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International Motor Racing Research Center (Kip Zeiter) - IMRRC · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  BrakeFix'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 International Motor Racing Research Center, or IMRRC,
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  collects, shares, and preserves the history of motorsports, spanning
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  continents, eras, and generations.
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  And race series, the Watkins Glenn based I M R R.
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  C.
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  S.
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  Collection embodies the speed drama and camaraderie of amateur and professional
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  motor racing throughout the world.
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  The center welcomes serious researchers and the casual fans alike to share stories
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  of race drivers, race series and race cars captured on their shelves and walls.
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  The center's collection documents the history of racing and more than 4000
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  books along with 250 different motor sports magazines and newspaper titles.
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  The archive also includes club and sanctioning body records, race
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  results, programs and posters, papers from motorsport journalists
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  and scholars, correspondence between race organizers, and more.
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  It's knowledgeable research and archive staff, like our guests, Kip Zeider and
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  Rick Huey, assist hundreds of scholars, journalists, authors, documentary
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  filmmakers, Drivers and race car owners from all over the globe with inquiries
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  about motorsports history every year.
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  And Kip and Rick are here to tell us all about it.
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  And as always, I'm your host, Brad, and I'm Eric.
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  So let's roll.
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  So welcome to break fix Kip and Rick.
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  Hey, how are you?
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  Thank you very much, Eric.
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  That was a great intro.
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  I, I really don't have anything to add, Eric.
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  Thanks so much.
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  So let's, let's dive into this.
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  Let's unpack International Motor Racing Research Center.
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  It's a mouthful.
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  So tell us about your history.
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  Where did this whole thing come from?
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  What's the, what started this?
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  The IMRRC, and I agree, it is a mouthful, whether you're trying
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  to say the whole thing or just trying to get the initial straight.
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  was actually kind of a town's gift to itself in celebration of the 50th
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  year of motor racing at Watkins Glen.
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  I'm sure most of your knowledgeable listeners are aware that the first
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  post World War II road race took place right here on the streets of
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  Watkins Glen back on October 2nd, 1948.
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  So as the village was coming up on the 50th celebration of this, In 98, talks
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  were beginning among some of the town leaders as to what could we do to have
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  a permanent example of that the public library to which we are attached over
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  the years had amassed quite a nice little collection of motorsports books.
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  So, 1 of the ideas that was floated was to take those books and kind of
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  use them as seedlings to open up an archival library slash research center.
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  One of the chief proponents of that, and there were lots of other people
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  interested in and that did a lot of work on this, but certainly one of the chief
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  proponents of that was Gene Argettsinger.
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  This is kind of a come full circle type of thing.
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  Gene is the wife of Cameron Argettsinger, and Cameron is widely acknowledged as the
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  founder of racing here in Watkins Glen.
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  Gene, who had served on the library board for years and years and
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  years, was very intrigued with the idea, was a real proponent of it.
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  As I say, there were many other people, John Bishop from IMSA,
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  John Saunders, who at that time, I believe, was the president of WGI,
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  all of whom showed interest in this.
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  So I'm going to fast forward here a little bit.
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  The money was raised, the building was started and completed in 1998,
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  in time for the 50th anniversary.
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  It was actually dedicated, I believe, in June of 1999 by some
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  fella named Sir Jackie Stewart.
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  So yeah, nobody knows who he is.
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  No, no, no, no.
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  You know, a name from the past in keeping with our historical impact here.
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  So that's really how it all came to be.
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  And, well, it, it, it makes sense.
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  The, the birthplace of American road racing, post World War II, over the
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  years, over the last 20 plus years, we've probably morphed into one of the
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  world's premier archival institutions.
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  And we have, you know, from that very small bunch of books that we took back
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  in, in 1998 or so, we now have a library that's pushing 5, 000 different volumes.
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  But in addition to that, and we can touch on this as we go on.
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  We have many, many, many more things here apart from just a absolutely
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  astounding motorsports library.
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  Let's dive into the collection a little bit more.
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  And I have, I have some questions about it.
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  So, you know, we want to answer the question.
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  What is the, at the library, right?
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  Well, we'll call it that.
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  Cause it's easier to say than the IMRRC.
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  So what's in the library, but I have a few kind of pressing questions.
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  What's the oldest thing in the library?
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  What's the rarest thing in the library?
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  Like let's, let's quantify some of these things.
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  Gosh, we have a lot of trophies through the years.
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  It's driver information, it's artwork, it's books, it's a magazine, uh, racing
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  programs from, uh, all over the world.
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  Those kind of things in the Sports Car Club of America collection,
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  which we manage for, for the club.
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  We received two tractor trailer loads of boxes that we've gone through.
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  Harry Handley collected all of that information for S.
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  C.
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  C.
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  A.
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  Back in the fifties and sixties, kept it at his home.
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  Then eventually it went to Peter Hilton, who was in the Indianapolis region of S.
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  C.
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  C.
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  A.
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  And he worked through the archives and it was at a storage facility.
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  And he had worked with some college kids and they'd got it sort of organized.
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  And then the situation there changed.
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  And so they were looking for a place to put it.
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  They contacted us and they worked out an agreement where it's here now.
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  We, uh, have got it into working order, if you will.
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  So I can go to a box and look for, uh, race information from, uh,
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  you know, 1957 at, uh, you know, someplace Sebring or wherever.
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  and come up with the answers.
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  It now is a working archive.
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  That's, that's the big key point.
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  I, I honestly can't answer your question as to what would be the oldest thing here.
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  I do know we have a start finish line sign from the original circuit.
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  So presumably that's one of the oldest things as it would
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  pertain to Watkins Glen.
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  Although I do know we have archives here and I know we have earlier
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  things in that we have publications.
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  that date back to probably the early 1900s.
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  You know, race write ups and things of that nature.
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  I was going to point out some of what I think are some of
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  the more interesting things.
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  Early on in my tenure here, I had a husband and wife come in on a
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  Saturday afternoon, and the lady was particularly intrigued with Sterling Moss.
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  So she was wondering if we had anything here from Sterling Moss.
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  We had a number of different books.
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  In the library, so they pulled out some of those and we're leafing through those.
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  Meanwhile, I was going through the archives and found that
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  we actually had a letter.
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  written by Sterling himself on Glen Motor Inn stationary to the
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  organizers of the Mexican Grand Prix, I believe back in 1961, stipulating
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  his conditions for participating in that year's Mexican Grand Prix.
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  And it included, I think, payment of something like 7, 500.
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  There were various other things involved.
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  All bets were off if there was a coup or something like that to upset the
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  government, but it was a page and a half literally written out by him, signed
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  by him on Glenn motor in stationary.
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  Now, for those people that came here in the 50, 60, 70s, kind of
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  the golden era of racing, as I.
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  Put it the Glenn motor in at the time was where all the team
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  owners, all the drivers stayed.
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  I mean, it was the place to stay for the racing community and Watkins Glenn.
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  So I got this letter out.
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  I showed it to them.
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  They absolutely just flipped out and come to find out one of the
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  reasons she was so intrigued by Mr.
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  Moss was her father was one of his financial advisors during his racing.
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  I thought the irony of that is would that happen in today's.
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  legalistic society.
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  You would need a team of 15 lawyers and 3, 000 sheets of paper and co signers
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  and, you know, notarizers and everything.
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  And this was a page and a half written out by Mr.
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  Moss himself.
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  Pretty fascinating deal.
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  So, and I can say I have had the distinct pleasure of staying at the
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  Glen Motor Inn many, many, many years past its golden days, but it is, it's
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  an iconic place there along the lake.
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  If you've never been there before listeners, I would definitely
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  recommend checking it out.
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  It's worth staying at once kind of getting the ambience looking around, seeing
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  all of the memorabilia that's there.
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  So it is definitely a piece of Watkins Glen history, but the whole area.
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  I love coming up to the Glenn.
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  It's it's enriched.
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  It's entrenched.
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  It just exudes it's quintessential racing, right?
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  It's just everything about the town.
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  You can just feel it when you get there.
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  It's, it's unlike anywhere else you've ever been.
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  It often reminds me, you know, I go somewhere else and I don't want
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  to name names of racetracks, but they're in the middle of nowhere.
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  And they're.
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  They're generally in the middle of nowhere for very good reason.
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  And it's very rare to be at a racetrack that where there is civilization,
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  there is beautiful scenery.
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  It's nestled, you know, high up on the hills, overlooking the lake.
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  I mean, it's just gorgeous.
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  Everything about the Glen.
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  So if you've never been there, I highly recommend it.
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  But we'll move on and we'll talk again about the collection.
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  I guess in my mind, and maybe in some of our listeners minds too,
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  you kind of envision it as not just a library, but maybe like a museum.
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  So maybe, maybe I have this.
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  fantasy in my head.
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  But do you guys see yourself moving in that direction or
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  always staying as an archive?
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  I think that depends on who on the board you ask at any given point in
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  time, because everybody seems to have a different vision of our future.
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  Some would like to see us become more of a car museum, which we're clearly not.
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  We were never designated that from the beginning.
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  We always like to have one or two interesting cars on the floor.
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  Eric, I want to interject something about about the center.
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  is our executive director, uh, Dan DeRusha.
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  Is a car guy and we are so thrilled to have him, uh, leading the
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  center the last couple of years.
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  And this, the pandemic of course, is sort of, uh, you know, taking us
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  off at the knees here on a couple of things, but, uh, uh, we have great
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  plans, we have wonderful leadership.
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  We have a wonderful governing council who, uh, are, uh, A lot of them are vintage
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  racers and so we have a good foundation here to make sure this moves forward.
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  That's the key thing is getting people to become members and in moving it
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  forward into the next generation.
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  For more programs for kids and just, uh, more opportunities to
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  have a room here to display things.
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  So when someone comes to Watkins Glen, they can not only learn about
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  the racing history here, but maybe there's a display on Indianapolis
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  or sports car racing or drag racing.
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  So you come to the International Motor Racing Research Center
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  and you leave with a pretty comprehensive chance to understand
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  the different types of motorsports.
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  Uh, and uh, so that's the, that's the big goal here is to move this forward.
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  Our main problem at the moment is simply space or lack of.
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  We have so many cool things and this is why it's, it's very difficult to
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  quantify what's our oldest, what's our most valuable, what's our, you know,
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  most interesting because we have such a wide variety of different things.
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  I was going to speak to programs for just a second.
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  I know we were talking at the beginning before this went live, so to speak, how
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  you kind of morphed from an Audi club into much, much, much more over the years.
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  Um, But for your German fans, we have nearly every program from
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  the Nürburgring, arguably the most famous track ever built in the
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  world, dating back from 1927 to 1996.
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  Almost every program for every event run during that 70 year
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  history at the Nürburgring.
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  Is that one of our more valuable things?
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  Are we really set up as a museum?
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  Candidly, I can make a case to a degree that we are.
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  We don't have a lot.
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  We, we don't have a lot of room for freestanding displays, which is why
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  when you come in the car is usually the most important thing that gets
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  people's attention right off the bat.
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  That leads to conversations about what kind of racing they're
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  interested in, so on and so forth.
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  We just really don't have the room.
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  At any given point in time, we have some interesting posters
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  or things hung on the wall.
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  We do have several, we have models all over the place, so
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  we have some very cool models.
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  Racing helmets.
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  Yeah, we have helmets periodically.
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  If we were to pull everything out of the archives, we literally wouldn't have
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  room to actually display it all here.
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  So we kind of try to rotate things around.
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  And a lot of times that's dependent on if we're having a program coming up,
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  one of our center conversations, or, you know, we have a group like perhaps your
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  group is coming in, a Porsche group is coming in, a Corvette club is coming in,
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  we'll try and get stuff out that pertains to that and their level of interest.
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  So it's kind of a rotating, display type of thing.
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  How does the collection grow?
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  It used to be pre COVID.
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  People would knock on our door two or three times a week.
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  That has since slowed down.
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  Now we get phone calls.
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  We still get the periodic knock on our door, but the collection grows by
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  people that perhaps they are downsizing.
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  Their, their father, their grandfather was a racer or was a
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  race fan later generations in the family interested in something
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  else could care less about racing.
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  So they have a basement full of old programs or they have trophies or they
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  have helmets or, you know, whatever ticket stubs before they just toss it.
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  They give us a call.
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  And they say, ask us if we're interested in it.
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  Now, I don't want to say that we're at critical mass, but
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  we're kind of approaching it.
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  As our space has become more limited over the years, we've had to get a little
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  bit more discretionary in what we take.
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  For example, if somebody calls and says, I have every issue of Road and Track since
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  1950, I can literally say, we have three issues of Road and Track from 1950 on.
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  So I don't need Road and Tracks or Car and Drivers.
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  It's always nice to add new books to the library.
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  With a library that has 5, 000 volumes, that becomes increasingly rarer because
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  we have so many books, but it's always cool to be able to add a new edition.
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  People come to us with old photographs, which are just gold, whether they're
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  sports car racing, road racing photographs, or circle track programs.
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  I have always considered myself the token short track.
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  which is not true because Rick enjoys it as well.
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  But I spent a lot of time at tracks like Shangri La Speedway in Owego,
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  New York and Oswego Speedway in Oswego watching the roundy rounders go around.
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  And I still love that.
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  That I think is what also makes us a bit unique is that we're not Watkins Glen
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  centric by any stretch of the imagination.
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  We are indebted to the founders of racing here.
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  To Cameron Inger and the family, we are indebted to the heroes that ran those
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  streets from 1948 to 1952 and the current wonderful facility at the top of the hill.
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  But we have much more here than just Watkins Glen stuff.
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  Yeah.
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  The National Speech Sport News Archives are here.
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  We have Chris Mackey's, typewriter, , and one of his
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  tape records when he passed away.
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  We were able to receive that through, uh, a gift from, uh, the uh, Dyson Foundation.
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  who purchased it at auction, and they're just invaluable to research work.
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  Area Auto Racing News, uh, one of the last publications of
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  that sort of newspaper style.
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  In, uh, in the Northeast, uh, we have their whole collection.
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  So we cover everything from, as Kip says, roundy round racing, to, uh,
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  rallying, uh, Runs the whole gamut.
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  Yeah, and that's good because multidiscipline is important because
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  I think a lot of people often align themselves with a discipline and we
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  call them disciplines here, right?
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  Whether it be road racing, circle track, round around rally,
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  autocross, whatever, motorcycles.
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  I mean, if it has a.
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  If it has an engine and you're racing against somebody else for
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  us, it's considered motorsport.
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  You know, motorsport is larger than people realize because again, there are so many
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  disciplines, whether it be off roading, drag racing, road racing, et cetera.
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  So I'm glad that, you know, you guys are all encompassing because it's, it's
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  good to walk in and see more than just, well, this is the history of Watkins Glen
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  under the guise of international racing.
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  And it's actually just well beyond that.
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  And that's really, really cool.
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  Would you say the collection is more locally focused?
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  I mean, it's obviously nationally focused, but does it go, does it
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  go into the international side?
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  Yeah, I think you could make a very strong case that it is
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  truly international in scope.
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  A lot of the books that we have in our annuals or reference section of our
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  library are truly worldwide in scope in terms of they cover F1 and rallying
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  and, you know, sports car racing here in the States and NASCAR and everything.
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  And, and I think our collections run the gamut of that too.
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  Uh, I just had an email from a guy in England who has a 1965 Corvette.
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  Who has a friend in Spain who has a 1966 Corvette, and he'd like
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  to have us look into its problem.
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  So, uh, we truly are an international motorsports research center, England,
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  France, uh, gosh, there was a car that was found in a garage in Dallas, Texas.
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  And a gentleman in the Netherlands bought it on auction.
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  He wanted to know about this car.
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  Well, we found a picture of that car in 1982 at Texas
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  Motors, Texas World Speedway.
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  Which I drove.
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  I went to one of the last events before it closed.
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  There you go.
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  What a facility.
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  What a facility.
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  And the story about this car is that it was, it didn't, uh, it only ran twice.
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  And then the sponsor, a young gentleman, put it in his garage
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  and it stayed there for 25 years.
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  He passed away.
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  The family put it up for auction.
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  So it didn't really have a lot of racing history, but we were able to track down
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  the driver who had the whole backstory.
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  The car had been in a fire on the street.
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  They made it in like a GT3 car and they ran it twice.
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  The guy who sponsored the whole thing.
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  Uh, took it and put it in his garage and it disappeared until that auction.
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  So, uh, the guy in Holland was very pleased to get all that information.
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  Well, again, the Nürburgring program collection, for example.
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  Autosport, Motorsport, Grand Prix International.
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  We have all of those publications.
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  Track and traffic from Canada that are, uh, Long gone.
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  Some of them, they have such complete information in them about race events.
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  It's all solid gold stuff.
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  Nice.
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  So do you find yourselves also collecting or having people donate
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  what I consider motorsport adjacent or at least car related or maybe
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  vehicle related publications as well?
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  And what I mean by that is there's a lot of coffee table books out there
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  about Porsches and Ferraris and all sorts of cars that also include.
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  The race cars, right?
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  So do you find yourselves people donating that as well?
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  Oh yeah.
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  If it's connected to motorsports, automobilia, we've got it here.
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  The complexity of a library most people don't realize anymore because we're
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  so used to the digital world is I can walk up to Google and ask it anything
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  or Bing or whichever service you use.
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  But a library, it's important that it's organized in such a way
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  And most people don't realize it.
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  Libraries aren't necessarily organized linearly.
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  They're basically a matrix, right?
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  Because you have to know this is the topic.
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  This is the cross section.
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  This is the genre, you know, and you start looking at it from different angles.
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  So is it about.
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  Give me all the stuff that's Ferrari, or is it organized by the driver?
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  Is it organized by the country?
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  And every library is different.
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  I mean, obviously general public libraries have the Dewey decimal system
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  and it's a very standardized, but in your guy's world, you probably had to
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  literally write the book pun intended on how to organize all this data.
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  So when I walk into the library, how would I find myself?
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  How would I navigate all the information that's there?
• 20:20
  Well, first of all, you'd have to tell us what you were looking for, because
• 20:23
  in terms of categorizing the books, we do have a marks section and it starts
• 20:29
  with alpha and it runs the gamut to Volkswagen and you know, you mentioned
• 20:34
  Porsche, I couldn't even begin to tell you how many books we have on Porsche.
• 20:38
  Porsche and Ferrari are far and away the most volumes.
• 20:41
  If you're interested in biographies, we have a biographical section.
• 20:45
  We have a annuals or reference section where we refer to Indianapolis 500, not
• 20:53
  program so much, but like the old Floyd Clymer yearbooks that really runs the
• 20:58
  gamut of the whole month, the Speedway.
• 21:00
  We have those dating back to the probably 30s or 40s.
• 21:03
  Everything is categorized in, in slightly different Order.
• 21:08
  And I'd be totally disingenuous if I were to tell you, if you walk
• 21:12
  in and give me a book title, I can find it in about 30 seconds.
• 21:14
  Cause that's kind of rare that that happens.
• 21:17
  But I could come in and ask you, Hey Kip, I want to do some research on Lee Iacocca.
• 21:23
  How can you help me?
• 21:24
  Yeah, of course.
• 21:24
  I mean, at first, what we do is we would look into our biography section
• 21:28
  of books and find what we had there.
• 21:30
  And then we'd go into the, into the collection database itself
• 21:34
  and see if anybody had given us.
• 21:36
  anything pertaining to Iacocca over the years.
• 21:39
  And I bring that up and it's a bit of an inside joke because I'm a bit
• 21:43
  of an Iacocca fan, you know, genius ahead of his time and all that.
• 21:46
  And he did some wonderful things for Ford, especially, you know,
• 21:49
  basically birthing the Mustang, even though he didn't design it, he did,
• 21:52
  you know, position that and bringing Chrysler back from the grave twice.
• 21:56
  Right.
• 21:56
  So, but he's also influential and a lot of people realize, Oh, you know, Ford
• 22:00
  versus Ferrari, that whole movie came out, but I bring it up only because it's.
• 22:05
  One of those motorsport adjacent things where it's like, I want to
• 22:07
  come in and do research on that.
• 22:09
  What can you tell me that I don't already know from the mainstream
• 22:12
  or can look up on the internet?
• 22:13
  And I think that's really the key of coming into a library like the IMRRC
• 22:18
  is to say, I want to, like you said about that story about Sterling Moss.
• 22:21
  I want to dig in a little deeper.
• 22:23
  I want to get personal.
• 22:24
  I want to know about these off the cuff things that just aren't out there.
• 22:28
  If I punch it into Google.
• 22:29
  One of our greatest resources in that regard would be our historian, Bill Green.
• 22:33
  Mr.
• 22:33
  Green has just turned 80 years old a couple weeks ago.
• 22:36
  He's lived in this town his entire life.
• 22:38
  He's missed two years of racing here and that was when he was in the service
• 22:42
  and he was in Europe trying to get in as many races as he could get in
• 22:45
  when he was in the service in Europe.
• 22:46
  But Bill Green can tell you stories about almost Anyone related to racing
• 22:53
  and I don't care how far back you go.
• 22:56
  He is a walking encyclopedia of racing knowledge, more so on road racing.
• 23:02
  Obviously you grew up here as a kid and, uh, you know, that's
• 23:06
  really his, his bailiwick, but he's awfully good on Indianapolis.
• 23:10
  style racing too.
• 23:11
  So that's really in terms of stories that you don't know or never heard of before.
• 23:16
  Bill Green is the walking talking encyclopedia on that one.
• 23:19
  So let's talk more about research, right?
• 23:21
  Because that's part of the, one of the core competencies of a library
• 23:25
  is you're going there to do research.
• 23:27
  So how are the items in the library used, let's say on a daily basis?
• 23:32
  The, uh, SCCA archive is set up with the race results section.
• 23:38
  We've got driver files going back into the forties and, uh, then all
• 23:44
  of the sports car magazines from, uh, before it was sports car magazine,
• 23:49
  it was sport wagon, and it was three pieces of paper stapled together.
• 23:53
  And so we've got all of that to, to go through the club newsletters.
• 23:58
  It's probably the most important thing.
• 24:02
  Because we get a driver's name.
• 24:05
  All right.
• 24:05
  We may have his file, may have some results in his file,
• 24:09
  photographs, that sort of thing.
• 24:11
  Then we are looking at the years that he competed.
• 24:14
  So then we would go to sports car, see what we can pull out of there, as well
• 24:18
  as, as the actual race results itself.
• 24:21
  The most interesting thing.
• 24:23
  recently was a gentleman who had a raw RT1 Formula Atlantic car
• 24:28
  in England trying to research.
• 24:30
  He knew the professional history of it, but then wanted some
• 24:33
  background history of it in its later life in southern California.
• 24:38
  So we go to the Cal Club newsletters.
• 24:42
  And start digging through, uh, through there and getting race results
• 24:45
  for the gentleman who owned it in Southern California in, uh, the late
• 24:50
  seventies, early eighties, and, uh, uh, come across in a gossip column.
• 24:55
  That this car was a prop in an adult film, which was not what
• 25:01
  the gentleman in England expected to find out about his car, man.
• 25:05
  But I knew he was going to slip that in.
• 25:08
  You just never know what you're going to turn up.
• 25:10
  When you're digging in information here, I'm assuming you guys are on
• 25:14
  every mailing list that is imaginable too, because they're sending
• 25:18
  out results and stuff like that.
• 25:19
  And probably collecting things a lot more digitally these days.
• 25:22
  So your, your digital storage must also be humongous.
• 25:25
  So we won't dive into too much details on that as an example.
• 25:29
  Do you guys, as, as a lot of the racers that are still out there, some of them
• 25:33
  are still competing well into their, into their old age, are you guys doing
• 25:37
  profiles on them when, if maybe something tragic were to happen or if they were
• 25:41
  to pass, are you involved in the OBIT process when people are coming back?
• 25:45
  To find out about them.
• 25:46
  And I'll give you a prime example.
• 25:47
  Part of our drive through series.
• 25:49
  We, we have a motorsport section in there.
• 25:51
  We call it going behind the wall, which actually was inspired from our trip to
• 25:54
  Salem's a couple of years ago at Watkins Glen, where Brad was behind the wall
• 25:58
  with the Aston Martin team reporting from there back to us, which is pretty cool.
• 26:01
  To go back to this drive through episode last month, we talked about Ralph
• 26:05
  Hudson, who is a very famous world record setting motorcycle rider who died.
• 26:10
  Uh, you know, now it'd be about a month ago at 69 years old doing
• 26:14
  252 mile an hour on a motorcycle.
• 26:16
  He's still competing, right?
• 26:18
  So I wonder if people are coming back to get that type of
• 26:21
  information, to build out, you know, these legacies or these, these.
• 26:26
  We have such an association with S.
• 26:28
  C.
• 26:28
  C.
• 26:29
  A.
• 26:29
  That when some of their key personnel through the last five or six years
• 26:34
  have passed away, they call, they want photographs, they want articles
• 26:39
  that detail part of their work with S.
• 26:42
  C.
• 26:43
  C.
• 26:43
  A.
• 26:43
  So, yeah, we've participated.
• 26:45
  In that process.
• 26:46
  Yeah, we mentioned in the intro, you know, you guys are also involved
• 26:49
  with documentaries and filmmaking and things like that, where people are
• 26:52
  coming in to gather that information.
• 26:54
  That makes sense because you don't want to tell a complete fairy tale.
• 26:57
  You want it to be grounded in some sort of reality.
• 26:59
  And also last month, we discovered that Netflix through an article in
• 27:03
  variety, Netflix is putting out a drama based on the life of Ayrton Senna.
• 27:07
  So you guys probably can or can't talk about it, but I was wondering
• 27:11
  if anybody's come a knockin Looking for information like that.
• 27:14
  I do know, uh, several years ago, I don't think it was, it wasn't a Netflix thing.
• 27:19
  It appeared on one of these motor racing show things.
• 27:23
  Uh, there was a multi part series on Patrick Dempsey
• 27:26
  when he was going to Le Mans.
• 27:28
  And I do know that we helped quite a bit with that on footage and background
• 27:32
  information and stuff like that.
• 27:33
  Uh, we got a request once to host the video production for part of
• 27:40
  the California Ferrari launch.
• 27:42
  And, uh, so we had, uh, California Ferrari on the floor.
• 27:47
  And, uh, Robert Herjavec was here that weekend, the Shark Tank, uh, entrepreneur,
• 27:52
  uh, racing his Ferrari at Watkins Glen with the National Ferrari Club.
• 27:57
  And, uh, so he came down, uh, They moved everything in the place here, uh, set up
• 28:03
  all these incredible lights and, uh, uh, shielded, uh, windows and everything.
• 28:08
  And, uh, spent the day, uh, uh, filming, uh, his part of that, uh, that launch.
• 28:14
  And, uh, it was, it was really cool.
• 28:16
  He's a, he's a very neat guy.
• 28:18
  Then they took the car out and we showed them where the old circuit
• 28:22
  was and they drove around the old circuit and they had a drone.
• 28:26
  And, uh, they, they got some incredible footage from that.
• 28:29
  And, uh, a couple of days later, a friend of mine said, there was this guy in
• 28:34
  this red car kept driving up my road, and then he pulled in my driveway, and
• 28:38
  he turned around, he raced back down the other way through the cork fields.
• 28:41
  And he says he did that three or four times.
• 28:44
  What was going on?
• 28:45
  And I said, Oh, I said, you're, you're going to see that online someday.
• 28:51
  But, uh, so yeah, it's, uh, behind the scenes a little bit on that production.
• 28:56
  I'd forgotten that.
• 28:57
  Yeah.
• 28:57
  We help authors.
• 28:59
  We help film people and, you know, do that deep background search.
• 29:03
  Going to, uh, racingarchives.
• 29:06
  org.
• 29:07
  You can submit.
• 29:08
  research requests through the website, and then it goes right to our head
• 29:13
  archivist, Jenny Ambrose, and then it gets in the queue from there.
• 29:17
  So that actually brings up a really good question.
• 29:19
  How big is the staff?
• 29:20
  It sounds like you got a really good sized team.
• 29:23
  We multitask like crazy.
• 29:25
  No, it's a pretty lean, it's a pretty lean crew, Eric.
• 29:28
  Actually, there's only what, there's eight of us, I think, five of us.
• 29:33
  here that work full time and Rick and Joe Calley, who is the other SCCA technician,
• 29:39
  kind of split their time throughout the week working on the SCCA stuff.
• 29:44
  Yeah, I mean, so there's only eight of us here all together.
• 29:46
  It's a pretty lean group.
• 29:48
  The only thing I would say, Eric, is to your point of researching
• 29:52
  and coming in here to do research work, we're always happy to be
• 29:54
  able to help people in that regard.
• 29:56
  The best thing is if you know you're coming, shoot us an
• 30:00
  email, give us a phone call.
• 30:02
  Whatever and give us a heads up as to what it when you're going to be in town
• 30:06
  and what specifically you're looking for, because quite honestly, to just knock on
• 30:11
  the door and come in and say, gee, I'd like to spend the afternoon researching
• 30:14
  a can be a little bit difficult for us to we can ultimately find the stuff.
• 30:19
  It's just it's much better from both sides of the equation.
• 30:22
  If we have a heads up and kind of a notice that you're going to be in town next week.
• 30:25
  And here's what you'd like to look at.
• 30:27
  We can pull it out.
• 30:28
  Absolutely, I'll have it waiting for you.
• 30:30
  So I tell you what, if there was an opportunity for me to get a
• 30:33
  master's in automotive history, I'd probably be there every day.
• 30:35
  So sounds like the right place to be.
• 30:39
  So moving on from the research, you guys have something known as on the grid and
• 30:44
  we talked already about how the IMRC was never really intended to be a museum.
• 30:48
  But you do showcase a car and it seems to revolve throughout the year.
• 30:53
  So tell us a little bit more about that program.
• 30:55
  When I came here, I've been here eight years plus.
• 30:57
  And when I first came here, there was a tremendous gentleman by
• 31:00
  the name of Michael Argensinger.
• 31:02
  Cameron and Jean Argensinger's background had nine children all together.
• 31:05
  They had six boys and three girls.
• 31:08
  So Cameron and Jean did more than just racing and library stuff.
• 31:12
  They were all wonderful kids, just wonderful human beings.
• 31:15
  Actually, Michael raced for a number of years in Europe, wrote any number
• 31:19
  of different books, has a tremendous book here on the 20 year history
• 31:22
  of the Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.
• 31:24
  Wrote books on Mark Donahue, Walt Hanskin.
• 31:26
  Opened a PR firm in Chicago.
• 31:28
  Tremendous guy.
• 31:28
  So everybody in the racing universe knew who Mike Gargettsinger was
• 31:32
  and Mike was Largely responsible for getting the cars here.
• 31:36
  And it became a question when Mike called you, it was pretty much, yeah,
• 31:40
  Mike, I got that when you want it and how long you want to keep it.
• 31:43
  Michael unfortunately passed away four years ago, maybe now thereabouts.
• 31:47
  And, uh, so that job of, of, uh, getting cars kind of felt to me,
• 31:52
  which is fine, except nobody knows who I am, but fortunately I can
• 31:56
  tread on the reputation of the IMRRC.
• 32:00
  So.
• 32:00
  So what we try to do is we try to get cars here that are relevant to
• 32:05
  what might be happening at the track.
• 32:06
  If it's IMSA weekend, we want to have some interesting sports car.
• 32:10
  If it's NASCAR weekend, we want to have a big Vulcan, Hulken stock car on the floor.
• 32:15
  Or if we're doing a particular center conversation and maybe we'll Focus on that
• 32:20
  a little bit later in the talk, we want to have something that's relevant to that.
• 32:23
  Then there's just stuff that were no particular relevance at all.
• 32:27
  But candidly, I think it's cool.
• 32:28
  I had a super modified in here very early on in my tenure here,
• 32:33
  and it was one of the winged jobs.
• 32:35
  So we had to basically take the car apart to get it through the doors to
• 32:38
  get it in here and then rebuild it.
• 32:39
  But the look on people's faces when they would walk through
• 32:42
  the door and here's this.
• 32:44
  You know, big block Chevy engine canted over to the left, big wing on the, on the
• 32:48
  cage, they had no idea what this car was.
• 32:50
  It looked like it was dropped down from outer space.
• 32:53
  And then of course, I would be able to talk about the wonders
• 32:55
  of Oswego super modified racing.
• 32:57
  So even when we say our, our resources here run the gamut from, you know,
• 33:02
  circle track racing to road racing, so do the cars that we have on display.
• 33:06
  We've had numerous Formula One cars here.
• 33:09
  We've had a 917 Porsche just several years ago, and we were celebrating
• 33:12
  the 20th anniversary of this place, but we had actually the,
• 33:17
  uh, Maserati that led the first competitive lap here in town in 1948.
• 33:22
  And then we had the Asuka that took the last.
• 33:27
  checkered flag that was flown on the street circuit in 1952.
• 33:31
  We had those two cars side by side.
• 33:34
  And, you know, the Maserati actually came to us from the Saratoga Auto Museum.
• 33:38
  The Asuka came to us courtesy of a gentleman out in Vancouver,
• 33:41
  BC, who had the car restored.
• 33:44
  Wanted to show it at the vintage festival and it just all happened to work out.
• 33:48
  It took about a year for all of that to be planned out and worked out.
• 33:52
  But so even our cars, and again, like I say, we weren't ever envisioned as
• 33:56
  a car museum, but that's the first thing people see when they come in.
• 33:59
  So that lights their eyes up, you know, 5, 000 books, uh, bookshelves are impressive,
• 34:05
  but kind of like just a big library.
• 34:07
  So having an interesting car or two on the floor, that's what gets people's.
• 34:11
  attention.
• 34:11
  That's what kind of gets people's juices rolling a bit.
• 34:14
  And then, like I say, we can segue into what kind of racing they're interested in,
• 34:18
  and then the conversation goes from there.
• 34:20
  Are you guys familiar with the Simeone Foundation out in Philadelphia?
• 34:24
  Oh, yeah, we ran a, we ran a bus trip down there, uh, six or seven years ago.
• 34:28
  He's just a, he's a tremendous guy.
• 34:30
  Absolutely.
• 34:31
  So, so we went to visit Dr.
• 34:33
  Simeone as well earlier this year before everything shut down.
• 34:36
  And so that was, uh, some of our members had gone before and we did the same thing.
• 34:40
  A bunch of us got together and decided to go to Philly for the day.
• 34:43
  And what an incredible museum that is, because if you think about
• 34:47
  it, it's a private collection that's open to the public.
• 34:50
  And he is a very.
• 34:51
  Kind of strict or particular, I guess, is the word I want to use about what's
• 34:55
  in the collection because every one of those cars, maybe people don't know
• 34:58
  this, every one of the cars in the collection has motorsport pedigree.
• 35:02
  Right.
• 35:03
  So I, I joked that Dr.
• 35:04
  Simeone doesn't buy any losers.
• 35:06
  Right.
• 35:06
  But, but, but everything, you know, there's no street cars in there.
• 35:11
  They all have some sort of history and some sort of, uh, background to them.
• 35:14
  So I think it's an interesting crossover overlap there where I could see you guys
• 35:20
  doing something together in the future.
• 35:21
  And it'd be kind of neat.
• 35:22
  And he does have a ton of space.
• 35:25
  Yeah, no, he invited our group in actually, uh, our
• 35:29
  historian, Bill Greenwood.
• 35:31
  And, uh, we went on one of his demo days.
• 35:33
  I don't know if you've been there for his demonstration days, but
• 35:36
  those are definitely, I mean, the place you're absolutely right.
• 35:38
  It's a fabulous place, but it's really cool to go on a demo day because they're
• 35:42
  all geared to actually getting three or four cars out in the back parking lot
• 35:46
  and running them around so you get to hear them and smell them and, you know.
• 35:49
  So after he had done his demo day stuff, he took us upstairs to one
• 35:52
  of the conference rooms and he just.
• 35:55
  You know, we just talked to our group for probably an hour easy.
• 35:58
  He had Bill Green identify some photographs that he had in his collection.
• 36:03
  He's an awesome guy.
• 36:04
  And I was also wondering if they had ever called you to figure out some
• 36:07
  history on the cars that they have there.
• 36:08
  Cause again, all of them have been in races of some sort, right?
• 36:11
  Yeah.
• 36:12
  A couple of years ago, they had, uh, the Greenwich car show.
• 36:16
  And I took Mr.
• 36:17
  Green down because the feature was, uh, the Cunningham cars.
• 36:22
  I ran into, uh, Dr.
• 36:24
  Simeone there and reminded him of our group had been
• 36:27
  down to his, uh, his museum.
• 36:30
  And he says, Oh, how's Bill Green?
• 36:32
  I said, he's right over there.
• 36:33
  I brought him down here.
• 36:34
  He says, where is he?
• 36:35
  He says, I got to get him back down because I've got more things
• 36:39
  I need to have him identify.
• 36:41
  You're right.
• 36:41
  I mean, the cars on display are fabulous, but it's, it's really cool going on
• 36:44
  a demo day when you get to hear them.
• 36:46
  I'm a big sensory, you know, guy.
• 36:49
  I mean, I, I, what turned me on from racing right from the get go was the
• 36:54
  sound of it and the smell of it and all the visual stuff that, that it entails.
• 36:59
  So give me, give me a night of smell of methanol on Oswego Speedway,
• 37:03
  and, and I'm a very happy camper.
• 37:05
  So what's on the, what's on the grid right now?
• 37:08
  Well, unfortunately, nothing's on the grid right now.
• 37:11
  The last cars we had in here were actually two electric.
• 37:15
  Yeah, they were spec racers.
• 37:17
  Spec racers, but electric engines.
• 37:20
  Because we had those in here in conjunction with the Green
• 37:22
  Grand Prix, a very cool event.
• 37:23
  As its name would indicate that it's held at the track once
• 37:27
  the world changed completely.
• 37:28
  And unfortunately we had to shut down.
• 37:30
  It just, it obviously just made no sense to have anything on the floor here if
• 37:33
  we weren't going to be having visitors.
• 37:35
  So this has been in, in any number of different ways.
• 37:38
  This has been the year that we'd all like to just move on and move immediately
• 37:42
  to 2021 hit that reset button, right?
• 37:45
  Yeah, for sure.
• 37:46
  That's for sure.
• 37:47
  Uh, one more, one more thing on the car.
• 37:49
  If I might add, when I said originally that when Michael called It was usually
• 37:53
  just a question of what car do you want?
• 37:55
  I am always on the lookout for cars.
• 37:58
  So if I could just tell your, well, your viewers, your
• 38:01
  listeners, your audience, okay.
• 38:04
  That if they have anything that they think might be interesting and
• 38:07
  are willing to part with it for a month or two, I mean, depending on
• 38:11
  the tow involved, unfortunately, we're We're a struggling nonprofit.
• 38:16
  We don't, we can't pay money to have, you know, cars brought in and stuff.
• 38:20
  So I really have to work off just the good nature and, and, uh, wonderfulness
• 38:25
  of people that are willing to do that.
• 38:26
  But I, I am always on the lookout for interesting cars.
• 38:29
  So if I could just throw that out there.
• 38:30
  I think this is a great segue into talking about how the center raises money.
• 38:35
  And right now you guys currently have a sweepstake for a Corvette.
• 38:38
  Is that correct?
• 38:39
  That is totally correct.
• 38:40
  It's the brand new C8.
• 38:42
  Well, anyway, this is, this is the mid engine Corvette that Chevy
• 38:44
  has been promising for, you know, easily 20 years, uh, if not more.
• 38:48
  You mentioned going back to about 20 years or so, but I think you
• 38:53
  guys would be probably shocked to realize Corvette has been working
• 38:56
  on a mid engine version since 1964.
• 38:59
  And I actually wrote an article about this on our website, uh, gtmotorsports.
• 39:04
  org.
• 39:04
  And if you search mid engine, it'll come up.
• 39:06
  Uh, the title is the C8 is not the first mid engine Corvette.
• 39:09
  And I go through the history of the number of trials and
• 39:12
  errors that they went through developing the mid engine Corvette.
• 39:15
  So if you have some free time, check out our website as well.
• 39:18
  Oh, definitely.
• 39:19
  Well, and actually.
• 39:20
  Rick, you can speak to this, I'm sure better than me, but isn't it, is it legend
• 39:24
  or fact that the idea for the Corvette kind of originated in Watkins Glen?
• 39:29
  An American sports car, the idea came out of Harley Earl's visit to
• 39:35
  Watkins Glen in the, uh, in the 50s.
• 39:38
  And he, uh, you know, looked at the Allards and with the big American
• 39:42
  engines, in these small, uh, British sports cars and said, we've
• 39:48
  got to have something like that.
• 39:49
  And he spent a lot of time with the local Chevrolet dealer because they
• 39:55
  had brought the, uh, uh, Lesabre show car here for, uh, the concourse event.
• 40:02
  And, uh, they had, uh, Chance to talk about cars and, and here's all of
• 40:08
  these Allards and, uh, such going by.
• 40:11
  And, and he proclaimed on, uh, the, uh, gentleman who was the
• 40:16
  uh, dealership owner that there needs to be an American sports car.
• 40:20
  We're going to get to work on that.
• 40:22
  And, uh, so, you know, uh, wasn't many years later that, uh, a Corvette came to
• 40:28
  Watkins Glen to be part of that car show.
• 40:31
  But the groundwork was laid here at Watkins level.
• 40:34
  Very cool.
• 40:35
  Man, I, every day I wish I lived closer.
• 40:37
  Let me tell you.
• 40:39
  And, uh, we have one.
• 40:41
  Ours is a 2020 model.
• 40:44
  My understanding is the assembly line shut down at some point in time in the spring
• 40:47
  or, or, uh, Early summer, sometime mid pandemic and everything that was coming
• 40:52
  off the line after that is now a 2021.
• 40:55
  Ours is a true 2020.
• 40:57
  It's the base ZL1 with the Z51 option package.
• 41:02
  The Z51 package gets you Brembo brakes, Pirelli PZero tires.
• 41:06
  I think it's upgraded rubber all around.
• 41:08
  Uh, some suspension tweaks, some cooling tweaks, front splitter,
• 41:12
  uh, rear spoiler and a multi stage.
• 41:16
  driving setup, basically, where you can go from mild to wild.
• 41:20
  It opens the exhaust system up.
• 41:23
  It changes the shift points.
• 41:25
  It's one of these digital dashes.
• 41:26
  It's very cool.
• 41:27
  Every time you change to a different mode, the dashboard reconfigures.
• 41:31
  It's very cool.
• 41:32
  That is first prize.
• 41:33
  But there's also, in addition to that, You get an hour's worth of track time
• 41:38
  here at WGI with a driving coach.
• 41:40
  You get the three day, two night Ron Fellows Corvette
• 41:43
  driving experience in Vegas.
• 41:45
  Transportation to Vegas not included, but the course is included.
• 41:49
  You win admission for two to, for next year's season at the Jack Daniels
• 41:53
  Club, which is the real upscale place here at WGI to watch races.
• 41:56
  And when you come to pick up your car, you get an overnight
• 41:58
  accommodation at the Harbor Hotel.
• 42:00
  Which is literally the, you know, the greatest, nicest
• 42:03
  hotel in Watkins Glen right now.
• 42:05
  So you win all of that, if for some inexplicable reason you didn't want that,
• 42:10
  you can take 50, 000 in cash instead.
• 42:12
  It's not bad.
• 42:15
  Our main source of revenue is we are a membership based organization.
• 42:20
  So you can become a member for as low as 25 a year up to whatever your
• 42:25
  checkbook and your enthusiasm level and your wife or husband will allow.
• 42:30
  Our second biggest fundraiser of the year is as you say, uh,
• 42:34
  we always raffle off a car.
• 42:36
  Uh, this year we've gone to a bit of a, in lieu of the traditional
• 42:39
  raffle, where we set a finite number of tickets and do it for six months
• 42:44
  or whatever the length of time is.
• 42:45
  This year we've gone to a sweepstakes model, which means we are going
• 42:49
  to sell tickets until December 3rd, which is the drawing date.
• 42:52
  And you can buy tickets in increments of 25, which is the minimum price, up to 2,
• 43:00
  500, which is kind of the crazy price.
• 43:03
  But depending on, I think it goes 250, 500, 1, 500, something like that.
• 43:09
  And of course, the bigger the contribution, the
• 43:11
  more tickets that you get.
• 43:12
  So all people need to do is, is get on our website.
• 43:16
  Which is racingarchives.
• 43:18
  org.
• 43:18
  When you go to the homepage, if you go over to the right, there's a little
• 43:21
  thing that says support the center.
• 43:22
  Click on that.
• 43:23
  There's a dropdown menu, which takes you right to the page.
• 43:26
  And for your listeners, when you actually reach the page, there's a little
• 43:31
  blank to put in a promo code, put in KIPP, K I P, like Peter 25, KIPP 25.
• 43:37
  That gets you an additional 25 percent more tickets.
• 43:40
  For example, if you, if you want to contribute a hundred
• 43:42
  bucks, that gets you 16 tickets.
• 43:44
  With the KIPP 25 promo, you get 20, and it works that way on up the line.
• 43:48
  So that's, that's a heck of a discount code.
• 43:50
  I like that.
• 43:53
  That's our second biggest fundraiser.
• 43:54
  And our third biggest is our Argettsinger dinner, which unfortunately was a victim
• 43:58
  of, you know, the pandemic this year.
• 43:59
  Hopefully next year we will get back into our Argettsinger dinner where we honor a
• 44:04
  true mover and shaker in, in motor sports.
• 44:07
  So this is our main fundraiser for the year, and we'd like to invite people to
• 44:13
  get involved with the sweepstakes, but to become a member of this organization,
• 44:18
  it's founded for the motorsports person.
• 44:21
  If you need some information, we're probably the place to come, but
• 44:25
  let's go back and let's talk a little bit more about what you guys do.
• 44:28
  And let's talk, uh, something that Kip hinted to, which
• 44:31
  are the center conversations.
• 44:33
  And I hear that these are held about six weeks Six times a
• 44:35
  year, every two months or so.
• 44:37
  And what is that all about?
• 44:38
  Center Conversation is kind of considered our, our true outreach to the community.
• 44:42
  The actual conversation itself is held literally right across our parking lot
• 44:47
  at the junior high school auditorium, which when I first started here, had
• 44:50
  really hard, very uncomfortable seats, awful to sit there for any amount of
• 44:55
  time has subsequently been renovated.
• 44:57
  It's beautiful, very nice, comfortable seats, all kinds of, you know,
• 45:00
  the latest audio visual equipment.
• 45:02
  Center Conversations can range from an author with a new book.
• 45:06
  It can be the history of a particular series, a racetrack, a car, a driver.
• 45:13
  Some of the ones that come to mind that I actually had a hand in putting together
• 45:18
  one month after the Syracuse One mile dirt track, the Syracuse fairgrounds,
• 45:23
  which had run races since probably the early 1910 1930s was deemed unnecessary
• 45:30
  by the politicians in Syracuse.
• 45:32
  And we won't go into that because I'd be going on for another half hour.
• 45:35
  But anyway, one month after the Syracuse fairgrounds ran their final race, we
• 45:40
  had a program on the history of the Syracuse fairgrounds, and we had a
• 45:43
  doctor professor of history, but he went back and did a in depth research
• 45:48
  of the history of the Syracuse mile.
• 45:50
  We had a half a dozen drivers who had driven on the Syracuse mile, but we had
• 45:55
  a car on the floor called the Batmobile, which in 1980, driven by Gary Ballew,
• 45:59
  New Jersey guy, totally blew away the competition at Syracuse to the.
• 46:03
  To the point where they outlawed it, it ran one year, it cleaned house.
• 46:07
  That was it.
• 46:08
  You never saw it again, but we have that on the floor here.
• 46:11
  And that was basically an all day thing.
• 46:13
  We've had a program called the men behind the microphones, where we've had
• 46:17
  announcers from various disciplines, from road racing, from short track
• 46:21
  racing, talk about their experience.
• 46:22
  history.
• 46:23
  Rick and Bill and another gentleman do a program that normally kicks
• 46:27
  off our year talking about the people that are enshrined in the
• 46:31
  driver's walk of fame in Watkins.
• 46:33
  To your point earlier about coming up to Watkins Glen and the whole ambiance
• 46:37
  of the area, Hollywood has their walk of fame, Watkins Glen has our walk of
• 46:42
  fame, and the stipulation being that You had to have driven at the track.
• 46:46
  So Rick and Bill and Jim normally key off our series of conversations at the
• 46:50
  beginning of the year by each taking, Oh, I don't know what is it, Rick, three
• 46:53
  or four or five gentlemen, and doing a background information on their career.
• 46:57
  That kind of sets the tone for the year, but the Syracuse mile thing
• 47:00
  was an all day thing, but normally they'll last a couple hours.
• 47:03
  Uh, we'll have, you know, maybe some coffee and light
• 47:05
  refreshments over here before.
• 47:07
  And after, and it's very informal.
• 47:10
  After the program is done, people come back here and you, and you have
• 47:13
  the time to chat with the speakers.
• 47:15
  And it's just, I mean, it's a very cool way to spend a few
• 47:18
  hours on a Saturday afternoon.
• 47:19
  Doesn't cost anything.
• 47:21
  It's to the purpose of our mission of preserving and sharing, uh,
• 47:25
  the history of motorsports.
• 47:26
  So one of the challenges we have, which I'm sure you do as well,
• 47:30
  is engaging the younger audience, engaging the younger drivers, keeping
• 47:34
  people interested in motorsports.
• 47:36
  And so our charter or our challenge is to continue to spread motor sorts,
• 47:41
  enthusiasm and educate people on organizations like yourself and all
• 47:45
  the different groups that are out there and all the different disciplines.
• 47:47
  Right?
• 47:47
  So we have a, we have a long road ahead of us and a lot more episodes to come.
• 47:52
  And so you're, you're a chapter in this larger book, but I wonder
• 47:56
  from the center's perspective, what are you doing to engage?
• 47:59
  Yeah.
• 47:59
  Children or younger drivers, you know, all the way down or, and even women, right?
• 48:04
  Because we, we've talked a lot on this show sometimes too, that
• 48:07
  motorsport is male dominated, unfortunately, and we've seen a
• 48:09
  change in the last 20 years for sure.
• 48:11
  But how do you engage that fringe audience that it doesn't have gas that
• 48:16
  they need to burn off of their chest?
• 48:18
  That's a, that's a great question.
• 48:20
  Let me, I'll, I'll just throw in one thing and then I'll let Rick go.
• 48:24
  You're absolutely right.
• 48:25
  in terms of getting the younger audience.
• 48:27
  We desperately need to get younger.
• 48:29
  I mean, your audience can't see us, but I'm an old guy.
• 48:33
  Rick's not as old as I am.
• 48:34
  One of the, one of the things that we do, which is not necessarily considered
• 48:38
  a conversation, but we do it on an annual basis as we have a model car show.
• 48:41
  And two years ago, we invited and they participated and they
• 48:45
  were absolutely Tremendous.
• 48:47
  The Rochester Lego user group came down with a bunch of cars
• 48:50
  that they had built out of Legos.
• 48:51
  They built a track.
• 48:52
  Uh, they had parts bins where kids could build cars and race them down the track.
• 48:56
  These people were just phenomenal.
• 48:58
  We really had reached out to the various elementary schools in the area.
• 49:02
  And that one day in particular skewed our average age down considerably because we
• 49:07
  had kids probably from five years old.
• 49:10
  On up just running around the place all day long.
• 49:14
  But to your point of trying to encourage the younger crowd or the staff members.
• 49:19
  What 1 thing that was discouraging this year with, you know, the way the
• 49:22
  year panned out is our chief archivist.
• 49:25
  Jenny Ambrose as Rick had mentioned earlier.
• 49:28
  This being the hundredth year of women's suffrage has a exhibit, two
• 49:32
  exhibits, actually one, which I believe is still, it's a photo exhibit from
• 49:36
  a photojournalist, Kathy Meredith, who worked for, uh, Cananda Paper.
• 49:40
  Canand was, I don't know, 40 miles up the road here and was a photojournalist
• 49:44
  back in the, again, I keep harping on the golden era of racing sixties, seventies.
• 49:49
  So she has a lot of wonderful black and white photographs from Watkins
• 49:52
  Glen, uh, which is currently on display at the AR art Museum in.
• 49:56
  I'm sorry, in Elmira, and then we have a, uh, a banner display.
• 50:00
  That's going to be around for a couple more weeks.
• 50:01
  And then we're going to move it over here on women in racing, both from
• 50:05
  a driver standpoint, a photography standpoint, and a kind of behind the
• 50:10
  scene standpoint, meaning timing and scoring and things of that nature.
• 50:14
  We were disappointed.
• 50:15
  We had probably at least two center conversations that were
• 50:19
  simply going to revolve around women in racing, which let's just
• 50:23
  say they were, they're postponed.
• 50:24
  I think we're still going to do them next year, Lord willing.
• 50:27
  But, uh, but yeah, we are reaching out to that.
• 50:29
  You're right.
• 50:30
  It's not just all guys, all that stuff.
• 50:33
  There's many of us that love to go fast and love the sound of an engine, right?
• 50:38
  Very true.
• 50:38
  When folks are here in Watkins Glen, uh, the Chamber of Commerce is where the
• 50:44
  Women in Motorsports banner display is.
• 50:46
  And, uh, we've also got a, uh, Formula, Rena Spec Racer in there
• 50:52
  on display from the collections.
• 50:53
  There's a couple things left I guess to talk about on the list.
• 50:56
  You've got the Arting Symposium and you also have the Arts Inger
• 50:59
  Awards and all that kind of stuff.
• 51:01
  Do you guys want to kind of dive into that a little bit and explain
• 51:03
  to the audience again, these are some, uh, uh, more things that the
• 51:07
  Center does for all of its members and, and, and the interested public.
• 51:11
  Let me, I'll talk about the dinner and then I'll let Rick
• 51:13
  talk about the, uh, the symposium.
• 51:15
  The dinner was started, I believe six or seven years ago, quite
• 51:18
  candidly as a fundraising project.
• 51:20
  Cameron Argersinger, again, being the founder of racing here and
• 51:23
  the founder of post World War II racing in the United States.
• 51:26
  Uh, we honor him with this award and I always find myself catching myself
• 51:30
  when I say we give it to a motor sports personality because yes, they are
• 51:34
  personalities, but the list of people that we have honored with this award
• 51:38
  And by the way, they all show up.
• 51:39
  This is not just an honorary thing.
• 51:42
  Started with Chip Ganassi.
• 51:44
  Chip, you know, raced here both in sports cars, as well as had a nice
• 51:48
  Indy career and of course has, you know, morphed into a team owner of
• 51:51
  sports cars, Indy cars, NASCARs.
• 51:53
  So Chip held a lap record here in Formula Ford for quite a few years.
• 51:58
  So Chip was the first, Richard Petty was the second.
• 52:00
  Roger Penske, some guy named Mario.
• 52:03
  I can't think of his last name.
• 52:04
  Yeah, Italian last name.
• 52:05
  Mario something.
• 52:06
  Yeah.
• 52:07
  Um, Jim France and the France family and, uh, Bobby Rahal.
• 52:11
  Now I can't tell you, or I guess I'm not supposed to tell you.
• 52:15
  So I won't tell you who we were going to honor this year, but it would have
• 52:18
  just kind of continued that same vein.
• 52:20
  So anyway, the dinner itself has always been held at the Corning Museum of Glass.
• 52:24
  It's a 250 a plate dinner.
• 52:27
  A lot of industry insiders attended because we always try to, depending
• 52:31
  on who we're honoring, we have it in conjunction with either NASCAR
• 52:34
  weekend or the IMSA weekend.
• 52:36
  So there's a lot of people in town anyway, but it certainly
• 52:38
  is open for, you know, Joe fan.
• 52:40
  Clearly the year that we honored Mario, we had more Joe fans in the
• 52:44
  house than, than anybody because who doesn't love Mario Andretti?
• 52:48
  It's a very, upscale evening.
• 52:52
  It's it's business casual for dress, but Corning Museum of Glass
• 52:56
  always did a great job with it.
• 52:57
  We were very disappointed.
• 52:58
  We were actually going to move it to Watkins this year.
• 53:00
  We were going to have it at the Harbor Hotel.
• 53:02
  We were all excited about that next year.
• 53:05
  It's a terrific evening.
• 53:06
  You get to see a lot of guys kind of Semi up close and personal, I guess,
• 53:10
  depending on what table you're sitting at.
• 53:12
  But they've all been terrific.
• 53:14
  I, I'll preface it by saying that they've all been just wonderful.
• 53:17
  Richard brought Kyle and the two of them bantering back and forth on stage.
• 53:21
  It was very clear that it wasn't just some show that they were
• 53:25
  putting on for the audience.
• 53:26
  It was very clear that there's true love and of.
• 53:28
  Affection there in that family, the, the fellow that kind of surprised me was Mr.
• 53:32
  Penske.
• 53:33
  I always thought of him as kind of the, the captain, you
• 53:35
  know, the cold taciturn guy.
• 53:38
  And he couldn't have been more delightful and friendly and signed autographs.
• 53:43
  And, I mean, just totally my conception of him just totally disappeared.
• 53:47
  He was just wonderful.
• 53:47
  So it's a terrific evening again, hopefully back on the schedule next
• 53:51
  year, hopefully Back here or, or here for the first time in Watkins Glen.
• 53:55
  And, uh, kind of a stay tuned type of thing on that.
• 53:58
  So I'm definitely going to be paying attention.
• 54:01
  Yeah, no, it's, it's a fun night.
• 54:02
  We have, uh, show cars and stuff that are outside.
• 54:05
  Uh, the Corning Museum of Glass is always hugely busy with tourists.
• 54:09
  The interesting thing is because a lot of the people that attend the dinner
• 54:12
  are, are, are industry insiders.
• 54:15
  You know, what do they care about a show car?
• 54:16
  They see this every weekend.
• 54:18
  Okay.
• 54:18
  It's the people getting off the tour bus that all come over and take
• 54:22
  pictures of the, the IndyCar, the NASCAR stock car, the, you know, whatever
• 54:26
  it is we have on the floor, we have Mario's 79, uh, world championship
• 54:31
  winning F1 Lotus on display at one, yeah, well, actually it was the year.
• 54:35
  Duh, that Mario was here.
• 54:37
  Here.
• 54:37
  So, uh, uh, so yeah, we even get some cool cars that we have positioned
• 54:41
  out in front of the, uh, out, out in front of the place as well.
• 54:43
  Now the, uh, symposium is, uh, wide ranging topics in, uh, in motor sports.
• 54:51
  We've had, uh, authors, bloggers from all over the country and Europe have
• 54:56
  been here to go through the list of topics, gosh, just very wide ranging.
• 55:02
  We'd have to go back and really pull out some, some notes to be honest with
• 55:06
  you on, uh, on the range of topics.
• 55:09
  But one gentleman was here with, uh, uh, dirt track racing.
• 55:13
  In southeastern Alabama, and then another gentleman's here talking about,
• 55:18
  uh, Formula One in, uh, in the fifties, Formula V racing in its infancy,
• 55:24
  we had, and let me just interject.
• 55:26
  These are all academic.
• 55:27
  Yes, people.
• 55:28
  This is, you know, as opposed to our conversations where.
• 55:31
  Yeah, we'll have authors for stuff and a lot of fans.
• 55:34
  These are all academic people in large part talking to other academics.
• 55:38
  I mean, I, I was surprised that, I mean, I think one year, Rick, didn't
• 55:41
  we have somebody fly in from New Zealand or something to attend this?
• 55:45
  It's like, really?
• 55:47
  So it's wide ranging and, uh, they're, uh, very detailed, uh, PowerPoint
• 55:54
  presentations for the most part.
• 55:55
  Just, uh, people that have spent.
• 55:58
  Maybe a year or two creating this presentation.
• 56:03
  I mean, you're, you're riveted when you're, when you're sitting there.
• 56:06
  Uh, we've been holding those at the media center at Watkins Glenn
• 56:10
  International the last few years.
• 56:12
  They have a excellent, uh, audio visual set up and, uh,
• 56:16
  and hospitality set up there.
• 56:18
  So they've been very nice to, uh, to host that for us.
• 56:21
  And normally we would now be getting ready to host that.
• 56:24
  Again, because it's been held traditionally in November, but,
• 56:28
  you know, again, I hate to keep throwing this up, but it's, that's
• 56:32
  another thing that we lost this year.
• 56:34
  But again, hopefully next year.
• 56:36
  But that's a, it's a very interesting thing.
• 56:38
  I'm not an academic.
• 56:39
  I'm an enthusiast and we approach things at two different levels.
• 56:43
  And it's interesting to hear the academics.
• 56:46
  How they approach it as opposed to just a enthusiastic guy like me approaching it.
• 56:52
  But yeah, I, I think they, they desensitize themselves.
• 56:55
  They also strip away any loyalty, right?
• 56:58
  They look at it purely as data facts, statistics, all that kind of stuff.
• 57:02
  So, I mean, as a student, You always have to kind of stand back
• 57:06
  and look at the bigger picture.
• 57:07
  And I always view history as links in a chain, right?
• 57:10
  So certain events occurred, which caused other events to occur.
• 57:13
  And it's a whole ripple effect from that point forward.
• 57:16
  But yeah, but being an enthusiast, that's where the passion is.
• 57:19
  That's where the excitement is.
• 57:21
  So that's where people, uh, you, you can spread that enthusiasm and get other
• 57:25
  people interested in that particular topic or subject or whatever it might be.
• 57:30
  And that is how you continue to propel this forward.
• 57:34
  And again, I think it takes all types and I think you guys
• 57:36
  are doing a great job of that.
• 57:38
  And so having the academics and the enthusiasts, everybody in the same room.
• 57:42
  That's what keeps this going.
• 57:43
  That's what that's what keeps it moving.
• 57:45
  And to your point about being younger, Alfred State University,
• 57:48
  which is what, 90 minutes up the road here, probably has a tremendous
• 57:53
  automotive technology department.
• 57:55
  And we routinely have I don't know, 15 or 20 of their kids
• 57:59
  come down to listen to this.
• 58:01
  So in addition to the older, again, academic people in the room, we
• 58:07
  have, uh, kids that are involved in automotive technology, be it because
• 58:11
  they want to go on and be a service tech, be it they want to go on and
• 58:13
  become something to do with a race team.
• 58:15
  So that's, so that kind of helps us.
• 58:17
  skew that age thing down a little bit as well.
• 58:20
  And I think there's, there's a lot to look forward to in 2021.
• 58:23
  I mean, I, I'm going to definitely make it a point in my schedule to see
• 58:28
  which of these events, which I didn't know about until now that I can attend.
• 58:31
  I mean, I come up to the Glen very regularly.
• 58:33
  So for not this year, but so for me, it'd be easy to say, Oh,
• 58:37
  on this particular weekend, I'm already going to be there anyway.
• 58:39
  Or, you know, I'm going to go up.
• 58:40
  Do this instead because it's, it's interesting and it's something
• 58:43
  else that we can talk about maybe on a subsequent episode.
• 58:45
  Hey, what was the topic this year at the Arts Inc.
• 58:48
  symposium?
• 58:48
  Let's, let's break that down.
• 58:49
  Let's unpack it, you know, that sort of thing.
• 58:51
  But I do have a couple other questions.
• 58:53
  I think this question I could only ask you guys.
• 58:56
  We talk about it a lot because we're prepping for 2023 and
• 59:00
  there's a significance to that.
• 59:01
  And here comes the question.
• 59:02
  In your opinion, what's more important, the hundredth running of LeMans or
• 59:07
  the hundredth anniversary of LeMans?
• 59:09
  To me, it's the running of it, the event itself, you know, to be, uh,
• 59:14
  uh, reading, uh, in history here about Pete Lyons crawling through the
• 59:19
  woods, uh, in, uh, you know, 1970, creeping up to the guardrail to shoot
• 59:26
  some photographs and hearing a mantra come up through, uh, the Mulsanne
• 59:30
  Strait, it's all about the action.
• 59:32
  I think I would probably agree with Rick on the 100th running,
• 59:34
  but just to throw in yet something else we have in the collections.
• 59:37
  A guy sent us a VHS tape several years ago of a Ford GT40.
• 59:43
  This is an in car thing.
• 59:44
  There's no dialogue.
• 59:46
  The guy just starts out and he runs the whole course.
• 59:48
  And this is way before guardrails and all this stuff.
• 59:52
  And you are just along for the ride as this GT40 thunders down the Mulsanne
• 59:56
  Strait at 210, 220, 25 miles an hour.
• 59:59
  And the trees are literally feet away from you.
• 1:00:03
  I mean, it's just incredible.
• 1:00:06
  It's, and there's, as I say, there doesn't need to be any narration.
• 1:00:10
  It's just this in car camera with this car, uh, from probably the late 60s.
• 1:00:17
  Okay.
• 1:00:17
  That's when the GT40 was, was dominant there.
• 1:00:20
  Unbelievable.
• 1:00:21
  Um, spectacular.
• 1:00:22
  Unbelievable.
• 1:00:23
  Mesmerizing.
• 1:00:24
  How many years difference is there between the 100th
• 1:00:26
  anniversary and the 100th running?
• 1:00:28
  Well, Le Mans started in 1923 and there were years in there
• 1:00:31
  because of the war and everything else where Le Mans didn't happen.
• 1:00:34
  Yeah, so the hundredth anniversary of Le Mans is in two years or three years.
• 1:00:38
  Well, let's call it two years, right?
• 1:00:40
  We're not that far away.
• 1:00:42
  So this year marked the 88th.
• 1:00:44
  Running of Lamont.
• 1:00:46
  So that puts us 12 more years out to reach the hundredth running of Lamont.
• 1:00:50
  And that's why we asked the question hundredth anniversary
• 1:00:53
  versus hundredth running.
• 1:00:54
  Do you want to wait till 23 or do you want to wait to 32?
• 1:00:57
  It makes a big difference for the enthusiast at that point.
• 1:01:00
  So does that change?
• 1:01:00
  I think it would also depend on how old you are at the time.
• 1:01:06
  Now I might have to change my answer to the anniversary.
• 1:01:11
  Yeah, good, good point.
• 1:01:14
  But, uh, yeah, it's, it's still, uh, it's still about seeing it.
• 1:01:18
  And I'm hoping that We'll see, uh, more interest in, uh, more teams
• 1:01:24
  because it's, uh, it's the big companies are, uh, finding other
• 1:01:29
  ways to spend money, unfortunately.
• 1:01:31
  So, right.
• 1:01:32
  And we talk a lot about that, uh, on, on different episodes
• 1:01:35
  where, you know, the, the dawn of.
• 1:01:37
  The two door sports car is gone, right?
• 1:01:39
  A lot of sedans are disappearing.
• 1:01:41
  We're moving to electric.
• 1:01:42
  I mean, there's, but it's what people don't realize.
• 1:01:45
  Yes.
• 1:01:46
  Cars are appliances in some respect, depending on how you use them and
• 1:01:50
  trucks for their purposes, et cetera, but sports cars, racing, motor sports.
• 1:01:55
  Has done so much for engineering.
• 1:01:58
  It trickles down into so many other industries, things that
• 1:02:01
  were invented at the racetrack.
• 1:02:03
  And what people don't realize is not by doctors and scientists in the old days,
• 1:02:07
  by guys that went, that didn't look right.
• 1:02:09
  It didn't work.
• 1:02:09
  That broke.
• 1:02:10
  We need to fix it.
• 1:02:11
  And that ended up trickling down into other things.
• 1:02:14
  And so I always viewed racing as.
• 1:02:16
  pushing the envelope of engineering, especially Formula 1, right?
• 1:02:20
  And Formula 1 is on the grand scale.
• 1:02:22
  It's, it's right up there with soccer and other stuff like that.
• 1:02:24
  But a lot of other disciplines don't get the same kind of recognition.
• 1:02:28
  I, I like the fact that IMSA has really come up again in the last,
• 1:02:32
  you know, Like decade or so where it kind of fell off for a while.
• 1:02:36
  You know, it had its heyday in the Can Am, uh, you know, seventies and
• 1:02:39
  eighties, as you talk about the golden era of racing and things like that.
• 1:02:41
  And it's kind of ebbed and flowed, but I'm glad that it's coming back.
• 1:02:44
  But IMSA is very tightly coupled with Le Mans, even though Le Mans is WEC and FIA
• 1:02:50
  and all that kind of stuff, but you're right, the P1, especially the prototype
• 1:02:55
  cars, that's where you're looking at cutting edge technology that will be
• 1:02:58
  in your street car 10 years from now.
• 1:03:00
  And as we move away from that and people.
• 1:03:02
  If we don't continue to spread the enthusiasm or get people engaged
• 1:03:06
  in racing, then, then you're right.
• 1:03:08
  The big companies are going to pull out.
• 1:03:09
  They're like, well, I'm just going to go build something that
• 1:03:12
  moves people around all day long.
• 1:03:13
  Cause that's what people want.
• 1:03:14
  So it's, it's, it's, it's a bit bittersweet, but I hope that, you
• 1:03:19
  know, having conversations like this continue to reinvigorate that
• 1:03:22
  continue to kind of churn the water.
• 1:03:24
  And people look at the older technology and go, that's still ahead of its
• 1:03:28
  time, you know, that car from 1980 or 1970, they were doing that back then.
• 1:03:33
  I mean, I don't want to go into deep, specific engineering details,
• 1:03:36
  but there's still things that you're like, wow, I can't believe
• 1:03:39
  they were doing that 40 years ago.
• 1:03:40
  Right?
• 1:03:41
  So you got to look at motorsport.
• 1:03:43
  Not just as a sport, because it is, but also as chemistry, engineering, physics.
• 1:03:48
  I mean, it's all gamuts of STEM at the end of the day.
• 1:03:52
  I mean, look at, look at how many manufacturers, Audi, I think
• 1:03:56
  for one, got out of endurance racing and went formula E racing.
• 1:04:01
  Now I have to, I'm going to show my age here.
• 1:04:03
  And I just told you what turns me on about racing is all the visceral stuff.
• 1:04:07
  I've never been to a formula E race.
• 1:04:09
  I watched one briefly.
• 1:04:11
  It was like watching paint dry to me.
• 1:04:14
  I understand I'm probably in the minority, but if there's no sound
• 1:04:17
  and no smell apart from a burnt condenser or something, right?
• 1:04:22
  I, I don't know.
• 1:04:24
  I would find myself feeling it.
• 1:04:26
  I don't know.
• 1:04:26
  Yeah.
• 1:04:27
  I don't know.
• 1:04:28
  So another question for you.
• 1:04:30
  If you guys had to pick one manufacturer that was maybe the most, not maybe the
• 1:04:36
  most prominent, not the most winning, but the most influential in changing
• 1:04:41
  motorsport, who would you say that is?
• 1:04:45
  You didn't tell me I need to study for this trick questions here.
• 1:04:49
  Wow.
• 1:04:49
  Are we talking somebody along the lines of Ford Chevy?
• 1:04:52
  Are we talking along the lines of like a McLaren?
• 1:04:54
  Could be anybody.
• 1:04:55
  It's, it's your personal opinion.
• 1:04:57
  I have my vote, but I'll reveal that at the end.
• 1:05:00
  Well, going back to my era of racing, I guess I would say.
• 1:05:03
  I would probably say either McLaren or Porsche because I
• 1:05:08
  grew up in the era of the Can Am.
• 1:05:10
  And of course, the McLaren was the dominant car in the
• 1:05:13
  early years of the Can Am.
• 1:05:15
  But then when the killer Porsche 917 came out or whatever it was, I mean, you
• 1:05:21
  know, the 1100 horsepower Porsche just completely obliterated the competition.
• 1:05:25
  But McLaren was also very strong in F1 racing at the time.
• 1:05:29
  Not so much now, unfortunately, but, or Ferrari.
• 1:05:32
  I mean, Ferrari has been like a thread through so many years of
• 1:05:36
  racing sports cars, F1, I don't know.
• 1:05:41
  So Rick, Rick, what do you think?
• 1:05:43
  Uh, I'd have to say in, uh, the big three in this country, I'd
• 1:05:49
  have to say, uh, probably General Motors bringing along motorsports.
• 1:05:54
  And then having to drop out yet, still bringing the, uh, the technology through
• 1:06:01
  the back door, if you will, and, uh, working through a smaller race teams
• 1:06:06
  and, uh, probably I'd have to go with GM, although I'm kind of a Ford guy, Edsel
• 1:06:11
  Ford took me home from the racetrack one time, that's a story for you.
• 1:06:15
  Did he take you home in an Edsel though?
• 1:06:17
  No, he took me home in his own car.
• 1:06:20
  He dropped him off.
• 1:06:21
  He dropped him off a block before his house.
• 1:06:23
  Cause he didn't want to see him pulling up in front of his house.
• 1:06:25
  And then Edsel for God's sake.
• 1:06:27
  No, we were, we were at, uh, at the Grand Prix here and, uh, Edsel Ford Jr.
• 1:06:32
  was there.
• 1:06:33
  I was with some friends with the Tyrrell team and that's where he
• 1:06:37
  was a Jackie Stewart fan, of course.
• 1:06:39
  And so I'm walking home from the racetrack.
• 1:06:43
  And.
• 1:06:44
  I'm just down the road and I hadn't had a chance to meet him in the garage
• 1:06:49
  area, uh, but all of a sudden this cougar pulls over and Michigan plates
• 1:06:55
  and he says, Hey, you need a lift?
• 1:06:57
  And I had a material jacket on and he says, hop in.
• 1:07:01
  So I hop in the back.
• 1:07:02
  He's got his girlfriend in the front and he says, you live here, right?
• 1:07:06
  And I says, yeah.
• 1:07:07
  And he says, well, He says, good.
• 1:07:09
  And he says, I need to know how to get out of here on Sunday.
• 1:07:13
  So he hands me a piece of paper.
• 1:07:16
  I draw him a couple of maps and, uh, he dropped me off at, uh, my house, which was
• 1:07:21
  right across the road from Seneca Lodge.
• 1:07:23
  And, uh, uh, so I can say that Edsel Ford took me home and dropped me off
• 1:07:29
  in his personal car, which had a little plaque on the dash that said, This car
• 1:07:33
  built especially for Edsel Bryant Ford.
• 1:07:36
  Very cool.
• 1:07:37
  So that was a, that was a cool event.
• 1:07:39
  Well, I don't have anything to top that.
• 1:07:42
  Nah, I don't either.
• 1:07:43
  But, uh, all right.
• 1:07:45
  So what's your, what's your verdict?
• 1:07:47
  So growing up in the group B era, Right.
• 1:07:52
  So I'm dating myself now in the eighties, right?
• 1:07:54
  So I was a big Audi fan.
• 1:07:56
  I grew up in a Volkswagen Porsche family and, you know, Honstock is my hero.
• 1:07:59
  I got to see him race at the Glen on TV, uh, things like that, you
• 1:08:03
  know, with the, with the ITU cars and all that, but Audi is not my pick.
• 1:08:07
  When I look at the history of motorsport and I look at.
• 1:08:10
  One of the most influential in terms of breaking the rules, changing the
• 1:08:15
  rules, pushing the boundaries of engineering, having some of the top
• 1:08:18
  notch race car drivers of all time.
• 1:08:20
  I have to tip my hat to a company that started in a shed in
• 1:08:25
  England, and that goes to Colin Chapman and his crew at Lotus.
• 1:08:29
  Oh, okay.
• 1:08:30
  That's a good choice.
• 1:08:32
  I can't find a fault with that.
• 1:08:33
  No.
• 1:08:36
  My listeners are going, oh, yeah.
• 1:08:38
  Well, my listeners are gone.
• 1:08:41
  Oh God, he's talking about Lotus again.
• 1:08:43
  Here we go.
• 1:08:45
  So Kip and Rick, I can't thank you guys enough for coming on the show.
• 1:08:49
  This has been extremely educational and I think our listeners are really
• 1:08:54
  going to enjoy learning more about the IMRRC by visiting your guy's website,
• 1:08:58
  which you can visit by going to www.
• 1:09:02
  racingarchives.
• 1:09:03
  org or if you're like me and happen to be In Watkins Glen at some point
• 1:09:07
  during the year, head down to 610 South Decatur Street in downtown Watkins Glen
• 1:09:12
  to check out the facility for yourself.
• 1:09:15
  Obviously nowadays it's not open to the public like it used to
• 1:09:17
  be, but you can always reach out to Kip at kipatracingarchives.
• 1:09:22
  org, set up an appointment, come in and check it out and learn more
• 1:09:25
  about what they have to offer.
• 1:09:26
  So again, guys, I can't thank you enough for coming on.
• 1:09:29
  This has been really cool and a lot of fun.
• 1:09:31
  Yeah, I had fun.
• 1:09:32
  Yeah.
• 1:09:33
  It's been a pleasure.
• 1:09:34
  Thanks so much.
• 1:09:35
  Thanks, Eric.
• 1:09:40
  Hey, listeners, did you enjoy this particular episode?
• 1:09:44
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• 1:09:46
  by visiting the GTM website?
• 1:09:49
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• 1:09:53
  to log on to www.gt motorsports.org today and search for this particular episode.
• 1:10:01
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• 1:10:04
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• 1:10:07
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• 1:10:27
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• 1:10:28
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• 1:10:30
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