police officer who had written the report, who was the
• 20:58
  police officer who was given the car.
• 21:01
  Lauren did make contact with him.
• 21:03
  He had given the car to the shop where it landed, and it was still there
• 21:08
  as far as he knew six months later.
• 21:10
  After that, he lost contact with it, but Lauren had renewed hope and renewed
• 21:14
  enthusiasm because now he knew the car had not simply been disposed of immediately.
• 21:20
  It was still alive six months later.
• 21:22
  And if you look at what was there, you have to say, well, maybe
• 21:25
  somebody did try to fix this car.
• 21:27
  Endless letters and endless efforts.
• 21:29
  Later, Lauren Lundberg found the car, Steve Johanson, the police officer who
• 21:35
  made it his business to help Lauren.
• 21:37
  The last thing Lauren asked him for was, Can you give me a list, the whereabouts
• 21:42
  of every 1960 Corvette that is road registered on the road in Sweden?
• 21:48
  Stig's reply was, a letter several weeks later, I have better news than that.
• 21:53
  Not only do you not need every 1960 Corvette that's registered
• 21:57
  in Sweden, I found the car.
• 22:00
  It is the car.
• 22:01
  And it was the car.
• 22:03
  1995, when Loren finally did find it, the garage owner presumably sold it.
• 22:08
  It, it went to an enthusiast who more or less put it back together.
• 22:13
  It was obviously very difficult to source Corvette parts in Sweden and to
• 22:18
  come to any understanding of how the cars were originally put together and
• 22:24
  where you could get new parts for them.
• 22:26
  So the owner presumably did the best that he could and he basically glued
• 22:30
  the shattered body back together.
• 22:32
  Got the car basically back together and I believe on the road again.
• 22:37
  Kept it for some time, he sold it and a subsequent owner decided the
• 22:42
  car needed to be properly restored.
• 22:44
  He took it apart to restore it and never got any further than that.
• 22:48
  And that's the man that Loren Lundberg made contact with.
• 22:51
  It was in Stockholm, Sweden at that point.
• 22:53
  Remarkably, because the car only had a couple of owners after Camerati,
• 22:59
  and because parts were not readily available, nobody threw anything out.
• 23:03
  The guys that owned this car saved everything.
• 23:05
  That is one of the factory Chevrolet Engineering 37 gallon gas tanks.
• 23:11
  Interestingly, you'll see the sort of square protrusion that
• 23:15
  was not part of the original tank.
• 23:17
  Le Mans was full of very strict rules about adding water, adding oil.
• 23:20
  There was a rule about adding gasoline.
• 23:22
  The car had to make a certain minimum number of laps before fuel could be added.
• 23:26
  And those fuel injected Chevy V8s were very thirsty.
• 23:29
  Even with 37 gallons of fuel, the car could not make the minimum number of laps.
• 23:34
  So they actually extended the fuel tanks.
• 23:37
  These parts were still with the car.
• 23:39
  The car still retained its original chassis, its heavy duty brake
• 23:42
  and suspension setup, specially built original KONI racing shocks.
• 23:45
  There was a lot there of value, but it needed a major restoration.
• 23:51
  Here we are, this was 1995.
• 23:53
  It was loaded in a shipping container in Sweden, and then it went to
• 23:57
  Germany, where it was put on a ship bound for Long Beach, California.
• 24:01
  This was 35 years after the car left the United States.
• 24:04
  It was back home.
• 24:06
  Lauren picked the car up in the port in Long Beach and he drove it 400 miles
• 24:11
  across California, across the Mojave Desert, and halfway across Arizona
• 24:14
  to get back to his home in Glendale.
• 24:17
  The car had traveled 5, 500 miles to get to Glendale, Arizona, and Lauren
• 24:23
  proceeded to restore it in his garage.
• 24:26
  Lauren had a lot of work to do and richly deserved owning that car.
• 24:30
  After all the effort that he put in to find it, get it back to the
• 24:33
  United States and then restore it.
• 24:35
  And he was a fixture at Corvette shows for the next almost 30
• 24:39
  years that he owned the car.
• 24:41
  I'll tell you one story about Loren that sort of summarizes him.
• 24:45
  It's like Lucky Kassner and the anti freeze sponsorship
• 24:47
  for his air cooled Porsches.
• 24:48
  He was a wacky guy.
• 24:50
  He was a brilliant guy and super devoted to the car.
• 24:53
  Loren loved that car so much, he had a giant chain.
• 24:57
  It looked like it was holding the boat anchor on the ship that brought
• 25:00
  the car back to the United States.
• 25:02
  At the car shows Overnight, he would chain his Corvette to
• 25:06
  a utility pole or something.
• 25:08
  Because he loved the car so much, he was worried somebody might swipe it.
• 25:11
  That brings us to Dominic Testa.
• 25:13
  Lauren passed away in 2021.
• 25:16
  His family decided to sell the car.
• 25:18
  And its next caretaker is the gentleman sitting here.
• 25:23
  Dominic, I'll let you hear the story from his lips.
• 25:26
  I'm not sure that he knew what he was getting involved with or exactly
• 25:30
  what inspired him to buy that car.
• 25:31
  But I can tell you that he is every bit as devoted and in love with the car and the
• 25:37
  story and the people that it's brought him in contact with as was Lauren Lundberg.
• 25:42
  With that, I will turn it over to Mr.
• 25:45
  Testa to tell us his story.
• 25:52
  You're welcome.
• 25:54
  Thank you very much.
• 25:55
  You know, we talk so much about restoring cars and what's correct
• 25:59
  and, you know, all the specifications and colors and post clamps and fonts
• 26:06
  for race car numbers and all that.
• 26:08
  And to me, the car is so much more than that.
• 26:11
  It's people and the places that it's been to and all the things that I've
• 26:15
  learned since being involved with it.
• 26:17
  It's more than just one of the two cars that finished Le Mans.
• 26:22
  It raced in Havana at a time in 1960, when Castro was just taking over in Cuba.
• 26:27
  The last time that there was an international race in Cuba, Jim Jeffords,
• 26:32
  who was a great race car driver, drove it to great success in Cuba.
• 26:37
  To me, it represents like the American dream.
• 26:39
  You think in 1960 and Kennedy and saying, we're going to make it to the moon and
• 26:43
  back and all of the things that were going on in the world at the time, the
• 26:48
  United States puts together a team of four Corvettes never happened before.
• 26:52
  Sends them over to race at Lamont against Ferrari and Maserati and all
• 26:56
  these other cars and does remarkably well for cars that went there.
• 27:00
  It's one of the two that completed the 24 hours.
• 27:02
  All the other races, to its credit, raced at the Nürburgring.
• 27:05
  The only straight axle Corvette ever to race at the Nürburgring.
• 27:08
  And Sebring, Iron Man Gamble, was his nickname because he
• 27:12
  refused to get out of the car.
• 27:14
  He raced the entire 12 hours.
• 27:16
  Iron Man Gamble, I mean, these people are like cartoon characters.
• 27:20
  They're, they're like, uh, mythical figures in all of our lives.
• 27:25
  Fred Gamble went on to work.
• 27:27
  If you look over in the research center, there's pictures of Fred Gamble with
• 27:31
  Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney, and A.
• 27:34
  J.
• 27:34
  Foyt.
• 27:35
  All these people that were wrapped up in racing at the time.
• 27:38
  Fred Gamble was right there in the middle of it.
• 27:41
  To me, the biggest part of this story is after finding the car, and very frankly, I
• 27:46
  got involved with the car kind of like on a whim, it was for sale, kind of lingering
• 27:50
  around for a little bit, it didn't sell immediately, Lauren had passed away, his
• 27:54
  wife was kind of aggravated with having it in the garage, she wanted it out of there.
• 27:59
  It really was just an accident, getting involved with it.
• 28:01
  But getting to know Fred Gamble, after a couple of years of speaking with him
• 28:06
  on a regular basis, we became friends.
• 28:08
  You know, the stories and places he had been, things he had done, the stuff
• 28:13
  that he had collected over the years.
• 28:15
  It's just amazing.
• 28:16
  Most of his archives are at the research center, but he did hold on to some stuff.
• 28:21
  And every now and again, I would get something in the mail, just
• 28:24
  like these little dribs and drabs of photos and notes and things like that.
• 28:29
  One day I get something in the mail and it's a picture of Craig
• 28:32
  Breedlove standing next to the spirit of America, signed by Fred Gamble.
• 28:37
  You know, he was responsible with Goodyear for developing the tires that the spirit
• 28:41
  of America set the land speed record.
• 28:44
  At the time.
• 28:45
  So, uh, as I got to know him, at the time he was around 90 years old.
• 28:48
  He was living by himself in Honolulu.
• 28:51
  After he sold his skiing business in Colorado, he moved to Honolulu.
• 28:56
  The whole thing was kind of odd to me.
• 28:58
  He was 90 years old, he lived by himself.
• 29:00
  And every now and again, I would get things in the mail from him,
• 29:03
  and I couldn't quite understand it.
• 29:05
  One day, I was talking to him, and I said, Fred, why are you sending me this stuff?
• 29:08
  I mean, he had a son, he had a brother.
• 29:11
  Don't you think this stuff should be with them?
• 29:13
  And he was like, nah, my son really I never really cared too much about what
• 29:18
  I did, you know, all of this stuff.
• 29:20
  You have the car, I would really rather you have it.
• 29:22
  I have an amazing assortment of these little dribs and drabs of stuff
• 29:26
  that didn't make it to the research center archives that he sent me.
• 29:29
  Because he was getting older and I was kind of worried about him, I would
• 29:32
  call him every Saturday afternoon.
• 29:34
  He was in Honolulu, we were here in New York.
• 29:36
  Around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I'd call him up, which was like 10
• 29:39
  o'clock in the morning his time, and we would just chat for a little bit.
• 29:42
  And he would tell me some stories, and every now and again, he'd
• 29:45
  remember something, and say, oh, you know, by the way, um, here's this
• 29:48
  Walt Arfon story, or, uh, whatever.
• 29:51
  One day, I called him on a Saturday afternoon, and he
• 29:55
  didn't pick up the phone.
• 29:56
  And I thought, well, you know, maybe he was busy doing something, or in the
• 30:00
  bathroom, or, you know, who knows what.
• 30:01
  I didn't want to bother him.
• 30:02
  I waited an hour or so, I called him again, and he didn't pick up the phone.
• 30:06
  I said, you know what, I'm gonna wait till tomorrow and try him again tomorrow.
• 30:09
  He had no computer, no cell phone, no, no, he didn't like any of that stuff.
• 30:13
  Just called him on his landline in his apartment.
• 30:15
  Sunday came and went, didn't pick up the phone.
• 30:18
  Like a week goes by.
• 30:19
  And I'm sitting at the kitchen counter with my wife.
• 30:21
  I can't get a hold of Fred.
• 30:23
  I don't know what's going on.
• 30:25
  I tried him again, tried him again, tried him again.
• 30:26
  And she says, well, you know, maybe we should try and call
• 30:29
  somebody to see if he's okay.
• 30:30
  So I ended up calling the Waikiki Police Department, which had a substation right
• 30:35
  around the corner from where he lived, and they were happy enough to send a
• 30:38
  police officer to do a well check on him.
• 30:40
  And it turned out he had slipped and fell and wasn't feeling too good.
• 30:43
  And he was, you know, they found him in his chair and he's like, no, I'm okay.
• 30:47
  And the, actually the police officer handed my cell phone to him and I
• 30:51
  talked to him for a couple of minutes.
• 30:52
  Yeah, that, that was that.
• 30:54
  But that's, to me, what this car is all about.
• 30:57
  You know, we all talk about restoring cars and painting cars
• 31:00
  and all, all this other stuff.
• 31:01
  It's, it's all these people.
• 31:02
  As Richard had said, Loren Lundberg, kind of a wacky guy, kept meticulous records.
• 31:08
  Unbelievably meticulous records in his search to find this car.
• 31:13
  When I went to buy the car, his wife wanted the car out of the
• 31:16
  garage and she said, You know, I have all this other stuff.
• 31:20
  If you don't take it with you and the car, I'm just throwing it out because I've
• 31:24
  been stepping over for the last 20 years.
• 31:27
  I want it out of here.
• 31:29
  So I open up one of the boxes and I look at it, and it's photographs,
• 31:33
  and it's correspondences, and it's telegrams, and it's this and that.
• 31:37
  And I'm like, throw it out.
• 31:39
  With the reliable car carrier, it's out in front of the house, and I'm
• 31:44
  putting stuff in the trunk and throwing things on the front seat, and filling
• 31:48
  up plastic bags with stuff, and putting it under the engine compartment.
• 31:51
  So the car gets home, now I have these piles of papers, no
• 31:55
  rhyme or reason to any of it.
• 31:57
  So what I would do is every day on my way to work, I would just grab a handful of
• 32:01
  the stuff and I would take it with me.
• 32:03
  And I tried to organize it and get it in some sort of date order
• 32:05
  or subject order or whatever.
• 32:07
  Now my office was in Westchester at the time, so I'm flipping through the
• 32:10
  papers one day and there's a letter in his stuff, and in the sidebar of the
• 32:16
  letter was some handwritten notes and a man's name and a telephone number.
• 32:21
  And the man's name was Chuck Schroedel.
• 32:23
  And it had an address, Bedford, New York.
• 32:26
  Well, I was in Valhalla in Westchester.
• 32:28
  And Bedford is probably.
• 32:30
  10 miles away.
• 32:31
  So I'm sitting in my office.
• 32:33
  Chuck is sitting at home.
• 32:34
  I have the car.
• 32:35
  He was there at Le Mans in 1960, and I have a cell phone number, and
• 32:40
  I'm like, this can't even really be.
• 32:42
  What could it hurt?
• 32:43
  Let me call the number.
• 32:44
  I dial it up.
• 32:45
  Two or three rings later, he answers the phone.
• 32:48
  Chuck Schroedel, excuse me, but are you Chuck Schroedel
• 32:53
  that was at Lemans in 1960?
• 32:55
  And he's like, yeah, what's it to you?
• 33:02
  It's the start of a beautiful friendship.
• 33:05
  We've become fast friends.
• 33:07
  I try and travel around with him as much as we can.
• 33:10
  We've done a lot of things together.
• 33:12
  We've talked a lot together.
• 33:13
  And he's told me a lot of the things that he's done.
• 33:16
  Amazing guy, from race car driver, military police officer,
• 33:20
  New York Rangers goalie.
• 33:22
  It's just amazing.
• 33:23
  So, yeah, the car's great, restorations are great, paint jobs
• 33:27
  are really cool, black and white rims on the car, really cool.
• 33:30
  I asked Fred Gamble one day, he was a journalist and wrote lots of articles,
• 33:35
  and every time you'd ask him something, it was like a two hour explanation.
• 33:39
  So I said, Fred, and I was kind of intimidated by him,
• 33:43
  because it was Fred Gamble.
• 33:44
  I said, Fred, what's the deal with the black and white rims
• 33:48
  that you see in all the pictures?
• 33:50
  And he was the Goodyear guy, right?
• 33:51
  Thinking I'm going to get this technical explanation on why it was whatever.
• 33:56
  And he says, that's all we could get our hands on.
• 33:58
  What?
• 33:59
  That's all you could get your hands on?
• 34:02
  And that was it.
• 34:04
  That's all we could get our hands on.
• 34:06
  That's what it's about to me.
• 34:07
  The people that I met, Richard Prince, did a wonderful article in Corvette
• 34:11
  magazine, took awesome pictures.
• 34:14
  We talk Corvette and lots of other stuff all the time.
• 34:17
  Pip and everybody at the research center.
• 34:19
  Chuck, I can't thank you enough for all you do for me every day, every minute.
• 34:23
  My wife for putting up with me.
• 34:26
  It's just been more than I could have ever hoped for.
• 34:29
  Unfortunately, uh, as Richard mentioned, Fred passed away a couple of months ago.
• 34:34
  You were probably the last person to have any kind of in depth
• 34:37
  conversation with when you were doing the research for the article.
• 34:40
  Really happy you got a chance to talk to him.
• 34:42
  He was a incredible character.
• 34:43
  The stuff that legends are made of.
• 34:46
  That's what it's about to me.
• 34:47
  It's about the people.
• 34:48
  Cause great, people are better.
• 34:55
  Thank you, Dominic.
• 34:57
  Next up is, I would have to say the star of our show.
• 35:01
  It's simply amazing that somebody is with us who was at that race in 1960
• 35:06
  and who was an integral part of it.
• 35:08
  As I said, it was a very unlikely sequence of events.
• 35:11
  The whole car story is an unlikely sequence of events.
• 35:14
  And how Chuck Schroeder ended up in Le Mans and a Corvette enthusiast.
• 35:19
  I'll ask Chuck to come up here and tell us a little something of his story,
• 35:23
  how he ended up with the Corvette that he owned, and how he ended up
• 35:27
  at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1960.
• 35:30
  I can tell you, the days are long gone when you can just show up on
• 35:34
  a whim and find yourself, you know, Crewing on one of the entrances there,
• 35:39
  It's not happening anymore, but it was entirely possible in 1960.
• 35:43
  And Chuck Roell is the man who did it,
• 35:52
  first of all, if it wasn't for Lauren Lundberg and Dom Teca there,
• 35:58
  how the, I get emotional.
• 36:00
  He's responsible for that Corvette living and what Lauren
• 36:04
  went through to get that car.
• 36:07
  And then to sit there and watch Dickey Thompson, the dentist, you probably
• 36:10
  knew he was a dentist, to watch him With his white shirt like I wear.
• 36:15
  You know I was in the army.
• 36:17
  I went in in the late 50s.
• 36:18
  You can always tell by the shirt.
• 36:20
  I'm looking at Dickie Thompson in the film.
• 36:23
  And the car is next door!
• 36:26
  The same car that he's talking about is next door.
• 36:29
  It just, it's not possible.
• 36:31
  And then with Fred Gamble.
• 36:33
  I come to find out later.
• 36:35
  I majored in journalism at the University of Florida.
• 36:38
  I went in after the army.
• 36:40
  In 1966.
• 36:42
  1966.
• 36:42
  This is when I got out, and I entered in 1961.
• 36:45
  I was a journalism major, as was Fred.
• 36:48
  And I didn't really put this together.
• 36:50
  There was no reason to put this together.
• 36:52
  But I remember some of my professors saying, you know, geez, eight
• 36:56
  years ago, there was another guy that went through school here.
• 36:59
  And he used to write about the same things you write about.
• 37:03
  You know, drafting at Daytona.
• 37:05
  Things like that having to do with cars.
• 37:07
  And then I come to find out, as we progress, he also went
• 37:11
  to the University of Florida.
• 37:12
  As did I.
• 37:13
  It's just very, very hard to believe.
• 37:16
  How did I get involved with Corvettes?
• 37:18
  I'm a Corvette man.
• 37:19
  We got a bunch of Corvette people here.
• 37:21
  As an MP in Orléans, France.
• 37:23
  Orléans is the proper way you pronounce it.
• 37:26
  I pulled a Lieutenant Colonel over in the car.
• 37:29
  I pulled the Colonel over and I walked up to the window of the car, you know, and
• 37:33
  I, and I saluted him and he looked at me.
• 37:35
  He said, what did I do?
• 37:36
  What did I do?
• 37:37
  I say, Colonel, you didn't do anything.
• 37:39
  I want to know if you're interested in selling the car.
• 37:44
  And he looked at me and he said, you know, it's funny you say that.
• 37:47
  I just remarried and I inherited two kids.
• 37:51
  And he says, you can see there's one seat here.
• 37:54
  Yes, I will sell you the car.
• 37:56
  Three weeks later, I owned the car in France, a 56 Corvette, and it came
• 38:04
  from his brother and it was loaded.
• 38:07
  It had all the right stuff.
• 38:09
  It was a three speed.
• 38:10
  There was no such thing as, you know, as a four speed in the 56.
• 38:14
  So I got the car in heaven because I was a gearhead in high school, as we all are.
• 38:19
  Every one of you is a gearhead.
• 38:20
  My gearhead part was motorcycles, and when I went to Europe, I had the idea.
• 38:26
  of being a motorcycle champion racer.
• 38:28
  So the time goes by and I had been in the hospital.
• 38:32
  And by the way, the hospital that I was at was in Orleans, France.
• 38:36
  One of the things on our post was the hospital at La Chapelle.
• 38:40
  And we had to guard that hospital.
• 38:41
  We had other posts.
• 38:42
  I was at Comzee headquarters.
• 38:44
  It turns out that Walt Hansken had a very bad accident at Le Mans testing.
• 38:49
  They airlifted him.
• 38:51
  To my hospital through the same gates and everything.
• 38:55
  So a lot of these things are starting to come together.
• 38:58
  I got sick and I ended up in that hospital 16 straight days on my
• 39:03
  back with mono and a closed throat.
• 39:06
  I woke up on the 17th day.
• 39:07
  I was virtually perfect.
• 39:09
  And the doctor said that's what's going to happen.
• 39:12
  I got two weeks leave out of this.
• 39:14
  And I was hoping that I would be able to go to Le Mans, but I was
• 39:18
  on my back for the 59 Le Mans.
• 39:21
  So time goes by, the following April comes up, and I said, I know
• 39:25
  there's a testing day at Le Mans.
• 39:27
  So I went to the testing day.
• 39:29
  I had my Corvette.
• 39:30
  And you can go anywhere in France in those years, in a 56 Corvette,
• 39:34
  because you must be somebody.
• 39:36
  You have to.
• 39:38
  So I got to Le Mans.
• 39:40
  The first person I run into is Briggs Cunningham.
• 39:43
  And he's there doing that testing.
• 39:44
  We hit it off.
• 39:45
  It was very nice.
• 39:46
  You know, I was in the military.
• 39:48
  I'm young.
• 39:48
  I'm like 21 years old, 22 years old.
• 39:51
  And he said to one of his mechanics, you know, if we have a problem
• 39:54
  with the engines, here's the engine that we can use in this Corvette.
• 39:58
  And the mechanic says, Briggs, it's a 265.
• 40:01
  You can't put that in our Corvette.
• 40:03
  So that was my first inkling of Le Mans.
• 40:06
  I had known about Le Mans.
• 40:08
  And I was so psyched, I couldn't believe that I was there.
• 40:12
  So time goes by, June comes up, and I'm going to Le Mans with my Corvette.
• 40:18
  And at that point is when I hooked up with the Camerati Corvette.
• 40:22
  And all the cars were together, as you know.
• 40:24
  The Cunningham Corvette, in that garage, you saw that one picture.
• 40:27
  They weren't really showing the Camerati car, but it was there.
• 40:30
  So I'm a gopher.
• 40:31
  I'm not a mechanic.
• 40:32
  I am a gopher.
• 40:33
  I really am so un celebrity, it's unbelievable.
• 40:37
  The only celebrity part that I have is, I'm the only living person who sat
• 40:44
  in that car and drove it at Le Mans.
• 40:46
  Be it only in reverse and first.
• 40:50
  But I did drive it.
• 40:52
  So, you know, because they saw I had the Corvette, so I must
• 40:56
  know what I'm doing, right?
• 40:57
  So, hop in the car, just back it up.
• 40:59
  We've got to do this, we've got to do that.
• 41:00
  And pull it up.
• 41:01
  So I did drive the car.
• 41:04
  So they said, do you want to pit?
• 41:05
  At the end of the Molson Street, we all know the Molson Street's
• 41:08
  the longest straightaway, a sharp right hand turn where every car
• 41:12
  was required to have a shovel.
• 41:14
  If you missed the turn, you'd end up in the stand bank.
• 41:16
  And so the birdcage Maseratis, And the Corvette would be signaled at
• 41:21
  the end of the Mulsanne Street.
• 41:22
  The cars would come around the corner.
• 41:24
  You would hold out the signs, etc.
• 41:26
  The whole 24 hours.
• 41:27
  It rained early.
• 41:28
  And that was at that age.
• 41:30
  What do you care?
• 41:30
  You're in the army.
• 41:31
  It rains.
• 41:31
  So we go through the 24 hours.
• 41:34
  And I really didn't know quite what was happening.
• 41:37
  You couldn't get near the place.
• 41:39
  So I had my car, we had the Ford station wagon, so it was kind of time to go home,
• 41:45
  and that was my big experience at Le Mans.
• 41:48
  Well, life goes on.
• 41:49
  I went to work, I got a job with IBM, I graduated from the University of
• 41:53
  Florida, and in 1995, the phone rings, and I pick it up, Chuck Schroeder.
• 41:58
  He says, Are you the Chuck Schroeder that was at Rouen's France?
• 42:01
  I said, Yes, who is this?
• 42:03
  It was Loren.
• 42:05
  He says, I have that Corvette.
• 42:06
  Well, I didn't know what had happened to it.
• 42:09
  There's no way.
• 42:10
  He explained what had happened, and he says, Can you give
• 42:12
  me some tips on the car?
• 42:14
  And I really couldn't.
• 42:15
  I just had such vague memories.
• 42:17
  I remember we put the lights on the door to light up the number.
• 42:21
  Chuck, go see if you can find some wire from Cunningham.
• 42:24
  See if you can get this.
• 42:25
  So I was a total gopher.
• 42:27
  But there I was with these Corvettes and my baby sitting outside, so
• 42:31
  that really opened the doors for me.
• 42:33
  I didn't add much to the table, but I have that letter that he wrote me, which
• 42:37
  Dom has, explaining, can you answer these questions, which I really couldn't do.
• 42:42
  So I only talked to him twice, and I always wondered, I said, I wonder whatever
• 42:45
  happened over this, get into 2020, etc.
• 42:48
  The years go by, kind of lost contract of what had happened.
• 42:52
  Until the phone rings again, you know, deja vu.
• 42:56
  I pick up the phone, Chuck Schroedel.
• 42:58
  He says, are you the Chuck Schroedel?
• 43:01
  You can't make it up.
• 43:03
  And it was Dom.
• 43:04
  He says, well, I have the car.
• 43:06
  You got to be kidding.
• 43:07
  So he explained what had happened.
• 43:09
  So he says, would you like to do a couple of shows?
• 43:11
  One of the first shows was in Armonk.
• 43:13
  I live in Bedford.
• 43:15
  It's like six, seven.
• 43:16
  It's actually 7.
• 43:17
  5 miles from Bedford to Armonk.
• 43:19
  That's where IBM corporate headquarters is.
• 43:21
  And I was working in Irma.
• 43:23
  I said, geez, I'd love to do it.
• 43:24
  So he says, well, I've got all these pictures and everything.
• 43:27
  At the show, at one of the office buildings, it's a Corvette Club meeting.
• 43:32
  And there's Corvettes everywhere.
• 43:34
  And Dom has got the Corvette there.
• 43:36
  He's got a picture of me sitting in the car.
• 43:39
  We duplicated the picture.
• 43:41
  And we had the picture taken 65 years later.
• 43:45
  You know, I'm like, come on.
• 43:47
  So, we did the show together, and we struck up a friendship.
• 43:51
  We had a lot in common.
• 43:53
  What I brought to the table was, yes, I'm the last living soul
• 43:58
  that actually drove the car alone.
• 44:00
  That's an accomplishment in and of itself.
• 44:02
  Oh, and I actually could shift.
• 44:06
  One thing you might find kind of interesting, there's a
• 44:09
  picture of me with the Rangers.
• 44:10
  I got very involved with auto racing myself.
• 44:13
  And I race Brabham's, et cetera.
• 44:16
  And I had Springdale racing and we had the March dealership and
• 44:19
  we were so far over our head.
• 44:21
  It was unbelievable.
• 44:22
  My crew chief with our first Lotus, I had a Lotus 20.
• 44:26
  We were only in business for about two years.
• 44:28
  Fred Opert.
• 44:29
  Charlie Gibson, these are all people, he was the first
• 44:32
  person that we sold a March to.
• 44:34
  Everything was starting to come around, and this guy gets me
• 44:38
  involved with the past years.
• 44:40
  So now I'm starting to rethink, and I do have pictures.
• 44:44
  German Phillips plastic camera.
• 44:46
  I hooked up with Lance Reventlow at Rems France, I met Jill Sage.
• 44:50
  Oh, this is a great life.
• 44:54
  And he's opening up everything for me.
• 44:56
  And I'm going through these pictures and I said, Oh my God, he'd love to see these.
• 45:00
  And here's the birdcage at Le Mans.
• 45:02
  It was an unbelievable experience, which I'm still experiencing.
• 45:06
  Well, I got to race here.
• 45:08
  My last race was in 1987 in a cup race, because my wife at that time
• 45:14
  was a merchandising manager for us.
• 45:16
  Tobacco skull bandit.
• 45:18
  She had to register all the products to sell the licensing fees.
• 45:23
  And I was interested in buses.
• 45:25
  And I started a little bus company.
• 45:27
  And the chairman of the board of U.
• 45:29
  S.
• 45:30
  Tobacco said to Debbie, Do you think Chuck could put together
• 45:32
  a bus trip to the Poconos?
• 45:34
  And we'll take U.
• 45:35
  S.
• 45:35
  Tobacco to see our Skull Bandit.
• 45:37
  Debbie comes to me and says, You're not going to believe what Lou wants to do.
• 45:40
  I said, I could do that.
• 45:41
  I have a lot of people that know buses.
• 45:43
  So I had my restored 1964 Greyhound.
• 45:48
  True.
• 45:48
  35 foot Greyhound.
• 45:50
  And I got some of my friends with buses.
• 45:52
  We show up in Greenwich, Connecticut at corporate headquarters.
• 45:55
  Everybody's getting on.
• 45:57
  And I was doing fine until I got to the track and I started hearing the cars.
• 46:03
  I was bit again.
• 46:04
  So I started to get back into racing.
• 46:07
  I went to the Buck Baker.
• 46:08
  Well, I kind of joined forces, became partners with him for about three years.
• 46:12
  We got very involved with the Skull Band.
• 46:14
  Oh, I even dipped for a while.
• 46:18
  My cuff, right?
• 46:20
  And I said, I'm not going to sit on the back porch of a house in a rocking
• 46:24
  chair and say I should have done that.
• 46:26
  After the Buckbaker driving school, of which Jeff Gordon
• 46:29
  showed up shortly thereafter.
• 46:31
  So I went to the school, did some ARCA races, and the last race was in August.
• 46:36
  In the cup race, Rusty Wallace won the race.
• 46:39
  And I started last, but guess where I finished?
• 46:42
  Glass.
• 46:42
  It was an experience, and I did it.
• 46:49
  I got out of the car, got into my Pontiac station wagon, and drove
• 46:53
  home, and do you think I was high?
• 46:56
  I, I had done it, and it was over.
• 46:58
  In between there, the other fantasy was hockey, and I was the practice
• 47:03
  goalie for the New York Rangers from 1968, 1969, up until 82.
• 47:09
  Have we heard of Eddie Jockaman, Jill Villamere?
• 47:12
  I'm in the locker room, they're putting their pads on.
• 47:17
  I'm actually shaking.
• 47:19
  So I did that for 11 years, while I was with IBM, and IBM loved it.
• 47:23
  Oh my god.
• 47:24
  You've got to come see a presentation that Chuck's putting on to the customers.
• 47:28
  He's a practice goalie, by the way, with the Rangers.
• 47:31
  So, and I used to bring in goalie sticks from Jockaman and give them away.
• 47:36
  So anyway, listen, I'm going on and on and on.
• 47:38
  I don't know if anybody has a question, but that's kind of where we, let me,
• 47:42
  we will invite questions in the end.
• 47:44
  We have one more surprise for you.
• 47:46
  First of all, let me just thank Chuck for being here with us.
• 47:58
  One more superstar in the world of Corvettes and Corvette racing.
• 48:02
  We are very privileged to have here with us tonight.
• 48:06
  Laura Clouser.
• 48:07
  Laura is the General Motors program manager for all of GM's
• 48:11
  sports car racing programs.
• 48:12
  So she is the program manager for both Corvette racing and Cadillac racing.
• 48:16
  And she was kind enough to carve out a little bit of time from a very busy
• 48:20
  weekend and a very busy month and a very busy year and a very busy life.
• 48:25
  She was in Le Mans for a little more than two weeks.
• 48:28
  And was only home for a very short period of time before coming to Watkins Glen.
• 48:33
  And after this, she's off to the next adventure.
• 48:36
  She is the only person I know who travels more than I do.
• 48:39
  She is very rarely home, so it's really, really kind of her to give
• 48:42
  us a little bit of her time tonight.
• 48:55
  I really don't know how I follow something like this.
• 48:57
  This is impressive.
• 48:58
  We are not going to talk about how old I was or not.
• 49:01
  Oh, you weren't even a gleam in your pappy's eye.
• 49:05
  My parents might not have even been alive.
• 49:06
  I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
• 49:11
  Although they were high school sweethearts.
• 49:13
  So, uh, I was relatively early on in their relationship with marriage.
• 49:17
  So.
• 49:18
  Very nice to see all of you.
• 49:19
  Thank you for being here.
• 49:20
  Thank you for celebrating the wonderful thing that is Corvette.
• 49:22
  Whether it's in the racing form or the production form, we truly do have the
• 49:26
  best fans and customers in the world for Corvette Racing and Corvette, the brand.
• 49:31
  In fact, getting to know all the other OEs that we race against and,
• 49:34
  uh, developing good friendships and relationships with them.
• 49:36
  They are truly jealous of what we have in Corvette, which is quite an honor for us,
• 49:41
  especially representing General Motors up here, very much an honor for the company.
• 49:44
  So thank you all of you for the part that you play.
• 49:47
  From that standpoint.
• 49:48
  So here we are at Watkins Glen.
• 49:50
  We've got our brand new GT3 car that launched this year.
• 49:54
  Qualifying went well.
• 49:56
  So it's going to be quite a very busy race.
• 49:59
  The grid is very full, which means that it's been challenging to get
• 50:03
  a free lap during practice session.
• 50:05
  Qualifying was nice to finally see what are the cars actually capable
• 50:08
  of because we really couldn't assess that with the practices.
• 50:11
  But now we're going to get back into everyone's on track at the same time.
• 50:14
  And a lot of tomorrow is going to be staying out of trouble,
• 50:17
  which sometimes you just need a little bit of luck in racing.
• 50:19
  And that's how you can be successful.
• 50:21
  We're looking forward to that.
• 50:23
  But You said you wanted to wait until questions at the
• 50:25
  end, or do you want to open up?
• 50:27
  Welcome to, yeah.
• 50:28
  Instead of me rambling on, I'd rather just know what do you guys want to
• 50:31
  know, and I can answer your questions.
• 50:32
  That's easier for me.
• 50:35
  I have a question.
• 50:35
  Yes, Richard, what Can you just briefly explain to people where Corvettes are
• 50:41
  racing, who's racing them this year?
• 50:43
  Because most of the fans, even the really devoted fans, are so used to
• 50:47
  one full factory program raced for 20 plus years, and now I find that
• 50:53
  people are oftentimes a little bit confused about who's racing where.
• 50:58
  That's a fair point.
• 50:58
  Yes, we were doing the same thing in Corvette racing for over 20
• 51:02
  years, and then we changed it.
• 51:04
  Dun, dun, dun.
• 51:05
  It's been fun.
• 51:06
  So what has happened in the history behind that?
• 51:08
  We have always been in a class that was factory GT racing.
• 51:12
  That was an offering that was available in Imsa and then also over at Lamar.
• 51:16
  And we've been taking advantage of that.
• 51:18
  Well, that offering has gone away.
• 51:20
  So at the end of the GTLM class in IMSA, and then at the end of the
• 51:23
  GTE class at WEC slash LMA, which was last year, was the last year for
• 51:28
  that, the world of GT has pivoted to the GT3 platform for GT racing.
• 51:35
  How GT3 works is it is a customer racing based platform.
• 51:38
  Meaning that per regulations, anyone who makes a GT three car has to build at
• 51:43
  least 20 of them in the first two years of the homologation for the race car.
• 51:48
  And the intent in the spirit of the rules are that you're going to sell
• 51:50
  those cars and they are going to race wherever GT three cars could race.
• 51:55
  When we got the news that that's what IMSA was going to be changing to, and
• 51:59
  that's what the WECC was going to be changing to, we said, okay, this is going
• 52:02
  to be a really cool opportunity for us to expand the Corvette racing family, to put
• 52:07
  Corvettes in series that really we had never been able to do in the past because
• 52:11
  they weren't eligible to race, and to meet new teams out there and build new
• 52:16
  relationships with different entities.
• 52:18
  So what we are doing this year, IMSA is one of the few GT three series that still
• 52:23
  allows you to have a full pro lineup.
• 52:25
  So we have Pratt Miller running our pro cars in IMSA.
• 52:29
  And then we have an amateur team that races in GTD, which is A.
• 52:34
  W.
• 52:34
  A.
• 52:35
  They have a single car entry right now running with gory Fedani being
• 52:38
  the bronze driver that is Behind the wheel of that car, complimented with a
• 52:43
  silver and a gold driver for his lineup.
• 52:46
  And then across the pond, the team that was just racing at Le Mans
• 52:51
  races in the WEC is called TF Sport.
• 52:53
  They are located in the U.
• 52:54
  K.
• 52:54
  So they're a British team.
• 52:56
  They have always been a fierce competitor over at Le Mans.
• 52:59
  They were running Aston Martins prior to switching to Corvette.
• 53:02
  We have been very pleased with the with how well they're doing.
• 53:05
  We've learned a lot through this customer racing experience, and we've definitely
• 53:08
  learned how we can help get everyone up to speed with different ways and then
• 53:13
  things that you have to let the team do on their own because they are a customer.
• 53:16
  So after we made it through Lamar this year, I'd say we have quite a to do
• 53:20
  list of how to get better for next year.
• 53:22
  But the team has been right there with us hand in hand, which is
• 53:24
  exciting for us to keep growing there.
• 53:26
  And then we have a team D.
• 53:28
  X.
• 53:28
  D.
• 53:29
  T.
• 53:29
  That races to Corvettes in S.
• 53:31
  R.
• 53:31
  O.
• 53:31
  North America.
• 53:32
  So they come to track similar to the ones that M.
• 53:35
  S.
• 53:35
  A.
• 53:35
  Races at.
• 53:36
  They're a sprint racing series, though, so their longest race is 60
• 53:38
  minutes, and they actually accomplished the first win for the platform.
• 53:43
  So in Coda, they won not only race one, but race two.
• 53:45
  to because they do double header weekends with the Corvette.
• 53:48
  So that was super exciting.
• 53:50
  That's just the start.
• 53:51
  We're going to be growing.
• 53:52
  In fact, Richard mentioned that I'm not in the country much longer after this race.
• 53:56
  On Tuesday, Christie Bagney, who's the GT three program manager and I get on
• 54:00
  the plane and head over to Belgium.
• 54:02
  We're gonna be at the spot 24 race.
• 54:04
  We will not have a Corvette in the race, but we will be interfacing with all the
• 54:07
  teams over there as well as the other always that we race against in GT three.
• 54:11
  And the thought is to continue to network and relationships and
• 54:14
  figure out where we're going to place the next handful of cars.
• 54:17
  I think we're building number 12 right now, or something along those lines.
• 54:21
  Super exciting to see where we're going to go.
• 54:23
  We have potentials in Europe, we have potentials in Asia, and then we
• 54:26
  can always grow grids here in the U.
• 54:28
  S.
• 54:28
  as well between SRO and IMSA.
• 54:30
  More Corvettes will be popping up.
• 54:32
  I typically write Richard my technical questions.
• 54:36
  Sometimes he answers, sometimes he doesn't.
• 54:40
  I only answer when I know the answer.
• 54:43
  Usually they wind up in a magazine.
• 54:44
  So the technical question I have, I'm the Corvette Racing
• 54:47
  Reporter for two Corvette clubs.
• 54:49
  We've been talking with some of the issues that have transpired.
• 54:53
  Clarify for us.
• 54:54
  The Z06 engine and all of the accessory and all the auxiliary parts are a
• 54:59
  carryover from prior GT3 R racing.
• 55:04
  Starter motors, alternators, clutches, and yet we see some
• 55:09
  issues with those basic parts.
• 55:11
  In the current car, and a lot of us are saying, Why are we having problems
• 55:15
  with these when we think that these are carry over parts from prior years?
• 55:22
  And why are we having issues?
• 55:23
  Okay, I think I can tackle this.
• 55:25
  We're gonna back up a second.
• 55:26
  The race car that we launched in 2020.
• 55:29
  The C eight R was not production spec.
• 55:32
  So we use the C8R as the very first LT6 form of the engine to start working with
• 55:38
  it before you knew about the Z06 that came a couple years later, which actually it
• 55:43
  was very challenging in the racing aspect.
• 55:45
  Some of the timing got delayed due to COVID and all those type of
• 55:48
  things, but we had to race the race car and not really talk about the
• 55:51
  engine because we didn't want to give anything away on the production
• 55:54
  side for, I think, almost two years.
• 55:57
  Before we were allowed to actually start speaking about it.
• 55:59
  That's why you never saw any pictures of the engine or the car missing
• 56:03
  pieces that you could see the engine.
• 56:05
  That was all something that we had to be extremely careful about.
• 56:08
  So the engine that was in the C8R was the first go at it.
• 56:11
  It was purpose built for that race car.
• 56:14
  And then we took those lessons and learnings and we brought that back to
• 56:17
  production so that they can make the production version of the LT6 even better.
• 56:21
  Full circle, we launched the GT3 car here this year.
• 56:25
  The engine that is in the GT3 car is about 90 percent production components,
• 56:30
  so it is almost identical to the engine that is in any one C8 Z06, that
• 56:35
  happens to be lucky enough to have one.
• 56:37
  What is different is we've packaged it a little bit lower in the race car, so
• 56:40
  we made some modifications to the sump underneath so that it can sit lower
• 56:44
  in the car, but everything above is all production that you see in there.
• 56:48
  Parts like the alternator and some of those accessory drives are not production,
• 56:52
  they are built for the race car, and the reason being is the packaging to meet
• 56:56
  the rules and regulations for the GT3 class, we had to move some stuff around.
• 57:00
  The rear node in the back of the car is unique to the race car.
• 57:03
  The frame, that the car is built around comes from Bowling Green.
• 57:06
  So that is just like the Corvettes that you guys own and love.
• 57:09
  The cage obviously that we build in is unique to the race car.
• 57:12
  And then the body panels, we use the production body panels as the
• 57:17
  starting point and inspiration, but they're made out of carbon.
• 57:20
  So they are so So we have kind of a mix of some of the production,
• 57:25
  but the main components that are production are the frame, and then
• 57:28
  the engine itself, and then the rest of it are built around racing.
• 57:31
  Now, some of the parts that we're using in the C8 GT3 were very similar to what
• 57:38
  we ran in C8R, so we have been working between the two and understanding
• 57:41
  the lessons that we could carry over.
• 57:43
  We did still find some unique things.
• 57:45
  It is no secret that the launch of the car in Daytona for the GT3 was a little rough.
• 57:49
  But for those with short memories, when we launched the C8R in 2020,
• 57:52
  that Daytona was a little rough, too.
• 57:54
  So, it's kind of a symptom of a brand new race car.
• 57:57
  Not making excuses, but there is no GT3 car so far that has launched without
• 58:01
  problems for the first couple races.
• 58:02
  And a lot of it is IMSA starts us off at the Super Bowl.
• 58:05
  We literally have the 24 hour race is the very first race for the car, which
• 58:08
  is challenging in any aspect, but what has been really inspiring and a huge
• 58:14
  amount of credit goes to Christie, the GM team that supports her, the Pratt and
• 58:18
  Miller team that supports the program.
• 58:20
  If you look at what happened in Daytona and compare it to what we just had in Le
• 58:24
  Mans, we had a couple things in Le Mans we were working on, but the car's finished.
• 58:27
  They both took the checker.
• 58:29
  It was such a huge step forward.
• 58:31
  We're very excited, you know, that we feel like we've got our
• 58:33
  arms around a lot of the things we were dealing with back in Daytona.
• 58:36
  And we've done a lot of hardening of the car and made it stronger.
• 58:39
  The alternator has been definitely a sticking point.
• 58:41
  We've done a little bit of work too, but we're getting there.
• 58:43
  And rock on wood, it was not an alternator failure at Le Mans.
• 58:46
  So that was super exciting.
• 58:48
  Thank you very much.
• 58:49
  Of course.
• 58:50
  The Corvette Challenge was such a big thing.
• 58:53
  Will that ever come back in the world of racing and marketing?
• 58:57
  You know it's funny, so I didn't even know we did a Corvette Challenge
• 59:01
  until I started coming to corrals in these things and everyone keeps
• 59:03
  bringing up the Corvette Challenge.
• 59:05
  So I appreciate that you guys all were excited about it.
• 59:08
  But I kid, we have looked at stuff along those lines.
• 59:11
  I will say this.
• 59:12
  We really need to get a full arm around grasp of what we're doing
• 59:16
  with this GT three program and how we support our customers before
• 59:19
  we go chasing something like that.
• 59:21
  What we don't want to do is bite off more than we can chew.
• 59:23
  And we leave people that are buying these cars out to dry because we just
• 59:27
  don't have the manpower or the support to make sure that everyone's successful.
• 59:31
  So it's actually why we have released the cars so soon.
• 59:34
  Slowly in the grand scheme of things and why you only see seven
• 59:37
  race cars now running around the world versus doing all 20 at once.
• 59:42
  We wanted to step into this so that we left our customers in a situation
• 59:46
  where when they needed something, they could pick up the phone and
• 59:48
  call and get us and we weren't busy chasing somebody else's problem.
• 59:51
  So I'd say that it's going to take us probably a couple of years to
• 59:54
  really feel like we've got our feet on the ground solid and we've got
• 59:57
  a GT three program that is healthy.
• 59:59
  The customers have what they need, that we're able to grow at the rate
• 1:00:02
  we want to grow, and then we could consider something along those lines.
• 1:00:05
  Are you satisfied with where the standing is so far with the GT3 program,
• 1:00:10
  what's the progress from where you kind of expect it to be at this point?
• 1:00:14
  That'd be my first question.
• 1:00:15
  I have a second question, which is, big news today, we're running,
• 1:00:19
  meeting, headline, uh, meeting, uh, is there any, where is this going to
• 1:00:26
  take headline, driver, another team?
• 1:00:29
  Mhm.
• 1:00:32
  We'll do the Cadillac one first because it's easy.
• 1:00:34
  We're not ready to talk about drivers for next year yet.
• 1:00:36
  So for the Corvette question, I would say that when we were getting ourselves ready
• 1:00:42
  to go to Daytona this year, we knew that it was not going to be perfect again.
• 1:00:46
  If you look back at history, there is no such thing as a perfect launch.
• 1:00:49
  It was all going to be about how we reacted to everything that we dealt with.
• 1:00:55
  Now, was the list a little bit longer than we were hoping for at Daytona?
• 1:00:59
  Yeah, it was.
• 1:01:00
  But we very quickly formed the SWAT team, if you will, that's been
• 1:01:05
  chasing down every issue that came up.
• 1:01:07
  Not one issue has been brushed under the rug.
• 1:01:09
  They are all tracked.
• 1:01:10
  They are all scanned.
• 1:01:11
  considering and looking how we progress from Daytona being the first race.
• 1:01:14
  And as we went race by race, Christy has a great chart that I love, that she
• 1:01:18
  lists out each of the issues that we had, and then she tracks it race by race.
• 1:01:22
  And you can see red was, we have this issue, yellow was, we got a plan,
• 1:01:27
  we're getting there, green was, solved.
• 1:01:29
  And you can watch the Reds decrease and the green increase.
• 1:01:33
  I mean, that, frankly, is why we were able to do what we did at Lamont finished
• 1:01:36
  with both cars and not have all the issues that we saw back at Daytona.
• 1:01:40
  So I am very, very proud of the work that everyone's done.
• 1:01:43
  And I'd say at this point, we had had Lamont similar to Daytona.
• 1:01:46
  That would have been a big deal and a problem.
• 1:01:48
  But since we did not, we see like, okay, we were able to get Our hands
• 1:01:52
  around all of this, and I think it's a bright future for GT3 and Corvette.
• 1:01:56
  But at the start of the season, there were two cars in GTE and now there's only one.
• 1:02:01
  What is happening in this second car?
• 1:02:02
  Are you not contractually obligated to be racing that car
• 1:02:06
  and doing something with it?
• 1:02:07
  This is the fun part of customer racing.
• 1:02:10
  This is why factory racing, in some ways, is a lot easier, because
• 1:02:15
  you have a lot more control.
• 1:02:16
  When you Own the budget for the whole thing.
• 1:02:19
  And you, you know, are picking your team, you're picking drivers,
• 1:02:21
  you're picking all the things along that with customer racing.
• 1:02:24
  We are at the mercy of what the customer is going to do.
• 1:02:28
  We are very selective about what teams we're working with, and
• 1:02:32
  we try to vet as much as we can.
• 1:02:34
  But at the end of the day, if a driver and in the case of a W.
• 1:02:37
  A.
• 1:02:37
  Each of the bronze drivers own those vehicles.
• 1:02:40
  If he decides he doesn't want to do this anymore for whatever his
• 1:02:44
  reasons, There's nothing we can do to tell him otherwise, right?
• 1:02:48
  It's his money.
• 1:02:48
  He can choose to make that decision.
• 1:02:50
  And since he owns the car, it's his car, where it's going to
• 1:02:53
  land or who's going to buy it.
• 1:02:55
  We're not sure.
• 1:02:56
  We're kind of waiting to see like the rest of the world, uh, to find out at
• 1:03:00
  this moment in time, we're not entirely sure where it is, but it's stored
• 1:03:03
  somewhere, probably collecting dust.
• 1:03:05
  And as he's trying to work out where he's going to move it along, but I'd say
• 1:03:08
  that this has been probably the biggest lesson for our leadership to learn.
• 1:03:12
  And then for us too, is that you can't control everything and that sometimes
• 1:03:15
  you don't, again, you have to just react or you have to roll with the punches
• 1:03:18
  and make sure that you set up who you have for success and try to convince
• 1:03:22
  them to be good partners and show them the benefit of being good partners.
• 1:03:25
  The more that you lean in to letting us be a partners, the more we can provide you
• 1:03:29
  with support and help you be successful.
• 1:03:32
  I actually have a question for Chuck.
• 1:03:34
  What you've got to do is quite inaccessible today.
• 1:03:37
  Where do you think racing is really going, and how is it
• 1:03:42
  getting to see it now, I guess?
• 1:03:44
  The big complaint that I have, because I was out of racing for a while, is this
• 1:03:48
  IMSA series was very confusing to me.
• 1:03:51
  I'll be the first to tell you.
• 1:03:52
  I'm trying to read the different classes.
• 1:03:54
  Dom and I are struggling because it is really relatively new
• 1:03:58
  because this Corvette deal with Dom got me back into it.
• 1:04:01
  I've always been a fan of Formula One.
• 1:04:04
  I don't like to telecast.
• 1:04:05
  They don't do a thing for me talking about non issues and I want to
• 1:04:10
  learn more about Formula One, but it's almost after the opening lap.
• 1:04:14
  It's a non event.
• 1:04:15
  I'd like to see the media and I'd like to see Chevrolet, etc.
• 1:04:20
  Try to reach out and put it in a terms that everybody understands.
• 1:04:25
  I mean, why does it have to be so confusing?
• 1:04:28
  And I thought I understood some of it.
• 1:04:30
  So that would be racing to me.
• 1:04:33
  I mean, I look at a guy like Kyle Larson.
• 1:04:35
  He is not human, I can tell you right now.
• 1:04:37
  Eight years ago, seven years ago, in the sprint cars, I saw him and I told
• 1:04:41
  Joanne, I said, this guy is ridiculous.
• 1:04:44
  And it turns out he is ridiculous.
• 1:04:46
  The guy can drive anything.
• 1:04:48
  You've got to be kidding.
• 1:04:49
  He does it with a sprint car, a midget, it doesn't matter.
• 1:04:53
  That was fun, I really understood that.
• 1:04:56
  I could see the competition, and I understood totally what was going on.
• 1:05:00
  But honestly, I'm I was a little lost today.
• 1:05:03
  Let's see.
• 1:05:04
  They have the white numbers and the yellow numbers.
• 1:05:06
  This is the JV team and tomorrow is the varsity.
• 1:05:10
  I mean, that's kind of where I was.
• 1:05:12
  So you asked me where is racing going?
• 1:05:14
  It's not going down.
• 1:05:16
  NASCAR is having some problems.
• 1:05:18
  There's no question.
• 1:05:18
  I was very involved with it with the skull bandit and the names that we all know.
• 1:05:23
  Bobby Allison.
• 1:05:24
  Those are names that we can relate to.
• 1:05:26
  But I don't know if everybody's relating to it as much.
• 1:05:29
  And we're trying, like IBM, Hey, the customer's right.
• 1:05:34
  There's a culture.
• 1:05:35
  So let's keep the culture there.
• 1:05:37
  Let's get the customer.
• 1:05:38
  You've got to listen to them.
• 1:05:40
  What do they want to see?
• 1:05:41
  I'm going on, and I apologize.
• 1:05:43
  Hopefully that helped.
• 1:05:44
  No, it didn't.
• 1:05:51
  I also have a question for Chuck and Dom, and maybe also Richard.
• 1:05:56
  Obviously, everything that's happened with the 1960 Corvette is really
• 1:06:01
  incredible and so full of history.
• 1:06:04
  And you guys tell it in a really fascinating and incredible way.
• 1:06:08
  Simultaneously, obviously, there's so much of it there.
• 1:06:11
  And I guess what I kind of want to know is, do you ever forget anything?
• 1:06:15
  being told in a long format, sort of physical way, do you ever
• 1:06:19
  foresee it becoming like a book?
• 1:06:21
  Dominic has grand visions and no limits, has already asked me
• 1:06:26
  repeatedly to write a book, and I keep encouraging him to write a book.
• 1:06:31
  Yeah, it's, it's book worthy because of the people, and we
• 1:06:33
  only really scratch the surface.
• 1:06:35
  You could write a book about Lloyd Lucky Kastner, one of the epic
• 1:06:38
  conmen slash geniuses of racing in American on the international stage.
• 1:06:43
  It's worthy of it.
• 1:06:44
  The problem for me, personally, is books have to be a labor of love.
• 1:06:47
  Car books are not a good way to earn a living.
• 1:06:49
  I'm already cramming three lifetimes into the one lifetime that I have
• 1:06:53
  between my devotion to I do the photography for General Motors.
• 1:06:57
  I do production car photography for GM and other car companies.
• 1:07:03
  Even though the editorial world has shrunk dramatically just in the last
• 1:07:07
  few years, I'm still writing three or four articles every month, and I write a
• 1:07:11
  column every month, and I have a family.
• 1:07:13
  To attend to, and my beloved dogs to attend to, and the car hobby.
• 1:07:18
  Every time I go away on a long trip, my wife or my son brings
• 1:07:21
  another project car home.
• 1:07:24
  So, the short answer to your question is, yes, it deserves either a book on his
• 1:07:30
  own or certainly to be part of a larger book, and I think it'll happen one day.
• 1:07:35
  It's just not the right time, certainly for me, but it could
• 1:07:38
  be the right time for Dominic.
• 1:07:40
  Yes, and, yes, but.
• 1:07:42
  Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:07:43
  Thank you for your question, though.
• 1:07:46
  Will GM dive more into electric racing to improve Padawan and also make.
• 1:07:52
  Fun electric vehicles.
• 1:07:53
  I don't want boring electric cars.
• 1:07:55
  I want fun electric cars.
• 1:07:56
  Could those have a say?
• 1:07:58
  Oh.
• 1:08:00
  So, electric racing is a very interesting topic.
• 1:08:03
  At the moment, if we look at what we love about what we do in sports car
• 1:08:08
  racing, long 24 hour endurance races at circuits like Le Mans with a three
• 1:08:13
  mile straight, the electric technology is not there to support that right now.
• 1:08:17
  In Le Mans, I don't even know how many laps you would get.
• 1:08:20
  In a car like that before you have to come in and charge because you're at watt
• 1:08:24
  quite a bit for that Situation, but so what we are doing, especially with the
• 1:08:29
  hyper car with the Cadillac is to find a way to mate the electric technology of
• 1:08:35
  the hybrid with the combustion engine and to really get the goodness out of both.
• 1:08:40
  So what that means is that we solve the problem of drivers not being able to
• 1:08:45
  launch the car out of the pits because now they do push a button, the electric motor
• 1:08:49
  takes them out, the engine fires up before they hit the track and away they go.
• 1:08:53
  And then also the electric engine will give us a boost depending on where we're
• 1:08:56
  out of the track and help us control the power to the regulations that we have on
• 1:09:00
  the torque So it's finding those ways to incorporate both and lean on each other.
• 1:09:05
  And it's been fantastic learning for us because yes, there's still the combustion
• 1:09:09
  engine in the car, but the control system that we have to create to power
• 1:09:13
  everything and how we get it to talk to each other and integrate and what we're
• 1:09:16
  doing with the braking system and how we're regenerating energy from that.
• 1:09:19
  That is all good knowledge that can help us as we look to an electric
• 1:09:23
  future with production as well.
• 1:09:25
  Plus the simulation work that we do.
• 1:09:27
  We have a ton of lightweighting studies happen to get mass out of
• 1:09:31
  the car, learning new materials, new technologies there that we
• 1:09:35
  can then apply in the production.
• 1:09:36
  I mean, we've gotten to the point at GM that 3D printing
• 1:09:39
  happens on the production line.
• 1:09:40
  We 3D print parts for our trucks and that is a big, long one that we
• 1:09:44
  produce out of the plants every day.
• 1:09:45
  So this is stuff that we spearhead in racing and then we
• 1:09:47
  bring it forward to production.
• 1:09:49
  So it's trying to see the goodness out of the opportunities available.
• 1:09:53
  But in terms of seeing a fully electric racing.
• 1:09:56
  Formula E definitely is getting better each year that they go.
• 1:09:59
  I don't see an electric car replacing what we do at Rolex 24 here at Watkins
• 1:10:05
  Glen at Le Mans in the near future.
• 1:10:07
  I think that's probably not even in the medium future.
• 1:10:09
  We got a little bit while to go from a technology standpoint and with charging,
• 1:10:13
  and how we will bring the battery in and get it all juiced up again.
• 1:10:21
  I know, well, and I will say, honey, when we launched the Cadillac, we weren't
• 1:10:24
  sure how marketing was going to react to it, because we are looking at the
• 1:10:29
  EVs with the Cadillac, and you listen to the Cadillac LMDH car launch, and
• 1:10:34
  if you don't smile when that engine fires off, something is wrong with you.
• 1:10:40
  So, and they jumped right in and embraced it.
• 1:10:42
  We are unofficially the best sounding race car, I think, on the track.
• 1:10:46
  That's a very biased opinion.
• 1:10:48
  But a lot of people told me that too, so I just say it.
• 1:10:50
  So I'm good.
• 1:10:52
  I can make that official.
• 1:10:53
  I've had British people tell me the American car sounded the best at
• 1:10:56
  Le Mans, so there, there you go.
• 1:10:58
  Kind of on the development cycle, it's the second year on the
• 1:11:00
  Cadillac, new Cadillac prototype.
• 1:11:01
  What kind of changes from the first year of the development
• 1:11:04
  cycle to the second year?
• 1:11:05
  What kind of lessons have you learned from that first year, and
• 1:11:08
  what are you kind of trying to do?
• 1:11:09
  What's your kind of goals you want to accomplish in that
• 1:11:11
  second year of development?
• 1:11:13
  A lot of our areas that we were able to work on was the control system,
• 1:11:16
  and a lot of that's based on the fact that that is not constrained
• 1:11:20
  as much from the homologation.
• 1:11:21
  We cannot change any body panels on the car.
• 1:11:23
  We are strictly locked into what we submitted.
• 1:11:26
  The engine, we can't really modify that too much.
• 1:11:28
  Those things are locked down.
• 1:11:29
  So, really, it's the electrons.
• 1:11:31
  How they talk to each other and how the systems work, that's the stuff
• 1:11:34
  that we can work on and change.
• 1:11:36
  So we've, you know, looked at our control systems, we've worked with
• 1:11:38
  the suppliers that support us there, seeing how can we be more efficient
• 1:11:42
  and how everything talks to each other so we're not overloading systems.
• 1:11:45
  So I'd say the biggest gain that we had from Rolex last year to Rolex this
• 1:11:49
  year and Le Mans to Le Mans was that.
• 1:11:51
  We know the car better now and everything talks to each other
• 1:11:54
  and the system's much better.
• 1:11:56
  Uh, I believe the ACO, especially, uh, this year, has been sort of trying to
• 1:12:00
  generate interest and trying to generate class going forward for, uh, not electric
• 1:12:06
  vehicles, but hydrogen power vehicles.
• 1:12:08
  I recall several years ago now, GM Chevrolet had a pilot
• 1:12:12
  program for a hydrogen powered Equinox, uh, here in New York.
• 1:12:16
  Is that something that GM would look into for racing, or based on the
• 1:12:21
  outcome of that pilot program, is that something that GM's not really
• 1:12:24
  interested in pushing forward with?
• 1:12:26
  We still have some hydrogen work.
• 1:12:27
  We actually joined forces with Honda a few years back to work on the hydrogen space.
• 1:12:32
  I think just making sure that we keep our toes in technology that's out there.
• 1:12:36
  I would say that, yes, we're sitting in those meetings where they're
• 1:12:39
  trying to figure out how that looks.
• 1:12:41
  The years keep getting pushed in terms of what that would launch.
• 1:12:45
  So I think we're, at the moment, sitting at the table, listening,
• 1:12:49
  you know, seeing what they're coming up with, doing a little bit
• 1:12:51
  of studies behind the scenes, but.
• 1:12:53
  We need to get a little further along with that technology
• 1:12:55
  as well, similar to electric.
• 1:12:57
  It needs to be at a point where it makes sense.
• 1:12:59
  Sometimes, we as the OE can drive that, sometimes the sanctioning body
• 1:13:03
  will just make up their mind that no fooling, this is what you're doing,
• 1:13:06
  either you're in or you're out.
• 1:13:08
  And in that case, we will make a decision.
• 1:13:09
  I know that you guys are trying to compete in both Insta and
• 1:13:13
  Black with the Cadillac prototype.
• 1:13:15
  I also heard that after Mimosa's series, there were some worries that the kind of
• 1:13:18
  carryover of being able to participate in both series might make you uncompetitive
• 1:13:23
  in the World Endurance Championship.
• 1:13:25
  Are there any upgrades that would be planned for the, uh, Cadillacs versus
• 1:13:30
  Bihing in terms of temperature that would now be applicable to the ones in NSUP?
• 1:13:34
  No, the car has to be the same.
• 1:13:36
  So if we make a change, it has to be approved, therefore
• 1:13:38
  eligible to race in both.
• 1:13:40
  I would say that we're always working to make sure that we've got the best
• 1:13:43
  possible package, whether we're racing over in the WEC or racing in NSUP.
• 1:13:48
  But always shooting towards that point.
• 1:13:50
  At the end of the day, we won't be able to have changes that are
• 1:13:52
  only applicable to one series.
• 1:13:55
  Will the potential Formula One program have any effect on the
• 1:13:59
  Cadillac sports car program?
• 1:14:01
  We are very excited for the opportunity to grow motorsports with F1 and it will be a
• 1:14:08
  great addition to our motorsports program.
• 1:14:11
  Well, we We get a little bit drunk.
• 1:14:26
  You've never been in this house.
• 1:14:31
  Some of the really cool things you guys were watching earlier, too.
• 1:14:34
  Yeah.
• 1:14:34
  When are you coming back?
• 1:14:35
  We could use some extra help.
• 1:14:40
  Briefly mentioned 3D printing on a mass scale in your assemblies.
• 1:14:44
  I know Alec recently released a documentary on a prototype, and
• 1:14:49
  in that mentioned that he used, uh, Metal 3D printing for the
• 1:14:53
  first time ever in a race car.
• 1:14:54
  I was curious, what kind of process do you use for the 3D printing?
• 1:14:57
  Because I know there's a few ways to do metal 3D printing.
• 1:15:00
  What kind of results are you seeing?
• 1:15:01
  Are you guys happy with the results that you're seeing?
• 1:15:04
  Are you living up to the stress test, you know, thermal cycling, all that stuff?
• 1:15:07
  I'm just curious to see what you guys have thought of using 3D
• 1:15:11
  printing components in a race car.
• 1:15:13
  I'm not an expert in this space, so I can't answer your first part of your
• 1:15:15
  question, but what I can tell you is what that has enabled us to do is to fully
• 1:15:20
  mass optimize the parts that we print.
• 1:15:23
  So, one of the biggest pieces we have on the Cadillac that's
• 1:15:25
  printed is the oil tank.
• 1:15:27
  It's big.
• 1:15:27
  The reason that we print that is that we can create a design that only has
• 1:15:32
  walls where we need them for the proper volume and the proper delivery to the
• 1:15:35
  engine, and no material anywhere else.
• 1:15:38
  And so we're able to pull.
• 1:15:40
  Substantial mass out of a part that if we tried to machine it, we would
• 1:15:43
  have had to carry all this extra bit for either hooking it into the
• 1:15:46
  machining portion or because you just couldn't machine around that piece.
• 1:15:51
  And in terms of how it's holding up, we have now completed our fourth
• 1:15:55
  24 hour race with the platform.
• 1:15:58
  Those components have all been rock solid again, wood.
• 1:16:02
  We're very, very pleased with how that's all worked out.
• 1:16:05
  I mean, I think it's, it's pretty much the gold standard going forward
• 1:16:08
  for as we design engines and whatnot.
• 1:16:10
  We want to do there because mass is frankly the number
• 1:16:12
  one enemy of a race car.
• 1:16:14
  I mean, there's other things that people like to talk about, but if
• 1:16:17
  you're too heavy, you have such an impact of everything else you're trying
• 1:16:21
  to do, that it becomes a problem.
• 1:16:22
  If the mass is in the wrong spot of the race car, that
• 1:16:25
  makes it challenging as well.
• 1:16:26
  And that could really mess up set up and things that you're working through.
• 1:16:29
  So anytime we can pull mass out, we're looking into that.
• 1:16:32
  And then the section about he has a faculty OP, that's a different discussion.
• 1:16:41
  Okay, well, to Laura.
• 1:16:43
  very much for your time.
• 1:16:46
  I know it's super, super valuable, given your ridiculous schedule.
• 1:16:52
  Anything for you, Richard.
• 1:16:55
  Well, I'll let Kip say the final words, but before I turn the mic over to him,
• 1:16:59
  I just want to say on my behalf, and I'm sure I'm speaking on behalf of the
• 1:17:03
  Teslas and Chuck as well, thank you very much for joining us this evening,
• 1:17:08
  for your questions, and certainly for your enthusiastic support for
• 1:17:13
  Corvette Racing, the Corvette Racing program, and for the production cars.
• 1:17:17
  Both Corvettes and everything else that GM makes.
• 1:17:20
  I'm gonna just go out on a limb here and say that there are a few
• 1:17:23
  Corvettes in the garages and maybe, um, some Escalades, some pickup
• 1:17:28
  trucks pulling the car trailer, pulling the boat trailer, et cetera.
• 1:17:31
  So thank you very, very, very much.
• 1:17:33
  Because if you did not support the racing and the company, we would
• 1:17:38
  all have to find honest work.
• 1:17:39
  And that's the last thing in the world any of us want.
• 1:17:42
  So.
• 1:17:42
  Well,
• 1:17:51
  I don't know about you, but I thought that was just fantastic.
• 1:17:59
  Again, she did this last year and it was amazing.
• 1:18:01
  I want to thank Richard.
• 1:18:02
  I want to thank Dominic.
• 1:18:03
  The show is really all about Chuck Schroeder.
• 1:18:05
  I had not met Chuck until yesterday and I can't wait to hang out with this guy more.
• 1:18:10
  He's just so good.
• 1:18:11
  Thank you everybody for coming.
• 1:18:13
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