June 17, 2025 • 45 mins
On this episode of Throttle Therapy, Katherine Legge checks in following her NASCAR Cup Series race in Mexico City and looks ahead to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. She’s joined by driver Paul Dallenbach to discuss their matching leg injuries, his worst crash, and the support and competition that comes with growing up in a racing family. Paul shares how he got involved in stunt driving and why he prefers driving in commercials.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Throttle Therapy with Catherine 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. Hey, and welcome to this
(00:21):
week's episode of Throttle Therapy with Me Catherinelegg. Very tired
Catherine at the moment, actually, because I've been taking on
a lot lately and I love it, and I'm super
happy that I'm doing all the wonderful things that I'm doing,
and I'm very grateful that I get.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
The opportunity to do them. I just need a good
night's sleeve, I think.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
So.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I flew in from Mexico City to Colorado, where we
will be racing Pike's Peak this weekend. We'll be testing
as of four o'clock tomorrow morning. But I want to
tell you all first about the super cool time that we.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Had in Mexico City in NASCAR.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So obviously Mexico City is a new venue for NASCAR.
They haven't raced there before. Most of the drivers have
never raced there before. I, however, have well one of
the lucky ones. I say that, but then when I
drove the track. I didn't remember or recognize any of it.
I remembered driving in like maybe one hundred yards of it,
(01:24):
and then the actual race track nothing, which I don't
know what that goes to say about my memory. I
think I should probably go and see a doctor about Oh,
what's the word, And I'm actually not being facetious when
you have dementia.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Dementia is the word.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Gosh, maybe I really should or maybe I'm just tired
and I'm taking on too much.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's how it was the last time.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Anyway, we arrived in Mexico City and we went and
did a track walk, and then we had.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Practice, yeah, for practice in.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
NASCAR and qualifying. So first day I think we got
like an hour and a half practice.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It was awesome. We had a few issues in Pe.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
That we got around, you know, fixed, moved on from.
I also had to learn the car. It's only the
second time I've driven the Cup car, and it was
the first time I've driven out on a road course,
so kind of drinking from a fire hose in that respect,
But I very much enjoyed learning the car. We got
(02:21):
quick and throughout the session no risks were taken. It's
very conservative on like down shifts and not going off
and a bunch of other things because of I probably
still have a little bit of PTSD from Phoenix. And
then in qualifying, actually host of our cars and host
of ar not my favorite person at the moment, blocked
(02:41):
me on my two fastest lamps, which I don't blame
him for wanting to be in front of me, because
I would have wanted to be in front of me
because he was obviously going to be quicker. He's been
in that car, he's got a fast car. But to
actually back me up, I thought was pretty shady of him,
and I told him as much.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
And then in the race, I was kind of chilling.
I was hanging out. I felt racy.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I told the team I felt racy and I wanted
to go fight with the guys, and we collectively decided
it wasn't worth the risk because we had to finish
all the laps. So for the first stage, I was
just hanging out on the back of the field watching everybody,
trying to learn, trying to figure out where I could
go faster, where I was overdriving. I think definitely have
(03:27):
a tendency to try and be the last of the
late breakers. And carry too much speed into most corners,
and that really cost me on the exens and can't
do that with these big, heavy beasts.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So learned a lot there.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Kind of sucked in the chicnes and the essays, to
be honest, but got better every stint.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I will say it did rain, and.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I was very apprehensive as to what these cars would
feel like in the rain. I haven't driven in the
rain in a while, and so.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
It was a lot of fun, honestly, slipping and sliding everywhere.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I mean we were going over there, down the front
straight away, over the grid boxes for the open wheel
cars and getting will spin and so it was a
feat to keep it on the racing stuff. It's a
lot of them didn't and again I was just being
super conservative. It dried out, we went to slicks, then
I decided to race them, and we were making our
(04:24):
way forward. I think we were up to like twenty
first or something. If it's all cycled out with the
pit stops and the people shot stopping for the stages
to try and get ahead of the people who were
going for stage points. And what I mean by that
is you get allocated stage points for the first I
don't know how many. I'm still new to this. Let's
(04:47):
call it ten. I think it's ten or twelve. And
so everybody from twelve back pits a lap before it
goes yellow on a stage, so they've already done their
tire change and they're full of fuel, and then when
the leaders pit, they cycle behind them. So it's a
way of kind of cheating track position, if you like.
(05:08):
So with all of that being said, we were like
legit twenty first, twenty second. I'm feeling pretty racy, definitely
still learning and Carsinhosber, my favorite person in the whole world,
just spins me out.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Whether he spummed me out because he wanted to cause
Yellow to get back on the lead lap, because you guys,
he was a lap down when he spum me out.
Now bearing your mind, if I had done that, I
would be vilified right now, like my life would not
be worth living and I would be universally hated. But no,
nobody backs An Ireland not super happy with him. I
think there's a lot of people that aren't super happy
(05:43):
with him. So I'm gonna I'm gonna watch and wait
for it all to unfold. But we went back out
on track, and I think we showed that we had
some pace.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
My oh, the grip.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Tape on my brake pedal had melted and the rubber
on my shoe had melted, like worlded it together, so
my foot was stuck on the brake pedal, so I
couldn't modulate coming off the brakes that easy because I
couldn't pull my foot off.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The brake pedal, So that was super tricky.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And I think maybe we overinflaced the tires because for
the last ten or fifteen laps I was on the
hurting bus where I was literally tiptoeing around trying to
trying to make it home.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Had it not been for Carsenhoserber, my favorite person, we.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Would have finished, I think easily in the top twenty five,
and we had some good lap times, decent lap times,
you know, for my first time doing it. So a
lot of positives to be taken from that and a
lot too, a lot to take on to Chicago, which
is my next cut race. But before we get there,
I have a couple of weeks coming up. I have
(06:48):
Pike's Peak, which I'm here now as.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Soon as I can.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I'm going to start studying for the top section, So
on Tuesday morning we'll do it split into three sections,
hundred and fifty seven turns and like ten miles or something.
We'll do the top section tomorrow and then the bottom
section on Wednesday, and the bottom section is qualifying, so
that's where you're qualifying times come from.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
And then on Thursday we will do the middle again.
And we never did the.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Top section when we were here testing last week, so
it'll be really interesting to do the top I believe
you can get another look at one of the sections
on Friday if you so need. I don't think my
team want to do that because they want to prep
the car ready for Sunday, but it's there if we
need it. And then obviously Friday we have FanFest in Colorado.
(07:35):
Springs Witch is amazing, really looking forward to that. It's
like thirty thirty five thousand people that come out and
the streets are packed and it's like a big street
party and it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Meanwhile, my friend.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Cara, Cara who you've heard on this podcast, is coming
into town on Wednesday and we are going to do
some fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
So what happens is what happens.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Is when we are we test from sun up like
four am until nine am when they let the general
public on the mountain. So after nine am we have
time to ourselves after we debriefed and we've gone through
things with a team. Obviously we go to sleep at
(08:17):
like six o'clock in the evening, so it's not that
much time, but it's still significant and there are some
really cool things to do. So I'm going to get
Kara to do the manitud Incline with me, which is
like twenty seven hundred steps vertically to heaven and it's
really tough.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So I did it last year by myself.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
You go down a path whether way, you don't have
to go back down the steps, because I feel like
that would be a new joker. I started the Manitou
Incline feeling relatively fit and healthy even in the altitude,
and I saw a bunch of people stopped on the
side on the way up, and I was like, the
only thing I'm going to do. I'm going to go
really slowly, but I'm going to not stop. That lasted
(08:57):
probably about five hundred steps, and then I was one
of those people still on the side, going this is
a lot harder than it looks, but you get some
cool pictures and it's a challenge, so I love it.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
So we'll do that one day. We'll do the Garden
of the Gods, which.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Is a lot of fun to go run around and see,
and yeah, we'll generally look at Manitou Village which is
really cool and talk to some of the other competitors and.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It's just a really fun week.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
And then Saturday we stage for the race and Sunday
and the racinal. Sunday is the first time we see
the mountain from start to finished in one go. You
don't get to see it before. Then, you don't get
to see the transitions from the middle, bottom, top, blah
blah blah. You literally get to see it on race day.
And we are at the mercy of the gods with
(09:46):
regards to the weather, because we.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Are going for the front will drive record.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
We were about three seconds off last year and about
a nine and a half minute run, so it wasn't
much at all. So this year I want that record,
and if the weather allows and it's not too hot
and it's not too cold and it's not too snowy,
then we shall get it. We've got a bigger oxygen
bottle this year. Because last year I ran out of
oxygen before the top, and the top is when you
(10:10):
need it. It starts to feel a little bit loopy
if you're not acclimatized by the time you get to
the top. However, I have been in Mexico City for
the past week almost week, so I feel like that
was a good acclimatization, if.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That's a word. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this week.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
My dad's super sick, which bothers me massively obviously, and
I feel bad for because I think he tries to
keep up with me, and I think I've put a
lot on my plate and therefore his plate this year,
and hoping he feels better tomorrow. However, I'm not expecting
him to be up but three to go up the mountain.
(10:48):
So yeah, looking forward to it this week.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Very aptly. We have a good friend of mine.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I know I'm biased, Okay, I'm not blind to the
fact that I like having my friends on, but that's
normal because you have a certain level of comfort talking
to them rather than strangers.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
But pulled back, who is a Pike's Peak legend and
a good friend.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Of mine and from a very storage racing family and
just generally super cool.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Dude. Oh, we have the.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Same injury where I broke my leg in the same
place that he broke his leg last year falling off
the mountain, So try not to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And Welcome to the show. To pull doll back.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
This week, I am joined by a very good friend
of mine, a friend that I've known for like a
couple of decades now actually, which makes me feel a
little on the old side. And I started off racing
with him in a DP car back in two thousand
and and we became fast friends and we've done a
(12:03):
couple of really cool things since. Welcome to the Show,
pulled on.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Two thousand and seven. So we met before that though,
because we met skiing, didn't we correct?
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, we met up in snow mass I think you
were skiing with I think your boyfriend and then with
Kevin Calkov. Yeah so, and with Mark.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Wide So that was two thousand and five.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yes, and Mark White and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, we were skiing, which you do way better than
I do, by the way.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Well, I started when I was young and working in
a ski shop for twelve years. I got to ski
like one hundred times a year, so you get good
at it. But I don't ski that much anymore. I
you only ski about ten times a year now.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Oh really, And how's the leg when you're skiing?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
My leg is fine. I didn't have Yeah, I didn't
have the strength. I could only ski for about three
hours this year. But yeah, it was pretty good. It
just got tired more than anything. It didn't really hurt.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, we have matching leg injuries. I had to Yeah. Well,
first of all, I want to say, I didn't remember anything,
like I've hit the walls so many times. I don't
remember anything. But I remember about that ski trip that
I went to your family's ranch. I met Wyat, and
I met your mom and dad, and I didn't meet Wally,
your brother at that time. But I just remember them
(13:22):
being so incredibly welcoming and lovely, and it just feeling
like family. And sometimes you meet people and you just like,
these are my people.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah they were. My parents were great people. And we
had a ranch for fifty years. We sold it a
couple of years ago, and you came around, I believe
New Year's and we always did this chili cook outside
up on the hill on that's right. Yeah, yeah, snow
or not snow, and it was a lot of fun.
But my parents, you know, I lost both my parents
(13:50):
within ten months, and my dad just over a year ago.
And my mom was just the most friendly person in
the world. She just you know, there was always so
much food that she would cook just in case somebody
came over. And yeah, she just it was just a
big welcoming place. The ranch was.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It was really And she was such a badass too,
like to control all of you boys and to do
everything that she did like she was. She was a
cool lady.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, yeah, no. She came from a you know, an
Italian family in New Jersey. We have a really close family,
even my mom's side of the family. All my cousins
and aunts and uncles. We talk all the time and
we go visit all the time. And she kept that together.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
She was the one that, you know, family was everything.
And you know, like my brother's living in Costa Rica
right now, but he's looking to move back to Florida.
We just got back from Florida last night. We're looking
at real estate down there. We're trying to all be
kind of close. My sister's in Indy and she'll always
be there because you know of her work and stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
But she went in racing also for those of you listen.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yeah, she works for ECR and her husband works for
McLaren now, although he you know, he had his own
business forever, Ricky Howerton, and he took over his dad's business,
Jackie Howerton. They built sprint car parts and headers for
Indy cars and nascars and you know for years. But
now he's running the machine shop at McLaren and his son,
(15:19):
one of their sons is working there now. So yeah,
they're embedded in Indy Love Florida.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
By the way, let me know where you all are
and I might come down to you.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Absolutely, talking about family racing stock like it's just in
your blood. Obviously you've got White, You've got your brother
you raced. Did that come from your dad? Do you
think he caught that passion?
Speaker 3 (15:41):
He didn't encourage us, probably didn't want us to do it.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Did he raise himself?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah, my dad raised Indy cars from sixty five to
seventy nine, but ran Indy sixty seven through seventy nine,
all straight years. He almost won in seventy five, where
he led ninety six laps with twelve laps to go,
they burned the piston and then it rained and Bobby
Unster won the race. So we were all going to
(16:09):
Victory Lane heading there and it was his year. And
then in seventy nine he had three races where he
lost a wheel and he thought it was a sign
to stop, and the cart chief Stewart thing came up,
so in nineteen eighty he took over as car chief Stewart.
It was only the second year of kart and he
(16:31):
did that all the way through two thousand and three.
So he was the car Chief Stewart through seventy three
and the safety director and he was really the one
that helped create the safety team. So that was his
big thing was safety and track safety, but the safety
team was his brainchild. He's very proud of that. He
(16:51):
did retire and then they brought him back after a
couple of years when a couple of the chief stewarts
didn't work out, and he came back for a couple
of years and then he found in two thousand and
three he was finished. So my brother and I we
just and my sister, we had no access to racing
up here in Colorado. The closest go car track was
four and a half hours away. There was no short tracks,
there was nothing. There was a track in Aspen Woody
(17:15):
Creek Raceway which had like a Jaloppe type stock car
series and they ran five races a year. My brother
started doing that, you know, in high school, and then
I did it when I was fifteen. And it's kind
of funny how my career was kind of bookended by
break failures. But my first race, I had a huge
brake failure, had a massive crash and actually have it
(17:37):
on video and VHS because yeah, it's pretty bad. Yeah,
it was nineteen eighty three, so I really didn't get
started racing until eighty five. I was still in high
school where he did the Volkswagen Cup, and then I
did Atlantics and Transam and did whatever I could from
then on.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Was there any competition between you and Wally, your brother.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
On the ranch? We had several racetracks, we had four wheelers, snowmobiles.
Everything we did was competition and my sister, I mean
it was like brutal and that was our training really,
you know. We had mini bikes and we would race
in the snow, we would race in the dirt and
(18:21):
whatever we could. But yeah, a competition and everything. I
was a way better skier than him, so he conveniently
didn't ski. He kind of quicked because he didn't like
like that. But we were very competitive but at the
same time very supportive of each other and we tried
to help, you know. He helped me out through my
career and finding me a couple of rides here and there.
(18:43):
But yeah, super competitive.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So did your assistant not want to race?
Speaker 3 (18:47):
No, she didn't. She was very good on everything. But
she moved to Indy about nineteen ninety and she started
catering for Chip Ganassi Racing. She started she loved to
cook through my mom, who was a wonderful cook, and
after like three years or so, then she ended up
(19:09):
with pack West and then she ended up with Conquest,
and she was always with a smaller team, you know.
After Ganassi, she never did any competition outside racing on
the ranch. So, no, it wasn't her thing.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, so you did like transam and a bunch of
different things, right.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I did a lot of everything, or a little of everything,
let's put it that way. Besides hill climb, which kind
of took over the latter part of my career, I
only did really three years of full time racing, did
you really? Yeah? Because it was Volkswagen Cup Rookie of
the Year, and then I jumped to Atlantics and that
(19:51):
was Rookie of the year. And the Atlantic thing was
just kind of a funny story. I thought it was
a huge jump. And a friend of ours that had
an Atlantic car, he was going through a divorce, so
he sold us the team for a dollar and then
we ran the year, and then we sold it back
to him after the divorce was final for a dollar.
(20:12):
But it was great. I mean, going into the last
race at Saint Pete, ID qualified fourth. I was third
in the championship behind Scott Goodyear Calvin Fish, and I
was the top American and I would have won that
race if I would have finished, because everybody in front
of me had a problem. But the standing starts we
were doing at the time, and the light went yellow.
(20:35):
I think it was a weird sequence. It was like yellow, red, green,
I can't remember, but it wasn't green, and the guy
behind me took me out and so that was the
only DNF of the year. But after that it was
like two Atlantic races and I did finish second in
the twenty four hours of Daytona by ten seconds. I
won a GTO race with Chris Kneifel in eighty seven,
(21:00):
and then I raced for Selene, which was in eighty
nine with Calvin Fish and we did the escort series
and the truck series. I won a truck race, but
Selene was a disaster. I mean, it's funny. I just
he was trying to be an IndyCar racer that year
and he took all our sponsorship money from what we
(21:21):
were doing and put it in his deal. And I
just ran. I just was going through our warehouse and
I came across the letters. I mean, he owes me money.
I mean it was my first paid ride, and I
found the letter of him just pushing off things like, oh, well,
you need to send me the receipts in US dollars,
not the Canadian race. I'll just tell you the story
(21:43):
how he would operate. He would have us all pay
our own expenses, and he made us all rent five
liters Mustangs. We'd get to the track, he would take
our keys.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Oh he took the tithes, didn't he.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
I think he took all parts off twenty four hour
race and then all the bent parts went back on
the car and we take it back to Hurts and
that's what they got. And yes, sorry, but yeah, I
had a revolving door of drivers because everybody had Johnny O'Connell,
(22:16):
I had Rich Titus, Dorsey, Strader. They just they figured
it out that they weren't going to get paid and
it was just a disaster. And after that it was
just like two Atlantic races. There are five super b races, there,
two trans am races, and then Daytona, where I asked
you to drive because we had an extra seat, and
that was a lot of fun and although we weren't
(22:37):
very competitive, but it was you know, I love doing
dayton and supers.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Wasn't very good.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
You were good at that time.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
It was not very good, but I became a pretty
good endurance driver and just that was my first time
doing it and I was.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It was your first time, Yeah, like what, so what
is it? Yeah? Those cars were Those cars were fun.
That DP cars were pretty easy to drive. They were
like a faster trans am car, but people knew how
to manipulate the rules better than we did. And I
just remember being so much lower down the straightaways than
a lot of the faster cars with the same motors.
(23:10):
It's like, what's going on. It was frustrating.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I remember being like a deer in the headlights, not
figuring out traffic or any of the things because it's
the first time I drive one, and it was the
first time I've done any ensurance racing. And you and
your brother were super kind and sweet and understanding, and
I was just thinking, I'm.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Sorry, sorry, No, you did great, you did great. It
just it's always those races are so frustrating when you
have problems in the first five or six hours and
then you're twenty thirty laps down and then you're just
out there going to I want to go home.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, I want to go to sleep now.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
We had a couple of those. I've done some races
there where I would just show up to the Roar
before it was called the Roar with a helmet and
my suit and hoping to get a ride, and I
did usually. And I remember Anthony Azorro and I were
sleeping in the transporter. We lost a cylinder on the
pace lap. We were so slow, and we're both talking
(24:08):
to each other, going freezing in the transporter in the
middle of the night, because you know, we had no
place to go, and we're like, who's going to clutch it?
How would you get that at this thing? Let's just
go home.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
See you can admit things like that now, yeah, because
when you're still driving, I would never Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah, it was funny.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
So after your foray and second racing, how on earth
did you get to be the hill climb racer that
you are?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
I did the hill climb in eighty nine in just
a production car. I was offered a ride and I
was the only non turbo in my class. But it
was a good time to run. But then my brother
was having a car built. He had a car owner,
Dan League in ninety one and Mitch Davis, who you
(25:03):
know was your engineer at coin built the car in
Indy out of the Patrick Racing shop. So the car
had a lot of Indy car influence on it, and
Wally got a cup ride. So he said, hey, do
you want to do this? And I had nothing going on.
I'm like yeah. So the first year we went up there,
the car arrived late. I did one day of practice
(25:26):
and that's when you had a day of qualifying, one
run in qualifying, and then the race and I finished
fifth out of twenty five in open wheel and I'm like,
I like this, and then the second year I broke
and then the third year I broke the overall record,
which was Ary Ventnam's record. If you ever see the
climb dance video of the Pougeot, that was him, And yeah,
(25:49):
the road was perfect and I had broke the record.
So that's how I fell into it. King of the Mountain,
King of the Mountain. So I was able to make that.
You know, I won twelve times, three times overall, almost four.
I missed it by half a second once. But as
an open wheel car to win overall, we're not supposed
to win overall. Oh really, Well, it's all the rally
(26:09):
cars and you know all the factory cars that come over.
You know, we're just two wheel drive cars.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And that's when there was like dirt at the top
rank before it was paved.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, I won it when it was all dirt, and
then I won when it was fifty to fifty. Like, well,
they it took twelve years to pave. They did a
mile a year. Oh wow, they started like in ninety five,
ninety six somewhere in there. But what they did was
they didn't pave it in order, so they paved like
the first mile, then they paved in the middle a mile,
(26:40):
then they paved the top of mind. It was weird.
So those were the trickiest years because the tire choice
was really hard because you go from pavement to dirt.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Payment dirt and conditions, I.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Guess conditions were were crazy and there's always crazy up there,
as you know. But it just became my thing. I
was really good at it. It was my Indy five hundred.
I loved it. You know, I still may go back.
It's kind of one of those things. But I've had
two major accidents.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, you've driven up there in like crazy cars as well.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I had a car. It was my original car. We
just kept changing. It had a v you know, a
sprint car motor, which is eight hundred and fifty horse
power motor, and then we put two turbos on it
from Banks, so we had fifteen hundred horsepower.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Oh my god. Like for those of you who haven't
seen Pike's Peak, there's like three thousand foot drop offs
where you can literally just plummet if anything goes wrong.
Like I can't even imagine building your own car has
a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah, it's crazy. When it was dirt, it was a
lot safer. It looked more spectacular, but it was so
much more forgiving. The road was pristine, and if you
got in trouble, you can spin it off into the
you know, not even go off half the time. Now,
if you get in trouble, you're going off. And they
(28:01):
didn't pave from edge to edge. They paved like three
feet less. Yeah, down of the road. Yeah, so you're
going faster. They made the corners sharper now because it's
not as wide, and if there's any fluid, any thing
that happens, any kind of failure, you're going so much faster.
(28:21):
In my unlimited car, well we went unlimited when we
put the turbos on. I was going one hundred and
fifty six miles an hour up there in four places.
And in twenty twelve, my throttles stuck. Basically once I
went to full throttle, which was after the second turn,
and I went through.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
The trees and was that the fast big one?
Speaker 3 (28:41):
That was the first big one. So I cut five
trees and a half and knocked four over and I
was out.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
And this is the one everybody talks about, by the way,
like it went down in history.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, it's on video. And I was out of the
hospital in two hours. I didn't break a bone. It
was crazy. I was contorted like it took me three
months to feel right, and I had a headache of course,
a bad concussion, three stitches in my hand and that's it.
So the next year when I went back, I raised
for Reys Millen and I broke the record in time attack.
(29:17):
I beat his time by a tenth of a second,
and that was really set in my mind, like, Okay,
the crash didn't affect me a.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Tenth of a second on like eleven minutes.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Yeah, that's so crazy. It was nine minutes and forty
six seconds. I went up there. I beat David Donner
once by two tenths of a second. I lost the
overall in twenty twenty by four tenths of a second.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
That's so crazy to me.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
It is. It is crazy. Yeah, And everybody goes up
there with such different packages of cars and to come
that close it's really cool.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So fast forward to last year when you helped teach
me how to do it. It was my first time
doing it. I still don't know it completely. I have
to go back and study because we're going out there
this week actually to test. But you did it in
an electric Hyunda and had a huge crash. It was
very scary for everybody, but no one more so than you,
(30:22):
I would imagine.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Yeah, we were driving the for Hyundai. Brian heard it
and it was a great effort, super great team, and
they just had a software glitch and I lost my
breaks going about one hundred and ten is what they said,
and I hit the mountain at eighty. It was either
turn it into the mountain last second, which I did,
(30:45):
or go off an eight hundred foot cliff on the
Leuiase style. So I was pinned in the car. I
don't know how many times I rolled over. I wasn't
I didn't lose consciousness and my head was fine, but
my leg was pinned in the car and broke my leg.
And you were kind enough to come see me after
surgery and before surgery.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Well, we have this same injury now too, so we
have the exact same thing happened to us. Do you
have PTSD or have you like cut it off?
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yeah, no, I'm fine. I the first time it happened,
when I crashed, I was like, okay, it was mechanical.
It wasn't my fault. But now the second time it
was mechanical, and now I have doubts about going back
because neither time was my fault. It was quiet for
(31:33):
a year until they came out with the a recall
of the car in the software, which they have fixed
that the problem of the car. I'm able to say
it now. I mean, I'm going to say it now.
I mean it was it was a whole thing about
left foot breaking and blah blah blah. But the car
is does not have an issue. Now it's totally fine.
But going back now it's more about my wife does
(31:56):
not want me to go back. And I talked to
the people that you know heard it, and they I
think they want me to come back if they go
back next year. And I just have to decide if
I want to do it or not. I do have
my own car, the open wheel car, but I'm not
going to take it up there anymore. I'm going to
go do a race in West Virginia in August with it,
(32:17):
the West Virginia Hillfest in August, and just just have
fun with it. Maybe go to Goodwood next year.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I was going to say good to it. Do you think.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
So I grew up, I've done.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Twenty minutes from Goodwood. I've never done it and I
want to, and I love it so much. Every time
I was home for it, either the hill climb or
their revival. Actually that was fun too. I would always
go because there's such iconic events. So I was going
to say, I used to take it to Goodwood, but
I don't know what's involved in shipping it all the way.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Over well upon then they have different things for different people.
So I won it in two thousand and seven in
my class, and then went back in twenty seventeen and
finished eighth overall. In the shootout tents would have got
me third overall. But you don't get very much running.
It's like Pike's Peak. You only get two runs a day,
and it's the guys that have been there. There's a
(33:09):
huge crown in the road, so to get the set
up right you have to figure it out really fast.
But they do have packages where you can shift the
car over, but you have to be invited and accepted.
And I think it depends on the theme of the
year on what cars they want. They don't want the
same cars every year. The most amazing event. Ever, it
is so cool. They treat you great. It's so many
(33:31):
people there. They have this Driver's club and I'm just
in close, just street close. And i walk down out
of the Driver's Club and I'm just do doo and
I walk out and I just get hounded by people
with photos and autographs for a half hour. And my
wife is just like, nobody knows you in your hometown.
(33:51):
Everybody knows you over here. And it just shows you
how the race fans that go there are so knowledgeable.
They follow all kinds of motors words. I know Michelle
Mutan is she's going to be at pikes Peak this year.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
She oh, yeah, I didn't know that. It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yes, she is being inducted to the Hall of Fame,
which she'll join me because I'm in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yes you are.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
And so I met her there and that was cool.
That was like really cool for me. So and I
hope to see her this year. I'm just going to
go to FanFest this year. I might go to the race,
but yeah, so she'll be there. And Lynd Saint James
is the Grand Marshall.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I was going to say, Linda James, I don't know
if Michelle and Lynn worked together, because Michelle started with
Kathy Erlaka. She started the FIA WHIM, which is the
Woman in Motorsports Association, and that was when I went
back over there and to do DTM, So it would
have been like two thousand and seven ish and I
(34:49):
was the driver representative for it and it was just
getting started. And now it's like this big conglomerate and
they've got places in every aco and I know that
Lynn did the one over here, so I'm guessing that
they know each other before Michelle retired from doing that. Yes,
like two of the most iconic women in racing. And
to be clear, Michelle like one on a global world
(35:10):
rally stage, Like she is a badass. I am so
honored to know her.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Honestly, she's amazing. I mean what she did on Pike's
Peak in like I think it was eighty five, she
came up.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
And just pissed a lot of people off.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Pissed a lot of people off, for sure, you know
certain people, but yeah, and then she won major races
and she was with Pudi and I worked with Audi
for twenty three years doing their car commercials almost exclusively,
so I was always a fan of looking back at
her old videos and stuff, and she was amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
She was amazing. And actually that's a that's another good
segue into talking about your your other life where you
do all the cool stunt driving for commercials and movies. Yeah,
that much be interesting to do that. Do you ever
feel like, oh, we shouldn't be doing this. I always
look at the movies, yes, oh.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Yeah, but it's very coordinated, but there mistakes happen and
things go wrong. I don't do a ton of movies
because I don't like being away for so long. I
mostly do car commercials.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Just how I got around.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Right, a lot of standing around. But also you make
more money in the car commercials. And it was another
ski shop thing, you know. Johnny Uncer and Bobby Unser Jr.
Came into the ski shop. They needed another driver instead
of flying somebody in, they got me my sad card.
And that's kind of how I transitioned into it. But
(36:45):
it's a very small circle of people. Hard to get going.
It took me about six years to get going. The
movies I have done has been a watcher where I
double piano reeves in a great card to chase scene,
and then I did Need for Speed versus Ferrari Bad
Boys for Life. But the movies, I'm not. I'd like
(37:05):
doing them because you're with your friends. But the commercials
are two three four days, you're done and you get
to come home. Movies you go away for two three months.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah. Sometimes it's not. And I'm probably gonna do one
in October in Europe. We'll see if I get hired
or not.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
I kind of imagined that they would just do like
the car scenes all in one go, so they'd get
those people in, get that done, and then move on
and do the fighting scenes all in one go.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
You know, like yeah, yeah, it's different on each movie,
but it depends. Like in Ferrari, Michael Mann, he wanted
to be involved in everything. Usually you have two units,
so you have a stunt unit and they go do
their stuff, and they have your acting unit, and sometimes
they commingle if the actors need to be in the
scene or not. But with Ferrari, I think it was
(37:55):
really hard because we couldn't do our own thing, and
we had to wait a lot. I was doubling Patrick Dempsey,
although he did most of his driving, I only I
was his COVID backup driver and he was gone for
like four days where I drove from but I drove
other cars. But he had bleached hair and I had
bleached hair for the one scene where he had his
(38:16):
helmet off driving the Ferrari.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
But you can claim to be a dreamy liquor.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Yeah, so those us right now, Yeah, bark ry. But anyway,
it was fun. It was Italy for seven weeks. It
was awesome. But yeah, they tried it. They usually have
a second unit and we can do our own thing.
But the way the stunts are, you have a you know,
stunt coordinators make or break it, and you know, safety's key.
(38:42):
We rehearse a lot so you get it done. Yeah.
Sometimes you'll rehearse for days just to do the scene.
You know, sometimes weeks if it's really a complex scene
or a long scene. It just depends on the budget
of the movie. On how I.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Always look at like The Fast and the Furious and
stuff like that, and they're like changing down to go faster.
Who came up with this?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
I did do? I forgot that, I see I don't
even watch those, but I did Fast and Furious for
I did only one week on it, and it was fun,
but it was. It's just it's a different deal than commercials.
I like the commercials because it's usually just you and
you're driving a car. I'm not into the crashing of
cars so much for the stunt driving. I'm into the
(39:25):
performance side of it, so I love the sliding of
the cars. And when I did a lot of cool
stuff with Pontiac and Audi and just some really you know,
Pontiac was really aggressive on their stuff and slides and
things like that. The movies, you get asked to crash cars,
and usually they have guys that like to crash cars
and they'll put them in for that. I'm more into
(39:47):
the car chases and slides and near missus. You go
your whole life racing, not to crash, so it's hard
to focus in on in crash, I would.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Be the same. I like the police chances and I
like yeah, I like Actually, the truck commercials are the
ones that I wish I were to stay in the
stunt driving for because you see them like towing stuff
through these mountain dirt roads and like that.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
I love those because a lot of them are done
here in Colorado. I love I love doing those commercials.
What's crazy about the commercials is like a lot of
times you're driving cars that are prototypes. There's only one
of them in the country, like with Audi. I remember
when the new a floor came out and they said, okay,
we want you to do a one eighty and slide
(40:31):
up against the curb. Oh, by the way, this has
to be at the LA Auto Show next week, and
it's the only one in the country and you don't
get any part. You get maybe one take of practice
at it, so you have to figure it out really fast.
But that's how my racing career was because I would
show up at races and get last minute rides and
I had thirty minutes to figure out how to go
(40:51):
fast and practice and qualifying race. The thing is in commercials,
you have to figure it out pretty fast, and that's
why they like hiring certain people because just so you know,
in the film industry, one hour of overtime is like
forty thousand dollars to the production because of all the
overtime they have to pay. So if they can get
(41:12):
something in one or two takes instead of thirty takes,
it saves everybody a bunch of money.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
It makes sense. It's interesting you've had like four different lives.
Really to think about it. It's fatty cool.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
I don't know what's coming up next.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I had the exact same thing when I broke my legs.
I was worried about mentally, like when I went to
a track again, would I still have it? Would I
be scared? How would I feel about driving a car
on the edge. So actually, when I was I wasn't casted,
and it was probably a couple of months in and
I was coaching Aileen Billman, a friend of mine, in
(41:50):
for our challenge, and I shouldn't have done it, but
I did it because I was like so concerned. I
wasn't concerned physically, even though it took me a lot
longer to recover than I thought it would. Write like
it goes kind of fast at the beginning, and then
you like on this long slog you have to say
every thing. But like, mentally, I was worried about it.
And so I got out of the wheelchair and into
(42:10):
the Ferrari Challenge car and just drove around like eighty
percent just to see whether I could still do it.
And it calmed me and I was like, Okay, it's
normal again, you know, like this is what I know.
So I feel like if you hit quite speed, you'd
have the same experience.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
I think so because the year I went back after
my crash, the skid mark on the road was still there.
Was still there was there for seven years. That's so
it was a reminder every time I went through there,
and you just block it out, Like I just got
(42:48):
my screws out last week, out of my leg.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I got it out about a month ago because I
was actually coming unscrewed. I had a screw loose.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, there you go. Well fitting, yeah, it was just
bob and they kept the roden.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
But ye same.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
I go back tomorrow and get the stitches out. But
I'm walking fine, and it does hurt. But like you said,
it is longer than I thought it would be. But
I think, yeah, you just get past it, and I
think I'll go back up to Pike's Peak and it'll
be fine. It's just I want to go up there
this year.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
I need you, I need you all that. I need
a driver, coach, come on.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
I want to go see where I crashed and see
if I got lucky or if I would have been
because what they said was I was like three feet
from going down eight hundred feet. Now, I don't know
if it was a gradual or straight down or what.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
I heard that it was like a platform, because obviously
we were all super concerned because we hadn't heard what
was going on for like an hour almost and well
Mark Whideer got word that you were on like a
ledge a platform before it went down the eight hundred feet,
So it was kind of precarious position that you were
(44:01):
in to try and get you out of that without
risking falling over the edge.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Well, the scary thing for me was I was trying
to call people on the radio because I was pinned.
I thought I was going to catch on fire. You know,
you hear the evy scary stories. But it didn't, and
if it did, I would have been in big trouble,
I think. But I was talking to Jeff's work yesterday,
texting him on the plane, and he was asking me
(44:29):
the same thing. Are you going to go back? And
I said, well, I don't know. I want to go
back and see where I ended up. Although, yeah, I'll
be I'll be fine. I know that mountain so well,
but it's the unknown.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, well, Paul, I will see you in a couple
of weeks. Thank you very much for coming on and
sharing your story.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I am glad to see you doing well and love
to the family and thank you. We will see you soon.
Thanks for listening to Throttle Therapy. We'll be back next
week with more updates and more overtakes, and 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.
(45:13):
Throttle Therapy is hosted by Katherine Legg. Our executive producer
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
Katherine Legg and start listening.
Throttle Therapy with Catherine 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. Hey, and welcome to this
(00:21):
week's episode of Throttle Therapy with Me Catherinelegg. Very tired
Catherine at the moment, actually, because I've been taking on
a lot lately and I love it, and I'm super
happy that I'm doing all the wonderful things that I'm doing,
and I'm very grateful that I get.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
The opportunity to do them. I just need a good
night's sleeve, I think.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
So.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I flew in from Mexico City to Colorado, where we
will be racing Pike's Peak this weekend. We'll be testing
as of four o'clock tomorrow morning. But I want to
tell you all first about the super cool time that we.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Had in Mexico City in NASCAR.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So obviously Mexico City is a new venue for NASCAR.
They haven't raced there before. Most of the drivers have
never raced there before. I, however, have well one of
the lucky ones. I say that, but then when I
drove the track. I didn't remember or recognize any of it.
I remembered driving in like maybe one hundred yards of it,
(01:24):
and then the actual race track nothing, which I don't
know what that goes to say about my memory. I
think I should probably go and see a doctor about Oh,
what's the word, And I'm actually not being facetious when
you have dementia.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Dementia is the word.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Gosh, maybe I really should or maybe I'm just tired
and I'm taking on too much.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's how it was the last time.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Anyway, we arrived in Mexico City and we went and
did a track walk, and then we had.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Practice, yeah, for practice in.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
NASCAR and qualifying. So first day I think we got
like an hour and a half practice.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It was awesome. We had a few issues in Pe.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
That we got around, you know, fixed, moved on from.
I also had to learn the car. It's only the
second time I've driven the Cup car, and it was
the first time I've driven out on a road course,
so kind of drinking from a fire hose in that respect,
But I very much enjoyed learning the car. We got
(02:21):
quick and throughout the session no risks were taken. It's
very conservative on like down shifts and not going off
and a bunch of other things because of I probably
still have a little bit of PTSD from Phoenix. And
then in qualifying, actually host of our cars and host
of ar not my favorite person at the moment, blocked
(02:41):
me on my two fastest lamps, which I don't blame
him for wanting to be in front of me, because
I would have wanted to be in front of me
because he was obviously going to be quicker. He's been
in that car, he's got a fast car. But to
actually back me up, I thought was pretty shady of him,
and I told him as much.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
And then in the race, I was kind of chilling.
I was hanging out. I felt racy.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I told the team I felt racy and I wanted
to go fight with the guys, and we collectively decided
it wasn't worth the risk because we had to finish
all the laps. So for the first stage, I was
just hanging out on the back of the field watching everybody,
trying to learn, trying to figure out where I could
go faster, where I was overdriving. I think definitely have
(03:27):
a tendency to try and be the last of the
late breakers. And carry too much speed into most corners,
and that really cost me on the exens and can't
do that with these big, heavy beasts.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So learned a lot there.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Kind of sucked in the chicnes and the essays, to
be honest, but got better every stint.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I will say it did rain, and.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I was very apprehensive as to what these cars would
feel like in the rain. I haven't driven in the
rain in a while, and so.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
It was a lot of fun, honestly, slipping and sliding everywhere.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I mean we were going over there, down the front
straight away, over the grid boxes for the open wheel
cars and getting will spin and so it was a
feat to keep it on the racing stuff. It's a
lot of them didn't and again I was just being
super conservative. It dried out, we went to slicks, then
I decided to race them, and we were making our
(04:24):
way forward. I think we were up to like twenty
first or something. If it's all cycled out with the
pit stops and the people shot stopping for the stages
to try and get ahead of the people who were
going for stage points. And what I mean by that
is you get allocated stage points for the first I
don't know how many. I'm still new to this. Let's
(04:47):
call it ten. I think it's ten or twelve. And
so everybody from twelve back pits a lap before it
goes yellow on a stage, so they've already done their
tire change and they're full of fuel, and then when
the leaders pit, they cycle behind them. So it's a
way of kind of cheating track position, if you like.
(05:08):
So with all of that being said, we were like
legit twenty first, twenty second. I'm feeling pretty racy, definitely
still learning and Carsinhosber, my favorite person in the whole world,
just spins me out.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Whether he spummed me out because he wanted to cause
Yellow to get back on the lead lap, because you guys,
he was a lap down when he spum me out.
Now bearing your mind, if I had done that, I
would be vilified right now, like my life would not
be worth living and I would be universally hated. But no,
nobody backs An Ireland not super happy with him. I
think there's a lot of people that aren't super happy
(05:43):
with him. So I'm gonna I'm gonna watch and wait
for it all to unfold. But we went back out
on track, and I think we showed that we had
some pace.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
My oh, the grip.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Tape on my brake pedal had melted and the rubber
on my shoe had melted, like worlded it together, so
my foot was stuck on the brake pedal, so I
couldn't modulate coming off the brakes that easy because I
couldn't pull my foot off.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The brake pedal, So that was super tricky.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And I think maybe we overinflaced the tires because for
the last ten or fifteen laps I was on the
hurting bus where I was literally tiptoeing around trying to
trying to make it home.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Had it not been for Carsenhoserber, my favorite person, we.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Would have finished, I think easily in the top twenty five,
and we had some good lap times, decent lap times,
you know, for my first time doing it. So a
lot of positives to be taken from that and a
lot too, a lot to take on to Chicago, which
is my next cut race. But before we get there,
I have a couple of weeks coming up. I have
(06:48):
Pike's Peak, which I'm here now as.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Soon as I can.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I'm going to start studying for the top section, So
on Tuesday morning we'll do it split into three sections,
hundred and fifty seven turns and like ten miles or something.
We'll do the top section tomorrow and then the bottom
section on Wednesday, and the bottom section is qualifying, so
that's where you're qualifying times come from.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
And then on Thursday we will do the middle again.
And we never did the.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Top section when we were here testing last week, so
it'll be really interesting to do the top I believe
you can get another look at one of the sections
on Friday if you so need. I don't think my
team want to do that because they want to prep
the car ready for Sunday, but it's there if we
need it. And then obviously Friday we have FanFest in Colorado.
(07:35):
Springs Witch is amazing, really looking forward to that. It's
like thirty thirty five thousand people that come out and
the streets are packed and it's like a big street
party and it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Meanwhile, my friend.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Cara, Cara who you've heard on this podcast, is coming
into town on Wednesday and we are going to do
some fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
So what happens is what happens.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Is when we are we test from sun up like
four am until nine am when they let the general
public on the mountain. So after nine am we have
time to ourselves after we debriefed and we've gone through
things with a team. Obviously we go to sleep at
(08:17):
like six o'clock in the evening, so it's not that
much time, but it's still significant and there are some
really cool things to do. So I'm going to get
Kara to do the manitud Incline with me, which is
like twenty seven hundred steps vertically to heaven and it's
really tough.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So I did it last year by myself.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
You go down a path whether way, you don't have
to go back down the steps, because I feel like
that would be a new joker. I started the Manitou
Incline feeling relatively fit and healthy even in the altitude,
and I saw a bunch of people stopped on the
side on the way up, and I was like, the
only thing I'm going to do. I'm going to go
really slowly, but I'm going to not stop. That lasted
(08:57):
probably about five hundred steps, and then I was one
of those people still on the side, going this is
a lot harder than it looks, but you get some
cool pictures and it's a challenge, so I love it.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
So we'll do that one day. We'll do the Garden
of the Gods, which.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Is a lot of fun to go run around and see,
and yeah, we'll generally look at Manitou Village which is
really cool and talk to some of the other competitors and.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It's just a really fun week.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
And then Saturday we stage for the race and Sunday
and the racinal. Sunday is the first time we see
the mountain from start to finished in one go. You
don't get to see it before. Then, you don't get
to see the transitions from the middle, bottom, top, blah
blah blah. You literally get to see it on race day.
And we are at the mercy of the gods with
(09:46):
regards to the weather, because we.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Are going for the front will drive record.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
We were about three seconds off last year and about
a nine and a half minute run, so it wasn't
much at all. So this year I want that record,
and if the weather allows and it's not too hot
and it's not too cold and it's not too snowy,
then we shall get it. We've got a bigger oxygen
bottle this year. Because last year I ran out of
oxygen before the top, and the top is when you
(10:10):
need it. It starts to feel a little bit loopy
if you're not acclimatized by the time you get to
the top. However, I have been in Mexico City for
the past week almost week, so I feel like that
was a good acclimatization, if.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That's a word. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this week.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
My dad's super sick, which bothers me massively obviously, and
I feel bad for because I think he tries to
keep up with me, and I think I've put a
lot on my plate and therefore his plate this year,
and hoping he feels better tomorrow. However, I'm not expecting
him to be up but three to go up the mountain.
(10:48):
So yeah, looking forward to it this week.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Very aptly. We have a good friend of mine.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I know I'm biased, Okay, I'm not blind to the
fact that I like having my friends on, but that's
normal because you have a certain level of comfort talking
to them rather than strangers.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
But pulled back, who is a Pike's Peak legend and
a good friend.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Of mine and from a very storage racing family and
just generally super cool.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Dude. Oh, we have the.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Same injury where I broke my leg in the same
place that he broke his leg last year falling off
the mountain, So try not to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And Welcome to the show. To pull doll back.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
This week, I am joined by a very good friend
of mine, a friend that I've known for like a
couple of decades now actually, which makes me feel a
little on the old side. And I started off racing
with him in a DP car back in two thousand
and and we became fast friends and we've done a
(12:03):
couple of really cool things since. Welcome to the Show,
pulled on.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Two thousand and seven. So we met before that though,
because we met skiing, didn't we correct?
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, we met up in snow mass I think you
were skiing with I think your boyfriend and then with
Kevin Calkov. Yeah so, and with Mark.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Wide So that was two thousand and five.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yes, and Mark White and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, we were skiing, which you do way better than
I do, by the way.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Well, I started when I was young and working in
a ski shop for twelve years. I got to ski
like one hundred times a year, so you get good
at it. But I don't ski that much anymore. I
you only ski about ten times a year now.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Oh really, And how's the leg when you're skiing?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
My leg is fine. I didn't have Yeah, I didn't
have the strength. I could only ski for about three
hours this year. But yeah, it was pretty good. It
just got tired more than anything. It didn't really hurt.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, we have matching leg injuries. I had to Yeah. Well,
first of all, I want to say, I didn't remember anything,
like I've hit the walls so many times. I don't
remember anything. But I remember about that ski trip that
I went to your family's ranch. I met Wyat, and
I met your mom and dad, and I didn't meet Wally,
your brother at that time. But I just remember them
(13:22):
being so incredibly welcoming and lovely, and it just feeling
like family. And sometimes you meet people and you just like,
these are my people.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah they were. My parents were great people. And we
had a ranch for fifty years. We sold it a
couple of years ago, and you came around, I believe
New Year's and we always did this chili cook outside
up on the hill on that's right. Yeah, yeah, snow
or not snow, and it was a lot of fun.
But my parents, you know, I lost both my parents
(13:50):
within ten months, and my dad just over a year ago.
And my mom was just the most friendly person in
the world. She just you know, there was always so
much food that she would cook just in case somebody
came over. And yeah, she just it was just a
big welcoming place. The ranch was.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It was really And she was such a badass too,
like to control all of you boys and to do
everything that she did like she was. She was a
cool lady.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, yeah, no. She came from a you know, an
Italian family in New Jersey. We have a really close family,
even my mom's side of the family. All my cousins
and aunts and uncles. We talk all the time and
we go visit all the time. And she kept that together.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
She was the one that, you know, family was everything.
And you know, like my brother's living in Costa Rica
right now, but he's looking to move back to Florida.
We just got back from Florida last night. We're looking
at real estate down there. We're trying to all be
kind of close. My sister's in Indy and she'll always
be there because you know of her work and stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
But she went in racing also for those of you listen.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yeah, she works for ECR and her husband works for
McLaren now, although he you know, he had his own
business forever, Ricky Howerton, and he took over his dad's business,
Jackie Howerton. They built sprint car parts and headers for
Indy cars and nascars and you know for years. But
now he's running the machine shop at McLaren and his son,
(15:19):
one of their sons is working there now. So yeah,
they're embedded in Indy Love Florida.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
By the way, let me know where you all are
and I might come down to you.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Absolutely, talking about family racing stock like it's just in
your blood. Obviously you've got White, You've got your brother
you raced. Did that come from your dad? Do you
think he caught that passion?
Speaker 3 (15:41):
He didn't encourage us, probably didn't want us to do it.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Did he raise himself?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah, my dad raised Indy cars from sixty five to
seventy nine, but ran Indy sixty seven through seventy nine,
all straight years. He almost won in seventy five, where
he led ninety six laps with twelve laps to go,
they burned the piston and then it rained and Bobby
Unster won the race. So we were all going to
(16:09):
Victory Lane heading there and it was his year. And
then in seventy nine he had three races where he
lost a wheel and he thought it was a sign
to stop, and the cart chief Stewart thing came up,
so in nineteen eighty he took over as car chief Stewart.
It was only the second year of kart and he
(16:31):
did that all the way through two thousand and three.
So he was the car Chief Stewart through seventy three
and the safety director and he was really the one
that helped create the safety team. So that was his
big thing was safety and track safety, but the safety
team was his brainchild. He's very proud of that. He
(16:51):
did retire and then they brought him back after a
couple of years when a couple of the chief stewarts
didn't work out, and he came back for a couple
of years and then he found in two thousand and
three he was finished. So my brother and I we
just and my sister, we had no access to racing
up here in Colorado. The closest go car track was
four and a half hours away. There was no short tracks,
there was nothing. There was a track in Aspen Woody
(17:15):
Creek Raceway which had like a Jaloppe type stock car
series and they ran five races a year. My brother
started doing that, you know, in high school, and then
I did it when I was fifteen. And it's kind
of funny how my career was kind of bookended by
break failures. But my first race, I had a huge
brake failure, had a massive crash and actually have it
(17:37):
on video and VHS because yeah, it's pretty bad. Yeah,
it was nineteen eighty three, so I really didn't get
started racing until eighty five. I was still in high
school where he did the Volkswagen Cup, and then I
did Atlantics and Transam and did whatever I could from
then on.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Was there any competition between you and Wally, your brother.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
On the ranch? We had several racetracks, we had four wheelers, snowmobiles.
Everything we did was competition and my sister, I mean
it was like brutal and that was our training really,
you know. We had mini bikes and we would race
in the snow, we would race in the dirt and
(18:21):
whatever we could. But yeah, a competition and everything. I
was a way better skier than him, so he conveniently
didn't ski. He kind of quicked because he didn't like
like that. But we were very competitive but at the
same time very supportive of each other and we tried
to help, you know. He helped me out through my
career and finding me a couple of rides here and there.
(18:43):
But yeah, super competitive.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So did your assistant not want to race?
Speaker 3 (18:47):
No, she didn't. She was very good on everything. But
she moved to Indy about nineteen ninety and she started
catering for Chip Ganassi Racing. She started she loved to
cook through my mom, who was a wonderful cook, and
after like three years or so, then she ended up
(19:09):
with pack West and then she ended up with Conquest,
and she was always with a smaller team, you know.
After Ganassi, she never did any competition outside racing on
the ranch. So, no, it wasn't her thing.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, so you did like transam and a bunch of
different things, right.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I did a lot of everything, or a little of everything,
let's put it that way. Besides hill climb, which kind
of took over the latter part of my career, I
only did really three years of full time racing, did
you really? Yeah? Because it was Volkswagen Cup Rookie of
the Year, and then I jumped to Atlantics and that
(19:51):
was Rookie of the year. And the Atlantic thing was
just kind of a funny story. I thought it was
a huge jump. And a friend of ours that had
an Atlantic car, he was going through a divorce, so
he sold us the team for a dollar and then
we ran the year, and then we sold it back
to him after the divorce was final for a dollar.
(20:12):
But it was great. I mean, going into the last
race at Saint Pete, ID qualified fourth. I was third
in the championship behind Scott Goodyear Calvin Fish, and I
was the top American and I would have won that
race if I would have finished, because everybody in front
of me had a problem. But the standing starts we
were doing at the time, and the light went yellow.
(20:35):
I think it was a weird sequence. It was like yellow, red, green,
I can't remember, but it wasn't green, and the guy
behind me took me out and so that was the
only DNF of the year. But after that it was
like two Atlantic races and I did finish second in
the twenty four hours of Daytona by ten seconds. I
won a GTO race with Chris Kneifel in eighty seven,
(21:00):
and then I raced for Selene, which was in eighty
nine with Calvin Fish and we did the escort series
and the truck series. I won a truck race, but
Selene was a disaster. I mean, it's funny. I just
he was trying to be an IndyCar racer that year
and he took all our sponsorship money from what we
(21:21):
were doing and put it in his deal. And I
just ran. I just was going through our warehouse and
I came across the letters. I mean, he owes me money.
I mean it was my first paid ride, and I
found the letter of him just pushing off things like, oh, well,
you need to send me the receipts in US dollars,
not the Canadian race. I'll just tell you the story
(21:43):
how he would operate. He would have us all pay
our own expenses, and he made us all rent five
liters Mustangs. We'd get to the track, he would take
our keys.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Oh he took the tithes, didn't he.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
I think he took all parts off twenty four hour
race and then all the bent parts went back on
the car and we take it back to Hurts and
that's what they got. And yes, sorry, but yeah, I
had a revolving door of drivers because everybody had Johnny O'Connell,
(22:16):
I had Rich Titus, Dorsey, Strader. They just they figured
it out that they weren't going to get paid and
it was just a disaster. And after that it was
just like two Atlantic races. There are five super b races, there,
two trans am races, and then Daytona, where I asked
you to drive because we had an extra seat, and
that was a lot of fun and although we weren't
(22:37):
very competitive, but it was you know, I love doing
dayton and supers.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Wasn't very good.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
You were good at that time.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
It was not very good, but I became a pretty
good endurance driver and just that was my first time
doing it and I was.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It was your first time, Yeah, like what, so what
is it? Yeah? Those cars were Those cars were fun.
That DP cars were pretty easy to drive. They were
like a faster trans am car, but people knew how
to manipulate the rules better than we did. And I
just remember being so much lower down the straightaways than
a lot of the faster cars with the same motors.
(23:10):
It's like, what's going on. It was frustrating.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I remember being like a deer in the headlights, not
figuring out traffic or any of the things because it's
the first time I drive one, and it was the
first time I've done any ensurance racing. And you and
your brother were super kind and sweet and understanding, and
I was just thinking, I'm.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Sorry, sorry, No, you did great, you did great. It
just it's always those races are so frustrating when you
have problems in the first five or six hours and
then you're twenty thirty laps down and then you're just
out there going to I want to go home.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, I want to go to sleep now.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
We had a couple of those. I've done some races
there where I would just show up to the Roar
before it was called the Roar with a helmet and
my suit and hoping to get a ride, and I
did usually. And I remember Anthony Azorro and I were
sleeping in the transporter. We lost a cylinder on the
pace lap. We were so slow, and we're both talking
(24:08):
to each other, going freezing in the transporter in the
middle of the night, because you know, we had no
place to go, and we're like, who's going to clutch it?
How would you get that at this thing? Let's just
go home.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
See you can admit things like that now, yeah, because
when you're still driving, I would never Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah, it was funny.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
So after your foray and second racing, how on earth
did you get to be the hill climb racer that
you are?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
I did the hill climb in eighty nine in just
a production car. I was offered a ride and I
was the only non turbo in my class. But it
was a good time to run. But then my brother
was having a car built. He had a car owner,
Dan League in ninety one and Mitch Davis, who you
(25:03):
know was your engineer at coin built the car in
Indy out of the Patrick Racing shop. So the car
had a lot of Indy car influence on it, and
Wally got a cup ride. So he said, hey, do
you want to do this? And I had nothing going on.
I'm like yeah. So the first year we went up there,
the car arrived late. I did one day of practice
(25:26):
and that's when you had a day of qualifying, one
run in qualifying, and then the race and I finished
fifth out of twenty five in open wheel and I'm like,
I like this, and then the second year I broke
and then the third year I broke the overall record,
which was Ary Ventnam's record. If you ever see the
climb dance video of the Pougeot, that was him, And yeah,
(25:49):
the road was perfect and I had broke the record.
So that's how I fell into it. King of the Mountain,
King of the Mountain. So I was able to make that.
You know, I won twelve times, three times overall, almost four.
I missed it by half a second once. But as
an open wheel car to win overall, we're not supposed
to win overall. Oh really, Well, it's all the rally
(26:09):
cars and you know all the factory cars that come over.
You know, we're just two wheel drive cars.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And that's when there was like dirt at the top
rank before it was paved.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, I won it when it was all dirt, and
then I won when it was fifty to fifty. Like, well,
they it took twelve years to pave. They did a
mile a year. Oh wow, they started like in ninety five,
ninety six somewhere in there. But what they did was
they didn't pave it in order, so they paved like
the first mile, then they paved in the middle a mile,
(26:40):
then they paved the top of mind. It was weird.
So those were the trickiest years because the tire choice
was really hard because you go from pavement to dirt.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Payment dirt and conditions, I.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Guess conditions were were crazy and there's always crazy up there,
as you know. But it just became my thing. I
was really good at it. It was my Indy five hundred.
I loved it. You know, I still may go back.
It's kind of one of those things. But I've had
two major accidents.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, you've driven up there in like crazy cars as well.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I had a car. It was my original car. We
just kept changing. It had a v you know, a
sprint car motor, which is eight hundred and fifty horse
power motor, and then we put two turbos on it
from Banks, so we had fifteen hundred horsepower.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Oh my god. Like for those of you who haven't
seen Pike's Peak, there's like three thousand foot drop offs
where you can literally just plummet if anything goes wrong.
Like I can't even imagine building your own car has
a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah, it's crazy. When it was dirt, it was a
lot safer. It looked more spectacular, but it was so
much more forgiving. The road was pristine, and if you
got in trouble, you can spin it off into the
you know, not even go off half the time. Now,
if you get in trouble, you're going off. And they
(28:01):
didn't pave from edge to edge. They paved like three
feet less. Yeah, down of the road. Yeah, so you're
going faster. They made the corners sharper now because it's
not as wide, and if there's any fluid, any thing
that happens, any kind of failure, you're going so much faster.
(28:21):
In my unlimited car, well we went unlimited when we
put the turbos on. I was going one hundred and
fifty six miles an hour up there in four places.
And in twenty twelve, my throttles stuck. Basically once I
went to full throttle, which was after the second turn,
and I went through.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
The trees and was that the fast big one?
Speaker 3 (28:41):
That was the first big one. So I cut five
trees and a half and knocked four over and I
was out.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
And this is the one everybody talks about, by the way,
like it went down in history.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, it's on video. And I was out of the
hospital in two hours. I didn't break a bone. It
was crazy. I was contorted like it took me three
months to feel right, and I had a headache of course,
a bad concussion, three stitches in my hand and that's it.
So the next year when I went back, I raised
for Reys Millen and I broke the record in time attack.
(29:17):
I beat his time by a tenth of a second,
and that was really set in my mind, like, Okay,
the crash didn't affect me a.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Tenth of a second on like eleven minutes.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Yeah, that's so crazy. It was nine minutes and forty
six seconds. I went up there. I beat David Donner
once by two tenths of a second. I lost the
overall in twenty twenty by four tenths of a second.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
That's so crazy to me.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
It is. It is crazy. Yeah, And everybody goes up
there with such different packages of cars and to come
that close it's really cool.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So fast forward to last year when you helped teach
me how to do it. It was my first time
doing it. I still don't know it completely. I have
to go back and study because we're going out there
this week actually to test. But you did it in
an electric Hyunda and had a huge crash. It was
very scary for everybody, but no one more so than you,
(30:22):
I would imagine.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Yeah, we were driving the for Hyundai. Brian heard it
and it was a great effort, super great team, and
they just had a software glitch and I lost my
breaks going about one hundred and ten is what they said,
and I hit the mountain at eighty. It was either
turn it into the mountain last second, which I did,
(30:45):
or go off an eight hundred foot cliff on the
Leuiase style. So I was pinned in the car. I
don't know how many times I rolled over. I wasn't
I didn't lose consciousness and my head was fine, but
my leg was pinned in the car and broke my leg.
And you were kind enough to come see me after
surgery and before surgery.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Well, we have this same injury now too, so we
have the exact same thing happened to us. Do you
have PTSD or have you like cut it off?
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yeah, no, I'm fine. I the first time it happened,
when I crashed, I was like, okay, it was mechanical.
It wasn't my fault. But now the second time it
was mechanical, and now I have doubts about going back
because neither time was my fault. It was quiet for
(31:33):
a year until they came out with the a recall
of the car in the software, which they have fixed
that the problem of the car. I'm able to say
it now. I mean, I'm going to say it now.
I mean it was it was a whole thing about
left foot breaking and blah blah blah. But the car
is does not have an issue. Now it's totally fine.
But going back now it's more about my wife does
(31:56):
not want me to go back. And I talked to
the people that you know heard it, and they I
think they want me to come back if they go
back next year. And I just have to decide if
I want to do it or not. I do have
my own car, the open wheel car, but I'm not
going to take it up there anymore. I'm going to
go do a race in West Virginia in August with it,
(32:17):
the West Virginia Hillfest in August, and just just have
fun with it. Maybe go to Goodwood next year.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I was going to say good to it. Do you think.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
So I grew up, I've done.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Twenty minutes from Goodwood. I've never done it and I
want to, and I love it so much. Every time
I was home for it, either the hill climb or
their revival. Actually that was fun too. I would always
go because there's such iconic events. So I was going
to say, I used to take it to Goodwood, but
I don't know what's involved in shipping it all the way.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Over well upon then they have different things for different people.
So I won it in two thousand and seven in
my class, and then went back in twenty seventeen and
finished eighth overall. In the shootout tents would have got
me third overall. But you don't get very much running.
It's like Pike's Peak. You only get two runs a day,
and it's the guys that have been there. There's a
(33:09):
huge crown in the road, so to get the set
up right you have to figure it out really fast.
But they do have packages where you can shift the
car over, but you have to be invited and accepted.
And I think it depends on the theme of the
year on what cars they want. They don't want the
same cars every year. The most amazing event. Ever, it
is so cool. They treat you great. It's so many
(33:31):
people there. They have this Driver's club and I'm just
in close, just street close. And i walk down out
of the Driver's Club and I'm just do doo and
I walk out and I just get hounded by people
with photos and autographs for a half hour. And my
wife is just like, nobody knows you in your hometown.
(33:51):
Everybody knows you over here. And it just shows you
how the race fans that go there are so knowledgeable.
They follow all kinds of motors words. I know Michelle
Mutan is she's going to be at pikes Peak this year.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
She oh, yeah, I didn't know that. It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yes, she is being inducted to the Hall of Fame,
which she'll join me because I'm in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yes you are.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
And so I met her there and that was cool.
That was like really cool for me. So and I
hope to see her this year. I'm just going to
go to FanFest this year. I might go to the race,
but yeah, so she'll be there. And Lynd Saint James
is the Grand Marshall.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I was going to say, Linda James, I don't know
if Michelle and Lynn worked together, because Michelle started with
Kathy Erlaka. She started the FIA WHIM, which is the
Woman in Motorsports Association, and that was when I went
back over there and to do DTM, So it would
have been like two thousand and seven ish and I
(34:49):
was the driver representative for it and it was just
getting started. And now it's like this big conglomerate and
they've got places in every aco and I know that
Lynn did the one over here, so I'm guessing that
they know each other before Michelle retired from doing that. Yes,
like two of the most iconic women in racing. And
to be clear, Michelle like one on a global world
(35:10):
rally stage, Like she is a badass. I am so
honored to know her.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Honestly, she's amazing. I mean what she did on Pike's
Peak in like I think it was eighty five, she
came up.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
And just pissed a lot of people off.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Pissed a lot of people off, for sure, you know
certain people, but yeah, and then she won major races
and she was with Pudi and I worked with Audi
for twenty three years doing their car commercials almost exclusively,
so I was always a fan of looking back at
her old videos and stuff, and she was amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
She was amazing. And actually that's a that's another good
segue into talking about your your other life where you
do all the cool stunt driving for commercials and movies. Yeah,
that much be interesting to do that. Do you ever
feel like, oh, we shouldn't be doing this. I always
look at the movies, yes, oh.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Yeah, but it's very coordinated, but there mistakes happen and
things go wrong. I don't do a ton of movies
because I don't like being away for so long. I
mostly do car commercials.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Just how I got around.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Right, a lot of standing around. But also you make
more money in the car commercials. And it was another
ski shop thing, you know. Johnny Uncer and Bobby Unser Jr.
Came into the ski shop. They needed another driver instead
of flying somebody in, they got me my sad card.
And that's kind of how I transitioned into it. But
(36:45):
it's a very small circle of people. Hard to get going.
It took me about six years to get going. The
movies I have done has been a watcher where I
double piano reeves in a great card to chase scene,
and then I did Need for Speed versus Ferrari Bad
Boys for Life. But the movies, I'm not. I'd like
(37:05):
doing them because you're with your friends. But the commercials
are two three four days, you're done and you get
to come home. Movies you go away for two three months.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah. Sometimes it's not. And I'm probably gonna do one
in October in Europe. We'll see if I get hired
or not.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
I kind of imagined that they would just do like
the car scenes all in one go, so they'd get
those people in, get that done, and then move on
and do the fighting scenes all in one go.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
You know, like yeah, yeah, it's different on each movie,
but it depends. Like in Ferrari, Michael Mann, he wanted
to be involved in everything. Usually you have two units,
so you have a stunt unit and they go do
their stuff, and they have your acting unit, and sometimes
they commingle if the actors need to be in the
scene or not. But with Ferrari, I think it was
(37:55):
really hard because we couldn't do our own thing, and
we had to wait a lot. I was doubling Patrick Dempsey,
although he did most of his driving, I only I
was his COVID backup driver and he was gone for
like four days where I drove from but I drove
other cars. But he had bleached hair and I had
bleached hair for the one scene where he had his
(38:16):
helmet off driving the Ferrari.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
But you can claim to be a dreamy liquor.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Yeah, so those us right now, Yeah, bark ry. But anyway,
it was fun. It was Italy for seven weeks. It
was awesome. But yeah, they tried it. They usually have
a second unit and we can do our own thing.
But the way the stunts are, you have a you know,
stunt coordinators make or break it, and you know, safety's key.
(38:42):
We rehearse a lot so you get it done. Yeah.
Sometimes you'll rehearse for days just to do the scene.
You know, sometimes weeks if it's really a complex scene
or a long scene. It just depends on the budget
of the movie. On how I.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Always look at like The Fast and the Furious and
stuff like that, and they're like changing down to go faster.
Who came up with this?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
I did do? I forgot that, I see I don't
even watch those, but I did Fast and Furious for
I did only one week on it, and it was fun,
but it was. It's just it's a different deal than commercials.
I like the commercials because it's usually just you and
you're driving a car. I'm not into the crashing of
cars so much for the stunt driving. I'm into the
(39:25):
performance side of it, so I love the sliding of
the cars. And when I did a lot of cool
stuff with Pontiac and Audi and just some really you know,
Pontiac was really aggressive on their stuff and slides and
things like that. The movies, you get asked to crash cars,
and usually they have guys that like to crash cars
and they'll put them in for that. I'm more into
(39:47):
the car chases and slides and near missus. You go
your whole life racing, not to crash, so it's hard
to focus in on in crash, I would.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Be the same. I like the police chances and I
like yeah, I like Actually, the truck commercials are the
ones that I wish I were to stay in the
stunt driving for because you see them like towing stuff
through these mountain dirt roads and like that.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
I love those because a lot of them are done
here in Colorado. I love I love doing those commercials.
What's crazy about the commercials is like a lot of
times you're driving cars that are prototypes. There's only one
of them in the country, like with Audi. I remember
when the new a floor came out and they said, okay,
we want you to do a one eighty and slide
(40:31):
up against the curb. Oh, by the way, this has
to be at the LA Auto Show next week, and
it's the only one in the country and you don't
get any part. You get maybe one take of practice
at it, so you have to figure it out really fast.
But that's how my racing career was because I would
show up at races and get last minute rides and
I had thirty minutes to figure out how to go
(40:51):
fast and practice and qualifying race. The thing is in commercials,
you have to figure it out pretty fast, and that's
why they like hiring certain people because just so you know,
in the film industry, one hour of overtime is like
forty thousand dollars to the production because of all the
overtime they have to pay. So if they can get
(41:12):
something in one or two takes instead of thirty takes,
it saves everybody a bunch of money.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
It makes sense. It's interesting you've had like four different lives.
Really to think about it. It's fatty cool.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
I don't know what's coming up next.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I had the exact same thing when I broke my legs.
I was worried about mentally, like when I went to
a track again, would I still have it? Would I
be scared? How would I feel about driving a car
on the edge. So actually, when I was I wasn't casted,
and it was probably a couple of months in and
I was coaching Aileen Billman, a friend of mine, in
(41:50):
for our challenge, and I shouldn't have done it, but
I did it because I was like so concerned. I
wasn't concerned physically, even though it took me a lot
longer to recover than I thought it would. Write like
it goes kind of fast at the beginning, and then
you like on this long slog you have to say
every thing. But like, mentally, I was worried about it.
And so I got out of the wheelchair and into
(42:10):
the Ferrari Challenge car and just drove around like eighty
percent just to see whether I could still do it.
And it calmed me and I was like, Okay, it's
normal again, you know, like this is what I know.
So I feel like if you hit quite speed, you'd
have the same experience.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
I think so because the year I went back after
my crash, the skid mark on the road was still there.
Was still there was there for seven years. That's so
it was a reminder every time I went through there,
and you just block it out, Like I just got
(42:48):
my screws out last week, out of my leg.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I got it out about a month ago because I
was actually coming unscrewed. I had a screw loose.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, there you go. Well fitting, yeah, it was just
bob and they kept the roden.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
But ye same.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
I go back tomorrow and get the stitches out. But
I'm walking fine, and it does hurt. But like you said,
it is longer than I thought it would be. But
I think, yeah, you just get past it, and I
think I'll go back up to Pike's Peak and it'll
be fine. It's just I want to go up there
this year.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
I need you, I need you all that. I need
a driver, coach, come on.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
I want to go see where I crashed and see
if I got lucky or if I would have been
because what they said was I was like three feet
from going down eight hundred feet. Now, I don't know
if it was a gradual or straight down or what.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
I heard that it was like a platform, because obviously
we were all super concerned because we hadn't heard what
was going on for like an hour almost and well
Mark Whideer got word that you were on like a
ledge a platform before it went down the eight hundred feet,
So it was kind of precarious position that you were
(44:01):
in to try and get you out of that without
risking falling over the edge.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Well, the scary thing for me was I was trying
to call people on the radio because I was pinned.
I thought I was going to catch on fire. You know,
you hear the evy scary stories. But it didn't, and
if it did, I would have been in big trouble,
I think. But I was talking to Jeff's work yesterday,
texting him on the plane, and he was asking me
(44:29):
the same thing. Are you going to go back? And
I said, well, I don't know. I want to go
back and see where I ended up. Although, yeah, I'll
be I'll be fine. I know that mountain so well,
but it's the unknown.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, well, Paul, I will see you in a couple
of weeks. Thank you very much for coming on and
sharing your story.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I am glad to see you doing well and love
to the family and thank you. We will see you soon.
Thanks for listening to Throttle Therapy. We'll be back next
week with more updates and more overtakes, and 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.
(45:13):
Throttle Therapy is hosted by Katherine Legg. Our executive producer
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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Host
Katherine Legge
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