Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The Legend of Black Nasty: Bobby Parks and the Evolution of a Drag Racing Icon

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The Legend of Black Nasty: Bobby Parks and the Evolution of a Drag Racing Icon · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Break fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the auto sphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
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  designers, and everything in between.
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  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrol heads that wonder.
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  How did they get that job or become that person?
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  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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  At GTM, we pride ourselves on being ambassadors for all types of motor
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  sports, but we haven't really talked about drag racing much on break fix.
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  Until now.
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  Our guest today has been a staple in the DMV drag racing scene for
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  the better part of two decades.
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  Some of you in the area may remember an all black fourth gen Camaro roaming
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  around Upper Montgomery County, Maryland on huge slicks and skinnies.
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  That car was the genesis for what is now widely known as the Black Nasty.
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  Some of you might also know him from Street Outlaws and Pinks.
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  So join me in welcoming Robert Parks, the man behind the Black Nasty persona.
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  Welcome, Bobby.
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  Hey, how you doing?
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  And as always, I'm your host, Brad, and I'm Eric.
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  So let's roll.
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  All right, Bobby.
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  Was I right in my intro stating that the fourth gen Camaro, that
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  is the original black nasty.
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  That is the OG black nasty.
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  That is the one that started it all for me.
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  That was the looker that everybody, I mean, you know, driving around in
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  my little stock Camaro or whatever.
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  And I seen that thing.
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  It was like, how, first of all, how the hell are you driving that on the street?
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  That was definitely a question that was brought up by a lot of
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  people, including a lot of the Montgomery County police officers.
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  Yeah.
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  I'm sure you knew a lot of them by first name, but to start, so how did you.
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  Get into that.
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  How did you get into motorsports and drag racing?
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  Growing up, my dad used to tell me all his stories about his
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  drag racing and just a bunch of different cars and stuff that he had.
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  One of my favorites was a 69 Camaro that he had that he always talked about.
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  And when I was about seven or eight, he finally brought me to
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  the local drag strip, 75 and 80.
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  Like I was watching from the stands.
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  The first fast car that I saw go down, I was like, man, that's
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  what I want to do right there.
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  I don't know what it's going to take, but.
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  One day I'm going to do it.
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  It was just meant to be.
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  And then he didn't get you into one of those like junior
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  dragsters or anything like that.
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  I mean, at that age, don't they start doing that?
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  The funny thing about my dad is he will point in the direction that, you
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  know, he thinks you should go or maybe something you might be interested in.
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  But until you actually do it yourself, he's not going to do it.
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  When I finally bought the original black nasty 99 Z 28 Camaro, I did a little
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  bit of research before I bought it.
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  And that's when the whole LS motor thing started.
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  And the little bit of research that I did, I found out pretty much right away
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  that it was going to be a superior engine to most of what was already available.
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  Especially the LT one, which is.
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  All the experience I had back then, and I hated that engine.
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  And I mean, it was good for its time and there's people doing big things with it.
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  Now, still, I don't know why, but the LS just took over and took off.
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  And now, I mean, there's pretty much no car out there that hasn't been LS swapped.
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  And I'm glad that I did buy the car that I did because it gave me a huge
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  head start on this whole LS craze.
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  I mean, there's people that are just now.
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  Really starting to get into the whole LS community stuff.
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  And I've been doing it for over 20 years now.
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  Thank God I bought that car, started modifying it pretty much right away.
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  I was working at Midas, believe it or not, when I got that car, I didn't
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  know much past doing oil changes and brakes and real basic stuff.
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  When I got it fast forward 20 some years and pretty much nothing I can't do now.
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  You know, that's what I do for a living is, uh, I build drag cars and.
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  Most of the stuff that I build is LS based and I tune and fabricate pretty
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  much all my cars were 100 percent built by myself, including the, the original car,
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  which is where I learned a lot from, I
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  remember back then you had, at least in the early 2000s, you had like
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  one of the only LS one edit cables.
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  You know, the racers in group and everybody was going to you because
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  everybody had a Camaro or Firebird.
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  And we were all like, Bobby, we need your help tune my car.
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  I remember you changed plugs on my Camaro at one point.
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  LS1 edit, man.
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  That brings back memories.
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  That thing might have both been MS DOS based.
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  It's so old.
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  That thing was junk.
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  Now we have HP tuners and I pretty much use all standalone stuff for
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  my cars now, especially because I utilize the traction control a lot.
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  What are you using just out of curiosity?
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  I'm
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  using a FuelTech 600 and that has a lot of the latest and greatest stuff.
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  I do a little bit of stuff with Holley.
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  So if I was to choose something else, I'd probably jump on a Holley.
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  And I've done a little bit with a lot of the other programs out there too,
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  but for my budget, the Holley and the FuelTech are my two top choices.
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  And I prefer the FuelTech and my personal stuff.
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  So we talked about the car, the 4th gen Camaro that started it all, but
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  where did Black Nasty come from?
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  As you I'm sure know all about, I'm not going to say how or why, but
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  Lily ponds, one of the minutes down
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  the street from my house now,
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  one of the roads that we made famous, there's videos and stuff all
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  over the country now of that road.
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  But we were out street racing one night.
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  I had a buddy there with me that had never come out street racing before.
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  I think it was a turbo civic.
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  That I ran, I gave him like 15 cars in the kick.
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  I ended up beating them by like 20 some cars.
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  And my buddy who's standing behind the car, when I left, he
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  was like, damn, that car's nasty.
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  And then when I came back, you could hear it in the video.
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  So we were playing the video back and he was like, man, that car is so nasty.
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  And it's black.
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  You should call it black nasty.
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  At first I thought it was kind of goofy.
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  There was like 50 people out there watching the race.
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  The name just stuck.
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  I didn't call it that.
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  They just overheard it.
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  And then from that point on, everybody called it the Black Nasty.
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  And still 20 some years later, that's how 90 percent of the people
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  in the car community know me.
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  I mean, it's a great name.
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  It's funny how just like the simplest thing can turn into your
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  entire Persona and celebrity.
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  But before we get into your celebrity status, let's talk a
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  little bit more about some of the other iterations of the black nasty.
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  So the fortune Camaro was the original, but that's not what you're rocking today.
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  How has the black nasty changed over the years?
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  Yeah.
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  So I've gone through a few different cars and even a truck and some
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  motorcycles and all sorts of stuff.
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  If it's got an engine and some wheels and tires, I get into it.
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  I got out of racing.
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  And got into off roading for a few years.
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  And that's where that Jeep build came from.
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  And the Jeep, I actually traded it for the black Mustang.
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  That's how I ended up getting that.
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  That's kind of funny how it went from one thing to another, to another.
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  And then of course, during all that, I also was racing motorcycles
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  and got into motorcycles.
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  So bunch of different stuff.
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  Like I said, if it's got an engine and some.
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  Wheels and tires and I'm into it.
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  I'll, I'll race it or whatever I can do with it.
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  The second vehicle that I got into that I dubbed black nasty was an LS Mustang.
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  Wait,
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  wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
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  Isn't that illegal?
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  And like 48 out of the 50 States, you put a bow tie in a blue oval.
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  Oh, you make a blue oval move.
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  Oh, my bad.
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  My bad.
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  Don't get me wrong, the Mustang on its own, it's a great drag vehicle,
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  but the original five liter that came in those cars is, let's just
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  admit it, it's a pile of crap.
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  They pretty much break right down the center at about 450 wheel horsepower
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  and that's just not going to cut it.
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  That's a hot take right there, everybody.
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  So actually, when I got the Mustang originally, it was just a four cylinder,
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  it had no motor in it or anything.
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  No EcoBoost there.
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  No EcoBoost either.
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  Matter of fact, I wouldn't mind doing something like that if I was going to
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  build a driver, but the cars that I build, even the ones that are street
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  legal, Like my current one, I build them to be competitive in whatever
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  class that I decided to run in.
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  You know, you're not going to be competitive in today's
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  racing with the original 5.
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  0.
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  I mean, that thing is junk.
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  First thing I did with the Mustang, tore it all down, put an LS in it.
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  And believe it or not, within the first Three years, I think of building that car.
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  I broke the stock block nitrous record at Maryland international raceway.
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  We won the very first heads up race that we ever ran with that car.
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  So I built the car, took it to 75 and 80, did some testing, entered
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  it in world cup finals at MIR.
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  And just by pure dumb luck, we ended up winning the whole thing.
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  That was back in 2012, 2013.
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  We entered again and we're number three qualifier.
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  And that's when we ended up breaking the world record and
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  we did it in a restricted class.
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  So we were only allowed to run a certain amount of nitrous and we
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  were still able to break the all time record with that car at that time.
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  We went back a week later to re break the record.
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  It was about 40 degrees outside that day.
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  The oil pressure got so high because it was so cold that it
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  blew the oil filter O ring out.
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  And I ended up crashing the car at about 120 mile an hour into the wall at MIR.
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  That was a bad day, but I got really, really lucky.
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  I mean, there was no square inch of the car that wasn't covered in oil.
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  And what it did was it allowed me to slide so freely that when I hit
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  the wall, it just was like a sliding blow to the front end, spun around
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  one time, tap the rear a little bit.
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  Believe it or not, I was able to get the car back out onto the track within
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  three weeks, I was out running it again.
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  Wow.
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  That's
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  impressive.
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  So I just cut the whole front end off, welded some tubes in it.
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  I got donated a wrecked carbon fiber front end from a buddy who
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  raced in X275 class back then and a little bit of work later and we
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  were back out racing all over again.
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  So
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  that's the picture I saw that it looks like Mad Max from the front then.
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  Yes.
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  Yeah.
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  I didn't want to do it, but it ended up working out for the best anyway, that
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  front end on those things are super light.
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  So I was able to remove some around like 85, 90 pounds out of the car with
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  just that front end and tubing it.
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  You no longer run a Camaro.
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  You've made the switch.
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  How many Mustangs have you had?
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  Uh, have you been all Mustang?
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  It was first the Camaro, then the Mustang, the Mustang I had the longest.
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  I think I raced that for about eight years.
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  I ended up getting involved in radio racing.
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  That's what I really wanted to do well in, but radio racing is so expensive.
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  It is just crazy how much money you can spend in that stuff.
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  Now, these guys are going almost mid threes in the eighth
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  at over 200 miles an hour.
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  On little radial tires.
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  That's what I wanted to do.
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  It just got a little out of hand.
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  I spent a lot of too much money.
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  What I ended up doing was I got into no prep race, which is still
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  kind of new to a lot of people.
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  It's been around for longer than most people think, but no prep racing.
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  We basically simulate street racing, which as you know, is right up my alley.
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  The other thing it does is it takes a lot of the expense out of the
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  vehicle You don't need a ton of power.
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  These places that we race, we're typically racing either racetracks backwards.
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  So we're going from the shutdown area toward the starting line, or we actually
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  do it like one of the episodes of street outlaws that were on, we did airports.
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  Airports are really big now.
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  And the crazy thing about this racing is, is it's like never any time in history.
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  Could Joe Schmo go out and actually.
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  I hesitate to say make a living, but you could actually make a living
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  off of racing and not have a full ride or a big sponsorship to do it.
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  To touch back on your question about the Mustangs, I have a Mustang now.
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  So this is now my second Mustang.
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  And I went back to a Mustang for good reason.
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  They work very well.
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  I ended up selling the earlier Mustang because that one was set up so much
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  for the track that it made it really difficult to work on the no prep.
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  It had a four 27, all aftermarket LS motor in it that was run on methanol
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  and had a big single turbo and it made about 2, 400 wheel horsepower.
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  It was very difficult to tame that thing down enough.
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  To run these note preps and I ended up selling it And then
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  that's when I got into the truck.
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  The truck was probably the shortest lived venture that I
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  had mainly because of the cost.
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  Yeah.
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  I saw it on Facebook that you had just gotten the truck and like
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  a week later, it was just sold.
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  I
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  ran it for one season.
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  So the chassis was actually imported from the Netherlands, which is kind of
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  weird, but some guy in the Netherlands really wanted my dad's Chevelle.
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  He had a 69 Chevelle that was blown big block.
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  And the guy used to have one that he won some race back in the day
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  was so he, he had to have this car.
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  So he had a pro stock S10 chassis, which is borderline a pro mod, and
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  he offered it for a heads up trade.
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  And I still had the engine and transmission from the old black nasty 2.
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  0, the Mustang.
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  And we dropped that right into the truck, which was only like 2, 300 pounds.
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  So we knew we were going to just fly with that thing.
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  It took me.
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  About four or five months to build it.
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  We went out, did a couple of races, did very well with it right away.
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  That was a big tire car because we wanted to get into big tire, no prep.
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  Cause back then it was like kind of all the rage.
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  And it was like almost as soon as we built the truck.
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  All of a sudden two chassis were outlawed from small tire altogether.
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  So we stuck to big tire and big tire actually pays less money and
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  costs about twice as much to do.
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  So it just didn't make sense for me to keep doing it.
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  It costs a lot of money, like just putting the truck together,
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  even getting the chassis for free.
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  By the time we got done with all the parts and labor, I had easily a
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  hundred thousand dollars into that vehicle, but I got rid of the truck.
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  It left me with enough money to move on to the vehicle I have now.
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  So let's
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  go back and clarify a couple things.
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  Black Nasty 2.
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  0 followed by Black Nasty version 12 at this point.
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  These Mustangs are all Fox bodies?
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  Or are they SM95s?
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  Are they the new retro cars?
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  What are we talking about here?
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  I did not want to build one.
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  I was anti Fox body.
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  Everybody has one.
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  There are a hundred of them at every racetrack you go to.
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  And you know, everybody wants to be different after getting that car.
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  I finally understood why so many people use that car.
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  It is just kind of a cookie cutter.
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  Take it out of the box, do a couple of things to it.
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  And you have a race car.
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  I mean, it's just really is one of the most perfect.
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  Drag race cars that you can get lightweight, even though it's a
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  triangulated four link, it still comes with a four link, which works pretty
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  much just the same if you know how to use the instant center calculator.
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  It's just right out of the box.
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  It's basically a drag car.
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  And with as light as it is, you throw a cage in it and you're off to the
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  track and you don't have to make a ton of power to go fast with them.
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  It's just like the perfect car.
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  Yes.
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  I do want to build other stuff.
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  And you know, over the years for customers, I've built
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  a ton of different stuff.
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  One of my favorite things I've built recently was a AMC Rambler.
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  So I did a 5.
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  3 swap in one of those.
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  And those cars, a lot of people don't realize it, but they're super light.
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  The one that I built, it was like 2, 450 pounds or something like that
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  before I started tearing it all apart.
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  I didn't even weigh it after I was done, but I have to imagine it was no
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  more than about 2, 600 pounds and, and I didn't cut any weight out of him.
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  It was still the regular car.
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  That thing turned out awesome.
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  That was nasty.
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  Fox bodies are where it's at.
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  Then of course we had COVID and that pretty much destroyed business
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  for everybody, myself included.
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  And, uh, I was also still dealing with a divorce at the time.
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  So between COVID and the divorce, I pretty much was like losing my ass on everything.
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  So
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  I got rid of the truck and I was pretty much just going to get out of racing.
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  I told myself I'm done with it.
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  I've had a lingering back injury from power lifting back in the day.
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  It's evolved to a point now where I have to get spinal injections on a regular
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  basis, just to even be able to just live my normal daily life, much less work.
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  But other than the tuning and going to these no preps that we do now
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  and helping those guys out, we did start going to races again.
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  So when I sold the truck, I got about, I would say three months into my,
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  I'm never going to race again phase.
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  When I decided that's just not going to happen, I have to race.
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  I just cannot sit around.
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  It's it's not possible.
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  So I threw together a little budget build.
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  It took me about three and a half months to build it.
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  I wanted to do it for 15, 000, but it ended up costing me about 25.
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  And again, I don't build a car unless I think it's going to be competitive.
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  So yes, I could have built it for even 10 if I really wanted to, but a 10, 000 no
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  prep car is not going to be competitive.
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  You know, there might be ways, but.
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  I wasn't interested.
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  So one of the things I had to have was my FuelTech 600 with the
• 17:26
  traction control that it has helps me a lot in the no prep world.
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  So I had to have that.
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  I didn't want to skimp on that couple other small things that I had to
• 17:34
  have got the car together, started racing and this car based on all the
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  Experience that I had from street racing and track racing and everything.
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  I, I put it all together and I put it in this car and it didn't
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  cost a ton of money, but first day out, this car just worked.
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  It is amazing how well this car works and how little really is done to it
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  and how little money is really in it.
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  But we went out and won the first race.
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  And that was for about 3000, which was awesome.
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  Cause 3, 000, I really needed it at the time.
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  You know, I was living in my shop after my divorce for about three and a half years.
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  And then the shop got shut down due to COVID.
• 18:16
  But my main goal was to make this race called dig or die.
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  Which now is basically the super bowl of no prep racing for small tire guys.
• 18:26
  And just to clear something up real quick, depending on who you ask, no
• 18:30
  prep can mean two different things.
• 18:32
  Like a lot of guys know no prep from no prep Kings, which is a new spin off of
• 18:37
  street outlaws that they've been doing.
• 18:39
  No prep Kings is what we refer to as fake no prep.
• 18:43
  If you're racing on a track and you're going in the direction that you're
• 18:47
  meant to race at the track, it only takes about 10 or so cars to go down
• 18:51
  before the track is sticky enough.
• 18:53
  You know, it's basically like racing on a normal day at the track,
• 18:56
  especially if you have a big tire.
• 18:58
  So what we do is we purposely race on crappy surfaces.
• 19:02
  I thought it was kind of funny as you're talking about NoPrep and Kings of NoPrep
• 19:06
  and their fake NoPrep and it's like, so there's a lot of preparation in NoPrep.
• 19:11
  So it's a bit of a misnomer.
• 19:13
  Why is it called NoPrep?
• 19:15
  At the racetrack,
• 19:16
  basically what they do to consider it NoPrep is they scrape the track clean
• 19:20
  and they don't put any, it's like a form of glue that they put down on the track.
• 19:26
  They spray it down the track.
• 19:28
  If you're going to a prepped event, no prep Kings, they basically scrape the
• 19:32
  track and they don't put any glue on it.
• 19:34
  The problem with that is one.
• 19:36
  When you scrape the track, you give them a perfectly smooth
• 19:39
  surface to lay down new rubber.
• 19:41
  Soon as the new rubber is laid down, it becomes sticky again.
• 19:44
  It's basically like the racetrack.
• 19:46
  And when you have a big tire.
• 19:48
  You don't want a really well prepped surface.
• 19:51
  You don't want a ton of glue.
• 19:52
  We need what you call wheel speed for guys that don't drag race and wheel speed
• 19:57
  is basically just a controlled slip.
• 19:59
  So with a big tire, if you did hook it off the line, typically you'll go slower.
• 20:05
  It'll, it'll lug the motor down and you don't get out of the hole as fast.
• 20:09
  So you want a control amount of spin, which is exactly what you're going to get.
• 20:14
  On a track surface that has just been scraped and now you've got cars going
• 20:19
  down one after another after another, you know, after 15, 20 cars go down,
• 20:23
  it is a perfect racing surface.
• 20:25
  It doesn't get any better than that.
• 20:27
  In contrast, what we do, we go to the crappiest surfaces we can find.
• 20:32
  I mean, borderline gravel roads, some of these places, and the
• 20:37
  asphalt is 50 years old and cracked and broken, and it's really grainy.
• 20:43
  You typically can only get about 50 percent of the surface area of the tire.
• 20:48
  Actually on the ground, you're just doing everything you can to
• 20:51
  just get the car to hook and go.
• 20:54
  And that's the name of the game and no prep.
• 20:56
  The other funny thing about no prep that a lot of people complain about.
• 20:59
  is we do actually bring what we call prep, which is stupid and I'm kind
• 21:06
  of against it for the most part.
• 21:07
  I say we just use water and do water burnouts only, but most of these no
• 21:11
  preps do allow you to bring your own.
• 21:14
  Prep typically it's a form of glue mixed with denatured alcohol.
• 21:19
  And when you pour it down and you, and you do your burnout in it, you
• 21:22
  try to drag it up the surface as far as you can to give yourself a
• 21:26
  little bit more adhesion and get the car to take off a little bit faster.
• 21:29
  But even with that stuff, these places that we race are so horrible.
• 21:34
  that we can typically only use us a little bit of our power of our car.
• 21:40
  So it ends up just being a game of who can get down the most power out of everybody
• 21:45
  else.
• 21:46
  Is all this prep just really about the fact that the tires aren't good
• 21:50
  enough to withstand the amount of power and torque that you're putting down.
• 21:53
  Even at a
• 21:53
  racetrack, if you're on a slick.
• 21:55
  Depending on how your car is set up, if you know how to set the car up
• 21:59
  properly, most of the time you're going to wheelie rather than spin.
• 22:03
  It happens.
• 22:04
  You can spin in the radial world.
• 22:06
  We typically have about 56 to 58 percent of the weight of the car on the nose.
• 22:11
  And that's to keep the front end down.
• 22:13
  We usually strap the front suspension down, make it so that they can't travel.
• 22:18
  So the car doesn't want to flip over back.
• 22:20
  I got some pictures that I'm sure you could see of my car.
• 22:22
  It's trying to do just that.
• 22:25
  And that's with, you know, 56, 57 percent on the nose.
• 22:28
  Whereas in the no prep stuff, we're doing almost the opposite.
• 22:32
  We have to put so much weight in the back of these cars.
• 22:35
  That it almost ruins the suspension.
• 22:37
  If you were to just take a regular car and try and go no prepping with it and try
• 22:41
  and put down over a thousand horsepower, it's not going to get traction.
• 22:44
  So we put a ton of weight in the back of these things to get them to work.
• 22:48
  If we were to take our no prep cars and go to the track, they would
• 22:52
  just want to flip over backwards.
• 22:53
  And same thing, vice versa.
• 22:54
  If you take your.
• 22:55
  Track car and try to go no prep racing.
• 22:57
  You're just going to spin all the way down the track and you won't go anywhere.
• 23:01
  And then of course I utilize a few different methods of traction control,
• 23:05
  which do not make the car faster, but it's basically a safety net.
• 23:10
  So when I put the tune in the car, I put in it, the amount of power that I
• 23:14
  think that surface will hold that day.
• 23:16
  But if I miss on the tune up and I put a little bit too much power in
• 23:20
  it and it wants to blow the tires off, I utilize the traction control.
• 23:25
  To keep me going down the track and not having a boarded run.
• 23:29
  Over the years, my, uh, experience in traction control has actually
• 23:34
  helped a lot in the no prep world.
• 23:37
  And now it's pretty much a staple.
• 23:39
  And if you're not using some form of traction control, then you're probably
• 23:43
  not winning a ton of races either.
• 23:45
  And that's in partnership with automatic transmissions then too, right?
• 23:48
  Because, I mean, who's really running a manual.
• 23:51
  I mean, I guess.
• 23:51
  But there is a
• 23:53
  manual transmission class.
• 23:55
  It's best that they keep them separate because the manual transmissions do have
• 24:00
  a big disadvantage in the drag world.
• 24:02
  Every time you shift the gear, you got to worry about it breaking loose again.
• 24:05
  It upsets the chassis and yes, you could use like a Liberty transmission
• 24:09
  or something like that, where you don't actually have to hit a clutch
• 24:12
  and those actually do work pretty well.
• 24:15
  But they're very expensive and a lot of people don't have them.
• 24:18
  We also do a lot of little tricks with the converters and line pressure,
• 24:23
  converter pressure to basically give it a lot more converter slip when
• 24:28
  we're leaving so that the engine isn't transferring power so hard to the wheels.
• 24:33
  Gives us a nice, smooth transition in power.
• 24:36
  We also use what's called dump valves to bleed off converter,
• 24:39
  charge pressure to make the converter slip even more than normal.
• 24:44
  That also helps us get down and then we can start bringing that converter
• 24:47
  pressure back in as we go down to apply more power to tires without
• 24:52
  even adding any more boost or timing.
• 24:54
  Those things all help a lot.
• 24:56
  The key is, is being able to do it all together.
• 24:58
  You got to have the chassis set up well first, then you got to have.
• 25:01
  The tune and everything just has to work together in unison to make a good
• 25:07
  pass and no prep at the racetrack.
• 25:09
  You throw a tune up in it, you think is gonna go down and typically you
• 25:12
  will, you might wheelie, but you can pedal it and you'll go right down.
• 25:15
  No prep.
• 25:16
  These guys that.
• 25:18
  Have been doing it for years, are still having trouble getting an A to B pass.
• 25:22
  That's all we look for is just being able to start and finish.
• 25:25
  And if you can go down without spinning, you're typically
• 25:28
  going to win.
• 25:29
  Of all the places you've been and whatnot, what's your favorite drag racing track?
• 25:34
  Is there a particular venue that's better than the other?
• 25:36
  Well, Jason
• 25:37
  Miller, when he does world cup at MIR, well, now it's called MDIR.
• 25:42
  The prep that he does is amazing.
• 25:45
  That was one of the best surfaces I ever ran in terms of track
• 25:48
  racing and also capital raceway.
• 25:51
  And they're still prepping the Bradshaws.
• 25:54
  Mafia is what they call it.
• 25:56
  And ever since Capitol Raceway shut down, they still go around
• 26:00
  the country and prep tracks.
• 26:02
  But when the Bradshaws owned Capitol Raceway on a regular Friday night,
• 26:07
  that track was so sticky, it would rip your shoes clean off anytime.
• 26:13
  They've made my track racing program jump leaps and bounds because
• 26:17
  I no longer had to worry about.
• 26:19
  Whether or not the track was there, the track was always there.
• 26:24
  If I spun, it wasn't the track, it was my car.
• 26:27
  And that helped a lot in figuring out how to get the car to actually go faster.
• 26:32
  Cause it's one thing when you're traveling around and actually racing, because
• 26:37
  you're not going to go out and try and run a new best every single pass.
• 26:41
  That would be a dumb way.
• 26:42
  To go around the world and try and win race.
• 26:44
  Cause typically when you're trying to break a personal best, you're going to
• 26:48
  spin, or you're going to do something and it's not going to work out.
• 26:51
  So those two tracks, I don't know if one is better than the other, but a
• 26:55
  lot of it just has to do with the guys that are prepping them more so than the
• 26:58
  track itself, huge props to those guys.
• 27:01
  I believe that they could go to some of the crappiest tracks
• 27:04
  and make them work very well.
• 27:06
  And, and they've proven themselves time and time again, but I'm a
• 27:09
  little partial to MDIR because of.
• 27:12
  Winning world cup finals there.
• 27:15
  That was huge.
• 27:16
  I mean, I think there was 40, 50, 60, 000 fans that were there when we won.
• 27:21
  Well, technically when we won, it was like one o'clock in the morning
• 27:24
  and just not everybody had gone home.
• 27:26
  But during the day when we were in the brunt of the race, there
• 27:30
  was a lot of people there.
• 27:31
  It's.
• 27:32
  It's an experience that very few will ever get to experience.
• 27:36
  It's amazing.
• 27:37
  It's crazy.
• 27:38
  The energy and the electric there, but on the flip side in the no prep
• 27:42
  world, I raced at Rockingham Raceway, but we're racing the track backwards.
• 27:48
  The end of the track is horrible.
• 27:50
  It's a horrible, horrible surface, but.
• 27:53
  I won there and it was probably the most fun I ever had at a race ever in my life.
• 27:59
  It was just, it was incredible.
• 28:01
  Even if I didn't win all that money, which is by far the most amount of money
• 28:06
  I've ever won in my life at anything.
• 28:09
  By far.
• 28:09
  So that definitely adds to it and probably changes my perspective of things.
• 28:14
  But if you were there, you would understand this mad max atmosphere
• 28:18
  there, where it's just like, these guys are just thrown together what they can.
• 28:21
  And they've got these cars out there and everybody's going down the same surface.
• 28:25
  You're limited by the surface in terms of who can go how fast, and you're the
• 28:32
  guy that figures it out and beats over a hundred cars on the same surface.
• 28:38
  Yeah, that's.
• 28:39
  Just incredible.
• 28:39
  It's something that again, very few people ever in their life will get
• 28:43
  to experience something like that.
• 28:45
  And I'm just blessed beyond belief to have been able to, to do it myself.
• 28:49
  Honestly,
• 28:50
  you know, obviously you're a big advocate for the Fox body, but then
• 28:53
  they're not really Ford powered Fox bodies anymore, as we discovered.
• 28:57
  So if you're looking to get into this and you're talking about budget bills
• 29:01
  and stuff like that, what's a good.
• 29:02
  You know, starter drag car, or what do you think is maybe one of the best drag
• 29:06
  cars outside of the Fox body, right?
• 29:08
  That is maybe attainable for a lot of people.
• 29:11
  If I were to go to a different vehicle, I'd probably go back to
• 29:14
  like the OG black nasty and F body.
• 29:16
  The fourth gen F bodies are a really good starting point for a drag car.
• 29:23
  The suspension is really easy to work on.
• 29:25
  Matter of fact, it's easier to work with than a Fox body.
• 29:28
  It just doesn't have all the adjustability that a fox body has,
• 29:32
  but it will put you in the ballpark and it will get the job done.
• 29:36
  There are a few hundred pounds heavier than a fox body.
• 29:39
  from the factory.
• 29:40
  So there's a little bit more work to be done.
• 29:42
  There's a couple extra dollars to be spent, but for the most
• 29:46
  part, an F body will do well.
• 29:48
  And also I'm a big fan of S 10 pickups, first gen or second gen.
• 29:53
  Those are really good cars to start off with.
• 29:55
  All of them are, are relatively light.
• 29:57
  They all have good working suspension.
• 29:59
  You have to do like a Caltrax split monoleaf set up on the leaf spring S10s.
• 30:05
  But once you do that, those things work awesome.
• 30:07
  There's a lot of guys out there that use those that work done.
• 30:11
  Very well over the years,
• 30:12
  you know, since we've been talking about Mustangs for a while, let's
• 30:14
  bring up a topic here that may be sensitive for some folks, right?
• 30:18
  Because the Mustang for the longest time was a solid rear axle because
• 30:22
  they were catering towards the drag market, the NASCAR guys, you know,
• 30:27
  the rum runners and everything else.
• 30:29
  But, you know, the new generation Mustangs are now leaning towards circuit
• 30:33
  racing with independent rear suspension.
• 30:35
  Obviously we saw that for the first time on the SM95s with the
• 30:38
  Terminators and stuff like that.
• 30:39
  And then they disappeared again and you know, so on and so forth.
• 30:42
  But now IRS is the default from the factory.
• 30:46
  So what do you think about that?
• 30:47
  Is it true that, you know, IRS doesn't work for drag racing and vice versa?
• 30:52
  Let me put it this way.
• 30:53
  You
• 30:53
  can get it to work.
• 30:55
  The problem is.
• 30:57
  So much so that in no prep, I can't think of a single independent
• 31:02
  rear suspension car that has won a race as long as I've been doing
• 31:05
  it.
• 31:05
  Is that because of the inherent weak points in the IRS?
• 31:09
  It's not really the suspension itself.
• 31:11
  It's that you have so many more mechanical pieces, right?
• 31:15
  Parts and components, solid rear axle.
• 31:17
  It's a bar and wheels.
• 31:18
  Let's just call it that.
• 31:19
  Versus IRS, you've got axles, you've got CV joints, you've got all
• 31:22
  this other stuff that's in there.
• 31:24
  It's a.
• 31:25
  So is that where it really comes in?
• 31:26
  Or is it something else?
• 31:28
  Nope.
• 31:28
  Actually, it's in the suspension
• 31:30
  geometry for drag racing.
• 31:32
  There's two different styles that people use for suspension setups.
• 31:37
  One is referred to as squat, which is.
• 31:41
  typically used on big tire cars.
• 31:43
  What it does is it puts the instant center point long and low typically.
• 31:49
  And what that does is when the car goes to take off, it makes the back of the vehicle
• 31:53
  drop down because the rear axles actually trying to lift itself off of the surface.
• 31:59
  That's why it looks like the vehicle is squatting, which it is, it's, but
• 32:03
  it's squatting because the suspension geometry is set up in such a way.
• 32:08
  That it's trying to pull the tires away from the surface.
• 32:12
  And then there's what most of us small tire guys use, and you can use
• 32:16
  either, but most of us use separation.
• 32:19
  Separation works where if you have a, a high and short incident center.
• 32:24
  It will drive the tires into the surface you're racing on.
• 32:29
  You can actually use the geometry to your advantage in the drag racing world.
• 32:34
  Whereas if you have independent rear suspension, the mounting
• 32:38
  points of the arms are fixed.
• 32:41
  And even if you could make them adjustable, You can't really change
• 32:46
  the instant center height and length the way that you can with a four lane.
• 32:49
  It makes geometry correction or even just modifying the geometry in general
• 32:55
  really difficult for IRS and IRS usually because the instant center
• 33:01
  on those is way out in left field.
• 33:03
  You're going to have a car that squats and you can either use the squat, which
• 33:07
  a lot of guys in drag racing, what they'll do is they'll allow it to squat.
• 33:11
  And they set their castor camera points up to that squat point.
• 33:16
  The one trick that guys use with independent rear suspension is you
• 33:19
  find out where that point is, where your car squats, which is easy to do.
• 33:23
  If you, especially if you have shock sensors, they'll tell you
• 33:26
  how many inches the car squats.
• 33:28
  Then you put it on the alignment rack, you squat the car down to that point,
• 33:32
  and then you adjust your caster camber and get it to where the tire is sitting
• 33:37
  as flat as possible at that point.
• 33:39
  And then you have the most available traction.
• 33:42
  So yes, you can get it to work.
• 33:44
  It's just not easy.
• 33:46
  It's going to cost more money.
• 33:48
  And yes, as you mentioned, there are more failure points.
• 33:51
  If I were a newbie getting into no prep.
• 33:54
  And I already had an independent rear suspension car.
• 33:57
  Sure.
• 33:57
  I'd go for it.
• 33:58
  But if I were to start building one, that would definitely not be ideal.
• 34:02
  You would definitely want to go toward a four link setup.
• 34:05
  And again, Because of the rules, it's why Fox bodies are so popular.
• 34:10
  It's one of the few vehicles that come from the factory with a
• 34:13
  four link suspension that you're not going to break any rules.
• 34:16
  You can run a stock suspension class.
• 34:19
  You can run stock style suspension classes and all of these no preps and stuff.
• 34:23
  Now they're required that you don't run a full tube chest.
• 34:27
  If you're not running a full tube chassis.
• 34:29
  then it's kind of difficult to have a car that's going to work well
• 34:34
  that doesn't have a four link or that you're not going to turn into a
• 34:37
  tube chassis or at least back half.
• 34:39
  So it's just right out of the box.
• 34:40
  It's a, it's a car that's ready to rock.
• 34:42
  What are the target times you guys are shooting for?
• 34:45
  It's different for every surface.
• 34:48
  Obviously we're going a lot slower than what the cars are capable of going.
• 34:52
  It really depends on the venue, like the airports that we go to, you know, you
• 34:58
  basically have to have A low eight second car, and it will launch like about a 10,
• 35:05
  nine second car, but then it's going to back half like a low eight second car.
• 35:10
  And you'll wind up making a pass.
• 35:12
  That's equivalent to about mid eights in the quarter.
• 35:15
  And then you'll go to a different venue and you can run, you know, low fives,
• 35:19
  maybe even a high four, which would be like seven seconds in the quarter mile.
• 35:23
  It varies from place to place, but I would say if I were to Build a purpose built,
• 35:27
  no prep car going to be on small tires.
• 35:30
  I would shoot for a car that is capable of running low fives, high fours in the
• 35:36
  eighth or high sevens in the quarter.
• 35:39
  So that makes me wonder, like, how do you feel about when these guys
• 35:42
  show up, you know, at the track and they've got a brand new nine 11 twin
• 35:47
  turbo or a McLaren or Ferrari, and the car's putting down eights from the
• 35:51
  factory, how does that make you feel?
• 35:53
  Actually.
• 35:54
  I kind of like
• 35:55
  it.
• 35:55
  And I know 90 percent of everybody I raced with would completely disagree.
• 36:00
  But for example, there's a car coming out that I'm really
• 36:04
  interested in Tesla Roadster.
• 36:06
  I was always kind of a hater of the electric vehicles.
• 36:09
  I was not into it, especially Tesla's.
• 36:12
  I thought they were a joke.
• 36:13
  I couldn't believe that people would even consider thinking of
• 36:15
  those cars as performance vehicles.
• 36:18
  And then my buddy bought one and I took it for a drive one day.
• 36:21
  And I.
• 36:22
  I couldn't believe it.
• 36:23
  It's the technology and those things is incredible.
• 36:25
  And one of the things that kind of sparked my interest in the electric
• 36:28
  vehicles is the traction control, the traction control, because it's
• 36:33
  an electric motor, it's perfect.
• 36:36
  You can drive through a puddle and it feels like it never
• 36:39
  skipped a beat under full power.
• 36:41
  It's just nuts.
• 36:42
  And this new Tesla Roadster coming out is supposed to run high eights
• 36:47
  right off the showroom floor.
• 36:48
  Typically like a Ferrari or anything that's even close to capable of
• 36:53
  running those from the factory.
• 36:55
  They can't do it in a no prep, even with all the fancy traction control and things
• 37:01
  that they have on these new exotic cars, the traction control works very much
• 37:05
  the same as it does in my car, where if it's working, it's slowing you down.
• 37:10
  Yes.
• 37:11
  They can go down these surfaces and yes, they can do it pretty fast.
• 37:15
  But you can pretty much bring any factory vehicle that's made today
• 37:19
  and go to these no preps that we're racing and you're not going to win.
• 37:22
  You might come close, but you're probably not going to win.
• 37:26
  There's always the counter argument to that, which is the guy in the Ferrari
• 37:29
  or the Porsche goes, well, I can do more than just go straight for eight seconds.
• 37:33
  Right?
• 37:34
  So something to be said there too.
• 37:37
  Yes, but I can also buy a house and still have my car for the same
• 37:42
  amount of money that they spent.
• 37:43
  It just depends on what you want to do.
• 37:45
  I can build a road race car that will beat their car and I can have my drag
• 37:49
  race car and beat them in a drag race and have two cars to their one car.
• 37:53
  It just depends on what you like.
• 37:55
  Now, me, if I had the money, obviously I would have an exotic car, so I'm
• 37:59
  just hating because I can't buy one.
• 38:03
  But let me ask you this question.
• 38:05
  So we talked about the electric cars and you know, how great they are
• 38:09
  for what they are out of the box.
• 38:11
  But how do you feel about the archaic technology of the Dodge
• 38:16
  Demon purpose built drag car from the factory paying homage to the purpose
• 38:22
  built drag cars in the 60s and 70s?
• 38:24
  How do you feel about something like that?
• 38:26
  And then one of those showing up at the track with like a boomer that
• 38:30
  bought it, you know, it's their midlife crisis and they got their
• 38:33
  Dodge Demon and they're ready to rock.
• 38:35
  So
• 38:36
  that's the funny thing about these cars that they're building now to the
• 38:39
  average guy, they read about it in the magazines or they see it on the internet.
• 38:44
  They go, wow, like, that's crazy.
• 38:45
  You know, this car straight from the factory, it runs nines or runs eights.
• 38:49
  In reality, first of all, the times that are given on these
• 38:53
  cars are like the absolute best.
• 38:55
  Possible time imaginable.
• 38:57
  I read a little bit about the Dodge Demon when it came out that
• 39:00
  they went like a nine 60 with it.
• 39:01
  And it turned out that they had taken one of the cars and
• 39:04
  completely gutted it and ran it.
• 39:07
  And that's how they were able to obtain the time because normal customers
• 39:10
  couldn't go faster than like 10, three, and they couldn't figure out why.
• 39:14
  And then.
• 39:15
  The truth came out.
• 39:16
  And then, you know, like I said, like the Tesla Roadster that's coming out,
• 39:20
  that's really the only car that I'm worried about in the no prep work.
• 39:24
  If you're going to go to the track and race, you're going to get beat anyway.
• 39:28
  There is no production vehicle out there made that's going to even run.
• 39:32
  With the average Joe at the drag strip now because of the LS motor, obviously
• 39:37
  I'm driving an LS swapped Mustang.
• 39:40
  So I'm not brand loyal.
• 39:41
  I couldn't care less who makes it.
• 39:43
  If Honda made a good motor next year that I could go even one mile an
• 39:48
  hour faster with for 1 less, that would be in my car and I don't care.
• 39:53
  You know, I'm a racer.
• 39:54
  I'm Henry Ford never did anything for me.
• 39:56
  He's not writing me any checks.
• 39:57
  So I couldn't care less about the Ford Mustang or any of that.
• 40:00
  If someone's got something that'll work.
• 40:02
  Then I'm going to use it.
• 40:04
  The Tesla is really the only thing that I'm worried about when it comes out
• 40:08
  because of its advanced traction control.
• 40:11
  And it's going to be a monster.
• 40:12
  If you can run eight 90 with that thing in a wet parking lot, then
• 40:17
  it's going to be competitive.
• 40:19
  I would love to get my hands on one.
• 40:21
  If Elon was like, Hey man, here's a Tesla roadster.
• 40:24
  Do what you will with it.
• 40:25
  Let's see what we can get these things to go.
• 40:27
  I would have a field day with one of those cars, man.
• 40:29
  I would tear that thing apart, make it super fast.
• 40:32
  And I think it would be absolutely unbeatable in the no prep world just
• 40:36
  because of how the traction control works.
• 40:39
  Controlling an electric motor in comparison to electronics, trying to
• 40:44
  control a gasoline motor or diesel motor or whatever, but in terms of
• 40:48
  all these other cars, like the Dodge team, and I thought it was nice.
• 40:50
  It's a nice car, but that's not something I can buy and I can go be
• 40:54
  competitive and really any class.
• 40:56
  If I run it, no prep, it's way too slow.
• 40:58
  If I run it at the track, it's extremely too slow.
• 41:02
  I mean, nines nowadays.
• 41:03
  Is like, you're not even trying, if you're at the drag strip and you're
• 41:07
  running nines, that car had better be nuts because it's not fast.
• 41:11
  It's not to today's standards.
• 41:13
  When you can go out and buy a motor for 500 out of the junkyard, slap
• 41:17
  an eBay turbo kit on it and go out and run eights in the quarter mile.
• 41:21
  These nine second, a hundred thousand dollars cars are not impressing anybody
• 41:25
  anymore.
• 41:26
  So you couldn't see putting a Tesla power plant in your
• 41:29
  Fox body and just saying, Oh,
• 41:32
  I would love to, but there's a couple problems.
• 41:34
  One, Tesla is not allowing anybody to do it.
• 41:37
  So the only way you can do it is you would actually have to buy a car and ruin it,
• 41:41
  which I don't have the money to do that.
• 41:44
  And there is a couple aftermarket companies now that are selling electric
• 41:48
  motors to do something similar.
• 41:50
  That might be the future.
• 41:51
  It's still a little bit pricey now, but especially in the no prep world,
• 41:56
  that may end up being the future.
• 41:59
  And I hate to say that cause I'm huge what they say in your petrol head,
• 42:03
  but, uh, it's the way of the future.
• 42:06
  If they keep going this direction, the electric stuff is going to
• 42:09
  outperform the gasoline stuff by.
• 42:11
  Leaps and bounds.
• 42:12
  If they can just figure out how to get those stupid batteries a little
• 42:15
  bit lighter, they are going to fly.
• 42:18
  We talked about going to the factory or going to a dealership, buying a car off
• 42:22
  the showroom floor, taking a drag racing.
• 42:24
  That's going to be probably your novice, your drag racer, your beginner.
• 42:27
  It doesn't really know what they're doing too much.
• 42:30
  Tell us about some of the safety aspects.
• 42:32
  Especially since cars are going faster now, what are some of the things that
• 42:36
  you, I guess, do, you know, safety wise.
• 42:39
  And I'm assuming that you're following NHRA guidelines and things like that.
• 42:43
  That's one of the other crazy things about this no prep stuff, which is
• 42:46
  why I kind of refer to it as being like Mad Max style racing, there are
• 42:50
  not too many safety guidelines, which is scary, especially for the average
• 42:55
  guy looking to get into racing.
• 42:57
  It usually turns most people away when they show up.
• 43:00
  And they see some of these rust buckets with like barely a cage in it.
• 43:04
  And the guy has his regular seat belt on with a bicycle helmet.
• 43:09
  And guys look at that and they go, Oh my God.
• 43:11
  It's like, it's like
• 43:12
  lemons for drag racing.
• 43:13
  You hear this?
• 43:15
  And, you know, it appeals to the budget racer.
• 43:18
  The problem is 90 percent of these races are being put on by just regular guys.
• 43:24
  You know, they're not sanctioned events.
• 43:26
  They're not NHRA.
• 43:27
  They're not IHRA.
• 43:28
  These are just guys that say, Hey, let's put on a no prep race.
• 43:32
  Let's get 30 plus thousand dollars together.
• 43:35
  If we can get enough guys to run this race, we'll give away 2030.
• 43:39
  We got three races coming up this year for a hundred thousand dollars.
• 43:43
  If you're looking to get into drag racing and you're thinking about
• 43:47
  actually trying to win money in the real world, this is where it's at.
• 43:51
  As a matter of fact, this is your only option.
• 43:53
  Like I said earlier, for example, dig or die, which is considered like the
• 43:57
  super bowl of small tire, no prep.
• 44:00
  And that's, that's one of the.
• 44:01
  Big race.
• 44:02
  That's the one that I wanted to go to so bad.
• 44:04
  We ended up winning that one, which was huge.
• 44:07
  It was a 32, 500 to win that race.
• 44:11
  One of the most incredible moment in my whole drag racing career.
• 44:15
  I paid for my car in one race.
• 44:18
  Think about that.
• 44:18
  What other type of racing in the whole world?
• 44:21
  Think of any type of racing.
• 44:23
  There's nothing that you can do nowadays where you're going to build a car and
• 44:27
  you're going to be able to pay for it in one race as an average Joe that's not
• 44:31
  backed by multi million dollar companies, it just doesn't happen until now.
• 44:36
  So no prep is where it's at, but the safety is lacking in a lot of it.
• 44:41
  And it's going to catch up with us.
• 44:43
  The last race I went to a car flipped over the wall and there was a girl filming
• 44:49
  from the wall, sitting on the wall.
• 44:51
  Don't ask me why I have no idea, but the car flipped over on
• 44:54
  the wall and ended up crushing.
• 44:56
  And luckily for her, she got out of it with just a broken
• 44:59
  arm and a messed up ankle.
• 45:01
  Easily could have killed her.
• 45:03
  I don't know how it didn't kill her.
• 45:04
  From my view, she was dead already and they ended up having to, uh, medevac her
• 45:09
  out, but she lived and she's fine now.
• 45:11
  But the no prep stuff is a little sketchy to say the least.
• 45:14
  And like I said, it's kind of a simulated street race.
• 45:17
  That's kind of what draws these guys in is they want to see,
• 45:22
  you know, these ghetto venues.
• 45:23
  They want to see crap.
• 45:25
  Basically.
• 45:26
  They want to see.
• 45:27
  nothing being done to the track.
• 45:29
  It's horrible surface to race on.
• 45:31
  They don't care if it's safe.
• 45:33
  They just want a place where they can go and actually win.
• 45:36
  That's how far the N.
• 45:38
  H.
• 45:38
  R.
• 45:38
  A.
• 45:39
  And I.
• 45:39
  H.
• 45:39
  R.
• 45:39
  A.
• 45:39
  And all these people have gone away from entry level racing.
• 45:43
  There's no more entry level racing at the track.
• 45:45
  It doesn't exist anymore.
• 45:47
  The only option for budget guys is bracket racing.
• 45:51
  I don't like bracket racing.
• 45:52
  Who wants to build a car to run the same time over and over and over again?
• 45:56
  Not me.
• 45:56
  That's typically when everybody goes and gets hot dogs and, and makes
• 46:00
  phone calls and goes to the bathroom when the bracket raisers come out.
• 46:03
  We don't want to do that.
• 46:04
  You know, we want cars that are overpowering the track, doing
• 46:07
  wheelies, crashing, spinning, flipping over, catching on fire.
• 46:12
  That's what people want to see.
• 46:14
  Small tire, no prep brings it all.
• 46:17
  You know, you'll see a li in terms of safety for my I've been lucky
• 46:20
  enough wh outlaws, I picked up a sp and racequip actually supp everything
• 46:29
  I need to stay I've built NHRA certified, NHRA certified cages in my
• 46:36
  cars, so my personal stuff is safe.
• 46:39
  Obviously, I do that because I want to be safe.
• 46:42
  I don't care what everybody else around me wants to do, but I wear my Hans
• 46:47
  device, I wear my certified helmet, and I got a nice fancy carbon fiber
• 46:51
  helmet from RaceQuip that I love.
• 46:53
  I wear my fire suit, even though I Probably 70, 80 percent of the people
• 46:57
  there don't even own a fire suit.
• 47:00
  I still wear all my safety stuff and I've crashed before.
• 47:02
  So I know how it is.
• 47:03
  I don't take those types of chance.
• 47:05
  I got little girls.
• 47:06
  So if you got kids, it just makes sense.
• 47:09
  If you want to walk away from some of these crashes, it's best to do that.
• 47:12
  Uh, for example, a matter of fact, if you watch the show, one of the two
• 47:16
  episodes of street outlaws that I raced on season three of Memphis street outlaws.
• 47:22
  Episode six.
• 47:24
  So we're racing at a airport in West Virginia, super sketchy.
• 47:28
  One guy crashes in a car called the hillbilly hustler.
• 47:32
  So you can probably imagine what kind of safety equipment that guy had on board.
• 47:37
  But when this thing started rolling, parts just started flying off the car.
• 47:41
  Like they were never even bolted down.
• 47:42
  Like the doors.
• 47:44
  We're literally just door skins look like they were glued onto the car.
• 47:48
  And the guy flipped over and he ended up smashing his arm so bad
• 47:52
  that he had to get it amputated.
• 47:53
  Another guy crashed.
• 47:55
  He flipped just as bad flipped over end over end crashed into the
• 48:00
  camera equipment and everything.
• 48:02
  And because he had a certified cage and a nice safe car, he got up and walked
• 48:07
  right away, like nothing happened.
• 48:08
  So, I mean, that's kind of the difference.
• 48:10
  I understand not having the money, dude, I I've been there.
• 48:14
  You get by on what you can just to do it.
• 48:16
  And it's you that's taking the risk.
• 48:18
  So it's like, you know, you decide how important this racing stuff is to you.
• 48:23
  Is it worth your life?
• 48:24
  Is it worth a broken arm or are you going to just wait and save up a couple extra
• 48:29
  dollars to make sure that you're safe?
• 48:32
  And then go down there.
• 48:33
  And if something, God forbid does happen, you just get right up and walk away.
• 48:37
  I would say 99 percent of all the crashes that happen in certified
• 48:41
  cars, guys just walk away, they don't even go to the hospital.
• 48:45
  I mean, they're hitting walls at 200 miles an hour, flipping over
• 48:48
  and catching on fire, and they kick the door open and they walk away.
• 48:52
  Not everybody, but almost everyone, but the no prep is a little bit different.
• 48:56
  And that's why I think it draws so many people.
• 48:58
  There is an element of danger to it.
• 49:00
  I do think that it's going to change slowly, but surely with every race and
• 49:05
  with every accident, there's going to be mandates until it gets to a point where
• 49:09
  it's going to be almost like track racing.
• 49:11
  So we talked a lot about your time on street outlaws, but that's not where
• 49:14
  you got your, your television debut.
• 49:16
  You were on pinks.
• 49:17
  Oh, yeah.
• 49:19
  On ESPN, the Ocho.
• 49:21
  Oh,
• 49:21
  yeah.
• 49:23
  Matter of fact, I was on two episodes, but one of the episodes I was just
• 49:27
  kind of hanging out with a buddy.
• 49:28
  And then, um, the other episode was Justin Birchman from JPC versus a guy named
• 49:33
  Brian Leaf, a guy named Nate Pritchett.
• 49:35
  He was one of the co hosts for the show.
• 49:38
  And he's a personal friend of mine, drag racing buddy.
• 49:40
  And he was like, man, you should put your car on pinks.
• 49:43
  And that was the OG Black Nasty.
• 49:45
  And you know how I felt about that car.
• 49:46
  That was my baby.
• 49:47
  Yeah.
• 49:48
  There was
• 49:48
  no way that I was going to lose that car.
• 49:51
  I got the advantage of knowing who I was supposed to race before I raced them.
• 49:55
  So I agreed.
• 49:56
  I signed the contract.
• 49:57
  I don't know.
• 49:58
  What it was like after my episode, it was legit.
• 50:01
  You had to sign the title to your car over.
• 50:04
  If you lose, that guy gets your car.
• 50:07
  Oh
• 50:07
  my god.
• 50:08
  But behind the scenes, which kind of makes the show kind of suck, outside of the fact
• 50:13
  that the show actually sucks, because, because the way that it was set up, the
• 50:19
  host not knowing anything about drag racing, Or anything about sandbagging.
• 50:24
  It just made the whole entire show pointless.
• 50:27
  You would just go out, purposely lose first round, so that you could get
• 50:32
  something in the next negotiation, and sandbag the entire time, just pretend
• 50:38
  that your car is slow, and then when it comes down to the last round or two,
• 50:42
  Then you take off and you beat them.
• 50:43
  The first season that aired, nobody was really catching on.
• 50:46
  I don't know how.
• 50:47
  I mean, that's like street racing 101.
• 50:50
  So I don't know why it took so long for everybody else to catch on.
• 50:53
  But I mean, we knew about it right away.
• 50:55
  So we went out and lost the first two rounds like that on purpose.
• 50:59
  And then just annihilated them for the rest of the rounds.
• 51:02
  It's like easy money every time.
• 51:04
  So we did that.
• 51:06
  I did two commercials.
• 51:07
  I did one commercial for a place called altered atmosphere that it worked for a
• 51:11
  time, which was actually an import shop.
• 51:13
  And, uh, I kind of opened up my own domestic wing and
• 51:18
  then you may have seen it.
• 51:18
  I did a commercial for GM at one point, which was weird.
• 51:22
  I was working for the dealership at the time and some guy asked me if
• 51:26
  I wanted to be in a commercial and I thought it was going to be some
• 51:29
  little cable access thing and I was going to be like in the background
• 51:33
  somewhere and nobody would ever see it.
• 51:35
  Turns out it was nationally televised.
• 51:37
  They showed that commercial on just about every channel, every 15 20 minutes.
• 51:41
  I forgot all about that.
• 51:43
  Yeah, I
• 51:44
  remember it now.
• 51:44
  I forgot all about that.
• 51:45
  Oh my god.
• 51:46
  When they went to go film, they're like, oh yeah, we got a paid
• 51:49
  actor, so don't worry about it.
• 51:51
  And you know, here's your script.
• 51:52
  I was like script, like what, I got to say something?
• 51:55
  And the paid actor turned out to be a guy that just literally drove by in a car.
• 52:02
  That was the paid actor.
• 52:03
  Meanwhile, they're giving me 850 to do the whole entire commercial by myself.
• 52:09
  And I had no clue until two tractor trailers pull up with a big GM logo on
• 52:14
  the side and like 50 guys with camera equipment come out and I'm like, Oh
• 52:18
  my God, what did I get myself into?
• 52:20
  But it was a cool experience.
• 52:22
  You know, I don't, I don't know why I keep ending up on TV.
• 52:25
  Hopefully, Not on the news or anything for America's Most Wanted
• 52:29
  or anything like that in the future.
• 52:30
  But that was the first thing was Pinks and the commercials.
• 52:35
  And then we got an offer to go to Memphis.
• 52:38
  A guy named Dwayne Morris said that he had heard my name being tossed
• 52:42
  around a lot because they were looking for legit street racers.
• 52:45
  They weren't looking for Some guy that races at the track and wants to
• 52:50
  dabble in the street racing world and not get in trouble, they wanted to
• 52:54
  find guys who legit had street raced in their life, knew what they were
• 52:58
  doing, at least to a point and go out there and try and run with these guys.
• 53:02
  At the time and still is probably one of my favorite shows on
• 53:05
  television because there's not that many drag racing shows on TV.
• 53:09
  So it appealed to me right away.
• 53:11
  I went out there not knowing how it was going to be.
• 53:14
  And there is a little bit of uh, I don't want to say trickery,
• 53:17
  but let's just put it this way.
• 53:20
  Hollywood magic.
• 53:21
  Well, let's just say we're on their home turf, so they have home field
• 53:26
  advantage and they have home field advantage in more ways than one.
• 53:29
  For example, we're not supposed to test on the road that we're going to be racing
• 53:34
  on and those guys had been racing on that road for at least a year or two.
• 53:39
  So who knows how many passes these guys had on that road.
• 53:43
  And then we've got to come from 16 hours away.
• 53:47
  And drop our cars out of the back of a trailer, go down a road.
• 53:50
  We've never been on before in our lives and be expected
• 53:53
  to beat these professionals because that's what they are.
• 53:56
  I mean, they're basically professional street racers.
• 53:59
  What we ended up doing is we ended up going down almost a week early.
• 54:03
  We found out from previous guys on the show, what road that they raced on.
• 54:08
  And we went out there and we did our own testing in the
• 54:10
  middle of the night illegally.
• 54:12
  That's part of the reason why, if you're going to do this stuff, Don't
• 54:15
  pretend to be a street racer, either be one and do it, or don't do it at all.
• 54:21
  Cause you're going to get yourself embarrassed.
• 54:22
  And it happens a lot.
• 54:24
  Luckily for me, with my experience, I did well on the show.
• 54:27
  There was a little bit of trickery played on me in terms of tire
• 54:31
  size, which really screwed me up.
• 54:33
  I sent emails out to the production company and asked them about what
• 54:37
  size tire I was allowed to run.
• 54:39
  They don't know much about drag racing.
• 54:41
  They're just putting on a TV show.
• 54:43
  So they told me a certain tire size.
• 54:45
  I ended up getting that tire size.
• 54:47
  And when we showed up, we found out everybody else
• 54:49
  was running on bigger tires.
• 54:50
  I didn't want to have to deal with the disadvantage.
• 54:52
  We ended up going to the shop of one of the guys who's on the show named
• 54:57
  Dennis Bailey, and we went to his shop and bought a new set of tires
• 55:00
  and why everybody else was having a good old time hanging out with JJ, the
• 55:03
  boss and all the guys from the show.
• 55:06
  Me and my dad and one of my guys were in a parking lot somewhere in Memphis.
• 55:10
  We've never been before changing tires on the back of my car.
• 55:14
  It ended up messing with my traction control settings.
• 55:17
  I did lose that race, but I was out on them by two cars
• 55:21
  within the first 200 feet.
• 55:22
  So it was going to be an easy win.
• 55:24
  We had them covered by long shot.
• 55:27
  Just a stupid mistake on my part.
• 55:29
  But luckily for me, I got some of my redemption.
• 55:31
  They came to West Virginia to run on the airport and we shot the season finale.
• 55:37
  We ended up running, I forgot what it was.
• 55:39
  I want to say it was five rounds and we went to the finals with
• 55:42
  Dennis Bailey, believe it or not, and did really well on that show.
• 55:46
  That was episode seven of season three.
• 55:48
  So we did episode six, and then we did episode seven right after that,
• 55:52
  which ended up being the season finale.
• 55:54
  That was a hell of an experience, man.
• 55:55
  That was really neat, you know, with the show having been on air for, I forgot
• 56:00
  what it was, eight, nine, ten years, and me wanting to be on the show, and you and
• 56:05
  I have a mutual friend, Dasan Holloway.
• 56:08
  Yeah.
• 56:09
  Rest in peace.
• 56:10
  We wanted to be on the show and he would be at my shop working
• 56:14
  on his car all day, every day for months and months and months.
• 56:18
  Eventually he went to go work for revolution and he built a bad ass
• 56:22
  car that he would have definitely been competitive down there.
• 56:26
  And him and I, our goal was to make it on the show one way or another.
• 56:31
  We were hell bent on making it on the show.
• 56:33
  You know, as we both know, he ended up.
• 56:35
  Taking his own life.
• 56:37
  The really sad thing about that was not even four, maybe five months after
• 56:43
  that is when I was offered to be on the show, he would have been on the show.
• 56:47
  If he would have held out a little bit longer, he would have
• 56:50
  been right on there with me.
• 56:51
  But I ended up taking a picture.
• 56:53
  Of them down there with me.
• 56:54
  And I had it in my dashboard when I was down there racing those guys.
• 56:58
  So he was there with me in spirit.
• 57:00
  He came with me to the airport race.
• 57:02
  So, you know, he made it in one way or another.
• 57:05
  I'm glad that we did well.
• 57:07
  I'm glad that we went on the show.
• 57:08
  So regardless of the outcome, you know, we made a little bit of money on it.
• 57:12
  We picked up a couple of sponsors from it and did really well on the show.
• 57:16
  So I can't complain.
• 57:17
  I loved it.
• 57:18
  I'd do it again.
• 57:19
  Matter of fact, we got offered to go back on the show again.
• 57:22
  To their new spinoff called the, uh, America's Fastest,
• 57:25
  I think is what it's called.
• 57:26
  And that was in between my transition from the truck to my current car.
• 57:31
  So I didn't have a car at the time, so I had to bow out.
• 57:34
  But the truck, the guy that I sold it to, Eric Carey, matter of fact,
• 57:38
  you know him as Sledgehammer.
• 57:40
  He ended up buying the truck from me and he took it to Las
• 57:44
  Vegas to race on the show.
• 57:46
  So two of my vehicles were on the show, you know, a lot of us
• 57:50
  in at least this community come from a different world, right?
• 57:53
  Where we're all motor sports brethren at the end of the day, but there's
• 57:56
  different disciplines within this.
• 57:58
  So drag racing is one of them.
• 57:59
  They got the rally guys and the autocrossers.
• 58:01
  And I happen to come through autocross and cart racing into road racing.
• 58:05
  Now, now road racing, not to be confused with street racing, road
• 58:09
  racing being circuit racing, where we make the right and the left turns,
• 58:12
  you know, and sometimes go straight.
• 58:14
  But.
• 58:15
  You know, for us, there's a lot of schooling involved.
• 58:19
  There's a lot of just coming up through the ranks and developing
• 58:22
  your skills and honing yourself as a driver and going to different venues.
• 58:26
  Right.
• 58:26
  And in the drag racing world, it seems like, yes, there's different classes of
• 58:30
  drag racing, but to your point, there's the no prep, you know, there's the street
• 58:33
  racing and then there's the track racing.
• 58:35
  So is there the same kind of education system in drag racing, or is it
• 58:39
  really just the school of hard knocks?
• 58:41
  Mostly just the school of hard knocks.
• 58:43
  Now the faster you go, chassis has to be certified.
• 58:47
  You have to get a license.
• 58:48
  I've had a license.
• 58:50
  You got to make your track passes.
• 58:51
  They got to know that you can handle the car at whatever speed
• 58:54
  that you're going to be going.
• 58:55
  But that's the track stuff.
• 58:56
  Once you get into the snow prep world, it's kind of just a free for all.
• 59:00
  You know, you could have never made a pass in your life.
• 59:03
  And just jump in a car.
• 59:04
  You don't even have to have an actual driver's license and they're
• 59:07
  going to let you go down again.
• 59:09
  Like I said, this is still the early stages of no prep.
• 59:12
  So no doubt in my mind, the safety stuff is going to come on.
• 59:17
  Certainly it's probably going to come because it's going to be forced
• 59:19
  on everybody, no skin off my back.
• 59:22
  I already got everything I need.
• 59:23
  If, if they were to come and check my car out or check my safety equipment.
• 59:27
  I'm legit, you know, for as fast as I'm going, I'm legit, so I
• 59:31
  don't need to worry about it.
• 59:32
  The rest of the world is still playing catch up and a lot of
• 59:35
  it just has to do with money.
• 59:36
  So I think you're in a rare position where you've been doing this for a long time.
• 59:42
  And in motorsport, I often see that a lot of people either are
• 59:46
  lifers like yourself, and you're in the minority in that respect.
• 59:50
  Or they're like these, you know, bluebirds, they fly in for a couple
• 59:54
  of years and then they disappear.
• 59:55
  And then all of a sudden they're doing macrame and playing
• 59:57
  tennis and God knows what else.
• 59:59
  What's the life expectancy.
• 1:00:01
  And I don't mean that in a morbid sort of way.
• 1:00:03
  What's the seasonal expectancy of a drag racer?
• 1:00:06
  Is it about three to four years, just like it is for us in the road racing world?
• 1:00:10
  Nope.
• 1:00:10
  That's a big part of why I got into it, believe it or
• 1:00:12
  not.
• 1:00:13
  My original passion was road racing.
• 1:00:16
  I desperately wanted to be.
• 1:00:19
  You know, the next Mario Andretti, I think most kids do want to be that way.
• 1:00:23
  You know, I grew up loving Ferraris and Lamborghinis like every team.
• 1:00:26
  That was my thing.
• 1:00:27
  I never really cared too much for the drag racing thing until my dad
• 1:00:30
  actually brought me to drag strip.
• 1:00:32
  And I did, I did a little bit of road racing myself, motorcycles, sport bikes.
• 1:00:36
  So I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 1:00:38
  One of the reasons why I ended up gravitating toward.
• 1:00:42
  Drag racing is because of the life expectancy, if you will, of a drag racer.
• 1:00:48
  I got buddies who are 70 some years old that are still
• 1:00:52
  drag racing really fast cars.
• 1:00:54
  Cars fast enough that, let's put it this way, if you're not used to going
• 1:00:57
  that fast, I don't care who you are.
• 1:01:00
  You're not going to jump in that old man's car and run what that guy runs.
• 1:01:04
  It will scare you to death.
• 1:01:06
  You know, these guys are going over 200 miles an hour in the
• 1:01:08
  eighth mile, not the quarter mile.
• 1:01:10
  These cars are literally capable of taking off like airplanes
• 1:01:14
  mid track, and it happens.
• 1:01:16
  You can crash.
• 1:01:17
  And if you can get your nerve back, you can keep on doing it because most of
• 1:01:21
  the time, you're not going to get hurt.
• 1:01:22
  Drag racing is weird like that.
• 1:01:24
  Every once in a while, somebody dies.
• 1:01:26
  And it kind of freaks everybody out because it's such a rare thing.
• 1:01:29
  But it does happen and you have to understand that it can and it will happen.
• 1:01:32
  One of the more famous guys in drag racing these days, Lyle Barnett,
• 1:01:35
  he's got a whole video on safety.
• 1:01:38
  He was in a real bad car fire going down the track.
• 1:01:40
  It burned through a carbon fiber.
• 1:01:43
  Firewall
• 1:01:44
  and
• 1:01:45
  just burn the guy from his toes to the eyebrows.
• 1:01:48
  And lucky for him, he had a good fire suit on.
• 1:01:51
  He didn't wear the sock over his head.
• 1:01:53
  So that burnt the area inside the helmet, the face shield was up.
• 1:01:57
  So it got his eyes that burn his, his beard off and got his toes real bad.
• 1:02:03
  Either way, the guy got it pretty bad and he's a huge advocate
• 1:02:06
  for safety equipment now.
• 1:02:07
  And he'll tell you a story that.
• 1:02:09
  When he's done telling it, you're not going to just jump in a
• 1:02:12
  car and be an idiot after that.
• 1:02:13
  And if you are, then, then you're just an idiot, plain and simple.
• 1:02:17
  And if you're smart about how you race, especially in no crap.
• 1:02:21
  There's hero drivers and then there's smart drivers.
• 1:02:24
  A hero driver will stay on the gas way longer than they're supposed to
• 1:02:29
  in hopes that they still win the race.
• 1:02:31
  And then everybody goes, Oh, that was so amazing.
• 1:02:34
  You're such a good driver.
• 1:02:36
  You know, you were almost certainly going to flip the car over, but
• 1:02:39
  somehow you managed to pull it off.
• 1:02:41
  And that's what a lot of these guys shoot for.
• 1:02:43
  But I don't, I'm not a hero driver.
• 1:02:46
  I've crashed a car before.
• 1:02:48
  Yes, I've made some sketchy passes.
• 1:02:50
  No doubt about it.
• 1:02:51
  You know, there's probably people that would argue with me.
• 1:02:53
  Oh, bullshit, Bobby.
• 1:02:54
  We've seen you go through the finish line sideways.
• 1:02:57
  Yeah, that's because something happened that I didn't expect, but bet your ass.
• 1:03:02
  I was already out of the gas long before that happened.
• 1:03:06
  And that's probably why I went through sideways and not upside down.
• 1:03:10
  Whereas other guys, you know, you let off just, I mean, a 10th of a second too
• 1:03:14
  late and it's over for you, cars crashed, you're done, you're out, whatever much
• 1:03:19
  money it costs you to put in that car.
• 1:03:21
  And you're not going to be racing again in terms of how long
• 1:03:23
  you can keep doing this stuff.
• 1:03:25
  A lot of it depends on how smart you are.
• 1:03:27
  And I'm, you know, it's the same way in the road race world.
• 1:03:29
  If you take it easy, you're going to go a lot longer and you might
• 1:03:32
  even have a little bit more fun.
• 1:03:34
  But if you're competitive like me, I would take nothing less than a GT3 cup car.
• 1:03:38
  If I'm going to do road racing, I can't, I can't go slow.
• 1:03:42
  It's gotta be fast.
• 1:03:43
  It's gotta be dangerous.
• 1:03:44
  It's gotta be, you know, top level, whatever it is I'm doing.
• 1:03:48
  So you don't
• 1:03:48
  want a GTI?
• 1:03:49
  Yeah,
• 1:03:50
  I mean, it depends.
• 1:03:52
  Is it LS swapped and, uh, you know, got some super wide tires, all that?
• 1:03:56
  Now looking back over all the years that you spent in the sport, what's some advice
• 1:04:00
  you would give somebody starting out?
• 1:04:02
  The
• 1:04:02
  biggest one, this is because of my many years of building cars for a living.
• 1:04:08
  Know what you're going to do with the car before you even start, before you
• 1:04:13
  even think about getting into racing, be certain of what you want to do.
• 1:04:19
  Because even myself personally, I've run into situations where I'll
• 1:04:24
  build a car or I'll make a change based on what I think I want to do.
• 1:04:29
  And then I ended up not doing that.
• 1:04:31
  And then basically the car is no good to me anymore.
• 1:04:34
  For example, the S10, that was one of my favorite cars.
• 1:04:38
  It was my fastest thing that I ever owned.
• 1:04:41
  It was incredibly fast.
• 1:04:42
  It was awesome.
• 1:04:43
  It was the highest quality, highest caliber vehicle I've ever owned.
• 1:04:47
  But it ended up being worthless to me because I couldn't race in
• 1:04:52
  small tire class with it anymore.
• 1:04:54
  So that pretty much killed that.
• 1:04:56
  And then I found that having your dream car is not all it's cracked up to be.
• 1:05:00
  If you can't afford to race the car that you built.
• 1:05:03
  So even if you can afford to build a certain car.
• 1:05:07
  Take into account all the maintenance that's going to be required,
• 1:05:11
  which I'm sure in the road race world is probably top of the list.
• 1:05:15
  Don't get into a class that you can't even afford to replace the
• 1:05:19
  tires and brakes every time you go out, you're going to cause yourself
• 1:05:22
  more problems than anything.
• 1:05:23
  And then even though you're going fast.
• 1:05:26
  It's not fun at that point, when you're spending every dime you have
• 1:05:30
  when you're homeless, just to be able to keep doing what you love to do.
• 1:05:34
  It's not fun anymore, you know, then it loses all the fun.
• 1:05:38
  One example I like to give my customers is you ever drive go karts?
• 1:05:42
  You ever go to, you know, Ocean City or, or anywhere really and ride
• 1:05:45
  around on some go karts and maybe bash into each other a little bit.
• 1:05:49
  It's fun, right?
• 1:05:50
  I mean, it's hard to not have a good time.
• 1:05:52
  When you're doing something so cheap with so little consequences.
• 1:05:57
  So, I mean, you can crash those things.
• 1:05:59
  You're probably not even gonna get hurt real bad and you're
• 1:06:03
  out there doing it for dollars.
• 1:06:04
  When you start upgrading and go faster and faster and faster,
• 1:06:08
  you start to outrun your wallet.
• 1:06:10
  And as soon as you start out running your wallet, this stuff sucks.
• 1:06:14
  It becomes depressing.
• 1:06:16
  It goes from fun to miserable, almost immediately.
• 1:06:19
  You know, I got rid of the truck.
• 1:06:21
  And went through a little state of depression for a while between my
• 1:06:25
  back being hurt, money situation and COVID hit at the exact same time.
• 1:06:30
  So it was like a snowball effect, but yeah, if I could give anybody advice.
• 1:06:35
  Know exactly what you want to do before you do it.
• 1:06:37
  Cause it's going to save you a ton of time and money and aggravation
• 1:06:42
  and get with somebody that's done it, whatever it is that you want to
• 1:06:46
  do, go find somebody who's doing it.
• 1:06:49
  And if you want to be competitive, don't talk to somebody at
• 1:06:52
  the bottom of the barrel.
• 1:06:53
  Go talk to one of the top tier guys that are doing it.
• 1:06:57
  Ask them what it takes, ask them how much money it's going to cost and see if
• 1:07:01
  it's something that's feasible for you.
• 1:07:04
  Don't worry about what everybody else is doing.
• 1:07:06
  You go and try and outrun these rich guys.
• 1:07:07
  Like I did for years, for years and years, all I wanted to do
• 1:07:11
  was outrun these rich guys.
• 1:07:12
  Cause I got a sense of pride of taking something that, you know,
• 1:07:16
  costs half what their car does.
• 1:07:17
  And, and I, you know, they live, in big fancy houses and they come
• 1:07:22
  with double stacker trailers that cost more than the place I live.
• 1:07:26
  And if I beat those guys, it was just incredible to me.
• 1:07:30
  But when you keep trying to keep up or you don't, as they say, stay in
• 1:07:35
  your lane, it ruins, eventually it's going to ruin the experience for you.
• 1:07:40
  And that's where a lot of these guys get out of it.
• 1:07:43
  You know, in road racing, drag racing, you start racing over your
• 1:07:46
  head, you get a little bit too competitive, and then it just sucks.
• 1:07:49
  And then you get out of it.
• 1:07:50
  And I see it all the time.
• 1:07:52
  I, oh, you know, this sucks.
• 1:07:54
  And it's like, no, this doesn't suck.
• 1:07:56
  You made it suck.
• 1:07:57
  You know, you went into something that you weren't ready for.
• 1:07:59
  You're in over your head.
• 1:08:00
  And of course it sucks.
• 1:08:02
  You know, you're trying to compete on a level you should never be in.
• 1:08:04
  And that was one of the mistakes I made.
• 1:08:06
  So that would be the best advice I could give to get into it.
• 1:08:10
  That's actually really sound advice.
• 1:08:12
  And I think it's applicable to multiple disciplines.
• 1:08:14
  So thank you for that.
• 1:08:15
  Thinking
• 1:08:17
  about getting it.
• 1:08:18
  So what is the future of the black nasty?
• 1:08:20
  We talked about electric motors and electric, the future of drag racing
• 1:08:24
  as a whole, but what's the future of the black nasty old, I'll tell you
• 1:08:29
  what.
• 1:08:29
  I know I've been talking about this Tesla stuff a lot lately.
• 1:08:32
  And if I stay in no prep, I would highly consider doing an electric based, no
• 1:08:39
  prep car, and I think it would end up getting outlawed pretty fast if, and
• 1:08:46
  when that were to happen, I would start my own drag race league with electric
• 1:08:51
  motors, which there is one already.
• 1:08:53
  It's just small.
• 1:08:54
  It's not very popular.
• 1:08:55
  There's not a lot of guys involved.
• 1:08:57
  I do think that the electric based vehicle is something that I want to dabble in.
• 1:09:03
  I just don't have the money for it right now.
• 1:09:05
  I do think that I could do big things with it.
• 1:09:08
  There's already controllers for this stuff after market controllers.
• 1:09:11
  I mean, for traction control, there's huge things that I could do with that stuff.
• 1:09:16
  Obviously when this roadster deal comes out, I wouldn't be able to
• 1:09:20
  just buy it and go to a race and win.
• 1:09:22
  It's not going to happen, but I do believe that if I were given one, Elon, if you're
• 1:09:26
  listening, he's our number one listener.
• 1:09:29
  He's our, our biggest Patreon.
• 1:09:32
  I hope so, man.
• 1:09:33
  Please give me one of those roadsters.
• 1:09:36
  I will make that car about the most popular car on the
• 1:09:39
  planet within about six months.
• 1:09:41
  I promise you.
• 1:09:42
  See, I'd rather see you do it
• 1:09:44
  with a Mach E honestly.
• 1:09:47
  Hey, I mean, Ford built that crazy equivalent to 1400
• 1:09:51
  horsepower version of that thing.
• 1:09:52
  So it's doable, right?
• 1:09:54
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:09:55
  I I'd rather see Bobby in a Chevy Bolt.
• 1:10:01
  Hey man, I'll make something happen.
• 1:10:02
  I promise you one way or another, figure out how to make it fast.
• 1:10:06
  We talked about some of the sponsors and stuff that you're getting equipment from.
• 1:10:09
  Do you have anybody that you want to kind of plug or thank?
• 1:10:12
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:10:13
  I got a guy who's a, is more a friend than a sponsor.
• 1:10:16
  Actually two of them, Chewy over Chewy's performance in Mount Airy.
• 1:10:20
  He hooks me up with a lot of stuff.
• 1:10:22
  He's been sponsoring me now for a long time.
• 1:10:24
  So he's one of the original guys that believed in me, sponsored me all the
• 1:10:28
  way back into the 2012 era when I won world cup finals for the first time.
• 1:10:33
  And then a mutual friend of ours, Conrad Aschenbach.
• 1:10:36
  Sponsors me through front Royal Ford.
• 1:10:39
  So he hooks me up and I also have a guy, David Gates, who does all
• 1:10:43
  my transmission work, literally the only thing I don't do in my vehicles
• 1:10:48
  is build my own transmissions.
• 1:10:49
  And that's because this guy, David is on top of my shit.
• 1:10:54
  You know, if I break something, he comes, he grabs it.
• 1:10:56
  He'll literally pick it up from my shop, rebuild the whole thing
• 1:10:59
  and drop it back off the next day.
• 1:11:00
  If I break at the track, he will come to the track.
• 1:11:04
  And fix my shit there at the track so I can make next round.
• 1:11:07
  If it's possible, I got some pretty amazing people.
• 1:11:11
  That had my back and hopefully I can pick up a few more this season and
• 1:11:14
  next season, but the no prep thing is kind of hard sponsorship wise.
• 1:11:19
  Cause you know, it's not a sanction event, but it's kind of, like I said,
• 1:11:22
  Mad Max style, it borders on illegal.
• 1:11:26
  If you didn't know better, if you showed up at the track and saw what
• 1:11:29
  was going on, you would think some of this stuff is illegal, but it's not.
• 1:11:32
  So, you know, the sponsorships in that world is a little bit more difficult,
• 1:11:36
  but since we won literally the biggest.
• 1:11:40
  Small tire, no prep race ever put on it, dig or die.
• 1:11:43
  It's opened up a lot of doors for me.
• 1:11:45
  Uh, you know, honestly, I would have never had the opportunity if it wasn't
• 1:11:50
  for that race and winning that race.
• 1:11:52
  Congrats to you.
• 1:11:54
  I got the black nasty page on Facebook and it's the underscore black underscore
• 1:12:00
  nasty on Instagram that West Virginia airport race that's coming up.
• 1:12:04
  I want to say it's, um, May 15th, if I remember correct.
• 1:12:08
  And that one's going to be for a hundred thousand dollars.
• 1:12:10
  And they're bringing a famous starting line guy.
• 1:12:13
  They call him limpy.
• 1:12:14
  He's been on street outlaws numerous times for the cash days.
• 1:12:18
  So they're bringing him out to be the flagger.
• 1:12:20
  And that race is going to be for a hundred thousand dollars
• 1:12:23
  at the West Virginia airport.
• 1:12:24
  Where is that in West Virginia?
• 1:12:25
  How far is it from summit point?
• 1:12:27
  Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
• 1:12:28
  So it's close.
• 1:12:29
  It's right over the border
• 1:12:30
  of.
• 1:12:31
  Lake Hagerstown to West Virginia area.
• 1:12:34
  Okay.
• 1:12:34
  Okay.
• 1:12:34
  Yeah.
• 1:12:35
  Yeah.
• 1:12:35
  That's not far at all.
• 1:12:36
  Just past Charlestown, I guess.
• 1:12:38
  Oh yeah.
• 1:12:38
  So not far from Summit Point.
• 1:12:39
  Yeah.
• 1:12:40
  Great.
• 1:12:40
  Yeah.
• 1:12:41
  It's actually real close.
• 1:12:43
  Very
• 1:12:43
  cool.
• 1:12:43
  Yeah.
• 1:12:43
  We'll definitely have to come check that out.
• 1:12:45
  That one will be like one of the more, I hesitate to say well put
• 1:12:49
  together, but it'll be organized.
• 1:12:51
  It'll have some level of safety.
• 1:12:53
  So you won't see too much crazy, crazy, like just junk piles going down the track.
• 1:12:59
  So it'll probably be something right up y'all's alley for in terms of
• 1:13:03
  seeing a, a really legit first note.
• 1:13:07
  It'll give you a really good idea of what it's all about.
• 1:13:09
  Well, Bobby, it's been a pleasure talking with you today and delving into
• 1:13:12
  the world of drag racing and learning more about the black nasty and no prep
• 1:13:16
  NHRA, and just all the various different aspects of drag racing and street racing.
• 1:13:21
  You've done some exciting things over the last 20 years, personally.
• 1:13:24
  Can't wait to see what's next.
• 1:13:26
  I wanted to wish you good luck this season and, uh, You know, moving forward
• 1:13:29
  and, uh, just thank you for coming on.
• 1:13:31
  Yeah, thank you guys.
• 1:13:32
  I really appreciate it.
• 1:13:33
  It's been fun talking to you guys.
• 1:13:35
  Absolutely.
• 1:13:40
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:13:43
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:13:46
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• 1:13:46
  org.
• 1:13:47
  You can also find us on Instagram at GrandTouringMotorsports.
• 1:13:51
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call
• 1:13:55
  or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:14:02
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• 1:14:03
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• 1:14:05
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:14:07
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• 1:14:11
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