April 1, 2025 • 53 mins
In this episode of The Sparky Life podcast, host Lia Lamela welcomes Crew Chief Eric, the owner of Gran Touring Motorsports and the Motoring Podcast Network to the show.
The conversation spans Eric's background in motorsports, driven by his family's passion for cars, to the creation and evolution of GTM. Discussion points include the extensive career opportunities within the motorsports industry, the similarities between motorsports mechanics and construction workers, and the importance of teamwork in both fields. Eric also elaborates on the educational aspects of racing, challenging stereotypes, and promoting inclusivity within the motorsports community. Throughout the episode, Eric's enthusiasm for racing and mentoring shines, inspiring even those unfamiliar with the sport to take an interest in driving. The episode also includes sponsor mentions for SupplyHouse.com.
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00:00 Introduction to Today's Guest: Eric from Gran Touring Motorsports 01:08 Sponsor Message: Supply House 01:41 Eric's Background and the Origin of Gran Touring Motorsports 04:59 The Evolution of Gran Touring Motorsports and the Motoring Podcast Network 07:29 Parallels Between Motorsports and Construction 10:13 Breaking Stereotypes in Motorsports and Skilled Trades 12:49 Pathways into Motorsports Without Formal Education 17:59 The Thrill and Skills of Racing 22:58 Encouraging Women in Motorsports 25:41 Sponsor Message: Supply House 26:45 Returning to the Show 26:50 Challenges in Construction Training 27:43 Knowledge Sharing in Racing 28:11 Female Dynamics in Male-Dominated Spaces 30:05 A Story from the Track 32:37 Danica Patrick and Women in Motorsport 35:29 Opportunities for Women in Racing 45:32 Getting Involved in Racing 48:10 Secrets to Success 51:24 The Importance of Teamwork 52:41 Conclusion and Farewell
====================
The Motoring Podcast Network : Years of racing, wrenching and Motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories and information. #everyonehasastory #gtmbreakfix - motoringpodcast.net
- More Information: https://www.motoringpodcast.net/
- Become a VIP at: https://www.patreon.com/gtmotorsports
- Online Magazine: https://www.gtmotorsports.org/
Copyright Lia Lamela. This content originally aired on The Sparky Life Podcast; and has been republished with permission from its creator.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back today's guest crew chief,Eric owner of grand touring motorsports
and the motoring podcast network discussesracing wrenches and all kinds of rides.
Welcome to the sparky life.
I'm your host.
I am here to create thesparks in your life.
(00:21):
And here we discuss thebuilders of our civilization.
All things construction careeroriented every Thursday.
I stumbled across Eric and hismotoring podcast network and
immediately thought, Oh my gosh.
Freaking badass.
My peeps are totally going to love this.
I need everyone to knowabout Eric and his network.
(00:45):
Forget the fact that he's great tolisten to and knowledgeable about
his passion and is the pun Prince.
You know, I love the cheeseall about the cheese.
There is so much about theskilled trades of motor sports
that I didn't know existed.
So many career opportunities.
I was blown away.
So welcome with me, Crew Chief Eric.
(01:08):
Before we begin, a quick wordfrom our sponsor, Supply House.
Before you make that firstconnection on your next electrical
job, connect with supply house.
com.
They have got a huge inventory withthe top brands in stock and real
customer service from real people.
(01:29):
That's what you call in and you speakto a human being pretty awesome.
I highly recommend thatyou check out supplyhouse.
com today.
Now let's start our show.
So I ran across Eric and his GTM networkpodcast saying like, amazing, incredible.
(01:51):
And when I first started to hear.
All that good info andcheck out the website.
I immediately was like, Oh my God,my guys are going to love this.
Trisha's a gear head shoutout to Justin and Thomas.
Love you.
And they are going to literally gocrazy for what you've got in store.
So first, what the hell is.
(02:12):
So Grand Touring Motorsports,that's what GTN stands for
started many, many moons ago.
There's a whole backstorythere about my family.
It really starts with mygrandfather coming over after
World War II, looking for work.
And he got a gig as a chauffeurat the Belgian embassy.
And so my dad grew up in thatenvironment and then they would go back
and forth between the U S and Italy.
And then, uh, My dad eventually cameover with my mom in the late 70s, and he
(02:38):
was bitten by the bug, by the car bug.
He grew up just outside of the Ferraritest track in Modena, and so he's
like, I used to watch Niki Lauda, youknow, testing the Formula One cars.
He always wanted to be a race car driver.
And so he turned wrenches andmodify on anything that he could.
And again, he grew up inthe garages of the embassy.
And so it was like, You know,in his blood to have the grease
(02:59):
under his fingernails and stuff.
And so when I came along, you know, someof my earliest memories, the same thing.
It was like.
Dad's swapping an engine on our Scirocco.
And the girl's like, what is going on?
I'm like two years old.
Like, what are you guys doing?
You know?
So, but I started as a gopher andI learned, you know, doing things
in the garage and things like that.
And so at one point as my dad gotolder and further along in his career,
(03:21):
and he wasn't a mechanic by trade.
He was actually in the mainframedevelopment programmer industry.
Right.
So.
Cars were always his hobby.
He was moonlighting.
You know, he was racing.
He was a national champion inautocross and other things like that.
And so always working in the garage.
That's where we spent all our time.
That's where my dad and Ibonded, you know, and I learned
(03:41):
a ton of things that way.
And so later he developed a businesscalled Grand Touring Motorsports and
he sold parts and consulting and, youknow, helped tuned cars for racers.
Predominantly European stuff.
And then unfortunately, he wastaken from us at a pretty early age.
And so that all kind of came to a close.
And several years later, friend of mineand I got into road racing and we were
(04:04):
going together and doing all these trackevents and turn the wrenches on our cars.
And I ended up being his mechanicand my mechanic, which was tough.
We had very similar cars andyou can see them on our website.
I saw the Jetta.
The golfs.
Yes.
Golf.
Golfs the twin GTIs.
There you go.
. So can you tell I'm not, hook your head. You're gonna help me with this though.
You're gonna help me.
Absolutely.
(04:25):
So we were sitting around one dayand talking about, you know, how do
we keep all of our guys together?
You know, we're building a team, wewanna go endurance racing, we wanted
time trials, all this kinda stuff.
And so.
He was like, Brad goes,why don't we create a club?
I said, okay, well, whatare we going to call it?
Like I can do all the web work,you know, cause I too followed in
my dad's footsteps as an it guy.
(04:46):
And so he's like, why don't we justcall it grand touring motorsports?
And so 2013 ish, that was all reborna couple of years after my dad died.
And it has quickly evolved inthe last almost 12 years now
into a lot of different things.
So if you kind of break it down,there's three big components.
There's the clubhouse, which you canfind from our primary website, which
are Our main website turned into adigital magazine called Grand Touring.
(05:09):
We're 30, almost 32 issues now.
So 32 quarters of the magazine,it's a long time to be out
there as a digital production.
And then last year, as we grew ourpodcast, which was derived from our
writing and our journalism and, youknow, going to track days and all those
kinds of things, we developed somethingcalled the Motoring Podcast Network.
So our headliner show is called Break Fix.
(05:30):
That's a specific.
Grand Touring Motorsports production andthen we brought on other creators that we
were overlapping with that were strugglingin the industry and we created this thing
called the Motoring Podcast Network.
So we feature them now not on a podcastbut what we call a variety show.
So every week somethinga little different.
You might be hearing fromWilliam Ross from the exotic car
marketplace talking about Ferraris.
(05:51):
The other week you're hearing fromProfessor John Summers, the motoring
historian, about something that's goingon on the left coast of the country.
Or screen to speech which is aall woman production about sim
racers that are coming up andmaking their way into motorsports.
We've got things like what should Ibuy, which are really fun panel episodes
with guys from motor trend and analysts.
(06:11):
And we talk in debate, we buy forfictitious, you know, customers and
collectors and things like that.
We've got our drive through newsevery month, you know, so we,
there's a little bit of somethingfor everybody and that makes it nice.
Tune in when you want.
Hey, there's five or six episodesI missed, but I really only care
about, you know, the drive thrunews, and those are guaranteed at
the last Tuesday of every month.
(06:34):
Well, um, after I had the opportunity ofkind of like stumbling upon you, right,
the universe works in mysterious ways.
I was so intrigued about that.
Motorsports and the mechanicalaspect being in construction.
And once I started listening tothe episodes and I'm somebody
with no motorsport, likeit's like racing is I have.
(06:57):
Baby eyes.
Oh, just don't say that cars arean appliance because they're not.
I know that much.
I know that much.
Okay.
So, and I've got a lot of girlfriendswho are mechanics and things
like that and shout out to Trish.
Total gearhead.
She like loves this stuff.
But I just never kind ofgained a passion for it mainly
because I just wasn't exposed.
(07:17):
And as I was listening to yourepisodes, I was like, Oh my gosh,
there's so many correlations.
to the construction industry andskilled trades regarding this.
So you can, you expand on that for me.
Yeah.
So, you know, checking all thestereotypes at the door, I suppose
there are a lot of similarities betweenmechanics and construction workers.
(07:38):
And so, you know, working with your hands,it is a skill, it is a skilled trade.
You know, our tools of choice arewrenches, wrenches and spanners
and ratchets, and instead of clawhammers and nail guns and power
tools and things like that, so.
The idea is still the same.
You're building something oryou're dem, you're demolishing
some, you're taking it apart.
Now, in our case, when we're dismantlingsomething, it's to repair it, make it
(08:02):
better, upgrade it, whatever, and thenput it back together because we need
to put it into service, especially inthe motor sport world, it's under such.
Strenuous conditions that themanufacturers were like, well, we
didn't really intend it for that.
So we get, you get a littlebit more creative on the
motorsport side of the world.
But the same is true in construction.
You're like, wow, that wallisn't necessarily straight.
So we're going to have to dothis, but by eye, it's going
(08:22):
to look really good, you know?
So there's a little magic, a littleblack magic there, if you will.
But at the end of the day, yourthing, you have to think on your feet.
You have to be resourceful.
You use a little bit of MacGyvertactics, you know, in the same way.
There's also a community around.
Let's say mechanics, wrench turners,and even in the motorsport world,
(08:43):
in some ways, I often like to relatemotorsports to the military because
it's one of those situations whereyou do not succeed alone, right?
You have all these specialists aroundyou, whether they're programmers,
they're race engineers, they're.
Folks that specifically work onsuspension or are knowledgeable about
tires, all these different movingpieces because some people like maybe
(09:05):
yourself, you look at a car and go,it takes me from point A to point B.
But what you don't understandwhat we like to highlight on the
show is there's so many different.
Uh, careers that influence a car, right?
Chemists, physics, designers,aerodynamicists, electrical engineers.
I mean, the list goes on and on and onand on to build this thing that we take
(09:26):
for granted that takes us, you know,to Dunkin Donuts every morning or takes
it to the construction site, right?
So, uh, When you put all thattogether, rising tides lift all ships.
And so that is true ofjust general mechanics.
Cause when you ever walk into a shop,whether it's a race shop or a minor
key, the team has to work together.
Not every one mechanic knows everything.
There's a guy that's a specialistin alignments or exhaust or
(09:48):
engine work or tires or whatever.
But again, to, to get that finalproduct, the team has to work together.
To make the customer happy at the endof the day, but to get that car safely
back on the road or back on track andbe able to perform at its ultimate.
Yeah, that's exactly the same withthe infrastructure of construction
(10:08):
and how that all operates and havingkey specialists from different areas.
Um, it's a,
I can't help but think aboutthe term grease monkey and, you
know, the thoughts that come tomind when I think of mechanic.
I happen to know many mechanics beingin the skilled trades, and none of them
(10:30):
actually fit the stereotype description.
Like in construction,there's many stereotypes.
Do you come across that in moresport, motors, motorsports?
So if you.
If you take the obvious comparisons,like, Oh, mechanics are just
a bunch of substance abusingdegenerates, blah, blah, blah, blah.
(10:51):
You probably hear the same thingabout construction workers, right?
Yeah.
The difference is we've got greaseunder our fingernails, you know,
instead of, you know, splintersin our hands kind of thing, right?
Now, I make the joke all the time thatI lived this duality in my life, right?
Bruce Wayne by day in the IT industry,supporting the military and those kinds
of things for many, many years now.
And then at night.
Right.
I'm doing the podcast thing.
(11:12):
I do journalism, but I'malso turning wrenches.
I'm prepping the race car.
I've got this championship.
I'm working towards and I go intoa meeting and they're like, Yeah, I
work in computers, you know, and myfingernails aren't that great, you
know, all chewed up and my hands aregnarled because you inevitably bust
your hands when you're working on thecar because there's never any space.
I also joke, I live my life aquarter turn at a time, and that's
(11:33):
not a quarter turn on the racetrack.
It's a quarter turn on the wrench.
So that being said, I think thesame is true with the construction
industry as it is for mechanics.
But in, in the same way, even in my dayjob, It's hard to live it all the time.
You have to find another outlet.
So for me, turning wrencheswas always a backup.
(11:55):
It's like if the IT worldcollapses or that, you know, whole
white collar sweatshop that isprogramming is not for me anymore.
I can fall back on being a mechanic.
And the interesting part is I can alwaysgo get my ASC certification and go work
at any, you know, mom and pop garage.
And for those that don't know.
ASC stands for, what is this ASCcertification or what is it all about?
(12:21):
Uh, shoot, hang on.
Googling moment.
I don't want to get the acronym wrong.
It's the automotive serviceexcellence certification.
So you'll see that on theside of a lot of garages.
We have ASC certified mechanics,which basically means that they
went to school to be a mechanic.
They went to like Lincoln techor they went somewhere else and
they graduated with a degree.
(12:42):
In automotive mechanics and diagnosticsand all those kinds of things.
So I don't have that that'sadditional schooling.
It's additional cost.
But what's interesting isin the motor sports world, I
don't necessarily need that.
I can bring my previous careerexperience and my own personal
wrench turning experience withme to become part of a team.
And there's different ways to get involvedin race teams, whether it's through,
(13:04):
let's say you're a disabled vet and youwant to come in through something like
operation motorsport, where they find youplacement on a race and you can use the.
The skills that you learnedin the military on the team,
you know, things like that.
So the same is true for a laymanlike myself, where it's like, well,
you've got a background in it.
Do you, are you interested in analytics?
Do you want to study, you know, thesuspension geometry data that's coming
(13:26):
back, you know, real time stuff, youknow, how do you want to be involved?
And so even for constructionworkers, where it's like,
Hey, we need to build this.
We need to do that.
There's a lot of theseother, other types of.
Uh, skills that can be translatedeven into the world of motorsports
if people are looking to cross over.
So I joke sometimes if you can swinga hammer, you can turn a wrench.
There's a lot of translation thereas long as you kind of understand the
(13:48):
principle as my dad used to say Ifyou can take it apart without breaking
it, you can put it back together.
Yes
Well, I mean, uh when you talk about notneeding a license or degree to get into
that career path that's so Absolutelycorrelates with construction because
there are many different careers inskilled trades that you can do that.
(14:13):
And I am a big fan of thisbeing somebody who is, uh,
learning challenged, air quotes.
Um, I don't like the idea that you haveto get some sort of licensing or academic
accreditation in order to do that.
Do you, the career thatyou're looking to do now?
I'm not saying that there shouldn'tbe standards or qualifications.
(14:36):
I am saying that what we currently haveis too exclusive and doesn't truly project
someone's abilities in that career.
Yeah.
And I think for those of us, as I liketo say, petrol heads of a certain age,
we grew up under the fallacy that,you know, you had to go to college.
to make it in life.
And so that is applicable to Xenials likemyself and, you know, elder millennials
(15:02):
and millennials and things like that.
So there's other ways to make it right.
But again, I sort of had no choice becauseAnd I, and I say that, I know that's
kind of strong, but I came, I came aroundas a first generation Italian American.
And it wasn't like, Oh, you know, wecame over and Ellis Island in the 1800s.
It's like, no, my parents came overin the seventies, like really late.
(15:24):
Right.
And so they didn't, theydidn't finish school.
They wanted the best for us.
They broke their backs doingthe work that they could.
And my dad was very fortunate.
He was a smart guy and he got intothe right place at the right time, you
know, They wanted the best for me, butthey're like, you need to go and do this
it stuff, but I want to work on cars.
No, no, no.
You need to do this.
So I was sort of stuck,but in a way it worked.
(15:46):
It did allow me this weird Batman BruceWayne lifestyle that I have, but I also
am not burnt out on being a mechanicwhere the last thing I want to see or hear
about is, Hey, can you help me fix my car?
It's like, I'll say yes, because for meit's cathartic to go out into the garage,
but don't ask me to fix your computer.
Don't ask me to diagnose,you know, your Mac.
(16:08):
Write you down on the list forwhen I'm having more trouble.
Construction worker, the lastthing you want to hear is, hey,
can you help me build a shed?
No, leave me alone.
You're dead on.
Do you know how many times I getlike, oh, so you're an electrician?
Can you install thislighting, you know, for me?
Can you like let my landlord see this?
Freaking love it when I say I'man electrician because they've
always got projects and stuff.
(16:29):
And you're right.
The last thing I want to do is doelectrical work on my off time.
Yeah.
I enjoy it during the day.
I love what I do, butthen I also need a break.
Well, what also helps me love my hobbya little bit more is there's a lot
of YouTube certified mechanics now.
So
(16:49):
I'm like, here's a video, have a nice day.
I would feel irresponsible directingpeople to a YouTube for electrical work.
But they're out there,which is a little scary.
Um, I don't know how I feel about thatexactly, but I love the overall idea,
(17:09):
which is sharing knowledge, right?
Absolutely.
That's number one.
So I did not know how muchwas involved in racing.
I didn't have a clue.
I haven't been exposed to it.
Nobody in my family is like intoNASCAR and coming across you in
your show has gotten me into this.
And I always like thought of myselfas somebody who's not a daredevil.
(17:33):
In fact, I'm afraid of heights.
Don't ask me how that works with beingan electrician, but I, even though I
will get up in the lift and climb andbe whatever, I don't love heights.
So I don't love, like, highadrenaline activities, which is the
exact opposite of most of my peeps.
Most of my people love, you know,high adrenaline, and I would say a
lot of them are adrenaline addictsthat use it in a healthy way when it
(17:56):
comes to construction and building.
Can you break down the racing aspectand what really goes into this?
Yeah.
I think it's exactly howyou described it there too.
It's not for everybody either, becauseone of the things I realize as a coach,
right, so I, I, I spend time helpingwhat I call want to be race car drivers.
(18:18):
Sometimes people that havemore money than brains, right?
I bought this super coolcar and I want to go fast.
And it's the whole Ricky Bobby moment.
Right.
But it's like,
but you know, it's amazing that yougot here safely in the first place.
And I'm not trying to be any sortof way, but it's like, okay, Great.
You got 700 horsepower under the pedaland you have no idea how to use it.
(18:39):
And I hate to say anybody can go fast ina straight line and that's not a knock
against other disciplines of racinglike drag racing because drag racing
is extremely complicated and you arejust going fast in a straight line.
But there's a whole science to that too.
But road racing specifically, the guysthat come to the track with their brand
new ZL1 Camaros or their Corvettesor their Porsche or their Mustang,
(18:59):
you know, whatever dream car thatthey've Waited this whole time to get
and they, they just want to go fast.
It's like, look, safety is paramountin racing, especially road racing.
So one of the things that we workon, and I find it so shocking,
the adrenaline junkies, right?
The guys that just want to gofaster gals that want to go fast
(19:20):
is I put them in the right seat of.
A complete shit box, like200, 200 horsepower Toyota.
Right.
And they're like, Oh, a hundred miles anhour is a struggle down the straightaway.
Yeah, but I'm going to go intothis turn at a hundred and
they're not going to lift.
And they're like, excuse me, what?
And we're alreadythrough it at that point.
And you see them white knucklingand grabbing and freaking out.
(19:41):
And then the there's thatsphincter puckering moment, right?
Because they're, they'renot used to going that fast.
Fast in a turn.
And that's where the beauty of drivingcomes from is being able to work
with the machinery, understandingyour machinery, what the limits of
it are and how you can capitalize onit or maybe stretch it a little bit.
(20:02):
So when we're working withstudents, that's where we're trying
to get them to really go fast.
And I have this whole process whereit's like speed is the last thing.
Like we need to work onorientation, memorization,
consistency, then we can go faster.
But the speed actually comesnaturally if you follow that method.
And so you get the rush and peoplewill come away from what we call a
(20:22):
high performance driver's educationweekend and be like, I thought I knew
how to drive when I got here and thishas been an eye opening experience
and we can take it in different ways.
Do you want to learnabout accident avoidance?
Do you want to do aggressive stuff?
You know, not, we're not going to do stuntdriving at a track day, but you're going
to go home with a different appreciationfor your car than what you came with.
(20:42):
And what you realize too, is youthought you could go fast on the
road and you realize how dumb itis to go fast on the road and your
speed starts to just decrease.
And you're like, you know what?
I'm more situationally aware nowI'm looking up, I'm looking ahead.
I can see traffic patterns.
Like why is that guy doing that?
You know, accident avoidance,all that kind of stuff.
But it's, it's interesting how motorsporttampers some of that adrenaline.
(21:07):
And there's a really cool graph you cancreate that says, you know, when you
start out, you're all like, Oh, superanxious and I'm going to kill this.
We're going to light up all the tiresand the car is completely erratic
and you're completely nervous.
And then it's like.
It starts to converge, and you becomecool as a cucumber, and you can throw a
car around a corner completely sideways,and it doesn't even phase you, so that
(21:29):
adrenaline level Comes down as you startto master the skill, like any skill.
I mean, you're, you'redoing electrical work.
It's dangerous, but after a whileyou get comfortable with it.
Now you don't want to becomeoverconfident because that's
when you start making mistakes.
So same is true on our side.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
So first off, I want allthe info on your class.
Because even though I don't have anydesire to be a race car driver, I
(21:52):
would love to take a class like that.
Just the way you talked about it andlearn how to become one with my vehicle.
Like that is so cool.
Not to mention how muchI am in my vehicle.
Many construction peeps knowthis, like we are constantly
driving all over kingdom come.
And.
I have always thought of myself asthat stereotypical girl can't drive,
(22:15):
like I suck at driving, and I don'tknow how accurate that actually is,
because I have no one to comparemy skills to, and I just drive.
Cautious, I would say and slow and annoypeople with that on the road, but I
would totally dig a course like yourswhere I could become more confident in
(22:38):
my vehicle and really assess my abilitiesto understand the mechanical aspect.
So not to knock the boys.
I get to instruct all sorts of differentpeople, you know, different walks of life.
And what's really interesting, youcan pick up on other hobbies by the
way they drive and stuff like that.
I, one guy, I could tell hewas a pilot because the way
he held the steering wheel.
Oh, wow.
So when I have a lady in the carthough, I always find it to be the
(23:03):
most satisfying experience because.
There's less resistance to learning.
I'm like, because on a constructionlevel, like, okay, go ahead.
Go ahead.
I want to.
So there's this open channel toabsorb the input and change is done.
(23:26):
Right away.
And it's nice to see it be iterative aswell, because when you're teaching at
the track, you've got a corner by corner,then segment by segment, then you do
the whole lap and it all comes together.
Right?
So you got to start from the basics,but the ladies are always so much more
open and again, not to knock the guys.
Cause there's plenty of great guysthat are receptive, but you got to
sort of check your ego at the doorbecause you have to realize you're doing
(23:47):
something extremely dangerous, right?
And you're out there with 30of your closest strangers.
Like, I, you don't know if you pass theother guy that's next to you on the way
there, you know, and you pissed him offdoing your road rage thing or whatever,
but the point is, you've got all theseother moving objects at speed, at high
speed that you need to be receptive.
(24:08):
It's not just, I want to go fast, right?
And so that's where it all comes together.
And people come away from aweekend experience like that.
And they're like, whoa.
But on the other side, the appledoes not fall far from the tree.
My sister is also a certifiedcoach and she gets the opposite.
What, what is this girl going to teach me?
Right.
What she teaches you is thatwhen she blows by you in
(24:31):
her 200 horsepower shit box.
You got something to learn when you'vegot 700 horsepower under your foot.
Right.
And so she, she always feels thechallenge that there's this resistance
with the guys that they don'twant to learn, but I get that too,
because it's like, we're hard headed.
We think we know everything I'vebeen driving since I was 16.
This ain't driving.
This is preparing you to go racing, right?
(24:53):
This is a whole different ball game.
If you want to go down that route.
Right.
So.
But there's a lot of fantastic ladies.
They're super fast.
They're very competitive in all thedifferent disciplines of motorsport.
That's the other thing.
It's not just NASCAR, right?
There's formula cars,meaning open wheel cars.
There's rally, there's drag racing,there's autocross rally car.
(25:13):
I mean, it goes on and on and on andon, and you'll find women everywhere.
And so kind of open your eyes andpay attention to that, but, you know,
listen to their stories, figure out howthey, they came up through the system.
But if you get a chanceto ride with one of them.
Watch how they drive.
Very precise.
A lot of finesse.
And you're like, wow, that's, youknow, it's not this brute force.
We're going to manhandle thecar in the corner kind of stuff.
(25:35):
It's, it's, it's just been a beautifulexperience to work with the ladies and
help get them up through the system.
Let's take a quick break to hear fromour incredible sponsor, SupplyHouse.
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com.
Now let's get back to the show.
Okay.
You hit on so many things there.
So in construction, it isthe same with the guys.
They want to reach strength.
They don't.
necessarily want to be taughtbecause, and this is something
I learned as an apprentice rightaway, you never ask a guy why.
(27:06):
And the reason is theyview that as a challenge.
Like I'm challenging whatthey're telling me to do.
And I'm not, the why is because Iwant to learn why you are instructing
me to do this this way so thatI can absorb it fully and really
understand what you're asking of me.
But when I would ask my journeymenwhy they would get furious, and the
(27:28):
number one thing is because I'm tellingyou, because I'm fucking telling you,
I've been in here for two decades.
You do it how I tell you to do it.
Well, that's good and gravy.
I'm not, I'm not challengingthat and trying to understand it.
So I would have to learn ways ofasking why without using the word why.
So what's interesting about theracing world is when you ask why be
prepared for a deluge of information,we are very happy to share.
(27:52):
It comes off as mansplaining a lot,but it's an, it's an interesting
environment where knowledge transfer.
is the norm, right?
So asking why in motorsport and racing,I'm just warning you, be prepared.
You're going to get morethan you bargained for.
I love it.
I love it.
I think that's fantastic.
And as a female in a male dominant space,I would get exactly what your sister got,
(28:16):
where like, who the fuck is this chicktrying to tell me what to do basically.
And I would have to learn that.
So in the construction, um, hierarchy,Because that's kind of how it's built.
It's, it's very archaic in how theyperform team and team building and what
(28:37):
they consider leadership is one of ourdownfalls and something that Spurgy
Life is passionate about changing.
You know, you talk about teams and theimportance of teams and it sounds like on.
Your end of the spectrum,it's more collaborative.
It's less gatekeeping.
It's more embrace embracing andwanting to build together, which
brings the most successful teams,like a hundred percent, right?
(29:00):
The stats are there.
So when we're talking about the hierarchyand the structure, what you typically
see is a foreman who comes in, I callthem, um, table flippers, tool tossers.
Okay.
Like Just this is howit's going to be done.
No one challenged me, you know, beingon the chest kind of deal, right.
(29:23):
Which isn't very effective.
And when, you know, I'm emulating allthat I'm seeing when, so when I got into
a position of leadership, I tried thatapproach and as a female doesn't work,
doesn't work at all, like really bad.
I don't approach, I do not approachthe leadership aspect when I'm working
(29:45):
with my teams in that fashion at all.
Uh, forget the fact that I'm a femaletrying to come in on an aggressive
as opposed to assertive aspect.
Um, but it's, it's aparticularly powerful.
Poor dynamic when a man does it andit's worse when a female does it.
And it's interesting you bring that up.
So I'll share a storyfrom my sister's playbook.
(30:08):
And so we were at Virginiainternational raceway for an event.
We were called in during the day todo a special exercise with a group
of Folks from the Cadillac club.
And so you've got these really niceCTS V black wings, you know, again,
five, six, 700 horsepower vehicles thatyou're like, wow, that's pretty cool.
And she got put in one of those cars andshe's, she's uncomfortable with really,
(30:32):
really high horsepower, especiallyif it's modified beyond factory.
Cause she's like, look,you start bolting on parts.
You don't know where the ceiling isanymore, and it's outside of factory spec.
So it's sort of hard togauge like how far we can go.
And her student wasn't resistant.
Me, I'll call him a little stubbornand she, she was talking to me and
consoling me at one of the lunch breaks.
(30:53):
And she's like, I'm having ahard time, like getting this guy
to just back off a little bit.
We can go faster if he goes slower,but he just jams the throttle.
We're coming out of the turn sideways.
And he goes, we're going to endup in the wall if he doesn't stop.
Right.
So, and she's trying to tell himand he's just, it's not going in.
And at one point I just told her,I said, look, let him screw up.
Let him eat, eat the, you know, noteat the guardrail, but it's like, go
(31:17):
have an off, do it in a spot whereyou know, there's enough runoff room.
And then he realizes, Oh,I'm going to break my car.
We're going to hit something.
He's going to suddenly panic now.
Okay, coach, what do I do now?
Right.
So she had one of those momentsand that was the switching point.
It was like, you had to run head firstinto the wall, you know, figuratively
speaking before he would listen.
(31:38):
And then he got better.
And then he got faster.
So it was funny, you know, slow infast out is the is the methodology.
And so that's what she wastrying to get him to do.
And as he started to slow down, hisaverage lap speed went up, which
means his lap times were going down.
But to realize that you're wastingtime hooning around the track, he
just he wasn't getting it until he hadthat what we call code brown moment.
(32:03):
Code brown moment.
Okay, you've got toelaborate on that for me.
Where does that come from?
You get like an oh s moment, right?
There's code red and there's code brown.
It's brilliant.
I, um, I am obviously parshfulto, I resonate with females in,
(32:24):
in those types of spaces becauseI, there's just so much crossover
and correlation and relatability.
And uh, being a podcaster,I love podcasts.
And I'm definitely a Joe Rogan fan.
And when I deep dived into yourpodcast and all of the goodies in
store there, I actually had JoeRogan's podcast pop up with Danica
(32:48):
Patrick on being a woman in racing.
And I, you know, ofcourse was like, Oh, wow.
Okay.
Here's a female in a male dominant space,uh, totally was interested in what she
had to say and then was shocked whenduring the interview she said that, um,
you know, a lot of the guys don't likeit when, uh, don't want a female to pass.
(33:12):
Right.
So, cause he was asking herlike, what's her experience.
She was like, I don't know.
I'm not a guy.
I'm just gal.
And.
And.
And.
This is my perspective, and a lot of theguys don't want a female to pass them.
But I get that because I wouldn'twant a female to pass me either.
And then Joe Rogan waslike, wait, wait a minute.
Um, so are you saying youwouldn't care if a guy passed you?
(33:33):
And she's like, well, It wouldn'tbe that bad, but it would be
worse to have a female pastor.
So she, I respected that she was openlytalking about her cultural bias that like
women are shitty drivers or that they,you know, it'd be somehow worse to have a
woman, uh, pass her as opposed to a male.
Now, that being said, I had no idea howmany women were actually in this world.
(33:59):
And I.
Being somebody who, you know, wetalked about those two types of
women and male dominant spaceswhere one is like me, where I'm
like, ah, other girl, yeah, instantfriends, like so much to talk about.
And then the other female isgoing to be, you know, kind of
very standoffish and look at itin a negative competitive light.
(34:23):
And during that interview, something thatI noticed about Danica in particular,
which by the way, I did reach out to herto see if she'd come on the show, um,
was that she didn't seem really open orwanting to embrace other women in the
industry, which I'm like, bump, like,dude, like, what are you doing, man?
(34:44):
Like, that ain't the way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So to not.
You know, spread vile gossipor stories or whatever.
But I've heard from severalpeople that she is very much about
self promoting herself, right?
And not about empowering other women.
She's that competitive, right?
Where she's like, no, it's me or nothing.
(35:04):
Now what I don't want to do.
As part of that conversation ismisrepresent motor sports as a whole,
because NASCAR nation has its ownattitudes towards, you know, women
drivers and, you know, being mixedin with the boys and, you know,
the evolution of NASCAR itself.
Now, it doesn't speak for the FIA, whichis the governing body behind World Rally
and Formula One and a bunch of others.
(35:25):
And then drag racing, the NHRA,there's all these different
sanctioning bodies, but.
The consensus is we need more women,we need more diversity in general
in racing, but Danica is not a greatrepresentation for women that are
getting excited about motorsport.
The people you want to look up to areworking and we've had the privilege
(35:46):
of working with them for manyyears now is the folks over at like
WMNA, which was started by Lynn St.
James.
She was at Indy seven times,you know, and rookie of the
year, all this kind of stuff.
She's had a really longracing career as a.
Successful professional racer.
You've got people like MichelleMouton, who is a world rally champion.
You've got Steffi Bao, who's thefemale goat of motocross, right?
(36:08):
And Cindy Lux.
I mean, there's so many women overat WMNA and their goal is to bring
more women up through the system.
How do we help them?
How do we get them on the right teams?
How do we get them the rightcorporate sponsorship, the
right notoriety, the exposure?
Not just get them a seat.
How do we make them faster?
Right?
How do we get them to a point wherethey are beating the boys, you
(36:29):
know, and those kinds of things.
And what's interesting about motorsportis that it really is a level playing
field because the meat behind thesteering wheel, it doesn't matter
the gender, the car is the car.
Right.
And the team, like I mentionedbefore, has to work together.
The driver is notsuccessful by themselves.
If the car is a piece of junk now,granted budgets get in the way and
(36:51):
you know, more money, better teams,better cars, that sort of stuff
still happens despite cheating andother regulation bending and whatnot.
But the point is in NASCAR, whereit's basically spec racing, where all
the cars are supposed to be equal.
Then it comes down to the drivers.
And if you're just notthat good, if you're a back
marker, you're a back marker.
It doesn't matter.
There's men who start 40thand they end 40th, right?
(37:14):
And so it doesn't matter, you know,what does it take to get up and
run with the guys at the front guysor gals at the front of the pack?
So NASCAR is a little bit different.
Then a lot of the other motorsports and you know, there's all
sorts of stereotypes and stigmasthat go along with NASCAR nation.
But again, Danica doesn't represent allof motorsport, but what she's failing
(37:35):
at is representing women in motorsport.
And you'll also notice thatshe's not associated with WMNA or
shift up now or any of the otherorganizations that are helping to
bring women up through the system.
And so that's where I sort of look atit and go, you know, yeah, you're a role
model for somebody just not my girls.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(37:55):
So that, that's the message that I gotwhen I was watching that interview.
I was shocked.
I was like, Oh no, she's likeone of those girls that view
all other women as competition,but not a healthy competition.
It's competition by exclusion.
So it's, you know, who's the top racer?
It ain't her.
She has, she's, she's the onlyfemale at that level, but you're
(38:17):
not competing with other females.
So are you not competing with otherfemales because you like the status?
of being the only female and want tokeep it that way because that gives
you some sort of prestige, or is itthat you want to be a great racer?
And there's that.
And the other thing is, she sortof falls down the scale when
(38:38):
you're comparing everything.
Now, I mentioned these organizationsthat are helping women come out.
But then there's two, two, uh, Bodiesof racing that are even more important.
You got Beth Perretta with herall female indie car team, right?
from Theri.
I brought her on the show from,from the drivers all the way down
to the engineers ev, and she'sdone that multiple years in a row.
Now they've had technical issueswith the car and this and that,
(38:59):
but they're working together and weactually were able to interview the
aerodynamicist that was on that team.
We've interviewed other peoplethat have been part of that.
And then the other side of the world andthe another discipline of racing endurance
racing, you've got folks like the IronDames and all female endurance team that's
gone to Le Mans multiple times a yearand competed in a 24 hour race along with
(39:20):
the rest of the IMSA and WEC seasons.
So there's, there's not a lack.
There's not an overwhelming majority, butthe thing is, you never saw Danica plug
herself into, well, I'm going to leaveNASCAR and I'm going to go hook up with
Beth Perretta and her team, or I'm goingto go run with the Iron Dames and help
support them because I am a fast driver.
(39:42):
And what's interestingabout endurance racing is.
It's really team based.
It's like a rally race, right?
Rally in the sense of like rallyrunning where you're passing the baton.
So every driver has tobe consistently fast.
They have to turn, uh, lap times thatare within a margin of each other.
And then every, every couple hoursthey have to switch and the car keeps
running for six, 12, 24 hours nonstop.
(40:05):
And it's like, why didn't you insertyourself into those organizations?
Right?
Because she's about whateverit is that she's about.
If it's alien conspiracy theoriesnow, or, you know, self promoting
her racing career, that's fine.
But there are ways forwomen to get engaged.
In every discipline of motor sport andfor construction workers who might be
(40:26):
closer to what we call, you know, theroundy round racing, not just NASCAR, but
sprint car, dirt track, things like that.
I was shocked.
I went to an expo inPhiladelphia last year.
There are so many women drivers in USAC,which is the governing body of like
sprint car racing and things like that.
I was like, hell yeah, we need tofigure out your formula and get you
(40:46):
guys to come over to road racing andendurance because you're doing it right.
So.
I think those folks, if you're intothat, you're, you probably see a
lot more Amy's and Kaylee's andCaitlin's and, you know, running
around those circuits every weekend.
Very cool.
Very, very classy.
I didn't even know that existed.
So it's, it's a trilliondollar niche industry.
(41:07):
I'll put it that way.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
But I, I think that is reallyimportant that you pointed
out that the playing field.
is really even when it comesto this specific discipline,
because there are very fewdisciplines where that is the case.
(41:29):
Um, and, and you get that argumentabout basketball as an example.
Why can't basketball be co ed, right?
But the women will getchounced by the men.
Like, I'd like to see itplay out and see how it goes.
Motorsport doesn't have those walls.
Yeah, look, it is.
Look, on average, in general, menphysically are built to be more
(41:56):
athletic, more fierce in certain aspects.
You're literallybiologically built that way.
Like the environment needs youthat way for a reason, right?
And I'm not saying thatwomen can't do these sports.
I'm saying that it is clear that whenyou try to Marry female and male sports.
Uh, it's just too much of an unfairadvantage, which is ridiculous.
(42:18):
Well, and it's interesting becausethere's two schools of thought
when it comes to driving as well.
You can drive by data, which a lot ofFormula One drivers do, where it's all
about the data, the data, the data.
And it's almost like they'reinside of a remote control car.
But in the old days, if you go backand look at, uh, James Hunt and
Nikki Lauda and Ayrton Senna, MichaelSchumacher, they drove by feel.
(42:38):
What do I mean they drove by feel?
If you watch the latest Senna mockumentaryon Netflix, there's a whole, there's
several scenes where it's like,tighten the belts harder, harder.
I need to be able to feel the car.
They drove by intuition.
And what's interesting is going backto teaching Women drivers at the
racetrack is you guys are, it's agross generalization, more sensitive.
(43:00):
You feel more than the guys do becausewe're wrapped up in the adrenaline and
the excitement and the physical exertion.
I mean, I had one guy, I thought he wasgoing to rip the steering wheel off the
car, like he was Donkey Kong, right?
I'm like, relax, but the ladydrivers are more in tune with all
their senses and what's going on.
And they have more.
Finesse and finesse is superimportant in learning how to go fast.
(43:21):
If you can't feel the car andunderstand how it's communicating
to you, what's happening, even atthe level of adhesion of the tires,
which seems so like benign, right?
You, you, if you can't feel allthat, you're never going to go fast.
That's why I find it an absolute treatwhen I get a woman that wants to go
racing and learn how to go racing becauseit's like, this is going to be great.
(43:42):
It's all going to gel.
It's all going to work.
And I don't have this barrier to learning.
Um, so again, drive by feel.
That's super important.
I love that.
I f ing love that.
I think that's brilliant.
What a wonderful opportunity forwomen to get to explore this, just
the way that you talk about it.
You're so passionateand you get me excited.
(44:05):
Somebody who has no comprehension on,on, like, What this really is brand
new to to it, although I have hadtons of friends, tons of coworkers
that this is their thing, and I never.
connected.
But the way that you talk aboutit and listening to your episodes,
(44:25):
um, and your podcast, I'm like,dude, I want to learn how to drive.
Yes, absolutely.
I want to try this.
It's just really fun and exciting.
A quiz for the listeners.
If you remember back in the eighties, thefamous Volkswagen campaign, Farfig Nugent.
That's a word.
No, it's like, what does that mean?
(44:46):
This looks dumb.
You know what the guy, Stick figurewith his hair being blown back.
What that meant translating toEnglish is the joy of driving.
That was their big thing is again,going back to 200 horsepower ship boxes.
You can have a lot of fun in a car.
If you're willing to take thatnext step and learn how to use
this tool that you've been given.
(45:06):
I absolutely love it.
I love this.
You have totally changed my perspectiveon driving and given me a brand
new outlook on what I want to dowith this thing that I do often.
I do it every single day and I willcomplain, gosh, I hate driving.
I hate driving.
(45:27):
I am now embracing this idea.
You know what?
I could love this.
I could learn to love this.
So I'll say this because I'm sure a lotof the listeners and I'm not trying to.
You know, stereotype, probably drive bigtrucks, you know, Ford, Chevy, Dodges.
And that's fine.
There's a place for that.
There's a craftsmantruck series, by the way.
But, you know, you're going, well, Igot to buy a race car, trailer, and
(45:49):
I don't have the money to invest.
Look, go to a track event to your localtrack, especially look on the calendars.
There's a website that weuse all the time called H.
P.
D.
E.
So that's high performancedrivers, education, junkie, H.
P.
D.
E.
Junkie dot com.
You can look all across the United Statesand Canada at all the tracks and it
will show you who's going to be there.
Go check it out.
(46:09):
Go talk to people in the paddockif you have the time and you're
not working on the weekend.
But you always have an opportunity to getinto a race car and rent one for a weekend
or become buddies, become part of a crew,become part of like a AR or a chump series
where you're, you're helping out, you'reusing your skills and then you get the
opportunity to drive somebody else's car,you know, and they'll help you get through
(46:30):
the schools and all those kinds of things.
So now you're not laying out your cashand you can kind of try before you buy.
And if you get bitten by the bug,then you go to a website like racing
junk and you buy somebody else'srace car and then you're done.
Right.
So there's, there's reasons and seasons,but check it out, get a feel for it.
When you go to some of thoseevents, you have so much.
Immediate access that you don't have whenyou're paying for a grandstand seat at
(46:56):
a NASCAR race, even if you get paddockpasses, or if you go to your local, you
know, dirt track, you're not gettingdown there with the guys at an HPD.
You can talk to the driversand they're regular guys.
And some of them are pros and they comeand they practice and do those kinds
of things and, and they come and teach.
So it's a whole different experience.
It'll change your attitudetowards driving, and then you
can work your way into it.
(47:16):
But the fun part is you'll startto realize around the paddock,
guys that have trucks or gals too,that have trucks just like yours.
The most fun I've ever had is wetake out what we call the tow pigs,
especially on a rainy day for likerained out and the instructors are bored.
We'll go out with our trucks and run themon track and they are absolute blast to
(47:39):
just hoon around and get them sidewaysand just see what the trucks can do.
Cause you never get to drivethem in those conditions.
We like, you know, Whatis the limit of my F 150?
When is it going to start understeering?
You know, what are the, with theother thing, what are the nannies do?
Like all these electronic controlsto keep me safe is what happens if
I turn off that traction control?
Right?
So we get to play around even withour pedestrian vehicles sometimes,
(48:02):
but all that comes from the training.
I had an F 150.
I fucking love that.
I love to give that a roll.
Um, okay.
Eric, you are what many wouldsay is the American dream.
You're very successful.
You got this duality in life where youreally get to explore your passion.
You bring people together,successful podcasts.
(48:24):
Um, I know this is a little bit of aloaded question, but work with me here.
Work with me here.
What would you.
say has helped you get tothis point in your life?
A mixture of ADD and tenacity.
That is the recipe for success.
Now, to be honest, again, growingup as a first generation Italian
(48:47):
American, you know, my parentscoming over in the seventies, we,
we didn't have any family here.
We had no other choice but to rollup our sleeves and get it done.
So whether it was working on thehouse or working on the cars or,
you know, whatever it was that.
That stick to itiveness, right?
To always like achieve the goal.
(49:07):
Don't have lingering projects.
You can get it done, getit done, get it done.
Um, you know, I joke all the time.
My dad used to say if I wasn't doingsomething, you know, your idle hands
are the devil's workshop, right?
But he'd be like, don't you have somethingyou should be working on right now?
Go find something to do.
Right.
And so that helped my ADD as akid too, cause it kept me busy.
So I, I.
Carried that through my entire life.
I never have like sort of a dull moment.
(49:29):
And my wife jokes all the time.
Even when you're stationary,your brain is working.
You're thinking about the next projector the next article or the next.
You got to go here.
You got to do this.
So you got to prep the car, youknow, all these kinds of things.
And so that helps me, you know, let'ssay being not neuro neuro divergent,
I guess is the new term for it, right?
But, uh, realistically, it comes down toyou get out what you put in and sometimes.
(49:54):
100 percent isn't enough and folks thatknow me really well know I run it 200
percent most of the time and they'relike, I don't know how you do it.
When do you sleep?
Whatever.
So a lot of the secret to thatis time management, right?
That's the other thing is a moment.
You're wasting time.
And however you qualify that,what else could you be doing?
(50:16):
So for me, it's always beenwork, work, work, work, work.
And unfortunately it'stwo types of work, right?
And balancing that outand quality of life.
And I know it sounds like I'm runningon the hamster wheel constantly,
but I've found ways, leveragingmy day job to automate things.
That's the big deal.
And I, and that's the secretfor me, probably not so much for
construction workers, but maybe.
(50:38):
You know, the use of some technology,or I don't want to say AI, because
it doesn't apply here, but thereare ways to make processes better.
And if you think in that engineeringway of like, how do we iterate this?
How do we make it better?
How do we not just do the samething over and over again?
How can we, you know, How can wemodify and evolve the process?
(50:59):
That's where you gain time back.
And when you can share that with otherpeople, you become more efficient.
So bringing it back to motor sportand bring you back to construction,
working, if you're working as a unit.
Rather than as an individual contributor.
Now we all have more time to getmore things done or to hang around
the haddock and crack open a beerand BS and tell stories, right?
(51:19):
So that's what it, that'swhat it really comes down to.
Wow.
Okay.
So you would be actually shockedat how much technology plays
into construction and how you.
Can create systems within theconstruction, you hit the nail on
the head when you talked about,you know, working symbiotically as
team and as one unit and then howthat brings more time for everyone.
(51:43):
Right?
So one of my favorite things with my crewis that, you know, We start early, and
if we start early, we get to leave early.
So we work like as one, bang it out.
It's not about how long it takes to do it.
It's about getting it done.
Quickly and getting it done.
So, and one of the other thingsis the three C's of humanity.
(52:06):
The things that we don't do well,that we really need to exercise and
practice and refine is communication,collaboration, and cooperation.
If you could figure out how tomaster those three things in
concert, you are unstoppable.
So as a team, you need tothink about those three C's.
How do we communicate better?
How do we cooperate andhow do we collaborate?
And to your point.
(52:28):
Get start early, get done early,but it's that working as a unit,
like a military unit to get thingsdone, you know, you will succeed.
And you achieved more thanyou ever thought you could.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
I love it.
Thank you, Eric.
Thank you so much forcoming on the Sparky Life.
You are a pleasure.
I knew this was going to be awesome.
for having me.
This has been an absolute treat.
(52:50):
The Sparky Life.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Create the sparks in your life.
Welcome back today's guest crew chief,Eric owner of grand touring motorsports
and the motoring podcast network discussesracing wrenches and all kinds of rides.
Welcome to the sparky life.
I'm your host.
I am here to create thesparks in your life.
(00:21):
And here we discuss thebuilders of our civilization.
All things construction careeroriented every Thursday.
I stumbled across Eric and hismotoring podcast network and
immediately thought, Oh my gosh.
Freaking badass.
My peeps are totally going to love this.
I need everyone to knowabout Eric and his network.
(00:45):
Forget the fact that he's great tolisten to and knowledgeable about
his passion and is the pun Prince.
You know, I love the cheeseall about the cheese.
There is so much about theskilled trades of motor sports
that I didn't know existed.
So many career opportunities.
I was blown away.
So welcome with me, Crew Chief Eric.
(01:08):
Before we begin, a quick wordfrom our sponsor, Supply House.
Before you make that firstconnection on your next electrical
job, connect with supply house.
com.
They have got a huge inventory withthe top brands in stock and real
customer service from real people.
(01:29):
That's what you call in and you speakto a human being pretty awesome.
I highly recommend thatyou check out supplyhouse.
com today.
Now let's start our show.
So I ran across Eric and his GTM networkpodcast saying like, amazing, incredible.
(01:51):
And when I first started to hear.
All that good info andcheck out the website.
I immediately was like, Oh my God,my guys are going to love this.
Trisha's a gear head shoutout to Justin and Thomas.
Love you.
And they are going to literally gocrazy for what you've got in store.
So first, what the hell is.
(02:12):
So Grand Touring Motorsports,that's what GTN stands for
started many, many moons ago.
There's a whole backstorythere about my family.
It really starts with mygrandfather coming over after
World War II, looking for work.
And he got a gig as a chauffeurat the Belgian embassy.
And so my dad grew up in thatenvironment and then they would go back
and forth between the U S and Italy.
And then, uh, My dad eventually cameover with my mom in the late 70s, and he
(02:38):
was bitten by the bug, by the car bug.
He grew up just outside of the Ferraritest track in Modena, and so he's
like, I used to watch Niki Lauda, youknow, testing the Formula One cars.
He always wanted to be a race car driver.
And so he turned wrenches andmodify on anything that he could.
And again, he grew up inthe garages of the embassy.
And so it was like, You know,in his blood to have the grease
(02:59):
under his fingernails and stuff.
And so when I came along, you know, someof my earliest memories, the same thing.
It was like.
Dad's swapping an engine on our Scirocco.
And the girl's like, what is going on?
I'm like two years old.
Like, what are you guys doing?
You know?
So, but I started as a gopher andI learned, you know, doing things
in the garage and things like that.
And so at one point as my dad gotolder and further along in his career,
(03:21):
and he wasn't a mechanic by trade.
He was actually in the mainframedevelopment programmer industry.
Right.
So.
Cars were always his hobby.
He was moonlighting.
You know, he was racing.
He was a national champion inautocross and other things like that.
And so always working in the garage.
That's where we spent all our time.
That's where my dad and Ibonded, you know, and I learned
(03:41):
a ton of things that way.
And so later he developed a businesscalled Grand Touring Motorsports and
he sold parts and consulting and, youknow, helped tuned cars for racers.
Predominantly European stuff.
And then unfortunately, he wastaken from us at a pretty early age.
And so that all kind of came to a close.
And several years later, friend of mineand I got into road racing and we were
(04:04):
going together and doing all these trackevents and turn the wrenches on our cars.
And I ended up being his mechanicand my mechanic, which was tough.
We had very similar cars andyou can see them on our website.
I saw the Jetta.
The golfs.
Yes.
Golf.
Golfs the twin GTIs.
There you go.
. So can you tell I'm not, hook your head. You're gonna help me with this though.
You're gonna help me.
Absolutely.
(04:25):
So we were sitting around one dayand talking about, you know, how do
we keep all of our guys together?
You know, we're building a team, wewanna go endurance racing, we wanted
time trials, all this kinda stuff.
And so.
He was like, Brad goes,why don't we create a club?
I said, okay, well, whatare we going to call it?
Like I can do all the web work,you know, cause I too followed in
my dad's footsteps as an it guy.
(04:46):
And so he's like, why don't we justcall it grand touring motorsports?
And so 2013 ish, that was all reborna couple of years after my dad died.
And it has quickly evolved inthe last almost 12 years now
into a lot of different things.
So if you kind of break it down,there's three big components.
There's the clubhouse, which you canfind from our primary website, which
are Our main website turned into adigital magazine called Grand Touring.
(05:09):
We're 30, almost 32 issues now.
So 32 quarters of the magazine,it's a long time to be out
there as a digital production.
And then last year, as we grew ourpodcast, which was derived from our
writing and our journalism and, youknow, going to track days and all those
kinds of things, we developed somethingcalled the Motoring Podcast Network.
So our headliner show is called Break Fix.
(05:30):
That's a specific.
Grand Touring Motorsports production andthen we brought on other creators that we
were overlapping with that were strugglingin the industry and we created this thing
called the Motoring Podcast Network.
So we feature them now not on a podcastbut what we call a variety show.
So every week somethinga little different.
You might be hearing fromWilliam Ross from the exotic car
marketplace talking about Ferraris.
(05:51):
The other week you're hearing fromProfessor John Summers, the motoring
historian, about something that's goingon on the left coast of the country.
Or screen to speech which is aall woman production about sim
racers that are coming up andmaking their way into motorsports.
We've got things like what should Ibuy, which are really fun panel episodes
with guys from motor trend and analysts.
(06:11):
And we talk in debate, we buy forfictitious, you know, customers and
collectors and things like that.
We've got our drive through newsevery month, you know, so we,
there's a little bit of somethingfor everybody and that makes it nice.
Tune in when you want.
Hey, there's five or six episodesI missed, but I really only care
about, you know, the drive thrunews, and those are guaranteed at
the last Tuesday of every month.
(06:34):
Well, um, after I had the opportunity ofkind of like stumbling upon you, right,
the universe works in mysterious ways.
I was so intrigued about that.
Motorsports and the mechanicalaspect being in construction.
And once I started listening tothe episodes and I'm somebody
with no motorsport, likeit's like racing is I have.
(06:57):
Baby eyes.
Oh, just don't say that cars arean appliance because they're not.
I know that much.
I know that much.
Okay.
So, and I've got a lot of girlfriendswho are mechanics and things
like that and shout out to Trish.
Total gearhead.
She like loves this stuff.
But I just never kind ofgained a passion for it mainly
because I just wasn't exposed.
(07:17):
And as I was listening to yourepisodes, I was like, Oh my gosh,
there's so many correlations.
to the construction industry andskilled trades regarding this.
So you can, you expand on that for me.
Yeah.
So, you know, checking all thestereotypes at the door, I suppose
there are a lot of similarities betweenmechanics and construction workers.
(07:38):
And so, you know, working with your hands,it is a skill, it is a skilled trade.
You know, our tools of choice arewrenches, wrenches and spanners
and ratchets, and instead of clawhammers and nail guns and power
tools and things like that, so.
The idea is still the same.
You're building something oryou're dem, you're demolishing
some, you're taking it apart.
Now, in our case, when we're dismantlingsomething, it's to repair it, make it
(08:02):
better, upgrade it, whatever, and thenput it back together because we need
to put it into service, especially inthe motor sport world, it's under such.
Strenuous conditions that themanufacturers were like, well, we
didn't really intend it for that.
So we get, you get a littlebit more creative on the
motorsport side of the world.
But the same is true in construction.
You're like, wow, that wallisn't necessarily straight.
So we're going to have to dothis, but by eye, it's going
(08:22):
to look really good, you know?
So there's a little magic, a littleblack magic there, if you will.
But at the end of the day, yourthing, you have to think on your feet.
You have to be resourceful.
You use a little bit of MacGyvertactics, you know, in the same way.
There's also a community around.
Let's say mechanics, wrench turners,and even in the motorsport world,
(08:43):
in some ways, I often like to relatemotorsports to the military because
it's one of those situations whereyou do not succeed alone, right?
You have all these specialists aroundyou, whether they're programmers,
they're race engineers, they're.
Folks that specifically work onsuspension or are knowledgeable about
tires, all these different movingpieces because some people like maybe
(09:05):
yourself, you look at a car and go,it takes me from point A to point B.
But what you don't understandwhat we like to highlight on the
show is there's so many different.
Uh, careers that influence a car, right?
Chemists, physics, designers,aerodynamicists, electrical engineers.
I mean, the list goes on and on and onand on to build this thing that we take
(09:26):
for granted that takes us, you know,to Dunkin Donuts every morning or takes
it to the construction site, right?
So, uh, When you put all thattogether, rising tides lift all ships.
And so that is true ofjust general mechanics.
Cause when you ever walk into a shop,whether it's a race shop or a minor
key, the team has to work together.
Not every one mechanic knows everything.
There's a guy that's a specialistin alignments or exhaust or
(09:48):
engine work or tires or whatever.
But again, to, to get that finalproduct, the team has to work together.
To make the customer happy at the endof the day, but to get that car safely
back on the road or back on track andbe able to perform at its ultimate.
Yeah, that's exactly the same withthe infrastructure of construction
(10:08):
and how that all operates and havingkey specialists from different areas.
Um, it's a,
I can't help but think aboutthe term grease monkey and, you
know, the thoughts that come tomind when I think of mechanic.
I happen to know many mechanics beingin the skilled trades, and none of them
(10:30):
actually fit the stereotype description.
Like in construction,there's many stereotypes.
Do you come across that in moresport, motors, motorsports?
So if you.
If you take the obvious comparisons,like, Oh, mechanics are just
a bunch of substance abusingdegenerates, blah, blah, blah, blah.
(10:51):
You probably hear the same thingabout construction workers, right?
Yeah.
The difference is we've got greaseunder our fingernails, you know,
instead of, you know, splintersin our hands kind of thing, right?
Now, I make the joke all the time thatI lived this duality in my life, right?
Bruce Wayne by day in the IT industry,supporting the military and those kinds
of things for many, many years now.
And then at night.
Right.
I'm doing the podcast thing.
(11:12):
I do journalism, but I'malso turning wrenches.
I'm prepping the race car.
I've got this championship.
I'm working towards and I go intoa meeting and they're like, Yeah, I
work in computers, you know, and myfingernails aren't that great, you
know, all chewed up and my hands aregnarled because you inevitably bust
your hands when you're working on thecar because there's never any space.
I also joke, I live my life aquarter turn at a time, and that's
(11:33):
not a quarter turn on the racetrack.
It's a quarter turn on the wrench.
So that being said, I think thesame is true with the construction
industry as it is for mechanics.
But in, in the same way, even in my dayjob, It's hard to live it all the time.
You have to find another outlet.
So for me, turning wrencheswas always a backup.
(11:55):
It's like if the IT worldcollapses or that, you know, whole
white collar sweatshop that isprogramming is not for me anymore.
I can fall back on being a mechanic.
And the interesting part is I can alwaysgo get my ASC certification and go work
at any, you know, mom and pop garage.
And for those that don't know.
ASC stands for, what is this ASCcertification or what is it all about?
(12:21):
Uh, shoot, hang on.
Googling moment.
I don't want to get the acronym wrong.
It's the automotive serviceexcellence certification.
So you'll see that on theside of a lot of garages.
We have ASC certified mechanics,which basically means that they
went to school to be a mechanic.
They went to like Lincoln techor they went somewhere else and
they graduated with a degree.
(12:42):
In automotive mechanics and diagnosticsand all those kinds of things.
So I don't have that that'sadditional schooling.
It's additional cost.
But what's interesting isin the motor sports world, I
don't necessarily need that.
I can bring my previous careerexperience and my own personal
wrench turning experience withme to become part of a team.
And there's different ways to get involvedin race teams, whether it's through,
(13:04):
let's say you're a disabled vet and youwant to come in through something like
operation motorsport, where they find youplacement on a race and you can use the.
The skills that you learnedin the military on the team,
you know, things like that.
So the same is true for a laymanlike myself, where it's like, well,
you've got a background in it.
Do you, are you interested in analytics?
Do you want to study, you know, thesuspension geometry data that's coming
(13:26):
back, you know, real time stuff, youknow, how do you want to be involved?
And so even for constructionworkers, where it's like,
Hey, we need to build this.
We need to do that.
There's a lot of theseother, other types of.
Uh, skills that can be translatedeven into the world of motorsports
if people are looking to cross over.
So I joke sometimes if you can swinga hammer, you can turn a wrench.
There's a lot of translation thereas long as you kind of understand the
(13:48):
principle as my dad used to say Ifyou can take it apart without breaking
it, you can put it back together.
Yes
Well, I mean, uh when you talk about notneeding a license or degree to get into
that career path that's so Absolutelycorrelates with construction because
there are many different careers inskilled trades that you can do that.
(14:13):
And I am a big fan of thisbeing somebody who is, uh,
learning challenged, air quotes.
Um, I don't like the idea that you haveto get some sort of licensing or academic
accreditation in order to do that.
Do you, the career thatyou're looking to do now?
I'm not saying that there shouldn'tbe standards or qualifications.
(14:36):
I am saying that what we currently haveis too exclusive and doesn't truly project
someone's abilities in that career.
Yeah.
And I think for those of us, as I liketo say, petrol heads of a certain age,
we grew up under the fallacy that,you know, you had to go to college.
to make it in life.
And so that is applicable to Xenials likemyself and, you know, elder millennials
(15:02):
and millennials and things like that.
So there's other ways to make it right.
But again, I sort of had no choice becauseAnd I, and I say that, I know that's
kind of strong, but I came, I came aroundas a first generation Italian American.
And it wasn't like, Oh, you know, wecame over and Ellis Island in the 1800s.
It's like, no, my parents came overin the seventies, like really late.
(15:24):
Right.
And so they didn't, theydidn't finish school.
They wanted the best for us.
They broke their backs doingthe work that they could.
And my dad was very fortunate.
He was a smart guy and he got intothe right place at the right time, you
know, They wanted the best for me, butthey're like, you need to go and do this
it stuff, but I want to work on cars.
No, no, no.
You need to do this.
So I was sort of stuck,but in a way it worked.
(15:46):
It did allow me this weird Batman BruceWayne lifestyle that I have, but I also
am not burnt out on being a mechanicwhere the last thing I want to see or hear
about is, Hey, can you help me fix my car?
It's like, I'll say yes, because for meit's cathartic to go out into the garage,
but don't ask me to fix your computer.
Don't ask me to diagnose,you know, your Mac.
(16:08):
Write you down on the list forwhen I'm having more trouble.
Construction worker, the lastthing you want to hear is, hey,
can you help me build a shed?
No, leave me alone.
You're dead on.
Do you know how many times I getlike, oh, so you're an electrician?
Can you install thislighting, you know, for me?
Can you like let my landlord see this?
Freaking love it when I say I'man electrician because they've
always got projects and stuff.
(16:29):
And you're right.
The last thing I want to do is doelectrical work on my off time.
Yeah.
I enjoy it during the day.
I love what I do, butthen I also need a break.
Well, what also helps me love my hobbya little bit more is there's a lot
of YouTube certified mechanics now.
So
(16:49):
I'm like, here's a video, have a nice day.
I would feel irresponsible directingpeople to a YouTube for electrical work.
But they're out there,which is a little scary.
Um, I don't know how I feel about thatexactly, but I love the overall idea,
(17:09):
which is sharing knowledge, right?
Absolutely.
That's number one.
So I did not know how muchwas involved in racing.
I didn't have a clue.
I haven't been exposed to it.
Nobody in my family is like intoNASCAR and coming across you in
your show has gotten me into this.
And I always like thought of myselfas somebody who's not a daredevil.
(17:33):
In fact, I'm afraid of heights.
Don't ask me how that works with beingan electrician, but I, even though I
will get up in the lift and climb andbe whatever, I don't love heights.
So I don't love, like, highadrenaline activities, which is the
exact opposite of most of my peeps.
Most of my people love, you know,high adrenaline, and I would say a
lot of them are adrenaline addictsthat use it in a healthy way when it
(17:56):
comes to construction and building.
Can you break down the racing aspectand what really goes into this?
Yeah.
I think it's exactly howyou described it there too.
It's not for everybody either, becauseone of the things I realize as a coach,
right, so I, I, I spend time helpingwhat I call want to be race car drivers.
(18:18):
Sometimes people that havemore money than brains, right?
I bought this super coolcar and I want to go fast.
And it's the whole Ricky Bobby moment.
Right.
But it's like,
but you know, it's amazing that yougot here safely in the first place.
And I'm not trying to be any sortof way, but it's like, okay, Great.
You got 700 horsepower under the pedaland you have no idea how to use it.
(18:39):
And I hate to say anybody can go fast ina straight line and that's not a knock
against other disciplines of racinglike drag racing because drag racing
is extremely complicated and you arejust going fast in a straight line.
But there's a whole science to that too.
But road racing specifically, the guysthat come to the track with their brand
new ZL1 Camaros or their Corvettesor their Porsche or their Mustang,
(18:59):
you know, whatever dream car thatthey've Waited this whole time to get
and they, they just want to go fast.
It's like, look, safety is paramountin racing, especially road racing.
So one of the things that we workon, and I find it so shocking,
the adrenaline junkies, right?
The guys that just want to gofaster gals that want to go fast
(19:20):
is I put them in the right seat of.
A complete shit box, like200, 200 horsepower Toyota.
Right.
And they're like, Oh, a hundred miles anhour is a struggle down the straightaway.
Yeah, but I'm going to go intothis turn at a hundred and
they're not going to lift.
And they're like, excuse me, what?
And we're alreadythrough it at that point.
And you see them white knucklingand grabbing and freaking out.
(19:41):
And then the there's thatsphincter puckering moment, right?
Because they're, they'renot used to going that fast.
Fast in a turn.
And that's where the beauty of drivingcomes from is being able to work
with the machinery, understandingyour machinery, what the limits of
it are and how you can capitalize onit or maybe stretch it a little bit.
(20:02):
So when we're working withstudents, that's where we're trying
to get them to really go fast.
And I have this whole process whereit's like speed is the last thing.
Like we need to work onorientation, memorization,
consistency, then we can go faster.
But the speed actually comesnaturally if you follow that method.
And so you get the rush and peoplewill come away from what we call a
(20:22):
high performance driver's educationweekend and be like, I thought I knew
how to drive when I got here and thishas been an eye opening experience
and we can take it in different ways.
Do you want to learnabout accident avoidance?
Do you want to do aggressive stuff?
You know, not, we're not going to do stuntdriving at a track day, but you're going
to go home with a different appreciationfor your car than what you came with.
(20:42):
And what you realize too, is youthought you could go fast on the
road and you realize how dumb itis to go fast on the road and your
speed starts to just decrease.
And you're like, you know what?
I'm more situationally aware nowI'm looking up, I'm looking ahead.
I can see traffic patterns.
Like why is that guy doing that?
You know, accident avoidance,all that kind of stuff.
But it's, it's interesting how motorsporttampers some of that adrenaline.
(21:07):
And there's a really cool graph you cancreate that says, you know, when you
start out, you're all like, Oh, superanxious and I'm going to kill this.
We're going to light up all the tiresand the car is completely erratic
and you're completely nervous.
And then it's like.
It starts to converge, and you becomecool as a cucumber, and you can throw a
car around a corner completely sideways,and it doesn't even phase you, so that
(21:29):
adrenaline level Comes down as you startto master the skill, like any skill.
I mean, you're, you'redoing electrical work.
It's dangerous, but after a whileyou get comfortable with it.
Now you don't want to becomeoverconfident because that's
when you start making mistakes.
So same is true on our side.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
So first off, I want allthe info on your class.
Because even though I don't have anydesire to be a race car driver, I
(21:52):
would love to take a class like that.
Just the way you talked about it andlearn how to become one with my vehicle.
Like that is so cool.
Not to mention how muchI am in my vehicle.
Many construction peeps knowthis, like we are constantly
driving all over kingdom come.
And.
I have always thought of myself asthat stereotypical girl can't drive,
(22:15):
like I suck at driving, and I don'tknow how accurate that actually is,
because I have no one to comparemy skills to, and I just drive.
Cautious, I would say and slow and annoypeople with that on the road, but I
would totally dig a course like yourswhere I could become more confident in
(22:38):
my vehicle and really assess my abilitiesto understand the mechanical aspect.
So not to knock the boys.
I get to instruct all sorts of differentpeople, you know, different walks of life.
And what's really interesting, youcan pick up on other hobbies by the
way they drive and stuff like that.
I, one guy, I could tell hewas a pilot because the way
he held the steering wheel.
Oh, wow.
So when I have a lady in the carthough, I always find it to be the
(23:03):
most satisfying experience because.
There's less resistance to learning.
I'm like, because on a constructionlevel, like, okay, go ahead.
Go ahead.
I want to.
So there's this open channel toabsorb the input and change is done.
(23:26):
Right away.
And it's nice to see it be iterative aswell, because when you're teaching at
the track, you've got a corner by corner,then segment by segment, then you do
the whole lap and it all comes together.
Right?
So you got to start from the basics,but the ladies are always so much more
open and again, not to knock the guys.
Cause there's plenty of great guysthat are receptive, but you got to
sort of check your ego at the doorbecause you have to realize you're doing
(23:47):
something extremely dangerous, right?
And you're out there with 30of your closest strangers.
Like, I, you don't know if you pass theother guy that's next to you on the way
there, you know, and you pissed him offdoing your road rage thing or whatever,
but the point is, you've got all theseother moving objects at speed, at high
speed that you need to be receptive.
(24:08):
It's not just, I want to go fast, right?
And so that's where it all comes together.
And people come away from aweekend experience like that.
And they're like, whoa.
But on the other side, the appledoes not fall far from the tree.
My sister is also a certifiedcoach and she gets the opposite.
What, what is this girl going to teach me?
Right.
What she teaches you is thatwhen she blows by you in
(24:31):
her 200 horsepower shit box.
You got something to learn when you'vegot 700 horsepower under your foot.
Right.
And so she, she always feels thechallenge that there's this resistance
with the guys that they don'twant to learn, but I get that too,
because it's like, we're hard headed.
We think we know everything I'vebeen driving since I was 16.
This ain't driving.
This is preparing you to go racing, right?
(24:53):
This is a whole different ball game.
If you want to go down that route.
Right.
So.
But there's a lot of fantastic ladies.
They're super fast.
They're very competitive in all thedifferent disciplines of motorsport.
That's the other thing.
It's not just NASCAR, right?
There's formula cars,meaning open wheel cars.
There's rally, there's drag racing,there's autocross rally car.
(25:13):
I mean, it goes on and on and on andon, and you'll find women everywhere.
And so kind of open your eyes andpay attention to that, but, you know,
listen to their stories, figure out howthey, they came up through the system.
But if you get a chanceto ride with one of them.
Watch how they drive.
Very precise.
A lot of finesse.
And you're like, wow, that's, youknow, it's not this brute force.
We're going to manhandle thecar in the corner kind of stuff.
(25:35):
It's, it's, it's just been a beautifulexperience to work with the ladies and
help get them up through the system.
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Now let's get back to the show.
Okay.
You hit on so many things there.
So in construction, it isthe same with the guys.
They want to reach strength.
They don't.
necessarily want to be taughtbecause, and this is something
I learned as an apprentice rightaway, you never ask a guy why.
(27:06):
And the reason is theyview that as a challenge.
Like I'm challenging whatthey're telling me to do.
And I'm not, the why is because Iwant to learn why you are instructing
me to do this this way so thatI can absorb it fully and really
understand what you're asking of me.
But when I would ask my journeymenwhy they would get furious, and the
(27:28):
number one thing is because I'm tellingyou, because I'm fucking telling you,
I've been in here for two decades.
You do it how I tell you to do it.
Well, that's good and gravy.
I'm not, I'm not challengingthat and trying to understand it.
So I would have to learn ways ofasking why without using the word why.
So what's interesting about theracing world is when you ask why be
prepared for a deluge of information,we are very happy to share.
(27:52):
It comes off as mansplaining a lot,but it's an, it's an interesting
environment where knowledge transfer.
is the norm, right?
So asking why in motorsport and racing,I'm just warning you, be prepared.
You're going to get morethan you bargained for.
I love it.
I love it.
I think that's fantastic.
And as a female in a male dominant space,I would get exactly what your sister got,
(28:16):
where like, who the fuck is this chicktrying to tell me what to do basically.
And I would have to learn that.
So in the construction, um, hierarchy,Because that's kind of how it's built.
It's, it's very archaic in how theyperform team and team building and what
(28:37):
they consider leadership is one of ourdownfalls and something that Spurgy
Life is passionate about changing.
You know, you talk about teams and theimportance of teams and it sounds like on.
Your end of the spectrum,it's more collaborative.
It's less gatekeeping.
It's more embrace embracing andwanting to build together, which
brings the most successful teams,like a hundred percent, right?
(29:00):
The stats are there.
So when we're talking about the hierarchyand the structure, what you typically
see is a foreman who comes in, I callthem, um, table flippers, tool tossers.
Okay.
Like Just this is howit's going to be done.
No one challenged me, you know, beingon the chest kind of deal, right.
(29:23):
Which isn't very effective.
And when, you know, I'm emulating allthat I'm seeing when, so when I got into
a position of leadership, I tried thatapproach and as a female doesn't work,
doesn't work at all, like really bad.
I don't approach, I do not approachthe leadership aspect when I'm working
(29:45):
with my teams in that fashion at all.
Uh, forget the fact that I'm a femaletrying to come in on an aggressive
as opposed to assertive aspect.
Um, but it's, it's aparticularly powerful.
Poor dynamic when a man does it andit's worse when a female does it.
And it's interesting you bring that up.
So I'll share a storyfrom my sister's playbook.
(30:08):
And so we were at Virginiainternational raceway for an event.
We were called in during the day todo a special exercise with a group
of Folks from the Cadillac club.
And so you've got these really niceCTS V black wings, you know, again,
five, six, 700 horsepower vehicles thatyou're like, wow, that's pretty cool.
And she got put in one of those cars andshe's, she's uncomfortable with really,
(30:32):
really high horsepower, especiallyif it's modified beyond factory.
Cause she's like, look,you start bolting on parts.
You don't know where the ceiling isanymore, and it's outside of factory spec.
So it's sort of hard togauge like how far we can go.
And her student wasn't resistant.
Me, I'll call him a little stubbornand she, she was talking to me and
consoling me at one of the lunch breaks.
(30:53):
And she's like, I'm having ahard time, like getting this guy
to just back off a little bit.
We can go faster if he goes slower,but he just jams the throttle.
We're coming out of the turn sideways.
And he goes, we're going to endup in the wall if he doesn't stop.
Right.
So, and she's trying to tell himand he's just, it's not going in.
And at one point I just told her,I said, look, let him screw up.
Let him eat, eat the, you know, noteat the guardrail, but it's like, go
(31:17):
have an off, do it in a spot whereyou know, there's enough runoff room.
And then he realizes, Oh,I'm going to break my car.
We're going to hit something.
He's going to suddenly panic now.
Okay, coach, what do I do now?
Right.
So she had one of those momentsand that was the switching point.
It was like, you had to run head firstinto the wall, you know, figuratively
speaking before he would listen.
(31:38):
And then he got better.
And then he got faster.
So it was funny, you know, slow infast out is the is the methodology.
And so that's what she wastrying to get him to do.
And as he started to slow down, hisaverage lap speed went up, which
means his lap times were going down.
But to realize that you're wastingtime hooning around the track, he
just he wasn't getting it until he hadthat what we call code brown moment.
(32:03):
Code brown moment.
Okay, you've got toelaborate on that for me.
Where does that come from?
You get like an oh s moment, right?
There's code red and there's code brown.
It's brilliant.
I, um, I am obviously parshfulto, I resonate with females in,
(32:24):
in those types of spaces becauseI, there's just so much crossover
and correlation and relatability.
And uh, being a podcaster,I love podcasts.
And I'm definitely a Joe Rogan fan.
And when I deep dived into yourpodcast and all of the goodies in
store there, I actually had JoeRogan's podcast pop up with Danica
(32:48):
Patrick on being a woman in racing.
And I, you know, ofcourse was like, Oh, wow.
Okay.
Here's a female in a male dominant space,uh, totally was interested in what she
had to say and then was shocked whenduring the interview she said that, um,
you know, a lot of the guys don't likeit when, uh, don't want a female to pass.
(33:12):
Right.
So, cause he was asking herlike, what's her experience.
She was like, I don't know.
I'm not a guy.
I'm just gal.
And.
And.
And.
This is my perspective, and a lot of theguys don't want a female to pass them.
But I get that because I wouldn'twant a female to pass me either.
And then Joe Rogan waslike, wait, wait a minute.
Um, so are you saying youwouldn't care if a guy passed you?
(33:33):
And she's like, well, It wouldn'tbe that bad, but it would be
worse to have a female pastor.
So she, I respected that she was openlytalking about her cultural bias that like
women are shitty drivers or that they,you know, it'd be somehow worse to have a
woman, uh, pass her as opposed to a male.
Now, that being said, I had no idea howmany women were actually in this world.
(33:59):
And I.
Being somebody who, you know, wetalked about those two types of
women and male dominant spaceswhere one is like me, where I'm
like, ah, other girl, yeah, instantfriends, like so much to talk about.
And then the other female isgoing to be, you know, kind of
very standoffish and look at itin a negative competitive light.
(34:23):
And during that interview, something thatI noticed about Danica in particular,
which by the way, I did reach out to herto see if she'd come on the show, um,
was that she didn't seem really open orwanting to embrace other women in the
industry, which I'm like, bump, like,dude, like, what are you doing, man?
(34:44):
Like, that ain't the way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So to not.
You know, spread vile gossipor stories or whatever.
But I've heard from severalpeople that she is very much about
self promoting herself, right?
And not about empowering other women.
She's that competitive, right?
Where she's like, no, it's me or nothing.
(35:04):
Now what I don't want to do.
As part of that conversation ismisrepresent motor sports as a whole,
because NASCAR nation has its ownattitudes towards, you know, women
drivers and, you know, being mixedin with the boys and, you know,
the evolution of NASCAR itself.
Now, it doesn't speak for the FIA, whichis the governing body behind World Rally
and Formula One and a bunch of others.
(35:25):
And then drag racing, the NHRA,there's all these different
sanctioning bodies, but.
The consensus is we need more women,we need more diversity in general
in racing, but Danica is not a greatrepresentation for women that are
getting excited about motorsport.
The people you want to look up to areworking and we've had the privilege
(35:46):
of working with them for manyyears now is the folks over at like
WMNA, which was started by Lynn St.
James.
She was at Indy seven times,you know, and rookie of the
year, all this kind of stuff.
She's had a really longracing career as a.
Successful professional racer.
You've got people like MichelleMouton, who is a world rally champion.
You've got Steffi Bao, who's thefemale goat of motocross, right?
(36:08):
And Cindy Lux.
I mean, there's so many women overat WMNA and their goal is to bring
more women up through the system.
How do we help them?
How do we get them on the right teams?
How do we get them the rightcorporate sponsorship, the
right notoriety, the exposure?
Not just get them a seat.
How do we make them faster?
Right?
How do we get them to a point wherethey are beating the boys, you
(36:29):
know, and those kinds of things.
And what's interesting about motorsportis that it really is a level playing
field because the meat behind thesteering wheel, it doesn't matter
the gender, the car is the car.
Right.
And the team, like I mentionedbefore, has to work together.
The driver is notsuccessful by themselves.
If the car is a piece of junk now,granted budgets get in the way and
(36:51):
you know, more money, better teams,better cars, that sort of stuff
still happens despite cheating andother regulation bending and whatnot.
But the point is in NASCAR, whereit's basically spec racing, where all
the cars are supposed to be equal.
Then it comes down to the drivers.
And if you're just notthat good, if you're a back
marker, you're a back marker.
It doesn't matter.
There's men who start 40thand they end 40th, right?
(37:14):
And so it doesn't matter, you know,what does it take to get up and
run with the guys at the front guysor gals at the front of the pack?
So NASCAR is a little bit different.
Then a lot of the other motorsports and you know, there's all
sorts of stereotypes and stigmasthat go along with NASCAR nation.
But again, Danica doesn't represent allof motorsport, but what she's failing
(37:35):
at is representing women in motorsport.
And you'll also notice thatshe's not associated with WMNA or
shift up now or any of the otherorganizations that are helping to
bring women up through the system.
And so that's where I sort of look atit and go, you know, yeah, you're a role
model for somebody just not my girls.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(37:55):
So that, that's the message that I gotwhen I was watching that interview.
I was shocked.
I was like, Oh no, she's likeone of those girls that view
all other women as competition,but not a healthy competition.
It's competition by exclusion.
So it's, you know, who's the top racer?
It ain't her.
She has, she's, she's the onlyfemale at that level, but you're
(38:17):
not competing with other females.
So are you not competing with otherfemales because you like the status?
of being the only female and want tokeep it that way because that gives
you some sort of prestige, or is itthat you want to be a great racer?
And there's that.
And the other thing is, she sortof falls down the scale when
(38:38):
you're comparing everything.
Now, I mentioned these organizationsthat are helping women come out.
But then there's two, two, uh, Bodiesof racing that are even more important.
You got Beth Perretta with herall female indie car team, right?
from Theri.
I brought her on the show from,from the drivers all the way down
to the engineers ev, and she'sdone that multiple years in a row.
Now they've had technical issueswith the car and this and that,
(38:59):
but they're working together and weactually were able to interview the
aerodynamicist that was on that team.
We've interviewed other peoplethat have been part of that.
And then the other side of the world andthe another discipline of racing endurance
racing, you've got folks like the IronDames and all female endurance team that's
gone to Le Mans multiple times a yearand competed in a 24 hour race along with
(39:20):
the rest of the IMSA and WEC seasons.
So there's, there's not a lack.
There's not an overwhelming majority, butthe thing is, you never saw Danica plug
herself into, well, I'm going to leaveNASCAR and I'm going to go hook up with
Beth Perretta and her team, or I'm goingto go run with the Iron Dames and help
support them because I am a fast driver.
(39:42):
And what's interestingabout endurance racing is.
It's really team based.
It's like a rally race, right?
Rally in the sense of like rallyrunning where you're passing the baton.
So every driver has tobe consistently fast.
They have to turn, uh, lap times thatare within a margin of each other.
And then every, every couple hoursthey have to switch and the car keeps
running for six, 12, 24 hours nonstop.
(40:05):
And it's like, why didn't you insertyourself into those organizations?
Right?
Because she's about whateverit is that she's about.
If it's alien conspiracy theoriesnow, or, you know, self promoting
her racing career, that's fine.
But there are ways forwomen to get engaged.
In every discipline of motor sport andfor construction workers who might be
(40:26):
closer to what we call, you know, theroundy round racing, not just NASCAR, but
sprint car, dirt track, things like that.
I was shocked.
I went to an expo inPhiladelphia last year.
There are so many women drivers in USAC,which is the governing body of like
sprint car racing and things like that.
I was like, hell yeah, we need tofigure out your formula and get you
(40:46):
guys to come over to road racing andendurance because you're doing it right.
So.
I think those folks, if you're intothat, you're, you probably see a
lot more Amy's and Kaylee's andCaitlin's and, you know, running
around those circuits every weekend.
Very cool.
Very, very classy.
I didn't even know that existed.
So it's, it's a trilliondollar niche industry.
(41:07):
I'll put it that way.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
But I, I think that is reallyimportant that you pointed
out that the playing field.
is really even when it comesto this specific discipline,
because there are very fewdisciplines where that is the case.
(41:29):
Um, and, and you get that argumentabout basketball as an example.
Why can't basketball be co ed, right?
But the women will getchounced by the men.
Like, I'd like to see itplay out and see how it goes.
Motorsport doesn't have those walls.
Yeah, look, it is.
Look, on average, in general, menphysically are built to be more
(41:56):
athletic, more fierce in certain aspects.
You're literallybiologically built that way.
Like the environment needs youthat way for a reason, right?
And I'm not saying thatwomen can't do these sports.
I'm saying that it is clear that whenyou try to Marry female and male sports.
Uh, it's just too much of an unfairadvantage, which is ridiculous.
(42:18):
Well, and it's interesting becausethere's two schools of thought
when it comes to driving as well.
You can drive by data, which a lot ofFormula One drivers do, where it's all
about the data, the data, the data.
And it's almost like they'reinside of a remote control car.
But in the old days, if you go backand look at, uh, James Hunt and
Nikki Lauda and Ayrton Senna, MichaelSchumacher, they drove by feel.
(42:38):
What do I mean they drove by feel?
If you watch the latest Senna mockumentaryon Netflix, there's a whole, there's
several scenes where it's like,tighten the belts harder, harder.
I need to be able to feel the car.
They drove by intuition.
And what's interesting is going backto teaching Women drivers at the
racetrack is you guys are, it's agross generalization, more sensitive.
(43:00):
You feel more than the guys do becausewe're wrapped up in the adrenaline and
the excitement and the physical exertion.
I mean, I had one guy, I thought he wasgoing to rip the steering wheel off the
car, like he was Donkey Kong, right?
I'm like, relax, but the ladydrivers are more in tune with all
their senses and what's going on.
And they have more.
Finesse and finesse is superimportant in learning how to go fast.
(43:21):
If you can't feel the car andunderstand how it's communicating
to you, what's happening, even atthe level of adhesion of the tires,
which seems so like benign, right?
You, you, if you can't feel allthat, you're never going to go fast.
That's why I find it an absolute treatwhen I get a woman that wants to go
racing and learn how to go racing becauseit's like, this is going to be great.
(43:42):
It's all going to gel.
It's all going to work.
And I don't have this barrier to learning.
Um, so again, drive by feel.
That's super important.
I love that.
I f ing love that.
I think that's brilliant.
What a wonderful opportunity forwomen to get to explore this, just
the way that you talk about it.
You're so passionateand you get me excited.
(44:05):
Somebody who has no comprehension on,on, like, What this really is brand
new to to it, although I have hadtons of friends, tons of coworkers
that this is their thing, and I never.
connected.
But the way that you talk aboutit and listening to your episodes,
(44:25):
um, and your podcast, I'm like,dude, I want to learn how to drive.
Yes, absolutely.
I want to try this.
It's just really fun and exciting.
A quiz for the listeners.
If you remember back in the eighties, thefamous Volkswagen campaign, Farfig Nugent.
That's a word.
No, it's like, what does that mean?
(44:46):
This looks dumb.
You know what the guy, Stick figurewith his hair being blown back.
What that meant translating toEnglish is the joy of driving.
That was their big thing is again,going back to 200 horsepower ship boxes.
You can have a lot of fun in a car.
If you're willing to take thatnext step and learn how to use
this tool that you've been given.
(45:06):
I absolutely love it.
I love this.
You have totally changed my perspectiveon driving and given me a brand
new outlook on what I want to dowith this thing that I do often.
I do it every single day and I willcomplain, gosh, I hate driving.
I hate driving.
(45:27):
I am now embracing this idea.
You know what?
I could love this.
I could learn to love this.
So I'll say this because I'm sure a lotof the listeners and I'm not trying to.
You know, stereotype, probably drive bigtrucks, you know, Ford, Chevy, Dodges.
And that's fine.
There's a place for that.
There's a craftsmantruck series, by the way.
But, you know, you're going, well, Igot to buy a race car, trailer, and
(45:49):
I don't have the money to invest.
Look, go to a track event to your localtrack, especially look on the calendars.
There's a website that weuse all the time called H.
P.
D.
E.
So that's high performancedrivers, education, junkie, H.
P.
D.
E.
Junkie dot com.
You can look all across the United Statesand Canada at all the tracks and it
will show you who's going to be there.
Go check it out.
(46:09):
Go talk to people in the paddockif you have the time and you're
not working on the weekend.
But you always have an opportunity to getinto a race car and rent one for a weekend
or become buddies, become part of a crew,become part of like a AR or a chump series
where you're, you're helping out, you'reusing your skills and then you get the
opportunity to drive somebody else's car,you know, and they'll help you get through
(46:30):
the schools and all those kinds of things.
So now you're not laying out your cashand you can kind of try before you buy.
And if you get bitten by the bug,then you go to a website like racing
junk and you buy somebody else'srace car and then you're done.
Right.
So there's, there's reasons and seasons,but check it out, get a feel for it.
When you go to some of thoseevents, you have so much.
Immediate access that you don't have whenyou're paying for a grandstand seat at
(46:56):
a NASCAR race, even if you get paddockpasses, or if you go to your local, you
know, dirt track, you're not gettingdown there with the guys at an HPD.
You can talk to the driversand they're regular guys.
And some of them are pros and they comeand they practice and do those kinds
of things and, and they come and teach.
So it's a whole different experience.
It'll change your attitudetowards driving, and then you
can work your way into it.
(47:16):
But the fun part is you'll startto realize around the paddock,
guys that have trucks or gals too,that have trucks just like yours.
The most fun I've ever had is wetake out what we call the tow pigs,
especially on a rainy day for likerained out and the instructors are bored.
We'll go out with our trucks and run themon track and they are absolute blast to
(47:39):
just hoon around and get them sidewaysand just see what the trucks can do.
Cause you never get to drivethem in those conditions.
We like, you know, Whatis the limit of my F 150?
When is it going to start understeering?
You know, what are the, with theother thing, what are the nannies do?
Like all these electronic controlsto keep me safe is what happens if
I turn off that traction control?
Right?
So we get to play around even withour pedestrian vehicles sometimes,
(48:02):
but all that comes from the training.
I had an F 150.
I fucking love that.
I love to give that a roll.
Um, okay.
Eric, you are what many wouldsay is the American dream.
You're very successful.
You got this duality in life where youreally get to explore your passion.
You bring people together,successful podcasts.
(48:24):
Um, I know this is a little bit of aloaded question, but work with me here.
Work with me here.
What would you.
say has helped you get tothis point in your life?
A mixture of ADD and tenacity.
That is the recipe for success.
Now, to be honest, again, growingup as a first generation Italian
(48:47):
American, you know, my parentscoming over in the seventies, we,
we didn't have any family here.
We had no other choice but to rollup our sleeves and get it done.
So whether it was working on thehouse or working on the cars or,
you know, whatever it was that.
That stick to itiveness, right?
To always like achieve the goal.
(49:07):
Don't have lingering projects.
You can get it done, getit done, get it done.
Um, you know, I joke all the time.
My dad used to say if I wasn't doingsomething, you know, your idle hands
are the devil's workshop, right?
But he'd be like, don't you have somethingyou should be working on right now?
Go find something to do.
Right.
And so that helped my ADD as akid too, cause it kept me busy.
So I, I.
Carried that through my entire life.
I never have like sort of a dull moment.
(49:29):
And my wife jokes all the time.
Even when you're stationary,your brain is working.
You're thinking about the next projector the next article or the next.
You got to go here.
You got to do this.
So you got to prep the car, youknow, all these kinds of things.
And so that helps me, you know, let'ssay being not neuro neuro divergent,
I guess is the new term for it, right?
But, uh, realistically, it comes down toyou get out what you put in and sometimes.
(49:54):
100 percent isn't enough and folks thatknow me really well know I run it 200
percent most of the time and they'relike, I don't know how you do it.
When do you sleep?
Whatever.
So a lot of the secret to thatis time management, right?
That's the other thing is a moment.
You're wasting time.
And however you qualify that,what else could you be doing?
(50:16):
So for me, it's always beenwork, work, work, work, work.
And unfortunately it'stwo types of work, right?
And balancing that outand quality of life.
And I know it sounds like I'm runningon the hamster wheel constantly,
but I've found ways, leveragingmy day job to automate things.
That's the big deal.
And I, and that's the secretfor me, probably not so much for
construction workers, but maybe.
(50:38):
You know, the use of some technology,or I don't want to say AI, because
it doesn't apply here, but thereare ways to make processes better.
And if you think in that engineeringway of like, how do we iterate this?
How do we make it better?
How do we not just do the samething over and over again?
How can we, you know, How can wemodify and evolve the process?
(50:59):
That's where you gain time back.
And when you can share that with otherpeople, you become more efficient.
So bringing it back to motor sportand bring you back to construction,
working, if you're working as a unit.
Rather than as an individual contributor.
Now we all have more time to getmore things done or to hang around
the haddock and crack open a beerand BS and tell stories, right?
(51:19):
So that's what it, that'swhat it really comes down to.
Wow.
Okay.
So you would be actually shockedat how much technology plays
into construction and how you.
Can create systems within theconstruction, you hit the nail on
the head when you talked about,you know, working symbiotically as
team and as one unit and then howthat brings more time for everyone.
(51:43):
Right?
So one of my favorite things with my crewis that, you know, We start early, and
if we start early, we get to leave early.
So we work like as one, bang it out.
It's not about how long it takes to do it.
It's about getting it done.
Quickly and getting it done.
So, and one of the other thingsis the three C's of humanity.
(52:06):
The things that we don't do well,that we really need to exercise and
practice and refine is communication,collaboration, and cooperation.
If you could figure out how tomaster those three things in
concert, you are unstoppable.
So as a team, you need tothink about those three C's.
How do we communicate better?
How do we cooperate andhow do we collaborate?
And to your point.
(52:28):
Get start early, get done early,but it's that working as a unit,
like a military unit to get thingsdone, you know, you will succeed.
And you achieved more thanyou ever thought you could.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
I love it.
Thank you, Eric.
Thank you so much forcoming on the Sparky Life.
You are a pleasure.
I knew this was going to be awesome.
for having me.
This has been an absolute treat.
(52:50):
The Sparky Life.
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