August 3, 2025 • 51 mins
Guest
Andy Hateley
Youtube - @hateleydrift
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
When I first noticed your whole linkage throttle design, where
did you get that from originally?
Got a lot of power and we got the kiss Kim going.
What is going on? Coldplay is not here but they
might have got caught because they are piling that evil auto
works. BMW make some noise for the
drift wizard. Whenever they first started
(00:23):
here, it was so choked up and awkward.
It got a lot better once they widened the track.
You know you're not pulling out so much angle as you're leaving
O Z2 to get to O Z3. We just keep battling go D
batches over and over again. Long Beach we're losing power
steering and outside zone 1, which is probably the scariest
thing you'll experience in Formula Drift.
(00:43):
I want to say people don't realize having no power steering
is a lot better than having power steering lit fails the.
Judge is asking for. It their advice is is cheap but
get it done quickly. Basically, don't forget to have
fun. Focus on how you're doing
overall and enjoy it because youknow, I'm 41 now, I don't know
how much longer I'm. Going to be doing this.
(01:04):
Yeah. I've been wanting this forever.
I've been in the field with wherever they throw at me, brush
it off, pick myself up, moving on a little better.
Welcome back to the Circle Adrift podcast.
I want to say thank you again for stopping in every single
week for a brand new episode. This show is presented by SIM HQ
(01:25):
where you can always save 5% offon your next SIM magic upgrade
using code Circle Adrift. But if you are new here and have
no idea what I'm talking about, my name is Dawson.
And here on the Circle Adrift, we interview some of the most
interesting personalities withinthe industry, all to give you
the best information possible sothat you can not only learn
about drifting, but start yourself.
(01:45):
But today we will be at Formula Drift in Saint Louis, hearing
from Andy Hately on some of the issues that he's dealt with
throughout the year, his pretty wild throttle setup and a lot of
the insurance and outs of Formula Drift itself.
And without further ado, let's go ahead and get in the podcast.
We have a brand new face to the channel.
Not quite brand new. We had you guys on our podcast.
(02:07):
We did a joint. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You I'll I'll link that one downbelow.
That was fucking forever ago. But yeah, so I really, I got to
start off with the hat. That's the sore thumb, the
elephant in the room. I know.
That one. Yeah, mine.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm not talking about ears. It's boring.
No. Where'd the drift wizard thing
(02:28):
come from originally? For anyone that doesn't know.
Sitting on my couch watching dumb reels on Instagram, came
across this guy. What was his?
I forget his handle now, but he came up with this thing called
the frog wizard and it was just an animation of this frog doing
silly stuff and I was like I should try the drift wizard.
(02:50):
Like right around then I was coming up with a bunch of dumb
video ideas. I did a bunch of stuff.
So I still like have a phone full of notes of like dumb ideas
to make, you know, reels about and stuff like that.
So. It was as simple as that.
Yeah, that was one of them. I think we made like probably 6
reels that day out of like different random ideas that I
had and that one just like took off and the round after that, I
(03:14):
think it was Atlanta. I showed up and nobody called me
Andy anymore. They all just called me the
Drift Wizard. So I was like there's something
to this. Like people are yelling it from
like across the pits and like all sorts of stuff.
So it kind of became my persona,I guess and became bigger than
than my own name, which I prefer.
I have a little bit of of like anxiety when it comes to like
(03:37):
people, you know, coming up and talk.
I mean, I'm kind of an introvertto be honest, so.
Like, I hear you. Yeah.
Yeah, like, so it was nice to like, not be the center of
attention. Now the driftwood is just the
center of the attention, so. You had a face to hide behind.
Almost, yeah. It's a good move.
I like that, Yeah. Yeah, I've always said that I I
admire Japan FD for the characters and stuff that they
(04:00):
bring to the drivers and everything.
So like that you. You got to watch the old D1
stuff, man. That's that's where it was like
they did some characters, they did silly stuff.
They did like like physical fitness tests between the
drivers where they had them likerun like, you know, 100 feet.
They had them like a squeeze test with like a grip meter
thing. Like, yeah, there's some really
silly stuff and all the old option videos.
(04:22):
And that's like when I got into drifting, that's all I saw.
So it was like nice to see, you know, professional drivers be
silly, you know, And it's, I mean, to be honest, it's a silly
motorsport to begin with. Like we're out here sliding cars
around. Judge.
Judge fashion like it has nothing to do with the other
side of Motorsports, where everything is by the clock.
(04:42):
By the time when you cross the finish line, that's all that
counts. So it's nice to embrace that and
not be too serious out here because.
It's got to be cool to see the hats on the live stream.
Oh, it's great. Yeah.
That's that's how you get on thelive stream when you don't make
top 32 or you don't make top 16.It's like you get that exposure
no matter what. So every time you see a hat in
(05:03):
the crowd or you see it on the live stream, they, they know
where it came from. They know who we are.
It's really helped us like buildsort of our brand and and get
out to people that, you know, wewouldn't normally get to because
we're not making top 16 all the time in pro and stuff like that.
And pro spec, it doesn't have asbig as following as pro.
So like, it's nice to to find a way to get in front of the crowd
(05:26):
and get people talking about you.
Basically, yeah. Has it helped a program at all?
Just the fact of having that character.
Well, I mean, the hats are the biggest.
The selling of the hats is the biggest sponsor you ever had
monitoring. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Even impaired. Yeah.
It's hard to find money out here.
And yeah, we're. We've made more off of these
than anyone's ever written us a check for.
Yeah, yeah, what the fuck? Yeah, how many do you sell a
(05:49):
weekend? Typically this year's not as
good as last year because we hada lot of rain and like stuff
like that. And just like, especially in
Atlanta, Atlanta, we did like really good last year, but it
was raining during like the top 16 break.
So there wasn't like the mass amount of people coming down to
the pits. But on average, we go through
150 to 300 per round. I think the most we've gone
(06:09):
through is like a little over 300.
Yeah, yeah. Wow.
Yeah. Last year we went through 2000
of them, so yeah. Can people buy them online too?
We just started our website. Let's see about the beginning of
the season. I got it all set up, but I
haven't really done any advertising for it.
I actually just put drift, the drift wizard.com logos on the
side of the car now, so and I need to make some contact to
(06:33):
kind of promote that. I really haven't, but we've been
getting, you know, steady sales on the website, but no like big
boom or anything like that because we haven't really pushed
it yet. That makes sense.
Well, other than that, what how's the season been going as
far as you're driving the car, You know, just the way you're
seating and everything? It's on and off Long Beach.
(06:54):
We did pretty well, kind of fellinto third place for the seating
there and just haven't had the best of luck, you know, coming
in the events after that. And we just keep battling Odie
batches over and over again. It seems like we're going to
battle him for the fourth time in a row now at this round.
So, yeah. Yeah.
So. But I'm learning.
I'm learning him. I got it one more time in Jersey
(07:15):
and that's hard to do with Odie.So proud of that performance and
hopefully we can get another onemore time today or finally beat
them, you know? Do you change stuff going into
that battle because it keeps happening, or do you just try
and keep it consistent? We'll drop tire pressure a
little bit, try and grip the carup a little bit more, but we're
not changing a whole lot becauseusually there's not a whole lot
(07:35):
of practice, you know, at these rounds, this round especially,
we kind of missed half of our practice session yesterday
because the supercharger pump was was doing some funny stuff.
We got our IA T's up to like 220at one point, which is no bueno.
And then the we have a throttle Body Issue going on right now.
One of the bearings went bad. So the shaft actually has a
little bit of play in it and my crew guy Curtis packed it with
(07:59):
some grease for for the seating battles.
It felt a lot better after that,but the bearing itself is is
chewed up. So we borrowed A throttle body,
ironically from Audi, but it wasa 95mm and we're at one O 2, so
we'd have to do some tuning stuff with that.
So we're probably just going to repack it again today and run
tomorrow and then try and get a new one before Seattle, yeah.
(08:22):
What would like? So you obviously have to retune
it. Why?
Obviously changing a throttle body is pretty easy.
Yeah. What extensively on the tune
side of things are you going to have to change for?
Yourself, I'm not 100% sure. I just I just know that you're
going to get a little bit more constriction out of the 95
versus the one O 2. It's 7mm.
So that's that's substantial difference.
(08:43):
You're going down the line of stuff, you're having to change
fuel. And everything.
Yep, Yep. How much the throttle plate is
is kicked open. You know what idle and stuff
like that counts and then resetting TPS and all that
stuff, but I don't assume it would be a whole lot.
I probably should be something we'd be able to figure out
pretty easy with my tuner comingon Teamviewer and working as
(09:04):
magic. But ideally we just tried to
find the one O 2 to make it solid and honestly it's not bad
right now. So I'd rather keep it where it
is, regrease it and just and just do our battles and see how
it goes. So.
That's my next question is like if you do just go through today
or the next battles or whatever with this one and then you end
up changing it, is that not going to throw you off?
(09:26):
Not if it's a one O 2 because it's so you will be getting a
one O 2. OK, OK, nevermind.
Yeah, we just couldn't find a one O 2 here that was complete.
We found one from Trenton Beecham, but they actually took
it apart because their shaft, I forget what happened, but they
actually were like took it apart, removed the shaft, remove
the throttle plate and replaced his throttle plate and shaft
with that. So, so we don't have the parts
(09:49):
to replace it and it's a different throttle body than
ours. So, you know, we couldn't just
do a quick swap over. Yeah, all.
Right, so we got to stop the podcast for a second because I
know we're going through a lot of tires out there.
And given you're here supportingthe podcast, they want to help
you guys out and give you 20% off on your tires moving forward
with Code Circle Adrift 2. And on top of that, they're
(10:11):
actually doing free shipping, which is just added to your
cart. So if you're going to need tires
soon, or maybe you just never tried the Zeck Novas or you just
kind of want to stack up, I suggest you do that now while
you can get them at a better price.
But other than tires, let's get on back into the podcast now.
I I've heard a lot of the drivers say that it's pretty
gripped out at this track, right?
(10:32):
Or cars are like feeling really fast.
Are you having the same thing? It's a good surface.
It's pretty grippy out there. It's not, you know, I mean, it's
grippier than like Orlando and some of the other tracks, but
any tracks like this where you have a really high quality
surface like Salt Lake City or Rd.
Atlanta, it's just a quality track.
So they're using that really good pavement and you know, that
makes a big difference as far asthe grip levels go.
(10:55):
Do you like the like layout style that they're doing now?
Because whenever they first started here, it was so choked
up and awkward. And yeah, it got a lot better
once they widened the track, youknow, coming off of O Z2 and
into O Z3. They they widen that up a bunch
and now it's a lot easier to to make it happen and a lot less,
you know, you're not pulling outso much angle as you're leaving
(11:15):
O Z2 to get to O Z3. I personally like it.
I know a lot of people hate it because it's like speed up, slow
down, speed up, slow down. But I like the challenge and
I've always had good luck here. And it it, you know, this track
comes naturally to me. I guess we'll put it that way.
I every time I even in the SIM when I hopped on, I hadn't
(11:36):
driven it in a long time. And right off the bat, I want to
say it because my goal in the SIM is to do 10 laps with like
minimal mistakes basically in a row off the bat, like right when
you hop on the machine, go to Saint Louis, you can do 10 laps
right off the bat with no major mistakes, Fill all your zones.
Then I consider myself like ready for competition.
And I was able to do that. I mean, I want to say right when
(11:57):
I hopped on the track, it's it'sit's comes natural to me.
It's just a lot of yeah, speed up, slow down, downshift,
upshift, check your wheel speed with the E brake.
But yeah, I like it here. It's it's fun track.
Yeah. Well, since you mentioned Sam,
obviously you're on a SIM Magic setup, right?
Yeah, yeah. So what it consider like a brand
(12:18):
new, Obviously you're doing FD, so you're not going into
absolute brand new track other than Long Beach this year.
So we can use that. For example, what are you going
to do going into the SIM to practice it from the jump?
Like obviously you need to make it to the 10 laps, but there's
also you got to make it through the first turn before you can
make it to the. Next turn I'm I'm hoping someone
will make that track on the SIM before Long Beach.
(12:40):
That's true too. Yeah.
But yeah, that's what I'm hopingfor.
And if they don't like, I will pay you.
Like let's get that track on theSIM so we can get some track
practice, get the visuals down, get the timing down, all that
stuff. So yeah, hopefully we'll have
one, you know, come Long Beach and, you know, I can get some
practice before we head out on the track.
Do y'all have any idea of what it's supposed to be like?
(13:02):
Yeah, FD posted a a sort of render of what the tracks going
to look like, yeah. I didn't know if that was like 2
AT. It's basically it's basically
U-turn U-turn, U-turn, U-turn. Like it's very tight very long
radius cornered into another oneinto another one.
It looks like it's going to be all outside zones, maybe one
inside clip, so should be prettygood for tandem.
(13:25):
And the render is like fully walled, right?
Yeah. Is do you, is it going to be
that way? Have they?
I believe so, yeah. Yeah.
I mean, that's that's kind of the only way to do it when you
have a street course like that. Like you can't let cars run off
into, you know, the actual intersections and stuff like
that. You have to have it, you know,
very just a lot of barriers everywhere to keep the crowd and
(13:48):
to keep, you know, potential traffic that runs through, runs
over cones or something from getting into the course itself.
Yeah, that's fair. Well, other than all that, you
did mention earlier how you've been having a lot of like issues
and hiccups throughout the the season like earlier on.
What were some of those for example?
Just Long Beach, we had a bad power steering fitting which was
(14:10):
completely my fault to be honest.
We were testing at Willow and webled the power steering fluid
there. Had an issue with a hose, I
swapped out the hose and I don'tknow if some debris got in there
or what, but the actual chamfered part of the AN fitting
got damaged. So Long Beach we're losing power
steering outside zone 1, which is probably the scariest thing
(14:33):
you'll experience in Formula Drift.
I want to say like coming into the wall, you initiate and then
it's just gone and you're fighting the wheel.
And what people don't realize, like having no power steering is
a lot better than having power steering lit fails because when
it fails, you're fighting the hydraulic pressure.
So you're not only forcing the wheel to do its thing, you're
(14:54):
forcing fluid through the rack in both directions as you're
correcting. So it's, it's sketchy, very hard
to move the wheel. And fortunately, I was able to
round it up and get the car straight, you know, before we
ate the barrier. But same thing happened last
year, but last year it was, it was just bad power steering
pumps. And we switched to a company
called Radial Dynamics and otherthan, you know, my fitting
(15:17):
mishap that that was my fault, it's been completely solid ever
since. They do a lot of rock crawling
trucks. I think top five in Baja are
like 3 out of the top five in Baja this year running their
pumps. So those guys are putting it
through whoops, you know, big tire, lots of load and they
don't have any issues. So they also do stuff for
(15:37):
monster trucks. So they're just gurus of power
steering. Highly recommended.
If you're going to run mechanical power steering, talk
to Radial Dynamics. We're working on getting them to
make a bracket. Or my crew chief Curtis actually
might make a bracket to mount the LS power steering pump to
Jay-Z engines so you can run mechanical there as well.
Just a great system, great setup.
(15:59):
Their reservoir is something like I've never seen.
If you get a chance to go to their YouTube, they have a clear
version of the reservoir and it's a swirl pot down below and
it's got a screen in the middle that allows the air to bleed
out. And they just are pumping
compressed air into the system and you see you can physically
see it, the bubbles coming out, everything goes to the top and
(16:21):
the pump is always pulling cleanfluid even when air is
introduced in the system. So, you know, even if you, you
know, bust a lion or something like that, it's going to
gradually disappear rather than disappear, you know, in a flash
because you're going to feel thethe fluid pressure dropping, but
you're not going to get air intothe actual pump and cavitate the
pump and ruin other stuff. Yeah.
(16:43):
Well, since you went that route,did you, I assume you considered
going E throttle or not E throttle?
Sorry, electric power. Electronic power.
Steering, yeah, we considered it.
We talked to a lot of people. We would have probably, I had to
add another PDM possibly or get a bigger alternator, mount it,
run hoses. It was a big ordeal and I was
(17:05):
pretty much there. I was ready to swap everything
over. My crew chief was like, no,
let's give it one more try. And we gave Radio Dynamics a try
and it worked out perfectly so. How much of an investment like
cost wise you would you say thatwould have been total?
For the radial dynamic stuff or like.
For the electronic stuff. All the electronic stuff, I'm
(17:25):
not sure. It kind of depends on the route
you go. People are running, you know,
mini pumps. There's Opal Astra pumps that
like the guys in Europe use the MR2 pump is probably the most
popular and I've heard good things and bad things about it.
You know, some people love it, some people hate it.
Some people really like the consistency of it.
They say it feels, you know, like the simulator kinda, but
(17:46):
I'm I'm happy with what we got. It works and we haven't had a
single issue with it so. That's I would have considered
you would go that route more because of the SIM.
Since you have adapted to it, you use it I still.
Haven't even driven a car with electric power steering.
So I mean, maybe someone wants to lend me a car to try out for
a couple laps and you know, but we really like radial.
(18:10):
They're very helpful. The, the time that we needed
that pump was right before Florida and we needed it
literally the next day. And he was backed up on orders
and he's like, all right, listen, I have one here in
reserve like this is our backup pump in the case something goes
wrong. And he sent that out and got a
set up. Super cool guys.
And yeah, the customer service and the knowledge and the fact
(18:34):
that we can call him literally right now.
Hey, we got a problem. What do we do?
You know, and we figure it out right then and there.
And with electric stuff, basically you'd be going around
from team to team to team tryingto find someone who's a power
steering guru basically to help you out with it.
Whereas like I got it right hereon my phone.
That is true. Yeah, well, good man.
(18:54):
Well, I know I was on the other side of that, not electronic
power steering when I messed up and said E throttle when I first
noticed your whole linkage throttle design thing.
Where did you get that from originally?
My buddy WOWT while young, he runs that on his carbureted E46
out in Europe and it's really popular with the carbureted
(19:16):
guys. And I actually I wasn't going to
run that. I got this Joe's racing floor
mounted throttle pedal for the E46 because I wanted to replace
the flimsy plastic one that BMW comes with because he actually
broke that on the E30. The plastic hinge broke off at
Long Beach when we first, the first time I ever ran the E30.
(19:37):
So I wanted something solid. I wanted something metal.
So I mounted that up and that came with the bell crank for the
linkage. It came with the linkage stuff
and I was like, I think I can make this work.
So I mounted the bell crank basically, you know, in line
with the throttle blade and before we switch to the bigger
Magnuson supercharger, it was straight from the bell crank to
(19:58):
the throttle blade. So direct, you know, in a
straight line right up to the throttle.
And it worked great. It was way smoother than a
throttle cable. Throttle cables with the bends
and stuff like that, you can always kind of feel the cable,
you know, grinding around in there on the Teflon coated line.
And this was just the smoothest throttle I've ever felt.
So and then once we swapped to the Magnuson supercharger, I had
(20:20):
to put that little rocker in there to to get it to clear the
supercharger, which is fine. It's still direct, it's still
doing its thing, and it's just the most direct feeling throttle
I've ever had. It's the smoothest thing that
I've ever. Come I would have to expect it
provides way more feedback. Yep, from what's going on with
the. Way more feedback and you can be
(20:41):
way more precise. There's not that little bit of
drag that you get. And we've melted A throttle
cable before and had this throttle stick wide open.
So yeah. So it's nice to not have to
worry about that at all. Heat doesn't affect it.
Yeah, the drive by wire guys like to argue with me about it,
but like, I mean, yeah, there's a there's a lot of stuff going
(21:04):
on. There's a lot of nuts and bolts,
but I mean with E throttle, there's a lot of things that can
add to a failure as well. You know, it's a lot of wiring
voltage, this that there's tons of stuff that can make that not
work. And you know, I've seen cars get
total because of E throttles. I've seen cars get total because
of broken cables. So I just feel like this is one,
(21:27):
it's it's pretty darn reliable. I don't want to say the most
reliable because I don't have the data on that, but it also is
cool. It looks really cool.
I like it. I like mechanical stuff.
I like stuff that I can understand.
I'm a fabricator, I'm a builder.I know wiring, but I'm not a
wiring guy, you know, I can wirea fan, I can wire relay, I can
(21:48):
do all that stuff, but I'm that's not my Forte.
I like things that I can physically see and touch and
move with my hands, you know, not that you can't feel
electricity, but I don't think you want to be feeling it.
Yeah. I totally get that, yeah,
Because there's always that argument between cable and E
throttle. Yeah.
But like obviously cable, yes, there's the cable will fray,
(22:08):
it'll eventually get damaged. But yeah, the.
Plus side is like you can feel that happening so it's easier
to. Dodge that catastrophe failure
from you. Like if, if the throttle cable
does fail, like, OK, put a new throttle cable on.
Like it's not like you're chasing down or why don't I have
voltage or why isn't it opening all the way or, you know,
chasing down. Is it grounded properly?
(22:28):
You know, there's a there's a lot of things that can go wrong
with that. And you know, it's just easier
to diagnose a problem when it's right there in your face.
You can say, Oh, well, that bolts loose or oh, that cable
came off or, you know, the little feral fell off the end or
whatever, you know. So it's just my preference.
You know, it's what I like and what I like.
It's easier to diagnose and you know.
(22:50):
I saw Scott go through hell withhis E throttle he had just put
on it. Polecat ruined his whole day.
Because as soon as you go out ontrack, it's the car just like
goes into limp mode, doesn't have full 100% throttle, and now
he's got to wait 30 minutes to get yanked off a track because
this track's so long and oh, dude, it's a nightmare.
So not only are you ruining yourown day, but you could be
(23:12):
ruining everybody else's day. Not that Scott did that, but you
know. But yeah, I've seen him fail and
one of them failed at Seattle. I don't want to say the driver,
but back in the day, E throttle failed midway through the bank
and took the throttle away and he went up and into the wall,
totaled the car. And I mean, that can happen with
(23:33):
the cable too. That can happen with the linkage
too. I'm not saying it can't, but I
just, it's less common to have those random weird failures, you
know, with the cable or with a linkage.
Dylan, I know how to fail your last round.
He switched up the cable for this round, so you know to each
their own. If you want to run it, you want
(23:54):
to run drive by wire, you want to run cable, you want to run
leakage. I don't care.
I I like doing what I like with my car, so you know.
Hey, look, let's take a break from the podcast really quick
because we can't always have these nice comfy chairs at
events. When we're doing podcasts now I
have to think about not only keeping myself but the guests
comfortable as well while we're sitting down for such long
episodes. Nothing has kept the guests and
(24:16):
I comfortable enough other than the Viper chairs.
They use an extremely thick cushion so my app doesn't get so
or after 5 minutes, and I don't always have the best posture.
So the placement of the backresthelps me with a lot of my lower
back pain. And even when we have the XLR
cables for these microphones just laying on the ground, I've
never had an issue with the casters rolling over them or
(24:38):
tipping me out of the chair. But if you guys have been
considering getting your own Vipers hooked you guys up with
$50 off on your next Viper chair.
So I'll leave the link in the description for that.
And without further ado, let's just get back into the podcast.
Well, Speaking of just FD in general, how is it since you've
been here in FD for so long running a program, you know
(25:00):
economy is getting worse? Like how are you surviving
through all of this? Barely.
Yeah, just barely. Yeah.
Also, yeah, I mean, it's expensive.
Luckily Kumo Tire came on board and so if we didn't have the
deal with them, we probably wouldn't have moved up to Pro to
be honest. They've been very helpful.
(25:21):
They developed a great tire lastyear.
We were on A27535 and they developed their two 9540 for us
and it's been the best tire I'veever had.
Like we get 3 laps here, we're getting 4 laps at Long Beach
like and you don't really hear about that.
You know, like even with, even with the GT Radial and Pro spec
on the 255, we were getting 1 1/2 laps.
(25:44):
Basically, the tire would be gone by the time I entered outer
Zone 2. So just the life of the tire,
the fact that we can run 3 laps to kind of stretch practice a
little bit more. And they sent engineers out.
Actually here last year. We did some testing and they
they were taking temperatures and they did footprints on the
tire. They did a whole bunch of stuff.
(26:05):
The guy Andy over there at Kumo is really knows his stuff and
we're just really fortunate to have a tire company that came on
board and didn't just give us what they got.
They were like, all right, how do we make this the best for you
guys? And they did that.
They added more rubber on the outer edges of the tire because
those were wearing faster because we run such low tire
(26:26):
pressures that you actually the middle of the tire will blow up
a little bit and you're riding more so on the side wall of the
tire once you drop your pressures down really far.
So they added more rubber there.It's been a phenomenal tire all
year long. Yeah.
That's some weird science to that that's.
Cool. It's it's it's complicated.
Yeah. Damn, so is that like the the
(26:46):
main sponsor that's helping you guys out or is there anyone else
that's that's helping the program?
Evil Autoworks, they've been helping us out and that's Jeff's
sponsor as well. So we share Evil and Kumo.
And Jeff's basically the reason why I got on Kumo and the reason
why I got on Evil. So big shout out to Jeff Jones.
Thank you, Sir. So yeah, without, without that
(27:06):
kind of help, we wouldn't be here.
Yeah, just plain and simple. So how much is it costing you to
run these seasons now? Because especially living in
California, it's a lot. I mean cost of living alone.
Is high. I don't like to think about it,
you know? Well, you got to now.
Yeah. I mean, we spend generally
roughly 10 grand around, I'd saybetween hotels, paying my guys
(27:32):
parts that break, you know, Yeah.
Would you consider that on the lower end of drivers?
Oh, yeah, for sure. Really.
Yeah, yeah. What are other drivers spending?
I mean. 2030 plus around. If you're talking independent
guys, I'd say that's probably the average is like 1010 to 20,
you know, depending on what kindof mileage your rigs getting and
(27:52):
all that kind of stuff and how many spares you're bringing and
and what brakes. You know, if you're going
through two or three motors a year, it can get expensive.
But luckily we have a great engine builder.
Shout out to Jeff Ginter Racing Engines, another Baja guy builds
a lot of I think I think he was in the top, you know, three or
five trucks to this year. He builds like terrible Herbst
engines. He builds Vaughn getting off
(28:13):
road program engines. Super knowledgeable dudes, does
everything right and to the T and we haven't had an engine
problem at all since we've been,you know, messing with him.
Yeah, yeah. That's a problem you don't want
to have. Yeah, yeah, Some of these guys
out here going through what, 3 engines a year or some shit.
Yeah, yeah, that's ridiculous. And even some of the, you know,
(28:34):
some of the two J guys, the V8 guys, everyone has gone, you
know, that route before and it sucks, man.
I if we, if we blew an engine, yeah, that's our, that's our
season. Like we're done.
We don't have the money to continue.
Do you ever think after you'll get that big to where an engine
is disposable? Because I mean some racing, drag
(28:54):
racing out there where that's the case.
If you don't over talk to Papadakis, they'll probably, you
know, I mean, their their new B58 seems solid, but the old,
the 4 cylinder they're running that.
I mean, they were going through quite a few engines in that and
that's not to his fault. I think they just had they, they
were running as high as they could possibly get out of those
(29:14):
engines. And it wasn't a proven engine.
It didn't have a ton of slew of aftermarket parts.
So he's building and manufacturing everything that
you need to make that kind of horsepower.
So that's complicated, you know,and I, I couldn't do any better.
But that way, you know, you got to.
Go through all the growing painswith.
That Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so as far as the program
(29:36):
and everything, like say someonecomes up to you at one of these
events and it's like, I want to do this.
How do I start? Like what?
What do? I start driving.
What do I need to do? Yeah, especially now with
everything being so expensive. Seat time you know, obviously if
if you can't get out there and do well in your prime series and
earn a license, that's a big killer.
So you can have you know a greatfollowing, which is another part
(30:00):
of it is really build your social media package find a way
to be unique within the the sea of drift drivers out there.
We've all seen a car going sideways.
We've seen every brand, every make, you know, from Tesla at a
grid Life to, you know, to, to just Ferraris, yeah, everything
you know. So find a way to make yourself
(30:24):
unique, make yourself stand out and find sponsors that align
with you as your personality. Basically.
You know, fortunately, like I was talking about Kumo, they
post some pretty funny memes andstuff like that here and there.
So like, we kind of aligned withthem, you know, we already do
(30:44):
silly content and they were all about it.
And there's certain companies that just aren't about that at
all. They'd see the drift wizard,
they'd see me doing my stuff. And they go, what the hell is
that? Like, you know, So yeah,
there's. Nothing wrong with that.
Either no, there isn't, but yeah, there's there's corporate,
there's very corporate style sponsors and there's ones that
are willing to have a little funand we, you know, lean to the
(31:09):
side of having a little more fun.
That's the whole point, right? Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, business, I understand, you know, it's, it's
the livelihood, it's how they pay their bills, it's how they
stay afloat. So if they want to keep it very
corporate and not aligned with someone like me, I'm fine with
that. I will find someone who
appreciates what we do. And not only that, they have the
audience that appreciates what you do as well.
(31:31):
Because if their branding is silly and fun and, and, you
know, includes comedy and stuff like that, then you're going to
line with them. They're following, is going to
line with you, you're following,is going to line with the brand.
And we're all, you know, we're all doing that and helping each
other basically, yeah. It's all organic.
Too. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that makes it great. Yeah.
(31:52):
Well, what is like the most common misconception you've
noticed that especially being inFD running a program, you know,
car level, all of this stuff, what it like?
Probably that it's like pretty much the same as your local
drift event, just on a professional level, Like
everybody's here to help everybody.
When our throttle body went bad,I went over to, I was running
(32:13):
around teams and yeah, who we'regoing to battle.
Odie gave us a throttle body, his spare throttle body, you
know, and you don't see that in any other form of motorsport,
you know, from, you know, motocross to drag racing to Rd.
racing. You're not allowed to talk to
other teams in in a lot of thoseraces.
So I mean, like, you can't go and help, you know, we've had,
(32:34):
you know, Ray Shake from RTR come over and help us with the
E30 back. We were running electromotive
ECU because he knew that from way back in the day.
So he came over and helped us out, us out, You know,
Papadakis, way back in the day when Tanner was driving for the
team, I think 2007, they lent ustheir spare differential because
they were running the Z at the time.
(32:54):
Like we're lending parts, we're helping each other out, you
know, I've lent out my welder's been more used by more team,
more other teams here than we'veever used it, you know, So it's
all accumulative effort. It doesn't matter who you're
battling. Everyone wants to help each
other get out on track and perform their best.
(33:14):
Nobody wants to win with a by run or with, you know, a car
failure or whatever. You know, Brewski, who we
battled last night, he pulled inthe pits over here and he said
you got vacuum line. I'm like, yeah, I ran over my
trailer, got him some vacuum line to fix a vacuum hose he
needed. And, you know, he beat us like,
but that's it's not, it's not his fault.
It's not, it was my fault. I messed up on track.
(33:36):
Like, you know, and I don't wantto win because he needs a vacuum
hose and I'm not willing to giveit to him.
Like it's not. There's a lot of camaraderie out
here. And I think people don't realize
that when they are watching the stream or whatever, you know,
we're all friends, we're all having a good time.
We're all here, you know, partying last night, throwing,
(33:57):
playing. What's the game with the, the
sandbags, cornhole, cornhole. We're all playing cornhole over
it. And.
Sluck some people out of the. Cornhole.
Well come over to Stookie's pitch.
Shoot. Let's I will.
Let's team up because I'm not very good at it.
So I need you. Oh.
Dude, I grew up playing cornhole.
We tried to, like, travel baseball.
Yeah. So we'd set, we'd bring it set
up in the parking lot in the hotel and just play it all
night. Yeah.
(34:18):
All right, you're my teammate. You're my teammate for tonight,
then. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're going to mess some people up.
That's awesome, man. Well, as far as this event,
obviously what's what's the planof attack going into this next
battle, going in the rest of theevent, what are your hopes?
All that stuff. Odie's a tough one to beat.
(34:39):
We'll probably drop tire pressure a little bit, probably
leave the car set up like it is and really push hard in practice
as as far as in our chase line runs, because you know, he's
going to be fast and if we don'tpush hard, he's definitely going
to beat us. So we might as well push hard in
(35:01):
practice if we crash, if we messup the car really doesn't matter
because we wouldn't have beat him if we weren't pushing hard.
So yeah, just get out there, tryand get very comfortable when
you're leaving O Z2 coming into O Z3, that's the point where
he's probably going to gap us based on the grip level of that
(35:22):
car. So I need to figure out a way to
kind of cut the line in the right spot, get on throttle
early, and stay in the pocket throughout the course.
What are the judges asking for in those scenarios?
Is that like they they want you to cut the line or would that
they rather you stay deeper and less proximity?
Their advice is is cheap, but get it done quickly basically,
you know, so like if you got to cheat the line, that's if you
(35:44):
got to do all that stuff, you got to do it, do it quickly.
You know, don't be completely outside of the out of the zone
when the lead drivers filling the zone completely.
But yeah, you'd be better off a a car length or two behind, but
actually filling the zones and doing that, yeah.
So yeah, it's a gamble every time you come out.
(36:06):
Good. What do you think the judging's
been better this year? I think so, yeah.
Yeah. They seem to have switched out
quite a bit on a lot of the layouts and the way they make
certain calls. All Yeah, a lot has changed over
the years. I do like the fact that they're
they're better at spotting, you know, lead driver mistakes that
could lead to the chase driver losing proximity rather than
just focusing so much on proximity.
(36:29):
And I haven't had any arguments with the judging all year, so
I'm happy with it. Yeah, good.
Yeah. Well, what do you hope for the
future changes of FD and do you hope for any new tracks or like
do you have anything in mind? That you're looking for?
I'd like to see more telemetry being used as a helpful point to
(36:50):
the judges. I don't know if we're there yet
to use telemetry as a judge itself, but I know that, you
know, Drift Masters is using that Wally system Clutch Master,
Clutch Kickers is using it. So, and I've looked at some of
the data that from that, I've watched it and it's really solid
information to have. It's really detailed and it can
(37:13):
tell you, you know, who's going faster, who's filling the zone
more, who has more proximity, all this stuff, who has, you
know, angle versus proximity, all that.
So if we could sort of get that system to the point where it's
better than a judge, you know, Ithink we always do need at least
(37:34):
one or two human judges, but I think that could go a good place
to a good place with that electronic judging.
Basically. I think there's there's a lot to
be said about it. And I think that might be the
future of drifting is, is havingat least some sort of very
(37:55):
detailed telemetry input as far as decisions and how they're
made out on track. Yeah.
Do you think it'll cause more issues with the viewers?
At all? I don't think so.
I haven't seen any stuff on there that would confuse me.
It's pretty obvious, you know, when someone has more angle and
more proximity and stuff like that.
And if you're, if you're basing your parameters on how much
(38:18):
they're filling the zones, how much angle they have, how much
speed they're carrying, is thereany check UPS or brake checks or
anything like that, I don't see an argument with it, especially
cuz they should be able to show you on the live stream the
telemetry data where it has a little visual of the cars going
(38:38):
through their lap and showing you how.
Like I don't know if you've seenlike Formula One where they have
the ghost car and it's they, they overlay that over the live
footage so you can see where youknow where the gains are being
had, where people are gaining itback, all that stuff.
It'd be something like that. And you could see visually why
(38:59):
someone won rather than have someone explain it or just, you
know, one guy slides right, one guy slides left type thing.
So I think it would help explainit a lot better to the audience.
And I don't think there'd be anyargument because it's so cut
cookie cutter right there. Here's his mistake.
He didn't make mistake. He had more angle.
(39:19):
He filled the zones more, you know, vice versa.
And if you can relay that to thecrowd and to the audience, I
mean, there's no argument, you know?
Yeah. I still think it, it would.
I know it's not as consistent asa lot of people have made it out
to be because there are certain moments, you know, if a car
spins out now they all of a sudden had 100 and you know, 70°
(39:43):
of angle and like some nonsense.That's not possible.
And like, I think that aspect, well, you can't involve it
without offering the informationlike you said, to the viewers.
So, but if the, if the information's inconsistent, then
you can't consistently offer it to the viewers.
Yeah, I think that's the fine line that FD might be hung on.
(40:05):
Yeah on using it. Well, it's it's not quite there
yet. It's pretty damn perfect.
But yeah, getting it to to know everything about it and, and
really recognize a spin, recognize the fact that he had
too much angle and slowed, basically do a stop and then you
know that the system realizes what's happening and it tells
(40:26):
you what's happening. There's definitely some
programming stuff that needs to be refined, you know, to make it
obvious to the viewer itself, you know, obvious to the
audience and obvious to the judges.
So yeah, I don't think we're 100% there, but from what I've
seen, I've seen the system, I watched some of the runs from,
you know, drift masters and stuff like that.
(40:48):
My crew chief is guy running clutch kickers.
So he's been, you know, giving me a lot of information about
how it works and how it runs. And I think we're moving in the
right direction. I'd say we're over 90% there,
you know, and we just need little nuances, little things
for the system to be able to recognize, you know, when
someone spins, when they understeer, you know, if they're
(41:10):
if they're mid drift. And because you can have mid
drift, you know, major corrections where you're
basically understeering, but you're still sideways type
stuff. So if we can get all these
things sort of ironed out, I really think that that's where
the sport is going. It just needs that, that little
bit of ironing out, that refinement, yeah, that
everything else is there, but itjust needs, just needs a little
(41:31):
couple more swoops that iron, smooth everything out and we're
good to go. It's definitely close.
I just hope it, like you said, it's never really used as a
judge. It's just a solid tool.
Yeah, for judging. I would like to see it used as a
judge, personally. Eventually, yeah, because
there's if you can see the data and there's no glacion.
(41:53):
Has to be. And there's no weird stuff going
on. Deniably, Yeah.
But then, you know, if you get the system to the point where it
is undeniable, then the decisions are undeniable.
There's no bias. There's no possibility of bias.
You know, unless it's run by AI.You know, AI can do some funny
stuff but. It will be.
You're gonna have. To well, right now it's, I don't
(42:14):
constantly lie. I don't think so.
I just think it needs the right algorithm to recognize
everything that's happening on track.
It's just like an ECU. It's just like a telemetry
system in the car. If you can refine it and get it
to do what we want it to do, then I don't see a problem with
it. I mean, it's it's going to be
more accurate and it's going to be better at spotting mistakes
(42:36):
than a human would. Judging is really hard.
I don't know if you. Yeah.
But what about the emotional aspect to drifting?
Because drifting is an emotionalsport.
It's it's the coolest looking sport.
It's it's the craziest because there's so much tire smoke and
you can't take you can't give a computer a motion and say feel
this yeah, only when this happens.
(42:58):
Yeah. So like, what about the point
where like it's so dead close, but like you go with the one
that just felt right or felt cooler?
That's why I think we, that's why I think it shouldn't be the
primary judge. If you had one, if you had a
computer judge and two human judges, I think that's.
I see what you mean. That's probably the best system.
(43:19):
I have no argument with using itlike for like qualifying, for
example. You know, if you're going to do
qualifying and you want it to beall electronic just to speed
things up, That I have no problem with.
There's no weird nuances happening.
There's no chance for it to really make a mistake if it's
obvious and it's right there. And you're still in the game.
Yeah. But yeah, I think 2 human
judges, so they can outweigh thecomputer basically at all times.
(43:42):
So then, you know, if two guys go to this guy wins and one guy
goes one more time, or the computer goes the other
direction or it says one more time or whatever, then there's
always that, that, that, that superseding, you know, decision
making is done by people with emotions, you know, like you
(44:03):
want to say, but emotions go both ways, you know, And if
someone does a bang up run and they're on a, on a shred, it's
hard to not ignore those like little mistakes that they made,
you know, and I've judged before.
Judging is extremely difficult. Nobody realizes how difficult it
is to watch 2 cars at once and make your decision and focus on
(44:24):
a lead line, focus on a chase line.
Was his lead better? Was his chase better?
You know, it's really hard and you're making split second
decisions and you have to make them fast.
You know, it's not like you can sit there and analyze it, you
know, for 5 minutes and it's before you can make your
decision. And I have a rule when I judge,
if I can't make a decision in 30seconds, I just call one more
time. So that way the flow of the and
(44:46):
the, the flow of the show reallydoes count here.
You know, we don't, nobody wantsto sit there and watch judges
make a decision. It's the most boring part of
drifting. That's what really slows it
down. Drifting is exciting.
Everything else that goes on around the decision making and
all that relatively boring. You're just watching 2 cars sit
on the line. Matt Soap is sitting there
waiting. Waiting for who to point at, you
know, so. That's when a lot of that
(45:09):
information would come in handy,yeah.
Just being able to kill some of that time relay a bunch of the
info if. You could watch detailed, you
know, digital layout of the car sliding through and, and and
displaying the telemetry, displaying what's happening.
I think that would help the audience understand more what's
going on on track and how the decisions are actually made.
(45:30):
And it's going to help the judges a lot because it might
catch a mistake or it might catch that, you know, this guy
had a considerable amount more angle in this section of the
track than the other guy that led to him running away.
You know there's. There's no smoke.
Yeah, yeah, just. Get the shit out of.
Here, popping beads over. There, that was a loud one.
Yeah, there's no smoke in the inthe in the the info or the Dow.
(45:51):
So there's no smoke covering theactual lap that the judges are
judging on. So that would be becoming a lot
of handy, especially seeing proximity to the wall, whatever.
So that's interesting. I like how you look at it.
Yeah. Well, is there anything you want
to let them know as far as how to find you or how to buy one of
(46:14):
the cone hats if they skip through the 1st part?
Yeah, the Drift, wizard.com, we got all our merch up there.
T-shirts, cone hats. We got little mini squishy
cones, stickers, all that stuff.If you're at a Formula D event,
come find us. That's a lot easier.
These things are, they're not expensive to ship, but it's a
big thing and I don't like like they fold up, but they'll end up
coming all wadded up. So it has to come in a pretty
(46:36):
large box. So if you can make it to the
event, it's going to be cheaper.We sell them for 20 bucks, so
it's probably one of the cheaperhats in general in the pits.
A lot of people, I don't want tosay they're overcharging.
Snapbacks are kind of expensive these days, but these we're not
spending a lot on. We're not making a ton off of
it, but we're still making enough.
(46:57):
You know, it's, it's a not a gigantic profit, but it's still,
I think it's more important to fill the crowd and to make an
impression at each event rather than, you know, drive the price
up and try and make a bunch of money off of them.
So yeah, come find us. Screw the price.
Yeah, it's being a part of a. Yeah.
(47:18):
An existing entity, something that's cool.
It's definitely. Not a cult.
Definitely not a cult, but we, we have, we have meetings every
Tuesday at the YMCA, so come by,you know?
Yeah. Free popcorn, yeah.
And at Hateley Drift on Instagram, Andy Hateley Drifts
(47:38):
on Facebook. We post a lot of silly stuff
after each event. Definitely to try to have a good
time out here and make content that is funny.
I think that's the most important thing.
I mean, if you look at Super Bowl commercials, they're all
hilarious and that's arguably the most expensive advertising
in the world. So people do reflect with things
(48:02):
that make them laugh. And if I can make somebody
giggle a little bit, that's that's.
Great dude, I die your video. Sometimes it'll be the simplest
ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's some, some goofy stuff out there.
It's definitely like meme quality content.
And it's, you know, like I said,it's a silly motorsport.
Accept it. Yeah, yeah.
(48:24):
That's good man, I love that. Well if let me get the last
little question in. What is your best piece of
advice for anyone just getting into drifting?
Don't forget to have fun and don't focus too much on, I'd
say, what happens at each event.Focus on how you're doing
(48:47):
overall. It's not a race and it's not,
you know, you versus them. It's everybody working together
to make this sport what it is. And don't lose track of that and
make some friends. Have a good time.
Have a beer with your buddies after the event and enjoy it.
(49:09):
Because, you know, I'm 41 now. I don't know how much longer I'm
going to be doing this, you know, And I'm glad it's been a
wild ride. It's been 20, yeah, 22 years
now, 21 years I've been doing this so.
And it's been a blast ever sinceI hopped in a car and started
sliding around. The people I've met, the places
(49:29):
I've gone, it's an experience. So just enjoy it.
Whatever you're at, whatever you're doing, get your car set
up. Learn how to work on your own
car. Definitely.
It's expensive to hire guys to come out and do it or to have
someone build your car. That's basically why I started
with the E30. I wanted a car that was, they're
(49:50):
not cheap anymore, but they werecheap enough at the time that
like, hey, if I messed this whole thing up and did the roll
cage wrong or whatever, buy, youknow, get another one for
$600.00 on Craigslist and start over.
And I mean, I learned everythingon that car from wiring stuff to
welding to plumbing to, you know, it was my first engine
(50:10):
swap, first everything, you know?
So, yeah, just learn as much as you can so that you're not
paying other people to do it because it is very expensive.
Some people have unlimited budgets and that's, you know,
they can they can do whatever. But I think.
It's become self-sufficient or die Train, Yeah.
Exactly, exactly. So.
(50:31):
And I think that's honestly mostof us out here are are on that
train. You know, you're not going to
find many FD drivers that aren'tknowledgeable about what they
do. And even the guys at the top,
you know, Turk builds some amazing shit, Forest builds some
amazing stuff. You know, Vaughn has an amazing
program. It's he's built his own cars in
the past. And I mean, it's got a that's,
(50:53):
that's all his, you know, input.You know, Papadakis, like these
guys, they know what they're doing.
And that's just the most important part I think, is
understanding not only the driving side, not only the
social media side, but how everything works and being able
to diagnose problems, being ableto keep yourself on track.
That's just as important as anything else.
(51:14):
So have fun, learn a lot, and have a beer with your buds.
It's about it. Cheers to that.
Yeah, hell yeah, dude. Well I I want to say thank you
for stopping by making time doing this interview.
More than welcome anytime. Thank you, Ben.
I love this. Yeah, go have some fun this
weekend. And good luck.
Thank you. Thank you.
(51:36):
Trust no bitch, can't catch, no feelings.
I've been taking long flights from the Bay to Ibiza.
Hit home, run. I'm a ball like Jeter.
I just want 444, then I'll leave.
I'm a young pop star. Caught a boy.
Justin Bieber got a little money.
If you want, I can teach her whole life.
A movie. You can watch it in theater.
When I first noticed your whole linkage throttle design, where
did you get that from originally?
Got a lot of power and we got the kiss Kim going.
What is going on? Coldplay is not here but they
might have got caught because they are piling that evil auto
works. BMW make some noise for the
drift wizard. Whenever they first started
(00:23):
here, it was so choked up and awkward.
It got a lot better once they widened the track.
You know you're not pulling out so much angle as you're leaving
O Z2 to get to O Z3. We just keep battling go D
batches over and over again. Long Beach we're losing power
steering and outside zone 1, which is probably the scariest
thing you'll experience in Formula Drift.
(00:43):
I want to say people don't realize having no power steering
is a lot better than having power steering lit fails the.
Judge is asking for. It their advice is is cheap but
get it done quickly. Basically, don't forget to have
fun. Focus on how you're doing
overall and enjoy it because youknow, I'm 41 now, I don't know
how much longer I'm. Going to be doing this.
(01:04):
Yeah. I've been wanting this forever.
I've been in the field with wherever they throw at me, brush
it off, pick myself up, moving on a little better.
Welcome back to the Circle Adrift podcast.
I want to say thank you again for stopping in every single
week for a brand new episode. This show is presented by SIM HQ
(01:25):
where you can always save 5% offon your next SIM magic upgrade
using code Circle Adrift. But if you are new here and have
no idea what I'm talking about, my name is Dawson.
And here on the Circle Adrift, we interview some of the most
interesting personalities withinthe industry, all to give you
the best information possible sothat you can not only learn
about drifting, but start yourself.
(01:45):
But today we will be at Formula Drift in Saint Louis, hearing
from Andy Hately on some of the issues that he's dealt with
throughout the year, his pretty wild throttle setup and a lot of
the insurance and outs of Formula Drift itself.
And without further ado, let's go ahead and get in the podcast.
We have a brand new face to the channel.
Not quite brand new. We had you guys on our podcast.
(02:07):
We did a joint. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You I'll I'll link that one downbelow.
That was fucking forever ago. But yeah, so I really, I got to
start off with the hat. That's the sore thumb, the
elephant in the room. I know.
That one. Yeah, mine.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm not talking about ears. It's boring.
No. Where'd the drift wizard thing
(02:28):
come from originally? For anyone that doesn't know.
Sitting on my couch watching dumb reels on Instagram, came
across this guy. What was his?
I forget his handle now, but he came up with this thing called
the frog wizard and it was just an animation of this frog doing
silly stuff and I was like I should try the drift wizard.
(02:50):
Like right around then I was coming up with a bunch of dumb
video ideas. I did a bunch of stuff.
So I still like have a phone full of notes of like dumb ideas
to make, you know, reels about and stuff like that.
So. It was as simple as that.
Yeah, that was one of them. I think we made like probably 6
reels that day out of like different random ideas that I
had and that one just like took off and the round after that, I
(03:14):
think it was Atlanta. I showed up and nobody called me
Andy anymore. They all just called me the
Drift Wizard. So I was like there's something
to this. Like people are yelling it from
like across the pits and like all sorts of stuff.
So it kind of became my persona,I guess and became bigger than
than my own name, which I prefer.
I have a little bit of of like anxiety when it comes to like
(03:37):
people, you know, coming up and talk.
I mean, I'm kind of an introvertto be honest, so.
Like, I hear you. Yeah.
Yeah, like, so it was nice to like, not be the center of
attention. Now the driftwood is just the
center of the attention, so. You had a face to hide behind.
Almost, yeah. It's a good move.
I like that, Yeah. Yeah, I've always said that I I
admire Japan FD for the characters and stuff that they
(04:00):
bring to the drivers and everything.
So like that you. You got to watch the old D1
stuff, man. That's that's where it was like
they did some characters, they did silly stuff.
They did like like physical fitness tests between the
drivers where they had them likerun like, you know, 100 feet.
They had them like a squeeze test with like a grip meter
thing. Like, yeah, there's some really
silly stuff and all the old option videos.
(04:22):
And that's like when I got into drifting, that's all I saw.
So it was like nice to see, you know, professional drivers be
silly, you know, And it's, I mean, to be honest, it's a silly
motorsport to begin with. Like we're out here sliding cars
around. Judge.
Judge fashion like it has nothing to do with the other
side of Motorsports, where everything is by the clock.
(04:42):
By the time when you cross the finish line, that's all that
counts. So it's nice to embrace that and
not be too serious out here because.
It's got to be cool to see the hats on the live stream.
Oh, it's great. Yeah.
That's that's how you get on thelive stream when you don't make
top 32 or you don't make top 16.It's like you get that exposure
no matter what. So every time you see a hat in
(05:03):
the crowd or you see it on the live stream, they, they know
where it came from. They know who we are.
It's really helped us like buildsort of our brand and and get
out to people that, you know, wewouldn't normally get to because
we're not making top 16 all the time in pro and stuff like that.
And pro spec, it doesn't have asbig as following as pro.
So like, it's nice to to find a way to get in front of the crowd
(05:26):
and get people talking about you.
Basically, yeah. Has it helped a program at all?
Just the fact of having that character.
Well, I mean, the hats are the biggest.
The selling of the hats is the biggest sponsor you ever had
monitoring. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Even impaired. Yeah.
It's hard to find money out here.
And yeah, we're. We've made more off of these
than anyone's ever written us a check for.
Yeah, yeah, what the fuck? Yeah, how many do you sell a
(05:49):
weekend? Typically this year's not as
good as last year because we hada lot of rain and like stuff
like that. And just like, especially in
Atlanta, Atlanta, we did like really good last year, but it
was raining during like the top 16 break.
So there wasn't like the mass amount of people coming down to
the pits. But on average, we go through
150 to 300 per round. I think the most we've gone
(06:09):
through is like a little over 300.
Yeah, yeah. Wow.
Yeah. Last year we went through 2000
of them, so yeah. Can people buy them online too?
We just started our website. Let's see about the beginning of
the season. I got it all set up, but I
haven't really done any advertising for it.
I actually just put drift, the drift wizard.com logos on the
side of the car now, so and I need to make some contact to
(06:33):
kind of promote that. I really haven't, but we've been
getting, you know, steady sales on the website, but no like big
boom or anything like that because we haven't really pushed
it yet. That makes sense.
Well, other than that, what how's the season been going as
far as you're driving the car, You know, just the way you're
seating and everything? It's on and off Long Beach.
(06:54):
We did pretty well, kind of fellinto third place for the seating
there and just haven't had the best of luck, you know, coming
in the events after that. And we just keep battling Odie
batches over and over again. It seems like we're going to
battle him for the fourth time in a row now at this round.
So, yeah. Yeah.
So. But I'm learning.
I'm learning him. I got it one more time in Jersey
(07:15):
and that's hard to do with Odie.So proud of that performance and
hopefully we can get another onemore time today or finally beat
them, you know? Do you change stuff going into
that battle because it keeps happening, or do you just try
and keep it consistent? We'll drop tire pressure a
little bit, try and grip the carup a little bit more, but we're
not changing a whole lot becauseusually there's not a whole lot
(07:35):
of practice, you know, at these rounds, this round especially,
we kind of missed half of our practice session yesterday
because the supercharger pump was was doing some funny stuff.
We got our IA T's up to like 220at one point, which is no bueno.
And then the we have a throttle Body Issue going on right now.
One of the bearings went bad. So the shaft actually has a
little bit of play in it and my crew guy Curtis packed it with
(07:59):
some grease for for the seating battles.
It felt a lot better after that,but the bearing itself is is
chewed up. So we borrowed A throttle body,
ironically from Audi, but it wasa 95mm and we're at one O 2, so
we'd have to do some tuning stuff with that.
So we're probably just going to repack it again today and run
tomorrow and then try and get a new one before Seattle, yeah.
(08:22):
What would like? So you obviously have to retune
it. Why?
Obviously changing a throttle body is pretty easy.
Yeah. What extensively on the tune
side of things are you going to have to change for?
Yourself, I'm not 100% sure. I just I just know that you're
going to get a little bit more constriction out of the 95
versus the one O 2. It's 7mm.
So that's that's substantial difference.
(08:43):
You're going down the line of stuff, you're having to change
fuel. And everything.
Yep, Yep. How much the throttle plate is
is kicked open. You know what idle and stuff
like that counts and then resetting TPS and all that
stuff, but I don't assume it would be a whole lot.
I probably should be something we'd be able to figure out
pretty easy with my tuner comingon Teamviewer and working as
(09:04):
magic. But ideally we just tried to
find the one O 2 to make it solid and honestly it's not bad
right now. So I'd rather keep it where it
is, regrease it and just and just do our battles and see how
it goes. So.
That's my next question is like if you do just go through today
or the next battles or whatever with this one and then you end
up changing it, is that not going to throw you off?
(09:26):
Not if it's a one O 2 because it's so you will be getting a
one O 2. OK, OK, nevermind.
Yeah, we just couldn't find a one O 2 here that was complete.
We found one from Trenton Beecham, but they actually took
it apart because their shaft, I forget what happened, but they
actually were like took it apart, removed the shaft, remove
the throttle plate and replaced his throttle plate and shaft
with that. So, so we don't have the parts
(09:49):
to replace it and it's a different throttle body than
ours. So, you know, we couldn't just
do a quick swap over. Yeah, all.
Right, so we got to stop the podcast for a second because I
know we're going through a lot of tires out there.
And given you're here supportingthe podcast, they want to help
you guys out and give you 20% off on your tires moving forward
with Code Circle Adrift 2. And on top of that, they're
(10:11):
actually doing free shipping, which is just added to your
cart. So if you're going to need tires
soon, or maybe you just never tried the Zeck Novas or you just
kind of want to stack up, I suggest you do that now while
you can get them at a better price.
But other than tires, let's get on back into the podcast now.
I I've heard a lot of the drivers say that it's pretty
gripped out at this track, right?
(10:32):
Or cars are like feeling really fast.
Are you having the same thing? It's a good surface.
It's pretty grippy out there. It's not, you know, I mean, it's
grippier than like Orlando and some of the other tracks, but
any tracks like this where you have a really high quality
surface like Salt Lake City or Rd.
Atlanta, it's just a quality track.
So they're using that really good pavement and you know, that
makes a big difference as far asthe grip levels go.
(10:55):
Do you like the like layout style that they're doing now?
Because whenever they first started here, it was so choked
up and awkward. And yeah, it got a lot better
once they widened the track, youknow, coming off of O Z2 and
into O Z3. They they widen that up a bunch
and now it's a lot easier to to make it happen and a lot less,
you know, you're not pulling outso much angle as you're leaving
(11:15):
O Z2 to get to O Z3. I personally like it.
I know a lot of people hate it because it's like speed up, slow
down, speed up, slow down. But I like the challenge and
I've always had good luck here. And it it, you know, this track
comes naturally to me. I guess we'll put it that way.
I every time I even in the SIM when I hopped on, I hadn't
(11:36):
driven it in a long time. And right off the bat, I want to
say it because my goal in the SIM is to do 10 laps with like
minimal mistakes basically in a row off the bat, like right when
you hop on the machine, go to Saint Louis, you can do 10 laps
right off the bat with no major mistakes, Fill all your zones.
Then I consider myself like ready for competition.
And I was able to do that. I mean, I want to say right when
(11:57):
I hopped on the track, it's it'sit's comes natural to me.
It's just a lot of yeah, speed up, slow down, downshift,
upshift, check your wheel speed with the E brake.
But yeah, I like it here. It's it's fun track.
Yeah. Well, since you mentioned Sam,
obviously you're on a SIM Magic setup, right?
Yeah, yeah. So what it consider like a brand
(12:18):
new, Obviously you're doing FD, so you're not going into
absolute brand new track other than Long Beach this year.
So we can use that. For example, what are you going
to do going into the SIM to practice it from the jump?
Like obviously you need to make it to the 10 laps, but there's
also you got to make it through the first turn before you can
make it to the. Next turn I'm I'm hoping someone
will make that track on the SIM before Long Beach.
(12:40):
That's true too. Yeah.
But yeah, that's what I'm hopingfor.
And if they don't like, I will pay you.
Like let's get that track on theSIM so we can get some track
practice, get the visuals down, get the timing down, all that
stuff. So yeah, hopefully we'll have
one, you know, come Long Beach and, you know, I can get some
practice before we head out on the track.
Do y'all have any idea of what it's supposed to be like?
(13:02):
Yeah, FD posted a a sort of render of what the tracks going
to look like, yeah. I didn't know if that was like 2
AT. It's basically it's basically
U-turn U-turn, U-turn, U-turn. Like it's very tight very long
radius cornered into another oneinto another one.
It looks like it's going to be all outside zones, maybe one
inside clip, so should be prettygood for tandem.
(13:25):
And the render is like fully walled, right?
Yeah. Is do you, is it going to be
that way? Have they?
I believe so, yeah. Yeah.
I mean, that's that's kind of the only way to do it when you
have a street course like that. Like you can't let cars run off
into, you know, the actual intersections and stuff like
that. You have to have it, you know,
very just a lot of barriers everywhere to keep the crowd and
(13:48):
to keep, you know, potential traffic that runs through, runs
over cones or something from getting into the course itself.
Yeah, that's fair. Well, other than all that, you
did mention earlier how you've been having a lot of like issues
and hiccups throughout the the season like earlier on.
What were some of those for example?
Just Long Beach, we had a bad power steering fitting which was
(14:10):
completely my fault to be honest.
We were testing at Willow and webled the power steering fluid
there. Had an issue with a hose, I
swapped out the hose and I don'tknow if some debris got in there
or what, but the actual chamfered part of the AN fitting
got damaged. So Long Beach we're losing power
steering outside zone 1, which is probably the scariest thing
(14:33):
you'll experience in Formula Drift.
I want to say like coming into the wall, you initiate and then
it's just gone and you're fighting the wheel.
And what people don't realize, like having no power steering is
a lot better than having power steering lit fails because when
it fails, you're fighting the hydraulic pressure.
So you're not only forcing the wheel to do its thing, you're
(14:54):
forcing fluid through the rack in both directions as you're
correcting. So it's, it's sketchy, very hard
to move the wheel. And fortunately, I was able to
round it up and get the car straight, you know, before we
ate the barrier. But same thing happened last
year, but last year it was, it was just bad power steering
pumps. And we switched to a company
called Radial Dynamics and otherthan, you know, my fitting
(15:17):
mishap that that was my fault, it's been completely solid ever
since. They do a lot of rock crawling
trucks. I think top five in Baja are
like 3 out of the top five in Baja this year running their
pumps. So those guys are putting it
through whoops, you know, big tire, lots of load and they
don't have any issues. So they also do stuff for
(15:37):
monster trucks. So they're just gurus of power
steering. Highly recommended.
If you're going to run mechanical power steering, talk
to Radial Dynamics. We're working on getting them to
make a bracket. Or my crew chief Curtis actually
might make a bracket to mount the LS power steering pump to
Jay-Z engines so you can run mechanical there as well.
Just a great system, great setup.
(15:59):
Their reservoir is something like I've never seen.
If you get a chance to go to their YouTube, they have a clear
version of the reservoir and it's a swirl pot down below and
it's got a screen in the middle that allows the air to bleed
out. And they just are pumping
compressed air into the system and you see you can physically
see it, the bubbles coming out, everything goes to the top and
(16:21):
the pump is always pulling cleanfluid even when air is
introduced in the system. So, you know, even if you, you
know, bust a lion or something like that, it's going to
gradually disappear rather than disappear, you know, in a flash
because you're going to feel thethe fluid pressure dropping, but
you're not going to get air intothe actual pump and cavitate the
pump and ruin other stuff. Yeah.
(16:43):
Well, since you went that route,did you, I assume you considered
going E throttle or not E throttle?
Sorry, electric power. Electronic power.
Steering, yeah, we considered it.
We talked to a lot of people. We would have probably, I had to
add another PDM possibly or get a bigger alternator, mount it,
run hoses. It was a big ordeal and I was
(17:05):
pretty much there. I was ready to swap everything
over. My crew chief was like, no,
let's give it one more try. And we gave Radio Dynamics a try
and it worked out perfectly so. How much of an investment like
cost wise you would you say thatwould have been total?
For the radial dynamic stuff or like.
For the electronic stuff. All the electronic stuff, I'm
(17:25):
not sure. It kind of depends on the route
you go. People are running, you know,
mini pumps. There's Opal Astra pumps that
like the guys in Europe use the MR2 pump is probably the most
popular and I've heard good things and bad things about it.
You know, some people love it, some people hate it.
Some people really like the consistency of it.
They say it feels, you know, like the simulator kinda, but
(17:46):
I'm I'm happy with what we got. It works and we haven't had a
single issue with it so. That's I would have considered
you would go that route more because of the SIM.
Since you have adapted to it, you use it I still.
Haven't even driven a car with electric power steering.
So I mean, maybe someone wants to lend me a car to try out for
a couple laps and you know, but we really like radial.
(18:10):
They're very helpful. The, the time that we needed
that pump was right before Florida and we needed it
literally the next day. And he was backed up on orders
and he's like, all right, listen, I have one here in
reserve like this is our backup pump in the case something goes
wrong. And he sent that out and got a
set up. Super cool guys.
And yeah, the customer service and the knowledge and the fact
(18:34):
that we can call him literally right now.
Hey, we got a problem. What do we do?
You know, and we figure it out right then and there.
And with electric stuff, basically you'd be going around
from team to team to team tryingto find someone who's a power
steering guru basically to help you out with it.
Whereas like I got it right hereon my phone.
That is true. Yeah, well, good man.
(18:54):
Well, I know I was on the other side of that, not electronic
power steering when I messed up and said E throttle when I first
noticed your whole linkage throttle design thing.
Where did you get that from originally?
My buddy WOWT while young, he runs that on his carbureted E46
out in Europe and it's really popular with the carbureted
(19:16):
guys. And I actually I wasn't going to
run that. I got this Joe's racing floor
mounted throttle pedal for the E46 because I wanted to replace
the flimsy plastic one that BMW comes with because he actually
broke that on the E30. The plastic hinge broke off at
Long Beach when we first, the first time I ever ran the E30.
(19:37):
So I wanted something solid. I wanted something metal.
So I mounted that up and that came with the bell crank for the
linkage. It came with the linkage stuff
and I was like, I think I can make this work.
So I mounted the bell crank basically, you know, in line
with the throttle blade and before we switch to the bigger
Magnuson supercharger, it was straight from the bell crank to
(19:58):
the throttle blade. So direct, you know, in a
straight line right up to the throttle.
And it worked great. It was way smoother than a
throttle cable. Throttle cables with the bends
and stuff like that, you can always kind of feel the cable,
you know, grinding around in there on the Teflon coated line.
And this was just the smoothest throttle I've ever felt.
So and then once we swapped to the Magnuson supercharger, I had
(20:20):
to put that little rocker in there to to get it to clear the
supercharger, which is fine. It's still direct, it's still
doing its thing, and it's just the most direct feeling throttle
I've ever had. It's the smoothest thing that
I've ever. Come I would have to expect it
provides way more feedback. Yep, from what's going on with
the. Way more feedback and you can be
(20:41):
way more precise. There's not that little bit of
drag that you get. And we've melted A throttle
cable before and had this throttle stick wide open.
So yeah. So it's nice to not have to
worry about that at all. Heat doesn't affect it.
Yeah, the drive by wire guys like to argue with me about it,
but like, I mean, yeah, there's a there's a lot of stuff going
(21:04):
on. There's a lot of nuts and bolts,
but I mean with E throttle, there's a lot of things that can
add to a failure as well. You know, it's a lot of wiring
voltage, this that there's tons of stuff that can make that not
work. And you know, I've seen cars get
total because of E throttles. I've seen cars get total because
of broken cables. So I just feel like this is one,
(21:27):
it's it's pretty darn reliable. I don't want to say the most
reliable because I don't have the data on that, but it also is
cool. It looks really cool.
I like it. I like mechanical stuff.
I like stuff that I can understand.
I'm a fabricator, I'm a builder.I know wiring, but I'm not a
wiring guy, you know, I can wirea fan, I can wire relay, I can
(21:48):
do all that stuff, but I'm that's not my Forte.
I like things that I can physically see and touch and
move with my hands, you know, not that you can't feel
electricity, but I don't think you want to be feeling it.
Yeah. I totally get that, yeah,
Because there's always that argument between cable and E
throttle. Yeah.
But like obviously cable, yes, there's the cable will fray,
(22:08):
it'll eventually get damaged. But yeah, the.
Plus side is like you can feel that happening so it's easier
to. Dodge that catastrophe failure
from you. Like if, if the throttle cable
does fail, like, OK, put a new throttle cable on.
Like it's not like you're chasing down or why don't I have
voltage or why isn't it opening all the way or, you know,
chasing down. Is it grounded properly?
(22:28):
You know, there's a there's a lot of things that can go wrong
with that. And you know, it's just easier
to diagnose a problem when it's right there in your face.
You can say, Oh, well, that bolts loose or oh, that cable
came off or, you know, the little feral fell off the end or
whatever, you know. So it's just my preference.
You know, it's what I like and what I like.
It's easier to diagnose and you know.
(22:50):
I saw Scott go through hell withhis E throttle he had just put
on it. Polecat ruined his whole day.
Because as soon as you go out ontrack, it's the car just like
goes into limp mode, doesn't have full 100% throttle, and now
he's got to wait 30 minutes to get yanked off a track because
this track's so long and oh, dude, it's a nightmare.
So not only are you ruining yourown day, but you could be
(23:12):
ruining everybody else's day. Not that Scott did that, but you
know. But yeah, I've seen him fail and
one of them failed at Seattle. I don't want to say the driver,
but back in the day, E throttle failed midway through the bank
and took the throttle away and he went up and into the wall,
totaled the car. And I mean, that can happen with
(23:33):
the cable too. That can happen with the linkage
too. I'm not saying it can't, but I
just, it's less common to have those random weird failures, you
know, with the cable or with a linkage.
Dylan, I know how to fail your last round.
He switched up the cable for this round, so you know to each
their own. If you want to run it, you want
(23:54):
to run drive by wire, you want to run cable, you want to run
leakage. I don't care.
I I like doing what I like with my car, so you know.
Hey, look, let's take a break from the podcast really quick
because we can't always have these nice comfy chairs at
events. When we're doing podcasts now I
have to think about not only keeping myself but the guests
comfortable as well while we're sitting down for such long
episodes. Nothing has kept the guests and
(24:16):
I comfortable enough other than the Viper chairs.
They use an extremely thick cushion so my app doesn't get so
or after 5 minutes, and I don't always have the best posture.
So the placement of the backresthelps me with a lot of my lower
back pain. And even when we have the XLR
cables for these microphones just laying on the ground, I've
never had an issue with the casters rolling over them or
(24:38):
tipping me out of the chair. But if you guys have been
considering getting your own Vipers hooked you guys up with
$50 off on your next Viper chair.
So I'll leave the link in the description for that.
And without further ado, let's just get back into the podcast.
Well, Speaking of just FD in general, how is it since you've
been here in FD for so long running a program, you know
(25:00):
economy is getting worse? Like how are you surviving
through all of this? Barely.
Yeah, just barely. Yeah.
Also, yeah, I mean, it's expensive.
Luckily Kumo Tire came on board and so if we didn't have the
deal with them, we probably wouldn't have moved up to Pro to
be honest. They've been very helpful.
(25:21):
They developed a great tire lastyear.
We were on A27535 and they developed their two 9540 for us
and it's been the best tire I'veever had.
Like we get 3 laps here, we're getting 4 laps at Long Beach
like and you don't really hear about that.
You know, like even with, even with the GT Radial and Pro spec
on the 255, we were getting 1 1/2 laps.
(25:44):
Basically, the tire would be gone by the time I entered outer
Zone 2. So just the life of the tire,
the fact that we can run 3 laps to kind of stretch practice a
little bit more. And they sent engineers out.
Actually here last year. We did some testing and they
they were taking temperatures and they did footprints on the
tire. They did a whole bunch of stuff.
(26:05):
The guy Andy over there at Kumo is really knows his stuff and
we're just really fortunate to have a tire company that came on
board and didn't just give us what they got.
They were like, all right, how do we make this the best for you
guys? And they did that.
They added more rubber on the outer edges of the tire because
those were wearing faster because we run such low tire
(26:26):
pressures that you actually the middle of the tire will blow up
a little bit and you're riding more so on the side wall of the
tire once you drop your pressures down really far.
So they added more rubber there.It's been a phenomenal tire all
year long. Yeah.
That's some weird science to that that's.
Cool. It's it's it's complicated.
Yeah. Damn, so is that like the the
(26:46):
main sponsor that's helping you guys out or is there anyone else
that's that's helping the program?
Evil Autoworks, they've been helping us out and that's Jeff's
sponsor as well. So we share Evil and Kumo.
And Jeff's basically the reason why I got on Kumo and the reason
why I got on Evil. So big shout out to Jeff Jones.
Thank you, Sir. So yeah, without, without that
(27:06):
kind of help, we wouldn't be here.
Yeah, just plain and simple. So how much is it costing you to
run these seasons now? Because especially living in
California, it's a lot. I mean cost of living alone.
Is high. I don't like to think about it,
you know? Well, you got to now.
Yeah. I mean, we spend generally
roughly 10 grand around, I'd saybetween hotels, paying my guys
(27:32):
parts that break, you know, Yeah.
Would you consider that on the lower end of drivers?
Oh, yeah, for sure. Really.
Yeah, yeah. What are other drivers spending?
I mean. 2030 plus around. If you're talking independent
guys, I'd say that's probably the average is like 1010 to 20,
you know, depending on what kindof mileage your rigs getting and
(27:52):
all that kind of stuff and how many spares you're bringing and
and what brakes. You know, if you're going
through two or three motors a year, it can get expensive.
But luckily we have a great engine builder.
Shout out to Jeff Ginter Racing Engines, another Baja guy builds
a lot of I think I think he was in the top, you know, three or
five trucks to this year. He builds like terrible Herbst
engines. He builds Vaughn getting off
(28:13):
road program engines. Super knowledgeable dudes, does
everything right and to the T and we haven't had an engine
problem at all since we've been,you know, messing with him.
Yeah, yeah. That's a problem you don't want
to have. Yeah, yeah, Some of these guys
out here going through what, 3 engines a year or some shit.
Yeah, yeah, that's ridiculous. And even some of the, you know,
(28:34):
some of the two J guys, the V8 guys, everyone has gone, you
know, that route before and it sucks, man.
I if we, if we blew an engine, yeah, that's our, that's our
season. Like we're done.
We don't have the money to continue.
Do you ever think after you'll get that big to where an engine
is disposable? Because I mean some racing, drag
(28:54):
racing out there where that's the case.
If you don't over talk to Papadakis, they'll probably, you
know, I mean, their their new B58 seems solid, but the old,
the 4 cylinder they're running that.
I mean, they were going through quite a few engines in that and
that's not to his fault. I think they just had they, they
were running as high as they could possibly get out of those
(29:14):
engines. And it wasn't a proven engine.
It didn't have a ton of slew of aftermarket parts.
So he's building and manufacturing everything that
you need to make that kind of horsepower.
So that's complicated, you know,and I, I couldn't do any better.
But that way, you know, you got to.
Go through all the growing painswith.
That Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so as far as the program
(29:36):
and everything, like say someonecomes up to you at one of these
events and it's like, I want to do this.
How do I start? Like what?
What do? I start driving.
What do I need to do? Yeah, especially now with
everything being so expensive. Seat time you know, obviously if
if you can't get out there and do well in your prime series and
earn a license, that's a big killer.
So you can have you know a greatfollowing, which is another part
(30:00):
of it is really build your social media package find a way
to be unique within the the sea of drift drivers out there.
We've all seen a car going sideways.
We've seen every brand, every make, you know, from Tesla at a
grid Life to, you know, to, to just Ferraris, yeah, everything
you know. So find a way to make yourself
(30:24):
unique, make yourself stand out and find sponsors that align
with you as your personality. Basically.
You know, fortunately, like I was talking about Kumo, they
post some pretty funny memes andstuff like that here and there.
So like, we kind of aligned withthem, you know, we already do
(30:44):
silly content and they were all about it.
And there's certain companies that just aren't about that at
all. They'd see the drift wizard,
they'd see me doing my stuff. And they go, what the hell is
that? Like, you know, So yeah,
there's. Nothing wrong with that.
Either no, there isn't, but yeah, there's there's corporate,
there's very corporate style sponsors and there's ones that
are willing to have a little funand we, you know, lean to the
(31:09):
side of having a little more fun.
That's the whole point, right? Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, business, I understand, you know, it's, it's
the livelihood, it's how they pay their bills, it's how they
stay afloat. So if they want to keep it very
corporate and not aligned with someone like me, I'm fine with
that. I will find someone who
appreciates what we do. And not only that, they have the
audience that appreciates what you do as well.
(31:31):
Because if their branding is silly and fun and, and, you
know, includes comedy and stuff like that, then you're going to
line with them. They're following, is going to
line with you, you're following,is going to line with the brand.
And we're all, you know, we're all doing that and helping each
other basically, yeah. It's all organic.
Too. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that makes it great. Yeah.
(31:52):
Well, what is like the most common misconception you've
noticed that especially being inFD running a program, you know,
car level, all of this stuff, what it like?
Probably that it's like pretty much the same as your local
drift event, just on a professional level, Like
everybody's here to help everybody.
When our throttle body went bad,I went over to, I was running
(32:13):
around teams and yeah, who we'regoing to battle.
Odie gave us a throttle body, his spare throttle body, you
know, and you don't see that in any other form of motorsport,
you know, from, you know, motocross to drag racing to Rd.
racing. You're not allowed to talk to
other teams in in a lot of thoseraces.
So I mean, like, you can't go and help, you know, we've had,
(32:34):
you know, Ray Shake from RTR come over and help us with the
E30 back. We were running electromotive
ECU because he knew that from way back in the day.
So he came over and helped us out, us out, You know,
Papadakis, way back in the day when Tanner was driving for the
team, I think 2007, they lent ustheir spare differential because
they were running the Z at the time.
(32:54):
Like we're lending parts, we're helping each other out, you
know, I've lent out my welder's been more used by more team,
more other teams here than we'veever used it, you know, So it's
all accumulative effort. It doesn't matter who you're
battling. Everyone wants to help each
other get out on track and perform their best.
(33:14):
Nobody wants to win with a by run or with, you know, a car
failure or whatever. You know, Brewski, who we
battled last night, he pulled inthe pits over here and he said
you got vacuum line. I'm like, yeah, I ran over my
trailer, got him some vacuum line to fix a vacuum hose he
needed. And, you know, he beat us like,
but that's it's not, it's not his fault.
It's not, it was my fault. I messed up on track.
(33:36):
Like, you know, and I don't wantto win because he needs a vacuum
hose and I'm not willing to giveit to him.
Like it's not. There's a lot of camaraderie out
here. And I think people don't realize
that when they are watching the stream or whatever, you know,
we're all friends, we're all having a good time.
We're all here, you know, partying last night, throwing,
(33:57):
playing. What's the game with the, the
sandbags, cornhole, cornhole. We're all playing cornhole over
it. And.
Sluck some people out of the. Cornhole.
Well come over to Stookie's pitch.
Shoot. Let's I will.
Let's team up because I'm not very good at it.
So I need you. Oh.
Dude, I grew up playing cornhole.
We tried to, like, travel baseball.
Yeah. So we'd set, we'd bring it set
up in the parking lot in the hotel and just play it all
night. Yeah.
(34:18):
All right, you're my teammate. You're my teammate for tonight,
then. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're going to mess some people up.
That's awesome, man. Well, as far as this event,
obviously what's what's the planof attack going into this next
battle, going in the rest of theevent, what are your hopes?
All that stuff. Odie's a tough one to beat.
(34:39):
We'll probably drop tire pressure a little bit, probably
leave the car set up like it is and really push hard in practice
as as far as in our chase line runs, because you know, he's
going to be fast and if we don'tpush hard, he's definitely going
to beat us. So we might as well push hard in
(35:01):
practice if we crash, if we messup the car really doesn't matter
because we wouldn't have beat him if we weren't pushing hard.
So yeah, just get out there, tryand get very comfortable when
you're leaving O Z2 coming into O Z3, that's the point where
he's probably going to gap us based on the grip level of that
(35:22):
car. So I need to figure out a way to
kind of cut the line in the right spot, get on throttle
early, and stay in the pocket throughout the course.
What are the judges asking for in those scenarios?
Is that like they they want you to cut the line or would that
they rather you stay deeper and less proximity?
Their advice is is cheap, but get it done quickly basically,
you know, so like if you got to cheat the line, that's if you
(35:44):
got to do all that stuff, you got to do it, do it quickly.
You know, don't be completely outside of the out of the zone
when the lead drivers filling the zone completely.
But yeah, you'd be better off a a car length or two behind, but
actually filling the zones and doing that, yeah.
So yeah, it's a gamble every time you come out.
(36:06):
Good. What do you think the judging's
been better this year? I think so, yeah.
Yeah. They seem to have switched out
quite a bit on a lot of the layouts and the way they make
certain calls. All Yeah, a lot has changed over
the years. I do like the fact that they're
they're better at spotting, you know, lead driver mistakes that
could lead to the chase driver losing proximity rather than
just focusing so much on proximity.
(36:29):
And I haven't had any arguments with the judging all year, so
I'm happy with it. Yeah, good.
Yeah. Well, what do you hope for the
future changes of FD and do you hope for any new tracks or like
do you have anything in mind? That you're looking for?
I'd like to see more telemetry being used as a helpful point to
(36:50):
the judges. I don't know if we're there yet
to use telemetry as a judge itself, but I know that, you
know, Drift Masters is using that Wally system Clutch Master,
Clutch Kickers is using it. So, and I've looked at some of
the data that from that, I've watched it and it's really solid
information to have. It's really detailed and it can
(37:13):
tell you, you know, who's going faster, who's filling the zone
more, who has more proximity, all this stuff, who has, you
know, angle versus proximity, all that.
So if we could sort of get that system to the point where it's
better than a judge, you know, Ithink we always do need at least
(37:34):
one or two human judges, but I think that could go a good place
to a good place with that electronic judging.
Basically. I think there's there's a lot to
be said about it. And I think that might be the
future of drifting is, is havingat least some sort of very
(37:55):
detailed telemetry input as far as decisions and how they're
made out on track. Yeah.
Do you think it'll cause more issues with the viewers?
At all? I don't think so.
I haven't seen any stuff on there that would confuse me.
It's pretty obvious, you know, when someone has more angle and
more proximity and stuff like that.
And if you're, if you're basing your parameters on how much
(38:18):
they're filling the zones, how much angle they have, how much
speed they're carrying, is thereany check UPS or brake checks or
anything like that, I don't see an argument with it, especially
cuz they should be able to show you on the live stream the
telemetry data where it has a little visual of the cars going
(38:38):
through their lap and showing you how.
Like I don't know if you've seenlike Formula One where they have
the ghost car and it's they, they overlay that over the live
footage so you can see where youknow where the gains are being
had, where people are gaining itback, all that stuff.
It'd be something like that. And you could see visually why
(38:59):
someone won rather than have someone explain it or just, you
know, one guy slides right, one guy slides left type thing.
So I think it would help explainit a lot better to the audience.
And I don't think there'd be anyargument because it's so cut
cookie cutter right there. Here's his mistake.
He didn't make mistake. He had more angle.
(39:19):
He filled the zones more, you know, vice versa.
And if you can relay that to thecrowd and to the audience, I
mean, there's no argument, you know?
Yeah. I still think it, it would.
I know it's not as consistent asa lot of people have made it out
to be because there are certain moments, you know, if a car
spins out now they all of a sudden had 100 and you know, 70°
(39:43):
of angle and like some nonsense.That's not possible.
And like, I think that aspect, well, you can't involve it
without offering the informationlike you said, to the viewers.
So, but if the, if the information's inconsistent, then
you can't consistently offer it to the viewers.
Yeah, I think that's the fine line that FD might be hung on.
(40:05):
Yeah on using it. Well, it's it's not quite there
yet. It's pretty damn perfect.
But yeah, getting it to to know everything about it and, and
really recognize a spin, recognize the fact that he had
too much angle and slowed, basically do a stop and then you
know that the system realizes what's happening and it tells
(40:26):
you what's happening. There's definitely some
programming stuff that needs to be refined, you know, to make it
obvious to the viewer itself, you know, obvious to the
audience and obvious to the judges.
So yeah, I don't think we're 100% there, but from what I've
seen, I've seen the system, I watched some of the runs from,
you know, drift masters and stuff like that.
(40:48):
My crew chief is guy running clutch kickers.
So he's been, you know, giving me a lot of information about
how it works and how it runs. And I think we're moving in the
right direction. I'd say we're over 90% there,
you know, and we just need little nuances, little things
for the system to be able to recognize, you know, when
someone spins, when they understeer, you know, if they're
(41:10):
if they're mid drift. And because you can have mid
drift, you know, major corrections where you're
basically understeering, but you're still sideways type
stuff. So if we can get all these
things sort of ironed out, I really think that that's where
the sport is going. It just needs that, that little
bit of ironing out, that refinement, yeah, that
everything else is there, but itjust needs, just needs a little
(41:31):
couple more swoops that iron, smooth everything out and we're
good to go. It's definitely close.
I just hope it, like you said, it's never really used as a
judge. It's just a solid tool.
Yeah, for judging. I would like to see it used as a
judge, personally. Eventually, yeah, because
there's if you can see the data and there's no glacion.
(41:53):
Has to be. And there's no weird stuff going
on. Deniably, Yeah.
But then, you know, if you get the system to the point where it
is undeniable, then the decisions are undeniable.
There's no bias. There's no possibility of bias.
You know, unless it's run by AI.You know, AI can do some funny
stuff but. It will be.
You're gonna have. To well, right now it's, I don't
(42:14):
constantly lie. I don't think so.
I just think it needs the right algorithm to recognize
everything that's happening on track.
It's just like an ECU. It's just like a telemetry
system in the car. If you can refine it and get it
to do what we want it to do, then I don't see a problem with
it. I mean, it's it's going to be
more accurate and it's going to be better at spotting mistakes
(42:36):
than a human would. Judging is really hard.
I don't know if you. Yeah.
But what about the emotional aspect to drifting?
Because drifting is an emotionalsport.
It's it's the coolest looking sport.
It's it's the craziest because there's so much tire smoke and
you can't take you can't give a computer a motion and say feel
this yeah, only when this happens.
(42:58):
Yeah. So like, what about the point
where like it's so dead close, but like you go with the one
that just felt right or felt cooler?
That's why I think we, that's why I think it shouldn't be the
primary judge. If you had one, if you had a
computer judge and two human judges, I think that's.
I see what you mean. That's probably the best system.
(43:19):
I have no argument with using itlike for like qualifying, for
example. You know, if you're going to do
qualifying and you want it to beall electronic just to speed
things up, That I have no problem with.
There's no weird nuances happening.
There's no chance for it to really make a mistake if it's
obvious and it's right there. And you're still in the game.
Yeah. But yeah, I think 2 human
judges, so they can outweigh thecomputer basically at all times.
(43:42):
So then, you know, if two guys go to this guy wins and one guy
goes one more time, or the computer goes the other
direction or it says one more time or whatever, then there's
always that, that, that, that superseding, you know, decision
making is done by people with emotions, you know, like you
(44:03):
want to say, but emotions go both ways, you know, And if
someone does a bang up run and they're on a, on a shred, it's
hard to not ignore those like little mistakes that they made,
you know, and I've judged before.
Judging is extremely difficult. Nobody realizes how difficult it
is to watch 2 cars at once and make your decision and focus on
(44:24):
a lead line, focus on a chase line.
Was his lead better? Was his chase better?
You know, it's really hard and you're making split second
decisions and you have to make them fast.
You know, it's not like you can sit there and analyze it, you
know, for 5 minutes and it's before you can make your
decision. And I have a rule when I judge,
if I can't make a decision in 30seconds, I just call one more
time. So that way the flow of the and
(44:46):
the, the flow of the show reallydoes count here.
You know, we don't, nobody wantsto sit there and watch judges
make a decision. It's the most boring part of
drifting. That's what really slows it
down. Drifting is exciting.
Everything else that goes on around the decision making and
all that relatively boring. You're just watching 2 cars sit
on the line. Matt Soap is sitting there
waiting. Waiting for who to point at, you
know, so. That's when a lot of that
(45:09):
information would come in handy,yeah.
Just being able to kill some of that time relay a bunch of the
info if. You could watch detailed, you
know, digital layout of the car sliding through and, and and
displaying the telemetry, displaying what's happening.
I think that would help the audience understand more what's
going on on track and how the decisions are actually made.
(45:30):
And it's going to help the judges a lot because it might
catch a mistake or it might catch that, you know, this guy
had a considerable amount more angle in this section of the
track than the other guy that led to him running away.
You know there's. There's no smoke.
Yeah, yeah, just. Get the shit out of.
Here, popping beads over. There, that was a loud one.
Yeah, there's no smoke in the inthe in the the info or the Dow.
(45:51):
So there's no smoke covering theactual lap that the judges are
judging on. So that would be becoming a lot
of handy, especially seeing proximity to the wall, whatever.
So that's interesting. I like how you look at it.
Yeah. Well, is there anything you want
to let them know as far as how to find you or how to buy one of
(46:14):
the cone hats if they skip through the 1st part?
Yeah, the Drift, wizard.com, we got all our merch up there.
T-shirts, cone hats. We got little mini squishy
cones, stickers, all that stuff.If you're at a Formula D event,
come find us. That's a lot easier.
These things are, they're not expensive to ship, but it's a
big thing and I don't like like they fold up, but they'll end up
coming all wadded up. So it has to come in a pretty
(46:36):
large box. So if you can make it to the
event, it's going to be cheaper.We sell them for 20 bucks, so
it's probably one of the cheaperhats in general in the pits.
A lot of people, I don't want tosay they're overcharging.
Snapbacks are kind of expensive these days, but these we're not
spending a lot on. We're not making a ton off of
it, but we're still making enough.
(46:57):
You know, it's, it's a not a gigantic profit, but it's still,
I think it's more important to fill the crowd and to make an
impression at each event rather than, you know, drive the price
up and try and make a bunch of money off of them.
So yeah, come find us. Screw the price.
Yeah, it's being a part of a. Yeah.
(47:18):
An existing entity, something that's cool.
It's definitely. Not a cult.
Definitely not a cult, but we, we have, we have meetings every
Tuesday at the YMCA, so come by,you know?
Yeah. Free popcorn, yeah.
And at Hateley Drift on Instagram, Andy Hateley Drifts
(47:38):
on Facebook. We post a lot of silly stuff
after each event. Definitely to try to have a good
time out here and make content that is funny.
I think that's the most important thing.
I mean, if you look at Super Bowl commercials, they're all
hilarious and that's arguably the most expensive advertising
in the world. So people do reflect with things
(48:02):
that make them laugh. And if I can make somebody
giggle a little bit, that's that's.
Great dude, I die your video. Sometimes it'll be the simplest
ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's some, some goofy stuff out there.
It's definitely like meme quality content.
And it's, you know, like I said,it's a silly motorsport.
Accept it. Yeah, yeah.
(48:24):
That's good man, I love that. Well if let me get the last
little question in. What is your best piece of
advice for anyone just getting into drifting?
Don't forget to have fun and don't focus too much on, I'd
say, what happens at each event.Focus on how you're doing
(48:47):
overall. It's not a race and it's not,
you know, you versus them. It's everybody working together
to make this sport what it is. And don't lose track of that and
make some friends. Have a good time.
Have a beer with your buddies after the event and enjoy it.
(49:09):
Because, you know, I'm 41 now. I don't know how much longer I'm
going to be doing this, you know, And I'm glad it's been a
wild ride. It's been 20, yeah, 22 years
now, 21 years I've been doing this so.
And it's been a blast ever sinceI hopped in a car and started
sliding around. The people I've met, the places
(49:29):
I've gone, it's an experience. So just enjoy it.
Whatever you're at, whatever you're doing, get your car set
up. Learn how to work on your own
car. Definitely.
It's expensive to hire guys to come out and do it or to have
someone build your car. That's basically why I started
with the E30. I wanted a car that was, they're
(49:50):
not cheap anymore, but they werecheap enough at the time that
like, hey, if I messed this whole thing up and did the roll
cage wrong or whatever, buy, youknow, get another one for
$600.00 on Craigslist and start over.
And I mean, I learned everythingon that car from wiring stuff to
welding to plumbing to, you know, it was my first engine
(50:10):
swap, first everything, you know?
So, yeah, just learn as much as you can so that you're not
paying other people to do it because it is very expensive.
Some people have unlimited budgets and that's, you know,
they can they can do whatever. But I think.
It's become self-sufficient or die Train, Yeah.
Exactly, exactly. So.
(50:31):
And I think that's honestly mostof us out here are are on that
train. You know, you're not going to
find many FD drivers that aren'tknowledgeable about what they
do. And even the guys at the top,
you know, Turk builds some amazing shit, Forest builds some
amazing stuff. You know, Vaughn has an amazing
program. It's he's built his own cars in
the past. And I mean, it's got a that's,
(50:53):
that's all his, you know, input.You know, Papadakis, like these
guys, they know what they're doing.
And that's just the most important part I think, is
understanding not only the driving side, not only the
social media side, but how everything works and being able
to diagnose problems, being ableto keep yourself on track.
That's just as important as anything else.
(51:14):
So have fun, learn a lot, and have a beer with your buds.
It's about it. Cheers to that.
Yeah, hell yeah, dude. Well I I want to say thank you
for stopping by making time doing this interview.
More than welcome anytime. Thank you, Ben.
I love this. Yeah, go have some fun this
weekend. And good luck.
Thank you. Thank you.
(51:36):
Trust no bitch, can't catch, no feelings.
I've been taking long flights from the Bay to Ibiza.
Hit home, run. I'm a ball like Jeter.
I just want 444, then I'll leave.
I'm a young pop star. Caught a boy.
Justin Bieber got a little money.
If you want, I can teach her whole life.
A movie. You can watch it in theater.
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