January 7, 2026 • 55 mins
On this episode of Throttle Therapy, Katherine Legge is joined by VP of Global Motorsports Competition, Eric Warren. They discuss how he transitioned from aerospace engineering to the racing industry, balancing technical expertise with leadership, and the importance of adaptability.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Throttle Therapy with Katherine Legg is an iHeart women's sports
production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You
can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Hello, and welcome to
(00:24):
this week's episode of Throttle Therapy with Me Catherine Legg.
And this week we have a very special guest who
has had such an interesting path. He's gone from aerospace
engineering to overseeing GM's entire motorsport competition program and I
am beyond excited to welcome Eric Warren to the podcast
(00:44):
this week. Eric, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Glad to join Katin.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I know you're so busy, so I appreciate you spending
time speaking to me when you have so many other things,
especially with the addition now of the F one program.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I know that the work can never start.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And I don't know how you do it, honestly, because
you must survive very well with sleep deprivation.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It's something that you definitely learned to deal with, and
you know, you're always trying to work on different practices.
And I was just literally going through my race schedule
again yet today and I was like, man, it's gonna
be tough. It's coming here, but we'll see how it goes.
You kind of have to be flexible, depend upon how
each race series goes and try to help where you
can and figure out what the problems are. So you
never never quite works out how you think it's going
(01:29):
through before the season starts in good ways and bad ways.
So that's just part of being able to be adaptive.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, you good at like keeping all the balls in
the air, Like you've got the nast Cup part and
the Indycap part and all the things, like you're good
at keeping all of that up and going.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, I guess it's good as somebody else's judgment, I'm
trying to be good. So you know, it's it's each
series you kind of need to learn, like what is it?
What are they call it? The central elements, you know,
the relationship with the team and how the team works,
the team owner, what they're trying to get out of it,
what we're trying to get out of it from GM
(02:06):
and where we're supporting. And it's all about winning, and
so you try to pay attention to you know, how
is it going and where to put resources or where
to lean in and if I need to excel the
pitstand and make a call during the race, I'll go
that far if I need to, And most time I
try to not you know, try to you know, you're
(02:27):
developing people at the same time. It's always a little
bit like just dynamic and trying to just stay focused
on what important things are when there's a lot of
noise around and everybody has certain agendas and interest in things,
and so that's what's challenging, is trying to stay focused
on what's important. That's what's it take to win.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Actually, it's like having that thirty thousand foot view of
like taking away all the noise and have that calm
and like view through everything.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Do you do well with not much leap?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Then?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Do you are? You? You're good on the go all
the time.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I used to be when I was younger, I could
sleep on a few hours. And you know, I'm a
fairly adrenaline based person, so I can work non stop
pretty much. I'm fairly high. As people know, caffeine consumer
and my body what do you can't processes caffeine quite well.
(03:23):
So you know, there's point time when I we'll feel
my physical limit and kind of know like okay, like
no matter what, it's not necessarily physical, it's a mental thing.
I'll start getting just a little bit too snappy and
like all right, time for me to take a break.
So it's hard to do, and there's not a lot
of them, you know, phytically racing all the time and
(03:47):
board very easily seen. When I want to take a
break an hour later, I'm like, okay, that was good enough,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Let's give back in it, so I can't switch up.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, I'm the same but with food, like if I
don't eat, I get super grumpy, the same kind of thing. Anyway,
I want to I want to start like way back
at the beginning. And I'm not saying way back like
you're super old, because you're not at all. But I
want to go back to like Eric when he was
a teenager, like a young teenager, and you were in
school and you were like, I don't know what do
(04:16):
I want to be when I grow up?
Speaker 3 (04:18):
What? What did where did you see your life going?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
And how did the people around you and your path
kind of meander into what it is now?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Man, this would be interesting for other people to tell
the story too, But you know, I kind of grew
up in a small town Mount area, North Carolina, which
is kind of was the basis of a well known
older American show, It's Andy group of show. The town
is known as Mayberry and so very much southern town.
(04:49):
And you know, I kind of grew up in you know,
lower middle class, let's call it. But I didn't have
a lot of small house. I had a older brother
and a younger brother, and it was probably a couple
of thousand square I think maybe there's five of us
in one bathroom and and so. But the fortunate thing
my mother, uh was a teacher's aide, and my grandmother,
(05:13):
uh was a teacher. And so I kind of grew
up when I would say, six hundred yards probably from
an elementary school that I went to, and so I
would I would come home by myself after about five years,
when I was five or six years old, and stay
at the house until my mom got home from another school.
And so you can imagine the you know, the the
(05:36):
fun activities that a young boy gets into, gets the
trouble and different things. And I would make a bow
and arrow a lot of limbs and shoot airs across
the street and in someone's house and just all kinds
of things of trying to keep from being board. So
I got you know, I would read things or take
things apart and always kind of you know, did well
in math, I think. Uh so I played sports by
(06:00):
month as I was very competitive playing sports and you know, baseball, basketball,
any kind of sport. Older brother a lot of competitive sports,
and so you know, I really kind of liked math.
And then you know, I ended up having a little
(06:20):
bit as as you mature, kind of was in this
like gifted and talented program and I ended up getting
out of it because it was just like small classes.
There was too much of a click and I just
didn't want to be a part of that.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
And it was a smart one in the room.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well you know these things, you know, you look back
and there's a lot of favoritism and a lot of
different things, and you know, it took me a long
time to appreciate what's called the English classes because it
just seems so subjective, right. I was like a science
math like how can this you know there's a right
answer or wrong answer, and you write a paper and
it's like no, I really liked that, and you're like, well,
(06:57):
what do you mean, I don't like it, you know,
and so you know, it was a lot of wrong,
got frustration. So there was this thing and then one
summer I went to a kind of a camp, let's
call it where you know, it was like at a university,
and you got to go through like different parts of
an engineering you know, not knowing what engineering was like.
(07:17):
He spent a week in a physics thing and a
week in this and the whole time, you know, everybody's
playing basketball. It was like a fun It was literally
like being in college, honestly. But it was in my
tenth and eleventh grade year and I came home and
I was like, okay, I definitely taking pheasic class. Physics
class kind of guided me. You know. I was always
you know, my father had want to I be in
(07:38):
PC right when they first came out and I learned
the program. I think it was nineteen eighty and so
I was like, I always love computers, still do, and
so I didn't really know what it was like computer science.
Like I was in a class and wrote a database
for the basketball team to put our stats and send
it to the newspaper. And you know, this was like,
you know, I won't give it the year. It was
(07:58):
in ninety eighty four probably and nineteen eighty four, and so,
you know, so about that time period, so you know,
I kind of knew I was going to get more
towards the calculus and engineering thing, but I was still
playing a lot of sports. And I sang, actually people
laugh about this when I say this, but I was
in this music. Uh you know, I would go sing
(08:19):
in New York City and Eastern and do all these
kinds of things. And so honestly, I wasn't sure we
go to the music or science or or or whatever.
And so I was, you know, the Top Gun the
movie came out, so and so I literally was like,
of course, uh, you know, I saw it fifty times
and so I was like, okay, I'm going to fly
(08:41):
military planes.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
And so that's what I wanted to do when I
was a kid.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
There. So I ended up you know, senior year playing
sports and different things. I had a broken wrist in
a in a basketball game, but I'd gotten accepted to
the Air Force Academy, and my parents it's not really
been able to pay for my own college. They're like,
you gotta go, you gotta go. And of course I'm like,
top gun, I'm gonna go fly, but I didn't really
(09:07):
want to go, and so I had been except NC
State and I'm also short of went out there and
my rear three fractured and ended up coming back to
n C State, but I already had gotten enough taste
of Okay, I wanted to go, you know, not necessarily
fly the military planes, but really got into like on design,
(09:27):
I'm like, I want to be around it and all
the different things. So I knew I wanted to be
an airspace and so I went to n CEA State
did airspace engineering. Ended up my junior and senior year
in college, got NASA Langley Research Center had this summer again,
the summer kind of thing where I went there during
the summer I really got exposed a true kind of
(09:50):
airspace and different things, and so basically I ended up
going to grad school. NASA Langley Research Center funded my
way all the way through grad school, and I started
in to come take some floodynamics so I could combine
all the computer science and aerodynamics, and so I really
started doing that through grad school and just really got
into thinking I was going to I was doing hypersonics
(10:13):
and all kinds of kind of fundamental fluid physics and
they had never seen a race. At this point. I
played all kinds of sports. I'd never been any I
knew who they'll learn Heart was because I grew up
in North Carolina, but I didn't really watch it. And so,
you know, right before I was getting ready to get
out of a graduate school, my wife was pregnant with
(10:33):
our first son, and I kind of grew up in
North Carolina coming down to where the like kind of
the NASCAR teams are based that area. There's a lake
around here, Lake Norman. Uh, So I would come visit that.
So I had some learn to drive around that lake
and different, yeah, kind of you know, family history. And
so I met Michael Cranifice who used to run Worldwide
(10:56):
Motorsports for Ford. At the time, there was there was
a team called craft Sauce, one of my friends. I
went to visit him in the race shop and literally
walking out the door to go to lunch, I ran
into my pranipicst and he, my friend, introduced me, and
I told him budd. He said, when you get ready
of good our school, you call me. He said, Oh,
I need somebody like you, and I was like, Okay, yeah,
(11:16):
that's just being nice and whatever. And so so right
before I really left, I had some jobs with Naval
Service Warfare Center and different military things, and uh, my
wife was like an hour away from where we grew up.
She's like, you know, and otherwise I was gonna be
in California or or somewhere away from home. And uh,
so I called Michael and said, hey, you know, maybe
(11:37):
I'll come down and talk about it. And uh and
I think what the government was paying at the time
for PhD person out of graduate school was pretty low
and uh and so uh when I went and I
knew nothing about cars, nothing, planes, aircraft, all about it.
I've been doing all kinds of really theoretical food physics work.
(11:58):
And so I went to see Carenifice and walked into
the room and uh, it was Michael. It was Carl Haass,
he used to own Newman HOSS and then Mike. Uh,
Mark Hamford. I don't know if you know Mark campert
is he used to the Hamford device and all that.
Mark works for Newman Hass and was the air Damas system. Yeah,
(12:18):
so I go down to visit thinking I was just
going to talk to Michael and explore it a little bit.
And I walk into the conference room and he's got
Carl Haas there, who was the former owner of Newman
hass or wasn't host part of the Newman house. And
Mark Hamford, who did the Hamford device and he was
a well known Aernam system. So they started asking me
(12:38):
questions and you know, felt like thirty seconds, but thirty
minutes into it, they offered me a job. It was
two or three times the government was going to pay and.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So, and you had a kid on the way, so
you couldn't very well tend that down.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
And so I go back and I talked to my
advisor at college and they were like, oh, no, you're
throwing your education while you're throwing your life while you
shouldn't do it. And Doug Yates actually was, you know,
a well know needs to builder in Nascar. He went
to in c State and there was a professor that
he had done some work with that I got connected
with and started talking to him, tell me about NASCAR,
(13:16):
and tell me about this, and not a short accepted
the job. And so this was probably May, and obviously
I started on July something and so I was in
the library like reading every single textbook on vecandynamics and
deriving the equations and terrified that I wouldn't gone. And
(13:36):
again this is nineteen ninety seven, and so I'm thinking,
I'm like got to just know all this at like
such a high level. So I spent three months really
studying that. I knew the air dam it was part,
and I was studying the villacams part. So my first
day on the job, you know, with grayfus hosp was
(14:00):
the Indie test. So my very first day in racing period,
I got off the airplane. I got from the airplane.
Is the Inn Speedway a test? And uh and so
there's a lot of funny stories from NASCAR doing those years.
Everybody played tricks on new employees, and they were of
course seeing me come in like a fresh meat, you know,
(14:23):
here as a PhD aar space engineer coming in and
and uh so they tried to, but I was athletic,
played sports, and they tried to. They just threw me
impact gun and say take this wheel off, and uh
and so and literally just six months later, Roger Penskey
came in, bought Carl Haas's half out, and so became
(14:44):
Penskey Carnifice and some of the engineers left from Rusty's
watched his team Penske Racing South and so I kind
of became a chief engineer of Penske Racing for period
there and I started doing uh scale model aeryd amic work.
Can I going back and forth and kind of built
from there. So a lot a lot more stories there.
(15:05):
But I started going testing with Stuart Grand Prix Form
one team at the time in England and back in
forth with California. So it was definitely not an expected
route from what I grew up into where I ended up.
But now from where I sit, the technology that's in racing,
and you know, it's the combination of sports and the
(15:29):
competition and being competitive. You know, it's kind of like
it was made for me, but I just didn't know
at this time, you know. So it's one of those
things that you know, worked worked out for me.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
So so you fell in love with the racing side
of it as well as the technology inside of it,
obviously because it gave you the sports that you were
(16:03):
doing when you were younger. That's that's such a cool story.
So then you went to from from there, you went
to r CR or AM I missing a gap.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So I stayed at Penske for about four years, and
they were still kind of split up the teams, like
Jimmy Mayfid's team was in one shop and building their
own chassis and Penske Racing was and the other with Rusty,
and I was kind of, you know, engineering wise, in
the leadership role of both of them, really still leading
(16:33):
the erynamics. And I was doing a lot of stuff
with Ford Aeronamics at the time, and so I left
thinking I was going to do consulting because it was
a little bit of drama with the penskea campus team
and I was doing more things with Ford and there's
some uh, you know, let's call it judgmental mistakes and
(16:56):
being a little impatient at the time, and I ended
up starting a little consulting company for a year there
and then met Ray Everingham at the end of two
thousand and one.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Ray's been in everything. It's amazing time.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
And so it's almost like the same story like with Pranapus,
Like I didn't really know Ray. Obviously, I knew him
because it was you know, I was doing a lot
of aerdemic work time and at Penske, we were winning
races and polls. And this was during the heyday of
Ray and Jeff on the NASCAR twenty fourteen. So I
would watch him in the garage and I would see
(17:34):
things that he was doing with the car and I
was like, I know why he's doing that, and so
I had a lot of respect for him, and so
that same thing, I ran to him and he's like,
you need to come work for me and started this
Abhem Motorsports and want to come to be the technical director.
And I was like, why don't you do a deal
with my consulting firm, right, you know? And so I
was trying to so he kind of did at the beginning,
(17:57):
and long story short, I ended up going to work
for So I was at Abraham mother Sports for about
I don't think the case King Bill Elliott or the
originally we wanted to break yards perst year. That was.
That was a year I started and then stayed there
for five years. Uh really like it's longer than that,
about six maybe left there, went to Michael Waltrip Racing
(18:18):
because Andy Graves at Toyota was my next door neighbor
at the time, and he was at Toyota and Michael
and then had struggled their first year to make races
and they wanted me to come over and help sort
it out. So I did that for a year. You know,
didn't work out of the long run, but us F
(18:39):
one and Form one team kind of started in the
area and then I, you know, Ready and uh, you know,
we Ready wanted me to help him and designed this
lands speed record car. So we started working on a
landspeed record car, and I started doing the us F
one thing, and of course that never materialized, and so
(18:59):
I went back to what was then rich Payton Motorsports,
which was the old Everingham team and it was Ralsh
they were running combined together when Carl Edwards and kids
and Greg Befoor and Casey and all they were running.
So I kind of started back and doing simulation there.
And two years after that, Richard came to me in
(19:20):
the garage and said, you should come our cr I
want to really started being more technical. So I went
there two thousand and twenty eleven, two thousand, I think, yeah,
twenty eleven twelve. We stayed there about eight years, and
then I ended up coming to GM.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
All the way through that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Johnny, did you were you just solely focused, like I
just want to be the best aerodynamic engineer that I
can be, Or did you want to be like team
manager or did you have anything that you wanted to
achieve like obviously now you're the big boss at GM.
Did was that goal of yours? Or did that happen
just because you were brilliant all the other things?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, I mean I started out doing aeronamics at Penske,
but by the time really I was a chief engineer
at Penske, I'd spent my time learning. I ended up
learning a lot about you know, the vehiconomics and that
side of it. And I was very mathematical, and so
you know, I learned early on by it's called by accident,
because I didn't know anything about cars to think about
(20:22):
the car as a whole and understand the whole dynamics
of the vehicle of which ERA was a part of it.
So I always, you know, typically led the error programs
all the way through you know, telling the children's and
even then. But mostly I was the competition director or
a technical director all the way from really into Penske
to so now I've kind of led most of the
(20:48):
technical or engineering efforts and always pushing different areas other
than just aeryonamics. You know, you've got to have one
thing that you're really good at, so you know, when
things don't work out still people want to hire you
for a particular skill that you have. But I've kind
of done all the areas for a long time now,
(21:10):
almost thirty years. So.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
But in your role as like technical director, it's a
lot of peopling and a lot of leadership and management
and everything else. Do you enjoy that aspect of it
as well as the sitting down and crunching numbers and
running programs on computers that tell you about all the
different things you can do with the race car, like
what floats your boat?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
You know what kind of what they call it? When
the shrip movie. Like I'm like an onion. I got
a lot of layers, but you know, you know I can.
I can do both, and at times I like doing both,
Like I do like to sit and kind of derive
something and I can I like rinning programs and stuff,
(21:54):
so if I can focus on it and learn and
execute something. But I do get bored easily, and I
kind of when I got into racing, I kind of
like what's at the track right and going to the
racetrack and you're kind of seeing all the elements of it.
And one thing coming out of school, you know, I
saw that there are just a lot of unknowns, a
(22:15):
lot of complexities, like with tires and things that you know,
you can't just really sit at the desk, and you know,
dealing with drivers like rescuing them. I also learned very
quickly that maybe because I was Southern, I had a
Southern accent. I was able to blend in and I
could play the PhD when I wanted to, and I
could play the you know, nod and so I always
(22:37):
had good relationships with the drivers. I mean I always
have had that. And so I kind of, you know,
got to understand that, you know, I don't quite wrap
the whole thing around just sitting at a desk. You know,
you've got to kind of tie reality to it, and
it forces you into the teamwork and the relationships and
(22:58):
the people side of it. And so I would say
I developed over time, Like I said, during this Pinsk Yeers,
I was, you know, fresh at four years high school. Uh,
you know, they don't necessarily teaching in engineering school, certainly
not in the PhD in airspace engineering about the people's
skills and and you know, I'm a very just caught
(23:18):
confrontational competitive person, so you know, I wasn't used to
like direct challenges, you know, and so I always will,
you know, uh, compete at that level. You know, played
active sports and somebody you know in sports, you know,
you're playing basketball. So my challenges here, you know, you know,
you're like like right right in their face and everything else.
(23:41):
And so it took a while to kind of channel
that the correct way not to not to get you know,
tilted too far because learning that there's always agendas and
always things and and uh you know, so I would
say over the years I matured more on the understanding
of the whole pick sure, and you know, managing the
(24:02):
owner and the team and the budgets and the sanctioned bodies.
And so I think really that's why I've been able
to be successful is I kind of had to learned
some of that by fire, and so knowing all of
the elements of the technical part, been able to communicate
and on the people side, and the visionary had looked
for the future of any situation. Normally I can slot
(24:26):
into one of those roles and so understanding all those
elements are important when you start leading bigger organizations because
they're not that many people that have the experience and
making me really good in specialized areas, but bringing it
all together and managing conflict and how to plan and
(24:49):
develop as there's not that many people.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Right, And I mean as a driver, you experienced that
kind of thing all the time because you have engineers
that are really good at working out their comput you
do and they're like, well.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
This is what it should do.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
But then are they good with translating what you're telling
them and the actual human aspect of it.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
And so.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I think that a lot of engineers don't have that.
So I think that's a very unique, well rounded thing
that you have that Yeah, maybe it's learnable, but I
think also it's instinctive, right, And I think that probably
helps you with employing people at GM too, because you
know what to look for.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Well. I mean it's yeah, looking for the right talent,
but also it's making people believe I'm a positive kind
of future. What you try to hey, what we can do,
what's possible. I try to make people believe that we
(25:54):
can do things that maybe never can quite do. With
the moments so inspiring people. It's really where I feel
like I get good technical people, and you know, we
like to have good technical discussions and try to you know,
when we've done a lot of over the years, a
lot of really kind of cool technical things that that
eventually that reputation follows you and then you end up,
(26:19):
you know, even building GM Motorsports, you to build this
kind of critical mass. Once we started building this critical mass,
next thing, you know, it's like okay, you mean he's
over here, and he's over here, and everybody's like, you're
getting the band back together, you know, all the people
that used to work with and having the resources, and
it just kind of grows, you know, and you' it's
(26:39):
being able to help people with problems. So you've got
to be technically confident enough to be able to at
least understand what they're saying, if not able to help
them or even do it. And then recognizing that that
people learn faster, and there are a lot of things
that you can't do serially if you have to doing
(27:00):
in parallel, and so more people that are smarter than
you or as smart as you, that can work at
the same level and parallel you're going to progress way faster,
and so so many times you see things fail because
there's a bottleneck. Somebody's trying to be in a position
and it's for them to whatever when his ego or
(27:21):
trying to get a salary or whatever, and it always chokes,
you know, good good work. And I've tried to not
be that and try to just work with everybody. And
I've been around a lot of people like Raving him,
and you know, I've got it. It's crazy the experiences
I've been around, the Karl Hoast, the Roger Pensky's, the
(27:42):
v him, the Rick Hendricks. I mean, you think about
the Richard Peddie, you know, and that's you like, okay,
what are all these great elements of these leaders and
winter winners like what you know? And you kind of
get the sense of what it takes the wind and
you try to, you know, wrap all that and everything
you're doing.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
How do you juggle the like the day to day
stuff with all the different programs. So you have to
take like GM corporate and marketing and all of that
side on board, and then you also have to do
the IndyCar side and the NASCAR side and the emsicide
and like all the different elements like is it a juggle?
(28:25):
Have you found it happy? And the F one now
too obviously I think.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
And then the F one stuff is definitely made me
realize that you can't you can't do it all. You
definitely can't do it all. But it's hard to say
on the top of each issue with that another sports
car adding it to the other things and then going
(28:53):
into wek and all of that's involved. That that's complicated
learning the series, learning that now F one's a whole
different animal, uh, And you know, and it's I wouldn't
say that that I do a great job juggling, but
I have to do a better job than anybody else juggling.
And so typically what I try to do is, like
(29:15):
in particularly inside of GM, is a really try to
be a student of like what's important? Like you again,
like I said before, how do you kind of separate
the noise and like, you know, what's important to GM?
Like why are we doing this? Why are they doing it?
What means success? And you know, and try to build
(29:36):
a little bit of that moving forward to where you
get people believing. And so that's the same thing, you know,
you know with all these other programs, you kind of
try to say, okay, what you know, what part do
I need to do? And most of the time it's
communication problem. It's a problem with the ownership or the
or the or the leadership of that team or the
(29:58):
series or who this series, and it's like, okay, like
where is the problem? And since you I did find
a problem quickly or potential problems, you just start working
towards it. You know, if it's a particular leader of
a team that is being stubborn or closed minded, you're like, okay,
I got to work on my relationship with this person, right,
(30:19):
And eventually you just keep coming back and take whatever
argument you got to take and try to build trust
and and say, look, I'm here to help you. I
don't you know, I don't want your job. I don't
you know if you're successful. I'm successful. We're all successful,
and it's just time. I'm relentless on kind of coming
back the next day, and if I get frustrated, if
(30:42):
I get you know, people I said the other day,
it's shocking, like I said, was growing up, people knew
I was an emotional person. And I said that to
someone yesterday and they're like, really, you just seem so steady,
and I'm like.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Right, so calm, I would say the same thing. I
would never imagine you being like running off.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
My life and kids are that but uh, you know,
and it's not a bad emotion. I think emotion is good, right,
I mean, if you can control that, yeah, yeah, it's
passion and you know it drives you and you don't
want to lose. I would say probably the underlying thing
and what you know what made when I was younger,
I did kind of grow up a little bit poorer,
(31:22):
and I always had people say what you couldn't do
and you can't go to college, you can't do this,
and so I've always kind of had this running fear
of failure in the background, you know, and always trying
to prove something to somebody and which mostly it's me. Uh,
and so that's always kind of like been there too
to drive you, you know, and so you so it's
(31:45):
it's a challenge at times to manage the emotions, but
that's really trying to harness it. I think what's more
important if you if you don't have the emotion, you
can't connect with people, because then you're then you're literally
like they see you as you know, they don't know
who you are, right if it's you're either robot or
(32:05):
or you know, when people can see your emotion go
up and down, they kind of learn you and they say, hey,
this is a real person. You know. I could be
crying in front of my whole staff because somebody said
something nice in the meeting, or I could be fired
up and angry and pushing, you know, in a competitive sense.
(32:26):
And so I think that's always helped me, not hurt me.
So it's a again, I've made mistakes. It's it's hard
to be most sports for thirty years and not make
them dumb, you know, mistakes.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
It's funny that you say that, like I can maybe
learn something from that, because I've always thought that showing
emotion was a bad thing, and I've always tried to
not and so inevitably over the years, Like if I
get sad or whatever, it tends now to anger. So
then I, you know, channel it that way. But I
(32:58):
should probably just learn how to steer it rather than
try and try and shut it off. But it's interesting
that you look at Formula one these days and stuff,
and I was having this conversation the other day all
the drivers are robots. Nobody can connect with them because
they're all the same, Like you could take one out
and put Okay, some of them, like Max, has a personality.
(33:18):
There's some that do, but a lot of them are
so say that you can just like plug and play
the drivers. And I think what made mode to sports
great back in like the Dale days, was that all
of them had different personalities and you could connect with them,
and you could connect with the manufacturers.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Like my mum drove.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
A renaut Laguna, So when I was watching touring car races,
I always wanted the Reno to do really well. And
I liked smoking Joe Winklehock because he was putting his
head out the top of the roof and stuff like that.
So I think there is a lot to be sop
for emotion and connection. And actually it's I will give
that some more thought because that's a good way of
framing it. Yeah, did you struggle or did you find
(34:15):
it easy to delegate?
Speaker 2 (34:17):
I wouldn't say struggle, but I don't find it easy
because you know, I find that line of doing it
yourself in uh, you know, in actually delegating but then
holding something accountable. I kind of sometimes fall too much
into a teacher mode where I want to teach him
(34:38):
how to do it, And really I don't need to
be teaching how to do it. I just need to
get somebody to do it and home accounts so we
can do more things. So if I had to look
at a meter of I've probably struggle with it, you know.
But that's one thing again, bigger organizations, bigger things. That's
(34:58):
a lot the GMT h as you uh, you know,
you look and see how GM operates in a company.
I never worked at a big company. There's just a
lot of things that you end up have to do
and uh and at the end of the day, you
can't really develop future people just to be uh a
succession plan if you don't do it. So it's a
lot of leadership building you you are almost forced to
(35:21):
do it. But I would benefit from carrying less stress
if I would let others do things and be okay
if it's I'm a little bit of a perfectness, you know,
not not maniacal, but but enough where I just need
to be okay if you get if and if it
(35:42):
gets done and at a at a high level that
you know, it's managing your energy, your emotional energy on
what to worry about. If you worry about something too little,
that you should have delegated and you wasted energy on
something else, And so that's a lifelong process.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Actually, do you I hadn't thought about the not being
in corporate America because I've also not been in corporate America,
and team environments are very different than corporate America. Like
if I spoke to my if I spoke to somebody
in GM, if I was working there, the same way
that you taught your engineers sometimes like HR would be
(36:22):
all over it, right, and the same way the other
way around. And so I think when you're in a fire,
like you're in a pressure cooker situation on a team
in a race and it's competition and it's very different.
Did you how did you then transition to being in
corporate America and having to do things very differently? I
(36:43):
would imagine it's very differently. Although is it very different
or do you get to run it however you want?
And it's like running a race.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Team, it's very different in some way good ways, right,
you know, I think you know Juma's company and reference Point, Uh,
you know they care about employees significantly more than what
I would say race team does, right, race team, well,
they care about employees. They're singular focused on performance and
(37:12):
you know, you can move people out of there in
a second. And you know, in some ways that's good. Right.
It's like a you know, professional sports team. There's not
much tolerance and in mediocrity, right, and so it doesn't
leave a lot of room to grow and to learn
and things like that. So when I first came to GM,
(37:33):
I was like, wow, they actually care about you, and yeah,
that was a little bit of a you know, like
a positive good thing. And then you look at the
but you know that the things you hear and talk
about about how corporation moves slower than a than a
race team are true. But there's times when it's really important.
(37:54):
There's a lot more resources available and a lot more
things to tap into when you have a large company,
and so you know, normally your decisions are getting made
and things are getting made that you know, two things
are dealing with significant amount of money, and so you typically,
particularly the public company, you know you need to have
alignment with the corporation, like, you know, does it fit
(38:16):
in the budget, does it is it serving the purpose
is that money Bud spent somewhere else. And it's hard
to do that on your own, you know, there's just
too many things going on. And then also it's a
very public facing position, so you're representing gm UH, it's customers,
it's employees, and so you know, it's it's easy to
(38:40):
you know a lot of times you say do no harm, right,
You're you're always trying to to build things. Where in
the race team sometimes you're like, oh, you know, just
be a cowboy, and you know that, you know that
the press is going to see it as a you know,
sports thing, but you know it's a little different, h
you know, and so you have to be and I
(39:00):
think that hurts, Like when we talked about drivers a
little bit, maybe not be able to show the emotion
is because you're speaking for more people than he used to.
And then you also, social media, you know, unfortunately, gives
the platform of people to give a lot of criticism
and that always is in a way doing some kind
of harm, and so you're if you try to eliminate
(39:23):
that totally, you end up not not being able to
say a lot or do things quickly because you get
paralyzed and so you got to kind of just I
think that's where great leaders, where I think Mary Barr
and Mark Royce and DM are great leaders, is that
you know, when you when you get a vision, not
being afraid to move, and even if you have to say, Okay,
(39:44):
we're going to do this, and then through a year
later the something changes in the world and you've got
to make a big change that Okay, we know we
built this factory and we spend this amount of money
on this this thing, and it's a billion dollars, but
I consider being a cry over billion dollars and give
up the opportunity to earn fourteen more. And you know,
and that it teaches you to to make those cast
(40:07):
trade offs, make those decisions, but move, you know, move quicker.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Any decisions better than being paralyzed and not making a decision.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
So it's still learn still learning, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I guess everybody's still learning. And you think of the
Mary Bars of the world, and you think they have
it all figured out, right, Like I look at you
and I think you have it all figured out? But
do have you struggled because your attention is taken away
from the technology sign and you it's spread so thin
(40:43):
over all of them, like the indie car technology and
the NASCAR technology and sports car technology in the Formula
one technology, Have you managed to still get knowledge of
all of those different things so you can jump in
as and when and let you enjoy doing it, so
you know how the Formula one hybrid system works and
(41:04):
all of that or is it way more higher level
than that now?
Speaker 2 (41:07):
You know? I think you know as has broadened out
with that one. I still learn quickly. I still want
to learn quickly. I'm like a call it or I'm
constantly have a huge appetite for learning and a lot
about again trying to make sure I understand, okay, what
(41:29):
is important one of the central things. So I would
say where I do start to get you know, over
time I'll get frustrated as if you know, that's called
the administrative burden of just having to manage the machine
and all the different things. And you know, the longer
I'm away from some element of the technical or the
(41:50):
competitive part of what's going on, the less I like it.
You know, typically I'm always like, okay, this is happening
for a future benefit and a future thing. So you're
still working towards something that's important. But you go through
page where you're dealing with a lot of like, you know,
(42:11):
just managing your people and something didn't go the way
you want. You know, I think about bop and and
all the challenges of that. That'll take the lights another thing.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Holy moly, you've got so many.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
So it's that's a challenge. Like you know, I don't
ever want to get away from it so much. If
I do, then I'm going to retire because then you
just lost the spirit of it. I don't want to
be just the manager. I mean, has to be some element.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
So if I said to you, ay, Eric, I need
an engineer. I need you to be my engineer for
the Daytona five hundred, do you think that you could
put a car on track that was competitive, but you
think you could engineer me to be fun?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yes, that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
You know, I was been involved in calling the races
quite a bit up until this past year, so for sure,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Well, then if you're ever at least and you're welcoming
my pick.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
I might pop up there even now there that dude.
So that's the danger A lot of times of being
in the position on me and there's a lot of
times I'm just curious, I have a thought, I want
to talk about something, and uh, yeah, it's nothing for
me to step in to talk to the race engineer
and say if I wanted to try this in practice,
(43:33):
and why aren't we doing this? I got the question
about this, and and now you know, I'm just more
wanting to engagement, just you know, to have the discussion.
I'll walk off and come back later and someone say, well,
what happened. They're like when you tell them to go
change this, and so they went and did I said, no,
I didn't. I didn't say to do it. I just
want to talk about it. It's like, you know, it's
(43:54):
like I had an idea, like you know, I didn't
mean like there's a lot of a lot of times
when you I can't quite go in there and do
what I want to do because people will take it
too literal, and you I just want to, you know,
have fun in the engagement and the discussion of it.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
You know, Yeah, I am what do you think separates them?
And this was actually going to be a question about drivers,
but now I'm also I'm also interested in engineers. What
do you think separates the great Creachief engineered technical director
types like your ray evidems. What do you think makes
(44:33):
them so awesome? And then the same question for the
for the drivers, because you've worked with a lot of
really great drivers too.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah, I would say it's the same element probably certainly both,
but of anyone that really succeeds at a high level
against others, it's it's just this absolute refusal to lose.
I don't even know how to describe it, you know,
and people get that wrong sometimes, I think means it's
(45:01):
not a vanity as much as a uh there's something
that drives you to like it's like you care about
it so much and you feel like you've put all
your energy into it and you still get feed. Racing teach, unfortunately,
teaches you how to lose, right, And you think about
other sports, you know, maybe baseball, where you accept that
(45:25):
you're going to have a batting average of three hundred
and that's great, you know, So you know you're not
you're struck. You're getting out seven out of ten times
in racing. If you won thirty percent of the times,
you'd be the greatest one history, you know. So you know,
and so how do you manage that and still have
the drive you know, really forces you into you know,
(45:48):
the focused part that the what's relentless pursuit of better.
Someone wrote an article recently, and I think that's true.
It doesn't matter whether Michael Geordy listening to Michael. You
listen to Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame speech when he
got in basketball, you might as well be talking to
Ray everything. I mean, this same fear that somebody thinks
(46:11):
you're stupid, right, somebody thinks you're not any good. Michael
don a Grace basketball player, he said he spends the
whole time talking in the whole Fame speech about how
he was going to prove this person that talk you know,
junk to him in the game. It you know, so
they have this maniacal uh you know, they don't want
(46:31):
to lose. A lot of times it's driven because they're
embarrassed that somebody else might have either beat them and
they didn't think they should have, or that they would
look at it and think they didn't work hard enough
or want smart enough. It's some element of that. And drivers,
you know all or are you know, they can't stand
the fault that this person beat them, right, right right,
(46:57):
they work on the craft and then you know they
you know, the great ones actually just don't give up
and they just don't lose. They won't lose.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Well, I've got them not giving up part down, it's
the losing part.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
I have to work.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
You try, but I will never give up here.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
I'll be like seventy years. I'll not be like Eric put.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Me in crazy story, Like I played basketball growing up.
This thing as you get older and you watch drivers,
you know, even in any athlete, and yeah, I played
basketball a lot, you know, but I was great. I'm
six foot tall less than that now, it feels like,
and I was not a great basketball player, but I
(47:43):
played at a decent level. And I'll never get the
first time my son beat me in a basketball game
out in the front yard, I was like, how did
that happen? Like there's there's no way looking at him,
and it was. And there's so many of those little
of wake up calls that you get that Okay, I'm
(48:03):
just I can't do anymore. That's my level, right, Like,
I've gone as far as I could and I've tried,
and that's it, you know, And then you got then
you got to figure out how to mas the mostional
part of being okay with that and that you know
things that you can learn where it's like, okay, I
just need to read some more. I got to figured out.
I got to go get somebody give me more money.
(48:25):
I can prove it. That never really does because that's
the stop step. But you know it's it's tough.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
I know, well yeah, I mean I know it all
too well because obviously I'm not getting any younger. But
I feel like I want a shot, Like I want
to be able to say, Okay, I had a good
team and they were capable of doing this, and whether
that's P one or P ten or whatever it may be,
that's where I ended up. I feel like I've just
been scrambling to get a ride for the most part,
(48:57):
and i've and so just being on the grid is
a thing, and I don't want that to be my story.
I want to know where I stack up, and then
I think I can start with the next generation, and
so I think I would be okay with it then,
but right now, I still feel like I have to
prove to myself like and I think, okay, I don't
(49:18):
think I'm a center on Michael Schumacher. But I think
I'm good.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
And I just want to know. I just want to
know what that is.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
So what makes you I've just got a couple of
last questions. I know I've taken up so much of
the time, but.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
What makes you get out of bed in the morning,
Like what excites you the most about what you're doing?
Speaker 2 (49:40):
It's fine, probably thanks very more coffee, because coffee. I mean,
I'm going true, it's get some coffee. Uh, you know,
I still think there's you know, things you're trying to prove, right,
It's always this point when there's the next thing that
(50:02):
has challenged to you, you know, like F one, you know,
been in and around it enough and the challenge of
going through getting the intrigue. I mean, there were so
many things that were said, and so many things that
you just laugh at a little bit because you're like, okay,
like that's just straight arrogance. It's like, you know, and
(50:25):
it's you're just like I just got insulted, like directly,
like not even not even hidden, like you know, it
was a direct but it's and it's like okay, at
the moment, it's true, but it's but you know, but
it's like just I tell us all the time, like
I've literally had a lot of aernamics education and background
(50:47):
and you know, and even even got to spend a
lot of time around some F one aerdynamics and different things.
And you know, I was at the track two years
ago and someone walked me over and it's like and
then had the best intentions in the world, best intentions,
and like they were like, here's an F one car,
(51:10):
and like they just look at the car holistically. They
just look at the era of a car holistically. And
I literally looked at them and I was like, no kidding.
It's like it's because they can the rules allow it, right,
It's like you don't think the person back design in
the fifteen or an airplane's like, you know, gotta got
(51:33):
a rear you know, tail or real horizontal stabilizer on
airplane and the rest of the cars a box, do
you It's like, you know, that's that's what aeronamics is.
It's like really trying to manipulate the flood field and
understand how it works and whatever. But you know a
lot of times people kind of you know, in every series, right,
(51:54):
it takes certain skills and let's call it a you know, experience,
it's to know how to get everything out of those rules.
But like you know, when you tell someone like, okay,
Nascar is way more technical than you think it is,
Like you know, you're still doing simulation and simulators entire
modeling instead of working in the winter on them to
(52:17):
get another you know, twenty points of downforce. I'm trying
to figure out how to move all these surfaces like
twenty thousand and seven inch and stack it all up,
whether it's where it's one hundred of a second and
being able to control that week in and week out.
You know that know itself is challenging. You're going to
seventeen different types of tracks with different tires, and every
(52:39):
week it's a different weft side tire and red side tire,
and how do you deal with it? And everything has
its every game, everything has its own challenge. And the
minute you think just because you're dominating in this one
and you know this one, that somehow that makes you
a better human or a you somehow freed out calculus
better than the next person, you're you know, you're.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
I literally never thought that.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Right, right, There's a lot of things that do just
disruption is a painful is a painful thing, you know.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Okay, last question, I promised if you could go back
and give twelve year old you or fifteen year old
student who wants to be you a piece of advice,
what would that advice be.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
I would say, you know, be just a hair more patient.
Like I feel like the path out my life has taken.
I've raised two great kids, I have a wonderful wife,
great relationships. You know, I wouldn't think I would be
able to do that without going through some of the experiences.
But I think there's a few key moments where I was,
(53:46):
you know, really down and emotional and and uh, you know,
all things are temporary, you know, and they kind of like,
you know, just a little more patience, a little more
you know. I told my kids, you know, no matter
how bad the day is, I always tell myself that
(54:07):
I'm gonna get up the next morning. I'm enjoy my coffee, right,
and so it's like and then I'm going to start over.
And you know, I think learning that at a little
bit early age that time, and each day chipping away
at it. You know, there's no problem that persists no
matter what you know no matter if it's a difficult
person or what you know it you're it's bigger than
(54:29):
what you're making it out to be at the moment.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
That's amazing. Eric, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
I am beyond honored to work with you and drive
with you, and you're such an inspiration to so many people,
and honestly, I've learned so much during this school I
think everybody's going to really enjoy listening to it, so
I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
That's enjoy are continued working together and lot of stuff
for the future.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
So thanks, thanks for listening to Throttle Therapy. We'll be
back next week with more updates and more overtakes. We
want to hear from you. Leave us a review in
Apple Podcasts and tell us what you want to talk about.
It might just be the topic for our next show.
Throttle Therapy is hosted by Katherine Legg. Our executive producer
(55:19):
is Jesse Katz, and our supervising producer is Grace Fuse.
Listen to Throttle Therapy on America's number one podcast network, iHeart.
Open your free iHeart app and search throttle Therapy with
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Throttle Therapy with Katherine Legg is an iHeart women's sports
production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You
can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Hello, and welcome to
(00:24):
this week's episode of Throttle Therapy with Me Catherine Legg.
And this week we have a very special guest who
has had such an interesting path. He's gone from aerospace
engineering to overseeing GM's entire motorsport competition program and I
am beyond excited to welcome Eric Warren to the podcast
(00:44):
this week. Eric, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Glad to join Katin.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I know you're so busy, so I appreciate you spending
time speaking to me when you have so many other things,
especially with the addition now of the F one program.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I know that the work can never start.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And I don't know how you do it, honestly, because
you must survive very well with sleep deprivation.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It's something that you definitely learned to deal with, and
you know, you're always trying to work on different practices.
And I was just literally going through my race schedule
again yet today and I was like, man, it's gonna
be tough. It's coming here, but we'll see how it goes.
You kind of have to be flexible, depend upon how
each race series goes and try to help where you
can and figure out what the problems are. So you
never never quite works out how you think it's going
(01:29):
through before the season starts in good ways and bad ways.
So that's just part of being able to be adaptive.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, you good at like keeping all the balls in
the air, Like you've got the nast Cup part and
the Indycap part and all the things, like you're good
at keeping all of that up and going.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, I guess it's good as somebody else's judgment, I'm
trying to be good. So you know, it's it's each
series you kind of need to learn, like what is it?
What are they call it? The central elements, you know,
the relationship with the team and how the team works,
the team owner, what they're trying to get out of it,
what we're trying to get out of it from GM
(02:06):
and where we're supporting. And it's all about winning, and
so you try to pay attention to you know, how
is it going and where to put resources or where
to lean in and if I need to excel the
pitstand and make a call during the race, I'll go
that far if I need to, And most time I
try to not you know, try to you know, you're
(02:27):
developing people at the same time. It's always a little
bit like just dynamic and trying to just stay focused
on what important things are when there's a lot of
noise around and everybody has certain agendas and interest in things,
and so that's what's challenging, is trying to stay focused
on what's important. That's what's it take to win.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Actually, it's like having that thirty thousand foot view of
like taking away all the noise and have that calm
and like view through everything.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Do you do well with not much leap?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Then?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Do you are? You? You're good on the go all
the time.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I used to be when I was younger, I could
sleep on a few hours. And you know, I'm a
fairly adrenaline based person, so I can work non stop
pretty much. I'm fairly high. As people know, caffeine consumer
and my body what do you can't processes caffeine quite well.
(03:23):
So you know, there's point time when I we'll feel
my physical limit and kind of know like okay, like
no matter what, it's not necessarily physical, it's a mental thing.
I'll start getting just a little bit too snappy and
like all right, time for me to take a break.
So it's hard to do, and there's not a lot
of them, you know, phytically racing all the time and
(03:47):
board very easily seen. When I want to take a
break an hour later, I'm like, okay, that was good enough,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Let's give back in it, so I can't switch up.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, I'm the same but with food, like if I
don't eat, I get super grumpy, the same kind of thing. Anyway,
I want to I want to start like way back
at the beginning. And I'm not saying way back like
you're super old, because you're not at all. But I
want to go back to like Eric when he was
a teenager, like a young teenager, and you were in
school and you were like, I don't know what do
(04:16):
I want to be when I grow up?
Speaker 3 (04:18):
What? What did where did you see your life going?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
And how did the people around you and your path
kind of meander into what it is now?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Man, this would be interesting for other people to tell
the story too, But you know, I kind of grew
up in a small town Mount area, North Carolina, which
is kind of was the basis of a well known
older American show, It's Andy group of show. The town
is known as Mayberry and so very much southern town.
(04:49):
And you know, I kind of grew up in you know,
lower middle class, let's call it. But I didn't have
a lot of small house. I had a older brother
and a younger brother, and it was probably a couple
of thousand square I think maybe there's five of us
in one bathroom and and so. But the fortunate thing
my mother, uh was a teacher's aide, and my grandmother,
(05:13):
uh was a teacher. And so I kind of grew
up when I would say, six hundred yards probably from
an elementary school that I went to, and so I
would I would come home by myself after about five years,
when I was five or six years old, and stay
at the house until my mom got home from another school.
And so you can imagine the you know, the the
(05:36):
fun activities that a young boy gets into, gets the
trouble and different things. And I would make a bow
and arrow a lot of limbs and shoot airs across
the street and in someone's house and just all kinds
of things of trying to keep from being board. So
I got you know, I would read things or take
things apart and always kind of you know, did well
in math, I think. Uh so I played sports by
(06:00):
month as I was very competitive playing sports and you know, baseball, basketball,
any kind of sport. Older brother a lot of competitive sports,
and so you know, I really kind of liked math.
And then you know, I ended up having a little
(06:20):
bit as as you mature, kind of was in this
like gifted and talented program and I ended up getting
out of it because it was just like small classes.
There was too much of a click and I just
didn't want to be a part of that.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
And it was a smart one in the room.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well you know these things, you know, you look back
and there's a lot of favoritism and a lot of
different things, and you know, it took me a long
time to appreciate what's called the English classes because it
just seems so subjective, right. I was like a science
math like how can this you know there's a right
answer or wrong answer, and you write a paper and
it's like no, I really liked that, and you're like, well,
(06:57):
what do you mean, I don't like it, you know,
and so you know, it was a lot of wrong,
got frustration. So there was this thing and then one
summer I went to a kind of a camp, let's
call it where you know, it was like at a university,
and you got to go through like different parts of
an engineering you know, not knowing what engineering was like.
(07:17):
He spent a week in a physics thing and a
week in this and the whole time, you know, everybody's
playing basketball. It was like a fun It was literally
like being in college, honestly. But it was in my
tenth and eleventh grade year and I came home and
I was like, okay, I definitely taking pheasic class. Physics
class kind of guided me. You know. I was always
you know, my father had want to I be in
(07:38):
PC right when they first came out and I learned
the program. I think it was nineteen eighty and so
I was like, I always love computers, still do, and
so I didn't really know what it was like computer science.
Like I was in a class and wrote a database
for the basketball team to put our stats and send
it to the newspaper. And you know, this was like,
you know, I won't give it the year. It was
(07:58):
in ninety eighty four probably and nineteen eighty four, and so,
you know, so about that time period, so you know,
I kind of knew I was going to get more
towards the calculus and engineering thing, but I was still
playing a lot of sports. And I sang, actually people
laugh about this when I say this, but I was
in this music. Uh you know, I would go sing
(08:19):
in New York City and Eastern and do all these
kinds of things. And so honestly, I wasn't sure we
go to the music or science or or or whatever.
And so I was, you know, the Top Gun the
movie came out, so and so I literally was like,
of course, uh, you know, I saw it fifty times
and so I was like, okay, I'm going to fly
(08:41):
military planes.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
And so that's what I wanted to do when I
was a kid.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
There. So I ended up you know, senior year playing
sports and different things. I had a broken wrist in
a in a basketball game, but I'd gotten accepted to
the Air Force Academy, and my parents it's not really
been able to pay for my own college. They're like,
you gotta go, you gotta go. And of course I'm like,
top gun, I'm gonna go fly, but I didn't really
(09:07):
want to go, and so I had been except NC
State and I'm also short of went out there and
my rear three fractured and ended up coming back to
n C State, but I already had gotten enough taste
of Okay, I wanted to go, you know, not necessarily
fly the military planes, but really got into like on design,
(09:27):
I'm like, I want to be around it and all
the different things. So I knew I wanted to be
an airspace and so I went to n CEA State
did airspace engineering. Ended up my junior and senior year
in college, got NASA Langley Research Center had this summer again,
the summer kind of thing where I went there during
the summer I really got exposed a true kind of
(09:50):
airspace and different things, and so basically I ended up
going to grad school. NASA Langley Research Center funded my
way all the way through grad school, and I started
in to come take some floodynamics so I could combine
all the computer science and aerodynamics, and so I really
started doing that through grad school and just really got
into thinking I was going to I was doing hypersonics
(10:13):
and all kinds of kind of fundamental fluid physics and
they had never seen a race. At this point. I
played all kinds of sports. I'd never been any I
knew who they'll learn Heart was because I grew up
in North Carolina, but I didn't really watch it. And so,
you know, right before I was getting ready to get
out of a graduate school, my wife was pregnant with
(10:33):
our first son, and I kind of grew up in
North Carolina coming down to where the like kind of
the NASCAR teams are based that area. There's a lake
around here, Lake Norman. Uh, So I would come visit that.
So I had some learn to drive around that lake
and different, yeah, kind of you know, family history. And
so I met Michael Cranifice who used to run Worldwide
(10:56):
Motorsports for Ford. At the time, there was there was
a team called craft Sauce, one of my friends. I
went to visit him in the race shop and literally
walking out the door to go to lunch, I ran
into my pranipicst and he, my friend, introduced me, and
I told him budd. He said, when you get ready
of good our school, you call me. He said, Oh,
I need somebody like you, and I was like, Okay, yeah,
(11:16):
that's just being nice and whatever. And so so right
before I really left, I had some jobs with Naval
Service Warfare Center and different military things, and uh, my
wife was like an hour away from where we grew up.
She's like, you know, and otherwise I was gonna be
in California or or somewhere away from home. And uh,
so I called Michael and said, hey, you know, maybe
(11:37):
I'll come down and talk about it. And uh and
I think what the government was paying at the time
for PhD person out of graduate school was pretty low
and uh and so uh when I went and I
knew nothing about cars, nothing, planes, aircraft, all about it.
I've been doing all kinds of really theoretical food physics work.
(11:58):
And so I went to see Carenifice and walked into
the room and uh, it was Michael. It was Carl Haass,
he used to own Newman HOSS and then Mike. Uh,
Mark Hamford. I don't know if you know Mark campert
is he used to the Hamford device and all that.
Mark works for Newman Hass and was the air Damas system. Yeah,
(12:18):
so I go down to visit thinking I was just
going to talk to Michael and explore it a little bit.
And I walk into the conference room and he's got
Carl Haas there, who was the former owner of Newman
hass or wasn't host part of the Newman house. And
Mark Hamford, who did the Hamford device and he was
a well known Aernam system. So they started asking me
(12:38):
questions and you know, felt like thirty seconds, but thirty
minutes into it, they offered me a job. It was
two or three times the government was going to pay and.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So, and you had a kid on the way, so
you couldn't very well tend that down.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
And so I go back and I talked to my
advisor at college and they were like, oh, no, you're
throwing your education while you're throwing your life while you
shouldn't do it. And Doug Yates actually was, you know,
a well know needs to builder in Nascar. He went
to in c State and there was a professor that
he had done some work with that I got connected
with and started talking to him, tell me about NASCAR,
(13:16):
and tell me about this, and not a short accepted
the job. And so this was probably May, and obviously
I started on July something and so I was in
the library like reading every single textbook on vecandynamics and
deriving the equations and terrified that I wouldn't gone. And
(13:36):
again this is nineteen ninety seven, and so I'm thinking,
I'm like got to just know all this at like
such a high level. So I spent three months really
studying that. I knew the air dam it was part,
and I was studying the villacams part. So my first
day on the job, you know, with grayfus hosp was
(14:00):
the Indie test. So my very first day in racing period,
I got off the airplane. I got from the airplane.
Is the Inn Speedway a test? And uh and so
there's a lot of funny stories from NASCAR doing those years.
Everybody played tricks on new employees, and they were of
course seeing me come in like a fresh meat, you know,
(14:23):
here as a PhD aar space engineer coming in and
and uh so they tried to, but I was athletic,
played sports, and they tried to. They just threw me
impact gun and say take this wheel off, and uh
and so and literally just six months later, Roger Penskey
came in, bought Carl Haas's half out, and so became
(14:44):
Penskey Carnifice and some of the engineers left from Rusty's
watched his team Penske Racing South and so I kind
of became a chief engineer of Penske Racing for period
there and I started doing uh scale model aeryd amic work.
Can I going back and forth and kind of built
from there. So a lot a lot more stories there.
(15:05):
But I started going testing with Stuart Grand Prix Form
one team at the time in England and back in
forth with California. So it was definitely not an expected
route from what I grew up into where I ended up.
But now from where I sit, the technology that's in racing,
and you know, it's the combination of sports and the
(15:29):
competition and being competitive. You know, it's kind of like
it was made for me, but I just didn't know
at this time, you know. So it's one of those
things that you know, worked worked out for me.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
So so you fell in love with the racing side
of it as well as the technology inside of it,
obviously because it gave you the sports that you were
(16:03):
doing when you were younger. That's that's such a cool story.
So then you went to from from there, you went
to r CR or AM I missing a gap.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So I stayed at Penske for about four years, and
they were still kind of split up the teams, like
Jimmy Mayfid's team was in one shop and building their
own chassis and Penske Racing was and the other with Rusty,
and I was kind of, you know, engineering wise, in
the leadership role of both of them, really still leading
(16:33):
the erynamics. And I was doing a lot of stuff
with Ford Aeronamics at the time, and so I left
thinking I was going to do consulting because it was
a little bit of drama with the penskea campus team
and I was doing more things with Ford and there's
some uh, you know, let's call it judgmental mistakes and
(16:56):
being a little impatient at the time, and I ended
up starting a little consulting company for a year there
and then met Ray Everingham at the end of two
thousand and one.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Ray's been in everything. It's amazing time.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
And so it's almost like the same story like with Pranapus,
Like I didn't really know Ray. Obviously, I knew him
because it was you know, I was doing a lot
of aerdemic work time and at Penske, we were winning
races and polls. And this was during the heyday of
Ray and Jeff on the NASCAR twenty fourteen. So I
would watch him in the garage and I would see
(17:34):
things that he was doing with the car and I
was like, I know why he's doing that, and so
I had a lot of respect for him, and so
that same thing, I ran to him and he's like,
you need to come work for me and started this
Abhem Motorsports and want to come to be the technical director.
And I was like, why don't you do a deal
with my consulting firm, right, you know? And so I
was trying to so he kind of did at the beginning,
(17:57):
and long story short, I ended up going to work
for So I was at Abraham mother Sports for about
I don't think the case King Bill Elliott or the
originally we wanted to break yards perst year. That was.
That was a year I started and then stayed there
for five years. Uh really like it's longer than that,
about six maybe left there, went to Michael Waltrip Racing
(18:18):
because Andy Graves at Toyota was my next door neighbor
at the time, and he was at Toyota and Michael
and then had struggled their first year to make races
and they wanted me to come over and help sort
it out. So I did that for a year. You know,
didn't work out of the long run, but us F
(18:39):
one and Form one team kind of started in the
area and then I, you know, Ready and uh, you know,
we Ready wanted me to help him and designed this
lands speed record car. So we started working on a
landspeed record car, and I started doing the us F
one thing, and of course that never materialized, and so
(18:59):
I went back to what was then rich Payton Motorsports,
which was the old Everingham team and it was Ralsh
they were running combined together when Carl Edwards and kids
and Greg Befoor and Casey and all they were running.
So I kind of started back and doing simulation there.
And two years after that, Richard came to me in
(19:20):
the garage and said, you should come our cr I
want to really started being more technical. So I went
there two thousand and twenty eleven, two thousand, I think, yeah,
twenty eleven twelve. We stayed there about eight years, and
then I ended up coming to GM.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
All the way through that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Johnny, did you were you just solely focused, like I
just want to be the best aerodynamic engineer that I
can be, Or did you want to be like team
manager or did you have anything that you wanted to
achieve like obviously now you're the big boss at GM.
Did was that goal of yours? Or did that happen
just because you were brilliant all the other things?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, I mean I started out doing aeronamics at Penske,
but by the time really I was a chief engineer
at Penske, I'd spent my time learning. I ended up
learning a lot about you know, the vehiconomics and that
side of it. And I was very mathematical, and so
you know, I learned early on by it's called by accident,
because I didn't know anything about cars to think about
(20:22):
the car as a whole and understand the whole dynamics
of the vehicle of which ERA was a part of it.
So I always, you know, typically led the error programs
all the way through you know, telling the children's and
even then. But mostly I was the competition director or
a technical director all the way from really into Penske
to so now I've kind of led most of the
(20:48):
technical or engineering efforts and always pushing different areas other
than just aeryonamics. You know, you've got to have one
thing that you're really good at, so you know, when
things don't work out still people want to hire you
for a particular skill that you have. But I've kind
of done all the areas for a long time now,
(21:10):
almost thirty years. So.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
But in your role as like technical director, it's a
lot of peopling and a lot of leadership and management
and everything else. Do you enjoy that aspect of it
as well as the sitting down and crunching numbers and
running programs on computers that tell you about all the
different things you can do with the race car, like
what floats your boat?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
You know what kind of what they call it? When
the shrip movie. Like I'm like an onion. I got
a lot of layers, but you know, you know I can.
I can do both, and at times I like doing both,
Like I do like to sit and kind of derive
something and I can I like rinning programs and stuff,
(21:54):
so if I can focus on it and learn and
execute something. But I do get bored easily, and I
kind of when I got into racing, I kind of
like what's at the track right and going to the
racetrack and you're kind of seeing all the elements of it.
And one thing coming out of school, you know, I
saw that there are just a lot of unknowns, a
(22:15):
lot of complexities, like with tires and things that you know,
you can't just really sit at the desk, and you know,
dealing with drivers like rescuing them. I also learned very
quickly that maybe because I was Southern, I had a
Southern accent. I was able to blend in and I
could play the PhD when I wanted to, and I
could play the you know, nod and so I always
(22:37):
had good relationships with the drivers. I mean I always
have had that. And so I kind of, you know,
got to understand that, you know, I don't quite wrap
the whole thing around just sitting at a desk. You know,
you've got to kind of tie reality to it, and
it forces you into the teamwork and the relationships and
(22:58):
the people side of it. And so I would say
I developed over time, Like I said, during this Pinsk Yeers,
I was, you know, fresh at four years high school. Uh,
you know, they don't necessarily teaching in engineering school, certainly
not in the PhD in airspace engineering about the people's
skills and and you know, I'm a very just caught
(23:18):
confrontational competitive person, so you know, I wasn't used to
like direct challenges, you know, and so I always will,
you know, uh, compete at that level. You know, played
active sports and somebody you know in sports, you know,
you're playing basketball. So my challenges here, you know, you know,
you're like like right right in their face and everything else.
(23:41):
And so it took a while to kind of channel
that the correct way not to not to get you know,
tilted too far because learning that there's always agendas and
always things and and uh you know, so I would
say over the years I matured more on the understanding
of the whole pick sure, and you know, managing the
(24:02):
owner and the team and the budgets and the sanctioned bodies.
And so I think really that's why I've been able
to be successful is I kind of had to learned
some of that by fire, and so knowing all of
the elements of the technical part, been able to communicate
and on the people side, and the visionary had looked
for the future of any situation. Normally I can slot
(24:26):
into one of those roles and so understanding all those
elements are important when you start leading bigger organizations because
they're not that many people that have the experience and
making me really good in specialized areas, but bringing it
all together and managing conflict and how to plan and
(24:49):
develop as there's not that many people.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Right, And I mean as a driver, you experienced that
kind of thing all the time because you have engineers
that are really good at working out their comput you
do and they're like, well.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
This is what it should do.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
But then are they good with translating what you're telling
them and the actual human aspect of it.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
And so.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I think that a lot of engineers don't have that.
So I think that's a very unique, well rounded thing
that you have that Yeah, maybe it's learnable, but I
think also it's instinctive, right, And I think that probably
helps you with employing people at GM too, because you
know what to look for.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Well. I mean it's yeah, looking for the right talent,
but also it's making people believe I'm a positive kind
of future. What you try to hey, what we can do,
what's possible. I try to make people believe that we
(25:54):
can do things that maybe never can quite do. With
the moments so inspiring people. It's really where I feel
like I get good technical people, and you know, we
like to have good technical discussions and try to you know,
when we've done a lot of over the years, a
lot of really kind of cool technical things that that
eventually that reputation follows you and then you end up,
(26:19):
you know, even building GM Motorsports, you to build this
kind of critical mass. Once we started building this critical mass,
next thing, you know, it's like okay, you mean he's
over here, and he's over here, and everybody's like, you're
getting the band back together, you know, all the people
that used to work with and having the resources, and
it just kind of grows, you know, and you' it's
(26:39):
being able to help people with problems. So you've got
to be technically confident enough to be able to at
least understand what they're saying, if not able to help
them or even do it. And then recognizing that that
people learn faster, and there are a lot of things
that you can't do serially if you have to doing
(27:00):
in parallel, and so more people that are smarter than
you or as smart as you, that can work at
the same level and parallel you're going to progress way faster,
and so so many times you see things fail because
there's a bottleneck. Somebody's trying to be in a position
and it's for them to whatever when his ego or
(27:21):
trying to get a salary or whatever, and it always chokes,
you know, good good work. And I've tried to not
be that and try to just work with everybody. And
I've been around a lot of people like Raving him,
and you know, I've got it. It's crazy the experiences
I've been around, the Karl Hoast, the Roger Pensky's, the
(27:42):
v him, the Rick Hendricks. I mean, you think about
the Richard Peddie, you know, and that's you like, okay,
what are all these great elements of these leaders and
winter winners like what you know? And you kind of
get the sense of what it takes the wind and
you try to, you know, wrap all that and everything
you're doing.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
How do you juggle the like the day to day
stuff with all the different programs. So you have to
take like GM corporate and marketing and all of that
side on board, and then you also have to do
the IndyCar side and the NASCAR side and the emsicide
and like all the different elements like is it a juggle?
(28:25):
Have you found it happy? And the F one now
too obviously I think.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
And then the F one stuff is definitely made me
realize that you can't you can't do it all. You
definitely can't do it all. But it's hard to say
on the top of each issue with that another sports
car adding it to the other things and then going
(28:53):
into wek and all of that's involved. That that's complicated
learning the series, learning that now F one's a whole
different animal, uh, And you know, and it's I wouldn't
say that that I do a great job juggling, but
I have to do a better job than anybody else juggling.
And so typically what I try to do is, like
(29:15):
in particularly inside of GM, is a really try to
be a student of like what's important? Like you again,
like I said before, how do you kind of separate
the noise and like, you know, what's important to GM?
Like why are we doing this? Why are they doing it?
What means success? And you know, and try to build
(29:36):
a little bit of that moving forward to where you
get people believing. And so that's the same thing, you know,
you know with all these other programs, you kind of
try to say, okay, what you know, what part do
I need to do? And most of the time it's
communication problem. It's a problem with the ownership or the
or the or the leadership of that team or the
(29:58):
series or who this series, and it's like, okay, like
where is the problem? And since you I did find
a problem quickly or potential problems, you just start working
towards it. You know, if it's a particular leader of
a team that is being stubborn or closed minded, you're like, okay,
I got to work on my relationship with this person, right,
(30:19):
And eventually you just keep coming back and take whatever
argument you got to take and try to build trust
and and say, look, I'm here to help you. I
don't you know, I don't want your job. I don't
you know if you're successful. I'm successful. We're all successful,
and it's just time. I'm relentless on kind of coming
back the next day, and if I get frustrated, if
(30:42):
I get you know, people I said the other day,
it's shocking, like I said, was growing up, people knew
I was an emotional person. And I said that to
someone yesterday and they're like, really, you just seem so steady,
and I'm like.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Right, so calm, I would say the same thing. I
would never imagine you being like running off.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
My life and kids are that but uh, you know,
and it's not a bad emotion. I think emotion is good, right,
I mean, if you can control that, yeah, yeah, it's
passion and you know it drives you and you don't
want to lose. I would say probably the underlying thing
and what you know what made when I was younger,
I did kind of grow up a little bit poorer,
(31:22):
and I always had people say what you couldn't do
and you can't go to college, you can't do this,
and so I've always kind of had this running fear
of failure in the background, you know, and always trying
to prove something to somebody and which mostly it's me. Uh,
and so that's always kind of like been there too
to drive you, you know, and so you so it's
(31:45):
it's a challenge at times to manage the emotions, but
that's really trying to harness it. I think what's more
important if you if you don't have the emotion, you
can't connect with people, because then you're then you're literally
like they see you as you know, they don't know
who you are, right if it's you're either robot or
(32:05):
or you know, when people can see your emotion go
up and down, they kind of learn you and they say, hey,
this is a real person. You know. I could be
crying in front of my whole staff because somebody said
something nice in the meeting, or I could be fired
up and angry and pushing, you know, in a competitive sense.
(32:26):
And so I think that's always helped me, not hurt me.
So it's a again, I've made mistakes. It's it's hard
to be most sports for thirty years and not make
them dumb, you know, mistakes.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
It's funny that you say that, like I can maybe
learn something from that, because I've always thought that showing
emotion was a bad thing, and I've always tried to
not and so inevitably over the years, Like if I
get sad or whatever, it tends now to anger. So
then I, you know, channel it that way. But I
(32:58):
should probably just learn how to steer it rather than
try and try and shut it off. But it's interesting
that you look at Formula one these days and stuff,
and I was having this conversation the other day all
the drivers are robots. Nobody can connect with them because
they're all the same, Like you could take one out
and put Okay, some of them, like Max, has a personality.
(33:18):
There's some that do, but a lot of them are
so say that you can just like plug and play
the drivers. And I think what made mode to sports
great back in like the Dale days, was that all
of them had different personalities and you could connect with them,
and you could connect with the manufacturers.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Like my mum drove.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
A renaut Laguna, So when I was watching touring car races,
I always wanted the Reno to do really well. And
I liked smoking Joe Winklehock because he was putting his
head out the top of the roof and stuff like that.
So I think there is a lot to be sop
for emotion and connection. And actually it's I will give
that some more thought because that's a good way of
framing it. Yeah, did you struggle or did you find
(34:15):
it easy to delegate?
Speaker 2 (34:17):
I wouldn't say struggle, but I don't find it easy
because you know, I find that line of doing it
yourself in uh, you know, in actually delegating but then
holding something accountable. I kind of sometimes fall too much
into a teacher mode where I want to teach him
(34:38):
how to do it, And really I don't need to
be teaching how to do it. I just need to
get somebody to do it and home accounts so we
can do more things. So if I had to look
at a meter of I've probably struggle with it, you know.
But that's one thing again, bigger organizations, bigger things. That's
(34:58):
a lot the GMT h as you uh, you know,
you look and see how GM operates in a company.
I never worked at a big company. There's just a
lot of things that you end up have to do
and uh and at the end of the day, you
can't really develop future people just to be uh a
succession plan if you don't do it. So it's a
lot of leadership building you you are almost forced to
(35:21):
do it. But I would benefit from carrying less stress
if I would let others do things and be okay
if it's I'm a little bit of a perfectness, you know,
not not maniacal, but but enough where I just need
to be okay if you get if and if it
(35:42):
gets done and at a at a high level that
you know, it's managing your energy, your emotional energy on
what to worry about. If you worry about something too little,
that you should have delegated and you wasted energy on
something else, And so that's a lifelong process.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Actually, do you I hadn't thought about the not being
in corporate America because I've also not been in corporate America,
and team environments are very different than corporate America. Like
if I spoke to my if I spoke to somebody
in GM, if I was working there, the same way
that you taught your engineers sometimes like HR would be
(36:22):
all over it, right, and the same way the other
way around. And so I think when you're in a fire,
like you're in a pressure cooker situation on a team
in a race and it's competition and it's very different.
Did you how did you then transition to being in
corporate America and having to do things very differently? I
(36:43):
would imagine it's very differently. Although is it very different
or do you get to run it however you want?
And it's like running a race.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Team, it's very different in some way good ways, right,
you know, I think you know Juma's company and reference Point, Uh,
you know they care about employees significantly more than what
I would say race team does, right, race team, well,
they care about employees. They're singular focused on performance and
(37:12):
you know, you can move people out of there in
a second. And you know, in some ways that's good. Right.
It's like a you know, professional sports team. There's not
much tolerance and in mediocrity, right, and so it doesn't
leave a lot of room to grow and to learn
and things like that. So when I first came to GM,
(37:33):
I was like, wow, they actually care about you, and yeah,
that was a little bit of a you know, like
a positive good thing. And then you look at the
but you know that the things you hear and talk
about about how corporation moves slower than a than a
race team are true. But there's times when it's really important.
(37:54):
There's a lot more resources available and a lot more
things to tap into when you have a large company,
and so you know, normally your decisions are getting made
and things are getting made that you know, two things
are dealing with significant amount of money, and so you typically,
particularly the public company, you know you need to have
alignment with the corporation, like, you know, does it fit
(38:16):
in the budget, does it is it serving the purpose
is that money Bud spent somewhere else. And it's hard
to do that on your own, you know, there's just
too many things going on. And then also it's a
very public facing position, so you're representing gm UH, it's customers,
it's employees, and so you know, it's it's easy to
(38:40):
you know a lot of times you say do no harm, right,
You're you're always trying to to build things. Where in
the race team sometimes you're like, oh, you know, just
be a cowboy, and you know that, you know that
the press is going to see it as a you know,
sports thing, but you know it's a little different, h
you know, and so you have to be and I
(39:00):
think that hurts, Like when we talked about drivers a
little bit, maybe not be able to show the emotion
is because you're speaking for more people than he used to.
And then you also, social media, you know, unfortunately, gives
the platform of people to give a lot of criticism
and that always is in a way doing some kind
of harm, and so you're if you try to eliminate
(39:23):
that totally, you end up not not being able to
say a lot or do things quickly because you get
paralyzed and so you got to kind of just I
think that's where great leaders, where I think Mary Barr
and Mark Royce and DM are great leaders, is that
you know, when you when you get a vision, not
being afraid to move, and even if you have to say, Okay,
(39:44):
we're going to do this, and then through a year
later the something changes in the world and you've got
to make a big change that Okay, we know we
built this factory and we spend this amount of money
on this this thing, and it's a billion dollars, but
I consider being a cry over billion dollars and give
up the opportunity to earn fourteen more. And you know,
and that it teaches you to to make those cast
(40:07):
trade offs, make those decisions, but move, you know, move quicker.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Any decisions better than being paralyzed and not making a decision.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
So it's still learn still learning, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I guess everybody's still learning. And you think of the
Mary Bars of the world, and you think they have
it all figured out, right, Like I look at you
and I think you have it all figured out? But
do have you struggled because your attention is taken away
from the technology sign and you it's spread so thin
(40:43):
over all of them, like the indie car technology and
the NASCAR technology and sports car technology in the Formula
one technology, Have you managed to still get knowledge of
all of those different things so you can jump in
as and when and let you enjoy doing it, so
you know how the Formula one hybrid system works and
(41:04):
all of that or is it way more higher level
than that now?
Speaker 2 (41:07):
You know? I think you know as has broadened out
with that one. I still learn quickly. I still want
to learn quickly. I'm like a call it or I'm
constantly have a huge appetite for learning and a lot
about again trying to make sure I understand, okay, what
(41:29):
is important one of the central things. So I would
say where I do start to get you know, over
time I'll get frustrated as if you know, that's called
the administrative burden of just having to manage the machine
and all the different things. And you know, the longer
I'm away from some element of the technical or the
(41:50):
competitive part of what's going on, the less I like it.
You know, typically I'm always like, okay, this is happening
for a future benefit and a future thing. So you're
still working towards something that's important. But you go through
page where you're dealing with a lot of like, you know,
(42:11):
just managing your people and something didn't go the way
you want. You know, I think about bop and and
all the challenges of that. That'll take the lights another thing.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Holy moly, you've got so many.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
So it's that's a challenge. Like you know, I don't
ever want to get away from it so much. If
I do, then I'm going to retire because then you
just lost the spirit of it. I don't want to
be just the manager. I mean, has to be some element.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
So if I said to you, ay, Eric, I need
an engineer. I need you to be my engineer for
the Daytona five hundred, do you think that you could
put a car on track that was competitive, but you
think you could engineer me to be fun?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yes, that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
You know, I was been involved in calling the races
quite a bit up until this past year, so for sure,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Well, then if you're ever at least and you're welcoming
my pick.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
I might pop up there even now there that dude.
So that's the danger A lot of times of being
in the position on me and there's a lot of
times I'm just curious, I have a thought, I want
to talk about something, and uh, yeah, it's nothing for
me to step in to talk to the race engineer
and say if I wanted to try this in practice,
(43:33):
and why aren't we doing this? I got the question
about this, and and now you know, I'm just more
wanting to engagement, just you know, to have the discussion.
I'll walk off and come back later and someone say, well,
what happened. They're like when you tell them to go
change this, and so they went and did I said, no,
I didn't. I didn't say to do it. I just
want to talk about it. It's like, you know, it's
(43:54):
like I had an idea, like you know, I didn't
mean like there's a lot of a lot of times
when you I can't quite go in there and do
what I want to do because people will take it
too literal, and you I just want to, you know,
have fun in the engagement and the discussion of it.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
You know, Yeah, I am what do you think separates them?
And this was actually going to be a question about drivers,
but now I'm also I'm also interested in engineers. What
do you think separates the great Creachief engineered technical director
types like your ray evidems. What do you think makes
(44:33):
them so awesome? And then the same question for the
for the drivers, because you've worked with a lot of
really great drivers too.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah, I would say it's the same element probably certainly both,
but of anyone that really succeeds at a high level
against others, it's it's just this absolute refusal to lose.
I don't even know how to describe it, you know,
and people get that wrong sometimes, I think means it's
(45:01):
not a vanity as much as a uh there's something
that drives you to like it's like you care about
it so much and you feel like you've put all
your energy into it and you still get feed. Racing teach, unfortunately,
teaches you how to lose, right, And you think about
other sports, you know, maybe baseball, where you accept that
(45:25):
you're going to have a batting average of three hundred
and that's great, you know, So you know you're not
you're struck. You're getting out seven out of ten times
in racing. If you won thirty percent of the times,
you'd be the greatest one history, you know. So you know,
and so how do you manage that and still have
the drive you know, really forces you into you know,
(45:48):
the focused part that the what's relentless pursuit of better.
Someone wrote an article recently, and I think that's true.
It doesn't matter whether Michael Geordy listening to Michael. You
listen to Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame speech when he
got in basketball, you might as well be talking to
Ray everything. I mean, this same fear that somebody thinks
(46:11):
you're stupid, right, somebody thinks you're not any good. Michael
don a Grace basketball player, he said he spends the
whole time talking in the whole Fame speech about how
he was going to prove this person that talk you know,
junk to him in the game. It you know, so
they have this maniacal uh you know, they don't want
(46:31):
to lose. A lot of times it's driven because they're
embarrassed that somebody else might have either beat them and
they didn't think they should have, or that they would
look at it and think they didn't work hard enough
or want smart enough. It's some element of that. And drivers,
you know all or are you know, they can't stand
the fault that this person beat them, right, right right,
(46:57):
they work on the craft and then you know they
you know, the great ones actually just don't give up
and they just don't lose. They won't lose.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Well, I've got them not giving up part down, it's
the losing part.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
I have to work.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
You try, but I will never give up here.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
I'll be like seventy years. I'll not be like Eric put.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Me in crazy story, Like I played basketball growing up.
This thing as you get older and you watch drivers,
you know, even in any athlete, and yeah, I played
basketball a lot, you know, but I was great. I'm
six foot tall less than that now, it feels like,
and I was not a great basketball player, but I
(47:43):
played at a decent level. And I'll never get the
first time my son beat me in a basketball game
out in the front yard, I was like, how did
that happen? Like there's there's no way looking at him,
and it was. And there's so many of those little
of wake up calls that you get that Okay, I'm
(48:03):
just I can't do anymore. That's my level, right, Like,
I've gone as far as I could and I've tried,
and that's it, you know, And then you got then
you got to figure out how to mas the mostional
part of being okay with that and that you know
things that you can learn where it's like, okay, I
just need to read some more. I got to figured out.
I got to go get somebody give me more money.
(48:25):
I can prove it. That never really does because that's
the stop step. But you know it's it's tough.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
I know, well yeah, I mean I know it all
too well because obviously I'm not getting any younger. But
I feel like I want a shot, Like I want
to be able to say, Okay, I had a good
team and they were capable of doing this, and whether
that's P one or P ten or whatever it may be,
that's where I ended up. I feel like I've just
been scrambling to get a ride for the most part,
(48:57):
and i've and so just being on the grid is
a thing, and I don't want that to be my story.
I want to know where I stack up, and then
I think I can start with the next generation, and
so I think I would be okay with it then,
but right now, I still feel like I have to
prove to myself like and I think, okay, I don't
(49:18):
think I'm a center on Michael Schumacher. But I think
I'm good.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
And I just want to know. I just want to
know what that is.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
So what makes you I've just got a couple of
last questions. I know I've taken up so much of
the time, but.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
What makes you get out of bed in the morning,
Like what excites you the most about what you're doing?
Speaker 2 (49:40):
It's fine, probably thanks very more coffee, because coffee. I mean,
I'm going true, it's get some coffee. Uh, you know,
I still think there's you know, things you're trying to prove, right,
It's always this point when there's the next thing that
(50:02):
has challenged to you, you know, like F one, you know,
been in and around it enough and the challenge of
going through getting the intrigue. I mean, there were so
many things that were said, and so many things that
you just laugh at a little bit because you're like, okay,
like that's just straight arrogance. It's like, you know, and
(50:25):
it's you're just like I just got insulted, like directly,
like not even not even hidden, like you know, it
was a direct but it's and it's like okay, at
the moment, it's true, but it's but you know, but
it's like just I tell us all the time, like
I've literally had a lot of aernamics education and background
(50:47):
and you know, and even even got to spend a
lot of time around some F one aerdynamics and different things.
And you know, I was at the track two years
ago and someone walked me over and it's like and
then had the best intentions in the world, best intentions,
and like they were like, here's an F one car,
(51:10):
and like they just look at the car holistically. They
just look at the era of a car holistically. And
I literally looked at them and I was like, no kidding.
It's like it's because they can the rules allow it, right,
It's like you don't think the person back design in
the fifteen or an airplane's like, you know, gotta got
(51:33):
a rear you know, tail or real horizontal stabilizer on
airplane and the rest of the cars a box, do
you It's like, you know, that's that's what aeronamics is.
It's like really trying to manipulate the flood field and
understand how it works and whatever. But you know a
lot of times people kind of you know, in every series, right,
(51:54):
it takes certain skills and let's call it a you know, experience,
it's to know how to get everything out of those rules.
But like you know, when you tell someone like, okay,
Nascar is way more technical than you think it is,
Like you know, you're still doing simulation and simulators entire
modeling instead of working in the winter on them to
(52:17):
get another you know, twenty points of downforce. I'm trying
to figure out how to move all these surfaces like
twenty thousand and seven inch and stack it all up,
whether it's where it's one hundred of a second and
being able to control that week in and week out.
You know that know itself is challenging. You're going to
seventeen different types of tracks with different tires, and every
(52:39):
week it's a different weft side tire and red side tire,
and how do you deal with it? And everything has
its every game, everything has its own challenge. And the
minute you think just because you're dominating in this one
and you know this one, that somehow that makes you
a better human or a you somehow freed out calculus
better than the next person, you're you know, you're.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
I literally never thought that.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Right, right, There's a lot of things that do just
disruption is a painful is a painful thing, you know.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Okay, last question, I promised if you could go back
and give twelve year old you or fifteen year old
student who wants to be you a piece of advice,
what would that advice be.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
I would say, you know, be just a hair more patient.
Like I feel like the path out my life has taken.
I've raised two great kids, I have a wonderful wife,
great relationships. You know, I wouldn't think I would be
able to do that without going through some of the experiences.
But I think there's a few key moments where I was,
(53:46):
you know, really down and emotional and and uh, you know,
all things are temporary, you know, and they kind of like,
you know, just a little more patience, a little more
you know. I told my kids, you know, no matter
how bad the day is, I always tell myself that
(54:07):
I'm gonna get up the next morning. I'm enjoy my coffee, right,
and so it's like and then I'm going to start over.
And you know, I think learning that at a little
bit early age that time, and each day chipping away
at it. You know, there's no problem that persists no
matter what you know no matter if it's a difficult
person or what you know it you're it's bigger than
(54:29):
what you're making it out to be at the moment.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
That's amazing. Eric, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
I am beyond honored to work with you and drive
with you, and you're such an inspiration to so many people,
and honestly, I've learned so much during this school I
think everybody's going to really enjoy listening to it, so
I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
That's enjoy are continued working together and lot of stuff
for the future.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
So thanks, thanks for listening to Throttle Therapy. We'll be
back next week with more updates and more overtakes. We
want to hear from you. Leave us a review in
Apple Podcasts and tell us what you want to talk about.
It might just be the topic for our next show.
Throttle Therapy is hosted by Katherine Legg. Our executive producer
(55:19):
is Jesse Katz, and our supervising producer is Grace Fuse.
Listen to Throttle Therapy on America's number one podcast network, iHeart.
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Katherine Legge
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