Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From Fire Chief to Apex Chaser: Clive Savacool’s Journey from Four Wheels to Two

Transcript

From Fire Chief to Apex Chaser: Clive Savacool’s Journey from Four Wheels to Two · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
• 0:09
  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder.
• 0:16
  How did they get that job or become that person?
• 0:19
  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
• 0:27
  Our guest tonight started his racing career as a teenager in go karts in the
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  1990s, moving to the West Coast Star Mazda Series racing Formula Mazdas in
• 0:36
  2003, where he finished third overall and won Rookie of the Year in 2006.
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  In 2008, he turned his attention to motorcycles and started racing with the
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  American Federation of Motorcyclists, which is the oldest motorcycle road
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  racing club in the United States.
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  Along with many racing wins and championships, today Clive Savicool
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  finds himself after several decades as a paramedic and part of the fire
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  service, still behind the handlebars of motorcycles and is a member of
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  the AFM board of directors to assist in overseeing staff and productive
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  operations of the racing club.
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  And he's here to talk to us about why you should consider going
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  to the track with your bike.
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  And joining me as co host tonight is Marissa Cannon, GTM club member and
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  Northeast Region Chief who also comes from a background in motorcycle racing.
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  So with that, let's welcome Clive to Break Fix.
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  Thank you guys for having me.
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  Um, love your show.
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  Welcome Clive.
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  So like all good Petrelhead origin stories, tell us about Clive.
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  How did you come into racing?
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  Did you grow up in a racing family?
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  What made you a Petrelhead?
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  Did you start as a kid or did you come into it later in life?
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  Yeah, I started as a kid, my uncle raced cars, he raced motorcycles
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  and he kind of helped raise me.
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  My dad was big into motorcycles as well.
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  And it just really, really intrigued me.
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  I'd go to Laguna Seca Raceway, Sears Point Raceway.
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  And I was just like five and six.
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  Met Carol Shelby, Dan Gurney when I was just a little tiny kid, you know?
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  And, and so I grew up around, you know, I mowed lawns for like two
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  years to save up my first racing cart.
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  It's always been a blast for me.
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  And then as a firefighter, later on as a fire chief, honestly, getting on
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  the track was a huge stress reliever.
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  I used to say it was my meditation time.
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  Cause didn't have to supervise anybody.
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  Didn't have to deal with any disciplinary issues, employees, no major disasters.
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  Just go out and have fun with my buddies, the racetrack.
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  So it grew from a kid's standpoint.
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  So you cut your teeth and go karts, and then you made a transition to
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  formula Mazda's, which is like.
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  A huge leap.
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  Did you even take an intermediary step until let's say like a Miata
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  or something else production based?
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  Well you should ask, I actually did one season in an RX 7 with SCCA on
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  the west coast San Francisco region.
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  I was too big for the Miata.
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  I'm 6'4 so didn't quite fit in that car.
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  It was fun, but going from karts...
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  Cars really felt kind of like slow motion, like a sedan on the track.
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  It was fun getting to go to my childhood dream tracks, Laguna Seca, Sears Boynton,
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  getting to be in a car on it, but the jump to Formula Mazda was to get something
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  faster and more similar to a racing cart.
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  And some people will say the transition from go karting to open
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  wheel racing isn't too different.
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  Would you agree with that?
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  Yeah, that's spot on.
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  The RX 7, very different, very slow.
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  If you start to spin out, it feels like it's an hour.
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  It just takes forever was the formula Mazda.
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  It handled very much like a racing cart, just the responsiveness, the fact
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  you're doing left foot braking in a formula Mazda, it translated very well.
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  And that's why I was pretty successful out of the gate.
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  So I raced with SCCA for a few years and then got to the
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  West coast star Mazda series.
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  In 2006, that last year, I don't think I ever finished off the podium once.
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  That is quite the accomplishment.
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  Yeah, I give it credit to being in a cart as a kid, the concrete
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  in your brain is still wet.
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  And so you learn those skills.
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  You learn the feel of a car, traction limits, and so on.
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  And I also had a great mentor as my uncle and the things he taught me lasted all
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  the way in through motorcycle racing.
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  Can you elaborate a little more on like what kind of cars are in
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  the Star Massa series, because you said you're too big for Miata.
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  I'm curious.
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  So yeah, the Formula Mazda cars, actually you're sitting on the
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  ground and you mold a seat.
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  It's quite a process to actually form a seat around you because you're buckled in
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  like you're getting in the space shuttle.
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  I basically had a molded seat that sat me down very low.
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  There was actually plenty of leg room.
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  So the Miata would have been a lot tighter fit than the Formula Mazda was.
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  I can't tell you what a modern, you know, Formula One car, IndyCar might be like.
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  I don't think there's many Formula 1 racers over six feet, but yeah,
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  actually fitting it pretty good.
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  I had your height.
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  I'm impressed that you passed the broomstick test because that's an age old
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  SCCA thing for open wheel cars, right?
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  Top of the roll hoop down to what would be the windshield above the steering wheel.
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  You must've had the perfect setup.
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  Yeah.
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  I just had that seat as low as possible.
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  Cause if you didn't have a seat in there at all, you would've
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  been pretty low in the car.
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  So it worked well.
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  So what did you learn?
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  From the transition from one discipline to the other, from carting to open
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  wheel, before you went to bikes, for instance, every discipline
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  brings something to the table.
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  So carting, they say is where you really develop your race
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  craft because you have no speed.
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  The carts are supposed to all be the same.
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  Everything's got momentum, but they're momentum machines.
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  But when you go to something like a formula Mazda, now your door to
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  door, literally wheel to wheel, because there's no fenders, what
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  did you take with you from carting?
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  And then what.
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  Did you graduate with from four wheels to two wheels carts were amazing in
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  that everything's happening at a faster speed, not literal speed, like miles
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  per hour, but just the fact that if the cart's going to spin out, it's
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  going to be faster than in a car.
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  If you're passing somebody, you set them up quicker than you would like in a car.
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  So I think you learn at a faster rate.
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  So when you get into a car, things are actually slowed down for you.
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  Even the formula Mazda, things were slowed down a bit.
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  The carting really just.
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  Get your brain ready to handle the cars.
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  And so when I first started racing formula Mazdas, I felt like I had a huge
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  leg up on some of the other rookies.
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  Cause it previous experience continuing on to motorcycles, honestly, what
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  really helped me and my uncle taught me this from day one is being smooth.
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  And so you can see some guys they'll get a car on a track, even with some motorcycle
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  racers, and they'll have the back tire a couple inches off the ground, sliding
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  sideways, but it's hard to be consistent.
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  When you're on the edge like that, whereas when you're smooth and you hit the line,
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  you hit your marks every time out, it just translates into speed and consistency.
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  What I was taught in racing carts, I took into car racing and then going to bikes,
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  even though it's completely different than cars, I still was able to focus on
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  being smooth, being smooth on the brakes, being smooth, your body positioning.
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  It, it all makes a big difference.
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  I've been around my fair share of motorcycle racing over the years.
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  And to see that it's like, as much as car racing is something that is beautiful
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  and fluid, motorcycle racing is ballet.
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  It's something that you just see.
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  It's so elegant.
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  It takes a lot of courage.
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  So explains why you're a firefighter and a paramedic going into that.
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  You know, it takes a lot of that to take everything that you've done in
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  a car and say, Hey, you know what?
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  I'm going to try this on two wheels.
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  Only some of the bigger names who've you've seen move from
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  either two wheels to four or 42.
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  What was the hardest part of your transition from four to two wheel racing?
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  And to dovetail off of that, what was the impetus for leaving
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  four wheel racing to go to bikes?
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  Racing the cars, it's kind of like that top point, like 2006.
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  And maybe around that time I bought my first motorcycle.
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  So I would have been, I don't know, 27, 28 years old.
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  And I'd never had a motorcycle before that.
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  I didn't get a small one.
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  I got a leader bike, a Honda RC 51, still my favorite bike on the planet.
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  That's a great bike.
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  Thanks.
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  I love it.
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  It was my favorite.
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  And of course my brain is like, well, I should just do a track day with it.
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  I actually went to a school with a company I still teach for.
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  I went to their school and right out of the gate, my brain was
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  already used to being on a track, was already used to going fast.
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  It already was programmed to sense the limits of adhesion
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  with the tire and so on.
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  And so now it's just the mechanics of.
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  Body positioning and all the differences between cars and bikes.
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  I just loved it on top of the motorcycle side of it.
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  I felt like I fit in better with the motorcycle crowd, like in the
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  pits, the guys I met, I still hang out with today, an amazing group of
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  people that I'm still up close with.
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  And so I think that was the impetus.
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  And so then I was looking also like how much I spend on a car
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  racing over a weekend where you essentially get four sessions, two
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  practice, one qualifying in the race.
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  And that's it.
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  Whereas you could spend all day on the track with a motorcycle, then put it away.
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  And it's still in great shape for the next time versus cars.
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  You're constantly working on them.
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  You need a team.
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  And so the cost factor was part of it, the fun factor, the people.
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  And so I think that's what slowly transmission me to bikes.
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  And for a period, I did both.
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  For a couple of years.
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  And then I was like, what am I doing with these cars?
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  It's killing me financially.
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  And I just have more fun with the bikes.
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  Did you make a shift to production based cars doing like HPDs or something?
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  Or are you still running the formula Mazdas?
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  I still had the formula Mazda in the last race.
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  I did was a double header Laguna Seca.
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  And it was the one and only time I'm aware of them doing this.
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  They had car racing and motorcycle racing on the same days.
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  And so I borrowed a friend's bike.
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  I went out and I got sixth in the motorcycle race, like 50 bikes.
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  And then I jumped in the car and got second.
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  There were some people there that also race in the series.
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  And one of them said, Hey, I'm looking for another formula Mazda.
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  And I basically came up with a deal to sell it to him.
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  I didn't even raise it the next day.
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  Cause like I knew my luck, I'd crash it.
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  If I raised it the next day when I have something lined up to buy it.
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  And so that was kind of like, you know what, I'm out.
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  So you mentioned.
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  The transition from cars to bikes and how bikes are more exciting and it's
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  more fluid, but obviously it's more physically active than being in the car.
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  But there's one other component to this that oftentimes maybe gets
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  overlooked and that's the risk.
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  Would you say that the risk on bikes is higher than in cars is about
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  the same, especially when you're wheel to wheel with other riders?
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  For sure.
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  A lot riskier.
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  Absolutely.
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  That doesn't leave your mind.
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  And honestly, I felt like over the years.
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  I left some speed on the table.
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  There were times when like, okay, I'm not going to push as hard as
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  I could, especially I raced in the Pikes Peak hill climb and there was
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  no way I was going to get right a hundred percent in that situation.
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  And so because of the risk factor, it does kind of hold you back.
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  Not everyone.
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  But I was very conscious, especially being a paramedic, you
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  know, I've seen the downsides.
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  And the flip side, you're on a racetrack, you have no cross traffic, you have no
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  cars, there's lots of runoff, you've medical standby around you, you have
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  the best equipment, like you have racing suits now that have airbags in them.
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  And so the safety is probably as good as it can get considering what you're doing.
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  And so from that aspect, we do make sure we're taking precautions
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  to make sure we're safe.
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  Are you using like the neck brace that they came out with to, to
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  go with your suit or are you just doing the airbag system?
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  I have a vest.
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  I don't have the neck brace.
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  And then the new suits with the company I work with, they have the
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  airbags built into the suit themselves.
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  When you were in the four wheeled world outside of the go
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  karts, you were pretty loyal.
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  I heard Mazda, Mazda, Mazda.
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  So are you brand loyal when it comes to bikes?
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  What kind of bikes are you running?
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  What are you racing out there?
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  Had a little brand loyalty for a bit with BMW because they sponsored me a little
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  bit after the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.
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  Because I was the first person I'm aware of, maybe the only
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  one to ever race a BMW S1000RR.
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  Pikes Peak.
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  And so the year after that, I got a bike from them.
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  Haven't had brand loyalty.
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  Like it's just a favorite, but I've kind of gone back and forth to Suzuki.
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  My first race bike was Suzuki, and then I tried a Yamaha, and then I
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  went to the BMW, then I tried a Honda, and I went back to the Suzuki because
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  it just felt like an all around good bike, especially for someone my height.
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  The Yamaha R6 was an amazing bike, but it was just underpowered for someone,
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  200 pounds, six foot four, you know, and the BMW was great for someone
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  my size, but I just never fell in love with the handling on that bike.
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  And so the Suzuki was just like an all around great bike for me.
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  And so that's kind of what I ended up winning my championship with the AFM.
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  And that was that the 1000, the 750, that bike is just an all around amazing bike.
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  It's got a good power, but it still has the handling of a middleweight bike.
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  Figured after that, I would move up to a leader bike again.
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  Nice.
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  Haven't taken that step yet.
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  Yeah.
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  I just know that the SV six fifties are really common, especially for
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  those who are starting out in racing.
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  That was my first race bike.
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  That was amazing.
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  I love that bike.
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  It is.
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  And what's funny is the lower horsepower classes.
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  Cause I think they only have like 80 horsepower.
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  Wouldn't you put the better carburetors on them?
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  The racing's better.
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  I think it's partly because it's a little bit of a spec class,
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  but when you've got just a lower horsepower, you're just dicing it up.
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  And I just loved that with the SV650.
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  It's like spec Miata for bikes.
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  That's what I'm hearing here, right?
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  You pretty much nailed it on the head on that one, Eric.
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  Could you elaborate a little more on the differentiation of the classes?
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  Formula 40, which I believe is for riders over the age of 40.
• 12:16
  That's right.
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  And I know that there's the dirt bike one, the Enduros, and then the other classes
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  like mid weight, lightweight, heavyweight.
• 12:24
  Yeah.
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  So with road racing, especially like with the AFM and other clubs.
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  The classes kind of all revolve around heavyweight, which are
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  leader bikes, middleweight, which are 600 750s and lightweight, which
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  are the, you know, like the 400s.
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  And so basically those three categories are what they break
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  off, expand and have other classes.
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  But ultimately those are the three groups of bikes.
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  The class I race in like formula 40, it's 40 and over.
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  They even have a formula 50.
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  Thankfully I'm not old enough yet for that one.
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  And then the legacy class that I raced in, honestly, the bike I raced in that class,
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  I raced in the 750 superbike class too.
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  And the 750 production class, even the bikes that are 10
• 13:00
  years old are still rockets.
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  The only difference is mine didn't have track control, which I was
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  never that big of a fan of anyway.
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  So the classes are really kind of just a break off of those three categories.
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  Fortunately, they do have Some little outlier ones, like I
• 13:12
  think it's called super dinosaur.
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  So you have like vintage bikes, which you guys like to wrench on them.
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  Cause of course they always break down AFM, which is a strictly women's class.
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  They also race in the other classes too.
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  They're the rock stars.
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  So that's been something that the AFM has really been successful
• 13:26
  at to draw in some more people.
• 13:27
  That's kind of the foundation this year.
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  We are adding two classes with Indians and Harleys to try and see if we can
• 13:34
  kind of go off the popularity of the Moto America has gotten out of it.
• 13:37
  Interesting.
• 13:37
  I'm not a motorcycle guy.
• 13:39
  I've always been a four wheel guy, but I do appreciate them.
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  And they are works of engineering art when you look at them and whatnot,
• 13:45
  but it's sometimes it's really hard to tell them apart outside of, you know,
• 13:47
  what's on the side of the gas tank.
• 13:49
  I mean, I know a BMW from a Triumph from a Honda, but when you're out there racing,
• 13:53
  what's it like on these different bikes?
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  Just like, well, the handling really wasn't there.
• 13:57
  What does that exactly mean?
• 13:58
  Because your contact patch in a corner is miniscule compared to what
• 14:02
  I'm used to on, you know, a 275.
• 14:04
  R seven Hoosier or something, you know what I mean?
• 14:06
  So it's like worlds apart, you know, Mars and Venus.
• 14:10
  So how do you translate that to somebody like myself or some of our listeners that
• 14:13
  are trying to figure out, what do you mean by the differences in all these bikes?
• 14:17
  It's all feel, which honestly I think was probably harder
• 14:21
  for me with the bikes because I didn't have my first motorcycles.
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  I was in my late twenties and now I just went ahead first and racing with it.
• 14:27
  You trail break a lot when you're on motorcycles more than probably a lot
• 14:30
  of people think who don't race them.
• 14:32
  For example, the BMW and I had the first generation.
• 14:34
  So it was their first one of the game.
• 14:36
  I'm sure they're a lot better now, but you just didn't have the front
• 14:38
  end feel on the front end when you're going in on the brakes.
• 14:41
  And so you really couldn't tell when it was going to break away.
• 14:44
  And probably a good example for the car.
• 14:45
  People is when you're in a turn and you're getting on the
• 14:49
  throttle and you can kind of.
• 14:50
  Feel the rear end start to step out on you and a lot of car
• 14:53
  guys, they know that feeling.
• 14:54
  They know when they're getting close to the rear end coming out,
• 14:56
  just coming a little sideways.
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  And so it's kind of a similar feeling to where you can tell when
• 15:01
  the front end is going to slip out and you're going to low side.
• 15:03
  And some bikes just have better feel than others.
• 15:05
  Like the Honda, I raced the CBR 1000 that had amazing front end feel.
• 15:09
  I loved that bike.
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  Some are just better than others.
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  The Suzuki was a good balance of all of that.
• 15:14
  Talking about rotation versus the car getting away from
• 15:17
  you versus drifting, right?
• 15:19
  There's three different sort of points.
• 15:21
  If you're coming around an apex, especially in a rear wheel drive car,
• 15:23
  a lot of us want to dial in some sort of rotation out of our cars, right?
• 15:27
  Because it allows us to egress the corner much more quickly or put it where we want
• 15:32
  it for track out and things like that.
• 15:33
  But what it sounds like to me for the bikes is it's all about the front end.
• 15:37
  And that's a little bit counterintuitive.
• 15:39
  What about the rear end are bikes pretty planted in the corners because you're
• 15:43
  applying the power and you're just sort of feeling everything through the
• 15:46
  front suspension and through the yoke.
• 15:47
  I probably didn't emphasize the rear as much because that always
• 15:49
  felt easier because you're getting on the throttle and you have a
• 15:52
  bigger contact patch in the rear.
• 15:53
  You could feel the rear sliding out a little bit.
• 15:56
  There's this one turn at Thunder Hill Raceway turn seven.
• 16:00
  And when you're going through that, it's almost.
• 16:01
  Full throttle and you're just flying.
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  It's probably like 130 miles a turn.
• 16:05
  And as you're coming out of it and you're on the throttle, your knees on
• 16:07
  the ground, you can feel the rear tire starting to slide out a little bit.
• 16:10
  And you just want to do it just a tiny bit, but you can feel that and you can
• 16:13
  really control it versus the front end.
• 16:15
  I was never good enough to want to go into a turn and want to
• 16:17
  slide the front as I'm coming in.
• 16:19
  And so honestly, the rear felt a little bit easier.
• 16:22
  And then with traction control, it's almost cheating with the rear sometimes.
• 16:25
  And I never Wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 16:27
  Your bikes have traction control?
• 16:28
  Like you've just blown my mind.
• 16:29
  The BMWs did.
• 16:30
  The Suzuki, I want to Championship did not cause I kind of didn't like it,
• 16:34
  but yeah, all the modern race bikes, they have amazing traction control.
• 16:37
  So you'll hear guys just come out of the corner and practically pin it.
• 16:40
  And you'll hear the exhaust was like a popping sound when they're
• 16:42
  just riding the traction control.
• 16:44
  So it's almost cheating and you can scale it back.
• 16:46
  So there's different modes on the traction control, like race mode,
• 16:50
  wet mode in different settings to allow a certain amount of tire spin.
• 16:53
  So to your question.
• 16:55
  The front was always a way to make up a lot more time on other people.
• 16:58
  Cause you could get deeper into the corner and have a higher corner speed that way.
• 17:01
  Because you've lived in both worlds.
• 17:02
  You probably remember the lectures from the classrooms about, you know, the
• 17:05
  car and the center of gravity and how it pivots on, you know, that pinpoint
• 17:09
  and whatnot and lateral movement under braking and acceleration, et cetera.
• 17:13
  What's the weight transfer like on a bike?
• 17:16
  You know, we see all those videos online with guys doing wheelies
• 17:19
  and doing endos and all, but that's not what you're doing on track.
• 17:22
  So.
• 17:22
  How subtle is the weight transfer and you're part of that weight transfer.
• 17:26
  Unlike in the car.
• 17:27
  Right?
• 17:28
  Absolutely.
• 17:29
  And Marissa hit the nail on the head that it's like a ballet because you want
• 17:32
  to be smooth with your body as well.
• 17:34
  Cause if you transition from one side of the bike really hard, or if
• 17:38
  you get on the brakes really hard, you're upsetting the suspension.
• 17:41
  And so that weight transfer you just described is huge with keeping the bike.
• 17:45
  Balanced the writing coach that I've worked with for years,
• 17:48
  Ken Hill, he's just amazing.
• 17:49
  And he would teach you on the brakes of just getting on so smooth on the brakes
• 17:53
  that you could actually break deeper and get on the brakes later because you were
• 17:56
  smooth and you weren't disrupting the brakes balance in that weight transfer.
• 18:00
  So you want to be smooth with it.
• 18:01
  And you watch some of the pro riders and they go into a turn,
• 18:03
  you know, MotoGP, it's slow motion.
• 18:05
  They see, you see them just slowly lifting the rear tire off the ground.
• 18:08
  It's because of how smooth they are transitioning to
• 18:10
  the brakes and minimizing.
• 18:12
  And granted, you're going to have a ton of transition of the weight, but it's
• 18:15
  how you do it and how smooth you are.
• 18:16
  That makes the difference.
• 18:17
  You know, we joke a lot when we're on track days with other guys, I break
• 18:21
  it to two going into turn one and you hear it all the time and you watch
• 18:24
  them from the outside and you're like, bro, you're not breaking up the two.
• 18:27
  What are the breaking zones like for the bikes?
• 18:29
  And you were talking about the weight transfer.
• 18:31
  Are you moving your body towards the front, put more pressure
• 18:34
  on the front end at that point?
• 18:35
  For me, I'm lucky because I'm tall.
• 18:37
  So I put my weight back on the bike because I'm coming to the corner.
• 18:39
  And another big thing with your body position is think about your,
• 18:42
  they call it economy of motion.
• 18:44
  You want to limit how much you move on the bike, but you want to be the right place.
• 18:47
  So when you're coming into a corner, you want to be on
• 18:49
  that inside part of the bike.
• 18:51
  You want your weight to be on that inside foot peg, but you don't want
• 18:53
  to transition all that as you're coming in the corner, you do it on the
• 18:56
  straightaway approaching that corner.
• 18:57
  So when you get there, your weight's already on that side of the bike.
• 19:00
  And then as you get onto the brakes for me being tall, it's easy.
• 19:03
  I get to the back of the bike, which helps limit how much the rear might come up.
• 19:06
  You essentially always get the front end diving down when you
• 19:09
  break, but the body position is huge with everything on the bikes.
• 19:12
  And then your question about break points.
• 19:14
  It's earlier with bikes than cars.
• 19:16
  And so that race I mentioned when I raced bikes and cars at Laguna Seca on
• 19:19
  the same day and a couple hours apart.
• 19:21
  You break much, much later in a Formula Mazda going over the front straight
• 19:25
  at Laguna Seca than you do on a bike, especially because the bike is
• 19:27
  actually going probably a little bit faster when you come to the corner.
• 19:30
  But back to your point about the contact patch, it's a lot smaller on
• 19:33
  the front tire of a motorcycle than four big wide slicks on a Formula Mazda.
• 19:37
  So there's a couple of times I had to catch myself from not
• 19:39
  going too deep on the bike.
• 19:40
  Yeah, combine with all those calipers that you have on the Formula Mazda too, right?
• 19:44
  Oh, yeah.
• 19:45
  Twice the braking power, right?
• 19:46
  That thing was insane.
• 19:48
  You raced the Formula Mazda and your bike on the same track in the same
• 19:51
  day, and transitioning back and forth has to be an interesting dilemma.
• 19:55
  Another thing that I don't think people take into consideration is
• 19:58
  your apex angles, your entry points into a corner on the same track.
• 20:03
  Are 180 degrees out from each other.
• 20:06
  They're different at times.
• 20:08
  I wouldn't say it was insanely different, but the benefit was that the muscle memory
• 20:13
  in my head when I'm on a bike, it knows, okay, this is the trajectory I need,
• 20:17
  this is where I need to be at this apex.
• 20:19
  The bikes have more power to weight ratio.
• 20:21
  So you probably apex a little bit later.
• 20:23
  You want to get the bike stood up so you can get on the
• 20:25
  throttle as soon as you can.
• 20:26
  Whereas the formula Mazda wasn't really high powered.
• 20:28
  So you wanted to be smooth.
• 20:30
  And so that had an impact on the apexes and the lines of the course.
• 20:33
  You memorized all the left turns at Laguna.
• 20:35
  So you got that down, right?
• 20:37
  You knew where they were.
• 20:38
  What I'm getting at is the arc of the turns on a bike are much
• 20:42
  longer than they are in a car.
• 20:43
  Right?
• 20:44
  Yeah.
• 20:44
  It depends too, like the leader bikes.
• 20:47
  Have sometimes a tighter apex and a slower mid corner speed because they
• 20:52
  want to carry as much speed into the corner, turn as much as possible,
• 20:55
  as quick as they can, and then get appointed down the next straightaway.
• 20:58
  Because BMW has got 200 horsepower.
• 21:00
  You want to get that throttle on with the cars.
• 21:03
  The Formula Mazda was actually pretty broad arc because it did not have
• 21:07
  that power that the motorcycles had.
• 21:09
  There were some differences, but the breaking points were definitely different.
• 21:12
  One point to your question about breaking points in the bikes is something that
• 21:15
  always stuck in my head wasn't as much when you get on the brakes, which
• 21:18
  is important, but it's almost more when you get off the brakes, because
• 21:21
  I wanted to make sure if I got the brakes too soon, and man, I didn't
• 21:23
  carry enough speed in the corner.
• 21:24
  So speaking of carrying speed through the corner and bike related
• 21:27
  activities, you're now an instructor or you've moved towards instructing
• 21:32
  like track days and stuff like that.
• 21:33
  Yep.
• 21:33
  I've actually been with the same company since 2008.
• 21:36
  It's the one I went to my first school at back in 2004.
• 21:39
  I think it was.
• 21:40
  When I had my RC 51, I got recruited to be an instructor a few years later.
• 21:44
  And it was, it was owned by a different group then than it is now.
• 21:47
  One of the instructors I worked with back then to bind the company.
• 21:50
  So we've kind of stayed this family for the last almost 20 years.
• 21:53
  And we've made quite a good name for ourself and the reputation
• 21:55
  about the atmosphere, our events.
• 21:58
  But yeah, so I teach with them at the schools and then we have track
• 22:00
  days throughout the year, where we also always welcome people for
• 22:03
  coaching if they need some help.
• 22:04
  Yeah.
• 22:04
  It's sort of where I transitioned away from racing just cause
• 22:06
  I'm getting a little bit older.
• 22:08
  For beginner track rider for motorcycle, how much would you say it costs to
• 22:11
  get into that first day on the track?
• 22:14
  What's great about track riding with bikes is you could just start with a bike
• 22:19
  straight off the showroom floor, go out and get a 400 for a reasonable price.
• 22:23
  You could get a used Yamaha R6 for a grand or so and take it to the track
• 22:27
  and it's going to be just a really.
• 22:29
  Fun bike to ride the track.
• 22:31
  So you could just show up with your safety gear and your bike and you're good to go.
• 22:35
  You do need to do some prepping, like take the mirrors off, cover
• 22:37
  up the lights and such, or you can go all the way to the extreme.
• 22:40
  Like I did at the end, having a trailer, generators, tire warmers, extra wheels.
• 22:45
  Spare body parts, spare sub frames.
• 22:47
  The sky's the limit if you really want to go racing serious.
• 22:50
  But if you just want to go do a track day ride, you just need a
• 22:52
  bike, a helmet and some safety gear.
• 22:54
  That and positive attitude, you're going to have fun.
• 22:57
  In terms of like expense, I know my leathers that I had were about 1, 500 and
• 23:02
  the helmet was about 800 and the gloves.
• 23:06
  I don't know if you have upgraded to the Stingray leather held gloves or not.
• 23:12
  So those are like five or six hundred dollars.
• 23:14
  You know, the boots and everything.
• 23:15
  So it's like you have to have a lot of more, you're physically on
• 23:18
  you, as opposed to being in a car.
• 23:20
  For those who are listening, it's like you're gonna spend money, but it's not
• 23:23
  gonna be like, Buying a car, setting the car up, adding the safety valves,
• 23:28
  adding the roll cage, all of that.
• 23:29
  There is some expense, but not as much.
• 23:32
  Marissa was bringing up cost.
• 23:33
  What does a motorcycle track day cost?
• 23:36
  Because when we look at it from a car perspective, for like two days,
• 23:40
  let's just say an average HPDE.
• 23:42
  Adjusted for 2023 inflation.
• 23:44
  You're talking maybe 500 bucks to race for two days and change.
• 23:48
  What's it cost on the motorcycle side?
• 23:49
  The track is a big factor.
• 23:51
  Buttonwillow Raceway down in Southern California is an amazing
• 23:54
  track, really, really desirable for testing cars and motorcycles
• 23:58
  because it has all types of turns.
• 23:59
  And so a lot of proteins will go there because they can test things
• 24:02
  out, but because it's in Buttonwillow middle of nowhere near Bakersfield,
• 24:06
  it's pretty reasonably priced.
• 24:07
  You could probably do track day there for 150 bucks.
• 24:09
  I think Eric just died.
• 24:12
  If you ever come out here, it's an underrated track.
• 24:14
  I love Buttonwillow.
• 24:15
  It's hard to get to and the hotels in the area are not the best.
• 24:19
  So camp, it's cleaner.
• 24:21
  That's saying a lot.
• 24:22
  Yeah.
• 24:23
  But then you go like Laguna Seca, and one of the reasons Laguna Seca is expensive
• 24:26
  is because it's such a nice facility, but also because they have a limit on how
• 24:30
  many vehicles can be on the track at once.
• 24:32
  It's either 30 or 35, depending on how much you paid.
• 24:34
  So, it probably could be 300 bucks or so.
• 24:37
  Sonoma's also kind of pricey, but then you go up to some other tracks, like
• 24:41
  Utah, they weren't too bad, probably a couple hundred bucks for the day.
• 24:44
  So cheap!
• 24:46
  So cheap.
• 24:46
  Yeah, in Utah, I cannot say enough good things about Utah Motorsports Campus.
• 24:51
  I love that track.
• 24:52
  Are the race entry fees as expensive as they were when
• 24:55
  you were doing Formula Mazda?
• 24:56
  Because you know, the SCCA events are pricey.
• 24:59
  Definitely cheaper than bikes.
• 25:00
  I think it's probably like 160 to enter.
• 25:02
  And then each class, I think is like 60.
• 25:05
  What a bargain.
• 25:06
  I should know.
• 25:06
  I'm on the board of directors, but it's a lot more reasonable.
• 25:09
  And you get a lot more track time.
• 25:10
  On bikes and another side note with bikes is with the cars, you
• 25:13
  have to have that thing set up.
• 25:14
  Perfect.
• 25:15
  When I raised the formula Mazda, you know, if you had the rear ride height off a
• 25:18
  quarter inch, the car was going to handle completely different with the bikes.
• 25:21
  I would just get it set up good the way I liked it.
• 25:23
  And I would hardly ever change anything just cause with the bikes, there's a lot
• 25:26
  more in the rider than there is with cars.
• 25:27
  Cause you have to have a car and tip top, good setup shape.
• 25:30
  If you're racing, whereas as a rider and motorcycles, you can compensate.
• 25:33
  Whereas you just can't do that with cars.
• 25:35
  You have to have the top car with bikes.
• 25:37
  It's a lot easier to set them up.
• 25:39
  And they also are way more durable with engines and such than cars typically are.
• 25:43
  You could push a bike really hard and race a few seasons
• 25:45
  without needing to do any work.
• 25:46
  Whereas a car, you could blow up a motor pretty easily.
• 25:49
  How quickly do you go through consumables, brake pads and tires and things like that?
• 25:53
  Tires, I would get a new set every weekend when I was racing.
• 25:56
  Probably could have gotten by without doing that.
• 25:58
  But when you're up at the pointy end of the field, if you get
• 26:01
  second and you think, man, I shouldn't have worn used Jag tires.
• 26:04
  I should've gotten new tires.
• 26:05
  You kind of do the best you can.
• 26:06
  But then again, with motorcycles, you get support pretty easily compared to cars
• 26:10
  because there's, they call it contingency.
• 26:12
  And so you can like with Dunlop, I would get discounts on all the tires and brakes.
• 26:16
  And so they would motivate, they want you to run their tires.
• 26:19
  They can say that they won that class with those tires on your bike.
• 26:21
  Probably the tires, the biggest cost, the rest of them, brake
• 26:23
  pads and such weren't so bad.
• 26:25
  The gas for races, I don't know, 25 bucks a gallon.
• 26:28
  I'm guessing 30 bucks a gallon.
• 26:30
  I only use them on race days, but the VP gas gave you a little bit more horsepower
• 26:34
  and something about the smell of that.
• 26:37
  The smell.
• 26:37
  It's like, if you could smell the song Thunderstruck by ACDC.
• 26:41
  That's what the smell of that gas does to you.
• 26:43
  You just go on track.
• 26:44
  Like, Oh, it's on.
• 26:45
  Well, one 10, right?
• 26:46
  Oh yeah.
• 26:47
  Nothing like race gas.
• 26:48
  Oh my God.
• 26:48
  Smell good.
• 26:49
  Oh.
• 26:49
  And it turns your exhaust pipe, the outer portion white because
• 26:52
  it's burning so hot out there.
• 26:54
  Yeah.
• 26:55
  Now, when you teach for motorcycle, Eric and I are very much familiar with the
• 27:00
  right side seat with the coach sitting there and, you know, being in your ear and
• 27:03
  driving around the track and everything.
• 27:05
  As you and I both know, with motorcycles, it's very different.
• 27:07
  You know, you, you have that classroom time and then you
• 27:09
  have what we call lead follow.
• 27:12
  Again, you have that in car driving, but what makes that different in
• 27:15
  motorcycle teaching for riding with a student and things like that?
• 27:19
  Yeah, it's certainly different than cars in that aspect.
• 27:22
  In our schools, we actually have that riding coach, Ken Hill, world
• 27:25
  known for his skills, and he'll teach our classroom portions.
• 27:28
  Every session he focused on something such as braking, body position,
• 27:31
  hitting your apexes, and then he'll instruct them, okay, this session,
• 27:34
  you go out with your instructor and you work on this, and then we go out.
• 27:37
  There's several things we'll do is for one, sometimes we'll do a two up ride.
• 27:41
  And we'll put them on the back of one of our bikes and we'll
• 27:43
  take a student out on the track.
• 27:45
  We go at their speed and they know if they, we don't want to freak them out.
• 27:47
  But the intent of that is we show them how late you can break into a corner, how
• 27:50
  soon you can get on the throttle to try and get them just to be more comfortable.
• 27:54
  Because a lot of times people go to the track for the first time,
• 27:56
  they're just flat intimidated.
• 27:57
  And so we can do two up rides to help show them the bike and the lines.
• 28:01
  And then every session we have hand signals if we want to pull in the pits.
• 28:05
  We'll coach them on something, go back out, come back in, work on it.
• 28:08
  At the end of the session, we might sit them down with the track map, draw
• 28:11
  lines in the track, make notes for them.
• 28:13
  We try to have a very good student to teacher ratio at our schools, just to make
• 28:17
  sure they get that personalized attention.
• 28:19
  That's great.
• 28:19
  I know the times we're in a classroom for car racing.
• 28:22
  So we're sitting there and there's a group of us and there's an instructor.
• 28:25
  And then we go out with another instructor and.
• 28:27
  You know, you do get that one on one time, especially when you're a
• 28:29
  novice, but as you, you get higher up, I know it tends to lag a little
• 28:33
  bit in terms of the instruction.
• 28:34
  Do you have plenty of opportunity to coach more advanced students to, you
• 28:38
  know, help them find their paths along in their racing time out on the track?
• 28:42
  We do, we have beginner schools, we have intermediate advanced schools,
• 28:46
  and then we have new racer schools.
• 28:48
  So we've had a broad spectrum, which is good because honestly, as a, as
• 28:52
  a rider, he's been doing it a while, doing some of the beginner schools, it
• 28:55
  can be a little tedious going out and not getting to race as hard as you went
• 28:59
  around the track, it's fun when you have some guys that come out wanting to
• 29:03
  race and they're just been riding the track for a while, maybe, and they're.
• 29:06
  They've got some talent and there's been some people that have challenged me.
• 29:08
  Like, Oh, this guy's going fast.
• 29:11
  I actually need to pick up my pace.
• 29:12
  It's kind of a broad spectrum.
• 29:14
  When I'm in the right seat, coaching somebody in a car, I have a radio.
• 29:17
  I can talk to them.
• 29:18
  We can work on things, you know, lap after lap, after lap,
• 29:20
  this lead follow construct.
• 29:22
  You know, we do it.
• 29:23
  Even with cars, but a lot of times there's radios, car to car, things like that.
• 29:27
  Do you use those on the bikes as well to talk to one another, or do you
• 29:30
  spend a lot of time leapfrogging so that you can see what they're doing?
• 29:34
  If they were able to mimic what you were able to put down, how
• 29:37
  does it really work mechanically?
• 29:39
  Yeah, we don't use headsets.
• 29:41
  And honestly, I think it might be a distraction on the bike.
• 29:44
  And so, using the hand signals, a lot of the leapfrogging, like you mentioned,
• 29:48
  you get really good as an instructor watching people in the side mirror,
• 29:51
  watching them hitting their apexes.
• 29:53
  It's surprising after doing it for this many years, you can
• 29:55
  pick up on them doing it right.
• 29:57
  And then the big thing is just that quick reinforcement.
• 30:01
  Of either the wrong behavior or the correct behavior and letting
• 30:04
  them know, okay, you did it right.
• 30:05
  Keep doing that or let's pull back in the pits.
• 30:07
  Let me show you again and we'll go back out.
• 30:10
  And so it's a lot of just pointing discussions and then lead follow.
• 30:14
  Are the teaching sessions designed?
• 30:17
  To make riders into racers, or is it more of an HPDE progression type system,
• 30:23
  novice, intermediate, advanced, and then eventually you get cleared to race.
• 30:27
  The beginner and intermediate schools, advanced schools, we tailor
• 30:30
  it to the individual students.
• 30:32
  If they just want to be a better rider on the street, they want to get
• 30:35
  familiar with the limits of their bike.
• 30:37
  We work with them on that.
• 30:38
  If there's someone that eventually wants to get to racing, then we'll work with
• 30:41
  them that, and then we'll point them in the direction of the new racer school.
• 30:44
  The new racer school is both to coach, but also to test, because once you
• 30:48
  complete the new racer school, which is just a one day class, then your
• 30:51
  license as a novice racer for AFM.
• 30:55
  And you can come out and do our Clubman race.
• 30:57
  The Clubman race is like new rider race series, and then you can race as a novice.
• 31:01
  And so the new racers really prepare them and for us to sign
• 31:04
  them off and say, yes, this person's safe to go ride with the AFM.
• 31:08
  And so it's kind of different ways to progress.
• 31:10
  But the new racer school is the actual gate to getting
• 31:12
  into the racing with the AFM.
• 31:14
  You mentioned different things that get taught in the classroom, body
• 31:17
  positioning, apexing, breaking, all those kinds of things.
• 31:19
  But what I'm still curious about is in HPDE, when we're training folks
• 31:24
  that, you know, they have their bucket list car or they want to, you know,
• 31:27
  like you said, they want to learn how to drive it the way the factory
• 31:30
  intended their brand new Z06 Corvette to be driven or M3 or whatever it is.
• 31:34
  One of the things we always focus on.
• 31:36
  Is safety, but inside of that is passing because passing is one of
• 31:40
  the riskiest things that you end up doing at any of these events.
• 31:44
  Cause you're going to get very close to a car.
• 31:46
  You're going to take it going into a turn or where the wheels are perceived
• 31:49
  straight, you know, things like that.
• 31:50
  But all of that is done and orchestrated using hand signals, which you
• 31:54
  mentioned between one car and another.
• 31:57
  And obviously an agreement between the student and the coach
• 31:59
  that's in the car with them.
• 32:00
  How does that whole negotiation with passing happen on a motorcycle?
• 32:05
  It's a lot more liberal than a car track day.
• 32:08
  And you know, a car track days for people that have done those,
• 32:10
  they have different levels.
• 32:11
  So maybe the newest class, I don't know all the rules.
• 32:13
  Like you're only allowed to pass like at the front straightaway
• 32:15
  or something like that.
• 32:16
  And then it goes up from there motorcycles.
• 32:18
  It's basically.
• 32:19
  Give them six feet of room in the newer classes, but you can pass anywhere.
• 32:23
  The general rule, just being a racer, especially a track day rider, is you
• 32:27
  don't want to take away somebody's line.
• 32:29
  And what I mean by that is if they're going into the turn and
• 32:32
  you dive to the inside to where they have to sit the bike up and go
• 32:36
  straight, you took away their line.
• 32:37
  Or if, say, you get a better run out of the corner, they're finishing the corner,
• 32:40
  going to the outside of the track, and you slide up the outside of them, you've
• 32:43
  taken away their line on the exit.
• 32:45
  And so basically if you're going to disrupt them, which is different than if
• 32:48
  you get on the inside of somebody, you go in side by side kind of, and you have the
• 32:51
  inside line to a turn, that's different.
• 32:53
  It's if you take the line away from them to where it puts them at risk
• 32:55
  for crashing or going off the track.
• 32:57
  That's kind of the good safe rule of thumb with motorcycles.
• 32:59
  With any good racing, there's always one of those violators.
• 33:02
  I know I've seen it.
• 33:03
  Plenty race starts where somebody comes from the outside
• 33:05
  and just dive bombs everybody.
• 33:06
  And you know, they're all hauling out the anchor to get their stuff
• 33:09
  together to get through the turn.
• 33:11
  It's incredible.
• 33:12
  Marissa just mentioned something interesting about, you know, passing
• 33:15
  on the outside in car racing.
• 33:17
  That's generally not the way it's done.
• 33:21
  It can be done.
• 33:22
  Let's look back at the Sebring 12 hour.
• 33:24
  And at the very end, we all saw how that turned out.
• 33:26
  Generally, you pass on the inside, heading into the apex, right?
• 33:30
  Or whichever side the apex is on, you're kind of on the inside of that is the same
• 33:35
  true of bikes, or is it sort of wherever it fits and you can get through and you
• 33:38
  can see through that line or that apex.
• 33:41
  Similar to cars, you set people up in bikes to pass them, you know, unless
• 33:44
  somebody makes a mistake and you're able to shoot up and get by them,
• 33:47
  you generally have to set someone up, especially if you're close to
• 33:50
  similar speeds and you plan it out.
• 33:52
  Good example is there's this track near out here called Thunder Hill
• 33:55
  Raceway and going into the last turn, it's a hairpin is tight turn, but.
• 34:00
  On the last lap, that's a good place to pass on the inside.
• 34:02
  So a lot of times you'll go in with a defensive line.
• 34:05
  You're not all the way to the edge of the track on the left
• 34:07
  side, which is the outside before you turn in to make your apex.
• 34:10
  And so if you're coming up on someone, you got a good run.
• 34:12
  You might go to the outside, let them take maybe the inside of the corner, and
• 34:17
  then it'll set you up for a better drive out onto the front straightaway, if that
• 34:21
  makes sense, because you're essentially going to be able to take a wider apex.
• 34:25
  Apex later into the last corner and then have a good run on
• 34:27
  them down to the finish line.
• 34:29
  And so with bikes, you know, the track's a lot wider than with cars.
• 34:32
  And so you kind of have these abilities to take different lines with cars, which
• 34:36
  is another thing I really liked about motorcycles is there's a lot more passing.
• 34:39
  It was more fun as a racer to dice it up with people versus a car
• 34:43
  where you might spend four or five laps to set up a pass on somebody.
• 34:46
  It's a lot more difficult.
• 34:48
  Not as big for a car, you know, and partially what you described there
• 34:50
  was almost like what we would call an over under which you were used
• 34:54
  to in the formula cars, wait for the mistake and dive underneath of them.
• 34:57
  And then you've got the exit speed and all that kind of stuff.
• 34:59
  Do bikes track out the same way a car does you mean finishing the turn on the exit?
• 35:04
  Yeah.
• 35:05
  Some cars don't want to track out because of differentials, because of, you know,
• 35:08
  exit speed, just because of the way they are, you know, in some cases we tell
• 35:12
  students all the time, make sure you get all the way out there to the curving.
• 35:14
  The car just doesn't want to go, or they're not carrying the same kind
• 35:17
  of speed, but I wonder what the bikes, because the arcs are larger
• 35:20
  and you are able to accelerate more quickly if they just naturally
• 35:23
  track out better than a car would.
• 35:25
  I wouldn't say it's better.
• 35:26
  It's different in that you have a much more three dimensional aspects.
• 35:31
  Of a bike than a car, you're, you have the lean angle that a car doesn't.
• 35:35
  And so one thing we tell people is when you add throttle, take away lean angle.
• 35:40
  And so essentially you're standing the bike up as you add throttle, you
• 35:43
  can hit the apex from a number of different trajectories on a motorcycle,
• 35:47
  and it could send you off the track.
• 35:49
  It could make it so you don't use all the track coming the exit.
• 35:51
  And so the trajectory where your bike is pointed at the apex is huge.
• 35:56
  And so usually that's when you're leaned over the most at the apex typically.
• 36:00
  And once you hit that apex, you kind of drop your inside shoulder as you
• 36:03
  lift up the bike to add throttle.
• 36:05
  And so you're finishing the corner with the goal of having the bike
• 36:08
  almost stood all the way up by the time you get to the outside of the
• 36:10
  track and being at full throttle.
• 36:12
  I mean, depending on how long that next straightaway is.
• 36:14
  Sort of in the difference of cars that you want to have that bike
• 36:17
  stood up in the proper position on full throttle as soon as you can.
• 36:20
  That makes sense.
• 36:21
  You know, you watch these motor GP races and whatnot, and you see the guys
• 36:24
  down on the sides of the sidewalls, you know, scraping the pegs on the
• 36:28
  ground and the whole nine yard, their knees are, you know, a millimeter
• 36:30
  from the asphalt if they're not scraping, how much physical exertion
• 36:34
  does it take to right side the bike?
• 36:36
  And even in a slalom situation, you see these guys just.
• 36:39
  Flip the bike from left to right and back and forth.
• 36:41
  How much does it take to get it to do that?
• 36:43
  Cause in a car, we're just not that physical.
• 36:45
  Yeah.
• 36:46
  Probably braking is one of the harder parts of it because you've got all
• 36:50
  that force on your forearms, but the actual picking the bike up, a
• 36:54
  lot of that is centrifugal force.
• 36:55
  I mean, you're, you're spinning up the rear tire, which then
• 36:57
  wants to stand the bike up.
• 36:59
  That isn't the exertion as much as probably the braking
• 37:03
  part of it with bikes.
• 37:04
  So do the G's affect you in the same way they do in a car?
• 37:07
  You know how it is in the Formula Masa, you got out and you felt
• 37:09
  like you just got hit by a bus.
• 37:10
  You just get beat up in the car.
• 37:12
  Is it the same on the bike or is it more relaxing?
• 37:14
  The G's aren't the same just because you're changing your
• 37:17
  center of gravity on the bike.
• 37:19
  As I'm going into a corner, I'm getting down on the inside.
• 37:23
  You've got your knee on the ground.
• 37:24
  Some of the faster guys got their elbow on the ground.
• 37:27
  And so that weight is on your foot peg.
• 37:30
  You put a lot of weight, which you probably can't tell too much.
• 37:32
  Like how's your handshake on your handlebar?
• 37:34
  Kind of have a different twisty as opposed to grabbing it like full force.
• 37:38
  Like street riders, you know, for racing, you have the little handshake that
• 37:41
  you kind of give it different ways of moving around on the bike and different
• 37:45
  wording and all kinds of stuff like that.
• 37:47
  People probably think a lot of guys have that weight on their
• 37:49
  forearm when the motorcycles it's.
• 37:51
  It's not, you want to keep your hands relaxed.
• 37:53
  That's why they say arm pump is such a big issue with motorcycles.
• 37:55
  Cause you want to keep that weight on your legs.
• 37:57
  And so that's the part where probably the G forces, I guess, would wear you
• 38:00
  out is your calves and quads at the end of a race can be pretty tiring.
• 38:04
  And usually in my brain, I think good.
• 38:06
  That means I had correct body position.
• 38:07
  If my legs are sore versus having arm pump, that makes sense.
• 38:10
  There's another large sanctioning body as well, which is the AMA.
• 38:14
  How is the AFM and the AMA similar and how do they differ?
• 38:17
  AMA is national.
• 38:19
  They're like the pros or like the major league baseball of motorcycle
• 38:22
  racing in the United States.
• 38:23
  World famous Wayne Rainey, world champion.
• 38:25
  He kind of took over AMA's racing almost 10 years, maybe 10 years,
• 38:30
  and they basically developed it to be what's now called Moto
• 38:33
  America, but it's still part of AMA.
• 38:35
  And they just had an amazing job of just reviving it from what
• 38:37
  it kind of was falling into.
• 38:39
  And so the AFM, you can kind of see as a feeder to the AMA, which is Moto America.
• 38:44
  And we get a lot of riders from Moto America who will go back and forth
• 38:47
  riding with us and riding with Moto America, really some of the top
• 38:50
  guys in the country come from AFM.
• 38:52
  Cameron Beaubier, who has won, I think, six national championships of the AMA.
• 38:56
  He used to race with AFM.
• 38:58
  He's from California.
• 38:58
  He's actually lives about 20 minutes from here.
• 39:01
  It's really kind of like a feeder.
• 39:02
  As part of an initiative we started a couple of years ago that we call the
• 39:06
  National Motorsport Safety Association, or NMSA for short, we hyper focus on safety
• 39:10
  across all the different disciplines of motorsports, to include motorcycles.
• 39:14
  We learned in talking to you before we got together here on the show that you
• 39:18
  developed some classes around first aid and four track day instructors and such.
• 39:23
  How they can assist injured riders until the ambulances
• 39:26
  arrive and things like that.
• 39:27
  So we wanted to explore that a little bit more with you kind
• 39:29
  of diving into the other side of Clive, which is your paramedic and
• 39:33
  fire service and things like that.
• 39:34
  So how did you bring your day to day life to the track with you?
• 39:37
  That's interesting.
• 39:38
  Started almost 10 years ago as a paramedic long before I ever had a motorcycle.
• 39:42
  And so when I got to the track and I was an instructor, it was kind
• 39:44
  of just a common thing, whereas if there was a wreck, I would be one
• 39:47
  of the guys that would stop to help.
• 39:48
  And I got to know the medics at the different tracks.
• 39:50
  And so there'd be a nice smooth handoff of any rider.
• 39:52
  And we had an incident in 2014, I think it was where someone crashed,
• 39:57
  had a head injury and sometimes head injury, you know, you're
• 39:59
  altered, they're a little combative.
• 40:01
  And I was actually not there that day.
• 40:02
  And so the company owner emailed me and was like, Hey, this is what happened.
• 40:05
  It was a bit of chaotic.
• 40:07
  Is there something you could do to help train the rest of the instructors?
• 40:10
  And so I put together a class that's morphed over the years, but basically I
• 40:13
  took the premise of even if you're not a paramedic or an EMT, there's things you
• 40:17
  can do to help stabilize the person and essentially try to minimize any further
• 40:22
  injury until the paramedics get there.
• 40:25
  And so we started the class with just teaching some basics, which included
• 40:29
  how you stop for a crash rider.
• 40:31
  You know, you don't want to stop in the impact zone.
• 40:32
  You don't want to put your bike in a place where someone can hit
• 40:34
  it and get injured themselves.
• 40:36
  You know, you walk backwards from the track, keeping an eye on the
• 40:38
  track towards the downrider or have somebody with you do that.
• 40:41
  So there's a lot of different etiquette policies we put in place on
• 40:43
  how to even just get to the person.
• 40:45
  And then once you get to the person, there were some basics we taught on
• 40:48
  just making sure their airways open, you know, making sure that they're stable.
• 40:52
  They had an injury, hold their head in place until the medics get there.
• 40:55
  So it's really some really basic stuff that fortunately there's laws in place.
• 40:58
  There's a law called the good Samaritan law, which basically says,
• 41:01
  if you have good intent, you get down there and try to help someone.
• 41:04
  As long as you're not trying to do a tracheotomy, the ballpoint pen,
• 41:06
  you act within normal behavior.
• 41:09
  The laws protect you from a lawsuit.
• 41:10
  That's kind of the premise we went with, with teaching the instructors.
• 41:13
  And it's basically been a class we teach once or twice a year.
• 41:15
  constructors, we all wear helmets and we know that those helmets protect
• 41:19
  us in such situations as an accident.
• 41:21
  And for us in the car world, you know, you have the SA helmets and you
• 41:25
  have the very different motorcycle helmets, the M rated helmets.
• 41:28
  Can you elaborate a little more on the differences between
• 41:31
  those two types of helmets?
• 41:33
  Do they allow SA helmets for track days with motorcycles?
• 41:37
  They don't, and it's not because they aren't good quality, it's
• 41:40
  because motorcycle helmets have been designed for multiple impacts.
• 41:44
  So, because if you fall, you're going to take a tumble and you might have multiple
• 41:47
  impacts, whereas an SA helmet, sometimes they're just designed for one big impact.
• 41:51
  I think for that rating, that'd be fire retardant too, correct?
• 41:53
  That is correct, yeah.
• 41:54
  Whereas motorcycle helmets, they're not.
• 41:56
  They differ in how they were designed to take a hit and
• 41:58
  then the fire retardant point.
• 42:00
  And then the other aspect is, you know, I've got a Simpsons helmet for
• 42:03
  racing cars, and you can't really see out of the visor unless you're sitting
• 42:06
  upright or even leaning backwards because the way they're set up.
• 42:09
  So bikes, you're going to be leaned over looking out of the top of the visor.
• 42:11
  You need to have that vision of view that you just don't typically
• 42:14
  get with a lot of SA helmets.
• 42:15
  Something very, very, very important is you get what you pay
• 42:18
  for when it comes to safety gear.
• 42:19
  Don't go buy one of those PVC helmets to go ride a bike.
• 42:22
  Get something quality from a quality brand.
• 42:25
  And same thing with your leathers, you can tell from the stitching from
• 42:28
  some of the leathers, they're going to rip as soon as you hit the ground.
• 42:30
  Now your, your ass is on the asphalt sliding.
• 42:32
  And as far as gloves, I don't have bike loyalty, but Dainese
• 42:36
  gloves, they just fit me so good.
• 42:38
  So I wear TCX boots because they fit my feet the best.
• 42:42
  And so I do have loyalty with safety gear and bell helmets.
• 42:45
  Those are the helmets I like.
• 42:46
  They fit me good and they're very, very safe.
• 42:48
  They also have the cheek pads that come out.
• 42:49
  So if your helmet has to be taken off by paramedics, the cheek
• 42:52
  pads come out and make it easier.
• 42:53
  You definitely don't ever want to cut corners on the safety gear.
• 42:56
  Never.
• 42:56
  Personally, I have an Arai helmet, which is made in Japan by the same family.
• 43:00
  I think that's been doing it for almost 50 some odd years.
• 43:03
  I'm a Revit suit.
• 43:04
  Those tend to fit me the best.
• 43:06
  And then the, I have the seedy Italian boots.
• 43:08
  Oh yeah.
• 43:09
  Along with the matching Revit gloves.
• 43:11
  I kind of went that way with my safety gear.
• 43:13
  Arai is definitely something that I will always buy an Arai motorcycle helmet.
• 43:18
  I have an old Arai too.
• 43:19
  I love it, but I'm sponsored by Bell.
• 43:20
  So I have to stick with that one too.
• 43:23
  And Bell makes a lot of crossover helmets.
• 43:25
  If you really enjoy Bell, you can get not only your car helmet, but
• 43:28
  also your motorcycle helmet, and you never have to leave the brand.
• 43:31
  Yep.
• 43:31
  That's what I used when I raced cars too, Bell.
• 43:33
  Riders generally wear leathers, but is any of that flame
• 43:36
  retardant or none of it's Nomex?
• 43:38
  Nope.
• 43:39
  I mean, leather inherently is.
• 43:41
  You know, fire resistant.
• 43:42
  So that helps because every once in a while you do see a motor blow
• 43:45
  up or something and they get off the bike pretty quick in general.
• 43:48
  I don't know of any organization that requires fire retardant for
• 43:51
  motorcycles, even underneath of the leathers, like as your undergarments.
• 43:55
  No, which ironically, a lot of them are this.
• 43:58
  Sweat wicking synthetic material, which will melt to your skin in a fire.
• 44:02
  So no, we kind of went the other direction.
• 44:04
  We just threw caution to the wind on the fire side of things.
• 44:08
  A leather riding suit is basically your roll cage.
• 44:10
  Yeah.
• 44:11
  That's a good analogy.
• 44:12
  I like that.
• 44:13
  It's all you got.
• 44:14
  Protecting you from road rash.
• 44:15
  Yep.
• 44:16
  Basically.
• 44:17
  So speaking of things that are epic, this is very epic, right?
• 44:21
  We're Pike's Peak.
• 44:24
  Can you tell us a bit more about your experience?
• 44:27
  And what are some of your other favorite tracks to race your bike on?
• 44:30
  Yeah.
• 44:30
  Pike's Peak was interesting.
• 44:32
  It all started with just having one night, having won too many Guinnesses, deciding
• 44:35
  to sign up for it, see if I get accepted.
• 44:37
  And next thing I know, they're like, yeah, come race this.
• 44:39
  Like, oh, okay.
• 44:40
  This is going to be a challenge, but it was definitely outside my comfort zone.
• 44:43
  When I did the first practice, the course is still open.
• 44:46
  And what Pike's Peak hill climb is, it's basically you race from the bottom of
• 44:49
  Pike's Peak to the top of the mountain.
• 44:51
  I think it's like 12 something miles.
• 44:52
  I can't remember how many turns.
• 44:54
  It's pretty crazy.
• 44:54
  It's like our version of the Isle of Man race in Europe.
• 44:57
  The mountain is still open to tourists, so the only time we got to practice,
• 45:00
  there was like three days or four days, and you have to get there like at 3 a.
• 45:04
  m., get ready to go, and then you race up the mountain.
• 45:07
  When it's like literally below freezing, there was ice and snow
• 45:10
  on the side of the track or road.
• 45:12
  You never get to do the whole course until the actual race.
• 45:14
  They break it up into three sections in practice.
• 45:16
  And so it was the challenge of my first run up.
• 45:18
  I thought, oh man, my in over my head.
• 45:19
  And then once I got a little bit more comfortable, I was like, okay, I got this.
• 45:23
  And fortunately, Bridgestone.
• 45:24
  It was a huge sponsor of mine and helped me out and gave
• 45:26
  me the best tires possible.
• 45:27
  It was a unique experience.
• 45:29
  And then the race itself, just crazy.
• 45:31
  I mean, you're racing up this mountain where if you go off, you're
• 45:33
  essentially going off a cliff.
• 45:34
  You had a good, I grew up in the era watching the Pikes Peak hill
• 45:38
  climbs when it was still dirt.
• 45:39
  And that was super exciting.
• 45:41
  Yeah.
• 45:42
  Yeah.
• 45:42
  You know, I doubt anybody wants to do Pikes Peak on a bike in the dirt for sure.
• 45:45
  It's great that it is.
• 45:47
  To your point with the tourists, it's like what we have here on the
• 45:50
  east coast, where we have tail of the dragon, it's riddled with tourists
• 45:54
  and cops and people doing things that they probably shouldn't be doing.
• 45:57
  This is a fully sanctioned race.
• 45:58
  And when it is race day, they close down the entire road
• 46:01
  to the summit of the track.
• 46:02
  So what did you learn about doing the hill climb versus.
• 46:06
  Yeah.
• 46:06
  Turning laps at Laguna Seca.
• 46:07
  You don't push as hard.
• 46:09
  You don't trail brake as hard.
• 46:10
  You have to watch random things.
• 46:12
  Like I did not get as close to the apexes as I would have like a
• 46:15
  Laguna Seca because there might be a little bit gravel and you're not
• 46:17
  going to know till you're there.
• 46:18
  Beware there could be deer or wildlife running across the track.
• 46:21
  Just some little stuff like the painted markers in the middle of the road.
• 46:24
  I tried to avoid those just because they were a little bit
• 46:26
  slicker than the asphalt itself.
• 46:28
  But really the biggest challenge for me was just knowing the course.
• 46:31
  I mean, there were so many turns and just memorizing it.
• 46:34
  And there's videos on YouTube of it.
• 46:36
  In fact, my video is still up on YouTube of the BMW, but I couldn't
• 46:38
  learn the course from a YouTube video.
• 46:40
  And so it was really hard.
• 46:42
  And on the actual race day, I was a lot more attuned to the track.
• 46:45
  But there's one section when you get past the tree line, where it's
• 46:48
  really hard to tell where you're at.
• 46:49
  And I remember one point I got off the throttle thinking I was coming to corners.
• 46:52
  Like, Nope, it's just a bend.
• 46:53
  You're going on a straightaway in the video.
• 46:54
  You hear me get off the throttle, like stopping or something.
• 46:57
  It's just forgot where I was at.
• 46:58
  And so that part was a challenge physically as a challenge
• 47:01
  because you don't get any warmup.
• 47:03
  And we had to be like at 2 AM or 3 AM on the race day itself, because
• 47:06
  they had to get us up and they had to get the spectators up and start.
• 47:10
  I can't remember what time.
• 47:11
  So it was a long day and sadly a racer got killed right before I went up.
• 47:15
  That was sad and it delayed things.
• 47:16
  So we're just hanging out that much longer.
• 47:18
  But yeah, I think memorizing the course, I never fully did, but that was one
• 47:21
  of the biggest challenges for that.
• 47:23
  When you were getting ready to race one of your bikes or when you were
• 47:27
  prepping for Pikes Peak, what do you do to prepare yourself for these events?
• 47:31
  Mentally, physically, you use any simulators, you know, things like that.
• 47:35
  Alcohol choices, you know, running.
• 47:38
  Good question.
• 47:39
  Pikes Peak is a little bit different because it was just so Different
• 47:42
  from anything else I'd done.
• 47:44
  So to prepare for that, I found out a few days before the race, another guy
• 47:48
  that was racing in a pro racer, you know, winning, he told me that there was a
• 47:51
  video game that has Pike's Peak in it.
• 47:52
  So I quickly went and found that video game in the Airbnb I was staying in.
• 47:56
  I got to use X Box and I just.
• 47:58
  Unfortunately, Pikes Peak was the very last stage of the game.
• 48:00
  And I'm not really a video game guy.
• 48:01
  And so I'd get through the game, but that actually helped
• 48:03
  a little bit to prepare for it.
• 48:05
  With normal racing, it's more about the practice, just getting a lot
• 48:09
  of laps in, getting physically fit for it so that you're, you're
• 48:12
  not exhausted during a race.
• 48:13
  Cause a lot of times with motorcycle races, you don't just race in one class.
• 48:16
  You know, you're racing multiple.
• 48:17
  And so you might finish one class, you might be in the next
• 48:20
  race right after that one too.
• 48:21
  So you can get pretty wore out.
• 48:22
  You just come in, top off your fuel tank, go right back out.
• 48:25
  So physical aspects, it's just stamina and endurance.
• 48:28
  Honestly, my size doesn't help 210 pounds, six foot four.
• 48:32
  And so if I really was a serious racer pro guy, I'd probably want
• 48:36
  to lose some weight and not that I'm fat, I just big firefighter.
• 48:38
  So that aspect, I would probably do different if it was my job.
• 48:41
  Is lose some, uh, even muscle mass, just get lean a little bit.
• 48:45
  So I'm not hauling around 210 pounds.
• 48:47
  One of the earliest motorcycle folks that we had on the show was
• 48:50
  actually on our nutrition episode.
• 48:52
  And Ken from new bill of health came on and he talked about when
• 48:56
  he would prepare for race weekends.
• 48:58
  And he said the key to success was hydration and he had a whole hydration
• 49:02
  routine that he would get into days before a race because bikes.
• 49:07
  Are hot, hot, different than a car because the sun's beating on you directly,
• 49:12
  but also the heat from the engine.
• 49:14
  So, I mean, does that still play in even to your regimen outside of working out,
• 49:18
  going to the gym and things like that?
• 49:19
  Yeah.
• 49:20
  Hydration's huge.
• 49:21
  I think that what's funny is when you get on the track with a bike, even when
• 49:24
  it's hot out and a lot of our tracks in California are in very hot places.
• 49:27
  Cause anybody listening probably knows they can't drop a race
• 49:30
  track in San Francisco and expect the neighbors to tolerate it.
• 49:32
  So they put it in places.
• 49:33
  People don't typically want to go aside from Laguna Seca.
• 49:36
  It's usually in hot places.
• 49:37
  But what I found is once I'm out on the track, the heat didn't really bother me.
• 49:41
  There was always enough air movement or I was distracted by from what I was doing.
• 49:44
  And it wasn't until the cool down lap and you're coming in.
• 49:46
  You're like, Oh man, I'm, I'm hot and my bike's hot too.
• 49:48
  The engine heat was never too big of an issue for me, but yeah, I'd say hydration.
• 49:53
  Hydration is huge, but I never had any routine of like a certain meal beforehand.
• 49:57
  I'm sure the pro racers do, but my buddies and I would just.
• 50:00
  Try not to drink too much probably the night before does not have too many beers.
• 50:03
  I think that's the golden rule, right?
• 50:06
  Yeah.
• 50:07
  And I knew that after the race, we're all going to have a beer anyway together.
• 50:10
  Yeah.
• 50:10
  So that's probably the routine.
• 50:11
  Now, how does your bike setup differ?
• 50:13
  You know, your road course versus a hill climb a little softer because
• 50:16
  it got so bumpy up above the snow line just because the asphalt had.
• 50:21
  From the weather over the winters was rippled.
• 50:23
  And so it was really, really bumpy.
• 50:25
  So a little bit softer and you weren't breaking as hard at times as you might
• 50:29
  like a Laguna Seca where it's a little bit better asphalt, better conditions.
• 50:32
  And then a huge thing that I messed up on is the gearing.
• 50:35
  I did not gear my bike.
• 50:37
  Right to where I don't think I ever even got out of fourth gear
• 50:40
  and there's six gears on the BMW.
• 50:41
  And by the time I realized that in practice, I wasn't able to
• 50:44
  get a new sprocket to fit my aftermarket wheels in time.
• 50:46
  So I really handicapped myself on the gearing itself.
• 50:50
  Other than that, I knew I wasn't going there to try and win.
• 50:52
  I was going to, I mean, of course I was going to try to win, but I was
• 50:54
  going to try and not kill myself.
• 50:56
  I was going to try and have a good time.
• 50:57
  Number one.
• 50:58
  Yeah.
• 50:58
  Yeah.
• 51:00
  Finish high up.
• 51:01
  And I did do good in my first and only time I did the race.
• 51:03
  So it was an amazing experience.
• 51:05
  That's great.
• 51:06
  And what about the tune?
• 51:06
  Do you have a different tune for that altitude related
• 51:09
  climb versus a road course?
• 51:11
  I use nitrogen in the tires because you're increased so much in altitude that if you
• 51:14
  use just regular air, your tire pressure would have increased too much by the
• 51:17
  time you get to the top of the mountain.
• 51:19
  And so you had to make sure to use just nitrogen in the tires.
• 51:21
  And then I use oxygenated fuel because I think the fuel is unlimited.
• 51:24
  I was in the open class, the open leader by class.
• 51:26
  And so our fuel was unlimited.
• 51:28
  So I use oxygenated, but honestly, the BMW, you know, those Germans
• 51:32
  know how to build engines.
• 51:33
  And so I watched some of the other manufacturers struggle with the
• 51:36
  altitude the entire time I was there.
• 51:37
  That BMW engine was a rock star.
• 51:39
  In fact, I think I had one of the highest trap speeds of anybody.
• 51:43
  No issues with the engine and the altitude.
• 51:45
  More me with the altitude because I've got some lung damage from being a firefighter.
• 51:48
  And so getting up to the altitude and being able to breathe was
• 51:51
  probably a lot harder than me.
• 51:52
  Then it was the bike.
• 51:53
  Do you carry O2 on the bike in that instance?
• 51:55
  No, but you're allowed to take one backpack up to the top of the mountain.
• 51:59
  You wouldn't take it up.
• 52:00
  Everyone threw their bags in this van.
• 52:01
  They hauled it up because the bikes went in the morning and
• 52:03
  the cars went in the afternoon.
• 52:04
  You couldn't come back down until it was like five or six.
• 52:08
  And so you were up there.
• 52:09
  Ducati team through these little oxygen canisters that
• 52:12
  you can get them at like REI.
• 52:13
  I use my backpack.
• 52:14
  I put a jacket and a flask in it.
• 52:16
  They were smart.
• 52:17
  They put oxygen in theirs.
• 52:18
  So they gave me one of theirs once I got to the top and we're all just hanging out.
• 52:21
  Now, the number one question we all want to know, what was in the flask?
• 52:23
  Jager, right?
• 52:24
  Uh, it was rum or whiskey.
• 52:27
  Ah, excellent choice.
• 52:28
  I just remember I got a Coke at the convenience store because I knew
• 52:30
  I had hours before we were done.
• 52:32
  So honestly, I shared it and I only got a little bit, but yeah, it was fun.
• 52:36
  So you look back on the experience fondly, would you do it again?
• 52:39
  Afterwards, I said I would do it again if like I had a full
• 52:42
  team because it was so hard.
• 52:44
  I had a buddy there with me.
• 52:45
  It was just a lot of work getting everything going.
• 52:47
  Not without a team.
• 52:49
  And I'd want to have a hotel near the track.
• 52:51
  I definitely want another sponsorship for tires.
• 52:53
  But that being said, I don't know if you knew this, they banned motorcycles now.
• 52:56
  Really?
• 52:57
  To your point, it was not paved up until like the mid 2000s or something.
• 53:01
  And they slowly paved it all the way to the top.
• 53:03
  I think it was the Sierra Club that basically fought a lawsuit
• 53:06
  and made them do it because of the erosion that the dirt was causing.
• 53:08
  So they paved the top.
• 53:09
  You could never take a BMW S1000RR there when it was dirt, right?
• 53:12
  The speeds and the bikes and the corner speed and everything just got so much
• 53:16
  faster with my era going there with leader bikes, sport bikes, Bobby Gooden
• 53:21
  was killed right before I went up.
• 53:22
  And then the next year Carl Sorensen was killed.
• 53:24
  They banned sport bikes after that.
• 53:26
  They said, okay, no more sport bikes.
• 53:28
  It has to be a motorcycle with a factory original single piece handlebar.
• 53:32
  So essentially, if you think about it, no race bike has a single
• 53:35
  handlebars from the factory, they figured that would slow them down.
• 53:38
  And then a few years ago, another rider was killed right towards
• 53:41
  the top on like a record run.
• 53:43
  I don't know for sure, but I'm betting the insurance company basically
• 53:46
  told the promoters no more bikes.
• 53:48
  So would you do it in a car then?
• 53:50
  I'm going to say no, if my wife listens to his podcasts, but if she
• 53:53
  doesn't, then yeah, that'd be fun.
• 53:55
  I do that.
• 53:57
  So that goes back to part of Marissa's original question, which is, you know,
• 54:00
  some of your favorite tracks to ride or drive on versus your least favorites.
• 54:05
  And are there any on the bucket list still that you want to turn laps on?
• 54:09
  You know, I've never written on a European track.
• 54:11
  All my buddies have gone over there.
• 54:12
  Just said how.
• 54:13
  Amazing.
• 54:14
  They are the surfaces, the designs, they're really amazing.
• 54:17
  And if you're familiar with the track in Utah, it used to be
• 54:19
  called Miller Motorsports Park.
• 54:20
  Now it's Utah Motorsports Campus or something like that.
• 54:24
  That has a European field to it.
• 54:25
  And I absolutely love that track.
• 54:26
  It's amazing.
• 54:27
  Laguna Seca is a big favorite.
• 54:29
  Sears Point, which is now called Sonoma Raceway is a challenging track.
• 54:33
  And I like it, but.
• 54:35
  It just seems like a lot of people crash there.
• 54:37
  And even though my last race I won was at that track.
• 54:39
  So I do like it.
• 54:41
  Road America is a track I want to ride someday.
• 54:42
  I hear nothing but good things about that one.
• 54:44
  Yeah, I've heard that too.
• 54:45
  I haven't had the chance to be on that one.
• 54:47
  My one experience riding on the track was at Loudon New Hampshire
• 54:51
  Motor Speedway on my Grom.
• 54:52
  Wow.
• 54:53
  Definitely not challenging at all.
• 54:54
  But it's a whole heck of a lot of fun.
• 54:56
  I will say that.
• 54:57
  Yeah.
• 54:58
  There's not much runoff there either, right?
• 54:59
  Because of the NASCAR, there's a lot of cement walls.
• 55:01
  So they do a lot of safety up there involving airbags.
• 55:05
  So they have giant airbags that they put out for the motorcycle races.
• 55:08
  So if you run off, you run into an airbag.
• 55:11
  I think if there's any track I don't like, you're on a motorcycle.
• 55:14
  You're already having fun.
• 55:15
  You know, they can take me to a go kart track and I'd be better than
• 55:17
  hanging out a day at the office, right?
• 55:19
  Any Northeast tracks that you're dying to try out?
• 55:21
  My aunt and uncle are from New York.
• 55:23
  And so I've always heard about Watkins Glen, but that seems like
• 55:26
  it might be more fun in a car.
• 55:28
  It's amazing in a car.
• 55:30
  Yeah.
• 55:31
  Barber Motorsports Park.
• 55:32
  I know it's not Northeast.
• 55:33
  Been there.
• 55:34
  I hear that's amazing.
• 55:35
  Lime Rock, I think it'd be fun in the car.
• 55:37
  Honestly, I'd go anywhere.
• 55:38
  I almost went to teach with another racing school just because
• 55:40
  they traveled the country and I wanted to experience other tracks.
• 55:43
  Find yourself doing a lot more instructing.
• 55:44
  You're still with the same group, things like that.
• 55:46
  Are you still racing today or are you just turning laps for fun?
• 55:49
  I just teach now.
• 55:50
  I still have my racing license.
• 55:52
  So I'm on the AFM board of directors.
• 55:54
  We're doing a lot of things to improve the experience of our
• 55:57
  riders, increase attendance.
• 55:58
  But.
• 55:59
  I think my last race was 2020.
• 56:01
  And if I don't race this year, I think I might lose my expert status.
• 56:04
  And so part of me wants to at least go ride.
• 56:07
  But then again, I've sold all my race bikes.
• 56:09
  And so now I teach on a Ducati monster.
• 56:11
  I would have to either borrow a bike or get another one.
• 56:14
  And I'd preface this with saying I got in a really bad wreck in 2020.
• 56:17
  And so after a couple of weeks in the hospital, it was hard to convince
• 56:20
  the family I was going to keep at it.
• 56:21
  Yeah.
• 56:22
  So now I primarily teach and it would be fun to race again, but it's
• 56:25
  also they're perishable skills too.
• 56:26
  You know, I wouldn't be as good as I was.
• 56:28
  Three years ago.
• 56:29
  So I wouldn't want to go out there and be down to the bottom of the
• 56:32
  field or something like that.
• 56:33
  So is that an opportunity then to go back to four wheel racing at that point?
• 56:37
  It is vintage racing.
• 56:40
  Yeah.
• 56:41
  I'm restoring a 1957 Devon to go vintage racing.
• 56:44
  Oh, nice.
• 56:45
  How's that going?
• 56:46
  It's almost done and it actually started in 2005 and it's just been this project.
• 56:51
  I've always had other stuff going on and I finally got the seatbelts getting
• 56:55
  mounted up, getting the extinguisher mounted, getting everything ready.
• 56:58
  I just double checked all my old safety gear, make sure it's good and
• 57:00
  I'm buying a new SA helmet for it.
• 57:03
  That might be fun just because it's a Devon with a Volkswagen engine.
• 57:06
  Oh, so it's not a motor MG or something like that?
• 57:09
  No, it's a Volkswagen 36, 37 horse with a Judson supercharger,
• 57:15
  which sounds faster than it is.
• 57:16
  Yeah.
• 57:16
  It'd just be fun.
• 57:17
  A little open convertible sports cars.
• 57:20
  Might be my segway back into four wheels.
• 57:21
  How high did you have to extend the roll hoop because of your height?
• 57:25
  Same thing, drop the seat down to the bottom.
• 57:29
  Yep, that is a small car.
• 57:31
  And you know, I've heard nothing but good things about
• 57:34
  transitioning to vintage racing.
• 57:36
  You can have a lot of fun.
• 57:37
  There's a lot of really interesting cars out there in that community.
• 57:40
  Is a lot like the road racing motorcycle community as well.
• 57:43
  Everybody's helping each other out to your point.
• 57:45
  I mean, you don't see a Devon every day, but it crosses a lot of lines with other
• 57:49
  cars, but you got a Volkswagen power plant, you got NG parts on, you got all
• 57:52
  sorts of stuff going on in that thing.
• 57:54
  So it's not like it's so different or so radical that, you know, you're going to be
• 57:57
  left on the side of the paddock going now, what do I do if something does go wrong?
• 58:01
  Yeah.
• 58:02
  And not that I'm that old, I'm only in my early forties, but in
• 58:05
  motorcycle racing, I eventually gravitated towards like the legacy
• 58:08
  classes where I won the championship, which was basically a requirement
• 58:11
  that the bike be 10 years or older.
• 58:13
  The other class of racing was like the Formula 40 class where you have some of
• 58:15
  the top guys in the club, but they all know they got to go to work on Monday
• 58:18
  and they're not thinking they're going to go to Moto America the next week.
• 58:21
  And not that it was more mellow, it was just guys didn't do dumb things.
• 58:25
  Which actually, honestly, the AFM has gotten pretty good about riding like
• 58:28
  gentlemen, I should say, or for women too, but so vintage racing when I was
• 58:31
  racing Formula Mazda, I remember the last season I was racing with some
• 58:33
  guys that just clearly had more money than common sense and were ready to
• 58:37
  just throw away their 100, 000 car to make a pass if they needed to.
• 58:41
  So I think the vintage racing might be more my speed now anyway, to.
• 58:46
  So since we're talking about restoring the Devon and going vintage racing and
• 58:49
  things like that, there's a Pitstop question we like to ask on this show,
• 58:53
  which is generally surrounds the idea of the sexiest or the ugliest car ever, but
• 58:58
  I'm wondering if that pertains to bikes too, is there such thing as an ugly bike?
• 59:04
  I'm sure there is.
• 59:05
  But for sport bikes, you know, they've started to come out with a lot of
• 59:07
  wings on the new bikes and that that's not super attractive to me.
• 59:11
  Kawasaki came out with a turbocharged motorcycle a few years ago.
• 59:14
  It was actually the one that Tom Cruise rides in his new Top Gun
• 59:17
  movie, which by the way, there's no pilot could afford that bike.
• 59:19
  It's not ugly, but it's.
• 59:20
  Different looking probably from the sexy standpoint, the BMWs honestly
• 59:24
  are beautiful bikes that s 1000 rr Ducati's Naturally, I mean the
• 59:29
  italians are so amazing with their designs So probably those two would
• 59:33
  be at the top of my list for the best looking bikes What about you, Marissa?
• 59:36
  What do you think?
• 59:37
  I have to agree with the BMW because I am more of a vintage
• 59:42
  motorcycle nerd than anything else.
• 59:44
  And so for me, I owned a BSA for a while, 1967, but the, uh, pre World
• 59:49
  War II BMW motorcycles are a thing.
• 59:52
  Thing of beauty.
• 59:53
  Like they are just beautiful and elegant and just incredible bikes.
• 59:57
  My favorite has always been triumph.
• 59:59
  My next bike will be a triumph and just to go from there.
• 1:00:01
  But I have to also agree on Ducati.
• 1:00:04
  The Italian's no style.
• 1:00:05
  Can't deny that one.
• 1:00:06
  Ferrari of bikes.
• 1:00:07
  Yeah.
• 1:00:09
  I will say they didn't make them for six foot four guys, though.
• 1:00:12
  I don't fit on Ducati very well.
• 1:00:13
  They don't make them for five foot two girls either, if it
• 1:00:16
  makes you feel any better.
• 1:00:16
  They don't make Ferraris for six foot four guys.
• 1:00:19
  Look at Tom Selleck.
• 1:00:20
  He didn't fit in that 308.
• 1:00:22
  That's why I needed a convertible.
• 1:00:23
  So a lot of times we also followed up with thoughts on what we called
• 1:00:27
  Evolution or the EV revolution.
• 1:00:29
  And you're starting to see more electric motorcycles coming
• 1:00:33
  through the industry as well.
• 1:00:34
  What are your thoughts on those?
• 1:00:35
  They're great for Laguna Seca for anybody in the West coast, you know,
• 1:00:39
  and you probably despise the 90 decibel noise limit at the track, which by
• 1:00:43
  the way, no modern motorcycle is below 90 decibels at full throttle.
• 1:00:47
  I think in general, it's impressive.
• 1:00:48
  The world stage Ducati is now the bike that they use for the Moto E series.
• 1:00:53
  My wife, she's got a Tesla and I got sold on how amazing they are to accelerate.
• 1:00:57
  It's really impressive what they're doing.
• 1:00:59
  And on a funny side note at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, because you
• 1:01:02
  have one direction, you know, it's just up to the top and you're done.
• 1:01:05
  All the EV bikes had to have a siren on them so that
• 1:01:07
  people could hear them coming.
• 1:01:09
  Probably also so wildlife could hear them coming.
• 1:01:11
  I'm excited.
• 1:01:12
  I heard that the new Ducati EV race bike also accelerates similar to a MotoGP bike.
• 1:01:18
  Not only are they coming up with some really amazing power plants in
• 1:01:21
  them, but the power delivery that they're giving them is something
• 1:01:24
  that racers can be familiar with.
• 1:01:25
  And as long as they get the weight balance right, they don't make them
• 1:01:27
  too heavy and they last long enough.
• 1:01:29
  They could probably be out there with the petrol bikes
• 1:01:31
  running side by side on track.
• 1:01:33
  Oh yeah.
• 1:01:33
  I mean, they had the first EV race at Laguna Seca with Moto
• 1:01:36
  America probably 10 years ago.
• 1:01:38
  And one of the Moto America riders, Steve Rapp, who's also a native Californian,
• 1:01:42
  he was doing lap times that the guys on the middleweight bikes were doing.
• 1:01:45
  I can only imagine it's that much more advanced now.
• 1:01:47
  And that's the challenge we have, let's say where you don't see Teslas.
• 1:01:52
  In sports car racing, because they can't go for two hours on
• 1:01:55
  a single charge at full tilt.
• 1:01:57
  Right.
• 1:01:57
  So I think in the bike world, it makes a lot more sense and it will
• 1:02:00
  be cool to see them dice that up.
• 1:02:01
  Kind of chuckling when you said moto E and I was wondering if that's as
• 1:02:05
  exciting and I'm hoping it's more than formula E because a lot of us are
• 1:02:09
  still have mixed feelings about that.
• 1:02:11
  It's pretty exciting.
• 1:02:13
  So you have to buy a subscription to watch MotoGP on TV, right?
• 1:02:16
  They make the Moto E one free.
• 1:02:17
  And so they're trying to also draw more attention to it.
• 1:02:20
  And honestly, I think with the way the world's going, it's inevitable
• 1:02:23
  that probably everything will be electric at some point, I imagine
• 1:02:26
  it's just what mandate and what time that's going to play into it.
• 1:02:29
  So it's great that they're getting a headstart on it and it's great
• 1:02:31
  that they get, and also some really amazing riders and motorcycles
• 1:02:34
  are riding these bikes too.
• 1:02:35
  Do you feel the same way that the car guys do where part of the biggest
• 1:02:39
  thing for them in this transition is going to be the lack of sound and a
• 1:02:43
  lot of people aren't fans of the wine that comes from the electric motors?
• 1:02:47
  You know, I didn't hear that complaint from a friend of mine who raced one.
• 1:02:51
  What she said was funny is how you could hear the announcements.
• 1:02:55
  As you're going around the track, you're riding on the track.
• 1:02:57
  You could hear clearly what they're saying, what people are doing.
• 1:03:00
  And so that was kind of the takeaway that she had from them, honestly, in
• 1:03:05
  motorcycle racing in the U S I think the fact that Harley's are now racing with
• 1:03:10
  moto America is a bigger red herring distraction against electric bikes.
• 1:03:14
  So the diehard super bike kind of racers from years ago, probably
• 1:03:18
  more resentment towards a bagger bike than they do an electric bike.
• 1:03:22
  Yeah.
• 1:03:22
  I've seen some of those baggers on track and it, it mostly it's been police bikes.
• 1:03:26
  So you see them going out and they're doing their testing out on the track.
• 1:03:29
  You just wonder like, are they scraping the bags?
• 1:03:31
  Is that part of it?
• 1:03:32
  What happens if you catch a bag?
• 1:03:36
  They're carbon fiber.
• 1:03:37
  If you've ever seen one of those baggers up close, they are full on
• 1:03:40
  race bikes with a Harley engine.
• 1:03:42
  They have so much money into those bikes that if you get close, you see these.
• 1:03:46
  Just amazing Olin suspension on them.
• 1:03:48
  So they've really put a lot of money to promote that class
• 1:03:51
  and done a really good job.
• 1:03:52
  But wait, I thought you said bikes were cheap.
• 1:03:55
  Those ones.
• 1:03:56
  No.
• 1:03:57
  Cheap.
• 1:03:58
  Oh, air quotes.
• 1:03:59
  Yeah.
• 1:03:59
  Those are the special racing.
• 1:04:01
  Those are the racing modified air quotes.
• 1:04:03
  Yeah.
• 1:04:03
  And if our benchmark is a formula racing car, then yeah, bikes are cheap.
• 1:04:07
  From a safety perspective, again, in your day job being part of the paramedics
• 1:04:11
  and part of fire safety, you know, we talked earlier about how rider suits are
• 1:04:15
  not fire retardant and things like that.
• 1:04:18
  So now you introduce the EV and if something happens, you could.
• 1:04:21
  Basically have a nuclear meltdown.
• 1:04:24
  Are you changing your teachings?
• 1:04:26
  Are you changing some of your recommendations?
• 1:04:29
  How are you getting involved with these new EV bikes from a safety perspective?
• 1:04:33
  I think it's safer than with the cars because you're not strapped to it.
• 1:04:37
  Probably the bigger safety issue with the EV bikes is their weight.
• 1:04:41
  Cause they're probably about a hundred pounds more than some
• 1:04:43
  of these other super bikes.
• 1:04:44
  But that being said, they're also lowering the weight.
• 1:04:46
  And so that's getting better.
• 1:04:47
  The fire factor, I don't think is big of an issue because the bike
• 1:04:51
  probably won't be near the rider.
• 1:04:52
  Might be a bigger concern if there's battery acid or something.
• 1:04:55
  I'm not sure exactly what kind of batteries they use in those.
• 1:04:57
  But from the safety standpoint, it's probably the weight more
• 1:04:59
  than electric factor, but bikes.
• 1:05:01
  But having said Tesla's, there's a huge problem when they catch fire.
• 1:05:04
  It takes lots and lots and lots of water to cool them.
• 1:05:07
  And basically what happens is the car just melts away.
• 1:05:09
  If you've ever seen like a news story on Tesla fire with that Clive, I want
• 1:05:13
  to give you the opportunity now, any shout outs, promotions, or anything
• 1:05:16
  else you'd like to share that we haven't covered thus far, just say, if you're
• 1:05:20
  on the West coast or near the West coast and you want to come to track
• 1:05:23
  day, I work with Carter's at the track.
• 1:05:25
  We've probably been around longer than anybody, well over 20 years and have great
• 1:05:29
  instructors with decades of experience.
• 1:05:31
  And then really the FM is, is a great place to come and ride.
• 1:05:35
  It makes you a better writer to go racing.
• 1:05:37
  You push yourself and you learn a lot.
• 1:05:39
  There's a mentoring program, new racer program.
• 1:05:41
  So no matter what level you're at as a racer, the FM is really good
• 1:05:45
  place to come test your skills and hang out with a lot of great people.
• 1:05:48
  Whether you prefer road racing, motocross, or supercross, motorcycle
• 1:05:52
  racing has something for everyone.
• 1:05:54
  Motorcycle racing is an exhilarating sport that offers a thrilling experience
• 1:05:57
  for both riders and spectators alike.
• 1:05:59
  With high speeds, tight corners, and intense battles for position,
• 1:06:02
  it's a sport that tests the limits of both man and machine.
• 1:06:05
  For those looking to get involved in the sport, motorcycle racing offers a variety
• 1:06:09
  of opportunities to participate, from amateur races to professional circuits.
• 1:06:13
  With a wide range of classes and divisions, Riders of all
• 1:06:16
  skill levels can find a place to compete and challenge themselves.
• 1:06:19
  So if you're looking for a thrilling and adrenaline fueled
• 1:06:21
  sport, consider motorcycle racing.
• 1:06:23
  It's a world of speed, excitement, and endless possibilities, and it's waiting
• 1:06:27
  for you to join in on the action.
• 1:06:29
  So be sure to check out organizations like the American
• 1:06:32
  Federation of Motorcyclists at www.
• 1:06:35
  afmracing.
• 1:06:37
  org.
• 1:06:38
  At AFM sports on Facebook at AFM racing on Instagram and at race AFM on YouTube.
• 1:06:45
  For more information, if you have any questions, you can always
• 1:06:48
  reach out to Clive via LinkedIn.
• 1:06:50
  That's right.
• 1:06:50
  Thanks, Marissa and Clive.
• 1:06:52
  I have to give you a big thank you for coming on break fix and sharing your
• 1:06:56
  experiences as a motorcycle racer.
• 1:06:58
  I know I learned a lot.
• 1:07:00
  I won't doubt that our audience did too.
• 1:07:02
  It's just a whole nother world out there to explore.
• 1:07:05
  And again, if you're tired of four wheel racing, you want
• 1:07:07
  to try something different.
• 1:07:08
  Maybe bikes have been waiting for you all this time.
• 1:07:11
  So you got to check it out.
• 1:07:11
  But again, thank you for opening our eyes to this and sharing
• 1:07:15
  all of your experiences with us.
• 1:07:16
  Yeah.
• 1:07:16
  Thank you guys for so much for having me.
• 1:07:18
  I got to say also, thank you guys for promoting the safety.
• 1:07:20
  It helps keep our sports alive.
• 1:07:22
  I want to also take a moment to thank you for being a first responder and everything
• 1:07:26
  you do as a paramedic and a firefighter.
• 1:07:28
  It's important, not only at the track, but in everyday life.
• 1:07:32
  So thank you.
• 1:07:32
  Yes.
• 1:07:33
  Thank you.
• 1:07:33
  Thank you so much.
• 1:07:34
  Thank you.
• 1:07:35
  Yeah.
• 1:07:35
  It's, it's given me a good life.
• 1:07:36
  And as far as guiding my career and met a lot of amazing people and
• 1:07:39
  ultimately met my wife that way.
• 1:07:40
  So it's been good to me.
• 1:07:47
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:07:50
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:07:53
  gtmotorsports.
• 1:07:53
  org.
• 1:07:54
  You can also find us on Motorsports.
• 1:07:58
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can
• 1:08:02
  call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:08:09
  org.
• 1:08:10
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:08:12
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:08:14
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
• 1:08:17
  to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization.
• 1:08:22
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• 1:08:25
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• 1:09:00
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