Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / DeeAnn Hopings' 70-Year view from the Grandstands

Transcript

DeeAnn Hopings' 70-Year view from the Grandstands · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts,
• 0:04
  but we've expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we
• 0:08
  want to share our stories with you.
• 0:10
  Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings
• 0:13
  together a top notch collection of knowledge and information
• 0:17
  through our podcast, Brake Fix.
• 0:22
  You've seen it time and time again, our infamous yellow card and
• 0:26
  its motto, everyone has a story.
• 0:29
  But tonight we get to reinforce that sentiment because we're joined by a racing
• 0:34
  super fan that has literally crossed the country following their passion
• 0:37
  for motorsports for nearly 70 years.
• 0:40
  We're joined by motorsports enthusiast, DN Hopings, to tell us about racing
• 0:44
  history with a view from the many grandstands that they've watched from.
• 0:49
  And with that, let's welcome Deanne to BreakFix.
• 0:52
  Thank you.
• 0:52
  Thank you.
• 0:53
  So like all good BreakFix stories, there's a beginning and yours starts in Toledo,
• 0:57
  at the heart of the country, as they say.
• 0:59
  When and where did it all begin for you?
• 1:02
  How did you get addicted to motorsports?
• 1:04
  Addicted is probably a good word.
• 1:06
  If you ask my friends and family, that's probably what they would say.
• 1:10
  When I was a kid in Toledo, There were two racetracks, Toledo Speedway
• 1:15
  was a half mile high bank paved oval, and there was also Raceway Park.
• 1:20
  Raceway Park was kind of a dual facility in that they ran horses,
• 1:25
  trotters, and pacers, and it was a dirt track back in those days, and this
• 1:29
  would have been 56, 57, thereabouts.
• 1:32
  What they ran were supermodifieds.
• 1:35
  At that point, supermodifieds were home built or a sprint car with a bolt on cage.
• 1:41
  Into the beginning of the 60s, when people started selling off
• 1:45
  IndyCar roadsters because the rear engine cars replaced them.
• 1:49
  People bought those and cut them down and modified them and
• 1:52
  turned them into supermodifieds.
• 1:54
  In anticipation of our conversation, if you notice my background, in 1973,
• 2:00
  a fellow Toledoan, Raleigh Beal, won the USAC Sprint Car Championship.
• 2:05
  And that's the car that he drove.
• 2:06
  It has a bolt on cage.
• 2:08
  So that was my beginnings, if you will.
• 2:11
  In the early sixties, got to see some really good racing, some
• 2:15
  pretty extraordinary drivers.
• 2:16
  One of them was Gordon Johncock, two time Indy winner.
• 2:19
  Another one was Johnny White.
• 2:20
  He was rookie of the year, I believe in maybe 64, something like that.
• 2:24
  Unfortunately, later on that summer, he had a bad sprint
• 2:27
  car crash that paralyzed him.
• 2:29
  And so that was the end of his career.
• 2:31
  Another guy from Northern Ohio, Gordon Dukes.
• 2:33
  He was the one that ran the cut down Indy Roadster.
• 2:36
  From time to time, we'd get people that came over from Sandusky, like Todd Gibson.
• 2:40
  It was kind of quite a good time.
• 2:42
  You know, for a kid, cars were fast.
• 2:44
  They were noisy.
• 2:46
  That was it.
• 2:46
  Because in today's day and age, the cars have changed quite a bit.
• 2:49
  And a lot of folks, especially in your generation, talk about the
• 2:53
  sights and the smells and the sounds and the circus of racing back then.
• 2:58
  And that's what drew them in.
• 2:59
  And that's what keeps them there even to this day.
• 3:02
  And we're seeing this evolution of racing.
• 3:04
  Racing is changing, you know, the introduction of EVs and things like that.
• 3:07
  But your journey in the world of sprint cars and super modified was
• 3:12
  not just a fleeting thing in Toledo.
• 3:15
  It followed you into New York.
• 3:17
  In between, I, uh, lived in Joliet for a couple of years.
• 3:20
  It is a very different situation because.
• 3:23
  There are some series that are relatively localized.
• 3:27
  They're not national.
• 3:28
  When I lived in Illinois, I did get to Santa Fe Speedway, which
• 3:32
  now is gone, unfortunately.
• 3:34
  Urban Sprawl does its thing.
• 3:36
  I got to see, uh, Mel Kenyon there.
• 3:38
  I had a midget.
• 3:38
  There's a richness here that, you know, when I stop and think about
• 3:41
  things that I remember, one of the other things about that particular
• 3:44
  event, there was a guy, Terry Wente, who was, I believe, Bob Wente's son.
• 3:48
  And he had a midget with an engine from a Cosworth Vega.
• 3:51
  That thing had a sound to it.
• 3:53
  It just screamed to me, you know, that's part of the attraction, the sights
• 3:58
  and the sounds, and when you said the smells back then, super modified, you
• 4:01
  know, sprint cars too ran on methanol.
• 4:03
  And so that had a pretty distinct smell to it as opposed to gasoline.
• 4:07
  At the start of a feature, you know, you get 18, 20 cars out there and
• 4:11
  then you get this big waft of methanol fumes coming through the stands.
• 4:16
  And it has changed.
• 4:17
  Things evolved, you know, technology does not stand still.
• 4:20
  The early days of your fandom, let's call it that, 1956, 57 into the
• 4:26
  early 60s, obviously still in the Midwest, as you went from some of the
• 4:30
  regional tracks to the larger super speedways and things like that, did
• 4:34
  you see some of the bigger names?
• 4:35
  Because this would have been the time of AJ Foyd and Mario
• 4:38
  Andretti and names like that.
• 4:40
  So were you witness to them?
• 4:42
  Not beyond TV.
• 4:43
  The first IndyCar race I saw Was at Michigan international.
• 4:47
  And it was the first one when they went to a full 500 miles, that was in 1981.
• 4:53
  Before then they had run twin 200s or twin two fifties.
• 4:57
  No, that kind of thing.
• 4:57
  Cause like at the time, a lot of people thought that MIS was too hard on the cars
• 5:01
  because the track was relatively rough.
• 5:03
  They didn't think that 500 miles that one shot was a good idea.
• 5:06
  And that particular event.
• 5:07
  Was the one where they tried to burn the joint down, the, uh, pit fire.
• 5:13
  It was bad enough.
• 5:14
  It's been two weekends because of rain.
• 5:16
  But then when they did get the race in, it was very close to
• 5:19
  becoming a really major fire.
• 5:21
  Basically, you know, all you saw was a cloud of fire retardant, you know, cause
• 5:27
  everybody was spraying fire extinguishers, but that could have been really bad.
• 5:30
  Fortunately, folks were on top of it in your early days, sprint
• 5:33
  cars, oval track, super modified.
• 5:36
  So that's definitely the sweet spot.
• 5:37
  And you found yourself moving from the Midwest to New York, which is
• 5:41
  where we got connected through the IMRRC and talking about as we go and
• 5:46
  super modified and things like that.
• 5:47
  So take us on that trip from the heart of the U S.
• 5:52
  Moving more into New England, into the East coast culture and vibe of motorsport.
• 5:57
  By that point, the hardware of choice for a super modifies went
• 6:00
  was the radical offset that original were pioneered by Jim Champagne.
• 6:04
  There've been kind of a gap in my going to races for a while.
• 6:09
  And when I was in college and got married and all this kind of stuff,
• 6:12
  but we moved to New York state.
• 6:13
  There was a speedway not far away, just to the east.
• 6:16
  I can't remember what the latter name was, but if you go far enough
• 6:20
  back, it was Shangri La Speedway.
• 6:22
  Which, if memory serves, is in Owego, New York.
• 6:25
  Yes, and that was where folks like Mr.
• 6:27
  Excitement, Jimmy Spencer, and other folks ran.
• 6:32
  And the other thing that we didn't really get in Ohio and Illinois
• 6:37
  were NASCAR pavement modified.
• 6:39
  There's some series like that one that their area is fairly well
• 6:43
  defined and they don't go out of that Eastern, Southeastern kind of thing.
• 6:47
  You know, just the way it is.
• 6:48
  I do have a bit of a bias for open wheel cars.
• 6:51
  You know, the NASCAR folks who always say that, you know, it's
• 6:53
  our only open wheel division, you know, all this kind of stuff.
• 6:56
  It is interesting because the people tend to stay with the series.
• 7:01
  Now, some do use it as a stepping stone, but a lot of people are,
• 7:06
  for whatever reason, are lifers.
• 7:08
  To me, you know, that's a wonderful thing because it's always that yardstick.
• 7:11
  When you have new people coming in, wanting to move on, these are the
• 7:15
  folks that you have to get through.
• 7:16
  And like I said, if you go much beyond the Eastern seaboard,
• 7:19
  you won't see those cars.
• 7:21
  You are still a fan of this type of racing today.
• 7:24
  Obviously your palate has expanded.
• 7:26
  You've become a fan of other racing.
• 7:28
  We'll talk about that, but it's still the sweet spot.
• 7:30
  It's your go to, right?
• 7:31
  What I found eventually was that every discipline has its attraction.
• 7:36
  I figured out that I'm not.
• 7:38
  a staunch fan of a given series and at the expense of others.
• 7:42
  To use a term I would consider myself an omnivore, you know.
• 7:46
  So, you know, that's, that's how I look at it, you know.
• 7:49
  Everything is unique.
• 7:51
  You can find fun in whatever series.
• 7:53
  And a lot of it comes down to finding out who the cream of the crop is.
• 7:56
  And then looking at the others that are just below that.
• 8:00
  Seeing what they're trying to do, if they're trying to dethrone the cream
• 8:05
  of the crop or they want to just build a reputation and move on, who knows?
• 8:09
  But in terms of the people, the dynamics are interesting.
• 8:13
  And one of the things you see back east a lot is that it's a
• 8:15
  generational thing and you'll see second and third generation folks.
• 8:19
  When I think about that, it's like, Hmm, I used to watch
• 8:21
  your father do this, you know?
• 8:25
  But, you know, that's how it goes.
• 8:26
  Do you think that being in the greater Corning area, you know, just south
• 8:31
  of Watkins Glen and you said east of Shangri La, do you think that allowed
• 8:35
  you to open your aperture a little bit to motorsports because having Watkins Glen
• 8:40
  in your backyard opened up Formula One to you, it opened up other types of racing
• 8:44
  that didn't exist in Ohio and Illinois.
• 8:46
  And the fact that it was close enough that I went to just
• 8:50
  about everything that ran there.
• 8:52
  I used to tell people that my kitchen was 17 miles from WGI, you know, so,
• 8:57
  so it was pretty close and working for Corning back when Corning and ISD were
• 9:02
  50 50 partners, we got tickets for free.
• 9:05
  So if you happen to be in the right place at the right time and when they were
• 9:09
  offered, you know, so I went to many events on free tickets, which was great.
• 9:13
  In many cases, I would take a vacation day on Fridays, and so I was there
• 9:18
  Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which to me was particularly interesting
• 9:21
  because from a technical background, it's like being backstage in a
• 9:25
  play or a concert or something.
• 9:26
  It's like, okay, what did the people do?
• 9:28
  How do they prepare?
• 9:30
  What do these cars look like with the body panels stripped off?
• 9:34
  What failed?
• 9:35
  Or what are they replacing?
• 9:37
  Because it's time.
• 9:38
  You know, to me, that was the fascinating thing.
• 9:40
  And over the years, I've taken some folks to the races with me.
• 9:43
  I always make a point of doing that, showing them that, yeah, the whole show
• 9:47
  isn't necessarily out on the racetrack, because you have to do an extraordinary
• 9:51
  amount of preparation to get you there.
• 9:53
  So we sort of glazed over it, pun intended.
• 9:56
  You talked about going to college and you went to school
• 9:58
  to become a mechanical engineer.
• 10:00
  Do you think racing influenced that or inspired you to get into
• 10:04
  that discipline of engineering?
• 10:06
  No, I'll tell you what the origin was.
• 10:08
  When I was in grade school in Toledo, our Springfield trip was to Greenfield
• 10:13
  village and the Henry Ford museum.
• 10:15
  For folks who don't know Greenfield Village, what Henry Ford did was went
• 10:19
  to places like the Wright Brothers House and Bicycle Shop or Edison's Lab
• 10:24
  and stuff and bought them, had them disassembled, numbered everything, brought
• 10:29
  them to Dearborn, reassembled them.
• 10:31
  So that was the origin of Greenfield Village.
• 10:33
  And I'll admit that Greenfield Village just didn't really do it for me, you know?
• 10:38
  I mean, it was like, yeah, okay.
• 10:39
  Kind of thing.
• 10:40
  But on the other hand, the Henry Ford Museum to me was like Valhalla.
• 10:43
  And they had.
• 10:45
  Or still have one of the largest and most powerful steam locomotives ever built.
• 10:49
  And it was the Allegheny that I believe the Chesapeake and Ohio brand kind of
• 10:54
  a competition between the Allegheny and Union Pacific big boy at the
• 10:58
  time, they weren't very restrictive.
• 11:00
  So, you know, I would sneak away from the rest of the class, climb
• 11:03
  up into the cab of the Allegheny and it just impressed me so much.
• 11:08
  It was just this huge machine.
• 11:10
  I credit that with.
• 11:12
  My thought process of, you know, wanting to become a mechanical
• 11:14
  engineer, it's a machine, whether it's an airplane, a locomotive, a car,
• 11:19
  you know, whatever, it's a machine.
• 11:21
  That's the fascination for me.
• 11:23
  So you talked about bringing other fans with you behind the scenes, because that
• 11:27
  is part of the track weekend experience.
• 11:29
  Do you think being a mechanical engineer gave you maybe a more critical eye or
• 11:32
  more discerning eye, or did it give you the ability to maybe water it down
• 11:36
  for the layman instead of Well, this is how this works and be able to answer
• 11:39
  some of their questions and get them excited about what they were seeing.
• 11:42
  At some point, I realized there's a such thing as information overload.
• 11:47
  You know, okay, there's a point at which people will start to glaze over and won't
• 11:51
  hear very much of what you're saying.
• 11:53
  And so, you know, that was part of my thought process.
• 11:56
  And, uh, there were maybe of my colleagues, other engineers that
• 12:02
  went with me from time to time.
• 12:03
  And so those conversations were a little bit different.
• 12:05
  The last time I went to Long Beach, I went with one of my wife's cousins.
• 12:09
  He lives just down the coast from Long Beach.
• 12:13
  He's in the medical profession, medical management kind of thing.
• 12:16
  He said for a number of years, he worked within walking distance of where They
• 12:20
  laid out the track, but it had never been.
• 12:22
  So in 2019, I guess he went with me.
• 12:25
  That conversation was very different.
• 12:27
  They tried to explain things in terms that would make sense
• 12:31
  to a non technical person.
• 12:33
  To me, it just adds to the experience.
• 12:35
  And it turned out.
• 12:37
  He thought it was really great because rather than going by himself,
• 12:40
  he had somebody that could explain things to him and answer questions
• 12:44
  and things, you know, it was fun.
• 12:46
  I thought it was fun too.
• 12:47
  So being an engineer and being able to dissect a complex machine like a race
• 12:52
  car, because a lot of people just look at a race cars, it's a car and it's
• 12:54
  got stickers and it goes faster than my street car, but there's a lot of science.
• 12:58
  There's a lot of art.
• 12:59
  There's a lot of chemistry.
• 13:01
  There's a multitude of things that go into building a race
• 13:03
  car, let alone your street car.
• 13:05
  So there's this debate that often happens on our show.
• 13:08
  Like you said, there's these staunch fan bases that if you grow
• 13:11
  up in NASCAR, NASCAR is the best.
• 13:13
  If you grew up in Formula One, Formula One is the best.
• 13:16
  If we strip all that away, just talking about technology, which
• 13:20
  discipline today Do you think is at the pinnacle of technology?
• 13:25
  Is it formula one?
• 13:26
  Is it WEC?
• 13:27
  Is it IndyCar?
• 13:28
  I know it's not IndyCar.
• 13:31
  I hate to say that because I am a fan of the series, but when the split happened,
• 13:37
  one of the outcomes of that, things became very difficult financially.
• 13:41
  People just couldn't attract the same level of sponsorship
• 13:45
  that they could before.
• 13:46
  That's what led to the series being a spec series.
• 13:50
  But the way even a spec series works, the cream does rise to the top.
• 13:55
  The differences are very small and very subtle.
• 13:58
  But what happens is you add up enough of those small differences
• 14:02
  and it becomes significant.
• 14:04
  And say that's the difference between the Nasty and a Dale Coyne.
• 14:08
  When you have the resources and the people to massage things to perfection.
• 14:14
  One of the things they do a lot of work with wheel bearings.
• 14:16
  You know, to find pieces that have a minimum of rolling resistance.
• 14:20
  And it's not to talk about Dale Point, but a team with those kinds of resources,
• 14:25
  there's some things they just cannot do.
• 14:27
  Also from a driver standpoint, they've had at times some very good people.
• 14:31
  You know, I was at the Glen when Justin Wilson won.
• 14:33
  That's the separation.
• 14:35
  Even though if you look at stock cars and supermodifieds and silver crown cars
• 14:41
  and whatever else, you do find a lot of similar technologies, but because of
• 14:46
  the particular application, they wind up using things a little bit different way.
• 14:50
  I won't say it's the same shop absorbers, but very similar ones
• 14:53
  because there's only a handful of people that do those rod ends.
• 14:56
  Brake discs, calipers, that kind of stuff.
• 14:58
  The series aren't isolated, if you will.
• 15:01
  There's a lot of stuff going back and forth.
• 15:03
  The people that build chassis, build engines, drive trains and stuff.
• 15:06
  I think back in the day, there was probably a lot more separation.
• 15:09
  And then things didn't necessarily transfer from one series or
• 15:13
  another type of car to another.
• 15:15
  But I've been, um, on a few calls with the e par trade folks.
• 15:19
  They're very interesting because some of the things really appeal
• 15:22
  to a techie like me, you know, so.
• 15:25
  Guy the other week was talking about the developments that his company
• 15:29
  has done using a hydrogen as a fuel.
• 15:32
  And that would be with the common hardware V8s and several track cars and
• 15:37
  four cylinders and midgets and things.
• 15:39
  Same thing, only different.
• 15:40
  Right now, it seems to me it's probably pretty close between Formula One and the
• 15:45
  WEC and also IMSA because Formula One has done the hybrid thing for some years now.
• 15:50
  With the sports cars, they're just starting, but certainly they build on the
• 15:55
  learnings and the technologies and things that have been developed over the last
• 15:59
  few years, different in the sense that the power levels that they use between
• 16:04
  the two series are different packaging.
• 16:06
  And a sports car can be very, very different.
• 16:08
  You know, you got a lot more space to work with, but also you got
• 16:10
  a heavier car to work with too.
• 16:12
  So that energy that you can develop probably has a little bit less of
• 16:15
  an effect since the car is heavier.
• 16:17
  But I see those two series kind of moving in parallel.
• 16:21
  A few years ago, I was really quite surprised with NASCAR from
• 16:24
  the standpoint that for years they had resisted various technologies,
• 16:29
  independent rear suspensions.
• 16:30
  Fuel injection is one of them.
• 16:32
  Fuel injection.
• 16:33
  Yes.
• 16:33
  You know, electronics and the electronic dashboard that they have now and stuff.
• 16:36
  Conceptually for them, that was a major step.
• 16:39
  What made us scratch our heads was when Toyota came to the game and we
• 16:42
  all said, do they know how to build a pushrod V8 with a four barrel carburetor?
• 16:47
  Yes.
• 16:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:49
  You know, there are others that are thinking about entering the series, like
• 16:52
  Honda and Hyundai and stuff, you know?
• 16:54
  So yeah, that's kind of fascinating.
• 16:55
  They're again, behind the curtain, you know, what's going on.
• 16:58
  With the companies, they see some positives.
• 17:00
  They're thinking about how they can exploit those.
• 17:02
  So as a fan, what do you think of the current to next generation NASCAR as we
• 17:08
  saw it as the garage 56 car at Lamont last year, the last several years, they
• 17:12
  NASCAR has made more inroads in putting road courses on the schedule in that
• 17:17
  sense, there's a lot of logic behind it to develop a car in that direction.
• 17:22
  Yeah.
• 17:22
  I, I think that's a good thing.
• 17:24
  Now, the thing is what I think may be very different.
• 17:27
  From what their traditional fan base thinks, you know, to me, Oh man, this
• 17:32
  is a great thing, you know, but to some of those folks, it's like sacrilege.
• 17:36
  Garage 56 and the Hendrix team did a really great job of maybe myth
• 17:40
  busting the idea of what a NASCAR is and what it should be in the future.
• 17:45
  And to your point with the introduction of road courses.
• 17:47
  I'm wondering if not only was it to say we can do this, but also to
• 17:51
  capitalize on this movement within the formula one community, especially the
• 17:55
  new generation formula one community that sprouted up during the pandemic
• 17:58
  through things like drive to survive.
• 18:00
  They want to see cars going left and right, not just chariot races in a circle.
• 18:05
  So do you think that's all a catalyst in this?
• 18:08
  And the other thing too, is, you know, consider the fan experience.
• 18:11
  If you go to an oval event, basically you're going to be in grandstands.
• 18:15
  You go to a road course event, yeah, you might be in grandstands, but there
• 18:19
  are a lot of places to walk around and see different things and get very, very
• 18:23
  different perspectives on how things work and who's good and who's not so
• 18:26
  good, who's got a major set that they're gonna do a daring pass that nobody else
• 18:31
  would do, you know, that kind of thing.
• 18:32
  It is a very, very different experience for a long time.
• 18:35
  The knock on road course, while you can't see anything, you can't
• 18:38
  see this and that and everything.
• 18:39
  But the thing is, one of the things that I've thought about the time that
• 18:42
  I went to MIS, if you're sitting in the grandstands, if you're up high
• 18:46
  enough, you could see the backstretch.
• 18:48
  It looks like ants back there, you know, and exactly what can you see?
• 18:52
  And I'm farsighted anyway.
• 18:54
  So, but it's like, I think the argument loses a lot of its energy because of that.
• 18:59
  But the opposite can be said about Daytona when we specifically talk about the 24
• 19:04
  hours of Rolex, because as a fan, and you can probably attest to this too,
• 19:08
  The experience is fantastic because being in the grandstands, especially
• 19:12
  higher up, you can see the entire track.
• 19:15
  It's not the most complicated track on the IMSA schedule.
• 19:18
  There's far more aggressive and far more challenging and
• 19:22
  technical courses out there.
• 19:23
  But as a fan, it's probably one of the best ones to be at live.
• 19:27
  I have a little bit of experience with endurance events.
• 19:29
  The six hour at Watkins Glen and also the Petit Le Mans, you know, if you
• 19:33
  can migrate, depending on what you want to do from the grandstands to over in
• 19:37
  the infield, you know, cause there's some really interesting places to be
• 19:41
  to watch from, there's a different thing about it because, you know,
• 19:44
  This is not a two or three hour deal.
• 19:47
  And many years ago, my son and I went to the Glen for the six hour and it
• 19:51
  rained that day and pretty nasty.
• 19:53
  Actually, it was kind of chilly and everything, but one of the cars, and I
• 19:57
  believe it might've been Ross Bentley got involved in somebody else's crash.
• 20:03
  They brought the car back to the garage.
• 20:04
  And when we were in the garage for a while, cause like I said, it was raining.
• 20:07
  Basically what had happened was he wound up getting T boned in the side
• 20:10
  pod, but five or six guys jumped on the car and they're working on it.
• 20:14
  It drew a crowd around them watching this.
• 20:17
  And it's a pretty good sized crowd, but you know, like three
• 20:18
  people deep all around the car.
• 20:20
  They thought they got everything put back together.
• 20:22
  They had a new side pod and put that on and started to pull away.
• 20:25
  Well, the thing is just leaking oil, like a sieve.
• 20:27
  So then they took everything apart again, found out the fitting that
• 20:30
  was leaking, took care of that, put everything back together.
• 20:33
  The car left the crowd that was watching this cheered and clapped the
• 20:38
  mechanics who said, it's like, huh?
• 20:40
  You know, they were just doing what they do, but they didn't realize.
• 20:44
  How impressed the fans were with what they did and how quickly they did it.
• 20:49
  And it wasn't like running around with, you know, like a
• 20:51
  chicken with his head cut off.
• 20:52
  They were very specific, very measured, very deliberate with what they did.
• 20:56
  So to see that was really quite an experience.
• 20:59
  And what you described is something I try to often relate to people and
• 21:03
  I think you gave a really great story around why IMSA and even WEC is probably
• 21:08
  one of the best series to participate in as a fan, not only because they're
• 21:13
  inexpensive to attend, but because you can get so close to action.
• 21:19
  All over the track, whether you're at a corner or if you're in the
• 21:22
  paddock or you're in the pits or wherever, and the races are long.
• 21:26
  So you have an opportunity to experience all of it.
• 21:29
  Yes.
• 21:29
  What I've noticed going to formula one races and NASCAR races and all those
• 21:33
  kinds of things, except for IMSA and the mint 400, I got to give props to
• 21:37
  Matt Martelli and his crew out West.
• 21:39
  Everybody keeps the fans at arm's reach.
• 21:42
  Go get your beer, go get your hot dog, but you're not allowed down here.
• 21:46
  Yes, that's right.
• 21:47
  And that's kind of an unfortunate thing because we see that you mentioned
• 21:50
  Drive to Survive, which I have a, you know, kind of a, this kind of thing.
• 21:55
  I haven't watched a single episode.
• 21:57
  I'm on a mission never to watch it.
• 21:59
  I'm not a fan of reality TV.
• 22:01
  So that's strike one for me.
• 22:03
  But the folks that.
• 22:04
  are attracted to that.
• 22:06
  One thing it does help is the access part of that because you realize
• 22:11
  unless you're going to pay a ungodly sum of money, that's as close as
• 22:15
  you're going to get to the folks that run the teams and drive the cars.
• 22:19
  And it has a purpose.
• 22:21
  I'm not going to go out of my way to watch one.
• 22:23
  But I understand the thought process, the fact that Gunther
• 22:26
  Steiner became so popular.
• 22:31
  It's just the man's personality is just kind of out there, you know,
• 22:35
  you know, he would be a fun person, I think, to talk to beyond that.
• 22:39
  To me, it becomes kind of tedious.
• 22:41
  And not only that as a fan and as an enthusiast, I think we
• 22:45
  have a different perspective.
• 22:46
  We're plugged in differently than let's say the layman, and I don't want to
• 22:49
  discount that fandom because it's a next generation of formula one fan.
• 22:53
  But I think for us growing up in different eras, you started way before I did, but I
• 22:58
  grew up in the group B era in the Senate versus prost era, you know, all these.
• 23:03
  And rivalries and things.
• 23:05
  And so you're invested as a fan, you're watching the race, you're watching the
• 23:08
  news, you're reading an auto week, you're plugged in at a different level and to
• 23:12
  your point, to watch it as a reality show, you're like, I don't care that any
• 23:16
  of this stuff happened, I understand how.
• 23:18
  It works as long as I don't have to watch it.
• 23:21
  It's okay.
• 23:22
  But then there's the other side of the coin.
• 23:23
  Like you were talking about being a mechanical engineer, going to these races
• 23:27
  and kind of talking over people I've seen myself and I have to pull back and
• 23:31
  go, okay, I'm sitting with a bunch of pedestrians that are kind of interested in
• 23:35
  racing, but I don't want to turn them off.
• 23:37
  Yes.
• 23:38
  Yes.
• 23:38
  With a bunch of jargon and a bunch of stuff, because then they're going to get
• 23:41
  lost and think this is way too technical.
• 23:43
  You're a nerd.
• 23:44
  Yeah.
• 23:47
  As Garfield said, I resemble that remark.
• 23:49
  Exactly.
• 23:50
  And I think that's the beauty of really being like, you are a super fan of
• 23:55
  racing, have made it a part of your entire life, but it's also hard to communicate
• 23:58
  with people and to relate to people except if they're in your circle, right?
• 24:02
  Oh, it is.
• 24:03
  It is.
• 24:03
  And the thing is, not only the knowledge part, but the passion part.
• 24:07
  The parallel would be football or basketball fans.
• 24:10
  And certainly, you know, folks are very passionate about the sport and their team.
• 24:14
  But I would have to say that my passion is at least as significant
• 24:19
  and as broad as fans of other sports.
• 24:22
  But the difference is, what they see is pretty obvious.
• 24:27
  I mean, they don't see the preparation part that goes on between the games, but
• 24:32
  once the game starts, then it's pretty clear what's going on, you know, who
• 24:36
  does what, and who's likely to do what.
• 24:38
  With motorsports, when we talk about the physicality of motorsports,
• 24:43
  all the series are different.
• 24:44
  Typically, you have a car of any sort, under body panels, unless you
• 24:49
  see it at rest when it's playing.
• 24:51
  Partially disassemble, you really don't have a sense of what's under there.
• 24:54
  And I think racing in the old, old days, we talk about things like,
• 24:57
  let's say the Mille Miglia, or you talk about some of these other
• 25:00
  famous European races, like Lamar and things like that in Europe, there was
• 25:04
  always that sense of national pride.
• 25:06
  Ferrari is out there for the Italian people.
• 25:09
  Mercedes is there for the Germans.
• 25:11
  And, you know, is there for the French and so on down the line.
• 25:14
  And I think that's a little bit lost.
• 25:16
  In let's say American motorsports and even formula one anymore.
• 25:21
  I mean, how many derivatives of Red Bull are there like Toro Rosso?
• 25:25
  It's this and that they're all the same as far as I'm concerned, but that brings
• 25:30
  us back to whack at least an LNP one.
• 25:33
  It's still Cadillac is the Americans, Ferrari for the Italians, Porsche's
• 25:37
  there, Acura's there, Toyota's there.
• 25:39
  And so you still have that national affiliation, that sense of patriotism.
• 25:44
  Maybe you're not fully engaged, but you're like Cadillac's American.
• 25:48
  I'm American.
• 25:48
  I'm rooting for the Eagles.
• 25:50
  Right.
• 25:50
  That's right.
• 25:50
  That's right.
• 25:52
  One of the things that I noticed speaking about Ferrari, the movie Ferrari, if you
• 25:55
  look at, you know, some of the forums.
• 25:57
  People thought, you know, Oh, this was fake.
• 25:59
  That's fake.
• 26:00
  Uh, kind of thing, but without understanding the history of the meal of
• 26:04
  media, what happened in 57, you know, not to get really gross, but what happened
• 26:10
  to the Patago that actually happened.
• 26:12
  And people said, Oh, that kind of accident can't happen.
• 26:15
  And that's just, you know, salacious and the whole, it's kind of like, that's
• 26:18
  how it happened as gross as it was.
• 26:21
  That's how it happened.
• 26:22
  You know, it's unfortunate that sometimes we as fans kind of screen ourselves
• 26:26
  from the history And don't really quite understand how we got here That's kind
• 26:32
  of sad and i'm glad you brought up the movies because you know that opens the
• 26:35
  door to talk about Some other ones and you know, we can discount all the fast
• 26:39
  and the furious and the grand And all that stuff, but there's been a few over
• 26:43
  the last couple of years The ferrari movie is one of them another one that
• 26:47
  comes to mind is race to glory Which is about the group b rally days Then
• 26:51
  you've got Rush, which is about Hunt versus Lauda, Ford versus Ferrari,
• 26:55
  you know, all these kinds of films.
• 26:56
  So as a fan of racing and growing up in these eras, what did you think
• 27:00
  about those movies and do you call out one as your kind of go to favorite?
• 27:03
  I've probably seen most of them.
• 27:05
  I won't say all, but you know, a high percentage of those films and
• 27:08
  going back to way back in the day, Clark Gable to Please a Lady or
• 27:13
  Steve McQueen's La Ma, and some of them are really quite well done.
• 27:17
  The thing is.
• 27:18
  I think sometimes people get too hung up with the racing part.
• 27:23
  Oh, this wasn't accurate.
• 27:24
  Oh, this didn't look right.
• 27:26
  And you know, that kind of thing.
• 27:27
  But I think the thing to remember is that people are involved in this endeavor
• 27:32
  and the strength of one's abilities and personality and stuff and how that
• 27:39
  works with other folks, how to mesh all that together to move forward.
• 27:44
  Obviously, I never got to meet Carol Shelby or William Ford, Enzo, you
• 27:48
  know, for most of us, this is the closest we're going to get, and to
• 27:52
  give some insight as to the motivations of the person, what their priorities
• 27:58
  were, and I knew a lot about that.
• 27:59
  Ferrari story, but the thing that struck me about that movie was this
• 28:03
  extraordinary amount of pressure that he was under his company is trying to
• 28:08
  go out of business a few years before that lost his son, all of the hassles
• 28:12
  going back and forth between he and Laura, the man could have easily cracked,
• 28:15
  but he didn't want a pressure cooker.
• 28:18
  Yes, but also where would the world be without Ferrari, right?
• 28:22
  If you kind of think about it and sometimes they're painted
• 28:25
  as the bad guy, like somebody's got to be the villain, right?
• 28:27
  And if you think about it in a lot of motorsport, not all motorsport,
• 28:31
  but a lot of motorsport It's either ferrari or porsche that it used to be
• 28:34
  mercedes They're held to this level that everybody else is trying to get to
• 28:39
  you know, which is really interesting.
• 28:40
  Yeah.
• 28:41
  Yeah Yeah.
• 28:42
  And, you know, as we've seen, Italy rises and falls with the fortunes of Ferrari.
• 28:48
  Ain't that the truth?
• 28:49
  This is serious shit to these folks, you know?
• 28:51
  Yeah.
• 28:51
  And I understand that.
• 28:52
  Even back in the day, I don't think that was ever true for Maserati, for instance.
• 28:57
  Right.
• 28:57
  They were part of the show, but not to the extent that Ferrari was.
• 29:00
  Yeah.
• 29:01
  They had bet the farm on Ferrari.
• 29:03
  Literally and figuratively.
• 29:04
  Yes.
• 29:05
  So, you know, it's like the man had a very complicated life.
• 29:08
  A lot of other folks would have just folded under that pressure.
• 29:11
  Just rose above it for God knows what reason to me.
• 29:14
  That was pretty fascinating.
• 29:16
  Also, you got other characters that have appeared over time.
• 29:19
  When we talk about people leading companies, Colin Chapman or Eric Broadley.
• 29:24
  Ferrari said something that aerodynamics were for folks
• 29:27
  who couldn't design engines.
• 29:29
  Correct.
• 29:30
  And then Eric Brodney said something kind of in parallel with
• 29:33
  that, that wings were for people who couldn't design suspensions.
• 29:36
  You have these pretty brilliant people saying these just off
• 29:39
  the wall things, you know.
• 29:43
  I swear Chapman used to say rules are for people who lose, but you know, that's all.
• 29:48
  So, you know, it's fascinating to me and I'm a, I'm a big fan
• 29:51
  of mid century architecture.
• 29:53
  Also Frank Lloyd Wright in particular, a couple of things, Wright hated
• 29:56
  basements and eavesdrops to most people.
• 29:59
  Those seem to be pretty innocuous, but to him, Oh God, that was a killer.
• 30:03
  Unfortunately, over time, a lot of his houses have, you
• 30:07
  Foundation and water problems because they don't drain properly.
• 30:11
  So it's funny how extraordinary people can have these flat spots
• 30:15
  that they just can't get beyond.
• 30:17
  It seems.
• 30:17
  Well, since we're talking about celebrity in motorsport now, you've gone to
• 30:22
  so many races over almost 70 years.
• 30:25
  You've probably rubbed elbows with some famous drivers and
• 30:27
  met some interesting people.
• 30:28
  So you named drop some locals earlier, but talk about some
• 30:32
  of the celebs that you've met.
• 30:34
  Okay.
• 30:34
  Well, one of the interesting things.
• 30:36
  about going to vintage events is that retired drivers show up and
• 30:41
  particularly Watkins Glen, you know, that's major vintage events
• 30:44
  and they would bring in people for grand marshals and things like that.
• 30:48
  That was how I met Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Jack Bratham, John Watson, Vic Elford.
• 30:53
  The others I met at Laguna Seca, but Gurney was interesting in that he's
• 30:58
  signed where I want to sign that.
• 30:59
  And I, I recently take the book back to him.
• 31:01
  And he said, Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.
• 31:02
  I said, sure, sure.
• 31:03
  So he's flipping through pages and his wife, Evie, was with him at the time.
• 31:08
  He ran across a picture of Gordon Johncock and he said, Oh, Gordie would
• 31:12
  drive into a corner as deep as anybody.
• 31:14
  He said it almost in such reverence.
• 31:16
  When I think about the career that Gurney had and all the things that he did, his
• 31:21
  respect for somebody that he competed against, that was pretty extraordinary.
• 31:25
  When I met Bratham, he signed my book, took it back, and I put my hand
• 31:29
  out to shake his hand before I left.
• 31:31
  And he stood up and shook my hand.
• 31:33
  And at the time, you know, he wasn't in the best of health.
• 31:36
  A lot of respect for that because there's something old school about
• 31:39
  that, that means something to people.
• 31:42
  Rick Mears.
• 31:43
  Rocket Rick Mears.
• 31:44
  Rocket Rick, yes.
• 31:45
  Penske moved to the IRL and he was still with the team, you
• 31:48
  know, in an advisory capacity.
• 31:50
  And so he was there for an autograph session.
• 31:52
  He signed my book and I took the book back and I said, thank you.
• 31:55
  And he said, no, thank you.
• 31:57
  Nobody else that I've ever had signed anything for me reacted that way.
• 32:01
  To me, it spoke to the kind of person that he was and how his celebrity
• 32:06
  hood or whatever you want to call it.
• 32:08
  He wasn't all about that as some people would be.
• 32:11
  That was a very nice thing.
• 32:12
  Ray Hall, Bobby, one of the books I have is, and I have a
• 32:15
  collection of motorsports books.
• 32:16
  So I, uh, opened where, when he won at Indianapolis and there
• 32:20
  was a of him with Jim Truman and he signed it and he just paused.
• 32:26
  What that said to me was that he was remembering that day and his friend,
• 32:31
  Jim Truman, he didn't have to tell me that, you know, I could see it.
• 32:35
  A little story about Ken Tyrell.
• 32:37
  Many years ago, the first company I worked for was what used to be Libby Owens Ford,
• 32:41
  which is now Pilkington North America.
• 32:43
  We did automotive glass and architectural glass.
• 32:45
  We would go up to Detroit for various trade shows.
• 32:48
  I think it was at the SAE.
• 32:50
  Ken Tyrell was there.
• 32:51
  This was in the day when he was sponsored by Data General
• 32:55
  and he had Renault engines.
• 32:57
  And this was into the turbo era.
• 32:59
  But what he told me was Alboreto won the last event with a
• 33:03
  Cosworth EFV in a Tyrell.
• 33:05
  He said, Alberto was just amazing to us because the mechanics, when they
• 33:10
  would take the cars apart after the race, there was hardly any brake wear.
• 33:13
  We never understood how he got the car stopped.
• 33:17
  People drop these little, little gems that, I mean, I didn't.
• 33:21
  Ask about that.
• 33:22
  He just volunteered that, you know, it was pretty amazing.
• 33:25
  So the Paul, he told me that the one race at Indianapolis, he won
• 33:28
  where it was the first time the winner's share was a million dollars.
• 33:31
  And there's that photograph of him with the pile of money.
• 33:34
  Right, right.
• 33:35
  What he said was, and I think it was Terre Haute banks and savings or whatever
• 33:39
  it was, they brought the money out.
• 33:40
  And what he said was they brought like.
• 33:43
  1.
• 33:43
  4, 1.
• 33:43
  5 million dollars because they didn't think that a million
• 33:47
  would look like enough.
• 33:50
  And he asked me, he said, well, do you know the story behind that?
• 33:52
  Because that was the photograph I had him sign.
• 33:54
  I said, do you know the story behind that photograph?
• 33:56
  He said no.
• 33:57
  And he explained it to me.
• 34:01
  There's some interesting things that happen beyond the view
• 34:04
  of regular people, I guess.
• 34:06
  So out of all the celebrities that you've met, can you pick a GOAT?
• 34:10
  A greatest of all time?
• 34:11
  Maybe not out of even the ones that you've met, but out of all of racing,
• 34:14
  is there somebody that stands out as your hero up there on the podium?
• 34:18
  I wouldn't put it like that.
• 34:19
  I would say For whatever reason, people that really impressed me, a
• 34:23
  lot of that would be people who were successful across various disciplines.
• 34:28
  And that would be the Gurneys, the Foytes, the Andrettis, folks like that.
• 34:32
  You know, there's always this debate about folks coming from
• 34:35
  a circle track background.
• 34:37
  And if you go to different series, you know, IndyCar, NASCAR, you have
• 34:40
  to learn to road race, obviously.
• 34:42
  I've always been impressed by people who were able to make that transition and
• 34:47
  really became very, very good road racers.
• 34:49
  When, uh, Mark Martin was driving, I happened to be at WGI for all of his wins.
• 34:56
  Never put a wheel wrong, complete control.
• 34:58
  Nobody could touch him.
• 35:00
  One who came very close.
• 35:01
  Interesting enough was Lake Speed.
• 35:04
  Yeah.
• 35:04
  Yeah.
• 35:04
  It's just like, hmm, okay.
• 35:06
  And then Jeff Bodine had a pole there.
• 35:08
  Ken Schrader had a pole there.
• 35:10
  I was like, damn, newfound respect for these people.
• 35:13
  Along with that would be people like Kyle Larson, Jimmy Johnson.
• 35:16
  I find it really interesting them doing IndyCar.
• 35:19
  It's like, okay, cool.
• 35:21
  That impresses me quite a bit that they were able to learn and apply.
• 35:27
  So that's a great thing.
• 35:28
  If you could sit down and have a beer or on the bench there in
• 35:31
  the grand stands with anybody in motorsports history, who would that be?
• 35:35
  There's something about the Austrians that is very direct and not
• 35:41
  sugarcoated or anything like that.
• 35:42
  It's the kind of thing, if you don't want to know somebody else's truth,
• 35:45
  don't ask He always struck me as an interesting person in general.
• 35:49
  But his will was just extraordinary.
• 35:53
  How many people would come back from the kind of injuries that
• 35:57
  he had to be a champion again?
• 35:59
  You know, I mean, that's just a, an extraordinary perseverance.
• 36:03
  Yeah.
• 36:03
  In a similar vein would be, uh, Alex Zanardi is a trite saying that
• 36:08
  refuse to lose, some people may not say that, but for some reason
• 36:12
  that is ingrained in their minds.
• 36:15
  There are no alternatives and Alex definitely exemplifies
• 36:18
  that that's for sure.
• 36:19
  So I agree with you mentioned all arounders and dreaded definitely on that
• 36:24
  list because he raced dirt oval stock cars, AB cars, Lamar formula one champion.
• 36:31
  I mean, the list goes on and on and on, right?
• 36:33
  We talked earlier a little bit about the evolution of racing modern formula one.
• 36:37
  What do you think about Andretti returning to formula one?
• 36:39
  Andretti Autosport, you think it's gonna happen?
• 36:42
  Andretti Global.
• 36:43
  Yes, yes, that's right.
• 36:46
  The FIA was okay with it.
• 36:48
  The Liberty folks and the team owners, that's some petulant BS to me.
• 36:53
  It's like protectionism.
• 36:55
  Right.
• 36:55
  The thought that, Whatever Andretti is going to bring to grow the
• 37:01
  sport is not going to be enough to offset the loss to the teams.
• 37:05
  I don't think that's true.
• 37:07
  I say let him buy Gene Haas out of his misery.
• 37:10
  You know what I mean?
• 37:11
  Yeah.
• 37:12
  Yes, that would work for me.
• 37:13
  Rewinding the clock, if Ecclestone was still at the helm, do you think
• 37:17
  he would have let them in already?
• 37:19
  I think he would have worked on the naysayers, figured out a way either
• 37:24
  to convert them or work around them.
• 37:26
  I mean, as fans, I think we all sit here and wonder, why
• 37:28
  can't we make the field bigger?
• 37:30
  This doesn't make any sense.
• 37:31
  What's the big deal if we add another two cars or whatever?
• 37:34
  And also with respect to the feeder series, that's two more seats.
• 37:39
  Yeah.
• 37:39
  There's a real Problem in Europe that they're developing drivers.
• 37:43
  It seems at a faster rate than seats become available.
• 37:46
  And that's really unfortunate.
• 37:48
  I can't say there's a real good way around that, but you have people who
• 37:51
  are very talented, who if they show up at the wrong point in time, it's
• 37:57
  just not going to happen for them.
• 37:58
  And that's pretty sad.
• 37:59
  The flip side of that is the BS with the super license.
• 38:03
  And.
• 38:03
  How pretty much all of us racing is so discounted in the way the points stack up.
• 38:08
  It's like saying, well, we really don't want you guys.
• 38:12
  And that conversation actually opens a door to a larger problem in motorsport
• 38:18
  that nobody has a silver bullet to solving this problem, but it's a
• 38:21
  conversation around diversity in the paddock and especially behind the wheel.
• 38:25
  And there's been a lot of talk lately about the formula one
• 38:27
  Academy and, you know, the demise of formula W it's on pause.
• 38:31
  Don't worry.
• 38:32
  It's coming back guys.
• 38:33
  Yeah.
• 38:33
  Okay.
• 38:33
  Yeah.
• 38:34
  What are your thoughts on maybe the first woman to come back
• 38:37
  to formula one since 1976?
• 38:40
  Well, Lombardi.
• 38:41
  Yes, exactly.
• 38:42
  The Lombardi.
• 38:42
  You know that, and maybe other people coming to the table in formula one.
• 38:47
  Do you think if we can check this box, if Andretti can make it happen, that
• 38:51
  might loosen the reins a little bit and allow a little bit more diversity
• 38:55
  in formula one and perhaps this is of greater importance for folks who
• 39:00
  work within the teams, the technical folks, the marketing folks to get the
• 39:05
  team to the races and be successful.
• 39:08
  If you remember Dave Despain, if you go back a ways, when James Stewart was
• 39:13
  real hot in motocross, you know, when he did Wind Tunnel, I put a question
• 39:16
  to him, since James Stewart has been so successful, have you seen any increase
• 39:22
  in black people attending events?
• 39:25
  He thought for a moment and he said, I don't know.
• 39:27
  I don't think so.
• 39:28
  What that says to me, yeah, pinning hopes on one or two people is
• 39:33
  probably not the thing to do.
• 39:35
  But on the other hand, it is important from the standpoint of if you see
• 39:40
  yourself, that reinforces the notion that It is possible when they do
• 39:45
  the garage shots, for instance, in Formula One, and you see the women
• 39:50
  that are mechanics and technicians, you see black people that are there.
• 39:54
  And I'm not sure why Ruth Buscombe and Bernie Collins are not doing
• 39:58
  strategy work at the moment.
• 40:00
  I'm not quite sure what happened there, but the woman who, um, engineered
• 40:03
  Audi to those Le Mans wins, and she's been on the Sky studio broadcast.
• 40:09
  You know, badass people.
• 40:10
  Absolutely.
• 40:11
  What really needs to be done is maybe the media needs to spend less time
• 40:15
  promoting the events and promoting the people, shining a spotlight.
• 40:18
  Yeah, we all know who Lewis Hamilton is at this point, right?
• 40:21
  But who's his tire guy?
• 40:22
  Or who's the girl that's doing his flight recorder data analysis?
• 40:27
  Those kinds of things.
• 40:27
  And I've said that before, when I've watched documentaries, they'll show
• 40:30
  you like three seconds of a person that he's like the tire technician.
• 40:33
  I'm like, I want an hour on that person and their job, because it's
• 40:37
  super interesting than watching Scott Dixon do laps and having some famous
• 40:42
  actor do a voiceover, you know, I'm like, whatever it's like you said.
• 40:46
  Everybody's got a story.
• 40:47
  We miss out on those.
• 40:49
  NASCAR did a little bit of that at various times with pit crew members, when they
• 40:54
  started getting people specifically to do those functions that were not
• 40:57
  mechanics, people came from various athletic backgrounds, that was what
• 41:02
  they brought to the table rather than.
• 41:04
  Sending Bubba to the gym three days a week.
• 41:06
  These guys started out as athletes, so they understand
• 41:10
  the training and the dedication.
• 41:12
  So all you need is somebody to focus them on the things that they need
• 41:15
  to do specifically to be able to function in that particular job.
• 41:19
  So you're not starting from scratch.
• 41:20
  Basically we learn and evolve.
• 41:22
  And I think you inadvertently touched on a nerve that a lot of
• 41:26
  people just don't resonate with, which is that motorsport is a sport.
• 41:31
  There are top elite athletes running at the upper echelons of motorsport.
• 41:36
  And so if you're not a fan plugged in, like you are and plugged in,
• 41:39
  like I am, you don't understand the physicality and the G's.
• 41:43
  Driving a Formula One car is akin to flying a fighter jet.
• 41:46
  And so these guys are under an immense amount of pressure, whether it's G forces,
• 41:51
  temperatures, just all sorts of stuff.
• 41:53
  And so you have to respect what they're doing behind the wheel of those cars.
• 41:58
  It's more than just driving around.
• 41:59
  Every time I hear that, well, it's just driving.
• 42:01
  It's like, yeah, it's like, let me get a broom and beat you with it.
• 42:08
  But yeah, that's the thought process.
• 42:10
  Let's see.
• 42:10
  The thing is the vast majority of people.
• 42:13
  Have probably never gone much over 70 miles an hour on an expressway.
• 42:17
  When you think about driving a car that can pull over five G's in a
• 42:21
  corner, and you're doing that multiple times a lap for 70, 80 laps over
• 42:27
  the period of, what, an hour and 45 minutes or so, you have to be fit.
• 42:31
  There's no choice or else you get so far and you just realize you need to quit
• 42:37
  because you just can't go any further.
• 42:39
  When, uh, IndyCar modified the, um, screen, put some air vents in it,
• 42:43
  I always thought it was interesting because some people would choose to
• 42:46
  use cool suits, others would not.
• 42:49
  That, you know, it's kind of a confidence thing that people felt that their
• 42:53
  training and preparation was of such a level that wouldn't be a problem.
• 42:57
  It's like, damn, you know.
• 43:00
  That says a lot.
• 43:00
  You alluded to something else there, as you were talking about, you know, how
• 43:04
  some people have never gone above 70 mile an hour, you know, some people do
• 43:08
  track days, we all have mixed experience with driving, you know, as a fan, a
• 43:12
  lot of people will probably say, Oh, you're just a long bench team principal.
• 43:16
  What do you know?
• 43:17
  Armchair quarterback, you know, that kind of thing.
• 43:19
  Have you turned some laps on the track yourself?
• 43:22
  Have you gotten out there to experience it?
• 43:24
  Yeah.
• 43:24
  Not competitively, but folks do schools.
• 43:27
  When I lived in New York state early on was when legends cars
• 43:30
  started to become popular.
• 43:32
  There was a dealer over in Binghamton, which is about an hour away between
• 43:36
  Corning and Binghamton is what I referred to as Shangri La Speedway.
• 43:39
  And, you know, he's trying to sell cars, basically what he's doing.
• 43:42
  So the, you know, the fee was pretty low for that reason.
• 43:45
  It was kind of funny is in the middle of the week, it had rained
• 43:47
  quite a bit the night before.
• 43:49
  I'm no stranger to a gas pedal, did a lap and you know, it's
• 43:52
  like everything felt good.
• 43:54
  So second time going out on the backstretch, went through a puddle.
• 43:56
  The next thing you know, we're just all over the place.
• 43:59
  And I'm sure folks were laughing about that, but it really got my attention.
• 44:03
  But after I did that, it's like, yeah, that was kind of fun.
• 44:05
  You know, do you think it changed your perspective?
• 44:07
  No, because it felt pretty much like I anticipated.
• 44:10
  And the thing to me was I fit.
• 44:13
  I'm not particularly tall or big or anything, but it just, it fit to me
• 44:17
  where the steering wheel was, where the pedals were, where the gear
• 44:19
  shift was, you know, I was home.
• 44:21
  I did many years ago, Richard Petty's school at Disney World
• 44:26
  Speedway, which is gone now.
• 44:28
  It was a weird thing because what the Disney people thought was they didn't
• 44:31
  want to upset not the skyline, but the view for when you went past the track.
• 44:37
  So what they would do for the events that they had, they would
• 44:40
  put the stands up, take them down, put the stands up, take them down.
• 44:43
  That's bizarre.
• 44:44
  It was kind of doomed to failure.
• 44:46
  Yeah.
• 44:46
  Back then they would have been a bush car.
• 44:49
  It was kind of a fun track, pretty well banked, but relatively short.
• 44:51
  Last thing I did, Ken Bouchard, he did a thing at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut.
• 44:56
  He had a fleet of pavement modified.
• 44:59
  That was fun.
• 45:00
  I liked that.
• 45:01
  And there was a point at which I helped a friend of mine
• 45:03
  maintain his paper modified.
• 45:05
  There were interesting cars in that, if you see people kind of slither to
• 45:08
  get in there, you know, well, once you're almost there, for me, there
• 45:12
  was nothing else to grab on to.
• 45:14
  So it's like the last four or five inches, you just kind of.
• 45:18
  You know, there again, once you're in there, you get strapped in and everything.
• 45:21
  It's like, it's cool.
• 45:22
  So do you think that was maybe a dream realized getting to
• 45:25
  drive an asphalt oval car?
• 45:26
  You know, having watched them since a kid?
• 45:28
  Yeah.
• 45:29
  Yeah.
• 45:29
  I'm looking for something else to do.
• 45:32
  Kenny Wallace and Everham and I forget who else was involved.
• 45:36
  Do this thing where they do like a dirt modified sprint car and maybe
• 45:40
  a midget, something like that.
• 45:41
  When I found out about it.
• 45:43
  It was about two or three weeks too late, so I missed their schedule,
• 45:46
  but that seemed kind of interesting.
• 45:48
  It is the experience of it to do that.
• 45:50
  It's like something for your memory banks that you carry with you.
• 45:54
  In the intro, we talked about how your motorsports passion
• 45:57
  followed you across the country.
• 45:59
  So eventually you made your way from new England all the way to California.
• 46:03
  So let's talk about the difference in racing.
• 46:06
  You mentioned long beach and Laguna Seca in previous parts of the
• 46:09
  conversation, but what was it like?
• 46:11
  Going to the car capital of the United States, right?
• 46:15
  California.
• 46:16
  Yeah.
• 46:16
  What's the vibe like, the car culture?
• 46:19
  Are they invested in motorsport in the same way they are on the east coast?
• 46:22
  What was that like for you?
• 46:23
  I would also add to that the Peterson Museum and also the Nethercut.
• 46:27
  I'm a member of a car club.
• 46:29
  Matter of fact, I am the community liaison officer.
• 46:32
  But we took a trip to the Nethercut and I will tell anybody, if you want to go see
• 46:36
  a car museum, it's not just a car museum.
• 46:39
  The Nethercut is just an extraordinary place.
• 46:41
  The thing that surprised me, hardly any of my car club members are motorsports
• 46:46
  fans and they're into fifties, sixties, bit into the seventies, Detroit cars.
• 46:52
  Some of the folks who do have sports cars and foreign cars of various sorts until
• 46:56
  fairly recently, they felt that they weren't really all that much appreciated.
• 47:00
  That's not what Mecham says.
• 47:04
  Well, we have a regional collector car auction here twice a year.
• 47:08
  And they do something like about 6 million over a weekend.
• 47:12
  Meekum and the rest of these folks are doing 20 and 30, but yeah.
• 47:15
  So, so that was real different for me.
• 47:17
  They go through a process early in the year where they decide or figure
• 47:21
  out what kind of special events.
• 47:23
  That the club is going to do, and I proposed going over to the
• 47:27
  other side of the mountain here to Paris Auto Speedway, the pass.
• 47:31
  And I've been over there a few times to see USAC CRA sprint cars, and
• 47:35
  these are non wing sprint cars, 410s.
• 47:38
  The Outlaws have run there, saw the Outlaws over there.
• 47:41
  So what I proposed, okay, let's pick a Saturday night and we'll
• 47:45
  go over to the sprint car races.
• 47:47
  The club has a little magazine.
• 47:48
  It's like maybe 10 pages or so every month for the three months leading
• 47:52
  up to that, you know, I would capture cars and sprint cars on dirt in
• 47:56
  action and some discussion about that.
• 47:59
  I even wrote a document, Sprint Car 101.
• 48:02
  Where explained the technical details cars, about 1400 pounds, 410 cubic inches,
• 48:08
  about 900 horsepower, basically data.
• 48:10
  And then how the races went there's qualifying, there's heat races.
• 48:13
  You know, sometimes if you have enough cars, the last chance qualifier
• 48:16
  in the future explained things like rim riding or bottom feeders,
• 48:21
  slide jobs and stuff like that.
• 48:23
  We got six people.
• 48:25
  What?
• 48:26
  I know, I know.
• 48:27
  I'm thinking, I don't think I could have done any more, you
• 48:29
  know, to bring people out for this.
• 48:31
  Like, I was amazed.
• 48:33
  There was one guy who couldn't make it, why'd you, who actually runs
• 48:37
  a late model over San Bernardino.
• 48:39
  One of the other people back in the day raised hobby stocks, but
• 48:43
  you know, the rest of them had never been before, but that was it.
• 48:46
  When I joined the club, I would not have expected that.
• 48:49
  But, you know, over time, I learned where people's thought processes were.
• 48:54
  But you also came to the club with an interesting resume
• 48:56
  of cars in your history.
• 48:59
  I'm going to read off a couple here for the listeners.
• 49:01
  72 Honda 600 Coupe, 1970 Lotus Elan Plus 2S.
• 49:06
  You had a Biat 131, a Chevy Citation.
• 49:08
  We could talk about that.
• 49:10
  Probably in a whole episode to itself.
• 49:11
  Yeah, I can tell you why.
• 49:13
  Exactly.
• 49:14
  84 VW Quantum.
• 49:16
  You had one of the most sought after Nissan Maximas ever.
• 49:19
  A 94 Isuzu Trooper.
• 49:20
  And then you're currently driving a JCW Mini Cooper Clubman.
• 49:24
  I noted that You are a manual transmission purist.
• 49:27
  You're part of the save the manual club.
• 49:29
  Like I am, you know, one of the dinosaurs out there, all of these cars,
• 49:33
  manual transmission since day one.
• 49:35
  To be perfectly honest, I'm a little quirky in some ways.
• 49:39
  I'll claim that I grind my own coffee beans, for instance.
• 49:42
  So it just works for me.
• 49:45
  The cars, sometimes I was trying to accommodate some things from a
• 49:50
  family perspective, you know, as the kids got older, that was the
• 49:53
  reason behind the VW quantum wagon.
• 49:55
  Oh, you had a, was it a synchro?
• 49:57
  Cause that's even better.
• 49:58
  It wasn't the synchro model, but it did have the Audi five cylinder drive train
• 50:02
  that had the shortest shifter throws of any car that I have ever driven.
• 50:06
  I mean, it's almost like you could just wheel it into place.
• 50:09
  The Germans were also a little interesting because it had power
• 50:12
  locks, but they were vacuum driven.
• 50:14
  Yep.
• 50:14
  That came from the Rocco's.
• 50:16
  and I think you could open and close like about five times
• 50:20
  before the reservoir was done.
• 50:22
  . That's correct.
• 50:23
  Then you had to turn the car on to get it to refill.
• 50:25
  Yeah.
• 50:26
  So I was like, okay, they're a little quirky.
• 50:28
  But the first dealership I went to, I was looking at a year old one before I
• 50:33
  bought the new one at another dealership.
• 50:35
  But the sales guy inadvertently, or maybe he just wasn't smart enough.
• 50:39
  I don't know.
• 50:39
  Locked my wife in the back seat because he tripped the child proof lock, then
• 50:43
  couldn't figure out how to undo it.
• 50:46
  I've run across some salespeople who were, as my grandmother would
• 50:49
  say, really doozies, you know.
• 50:51
  In that list of cars, though, you had a proper British roadster.
• 50:55
  So, talk about the Lotus a little bit.
• 50:57
  I've always been a fan of Lotus and of Colin Chapman's.
• 51:00
  I like his thinking about things.
• 51:02
  The one thing about the original Elan and then the, the larger plus US.
• 51:06
  You wouldn't want to have a wreck in one of them.
• 51:08
  The way they did the backbone chassis was like an X.
• 51:11
  So if you got T boned in the door, God help you, because there
• 51:15
  was very little structure there.
• 51:16
  Matter of fact, there's a company in the UK that is offering a
• 51:20
  substitute chassis for the Lotuses.
• 51:23
  It's a tubular shield, but it does have structure under the rocker panels.
• 51:27
  Then it's a lot safer.
• 51:28
  A modicum of safety, yeah.
• 51:30
  Yeah, yeah.
• 51:31
  It's all relative, you know.
• 51:32
  I like what Chapman did with the cars.
• 51:34
  That car, just a little under 1, 600 cc's.
• 51:37
  I think that one, it wasn't a big valve.
• 51:39
  I think this one was like 115 horsepower.
• 51:41
  But because it was so lightweight, it was surprisingly quick.
• 51:45
  And of course, Lotus handling.
• 51:46
  I'll never forget when I first bought it.
• 51:48
  I took my grandmother for a ride just about a block away from her house.
• 51:52
  There was another side street that came in at an angle.
• 51:55
  And so we left the house.
• 51:57
  I think I hit second gear going around that dog leg and
• 52:01
  she says, Oh, I like the car.
• 52:06
  It's just, unfortunately when I bought it before we had our first child, when
• 52:11
  she came along the plus two part in the back had these two kind of rounded
• 52:16
  areas to sit in the car seat didn't fit.
• 52:20
  So instead of leaning back a little bit, she wound up sitting like bolt upright.
• 52:24
  And so I said, this isn't going to work.
• 52:27
  So, uh, that was what led to the Fiat.
• 52:29
  The Fiat was an interesting car because at the time it was
• 52:32
  billed as a poor man's BMW 320.
• 52:35
  I could see that.
• 52:36
  Yeah.
• 52:36
  And that was, that was pretty accurate.
• 52:37
  But it was no 131 Abarth.
• 52:39
  They are diametrically opposed.
• 52:42
  Yeah.
• 52:43
  Yep.
• 52:43
  Very true.
• 52:43
  And it unfortunately met a sad fate.
• 52:47
  One of the few times I would leave my cars outside and not put it in the garage,
• 52:52
  that night, probably two in the morning or something, there was a windstorm.
• 52:56
  We had a tree in the backyard that was more dead than we thought, and
• 53:00
  evidently it got to waving back and forth and just fell right across the car.
• 53:05
  fell right over the radiator.
• 53:06
  It was history.
• 53:07
  You mentioned the citation.
• 53:09
  Oh God.
• 53:09
  Was it X11 or was it base?
• 53:11
  No, it wasn't.
• 53:11
  It wasn't.
• 53:13
  After the tree fell on the Fiat.
• 53:15
  So now we're thinking about, okay, we need to obviously replace the car
• 53:18
  because it is not going anywhere.
• 53:20
  As I said, I worked for Livio and Ford at the time we, you know, were
• 53:24
  long time glass suppliers to them.
• 53:27
  And There was a bit of a recession going on and stuff.
• 53:31
  And so I purchased the citation out of loyalty.
• 53:34
  Basically, did that turn into hatred after owning a citation?
• 53:37
  Cause you're the only citation owner I've ever met.
• 53:40
  Nobody has anything good to say about him.
• 53:43
  It was very unimpressive.
• 53:46
  That's a very nice way of putting it.
• 53:48
  Yeah.
• 53:48
  Yeah.
• 53:49
  I'm being charitable here.
• 53:50
  You know, it didn't run badly.
• 53:51
  Didn't handle badly.
• 53:53
  Brakes were something else because the rear brakes tended to lock up first.
• 53:57
  I had an accident because of that.
• 53:59
  For that didn't hit anything, but I'm leaving work.
• 54:01
  A dog starts kind of trotting across the street, realized that there was another
• 54:06
  car coming from the other direction, all of a sudden took off running.
• 54:10
  in front of me.
• 54:11
  It hit the brakes and hit the dog.
• 54:12
  The dog wound up daggering away, but I wound up between the street
• 54:17
  and the sidewalk backwards.
• 54:18
  Fortunately, there was nobody out there at the time.
• 54:20
  It was like dinner time.
• 54:21
  I mean, I would have, you know, just broadsided somebody had they been there.
• 54:24
  It sounds like you bounced off the dog.
• 54:28
  It's not good.
• 54:29
  The brakes were on that thing.
• 54:30
  I was almost pissed because the dog walked away.
• 54:34
  It should have been laying there on the street.
• 54:36
  Oh man.
• 54:37
  Then the way I would go to work in Toledo was on the other
• 54:40
  side of town where I live.
• 54:42
  I would go across a place where there was an old roundhouse for locomotives
• 54:46
  and it was about eight or ten sets of tracks that you had to cross.
• 54:50
  I had my hand on the gear shift as we were kind of bouncing over the tracks,
• 54:56
  my hand just kind of pulled back a little bit, broke the synchronizer rings.
• 55:01
  So it was under warranty because I'd only had it not even six months by that point.
• 55:04
  Really pissed me off because I took it back to the dealer.
• 55:07
  He tried to explain that I didn't know how to drive a car with a manual transmission.
• 55:13
  That's not happening.
• 55:13
  That was the fourth car I'd owned with the manual transmission.
• 55:16
  So it's like, no, but they fixed it.
• 55:19
  They didn't argue, you know, really weird things.
• 55:21
  You've gone along and there's a bunk that was the rings falling down to the bottom
• 55:25
  of the gear case, you know, the Honda 600 was Honda's spin on what the mini
• 55:31
  was, although I think the top speed of the thing was like 82 miles an hour with
• 55:35
  a tailwind being pushed by Silverado.
• 55:39
  Yeah, so of all the cars you owned, maybe the Lotus is in this category.
• 55:44
  Were any of them inspired by going to the races, something you saw
• 55:48
  in the paddock or you were like, you're a fan of Colin Chapman.
• 55:50
  So obviously again, the Lotus checks that box, but anything else you were
• 55:53
  like, you know, this is calling me because you know, the old saying, right?
• 55:57
  Race on Sunday.
• 55:58
  Sell on Monday.
• 55:59
  Yeah.
• 55:59
  Yeah.
• 56:00
  I think I was less affected by that.
• 56:02
  You know, in the case of the Lotus, it was more realizing what Colin
• 56:06
  Chapman did with his cars, not only street cars, but the race cars also.
• 56:10
  A lot of times folks were just trying to catch up.
• 56:12
  The only one I think that might've played a part is perhaps the mini, but you know,
• 56:17
  I would've had to bought an early one, you know, for that to be strictly true.
• 56:22
  Other than when I had to compromise in order to fit the four of us in a vehicle,
• 56:27
  I pretty much bought what I, what I liked.
• 56:29
  Because normally we ask people, what's the sexiest car of all time?
• 56:32
  And you get answers like, you know, the Ferrari Daytona or the Jaguar
• 56:36
  E Type and all this kind of thing.
• 56:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 56:38
  Since we're motorsports super fans here, the possibility, you know, we
• 56:42
  win the lottery, do we buy a race car?
• 56:43
  What are you going to do with it?
• 56:45
  If we have like Nick Mason kind of money, Elon Musk kind of money.
• 56:50
  Yeah.
• 56:51
  Three race cars that would be in your garage, doesn't matter the discipline.
• 56:56
  What would they be?
• 56:57
  The first lay down roadster, Minneapolis that George Sala and Howard Gilbert, uh,
• 57:02
  Clint Eaperly, I guess, built, you know, the one that won at 57, 58, that to me
• 57:06
  was what attracted me to IndyCar racing.
• 57:09
  Another one would be the Ferrari Tipo 156 that Phil Hill won his title with.
• 57:14
  The last one would be kind of an oddball.
• 57:16
  Go back to Jordan F1.
• 57:19
  Probably was their first car with the green seven up livery.
• 57:23
  I remember that one.
• 57:24
  That was a beautiful car.
• 57:25
  Was it Jerry Anderson?
• 57:27
  Was it the guy that designed it?
• 57:28
  He was one of the last that could Design a complete car.
• 57:33
  Don't let Adrian Dewey hear you say that though, okay?
• 57:35
  Yeah.
• 57:36
  Well, you know, we don't really know if he'd ever designed
• 57:40
  any suspensions or anything.
• 57:41
  I don't know, but Anderson was it.
• 57:44
  Somebody said he could probably pick up the back end of the car by himself.
• 57:48
  He was pretty a good sized person, I guess.
• 57:50
  As it also ran for the top three cars.
• 57:53
  I would also include the, uh, Ferrari 323 SP.
• 57:56
  Ooh, that's a really good choice.
• 57:59
  Oh God, hearing that car at Watkins Glen being over around turn one
• 58:04
  and hearing it go up the S's.
• 58:05
  Ah, that was a wonderful sound.
• 58:08
  That was a wonderful sound.
• 58:09
  Nothing like a Ferrari.
• 58:10
  Unfortunately, it was kind of sacrilege when it got to a point where Ferrari
• 58:13
  didn't want to develop it anymore.
• 58:14
  Kevin Durant put a, uh, Judd V10 in the back.
• 58:18
  Which I perfectly understand, but it's like, Oh man,
• 58:23
  you mentioned earlier missing the opportunity to drive the midget
• 58:27
  oval cars and things like that.
• 58:28
  And you kind of alluded to, it might still be a possibility for you to
• 58:32
  do this near future at 75 years old.
• 58:36
  I got to believe there are still some bucket list races on your list.
• 58:41
  So what's left that you want to attend?
• 58:43
  What do you want to go see?
• 58:45
  Indianapolis.
• 58:45
  Indianapolis.
• 58:46
  For one, I've been to the museum, but not to the race.
• 58:49
  Go back a ways when Ganassi employed Bruno Iancara and Nicholas Manassian.
• 58:55
  I was there for a conference and of course played hooky a little bit, went
• 58:59
  over to the Speedway, to the museum.
• 59:01
  They were testing there.
• 59:02
  And so that probably would have been like mid nineties, maybe late nineties.
• 59:06
  That was the closest I got to the speedway.
• 59:08
  Lamont would be interesting just because of all the things that go on.
• 59:13
  There's a race and there's this big party and the history of it.
• 59:16
  It's a good and bad history.
• 59:18
  Unfortunately, going back to Ford versus Ferrari, that was certainly historical.
• 59:23
  When they did that 250 down the Mulsanne and then retired the car.
• 59:31
  It's like, okay, but I ran across a video recently.
• 59:34
  Mazda did one back in late 80s, was it?
• 59:37
  Oh, the 787B?
• 59:38
  Yes.
• 59:39
  1991.
• 59:40
  91, okay.
• 59:41
  So there was a bit of a reenactment because when Johnny Herbert
• 59:45
  did the last stint, he couldn't get out of the car, basically.
• 59:47
  So he didn't make it to the podium.
• 59:49
  They brought the car over.
• 59:50
  He did a lap and got out of the car and, you know, was on the podium and stuff.
• 59:54
  So listening to that car, watching it, That was an extraordinary piece.
• 59:59
  It just was for a lot of cars.
• 1:00:01
  It is about the sound because it is so distinctive and I've been surprised
• 1:00:06
  every now and then I find two dissimilar cars that sound very, very similar.
• 1:00:11
  If you remember Aston Martin built prototype, the AMR one, they had
• 1:00:15
  Reeve Calloway developed their engine, the three liter V8 double rear cam.
• 1:00:21
  Sounded almost exactly like a Cosworth EFV.
• 1:00:23
  And I'm like, really?
• 1:00:24
  That Mazda, it just sang.
• 1:00:27
  Well, there's nothing like a quad rotor Mazda.
• 1:00:29
  That's for sure.
• 1:00:30
  That's a one and only engine.
• 1:00:31
  That's one of the interesting things about sports car racing.
• 1:00:33
  You have more than one series on track at the same time.
• 1:00:37
  That presents a whole different set of conditions.
• 1:00:40
  And often the results are determined by people doing things they shouldn't be.
• 1:00:45
  And in places where they should not be.
• 1:00:47
  It happens.
• 1:00:48
  Yeah.
• 1:00:48
  Frequently enough that, you know, it shouldn't be surprising.
• 1:00:51
  All right.
• 1:00:51
  Last one for you.
• 1:00:53
  Sure.
• 1:00:53
  We talked about a lot of racing and we could probably spend a whole
• 1:00:57
  other episode diving into all the stories you have, but if you had to
• 1:01:01
  pick a decade, like the golden era of racing, what is that for you?
• 1:01:06
  It would probably be the sixties and in the end of the fifties, leading into
• 1:01:11
  that, just from the standpoint with.
• 1:01:14
  Moss and Gurney and Phil Hill and Ginther and all the rest, you know,
• 1:01:20
  Graham Hill and Clark and eventually Stewart and stuff, you know, folks
• 1:01:24
  of that era, there were very few slouches, you know, everybody had
• 1:01:28
  a pretty fair amount of talent.
• 1:01:29
  Obviously some had more than others.
• 1:01:31
  There were a lot of extraordinary people.
• 1:01:33
  It was a different situation because as many folks that
• 1:01:37
  were lost during that time.
• 1:01:39
  It would have been even worse had people not driven with the
• 1:01:43
  respect for their fellow drivers.
• 1:01:46
  And Senna was extraordinary, don't get me wrong.
• 1:01:47
  But his thing was to put people in a situation where either they
• 1:01:52
  yielded to him or they crashed.
• 1:01:55
  You know, it's a hell of a choice when you think about it, you know.
• 1:01:58
  That's not actually outwitting.
• 1:02:00
  Somebody or figuring out what your strength is compared to their weakness.
• 1:02:06
  There was a dark side to Senna.
• 1:02:08
  Similarly, there was a dark side to Michael Schumacher as good as they
• 1:02:11
  were, that tarnishes the shine a little bit, you know, so one of the
• 1:02:16
  things that I always think about.
• 1:02:18
  Was when Schumacher crashed and pulled back on the track to
• 1:02:22
  prevent Damon Hill from passing.
• 1:02:23
  I remember that.
• 1:02:24
  And it's like, or when he was with Mercedes in his final years.
• 1:02:30
  Yeah.
• 1:02:30
  It was like, at the beginning of the race, moved Barrichello almost over to
• 1:02:35
  the wall in front of the pit street.
• 1:02:36
  I can't remember where that was, but that shit doesn't need to happen.
• 1:02:39
  There's just no excuse for it.
• 1:02:41
  That's a negative.
• 1:02:42
  To me, I can't imagine people like Gurney and Andretti and
• 1:02:47
  Foyt and others doing that.
• 1:02:50
  They had more class than that.
• 1:02:51
  These days, there are a handful of people that I follow, not necessarily
• 1:02:56
  because they're going to win a ton of races, but I have a lot of
• 1:02:59
  respect for them for various reasons.
• 1:03:00
  In Formula One, obviously it would be Hamilton, but.
• 1:03:03
  The others I like are Sonoda, Ricardo or Ricciardo is the correct pronunciation.
• 1:03:08
  I guess Danny Rick.
• 1:03:10
  Yep.
• 1:03:10
  I don't know.
• 1:03:11
  There's something about them that captures me in IndyCar.
• 1:03:14
  It would be a willpower.
• 1:03:16
  Whenever you talk to willpower, you know what he's feeling, whether
• 1:03:19
  it's up here or down here, there's no sugarcoating it, he'll tell you
• 1:03:23
  what's on his mind, I respect that.
• 1:03:24
  Not everybody's like that, unfortunately.
• 1:03:27
  Well, Dan, this has been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:03:29
  I mean, you are a wealth of information.
• 1:03:32
  Your depth of knowledge is beyond most people and as racing fans.
• 1:03:37
  And like, that's why I say you're a super fan.
• 1:03:38
  So this has been a lot of fun and we could probably go on all night.
• 1:03:42
  Yeah.
• 1:03:43
  Yes.
• 1:03:44
  But we've reached that part of the episode where I like to invite our guests
• 1:03:47
  to mention any shout outs, promotions, or anything else they'd like to share
• 1:03:50
  that we haven't covered thus far.
• 1:03:52
  If I can talk about the Air Museum for a little bit, the Palm Springs Air
• 1:03:55
  Museum, there's a few things that make it pretty unusual among air museums.
• 1:04:00
  One is that our planes.
• 1:04:02
  are not behind barriers, 15 feet away.
• 1:04:05
  If so, you can walk right up to the planes, you know, look
• 1:04:07
  them over every Saturday.
• 1:04:08
  They pick one of the planes.
• 1:04:10
  You can go sit in a cockpit and have your photograph taken.
• 1:04:12
  And we cover a pretty good spectrum.
• 1:04:14
  At one end, we have three or four planes from the thirties that are fabric covered.
• 1:04:18
  At the other end, the other spectrum is the F 117.
• 1:04:21
  And that's, that's the hanger where I am a docent.
• 1:04:24
  For the time, that was a pretty extraordinary aircraft and how
• 1:04:27
  difficult it was to detect by radar and infrared scans, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:04:33
  Well, over the life of the 1 17, 558 pilots flew them.
• 1:04:37
  Three were women.
• 1:04:38
  That's not classified information, but it's just not widely known.
• 1:04:42
  So when we have families with young girls that come through and I make a point
• 1:04:45
  of telling them that And I've been in contact with one of the women recently.
• 1:04:49
  At the time, they were among the best of the best fighter pilots.
• 1:04:52
  What happens a lot of times when I tell families this, the mothers,
• 1:04:56
  grandmothers, aunts will turn to the young girls and say, did you hear that?
• 1:05:00
  Did you hear that?
• 1:05:01
  You know, it's an important piece of information to pass along.
• 1:05:04
  And when you see yourself, Then you begin to believe that it is possible.
• 1:05:09
  That's the significance of it.
• 1:05:11
  We're one of the few museums that flies aircraft.
• 1:05:15
  We have six aircraft that you can pay to have rides in.
• 1:05:18
  The most expensive one is a T 33, T 38 trainer.
• 1:05:22
  It's a jet.
• 1:05:23
  I think that's, I forget, 4, 000, 5, 000, that's at the high end.
• 1:05:28
  At the low end would be, uh, a ride in the C 47 that we have.
• 1:05:32
  And I think that's 200.
• 1:05:34
  It's an interesting place.
• 1:05:35
  And one of the focuses for the museum is education for young folks.
• 1:05:41
  As one of the F 117 pilots pointed out.
• 1:05:44
  We have a shortage of pilots and that's for the military and commercial pilots.
• 1:05:48
  A good part of the effort is how to bring this information to young
• 1:05:52
  folks and interest them and encourage them to follow careers in aviation.
• 1:05:58
  You know, not necessarily pilots, but you know, a whole
• 1:06:00
  lot of people work in aviation.
• 1:06:01
  I like that.
• 1:06:02
  And also what impressed me before I moved here, we came here on vacation
• 1:06:06
  and I visited the museum, they have pretty good size, you know,
• 1:06:08
  exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen.
• 1:06:10
  Four statues out in front of the building.
• 1:06:13
  They're life size.
• 1:06:14
  It would be for the airmen running to their planes.
• 1:06:18
  That impressed me.
• 1:06:18
  Also a significant exhibit, women in aviation.
• 1:06:21
  You know, there's this thinking that it's not only about the planes,
• 1:06:24
  there are other things going on here.
• 1:06:26
  I appreciate those kinds of things with that.
• 1:06:28
  DN.
• 1:06:29
  I can't thank you enough for coming on break fix and sharing your life's
• 1:06:33
  journey, your stories, your memories, and your passion for motor sports with
• 1:06:37
  us and our audience folks like yourself are the reason that this show exists.
• 1:06:41
  And we appreciate you, your fandom, and for helping us to continue
• 1:06:46
  to spread motorsports enthusiasm.
• 1:06:48
  Like we said, at the beginning, everyone has a story.
• 1:06:51
  And if you'd like to share yours, don't hesitate to reach out.
• 1:06:55
  Thank you.
• 1:07:01
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:07:04
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:07:07
  gtmotorsports.
• 1:07:07
  org.
• 1:07:08
  You can also find us on Instagram Also, if you want to get involved or have
• 1:07:14
  suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send
• 1:07:21
  us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:07:23
  org.
• 1:07:24
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:07:26
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:07:28
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of break fix.
• 1:07:31
  And we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization.
• 1:07:36
  And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes
• 1:07:39
  like this one at no charge.
• 1:07:42
  As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for
• 1:07:46
  bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.
• 1:07:50
  For as little as 2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers,
• 1:07:54
  writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of
• 1:07:59
  fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster.
• 1:08:02
  Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.
• 1:08:05
  patreon.
• 1:08:06
  com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without fans,
• 1:08:11
  supporters, and members like you.
• 1:08:14
  None of this would be possible.