Episode 155 - Eric Hardin - Mint 400 Trophy Truck Winner - The Dirt Life

Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:07):
Welcome to the dirt life show with your host, George
Hamil. Yeah, yeah. Welcome toEpisode 155 of the dirt life
show. stoked to have you guysjoin us tonight it's going to be
an awesome show. We have a tonof cool stuff to talk about
today, man, it's gonna be reallygood. It's gonna be really good

(00:29):
to to catch up with you guys alittle bit after the man 400 We
had tons of cool stuff thathappened at the Mint 400. But
today, we got your winner, andthe overall winner in the trophy
truck class, Eric Hardin. Thanksfor having us at Hardin
motorsports dude. Appreciate it.
Thanksfor having me. And thanks for
being here. Yeah,it's cool, man. You got a good
spot going here. And then, man.

(00:50):
It's been a while since we'vetalked to Jason Merrill on the
show. But fun fact, Eric, he wasour first guest on the dirt life
show when we started the show.
What's up, Jason? What up? Dude?
It's been a while but man, I'mpumped to have you back on and
now we get to talk with yourbuddy.
I know. Eric's good did.
As I've been hearing fromeverybody. I've been thanks all

(01:11):
your guys at the shop. RobertCain for helped me out like just
such a cool atmosphere over hereat Hardin motorsports. I'm
Georgie Hamill, your host of thedirt life show. We're gonna have
some fun tonight. We got somecool questions to ask Eric at
the end. But mainly I want totalk about some cool stuff. Man,
I want to talk about life ingeneral, right? So life can take

(01:34):
a lot of drastic turns, for goodor bad. It's how you deal with
these things. These turns thatpush you forward and defines
you. Our guest tonight hasfought through some very tough
times. But as always kept hissights on greatness. Never
letting adversity when he is aprofessional off road racer now

(01:55):
meant 400 champion gratulations.
But most importantly, he's nevergiven up. Like I said, we got
Eric card in here. It's reallycool man to be able to sit next
to you because we have a lot ofthe same. I don't know what you
want to call it. Perceptions oflife. And I want to talk with
Jason about that. Because Jasonshowed me a lot of stuff when I
was racing with his team abouthow to think about certain

(02:17):
things and put them out of theway so that you can accomplish
your goals. So that's one of thesubjects that I want to talk
about today. And I think it'sgonna be really cool. For the
kids. I know a kid in Danbury iswatching so it's gonna be cool
to talk with all the kids andall the people that are watching
as well. So let me get throughthe sponsors real quick and then
we'll get into it. Let's seehere. Thank you to everybody. I

(02:39):
can see wheels. You can headover to your local floral parts,
grab some KMC wheels and tell methe dirt life sent to you. Thank
you guys at Max's tires, alwayshelping us out. We got some
pretty cool stuff. We're gonnabe at the DPW for race this
weekend hanging out with JeremyMcGrath, his daughters Rowan and
Bergen. They're going to beracing out there. So that's
going to be a fun time. It'salways cool to see the

(02:59):
kids reg boys. Absolutely. Thankyou the guys over at Motul and
if you gotta get your reg readyfor summertime, change your oil
get some old tool in there.
Shock Therapy Thank you verymuch. You can use the code dirt
life get yourself some shocktherapy parts. They just came
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Vision canopies, and cryo heat.
Alright, so let's get into itboys. First things first. How
was the man 400? Eric,it was unreal. Unreal for us for

(03:41):
for once?
Well, you raise quite a bit,right because you do more
series. You do best and desertstuff sometimes. Right? And then
now mint 400.
We've done a couple of best inthe desert races. You know, over
the last few years. We did theBluewater desert challenge, I
guess shoot that was a coupleyears ago. Mostly we only do the

(04:05):
mint and King of the hammers thelast three years and we did San
Felipe a couple years ago.
Okay, a lot of that stuff likeus to different trucks. Right.
So Jason, we see a couple ofdifferent trucks back here.
Eric, maybe give us a little bitof an understanding of what the
difference is between those twotrucks.
Yeah, the one in the back withthe body on it. That's Frankie.

(04:26):
Nick, who who preps all thetrucks and runs the shop he
named it Frankenstein becausewhen we got a years ago, it was
pretty thrash and needed. Itneeded some love. So he had to
rebuild the whole thing fromfrom scratch. It's an ID truck
and with Dave's help and I'vebeen told but it was able to
turn it into a nice truck. Soit's a good pre runner and just

(04:46):
as an LS motor in it. So weended up going to pre racing a
lot of the more races with thattruck.
And all reliable kinda.
I mean, we ended up racing it atthe California 300 Just because
the course was so tight andtechnical, I thought a free
runner would be fine for itbecause but it ended up blowing

(05:07):
up the motor. So it didn't. Itdidn't end up working too well.
So way to go was reliable upuntil that though.
Have you ever driven a trophytruck? Jason?
I've been in a lot of them.
Yeah, just having a one turn apro for really? Yeah.
How was that? I was fine. Wouldyou ever do short course or?
I don't think so. I think that'sa young man's game. Guys are

(05:29):
wild.
If you put Eric in there, Ithink he'd probably give
everybody run run for theirmoney,
dude. Yeah, totally. So the mid400 was good for you this year
and use this truck. Thedifference between the two
trucks is obviously thehorsepower horsepower.
Yeah, yeah. So Frankie works outgood for the bigger truck
doesn't have a name because itnever won a real race, a big
race. So we were waiting to nameas we got to come up with

(05:52):
something for but you know, it'scool. Because what do you do
with half us brake pads? What doyou do with worn out rear gear?
You know, all these differentparts that so they're
pretty much identical? Yeah.
chassis, components and stuff.
Yeah, exactly. So we're able toput all the put all the parts
when we're done with it on thebigger truck onto that truck.
And do that makesa big difference. That's
actually when Jason has acompany called the UTV wolf

(06:12):
pack. And they had a race teamwhen Lucas was doing the
professional stuff. And that'swhat we would always try to do.
Right is always haveinterchangeable stuff. Like so
that's a big deal. Jason.
Yeah, we had five or six,actually, we had seven, seven
race cars that were all builtsame. So if we ever had issues,
we can swap parts. And then youknow, the biggest thing that did

(06:33):
help us which, you know, inracing, I think Lucas Oil was
all about helping other people.
And at the track, you would findpeople that were self inclusive,
they would just be bythemselves, and they wouldn't
help anyone. And then you comeover to our pits, and we're
always helping people. We had awe had a player's, we had a
computer scanner to clear codes.

(06:53):
So we're we're clearing codesfor people that you know, the
car would go into limp mode andyou needed a computer to clear
it up. We'd be helping people onmy mechanics about why you
helping him. He's yourcompetitor, Mike, well, what's
the fun of being out there byyourself? He paid the same
amount of money to be on, youknow, yeah, to be on course, he
paid the same amount of money tobe here. I mean, I would expect
someone to help me out if I wasthere. And so we've we've lived

(07:14):
by that, you know, the wholetime that we've been racing,
actually, that's a good point tobring up. Because that's a
perception thing, right? Like,Eric, what we were talking
about, like, you guys do thatsame thing for other teams,
right? Like, let's just say ateam comes into the pits and
their trucks messed up and theydon't have any help or whatever,
like your guys will jump in to.
Absolutely. I mean, that's kindof how most of the off road
community is. It's abrotherhood. It's it's one giant

(07:36):
family out there. I mean,obviously, we're all competing
against each other, and we allwant to win. But at the end of
the day, you know, we want tohelp each other and help
everybody have as much successas possible. And it's fun.
So I learned a lot of that stufffrom Jason when I started racing
UTV. He's like, I didn't knowthat existed because like coming
from dirt bikes and like racingSupercross. What nobody gives a
shit like you're on your own.
Like, yeah, and they'll tell youlike bullshit. They'll be like,

(07:58):
Oh, you put this means you getin, you're good, like, but it's
total like horseshit, right? Andthen so like I come in, and
Jason's like, yeah, no, it's notlike that, dude, like, everybody
helps each other. Like, therewas one time I forgot, like,
something happened to me inpractice or something. We had to
weld a bunch of stuff. Likethey're out there. Like,
we were up there until likethree or four in the morning
wrench on shit.

(08:19):
That's how that's how thecamaraderie thing works, right?
That's one of the reasons thatyou probably like off road so
much.
Yeah, absolutely. It's just it'sa lot different. You know, years
ago and a prior life, I used torun some stock cars, and we'd
run like the the NASCAR Westseries. And it was a lot
different there. I mean, peoplewould help each other if they

(08:39):
really needed it. But everybodywas pushing. Nobody was sharing
secrets. Nobody would talk aboutanything.
Yeah, I can get that. And well,I and I do understand
the secret thing is different.
You know, I'm saying like,there's a point where obviously
you have an advantage on someoneis one thing. But helping people
get back to the track is iscompletely different. I had
where where that stemmed fromme. And I'm not going to put

(09:02):
someone on blast. But I raisedking of the hammers one year.
And my crew didn't make it toone of my pits. And I wasn't
going to make it to the next pitbecause I was going to run out
of fuel. And one of the top, youknow, one of the bigger teams in
our, you know, that wassponsored by a big company. I
went up and asked him if I canhave some fuel. And I'm like, I

(09:24):
just need like a gallon or twogallons just to make it to the
next pit. And literally, he hadlike, he had like 1011 gallon
drums. He's raised in a UTV, andhe's like, No, we don't have
enough. And it's really I pulledin before his guy or car and I
started like 56 and they startedcloser up front and I came into

(09:45):
that pit before them and he'slike, he's like, Yeah, we only
have enough for what we need.
And I remembered that all myyears racing, I wasn't sponsored
by players. I didn't have afactory deal. And I remembered
that and going forward faster.
Word. You know, however manyyears we had our deals, you
know, we raced for 12 or 13years and six of those years
were a factory back team. And Iremember that, and I always told

(10:08):
my guys, I said, if I'm out ofthe race, people need stuff,
take it off the back of thetruck, get their driver's
license, tell them to send usback the part. Yep. If if
someone needs help, and I'm notthere yet, go help them. If
someone pulls in, and they don'ttheir level of lost, help them,
you know, because they're there.
And some of those guys, I dothat and, and when we started

(10:29):
racing, we started doing thatstuff. I can tell you, I've
gotten emails and messages frompeople that we help that were
like, Hey, I came from Ohio. Andthe only reason I finished this
because you gave me a PTO that,you know, and they ended up
finishing so that that, youknow, like I said, that stemmed
from what someone did to me. AndI thought that was pretty

(10:51):
shitty. Yeah, as I pulled intothe pits, like in my car was
like duck, duck, duck, you know,and it barely made it. So it to
the next pit. So just, I don'tknow, I just can't do poor
sportsmen, you know, yeah,you can't do people dirty like
that. Like when fair and square?
Yeah. Well, Imean, it's not just that, I
mean, obviously, they're in arace, you come in before them,
and they're like, oh, we havethe advantage. But it's like,

(11:12):
when it's a different situationlike that. You feel like okay,
like, Come on, throw someone abone, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thatactually brings me back to like,
what I wanted to kind of startoff with Eric talking about is,
you guys kind of grew uptogether, right. And there's a
lot of other people that we'vehad on the show and that a lot
of people in the off roadcommunity know one notable Casey

(11:35):
curry. You guys have had like along term relationship for a
long time, right? And all thestuff that you guys learned
growing up was helping eachother right, like, even if
you're just playing when you'relittle kids, like everybody
still helps each other, right?
And teaches each other how tolike ride bicycles or whatever.
So you grew up in SouthernCalifornia. What are some of the
memories that you had firstbefore you got into off road?

(11:56):
Like what kind of was the paththat you took to get to that
point?
Home man,it's kind of always been an off
road. Yeah, like stuff. Third,fourth generation.
I mean, for racing. We're thefirst generation my brother me,
but I mean, yeah, I'm theyoungest of four. So we kind of
grew up just riding dirt bikes,going out to the desert. Doing

(12:18):
all those normal types of speed.
Yeah. The Jeep speed. Yeah.
Yeah.
What was the first yeah, thoseare cool stories. What's some of
the first stuff that you werethinking? Oh, I
mean, we used to go out to thedesert and he had this as 10. I
had, I think it was an LS motorright now. It was it was
something and it sounded like abat out of hell. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, wetook the exhaust the mufflers,

(12:38):
that's what it was. That's whatit was. It was It was wild. Oh,
we got to add this cherrybomb. Yeah, it was a Jeep speed.
And then Jeep speed ran thoseseries. I think it I don't know
what class he was in. Butyeah, how old were you guys?
So it's kind of funny. You know,our first truck my brother and I
built it. Well, he pretty muchbuilt it. He's He's a lot
smarter. And he was a littleolder than me. I was 14. We

(13:02):
brothers basically a genius.
Yeah, he definitely is. But Idon't know if this part was all
such a good idea. But we took aold parts truck off the off the
lot bought it off my dad forlike 200 bucks at 185,000 miles
on it long bed 1992 GMC Sonoma.
And then we just built it with aarc welder and a tube bender in

(13:25):
my parent's garage. And it waspretty bad. I mean,
that's the we learned that thatwas it. That's the best part
about it, though, did it like, Idon't know redneck engineering,
like you figure it out. Andhonestly, those life lessons or
those things that you learnedprobably still help in the pit.

(13:45):
They definitely do. I mean,learning how to MacGyver and
just do whatever you need to doto
know just give me some duct tapeand a snorkel and I got this, I
can't eventell you how many times duct
tape and zip ties have gotten usout of the out of the desert,
you know, total duct tape andzip ties, you know, you know, a
tree stump underneath the frontof the suspension and just drove
drove the car and my co driverwas on the back side of the car,

(14:08):
trying to balance out theweight. You know, it just got
out of there. It was good if wewere on flat ground or going up.
But as soon as we went downhill,the front would just dig. So
like there was like, you know,the happy balance, and then I
would be sitting out, we put itin neutral and I'd be sitting on
the side of the car and he'd beon the back would be ghost
riding, you know, from outsidejust to get the weight out. You

(14:31):
know, it's either that or you'resleeping out in the desert
sometimes because those recoveryteams don't get to you to like,
lately, you know. And so we'velearned how to how to MacGyver
stuff back together so that wedon't sleep out in the desert.
But that's the way you got to doit. Right, man. So you mentioned
it before, what do you do for anoccupation?

(14:53):
So I'm in the car business. So Irun to Kia dealerships in Orange
County. Keever Weingarten Rukia.
So Have you need to keep yourhead down? Yeah, if you need a
Kia, we want to see in a Kia.
We'll plug. But, you know, wetry and spend as much time as we
can racing, but it's hard, youknow with a real job.
Yeah, totally. So mostdefinitely comes first. Yeah. So

(15:14):
most of the stuff that you do ison unlimited schedule,
basically. Right? How much timedo you actually get to spend in
a race truck then. So or I geton a prerunner, racetrack,
whatever it is. So mylittle nephew Cole, he's, he's
now he's 18. But he's, he'sracing 1600. And the more series
and that's, that's the serieswere the 1600s are all that, for
the most part, and it's a realcompetitive class, he's doing a

(15:34):
good job. And so it's fun beingout of those races, you know,
it's got a real familyatmosphere, we can bring the RVs
out there. You know, make a bigbonfire getting a circle, it's a
camp in a circle, it's fun. Sosometimes I'll raise Frankie,
the pre runner in those races,when they're not at the same
time as the 1600 races. So I gotto do that a few times in 2021

(15:58):
We won the championship we won abunch of races so we love the
more series and what Cody doesout there. And the you know, the
experience that I've learnedfrom from that series, and it's
really cool because they'renever used to be any real big
races out in Johnson Valley.
Lucerne are in Barstow and thennow it's like, everything's out
now king of the hammers is big.
And for the desert classes,which it wasn't before. And, I

(16:21):
mean, that's a premier race nowand, and I feel like it's helped
a lot, you know, just runningthose races like I, I mean, I'm
sure a lot of guys test outthere and know that no, that
that does or well, but you know,because of all the races we've
done out there. I feel like wehave a little bit of an edge
just because IYeah, cuz you know, the
Translate muscle memory. So themic is closer to Canada. Well,

(16:42):
you know what, the first time Iever heard a kingdom, the
hammers was when you racedadjacent, like, but that was
like, I don't want to say whenUTV started because like
Guthrie's were like ahead ofthat schedule.
But it was the first is XP 1000at a na car and I was
like oh, you're like yeah, I'mgoing out there. I'm like to do
what and he's like racing therocks. And I'm like, why rock

(17:03):
suck and then you'd like, Dudeannihilated that freaking car,
like, you came back and you'relike, but it was pretty fun.
Oh, man. So we took a Lucasshort course car. And to get to
the car, though, two weeksbefore I was like, I'm gonna go
race king of the hammers. And Ididn't have a co driver. So I
call one of my buddies and he'sa CrossFit dude, because I know,

(17:26):
I know that the CrossFit guysare like, you know, all over the
place. Like they're super, youknow, you have to have somebody
it's light and quick and get outof the car fast, right? And so I
knew that so I've Reagan said,I'm like, I'm like, Hey, I'm
like, I call my buddy. I'm like,Mike, Hey, you want to come and
CO drive? And he's like, Yeah,I'm like, Have you ever wished
before? He's like, No. I'm like,Okay, I'm like, let's figure it

(17:47):
out. So, I built a car in twoweeks, took a short course car
and lifted the suspension up,Walker Evans, you know, came
down and dialed the suspensionin and went
short course guys think they canraise their dogs. And hey, you
know what?
I signed up late. I went like 58off the land. I was dead last.
And I remember, there was Idon't even know all the hills.
But I went by this one Hillscalled Sand Mountain. And I

(18:10):
don't know where it's at on thetrack, but I had like four
stickers like they make you theyput stickers on each side. Yeah.
And I went through the SandMountain and rusty. Rusty
Baptists was there and he'slike, I'm like, trying to get up
this hill. And, and he's like,Dude, he's like, where did you
come from? Bro? He's like,you're sitting third. I'm like,
No way. I'm like, I'm sittingthird. I'm like, Dude, there's

(18:33):
no way. He's like, here's athird car that's passed through
No. Three cars.
Did you know that you will passon many dudes?
No, they were. We pass a lot ofcars. But we you know, I'm
saying like, we didn't know. Youknow, maybe there was some guys
stopped them pets. And you know,it was it was later on in the
day. And where we got where weended up having our issues that

(18:54):
race was we pulled into one ofthe pits and had to change an
axle. And that put us down andthen we got stuck behind some
people. But I can tell you onething if you raise king of the
hammers, I see people getpartners where they have like
these big dudes. They're like200 plus pounds, and they're
sluggish, slow people did theguys that I had that I the guy

(19:16):
that I had a my my car. He waslike 150 pounds wet. And he was
like a spider monkey. Yeah. Andhe didn't know how to winch but
like we would pull, likeprobably jumped from rock to
rock. And when we pulled up like10 minutes behind people, and my
guy would begin he would passthe dudes. And these fat dudes
would be sitting on the rocks.
I'm out of breath. And my guywould be like, ding ding me hook

(19:37):
the rope. And we went past them.
And it was like, you know, itwas honestly we we had fun but
it was like one of those thingslike we will be yelling at each
other. And then and then thenext minute we'd be like, Oh, do
we just blew by that guy. Youknow at the very end of the
race. We literally we we get outof the car and walk to our
trailers didn't say a word toeach other. Do that. Perfect,

(20:00):
and the next day we get comeback out and I'm like, What's
up? And he's like, what's up?
I'm like, nothing. And like, youknow, it was like the awkward
boyfriend girlfriend thing. Andhe's like, so you want to race
next year? I'm like, hell yeah.
He gets out addicting Do you?
Have you ever done Koh? Like therock? Rocks? Are you into it?
Because dude, like, I'm not arock guy,

(20:20):
right? No, I mean, I was never arock guy either. I really didn't
have the respect for but nowthat we've been going on for the
last two, three years, I mean,and it's a killer guys have in
the hills, they go up and down.
We hung out and watchedchocolate thunder for a little
bit, just just at nightwatching. You know, everybody
cruising up and down. And it'sit's a scene. It's a ton of fun.
It keepsevolving, though, like from from

(20:41):
when they had it what the ninehundreds to the 1000 was like
they keep changing the courseand keeps now
they're running 30 fives likeKyle chi and the Miller brothers
and stuff. Do they run 30 fivesand they don't like they don't
let off. They're wide open thewhole time.
Yeah, and there's a lot morecars to I think I don't know how
many cars are were in the lastone. But when we raised it when

(21:03):
I raised it, there were 58 cars.
And I think to finished. Andthat's it. Yeah. And they
extended the time, you know,which I think was was a crappy
thing for them to do at time.
But you know, K, which changesthe rules as they go. They they
they added an hour on to therace. You know, we were told
that the race timed out. So thatthe one of the refs is like,

(21:25):
Hey, you got to turn around andgo back. Oh, well, so then later
that day, because they didn'tget a full podium. They extended
now we're on to the race. Oh,because they needed some people
they needed. They needed enoughpeople to create a podium so
they knew an hour would fitthat. Hey,
let's throw a shout out realquick to Caden over there, the
helping us and gettingeverything ready. Appreciate

(21:46):
your guys help. Do you think doyou think that you would ever do
that though? Like, actually youknow what before asked that
question. Are you big UTV guy.
I'm not really no. I mean, bigtruck guy. I think they're cool.
I think they're really cool. Ihad a razor a few years ago, but
I broke it all the time. Sothere's a dude that can help

(22:07):
you. Right, right.
He breaks a lot of stuff. He'sHe's He's lead foot. He's hard
on it. Yeah. I mean, we all are,but Well, yeah. So it's kind of
cool. Like we're talking allthese stories like coming up,
like, did you have anything likewhen you started racing, that
you really remember, like, onerace that you were like in the

(22:29):
zone, or that you broke down orjust something like super cool,
because you didn't always drivetrophy trucks, you came through
the ranks, rightcame through the ranks, and it
took a long time to get throughthem. We took our time, we spent
five, six years in class seven,seven s seven open. As that
class was evolving, I think ourwe stopped racing that in 2004.
And we broke everything. I mean,it was really, it got really

(22:54):
frustrating in that class, Iwish we would have been in like
a buggy or something that wasmore made for the desert and a
little bit more refined. Butwas just because you drove it
too hard. Just because we driveit hard. It breaks driving slow,
it breaks. I mean, we neverfinished the ball 1000 We tried
like five times, and there'dalways be something broken. But,
you know, we learned and that'swhere we really learn how to

(23:17):
MacGyver things and, and learnhow to crash really well do it
through all that. So got got,not all of them out of the way.
But a lot of them out of theway.
Like talking about learning,like when, when you see like, I
don't know if I'm readingbetween the lines too much here.
But like, Jason has taught me alot about all this off road
stuff. But like when I hear youtalking about that not being

(23:39):
able to finish a Baja race.
There's a lot that goes behindthat, like, I don't know how to
explain it. But basically whatI'm trying to say is, you learn
so much subconsciously about howto live life, right? Because
you're at your lowest, thenyou've crossed the finish line.
And you have this like relief oryou're at your highest if you
win, like there's so manydifferent ways to look and
perceive all that stuff andteaches you a lot in life. And

(24:02):
you've done it for a long time.
Jason's done it for a while.
Now, when you get to be able tobe at the top of the podium,
like those things are supermeaningful.
Yeah. Absolutely. It's like it'sunreal right now, you know, to
come out of the mint. Like thatwas such a great like just an

(24:24):
awesome win and you know,unexpected as a dark horse. So
after all the stuff we've beenthrough.
Well, let me ask you this. Youjust said unexpected Jason like
not unexpected. Yeah, that'swhat I'm saying. Like, like,
like the announcers like oh, youknow, Eric Hardeen. Eric
Hardeen. I'm like, What do youmean? aircard and I'm like,
Derrick harden. You know, Eric'sbeen racing next for fence.
Thanks for correcting. He's beenracing since you know, we're in

(24:45):
high school. So on the livestream, he's he's not new to
racing. And what people don'tunderstand is like it from the
outside. It's like, Oh, this guyjust popped out of nowhere and
won the mint 400 They don't seethe years and years of like
blood, sweat tears away fromfamily, you know, missing work
and busting your ass to actuallyget that first place meant 400

(25:09):
trophy and people are alwayslike, Oh, well, what did you win
at the race? And I'm like, atrophy and a couple grand. And
they're like, that's it? Yeah.
Oh my How much does it cost toget there? Like doesn't matter.
You don't even know because justthat race, what to get there,
but not what it's accumulated tolearn what you had to learn to
physically make it to thatpoint. Yeah, 100 person, it

(25:30):
takes a lot for everything tocome together perfect. Like that
day. I mean, even on his lastlaps, I mean, I don't think I've
missed them in 400 in 10 years,and that was the first one I
missed. And I was at my housewatching the helicopters. And
And honestly, I think myadrenaline was probably running
as hard as his was, because Iknow what it's like to be on

(25:51):
that last lap. And in everythinghas to work. I mean, even two
miles from the finish, peopleget flat or something goes
wrong. And it's like, you'rejust you're, you're that close.
And then you get to sleep anddream about being that close.
But you pulled it off. Andthat's, that's what's awesome.
Yeah, it's pretty gnarly, right?
Like, actually tell us from athird person perspective, like,

(26:15):
what were you thinking duringthe race?
I mean, at the beginning, wewere just, hey, let's get to
the, to the second and the thirdlap for once, you know, after
coming out of the hammers, and Ithink we were talking about it
the other day, but, you know, Igot three flats that the
hammers, you know, passing theleader trying to pass the
leaders, and I hit every rockout there

(26:38):
I've been in, you're probablylike, oh, shit, we're throwing
it away. Yeah,yeah, I totally threw it away.
And because I was driving overmy head and taking unnecessary
chances, and you know, that raceis more of a spring because it's
only two laps. But you know, inthe men, Andrew Meyers, who's
like, my, he's my best buddy.
But he's also you know, mymentor and driving coach, when

(26:59):
he's riding shotgun with me,he's been teaching me how to
drive for the last five years orso. And, you know, he's just,
he, he'll be there, and he'lljust be yelling at me like, Hey,
calm down, calm down, we'regonna go slow in these rocks,
we're not gonna get a flat, justslow down, and the rocks go
fast, where we need to go fast.
And that's what we did. And Ididn't want to slow the race
pace down at all, but it reallyhelped, you know, with with the

(27:20):
rain and everything the nightbefore,
because it kind of like drawingyou back a little bit made the
race come to you almost.
Yeah, well, I mean, it wascrazy. Because we get around the
first lap and the second lap, westarted kind of laying it down a
lot, a little faster, actually alot faster in the rocks and
everything. And we just startseeing people pulled over and
they're way easier to pass whenthey're changing a tire, you
know, normally.

(27:43):
I would hope so.
I'm like, I know, I know. Andseen people changing drive
shafts. And I was like,they're probably having a lot of
issues coming out of thecorners, like the ground, you
know, got tacky. Yeah. Andthey're probably not used to the
mint 400 Being that tackier,whatever, and maybe we load in
the drive train. Maybe they settheir trucks up, you know, for a
dry, dusty, silty track. And wewere actually

(28:08):
talking a lot. We're talkingabout that because those four
wheel drives are still kind ofbrittle, so to speak, you know,
like we were talking to dependson whose truck Yeah, true. But
we were talking about that onthe live broadcasts were like,
now that there's that much moretraction. Does it help if you're
lighter on the throttle insteadof just giving all the juice to
it? Because then it's reallytwisting the drive train, but I

(28:29):
don't know, man, whatever youdid work.
i We barely made it. And it's alot more fun. I tell you that
driving with it a little tackylike that, I mean, the truck
accelerates way faster. You'reseeing way higher speeds and you
typically have under prep. Yeah,yeah. I mean, it's it was like a
groom track. You know, for a lotof it's stuck in the corners. It
wasn't too muddy. Like, youcould really rail and it was

(28:50):
there was a lot faster, youknow? Yeah. So
you can really cook it. Yeah,there was a lot of people on the
live feed that were having fullFOMO because they just wanted to
be at the track. Like becausethey saw it and they're like,
dang it. It's like fully wateredtrack now.
Yeah. And that's it's so rare inour sport. I mean, I was
watching some of the videosafterwards and you see Harley
and BJ just deicing for a longtime. You know, normally that

(29:11):
would never happen they weregoing at it at 100 miles an
hour. I mean, like they couldsee and yeah
you get you get wind and waterand all of a sudden now the race
pace turns up Yeah, turns up bigtime. Turns out you can see you
can see someone's 100 feet infront of you and if they try to
bunny rabbit you can go afterhim. You know

(29:34):
that's so cool though. Likebecause that that's a different
race.
That's a real race. Well, youget was always like that
you get a couple of factors likelike rain or wind will will will
make a race go from you know,okay, this is cool, whatever and
then it'll turn into Okay, theseguys are battling because now
rain and wind will create thosethings where you could see you

(29:56):
can go 100 miles an hour in thedirt and not have to worry about
it. That's the biggest thing.
Exactly, but it's super cool,right? Like, you never really
get that opportunity. And thisyear it happened.
Yeah, it's wild. Well, alright,so you pretty much always been
in off road and are always, Idon't know what you want to call
it, quote, loved off road. Butwhat wanted to make, like What

(30:16):
made you start are actually abetter question. When was it
that you understood you wantedto become a race or a
professional driver?
I mean, I wanted to race offroad, obviously, my whole life
as a kid, it's a kid's dream togo out and drive trucks and
anything in the desert. But itreally kind of unfolded when I

(30:38):
was 13. I was riding my dirtbike and it was right after I
had I had cancer when I was alittle kid when I was 12. I was
diagnosed with osteosarcoma,which is a bone cancer. That's
one of the things I want to talkabout if you want to get well I
mean, we don't have to dive intoit all right now but after I was
done with like, my last chemotreatment, my brother and I and
my buddy would we went out toCorona. Went for a dirt bike

(31:01):
ride. And of course I whiskeythrottled it when you could ride
in Corona. Yeah, this is thisnot long ago. We're talking. I
was 27years back in the 19. Yeah,
baby. Yeah, that's cool. Andthen I ended up breaking my leg,
I broke my femur. And then Ijust gotten a prosthetic and
actually shattered that thing,too. So my mom was really

(31:22):
pissed. Yeah, way to go. Becausethose things are expensive.
Yeah, it was just a bad dealaround. I think it was my bones
were a little bit more brittle.
Because of the chemo for I wason chemo for a year and a half.
So then I had to get a play,like you guys have all had, you
know, nine days in the hospital,whatever. And then afterwards, I
got with my brother, and we kindof put a little sales pitch
together, like, hey, if wecould, we could borrow 10 grand

(31:43):
to put to go build a truck andbuy this fuel cell and buy the
material to run the tubes. And,you know, buy the seats in the
seat or truck was it that youwere trying to build this was
this old last time I was there?
Yeah, this 1992 Sonoma, and sowe were able to sell it, and we

(32:04):
got the money and we scab thisthing together. And dude,
that's like, you know, thatmeans so much. To me, that's
literally the exact same, even10 grand was the exact same
process that I went throughadjacent. I was like, my
sponsors Give me half the money.
And for the last two years, Isaved up an extra 10 grand. And
I called him and he's got a carfor like, 20 grand for sale or
whatever. I think I paid like 17or 18 for Yeah, cuz I had to
travel back and forth fromArizona. Jason's like, I'll cut

(32:27):
you a deal on some gas andstuff. And I was like, super
pumped. And the reason that Iactually got there was another
one that I wanted to get. And Ihave reason I bought that one
was because he answered thephone. And he's like, Yeah, I'll
help you just call me anytimeyou need anything. And I'm like,
Fuck, yeah, this is the, this isthe way to do it. Because I'm
like, so green, probably the waythat you were. And I'm like, I
don't know what I'm gonna do.

(32:48):
I'm gonna show up to the tracklike an idiot. And then he
guided me through the wholeprocess, like meant to only
mentored me. So it kind ofsounds like you went through the
same thing, because you plannedit out, got with your brother
and started like structuring andall together.
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, if youhave the opportunity to stand on
the shoulders of giants likeJason or something that really,
that really cuts that learningcurve down
is worse than his ego. Sowe're racing, we're racing.

(33:08):
We're racing glorified golfcarts, you raise that trophy, a
little bit different. But we'retotally gonna say we are like,
We are the power to weightratio, you know, like, what you
TVs are now today. They are likemany trophy trucks, but they're
still not, you still can'treally compare, you know, a

(33:28):
trophy truck, you know, to aUTV, they're just too different.
Yeah, it's yeah, it just doesn'twork the same, but
they are getting, you know, upthere,
it's gonna be a little whilebefore a UTV overalls about how
race? I don'tknow, I've heard a lot. You
know, I've heard a lot of peopleover the years, even when we
first started racing the LucasOil series, when we brought

(33:50):
that, you know, UTVs to thetrack, and we were made fun of,
you know, they're like, Oh, noone's gonna come watch that. You
know,I remember there was some times
in our stock production 1000class that we were close to pro
245 cars. Yeah. 45 cars. And wewere close to Pro two times,
like, it was like we were,I don't know, if we were there.
The SR ones would run fast laptimes, but not our cars weren't

(34:11):
that fast,I guess. Yeah. In consideration
for the lap times. But so yeah,so you go through all the all
the stuff like you're, you'relearning from the ground up?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think wemade pretty much every mistake
you could make. But I guessthat's part of learning. You
know,that's the one of the best parts

(34:32):
of I mean, at the time, itprobably doesn't seem that fun,
but like, understanding all thatstuff is a necessity for
continuing a good career at it,and finishing races. 100% like
that truck.
He said, Frankie, you know, heprobably knows how to tear that
whole thing down. Yeah, youknow, I mean, I mean, because
you've had to put it backtogether because out of

(34:53):
necessity, though, you know,like you learn how to do things.
It's like one of the things thatI did like my my co driver was
also my mechanic. Like, rightnow, and there was a reason for
that. So I didn't have to get inthe car.
Yeah, good point, you know,yeah. But we have becomes, like,
let's just say, for whateverreason that you didn't have an
opportunity to have somebodyhelp you, you would figure it

(35:14):
out. And that's one of thethings that I'm trying to say is
like, you learn so much goingthrough these processes or
whatever you want to call it inoff road that you have to figure
stuff out, right? Doesn't matterwhat it is, you'll make a
decision to move forward andprogress. Yeah, for sure. And
those types of things, I thinkthose are really key components

(35:35):
in life in general, right? Like,maybe you didn't know, just like
I didn't, I was naive when Iwent through all these different
injuries. But you're beingtaught something that is a good
life lesson, right? And a lot ofkids don't get the opportunity
to live those life lessonsJason's kids do. A lot of the
people that you're around dolike your nephew does, like all
these different things happen.
And it tunes people up to bebetter human beings in general.

(35:57):
And I didn't know that stuffwhen I went through all these
things. But now as I get older,and I understand the things that
I went through, I reallyappreciate the fact that I
learned all that discipline,discipline, discipline, yeah,
all that stuff. It just makesyour whole life different
perspective. You have to bedisciplined to want to race.
Yep. Because it is timeconsuming. And when you when you

(36:20):
put that wrong bolt in and youdon't tighten something
correctly, and it causes yourrace failure. Then you get to
sleep and think about that therest of the friggin NEC till the
next race accountability. Did Ican't tell you, you know, like
the, for example, one of theWorld Championships, Matt
Martelly. You know, he makes funof me because the one of the

(36:41):
years I was behind RJ in secondplace, and I ran out of gas two
miles from the finish. In secondplace, I ran out of gas. And
Matt, Matt Martelli. I come inand he's making fun of me. The
next year, again, I was insecond place behind Rodney
Anderson for some reason.

(37:01):
They're always a little bitfaster. And I stopped for gas.
And car Romo's. dad's like,don't stop, don't stop, go, go
go because she had a biggertank. She had a brand new car
and I didn't have like a fouryear old beater. And I stopped
for gas and she went by and Iwas like, you know just to in

(37:22):
Matt's like Matt Martelli cameup. He's like, bro, he's like,
when you're gonna get a gas tankin your damn car. I'm like, I'm
like, it's not even a race car.
I'm like, did this is what I'mlike, I didn't even prep this
car. I just came out here andran it. He's like, he started
laughing.
But that's the beauty of it.
That's the beauty of UTV is Imean, like you. I don't know one
of these days. If you don't havetime to prep the trophy truck,

(37:43):
just get in one of the UTVs andgo have some fun.
Well, they're good pre runners.
Yeah, I'm saying like if youhave a trophy truck I mean look
at the herps guys like did theall their pre runners are all
TVs and now they're actuallystarting to build like, race you
TVs for pre runners. Yeah,exactly. So and then a lot of
people do that Baldwin BJBaldwin does that. Menzies does
it.

(38:05):
Rob Mac does it a lot. Now,Razor now instead of waiting, I
mean, to prep a UTV? Well, itgoes back to the whole park
cheaper than thenyou can and you can have a
million parks land on the trailin the chase trucks. Yeah, you
can fill a chase truck up withthe ATV parts. I mean, it is
pretty cool. Alright, so goingback to like what we were
talking about before, as youstart, you start having this
itch right. And you startedwanting to be a professional

(38:26):
driver. Like it hit you rightaround? What age 13? Around 13?
Yeah, so what what's the planafter that you save up the
money, you get to get the carand then like, You got to figure
out all this stuff on your own,or do you have help? Yeah, no,
webuilt the truck. And we started
racing it. You know, I mean, itwas a ship box. But we went out
to Parker for free.

(38:48):
What are you doing, though? Youjust going in the desert? You
got friends that are helpingyou? Yes. 10?
Yeah, that was the Robert rayhere. He was out there.
Robert been like the diehard?
Yeah, he's been there since thevery beginning. It's a variable
wave. Yeah.
Yeah. But that's cool. Becausehe was telling me some stories
actually about, about how youguys had kind of started doing

(39:10):
all that stuff. It's sointeresting to me to always
understand this, becauseeverybody's got their own
journey, but it's kind of thesame as the other person, right?
So you're out in the desert, andyou're just like, figuring it
out on the fly.
Yeah, just my brother and me. Wewe Pete drive apart and I drive
apart and we just kind of whowas a better driver, he was
definitely a better driver.

(39:31):
All right, so you startedfiguring it out and kind of
getting getting your headwrapped around how to do it. And
at that time, did you alreadyhave everything with the cancer
taking care of?
Yeah, yeah. So luckily,gratefully, you know, it was all
good. And it's been good sense.
So I have I have a question. Andwe'll Tarantino it after. So the
truck was set up so you guyscould both drive. And he was

(39:52):
able to do it. As good as youare. How did you eat?
I mean, luckily, we're both nottoo tall. So Jason, we're both
short. So we didn't have Oh,yeah, we all get it eat back too
much. So, you know, a couplepillows and nothing a pillow or
pad can fix and thenyou drive with your left foot.
So like did it did you have tohave any different
configuration at all? I know. Ijust drive like a regular. Yeah,

(40:15):
you just move your leg over. Ijust can't drive anything.
That's a stick with a clutch.
Yeah, you'd have to have prettyfast feet.
What George when George usearrays and Lucas Oil, we had to
put a piece of foam becauselaughter We call this foam we
call it the donkey deck. Yeah,big ass like so well, I held his

(40:37):
legs in place because left toright. You know, like when he
would take a corner his his legswould Yeah, like shift all the
coffee. So he had to custommodify the seat with foam.
And then we made like these bigfoot pedals like, I don't know,
I was calling like Playhousefoot pedals, right, because the
brake pedal was like, I don'tknow, six inches by eight

(40:57):
inches, like massive. So I wouldalways have been able to hit the
brakes. And then the foot pedal,the gas pedal was, I don't know,
four inches wide, six incheswide, and we space them apart.
So they were directly in frontof me with a little space in
between. And then what I woulddo is I would hold on to the
steering wheel, obviously and Ihad a Yamaha YZ or a Polaris and

(41:18):
the waxie we had like a streetbike shifter, like SR one. Yeah.
And then I would hold my legs uplike doing a setup the whole
race and just stab the pedalswhen I needed to. So you like
doing a sit up for whatever, 20minutes when you're out on
course or like UTV worlds likefor like two hours, you would
just be set it up. So I was kindof like you. I was like Austin,

(41:39):
not necessary. I mean, you getused to it, right? But like,
it's my normal at the time. ButI remember thinking to myself,
like, Fuck if I could just havea look because I was either
smashing it or all the way off,right? Like there was no in
between. And I was wondering ifthat still happens to you.
So I mean, I cuz I have a realfoot and one real foot and
ankle, I'm able to like, youknow, roll on the gas as smooth

(42:02):
as I can, right. But you have totime it on the pedals, but you
don't have that much time toroll in the gas because you got
to be greedy with the throttle.
I mean, we're in a race right?
So you gotta go fast. So it endsup just kind of being smashed
down. And thenespecially in qualifying, it
probably affects you right?
Yeah, it definitelyhurts in qualifying anything
where it's tight, you know, justbecause those guys Yeah, I can't

(42:23):
tell you because you lose aquarter second here and a
quarter second there. Like thatadds up pretty clear.
Yeah, it does. Yeah. Qualifyingtough you and you don't
set the trumpet the truck up anydifferent like it's,
I mean, I just tried to I tryand straight line break drivers
as far into the corner as I canand slam the brakes down and
then get back on the gas.
So Jason was your was yoursecond driver at the races? He

(42:44):
just jumped in. And it's justnormal for him.
Just normal. Yeah. Yeah. Really?
Yeah.
I thought you would at leasthave be able to
reach the pedals, though. But,yeah. Here's so much taller.
That's funny. I mean, even evenwith their driving with his left
foot. I mean, he's still he'sstill crazy talented. I mean,
he's still one of the fastestguys out there. So well. That's

(43:04):
one of the things I don't thinkthat that I mean, even though
like it is a handicap is notreally handicap. I don't think
his legs ever slowed him down.
Yeah. And that's kind of what Iwas gonna get out. And I want to
talk about it a little bit too.
But like, your normal is justdifferent. Like,
a one speed though.
He's always amped. He's alwayshappy. He's always got energy.

(43:24):
He's always like, you're alwayspinned no need for caffeine. No,
he's always pinned, but thatwhole thing is like, and I
learned a lot about this when Iwas racing to because my normal
wasn't the same as everybodyelse. So I always told everybody
else if I was if I was normal,like you, I would fucking smoke
you. But I'm not I'm at adisadvantage. If you were at the

(43:46):
same disadvantage as me, I wouldstill smoke you because my
normal in my head was differentthan what they thought, right?
So I was wondering if like, youhave that same perception or
mentality, you're like, itdoesn't matter. This is the way
I do it. And that's it.
I mean, that's the way I thinkabout it, you know, like, this
is the way I do things the rightway for me to do it. And, you

(44:06):
know, I've, I've always feltlike, we could go out there and
and give everybody a shot at awin, you know. But, yeah, no, I
mean, I don't think about thatway as a disadvantage I think
about it is, this is the way wedo it. And that's
it. And that's it. If everybodyelse just had a left leg, then
you would be that much moreahead because that's the way
that you think it's kind ofcrazy to think that that I don't

(44:27):
know I wouldn't want to saypeople are limited and I want to
sound like an asshole but I wishthat people would have more of
an open or clear perspectivebecause they see that as a
limitation, but it's not right.
Like if they had that same thingthey should be open and
understanding that they couldjust do everything the same.
Yeah, yeah. The whole excusething doesn't doesn't really get
that far, you know? Yeah, it'slike
that makes a lot of sense then.
And yeah, like Jason wouldalways tell me that when I get

(44:49):
off the track you buy Dude,you're hauling ass like you're
doing good. Like,he'd be like, all passed. Yeah,
bro. I didn't do good. I'm like,No, I'm like, Did you were
hauling ass bro. You gotta liketop three or top four? Nah. did
so and so hit me he come off allpissed. That's the same deal,
Mike, there were 18 cars outthere. You're in the top five.
What are you so pissed aboutbro?

(45:09):
Winners winning, right? Yeah,but yeah, like that whole thing
like, I really want to expressthat how much it should be
thought of when you're a kid oranybody like maybe a better
question to ask you is what kindof advice would you give a kid?
Maybe he's 1315 16. Like, andhe's going through hard times,
I've had a bunch of peopledirect message us and say, Dude,

(45:32):
I had such a shitty race, like,how do you get through this
stuff? Because it's justweighing on me so much. Like,
there's a lot of races that youdidn't finish. There's races
that you've won, like, how doyou manage that stuff?
I mean, there's major peaks andvalleys in motorsports, or any
type of racing. I mean, there'sonly one winner, you know, this
isn't a football game orbaseball game where half the
people went and half the peoplelose. I mean, there's only one

(45:53):
winner every time you go to arace, and even the best guys
don't win every race. Yeah. So.
So it definitely gets in yourhead. Especially if you make a
dumb mistake, which is supereasy to do. And everybody does
it. So you knew it wasavoidable? I mean, it's hard to
stay positive. But what do youdo? We just keep going out there
and thrashing. Yeah, andeverything's avoidable

(46:16):
hindsight, in hindsight, butRight. It's like, oh, man, that
rock was bigger than shit. Ican't believe I hit that. But
one ofthe things that you taught me,
Jason was being accountable forit, right? Just be like, George,
you fucked up. You didn't winthe race. Don't do it again. And
that's what I think a lot of thekids maybe miss right is
it's figuring out, it's figuringout the stuff like what you're

(46:39):
talking about. So I just, I'mgonna probably get yelled at by
Kayden on this one. But I justgot done having the same
conversation with Caden aboutsome stuff he hit, he hit a
pothole in one of his cars, andthere's a hairline crack, and in
the arms, and he's like, Hey,like, what should I do? And I
said, Hey, come on up to myoffice, I'm like, we should, you
know, at least gusset them andcheck out the front and do some

(47:02):
stuff. And I made the samemistake on one of my races at
the Mint 400. And I was superaccountable for that one. And it
stuck with me ever since. I, youknow, I rolled my race car at 75
miles an hour,I remember that we were scared
that you and Ricky didn't like,it was bad. You know, it was my
fault. You know, I'm sayinglike, 100% I'll take

(47:23):
accountability for it. You know,we had we had some issues with
getting some parts from one ofthe parts guys. And it was a
factory part that failed, youknow, wallowed out and the the
ball joint just fell out of thebottom of the bearing carrier.
And we just hit 75 miles anhour. Thank God, we didn't, you
know, get up to speed becauseyou know, at the time, I think

(47:45):
we clocked that card 100 Withwith queen, you know, we with
Queen racing, we got that twoseater up to 100. And we just
clocked up to 75 miles an hourin the car just started to hook.
And as it started to hook, youknow, I just told my co driver
Mike, hold on. And then, youknow, we went and over nA times.
And you know, it was like a yardsale. I mean, shit everywhere in

(48:09):
every direction, you know, 5050feet, 100 feet, iPads and tool
bags, and whatever. Yeah, justanything that's inside the car
was outside of the car. Exceptfor you guys. Except for us.
Yeah, we, I dislocated my kneeand destroyed my knee. And my co
driver had to drag me out of thecar. And then he laid me down on
the ground and we had to push myknee back into place and then

(48:31):
got back up, jack the car backup, turned it over, put the
stuff back together and thendrove 10 miles an hour to the
next road. You know, andso that's talking about
MacGyvering. But I think thelesson learned here is to be
accountable for that. And like,Yeah, I mean, I do you know, I
took the chance because I wantedto go make the race. I want to

(48:53):
you know, I'm saying like, I waslike a racer does like a race or
does I made I made a stupidmistake, you know, I should
have, what I should have done isI should have taught one of my
other cars apart. And I lookedat the part and I was like I you
know what I think? I think it'llbe good. And I made that
mistake. And I paid for it. Youknow, I had I had a pretty
gnarly knee surgery a year and ahalf ago. And I have nerve

(49:15):
damage in my neck and my hands.
So I'm paying for it now. But Imean, it's not going to stop me
because now I'm almost throughmost of my recovery. And I'm
already planning on building anew car. Yeah. When the
accountability portion, likeyes, you're in the car, the car
that we're talking aboutbuilding you know is is Yeah,

(49:37):
it'll be it'll be a fun car.
We do. I can't wait to see thatthing. But I think I like both
of you guys are saying is thelesson learned here is? Well, I
guess there's two lessonslearned racers forget very
quickly. You can move forward.
You forget about what happenedin the last corner so you can
get to the next corner kind ofthing. But as long as you're
accountable for it and you dolearn from it and you take
something from it like youngCaden like he's such a smart kid

(49:58):
and he's going to push past itand get through it and be better
because of it. And those thingsdon't just happen if you didn't
race off road. You don't learnthat kind of stuff.
No, not at all. Caden, Caden isgood. I mean, he, you know, I
helped him out as much as Ipossibly can. He runs a lot of
our parts. So he's he was up inmy office couple days ago. Right

(50:19):
on so love helping him out. Youknow, he he's the same way he
hustlesExactly. Actually, another
person I just commented in GregKelly. She's young little girl.
She said, Yeah, you just keepgoing and get back out there.
Yeah. 100% That's the way racersthing so good on you. Great. All
right, so let's kind of liketake a step back then. What When
did you know that you had anillness in your leg or cancer in

(50:42):
your leg?
So I was 12 years old. I wasjust like any other kid real
athletic playing hockey ridingBMX, doing all that type of
stuff riding bikes. And I justI, I had a bump in my in my shin
on my right shin and then I keptcomplaining about it. We went to
the doctor's anyways, they saidit was shin splints tendinitis

(51:05):
for a long time and then ninemonths later when saw specialist
and he's like, Oh, no, and I wason
it. Oh, that misdiagnosed? Dude,I hate here. Yeah, yeah, it
happens. But that was on aTuesday. This was me.
Yeah. Well, I mean, it happens alot more often. Yeah, it's hard.
They make that they misdiagnosedmy grandma and she died of

(51:26):
breast cancer. Soshoot. Yeah. Well, so they
finally get it right. And theydiagnose you like, what's the
move? Because Dude, you're ayoung kid. Like, that's gotta be
like life changing? Yeah,I mean, it happened real quick.
That was a Tuesday. And thenthose specialists Dr. Eckhart
was name he's in UCLA, he onlysaw people on Wednesdays, we
were able to get in luckily,that next day, and then he was

(51:47):
like, Hey, we're going to do abiopsy on Friday. But we're most
likely going to cut your legoff. And they just told us right
that that's the only option atthe time. Yeah, I mean, he's
like, that's most likely whatwe're going to need to do.
You're like, we got to beproactive on
this whole 12 years old. Wereyou scared? shitless

(52:07):
I mean, you know, you'reresilient. When you're a kid.
You should be. It's like, Dude,I don't know, that would scare
the crap out of kids. Yeah, Imean, it sucks. And being a
father. I mean, how I think it'sharder on
the parents, you know, I mean,anytime any kid goes or anything
tough like that. It's definitelyharder on the parents. I mean, I
feel now especially now that I'molder, I'm like, Oh my gosh, my

(52:28):
poor mom, my poor dad having togo through all that any parent
who has to go Yeah, cuznow you're recollecting on all
that stuff.
But as a kid, it wasn't thatbad. I mean, you know, you
bounce back from stuff a lotfaster.
I don't know, man. I've beenthrough a lot of injuries and
just hearing the story. Like, itscares me like, put your dad
through hell, that's for sure.
Yeah, my dad and my mom and theystill blame me for their gray

(52:49):
hair. Yeah,definitely. For sure. But
so you go through that stuff.
And what's the because this iskind of the theme of the show.
I'm kind of feeling like rightnow is we're talking about
camaraderie, people helping eachother and stuff. So does the
whole family like bond together?
And they're, they're giving youpositive reinforcement and

(53:09):
letting you know, it's gonna beokay. Or like, how does it Oh,
yeah, my whole family. I've gottwo sisters and a brother. And I
mean, we're still super superclose. We were we were closer
than ever back then. You know, Imean, that brings everybody
together. So you know, they werejust super supportive on the
it's easy, a lot easier. Beingthe youngest to you know, you

(53:30):
got a lot less, you know, older,smarter people around you. So
they're looking out and doingthe work and helping my parents,
you know,but they're also learning from
from your interactions with themand stuff too. And to me, Jason,
I wasn't around him at thattime. You probably were spending
a little bit of time with him atleast like Did you see any
change in his demeanor was heliked a strong pick me up kid

(53:51):
that was still like,he's he has the same energy he's
always had. I mean, I rememberwhen I think it was it was
junior high school when? Whenthey did diagnosi right. Yeah,
we're at El Rancho. But I mean,ever since I've known him I
don't I don't think hisattitudes ever changed. I think
he's always been on a high.

(54:11):
Was that something hard for you?
Like, did you or you just didn'tknow any different
at least I never saw like yeah,no. Oh, sorry. Good, obviously
there I'm sure he probablyYeah, it was there nights like
in bed when you're just likeoh yeah, of course. You know,
you don't feel good. So you'resick or puke? I mean, it's no
fun going through all thatstuff. When you're does it fuck
are you mentally? Well, I meanonce like they they nuked me

(54:31):
with chemo for nine months. Andso that first nine months was
the worst and then, like, I wasjust dragging this leg around
that I knew I was sick. Icouldn't walk on I couldn't do
anything. I was like to just cutthis thing off like oh, so it
didn't work at all. Well, Imean, I couldn't it was it was
too weak to put weight onbecause it would break you know,
so really, yeah. So that whenthey first told me that week, I

(54:54):
was on crutches for nine monthsand then I once once they He
actually did the surgery, whichwas really no big deal. I was
looking forward to having it cutoff. And you know, once they did
that, that was kind of like, werounded the corner and now we're
on the exit. Now we're on ourway out and do that takes
a lot as a human being to beable to have that, like

(55:16):
understanding of life. Well, Imean,
I didn't really understand it, Idon't think and that's probably
the best part. You know, I thinkthat's why being gone
understand, you know, the depthand the severity of everything
as much, you know, for me, itwas just like, alright, well,
we're nine months in, they cutmy leg off. Now I got nine more
months, and then I can go outand hang out with my friends and
be normal, or be more normalagain. So yeah,
I get you. Yeah. And I thinkthat naive part about it like

(55:39):
has helped me a lot to in life,like, as stupid as it sounds
like you just don't know whatyou don't know. Right? Yeah,
just go forward. Just goforward. It's pretty crazy,
though. And I commend you forhaving that attitude and being
able to look forward to that.
One of my buddies, ChrisRidgeway used to be a
professional dirt bike racer aswell, too. He had annihilated
his ankle enough that it wasjust a complete mess, like, and

(56:00):
he had to, like, go into thedoctor's and he was like, for, I
think, two years or something.
He said, he was like, Dude, Ineed this thing taken off. Like,
if this thing doesn't work, it'slike more pain and more of a
hindrance to me, I need to geton with my life. And then so
like, now I kind of see the sameperspective that you were
feeling was like, Dude, you knowwhat, I can have a better

(56:21):
quality of life and a better. Idon't know, moving forward, if I
could just fix it. And that'show you fixed it.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and youknow, of course, they're telling
me back then, it's really notthat big of a deal. And I spoke
to a couple people, you know,who were older and successful
and gone through all that. And Iwas like, right on this guy is
normal. He's cool. He's doinggreat. His this chicks cool. You

(56:43):
know, no big deal. And that'sexactly what it was. I mean, do
you know, it's like peermentors? Kinda? Yeah, they just
come and talk to kids and stuff,you know, and they gave me some
perspective on it. And theyhelped inspire me. And it was
just good to see that. Andit's real world example. So it
makes it a lot easier tounderstand. Right? Yeah,
totally. I think. I think thatthere's a lot to be said about

(57:03):
those people too. As much as wetalk about off road, giving you
this opportunity and giving youa clear perspective. There's
those people that still helpman, I love people like that.
And then so it didn't slow youdown at all. Like you were just
I mean, I couldn't play hockeyanymore. ride dirt bikes,
really? I mean, I could ride butI sucked, you know, no rear
brake for you. Yeah. And itwasn't that fun, like not being

(57:26):
good. So I just didn't reallywant to focus on that. And I
mean, with age comes a cage, Iguess. Right. And then we kind
of rolled into the truck stuff.
And the rest is history. I mean,yeah, kind
of like how we had just talkedabout where you like when you
first got in the truck to like,do the race truck stuff. Are you
scared? Are you scared?
No, I was scared. For sure. Iwas nervous. Because, you know,

(57:47):
you watch all the videos. Roger,Robby Gordon all these guys. You
don't know if you're gonna beable to get that. You know, that
drift around the corner? Right.
You know, it looks cool. Crustydemons. dirts. Awesome. You know
growing up. Yes. Thanks.
Except for one sec lands on allthose people.
Yeah, make some mistake. Yeah,he's done it a couple of times.
He landed on some crowds withhis with his old sand trucks.

(58:10):
Wild Man. Yeah, yeah. But younever know if you're gonna have
that. That knack? You know, ifyou're gonna be able to do it.
Andso what do you just use that? I
don't know what the plural fornaive is. But you just beat us
being naive. Just be like, Youknow what, I'm just gonna go for
it. You just go for it, startdriving it in. And so that's
exactly what I'm talking aboutis that's one of the things that
I want everybody to understandis there's no limit, right? You

(58:30):
if you just want to go for it,you just go do it. Like that's
what makes a good person. Andthat's what makes a good racer.
is just going out there anddoing it. Kind of jump in. Yeah.
I mean, I don't think it's everslowed you down. I mean, I
remember the one time when youhad some jet skis and you're
like, did you want to you wantto go run some jet skis up to
Newport and back and I'm like,sure we go down to like, I where

(58:51):
we go Long Beach or Corona delMar. Yeah, that's far No. Dana
Point, Dana Point, really thatfar. And we come out of Dana
Point. And, and you know, hecomes around the corner. He's
like, he's gone. And, and he'snot standing on the jetski
because he's sitting, you know,and he's hooked up on this
thing. And he's flying off thefriggin the rollers, you know,

(59:12):
hauling ass really trying tokeep up and I come off a wave
sideways. And I landed justlaunches me like 15 feet from
the ski and I'm like, swimmingup and he like comes back. And
he's like, What are you doingMerrill? I'm like, I'm like,
Dude, I just got tossed. Youknow, we get back on the ski and
I get used to it and we haul assup to Newport and that haul ass
back. No, no, that's like, yeah,like, so

(59:35):
the limits didn't exist. But no,it didn't slow him down. Like I
couldn't even keep up with them.
You know?
Dude, that's so rad, though. Andthat's cool. Because that shows
a lot of the people around you.
I don't know if if youexperienced it, why you're doing
it. But a lot of your friendsprobably took motivation from
you.
I don't know about that. Youknow, but that mean without my

(59:56):
friends I wouldn't be able toget through you know, there's
tons of support from them. Youknow,
yeah, but I think you probablydid so support like Silent
support that you didn't evenknow. Me. I
guess. He does do some dumbshit. I remember one time he's
like, I'm like, Hey, we're gonnabe at Catalina on the big boat.
I'm like, dude, come meet us.
And like 12 o'clock rolls aroundout here from 1231 Two I'm like,

(01:00:16):
still on here from calling himHe's not answering his phone.
And and the next day, I finallyget a hold. I'm like, Dude,
where are you? He's like, westarted hauling ass out there.
And we saw a cruise liner. Andwe thought those are the lights
to Catalina so we followed it.
And he ended up where did youend up? Bringing this. He ended

(01:00:38):
up somewhere far away. They ranout of gas. I know where you
were.
This is a long time ago. This islike 2002 We
literally I kept I kept wakingup. I kept waking up in the
middle and I'm like, where ishe? Like he should be here by
now. You know?
Yeah, yeah. We got lucky onthat. He I'm
saying like he just did. He'slike, Oh my God. I'm going to
Catalina is a good zombie outthere, bro. No problem. You

(01:00:59):
know? Oh my god. What he's likejetski on like at night. He's
like, Yeah, it's no big deal.
That's like fearless. I can't doit. I'm not an ocean guy. The
sharks scare the fuck out of me.
Yeah,I mean, you're floating on a
jetski unless you fall off andthere's that's what I mean.
Yeah, you don'twant to follow it don't want to
run out of gas. Jason. I knowyou'd like to run a gas. So

(01:01:20):
I do run out of gas. I ran outof gas plenty of times. But
everyone thinks like you falloff a jetski in the middle of
the ocean sharks gonna come upand eat you. It's like, it's not
even the case. You know? I don'tknow. Um, so that's why I think
I do a lot of spear fishing inand we'll be out there and
rarely do we ever see sharks. Wedo see him but it's not like
everyone like say you jump inthe water. It's like, oh,

(01:01:40):
there's a shark. Yeah, you know,think about
it, though. When you're swimmingin the ocean. Oh, dude. I
remember we'rethere's some big sharks out
there. I'm not I'm not evengonna play. The only ones I'm
scared of are big makers. Like Ifelt like white sharks or though
cruise. Big makers or aredifferent. You're not helping
me.
Like at all.
Okay, I'll bring you all bringyou spearfishing in you're a

(01:02:02):
perfect example because I justhave to swim faster than the
next person. And we're good.
That's why whenever I bringJeremy I just give him the short
films and I have a big longfence.
Jenna harden just commented andsaid Eric and his brother got
rescued by Carnival cruise shiponce you hook me up with that

(01:02:22):
story. That'swhat he's talking about that.
But we all do we all have thosestories where we went out and
did something we shouldn'tcruise ship though. I ended up I
took I took a boat with nonavigation. I ended up in Long
Beach. Yeah, I'm saying like, wewent we went the complete wrong
direction.
I still don't know like thiswhole like the Nautilus stuff
where you like fine, I'd havezero idea because it's just all

(01:02:44):
the same. Like it doesn't lookgood or no direction except for
the stars and the sun. Likewhen you're out in the middle of
the ocean. I mean, it does. Itdoes change because like you
can't get turned around realquick.
That's what I'm saying. Youdon't know where you're going.
Right. And I always thought I'mgood with the directions but not
in a situation like that. Iguarantee I get lost.
Yeah. Get lost in the vortex.
Really.
There's I mean, there's so manystories that there's so many

(01:03:06):
stories where like Eric, youknow, we went
Wait, how far was that cruiseship away from the like from the
shore. Hewas trying to trying to get to
Avalon, which is 15 miles. Theycut through the there's a thing
called the 15 mile Bank, whichis where it's it is a tanker
ally. So all the tankers cutthrough that between Catalina

(01:03:29):
go quick. Yeah, well, we thoughtwe were we just kind of follow
the things south and ended upbeing by the time we stopped it.
He said we were 50 miles off alittle boy yeah. So we we were
falling for like two hours. Oncewe got closer, and we realized
that it was a that wasn't a cityand that it was a cruise ship.
It was too late to go anywherebecause our lights were
flashing, you know on these twostrokes. So how did you flag it

(01:03:52):
on the cruise ship took like 30minutes, we have flashlights and
people drink it on them up atthe bar tops on the flag.
Thank God they weren't toosauced up.
They were pretty soft stuff. Idon't know. That's probably why
they weren't stopping. Thecaptain probably wasn't
listening or whoever driving thething.
But they're I mean, there's somany that you can go into so
many stories, but there the oneof my favorite ones was it was

(01:04:14):
me, Robert Eric, and we weremeeting Casey curry.
He's involved in a lot of thesedumps. We were going up and
meetingCasey Currie up at carbon
Canyon. And I can't rememberwhat truck he had. It was one of
the pre runners. That thing hada big boy motor in it. Yeah,
because we got onto the on rampand we drifted the whole on ramp
going all the way through. Andone of the big trucks they were

(01:04:39):
big man, they were big thatyeah, he drifted the whole
corner all the way up and thenwe get into the street and the
carbon Canyon and we're haulinggas. We're I don't know how fast
we're going. But I remember likewe blasted by this cop. And he
came out he came out and see thelights and he's like, oh those
lights and we try and gettingaway from them and cop ended up
pulling us It's over. And he'sWhat's that? Yeah, Silverado.

(01:05:02):
And he's like cops like, howfast were you guys going? And
Eric's like, I don't know. He'slike, I don't know how fast you
guys are going. I just knowyou're hauling ass because he's
like, my face was down doingpaperwork. And I heard you guys
go by. And then I looked up andyou guys were already gone. And
then we got out of that one. Idon't know how we talked our way

(01:05:25):
out of that one. Barely. Thatwas close. I was close. And we
were hauling ass. He was he wasdriving. Then we get up into the
actual canyon where the dirt isand and we're flying through the
dirt. And we meet up with Caseyand Casey's there and we're
hauling ass back down and somechicks down there videotaping.
Oh, really? And Eric's like, doyou stand in the middle of road?

(01:05:48):
What do I do? I'm like, I don'tknow friggin duster, dude. So he
turns and duster. And she likeputs the camera down. Casey, I
think he stopped. I think hestopped or he something she got
his license plate. He ended uphaving to go to court. But he
didn't. But he didn't rat usout. He went to court for that.
And hesaw as a statute on that whole
thing.

(01:06:09):
We're way past our wetechnically didn't do anything
illegal. That's right. Becausethe cops dusted the girl out.
You're good. Yeah, no proof. Butyeah, but Casey didn't rat us
out. Sodude, solid, man. You got a
solid group of people rightthere with you.
I think I think she videotapedhis license plate. I think he
was driving like a jeep. That'swhy he couldn't duster out. It

(01:06:30):
was a little underpowered. Yeah.
Funny.
Now you're out there one of themin 400. Dude, which one was
better? Not getting a ticket orwinning.
They were both a rush. It wasfun. Yeah, I mean, we had fun.
We didn't get a surprise that wegot away like, twice, which was
like rare, right? The cop andthen that girl that was

(01:06:53):
videotaping that got Casey, notus.
Bringing up all these greatmemories.
Those those those times arefunny. And I guarantee a lot of
the people that are listening orwatching the show, like I have
those same type of memories.
Every guy says, if you guys dohave those stories, let us know.
So we can talk about those aswell. But if we don't get to it,
send us in the direct messagestoo. All right. Let's take a

(01:07:14):
quick commercial break and we'llcome back in just a second. So
stay with us watch themcommercials give us about five
minutes or so get another drinkand we'll see you guys in just a
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Zoolander racing the bestproducts period Welcome Back
Episode 155 Dirt life show withyour man 400 Winner Eric harden

(01:11:27):
did. It's been such a cool timeto talk with you guys Jason
marrow from UTV Wolfpack. Andobviously Eric like just hearing
the stories, dude, there's somuch cool stuff that you guys
have done. Whether it be sketchyor not. It's still pretty cool,
because all of us have livedthrough that same stuff. So But

(01:11:47):
let's actually talk about somesome, like more racing serious
stuff, like how hard is it? Orhow much effort does it take to
get a trophy truck to the racesand across the finish line?
I mean, it's it's a massive,massive effort to to get any car
to the races and you know, andto get it especially to the
finish line. But you know, asfar as trophy trucks go, we're

(01:12:09):
we're on the smaller side of theteam's lower budget team. So we
don't really get a pic a lot ofthe big races were on the big
series. But, you know, ourteam's badass Nick Taylor, they
bust their ass on the trucks.
This last month. We did King ofthe hammers. Early February then
we did another more race twoweekends ago for my nephew Cole.

(01:12:33):
He got second in 1600. And thenwe ended up Reese how hype was
he always stoked? He's stoked hegot his first win in December at
the Barcia race out there, soreally pumped for his future.
And you know, he's he'sshowbizzy. He's 18 Now also,
dude, he's pumped. Yeah, yeah,he's pumped. He's doing he's
doing a much better. He's doinga really good job. And you know,

(01:12:55):
he's showing his maturity behindthe wheel. So I'm super pumped.
Everybody keeps talking abouttell the story of the cruise.
Everybody's saying that. That'sfunny, man. So most notably,
well, Eric is known now forwinning the man 400. But prior
to this, he was known for thecruise ship incident.

(01:13:16):
Not at all. Eric has always beenjust wide open.
lives his life full throttle.
Yeah, it's funny, because it'slike, you know, we we always we
actually text more than we talk.
And we have like a Text groupwith all our buddies from high
school. I feel like thisstandard these days now. Yeah.
But you know, it's like us justtalking shit to each other. You
know, that's about it.

(01:13:37):
You see the text message group,and you're like, hey, I need to
throw some heat.
Yeah, no, it's like that allday. I mean, we're talking crap
before the month. 400. And thenit just got worse.
Yeah, yeah, it's one of thosethings will go dormant for a day
or two or three. And then it'slike, bam, somebody gets going.
And usually you and BJ Fisher.
Yeah. But uh, you know, the goodthing is is like, even today,

(01:13:57):
like I haven't, you know, Ihaven't seen him in a year or
two. And it doesn't matter howlong it's been like, you know,
when we see each other. I mean,it's the same thing. He's the
same Eric, that he's alwaysbeen. Nothing's ever changed.
He's the same Jason. Definitely.
Yeah, I was gonna say the samething, too. That's why we love
him. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Imean, that's why everybody loves
both you guys, right? How do youkeep such a positive mindset?

(01:14:19):
That's one of the things that Iwant to know. And I'm not just
talking about because of whatyou've been through with your
leg or the cancer and stuff likethat. I'm talking about life in
general, right? Because there'sa lot of things that happen
nowadays that are more seen onsocial media, right? So like,
you're not a big social mediaguy, but people post positive
inspirations and or they telllike, how their life is going or

(01:14:40):
they're in the shit shittycircumstance or whatever. But
you're really busy dude, Jason'sreally busy. Do you guys have
all of these different thingsand you're taking on all this
stuff like racing? You got anoccupation. These are full time
gigs right here getting thesetrucks to the track and then you
go out and you Lose or you win.

(01:15:01):
I mean, these all of thesethings are a lot to handle for a
human being like, so how do youkeep a positive mindset?
I mean, it's super tough. And,you know, we do the awkward
racing, it's our therapist. Youknow, we, we do it to have a
good time. And it's your Dr.
Phil to Yeah, exactly, to forgetabout the hard time and the
stress and you know, everythingin the rest of the world that
we're dealing with, that we'reall dealing with. So we're lucky

(01:15:22):
enough to be able to do thiswith a bunch of fun people. But
you know, we take it superseriously. So when we're out
there, I mean, shoot, it's been,it's been really frustrating for
me over the last few years,since we've, you know, Andrews
been teaching me how to go fastand what needs to happen behind
the wheel and what the truckneeds to be capable of how we
need to set it up over the lastfew years. And now we finally

(01:15:42):
feel like we're there. And allthe big events are just shit the
bed. I mean, we can't, can'tfigure it out last year, like I
was, I think we were talkingabout it last time. But last
year, we were running third,which would have been a sweet
podium finish for our first topor good finish in a mint or
hammers are a big race. And webroke an actual going downhill
like just didn't make sense. Sothe DNF that and the year before

(01:16:05):
we scattered a motor, or a gear,and then the year before another
motor, and then we left the lugnut loose the year before that
and snap the act or snap thestuds off. Then the year before
that we lost another motor. So Imean, my brother's finished this
thing one time with me and andwe finished far back. So it's
like, it's like our nemesis. Youknow, we can't get that race. We

(01:16:26):
can't finish that race.
Does that drive you?
I mean, it frustrates me forsure. And, you know, I mean, we
do a lot of the more races, youknow, I kind of break them down
as far as car counts go, youknow, small, medium and large
races. And, you know, the moreraces are awesome. There's
usually not a big car count forthe you know, for the unlimited
trucks, but there's enough whichis makes it really fun. And

(01:16:49):
there's competition, but it'scool to be able to go win, win
that championship in 21. Andjust go out there and race with
Cody and those guys. And then tobe able to win battle, Prim last
year was a confidence booster.
So we're broken. Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's cool. But like Iwant to get to the my end

(01:17:11):
question is going to be how muchlike how much you drive and how
much you look forward to gettingout there on the track and being
a competitive individual and allthis stuff. Because one thing
that I think Jason probablynoticed when he was watching the
mint 400 Live Feed and I noticedvery, very a lot when I saw you
was the capabilities that youhave for technical stuff in the

(01:17:35):
truck. And you have limitedfunction with your lower
extremities but you had timinglike you were wheeling and
bouncing over oops, you weregoing through corners in the in
the perfect area, like you wereapex at the perfect time, like
and this was on the last lap. Sothe man 400 When you're smoked,
like your body is tore up, likeyour mental focus is fog, like

(01:17:56):
everything. And you were stilldoing that. I don't know if it's
muscle memory being in the truckfor that long or how it actually
works. But going through all ofthe things that you do, keeping
the positive attitude and all ofthese things equal that on the
track, and it's prettyimpressive to be able, for me as
a visual person. And looking atthat on the live feed. I

(01:18:17):
couldn't believe it like I wouldhave probably been on more like
just fuck, I'm barely gonna makeit I'm just gonna roll these
things and bring her home. So Idon't know how it how it works
for somebody like you.
I mean, we pretty much drive asfast as we can almost all the
timeyou know and that's that's the
energy thing you were talkingabout Jason that's been good and
badover the years you know, it's
likehe'll drive the wheels off some

(01:18:39):
don't don't let them fool you onthat one. But hasn't let off.
But yeah, I mean we're out thereto race and have fun you know,
and nobody wants to see somebodyjust go stop just because they
have a lead you know you gottago and get to the finish and
Andrew and me were arguing aboutwhat visor to run on the on on
my helmet because he's runningthe clear shield with the with

(01:19:02):
their off with a pro armor tenetor the cruise armor tinted tear
off oh yeah, that's one tear offyeah, so he could take it off
when it got dark and then I wasgoing to do that but it wasn't
dark enough so and my gingereyes you know I read you gotta
have like devisee I need adarker so I don't have to squint
the whole day so I was like noI'm running attendant shield

(01:19:23):
we're gonna finish before darkor we're not going to finish
like we're gonna get finishwe're gonna finish and so that
was the other reason like thelast laugh that I was hauling
acids because I didn't want Icouldn't it was getting dark you
know?
What drives you is completelydifferent
completely different than whatyou thought it was gonna be. I
don't want to listen to himso I was thinking it was gonna
be this like Jesus changingmoment. Now I couldn't see shit

(01:19:46):
there's a lesson here you knowmaybe put two of those things on
and then you cancruise that way when it gets
dusky can't see anything. Or theother. Yeah,
I better hurry up. Yeah, butyou could tell I mean that on on
the last like two laps. Seemslike you were picking up speed
like you were you were movingand it was smooth and, and it
was going I mean, you're haulingass.

(01:20:08):
I'm in the truck felt great.
Trucks fast. I mean we hit 151Twice. Holy shit really? Yeah,
I think what was your lead timeon everyone? 15 minutes
something like that 1415Did that like if you look at
like the last couple years raceslike on the Trophy Truck
finishes like they were stackedon top of each other on the
finishes and it's sort of secondYeah, so 15 minutes is is pretty

(01:20:28):
cool. And plus they're likeduring the mid 400 Not to get I
want to talk more about you,Eric, but like during the mid
400 Like, even rob Mack said atthe beginning he's like, Dude,
this is too fast. Like we're notgonna survive like this is the
we're pushing the trucks thattoo hard. And then, like at the
end serratus was admittedly hewas. I don't know why you want

(01:20:49):
to say cruising but he waspushing it. But he didn't want
to push it too hard. Right. Buthouseholder was fucking pinned.
Yeah, he was going he wasmoving. Yeah, like he was like
he was stretching it out as hardas he could. Like, I'm, I'm I'm
surprised that his truck made itbut like, honestly, dude, it was
pretty impressive to watch himdrive to
now he was he was willing. Imean, I was looking at the five

(01:21:11):
red those laptimes Correct. Heset the fastest lap out to
everybody the first the firstlap of the race. And I don't
know how he did the other ones.
But I mean, he was he wassmoking it, you know, and that's
when everybody was alive in therace and running. And it was
pretty impressive. I mean, heAdams, a good driver in England.
I mean, we just saw it from himlast month at the hammer is
getting overall winners. Any hecan go fast. And he can he can

(01:21:33):
finish clearly. I mean, top topthree last weekend and then
winning the hammers is dude.
Yeah, he's no slouch at all. Hedoes great.
Yeah, he's really cooking itman. It was cool to see. And I
liked the way that it was likeit was a battle to the end,
right? Like, if you did have amistake, or if you lost a tie or
something like you were given upa lot and he would have been

(01:21:54):
able to come come up.
Absolutely. Absolutely. No. Imean, we were we weren't really
looking out the rearview mirrorat that point. We were we were
more worried about Harley andKevin on that last lap, because
those guys are those guys canlay it down and
we were we yeah, we grew up. Wegrew up with Harley too. Yeah.
Yeah. He's Harley's from highschool to it's kind of crazy to

(01:22:16):
a different high school, but weyou know, we grew up with him.
You guys were all so close,right? Yeah. It's kind of crazy,
man. Like, do you guys everthink like how you guys all
ended up here?
It's pretty crazy. How many cameout of like those high schools?
Well, Ican tell you guys could have
played hockey. You guys go playsoccer. You gotta get it done.
Something thatno, we want to we want to pick
out a really expensive sportthat doesn't pay out very well.

(01:22:36):
Yeah, we wanted to Yeah, stressout. Yeah, who wants to go play
golf and make millions andmillions of dollars? Yeah. Why
would you want to do somethinglike that? Right. Yeah, not get
hurt. Yeah. spend millions andnot make much. Yeah,
exactly. That's justthe way it goes. But that is our
off road culture. Right. I seenanother meme the other day. If
you want to make a million bucksand off road, you just start

(01:22:57):
with two carwith two. Yeah. Yeah. But you
can't you can't replace like,like, the adrenaline or, you
know, like even I remember likein the Lucas Oil races, like
before we'd go out we'd bestaged. You know, and the the
one race would be going myadrenaline be going so hard that
I would fall asleep in my car.
Like before, before we're aboutto go out, fall asleep. And then

(01:23:20):
the guy will come up and smackmy window. Go do go, you know,
and I'd wake up and be like,it'd be on again, because my
adrenaline. We'd be sittingthere for 30 minutes waiting or
20 minutes and your adrenaline'spumped. And your your all of a
sudden you go from this high tolike us waiting and you just
fall asleep. Yeah, like nothing.
Yeah. Have you ever had thathappen? Yeah, kinda
like, the way I always talkedabout it was everybody has their

(01:23:42):
own different way of dealingwith the chemicals that go
through their body, right? Like,I told everybody, like, I don't
get nervous, right? Like, all ofthat stuff comes through me.
Like I get excited. Like, I getsuper pumped up. So like, when
the adrenaline starts going forme, like I have a problem
concentrating on breathing.
Because I'm so excited. Like,I'm ready to go like a little
kid, right? Like, yeah, good togo Disneyland like and I can't
stop because I'm so excited. Soif I take a couple deep breaths,

(01:24:05):
or like in Jason's case, like Itell ya, do you get like that?
Or no,I get antsy. I get I mean, I
still get butterflies every timeI go up there. I mean, you just
get so excited. You know, onceyou go through, you mash the gas
once you know it gets suckedback, hit hit the first or
second corner. Like Alright,this is this is why we're here
you know, and the nerves calmdown and go with it. Yeah, like

(01:24:30):
it's go time once you get going.
I think everything just goesaway.
You feel like we're a littlecalmer than like Don Dell was.
So many people been talkingabout that. There was a few
people that sent it pretty hard.
I saw spec track that like hesent it he didn't like nosedive
but he sent it likethe perfect line. I mean, he got
through that thing clean and Idon't know if he did that every

(01:24:50):
lap but it was definitely thefastest way to do it. If the
troubleit was so crazy. And then I was
talking to Jason Montes in theintro herbs truck and he was
like Do Troy sentence so hardoff off the finish line dude and
he got all whipped like dirtbike whipped and then landed
right next to the pylon almosttook out them in 400 Like,
I don't I don't get people likeliterally you watch people you

(01:25:14):
know the first 35 feet and it'slike I had the race is usually
one the first 35 feet. Yeah, andit sucks because it's like I
think I mean, I haven't had a 35foot you know one like that but
I see people go out there and inbeing a race or you know what it
took for them to get there? Yep.
You know the prep the hours thepeople the money, the time away

(01:25:34):
from family, just everything toget there. And then in 35 feet,
you go send it off a jump andjust destroy your car. It is it
to me is just the craziestthing. It's like, dude, let the
do go by, you know, but I mean,that's, that's part of, you
know, the fun part of watchingthis stuff, right? Because
there's always someone outthere. It's like, hit it, Larry.

(01:25:55):
We have enough rednecks in thesport with money, right? They're
like, go for it.
It makes it super good for us onthe live stream because we can
commentate? Yeah. But yeah, solike, talking about being smooth
and like all of that stuff. LikeI think there's a lot to learn
again, talking about the kidsand stuff. Like if you're in a

(01:26:16):
situation like let's use KadenDanbury, again as the example.
Right? So if he needs toovercome an obstacle that he
broke and he was feeling guiltyabout it, just become
accountable for it. And thenwhat do you suggest he does the
next time he gets out on track?
Like how does that work?
Just try not to make the samemistake twice. You know?
He's pretty good at that.
No, I'm yeah, we're using him asthe example. But there's a bunch

(01:26:37):
of kids that have that sameissue. Because they really get
down on themselves. They want towin for sure.
Everybody does freshers high inthe competitions. You know,
stiff, stiff, yeah, today it isor everyone's getting out there.
It's serious this year,especially the UTV is I mean,
it's it's crazy. These guys arenuts.
Yeah. And there's a lot of themthere. Yeah, there is. That's
what's cool about it, though.
It's like I was watchingit on Friday. Watch them all

(01:26:58):
take off and do it. It was itwas killer. And there's some
really great drivers out thereto Christmas Robbins actually
said how rad would it be if wecould just still go wide open
down the main pit like the olddays? I never saw that what
we're talking about withouta Speed Check.
Yeah, yeah. There used to bespeed limits back when we
started speed checks now,you know, through all the fields

(01:27:19):
and stuff. Well,I kind of feel for that speed
check because I don't want toever get hit by a car. Well, I
think the speed checks that theydo or like in certain areas,
like one of the speed checks ison that bridge where you know,
you're going you know, obviouslyside by side they obviously
don't want people it's asphalt.
You can't you know, be doing 150miles an hour next to each
other. I mean, yeah, just thewind drift alone would pull you

(01:27:40):
guys together something, youknow,
trophy trucks didn't go as fastback then. Right? Like or did
they know theydidn't go this fast? They were
fast, but the track was probablydifferent.
was rough. I don't think thereweren't you know, 75 or 85
Unlimited cars run around therewhile I'm in the trash. I think
we're probably still rough. Imean, they're you know, but you

(01:28:01):
got to remember like withevolution like well, Kingdom
motorsportssaid they can have a bypass to
watch the people go past likethat's what they should I mean,
that would be sweet.
What do you mean like like takea longer route but
like a pit road or you stay oncourse kind of thing?
That's all they added in thehammers on that remote pit? You
could pull?
Yeah, kind of like WorldChampionships. Yeah. Or yeah,

(01:28:24):
World Championships had it youhad we had a pits that you
pulled into. And yeah, or youcome on desert bypass. Yeah.
That that would actually be kindof cool. Because then you could
see people just ripping rightthere. Well, and then all the
people in the pits could get alltheir Instagram bangers. I think
there's two sides of that. Imean, obviously with the with
the speed checks and stuff,there's two people that people
are using it for multiple thingsare checking the cars as it

(01:28:46):
drives by two. Yeah, that's agood point. You know, so so it
does. I feel like there'sthere's obviously a help on that
side of it. But it's also couldbe a safety thing because you
can end up seeing some wobblingfrom you know, because when we
used to drive through the pits,you know, my guys would be out
looking down you know, the rowout of the car to see if
anything was wobbling, loose,broken and then when we pass is

(01:29:09):
the same thing. Yeah.
And did some of the people eventhrow a frickin granola bar
hammer inside the car water,whatever, too.
We had. We had little worms onzip ties. So you just pulled
them off the dash to goanywhere? Yeah. And then and
then granola bars or duct tapeto the roof. Yeah, I
remember that. That's the firsttime I figured out how to eat in
the car was when Jason had ducttape. I'm like, I'm gonna do

(01:29:30):
that. That's such a great idea.
Hey, did it flesh and dig in abag? Have you ever tried digging
a bag doing like 70 over oops,just don't work. Trying to eat
some Lay's potato chips. Now youpeel it off the debt off the top
of duct tape and literally theduct tape will peel the it'll
open the wrapper at the sametime but you're just
chopped down on it. Such a goodidea. All right, pro tip duct
tape.

(01:29:50):
Your food to the roof. zip ties.
Hey, what do you eat when you'rein the car in the truck?
So I mean, the good thing aboutthose little 25 mile an hour
sections is I mean it gives youa chance Sup pee. So I mean, I
definitely wasn't dehydrated. Iwas drinking like PD like sport,
the whole time. Pee and everysingle lap perfect, but, you
know, I would eat like a goo.
The last two laps, I needbanana. So I'm like cramping up

(01:30:13):
I always get like leg cramps andarm cramps, you know, if we make
it to, if we can make it thatfar in these races, you know, it
doesn't happen as often but nowit's starting to happen. So I'm
stoked. But that in a granolabar, you know, not too much just
enough to just, you know, you'rewrong. I
used to like PB and J's or liketurkey sandwiches or anything

(01:30:35):
like that, like somethingsubstantial. It's kind of crazy
that people have such differentpersonal like, preferences when
they're out there and likeeating what did you eat? Just
eat granola bars and likegranola bars and then yeah, I
mean, we would have sugarproducts. It depends on the
race. Like we would set updifferent races last year like
hey, we missed the float like,yeah, Vegas arena was like, you

(01:30:55):
know, more endurance stylesnacks and then I think like the
mint 400 and stuff was just likemore sugary products to try and
just keep you jacked up amountain dew or something as
long as you could you know, thewhole time. Yeah, huge crash
after the race. Those Yeah,those energy goo things with all
the caffeine and everything inthere afterwards. You're

(01:31:16):
like, yeah, you're shaking yourstomach hurts. Yeah, but
it's fine. Like after the racedoesn't matter what. And then
plus like after the race of beeris like the best thing ever did.
It was the one thing I missabout the bat races with Casey,
folks, you know, is that when wefinished the races, he'd be he'd
be standing there with a beer.
You know, like ready foryou? Yeah, well, there was
actually beers the mint 400 Thisyear Christian syrup has got to

(01:31:38):
chug Yeah, belching beaver.
Yeah, yeah. So I think he shouldhave chuck in Corona. But I mean
we gave him some shit that lastweek when you're talking on the
show. Man you guys got any otherstories? Like to me to talk
about? Did you ever guys Did youguys ever go to the track and

(01:31:58):
like race together or with eachother? Anything like that? I
don't think so. I think yeah,dirt bikes, maybe like oh, no,
all the Merrill boys were faston dirt bikes and crazy. It's
allcrazy or stupid. Well, there's
a fine line.
There's a fine line.
Well, there's still a lot oflove to wheels in your family to
your brother kids. Like yourkids. Like,

(01:32:20):
my nephews are rippers and nowthey got those serums and yeah,
and did their soup in thesurrounds up were like, you
know, their mod not the chips.
You know, my nephew told me hehit 98 miles an hour and one
day, no fucking way. I'm like,bro, what are you doing? You
know, and really, they got theygot down in 88 Miles 98 is what
he told that's so sketchy.

(01:32:42):
Yeah, they wear helmets. Okay, Imean, yeah, 90 miles an hour
helmet can do much. Yeah, you'redead. Yeah, it's like, but did
they have tracks all over theplace down in Newport like and
like little dirt sections. Andthey have like, they're hidden
for like 50 6080 foot isn'tshitload?
Yeah, and you don't have a motorso that people can't like hear
you out there. It's almostriding like bicycles.
Well, yeah, they're quiet.
That's crazy. I got Masonelectric dirt bike, and do we

(01:33:05):
rip that thing all over Irvine?
No one says a word. Because it'squiet. Yeah, it doesn't say
yeah, doesn't make any noise.
Dude, actually, that's we shouldtalk about that. Then do you
guys see like any type ofracing? I'm returning like a
trophy truck being electric oranything like because? Could you
imagine if you could just havehot swappable batteries.
So I know who's building oneright? I know, I'll probably get

(01:33:27):
shit for this. But I actuallynerd it out. I nerd it out for a
while on turning a Tesla into anoff road car. Like just dissect
them. The problem is, is thatit's all a unibody right? They
don't actually have like, legitframe. So can you use the drive
line? You could? I mean, I'veI've done a lot of homework on
dissect. And that's toughbecause Koh came out with like

(01:33:48):
an electric, you know, electricclass, but I didn't want to do
Koh but you know, I looked atlike buying a salvage title
Tesla and then just convertingit over. It's just a lot of
time. A lot of energy a lot oftime I don't have right now. So
I wonder how long it would lastlike you go like 40 Miles fully
pinned?
No, I mean, so when the bigelectric thing. So when the big

(01:34:10):
electric thing like popped offin the beginning when all these
electric trucks were like havinglike rival like, who's going to
come out first, like thelighting in the Caribbean. And
if you remember Brent thaw,built the Lordstown motors truck
and they went down to Baja. Ithink they went like 20 miles.
So and then something happenedwith the truck. And I don't know
all the details on it. Andelectric. Yeah, I just know that

(01:34:32):
I had a lot of stock inLordstown that I bought on
Friday, and I lost a lot ofmoney on Monday. So, because I
was like, Yeah, Ireally think about that. Well,
yeah.
I mean, I thought you know, I'mmy call Brent. I built the
truck. I'm like, Dude, it shouldfinish. I mean, you know, why
not? Right, like, and so I hadhigh hopes for it because it's
like, you know, the firstelectric truck wins, you know,

(01:34:52):
not wins but finishes the Baja500 and Wall Street would go off
and so, yeah, I lost a lot ofmoney on that. So I was kind of
bitter about that. You know, butI think I went slow now you'd
looked into Tesla, so you canmake so yeah, so I'm like, I'm
over here nerding out on stuffon how to you know, because the
biggest issue they had was, waspulling in and charging the
truck. You know, like they havelike big generators on trust,

(01:35:14):
I'm saying like, if you have hotbattery, but the problem is, is
like the way that those systemsare set up. You know, it's not
like a normal like, like, likethe Tesla batteries, they bolt
up underneath and there's a big,you know, you need like a big
Jack system to unbolt it andcome out. And like there's a
process to it. You know,I'm saying we can figure this
out, we could figure it out.

(01:35:34):
If you get a sponsor from them,it would be pretty wild
to see that the only reason Isay that is because like you
could control every single thingfrom the car, like let's just
say it was like the man 400 Andit was dusty the whole time at
the beginning and then it gottraction, you could actually
just change all of that stuff onthe fly, and have less
horsepower and like tractioncontrol, like it would do it. I
mean, I know you can do it onsome of the bigger trucks and

(01:35:55):
the more money teams but like,still like could you imagine how
fast those things go.
It's just money and time. Imean, we you know, when when I
raised we mess with FLIR and andI don't know if you know what
FLIR is like, don't don't FLIRis nightvision for boats, okay,
so you could actually you coulddrive in the night. So FLIR

(01:36:16):
works the same way and dust.
And, and so we were messingaround with FLIR Systems in our
car. And the problem was, isjust the dust in the screen. So
we were trying to figure out howto drive through dust at full
speed with a FLIR system, butthe problem is, is like the FLIR
Systems that, you know, youcould do that with the
government uses, like 100 grant.

(01:36:38):
So, you know, it's just again,it's just time and money to do
that. So clearly, there's somuch technology out there that
we don't use. But, you know,people just have to have the
resources or the money or timeto put it together.
Dude, I can barely get aStarlink set up on the site.
So yeah, I mean, just thinklike, just think if you're in a

(01:36:58):
trophy truck, and you had ascreen in front of you, and you
had a FLIR camera, and, and itwas complete dust, just like at
nighttime, you could literallyyou can drive as fast as you
want, because you can lookthrough that screen and you can
see perfectly through thedaswell the FLIR system, dude,
that would be so crazy. Couldyou imagine the advantage? Like,
that's why we tried, welegitimately tried to put one

(01:37:19):
into the car. And just justbecause the dust application
with the Marine, it didn't work.
This is meant clogging thecamera. Yeah, I was just
clogging the camera up. So wetried putting, you know, plastic
rotators you know, and it justlike, fortunately, like if you
go through silt, it just, it'severywhere. You can't get so out
of stuff for days. So it sticksto everything, especially

(01:37:41):
electronical stuff that's wildto think about how like in five
years or 10 years what we'regoing to be talking about,
I think it'll be attainablebecause you know, the those
systems will come down in price.
I think RCR has one in his truckor he was right on one Desi.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, like I said, if he hadif you have the funding, and
I mean, all those things are socool. And I love technology. We

(01:38:04):
got another technology buffRobert over there. I love TAC
it, it is kind of crazy to thinklike, just in your what you're
talking about is a little bitescalated compared to what I'm
going to mention, but like justthinking about the starlings,
like you have a computer networkon the car now. Yeah, like so
that gives opportunity for allkinds of stuff, right? Like
without giving away too manysecrets so you can know where
the car is. And all I have livedata on my car, you can have

(01:38:27):
live data, you can plug it intoa Motek you can do all kinds of
cool stuff. So it can be just inyour car while you're driving.
Yeah, not like f1 kind of shit,right? Like and not just showing
a live feed or live broadcast,right. So once those types of
things work themselves out. Andagain, this is not like five
years, probably a year or twodown the road like this is for
certain things. Yeah, yeah. Butit's it's pretty amazing to see

(01:38:48):
that we'll have all that but itkind of it kind of also takes
away from it too. I guarantee ifyou talk to like somebody like
Rob Mac or any of those otherpeople. Just keep it just keep
it simple. Yeah, like, let'sjust get out there and race.
Like, I remember talking to BobBauer, like he's old school, old
school, right. And he's like,you know, what, the first Baja
1000 We just said, we'restarting here. We're ending

(01:39:08):
here. Whoever gets there thefastest wins. No maps, nothing.
You just go. Like, that's how itworks.
Yeah, figure it out. Yeah. Butlike, that's like, true. It's
cool. Baja. I feel like there'sa lot of fun in that though,
too. Right? Yeah. 100%. But, youknow, it was like the same
reason that happened with shortcourse. Remember, the reason
that we started to push the UTVsinto Lucas short course was

(01:39:31):
because of money. You know, wedidn't have a big funding, you
know, we didn't have my mom anddad weren't. We're writing
checks for cars. And, and so youknow, the people that were
racing, the SR ones, you know,they came out with 60 $80,000
cars, we couldn't do that. So wewant to we want to develop
something that you can go buyoff the showroom floor and have

(01:39:51):
parts readily available that youweren't stuck to one builder,
right. You know, kind of like ifyou go buy a Tatum sand car and
you got Tatum front arms, Imean, you have to go buy him
from paid him and if he charges10 grand, that's what
you're that's what you'repaying. Yeah. Well, that's why
the TVs are soadaptable because you can go
down to the nearest playersdealer and pick them up. And
there's a ton of playersdealers, you know, they have a
huge network doing 100%.

(01:40:14):
Like, I love that, that. Thatmakes me think like, because you
spent a lot of time at the offroad races and stuff like, what
have you. I know you got thetrucks, but like, what if you
just want to race a UTV oneweekend? And the trucks are
prepped? Just jump in one wouldyou?
Yeah, of course. Race anything?
Yeah. I mean, those thingsaren't stocked, so even the
stock ones aren't stocked there.

(01:40:34):
Yeah. But like I said, we knowguys that have TV. You could you
could get in there and race. Imean, like, I feel like that's
pretty cool. And I honestlythink that we again, we're
talking about the kids. Like ifthe kid saw you jump into UTV
and race, they would love to seeyou do that. Like, I feel like
they'd love to see you at thetrack. Especially like, let's
just say a DB for race orsomething.
Yeah, no. That'd be great.

(01:40:56):
I think it would be pretty cool.
Don't you think? It'd be cool tosee him out there and UTV Jason.
Yeah. Jason back out there.
I think. I think it's morerelatable. Sounds like he's
gonna get out there and ETVPretty soon
I'll figure it out. I'm excited.
I got I got I got some morephysical therapy to do and then
I'll, I'll get my stuff sorted.
The big thing right now as youknow, my son, so we started

(01:41:18):
doing this k one has like aGrand Prix series for juniors
and so I've been putting my sonin that. And so he's been
getting super competitive. He'sgetting super fast too. And, and
now you like it? Oh, he lovesit. And now I've been training
my daughter and you know, in thebeginning she was she was pretty
slow. She's getting last placeand two days ago, you know, she

(01:41:41):
got second place right behindthem two seconds behind them.
Know when she gave him a run forhis money. And she's like, she
she can only reach one pedal. Soand she barely reaches the
steering wheel. And and she'sgiven them a run for his money.
So she loves it. So I figure youknow, my thing is, is like my
son has he has a racing go kart,he actually has like one of

(01:42:04):
those gas powered ones. It'slike, badass. He's got a UTV,
he's got dirt bikes, she hastheir bikes. You know, it's like
the evolution they like thebest. They like four wheels or
two wheels. They love both. Theyjust love being outside. And I
feel like that's like thebiggest thing you know, it's
just it's just making sure theyget outside and have fun and
that's honestly like that'sthat's been my motivation lately

(01:42:26):
and that's why I've kind ofbacked off a lot but I felt like
we could still go race one ortwo races a year. I feel like
what we were doing before wasjust too much. You know, I think
at one time we were doing we did38 events in a year.
Oh my God really? Yeah.
You know we did we did fullLucas Oil series we ran desert
series you know bat full bat andthen you know we are run some of

(01:42:47):
the other local races. I can'tremember what they were called,
like the dirt series. Do. That'sa lot. Yeah. So that's a lot of
resources. And we are settingand we are setting up at events,
you know, for for the partscompany. And we were still doing
a lot of stuff like a lot ofbuilds for Indian and Rockstar
and Polaris like a lot of, youknow, behind the scenes stuff

(01:43:10):
that people didn't see. Sothat's a workload. I feel like I
missed like two years of my songrowing up you know, and that
was wearing like when I caughtmyself
yeah, I get I get that and plusnow like you just said like
seeing Mason girls and stufflike actually enjoying the like,
I don't know what you want tocall it the beginning stages of

(01:43:30):
motorsports like that's prettycool.
I watch the complete oppositelike get my wife was playing
with dolls when she was little.
My daughter's is the completeopposite. She loves. She loves
this stuff. And I'm gonna fastI'm gonna make it to where she
passes my son. Give them givethem gives him some for his
money, you know?
Yeah, that would be pretty coolto see. Right?
100% What is Jenny think likeshocking about the family

(01:43:53):
atmosphere like, because I mean,like you guys both grew up like
doing that stuff. And yourparents obviously liked it and
let you guys do that. Is thatthe same thing? Jason?
She She's She deals with it.
copes with it. Right? Like,yeah, she tolerates. Exactly. I
think that she obviously sheknew who she married. Now,
there's no sugarcoating that. SoI always tell her, I'm like, you

(01:44:15):
know, if you don't want I mean,you get what you got. So I'm
still the idiot that I do allthis crazy stuff that we do. You
know,I think all three of us are the
same way. Right? Yeah.
She wants to put me in a bubble.
I'm like, yeah, it's not gonnahappen. I was supposed to go
snowmobiling this last week. Andshe was giving me you know, shit
about going up the mountainsbecause it just dumped and one
of her friends got stuck. I'mlike, yeah, they probably drove

(01:44:38):
a Prius up there. Now, like, Igot a truck, we're fine. It's
good. It's okay. What's thatnight and I figured I'd save it.
I have to go to a bachelor partythis weekend. So there you go.
Yeah, pick your battles. Pickyour battles.
All right. Well, let's uh, let'skind of wind down the show a

(01:44:59):
little bit here. It doesn't looklike YouTube and, and Facebook
were actually being very nice tous. But that's okay. Instagram
still worked out today. That's aflip from last time. Doing these
live podcasts is very much likean off road race. Sometimes it
works. Sometimes it does. Butit's cool, man, I really
appreciate both you guys takingthe time obviously away from

(01:45:21):
your families and just kind ofhanging out and doing shop talk
with us. I do want to have rapidfire q&a with Eric though you
want to do it real quick. Jason,do you have
give me you want me to ask himquestions
while you ask a question andthen I'll ask a question. So
with Radware we want you juststart with the first one.
Where did you grow up that one?
No, the rapid fire q&a.

(01:45:41):
Okay, got it. Tacos are hotdogs. Tacos.
Big taco guy for chicken or aSATA.
SATA. Every time do you enjoythe river? River?
Big River guy really? River forsure. What do you take on the
river jetskis, jet skis, little ski boat.
I'm gonna give them shit all thetime that floats? I'm gonna give

(01:46:04):
you shit about the jet skis allthe time. So do you bring a jet
ski today? The PERB Exactly.
Let's see here. action shots orstill shots. action shots. Oh,
big action shot guy. Some ofthose action shots at the Mint
400 took of you are pretty sick.
Do that one. Are you coming tohave a corner? Oh, William. Is

(01:46:25):
such a trip.
Yeah,I can answer this one for him
through will or quad. QuadClaude Claude I didn't I didn't
think you're gonna do I thoughtyou would have said three
wheeler.
Not a big three wheeler guy.
I mean, I like three wheelers.
But I haven't written one in along time.
If you were gonna pick a threewheeler, what would you pick? Do
you fit the aretoo big to fit? Pretty well.
death machine. Yeah, totally.

(01:46:48):
Yeah. If you haven't stuck yourleg or flip one of those left.
When they had those, theKickstarter would always come
back to you. SHAN Have you guysseen they turn those like a CR
450 into a three wheeler. They'dlike us a half of 250 our
chassis or 200x chassis. Andthen they use the front end of
the mic the drag ones? No, it'slike an actual CRF 450 like the

(01:47:13):
front and then where the swingarm comes out. It's a solid axle
three wheeler and then they putthe fairings on it. Do this
wild. Yeah, I gotta. I gotta. Igotta show you some of those
things are easy. It's it? Well,I don't know if I will read one.
Alright, see? Pizza Rolls orjalapeno poppers? Pizza Rolls.
Coffee or tea? Even though pizzarolls burn the fuck out of the

(01:47:35):
top of your mouth.
Yeah, I don't know a wholeopinion popper.
Burning the top your mouth wetalked about? Yeah, that's
a good point. You said tea.
I like both. I love coffee andtea. coffee in the morning tea
in the afternoon.
All right. What's your favoritemovie? Top Gun? The new one or
the old one? The old one. Ogone. Did you get though? Have

(01:47:56):
you been down to Oceanside andsee how they move the Top Gun
house into like little hotelnow. It's such a bummer. Like it
was sitting there all the staticfor so long. Then it kind of
started getting decrepit, andthen they put up all these
buildings in downtown Oceanside.
And then so they moved thathouse over into like a I don't
know what you call it thecourtyard of a big ass Hotel. So
they still kept it. But it's notquite as cool as it was before.

(01:48:18):
No, I didn't know thatway the world turns man,
Instagram or Facebook.
Instagram.
Well, so you're gonna step upyour Instagram. Try
just let your chick take itover. Right Just do like one of
those shared accounts where it'slike Diana slash Eric.

(01:48:41):
People we grew up with you,bro. Your balls are the same.
Guys not raisingevery like 50th picture is just
the Eric on the podium untilthen he doesn't get anything.
Yeah. Let's see here. If youcould have any superpower, what
would it be? The fly? You gottafly. Yeah, we talked about this

(01:49:03):
a bunch because I kind of feellike this is a little
controversial. Like what did youpick? What was your superpower
that you picked? Or did I didn'tpick one what is yours?
Because I've never reallythought about it. What is it
that forever? What is it? That'slike Waterworld. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Big big spear fishingall over it.

(01:49:25):
What's that? Aquamanyou would do Aquaman I don't
know. So like I always wanted tolike the flying thing sounds
cool. But I like the jumperthing where you can like jump to
places like not like jumpinglike that movie jumper where you
like teleport or whatever. LikeI feel like that would be so
sick because you guys think it'dbe like oh, I want to go eat in
Italy for lunch and yeah, Iwant to go rob a bank. Yeah.

(01:49:48):
Problem solvedthat Yeah. What kind of Trophy
Truck you want? Yeah, where doyou get all that money?
Don't worry about it. It's cool.
You get your own truck. Yeah.
All right, what's an excellentNetflix or YouTube?
Netflix.
Have you seen drive to survivethe f1 thing on Netflix?
I haven't watched it yet. Dude,it's solid. I've heard that from

(01:50:08):
everyone. I know there's fiveseasons now.
Well, so. Oh, cool hard and saidyour favorite movie is Goonies.
I love Gooniestoo. Doesn't look good. Yeah,
Goonies is a good one. Legend.
Good. This is great shows howold we are, right? So the
Netflix, that's cool, you got tosee that that series, because
like, this is what I want. Sobad for off road to have a

(01:50:30):
series like that, like it wouldbe so cool. I mean, it's a
multimillion dollar production.
So I don't think it's ever goingto happen. But if we could
figure out a way to show themasses, because like, when you
think about the popularity off1, five years ago, it was very
low. But now since that hasshown to the general public,
it's massive, like it's got waymore of a following. You talked

(01:50:51):
about like the same thing in offroad. Yeah, I mean, the same
concept enough references. Ifeel like kind of I mean, like,
I don't disagree with you, Ifelt like with, you know,
everything going on with offroad, like all the big
manufacturers and OEMs pulledout, I mean, and when they did
it kind of fell out. I feel likethe new manufacturers and OEMs

(01:51:12):
are like the UTVs. You know,it's like they're the only ones
that are given true support.
Like you don't see Chevy Forddodge. You don't see them out
there with factory teams likeHonda is the only one out there.
Yeah. And, you know, it's likethat, you know, those companies
do need to come back. They doneed to bring that back. And I
don't disagree with you at all.
But I think that our supportdefinitely does not get the

(01:51:32):
love. It should. Yeah, I thinkso too. I mean, you look at like
Formula One stuff, like do whenthey did the Haas formula, one
team don't want to say like,from what I read, I think it was
like a $650 million deal atHostin, and that's just one
company one sponsor, right?
That's what I'm saying. It's notit's like, okay, like, dude,
imagine a million dollars forus, or $2 million for us can do
wonders. That's what I'm saying.

(01:51:53):
What do you think about the newPolaris team then like, so it's
kind of, it's kind of puttingthat out there. I
mean, it'll take 234 years to beable to, like, get up to a point
like that. ButI think that it's a start. You
know, obviously, that was like aconcept that that that we tried
to do you know, what, back in2012, with the five car team,
right, we just didn't have thesame funding, right? I think

(01:52:15):
that what they're puttingtogether is definitely in the
right direction. And, and thereason it's in the right
direction is because when wewere factory sponsored, we had
technical issues with our cars.
And one of the big things waslike, you know, I had my car
would go into limp mode. So Iwas like, Okay, I have to go to

(01:52:35):
the dealer to get it cleared. Sothen I made a big deal about
getting computers so we canclear our own codes. Then once
we got through that hurdle. Thenext hurdle was, well, you know,
we're spending all this money.
We're a factory team, why don'twe have any engineers that we
could talk to? Right? Then wegot, you know, Craig got
involved. And Craig's like, Hey,Jason needs a computer make it
happen. And at the time, they'relike, Well, we have to give you
like a dealer number. Because,you know, we only give them to

(01:52:58):
our dealers. And then Craigunderstood it, you know, Craig
got it. And that's obviously whyhe's part of that factory team
is because in order to, youknow, they're spending all this
money racing, and they don'thave their own in house
engineers helping these guysaccomplish things. Right. You
know, and that's part of wherethey're going. I think it's
good, because hopefully, maybeit'll push other OEMs to step

(01:53:20):
up. Maybe. You know, I feel likethe Honda team. I feel like
they're spread them. I thinkthey need to break it apart.
Yeah, I think they need to givethe UTV thing to somebody. And
they need to take the the truckside and give it to somebody.
Yeah, I like where your head'sat. And they're doing they need
to separate that because I feellike you know, they're they're

(01:53:41):
putting too much on one platebecause the reality is is like,
you know, I don't follow theproctor race team, but I don't
see them on a box all the time.
I think they just won lastweekend, right? Yeah, they won
the Baja, didn't they?
Yeah, and they wanted to mentionit, but like they're doing good
too. And the truck won thehammers in the

(01:54:04):
mama timeout Trump time orYouTube. TV?
I don't know. They've beenwinning a lot. They have seen
it.
Yeah, they've been really well.
But that's a lot better than itwas,
what two years ago? Yeah. AndI'm just talking more about then
practice runs a fantasticprogram and I really liked the
way that they do the programbecause it reminds me motorcross
right, like dirt bikes andstuff. Supercross teams,

(01:54:25):
legit. Yeah, it should be. Yeah,absolutely. And it looks nice.
That's why I'm just Yeah, hishis setups are definitely clean.
That's why play shows up, youknow, presentable to a factory
standard.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and theJapanese run a little different
than the United States peopledo. So they better be on point,
right? Yeah. 100% But the thingthat I like most about it is it

(01:54:46):
shows a good future for thesport of off road or for the off
road community, right? Like nomatter what happens when you
have an entity that startsbuilding a new thing that people
haven't quite seen yet Like whatthe SCI group is doing with the
players factory team, it givesan opportunity for growth. And

(01:55:07):
that is the most meaningfulportion of it. And I do think
that there is going to be someleaps and bounds that they have
to overcome. But that's withanything, right? When you're
paving the way you're paving theway, hopefully. And with all due
respect to everybody. Hopefully,those bigger programs don't pull
away from some of the, you know,core people that had been there
from day one to Well, you neverknow. I mean, hopefully it

(01:55:30):
doesn't pull away from stillsupporting other racers.
You never know. That's aquestion that always has to be
answered with time, right?
Yeah. But I'm just saying ingeneral, like, hopefully it does
not pull away from stillsupporting the racer. But as
we're talking about that,though, too, I don't know.
Because I don't know if it'sgoing to affect other people.

(01:55:50):
But as we talk about that, yougot to remember we're a vigilant
group, right? Like, let's justsay I was affected because I
used to be a Polaris factorydriver, and I didn't get a part
of that team. Well, that showsme another opportunity. It says,
Okay, well, my normal is notgoing to be what their normal is
now. Now I can go somewhereelse. And I can look for non
endemic sponsors like what I didwith you, Jason in the in the

(01:56:11):
UTV, Wolfpack, I asked you, Isaid, Should I keep all your
sponsors? Like no, go get yourown? Like, we have a limited
budget, we're sticking to this.
So I was like, okay, cool. Andthen I went out and got some non
endemic sponsors. I broughtSupercuts to the table, right?
Like, that was something thatwas cool. And but it was,
because of what I was shown, Isaid, Okay, I'm not gonna get
any help there, I gotta go findit elsewhere. And I think if
people understand that, theyhave the opportunity to do that,

(01:56:32):
that it'll open up doors thatthey didn't even think were open
because they got one close infront of them. So now it pushes
them to go do something else.
100%. So I do think that there'sa lot of opportunity for growth,
and that's what I mean byprogress and growth. So I mean,
to you know, like, like Eric'sset up, you know, Eric, Eric's
family in they own a Honda Kia,Buick Pontiac GMC stores. And,

(01:56:57):
you know, you'd think that GMCwould see stuff like this, and
they'd be like, hey, you know,we should come down there and be
the title sponsor on the side ofthat truck. If GMC is watching
this. Right. That's a greatidea. Yeah. I mean, you know,
these companies, you know, GM,you know, obviously, GM, like,
go back to the Lordstown motorsthing. You know, GM was a huge
contributor to that Lordstown.
They got a bunch of the peopleover there. They did spend the

(01:57:19):
money to take the brunt oldtruck and have the Brent old
build that truck and go bring itdown to Baja and do that. So you
know, why aren't you know, whyisn't GM? Why isn't Ford why are
they coming into these sponsors.
Now, the men 400 Is televise. Sothey can't make the excuse that
hey, you know, we're nottelevised, we don't have the
coverage, you know? So now thatthat's there, you know, why

(01:57:41):
aren't these big companiescoming in?
I think they gotta be shown itright. Like, they gotta be
reintroduced to it. You got toremember too, that there's a lot
of turnover in those companies.
100% And those people that thenew guys made, there's never
known about it, right. But ifyou
look at like, MHRA, and NASCARand all those places, like Did
they dump insane amount of moneyand those places? Right, well,
it's because of viewership,right? I mean, like, I mean,

(01:58:05):
yeah,we're getting there haven't been
televised for long though eitheroff road. I mean, the mortality
is do a killer job. We'regetting there.
about it, but the ball istelevised, right?
Not the way that you're not theway they not not the way it
should be. Not the way you'retalking about. Yeah, like it's
not televised, like, well, so Iwent to nitro rallycross over
the weekend. And it was that,oh, it was fucking amazing.

(01:58:27):
Like, I all I did a good job.
Absolutely. They do a fantasticjob. So I noticed two things. I
noticed one, that the mint 400was very close to that very
close, we just need a little bitmore technology to be able to
broadcast from trucks, like thestar link and stuff. And we need
to be able to tell a little bitbigger of a story, right? So
they have limited amount ofcharacters in nitro rallycross.

(01:58:48):
Let's just call it like 10people that are really well
known, right? And they keep tothose core structures. Because
it's easy to tell a story. It'seasy for people to latch on to
be a fan. When you watch afootball game, you know who your
favorite player is, right? So ifall of a sudden I go to an off
road race, and I see 500 trucksout on course, cool. That's rad,
right? Like, we just made abunch of money because we just

(01:59:09):
had all these people. But itmakes it very difficult to tell
a story. If all of a sudden EricHardin is my favorite driver,
Jason Merrill's my favorite UTVdriver, and I have the story.
And I can latch on to that. AndI see these people that makes me
connected, and I may have neverknown about off road, all of a
sudden, I'm gonna do to HomeDepot that you can walk up to
and say, I know that guy. I loveoff road. So it's a different

(01:59:32):
thing. And I think we're growingto be able to get there, but I
think it's gonna take a littlebit of time and I think it's
gonna take I don't want to sayrestructuring. But I think that
there is a little bit ofrestructuring that needs to
happen.
Yeah, and and, you know, Desertis is harder to film, right? I
mean, you know, that's why Ilove your course. Yeah, but, you
know, short courses just, it'sjust different. You know, you

(01:59:54):
gotta beat the shit out of yourcar for 15 minutes and then you
rebuild it for the next fourhours. Over Yeah, that's that's
short course, you know.
Oh yeah. All right. Let's keepgoing then. So what question do
we leave off on? Oh, video orphoto videos or photos videos?
Like, what's the best likeInstagram or video that you've
seen lately?

(02:00:15):
I mean that one of our CROhittin that mount that was
pretty insane. I don't know howwe got through I don't think the
FLIR picked out thing.
He smashed doesn't pick upeverything.
I think pretty good. So RyanRCL. Kudos. All right, Jason.
Most memorable race. The men.
That's a good one. Yeah, thereason I the reason that I have

(02:00:37):
this question, though, and I'vetold this story a million times
is my most memorable race was atGlen Hill on when I was on rmat.
And I remember I just got like,I was sleeping on the start, I
got a shitty start. And at theend, I had almost passed on
Hamlin, right at the finishline. And I remember being in
that race. And I was probablyonly like, 13 or 14 years old.
But I remember. It was like oneof those movies like, What's

(02:01:01):
that movie with Bradley Cooper,where he's like, completely
focused. Like he's like laserfocused on Iran where he takes
takes a pill like laser focus,like that's what it felt like,
like I was in the zone, so muchthat you couldn't break me out
of like getting to the finishline first kind of thing. Like,
did you ever have any money tobeat them?
No, I was like, I thought youwere going into like a banger on

(02:01:24):
that one. Iwish I was but I was like I was
I was so far behind that wasalmost like three quarters of
lag behind. And I ended up beinglike, maybe two feet from
passing them at the end likeright at it. And it was one of
those things that I'll neverforget. Because I really have
never had that level of focusever since. I don't know if you
got from the back to the front.
I think it was just the laserfocus that I had. It was like I

(02:01:45):
was on some sort of like, druginside my system that just made
me think like superpower likeracing guy or something.
I had a one. At the very end ofthe year, they take all the UTVs
and the Lucas Oil series and putthem all together. The NA is the
turbos everything. And it's ashit show. Yeah, it's like 35

(02:02:05):
cars. And I remember I got ashitty star. I end up winning. I
ended up winning that raceagainst all the triples I was in
a naturally aspirated car. And Iwon that I won that one I came
from the back so that's likeYeah, yeah. Are you just like
all you couldn't do anythingwrong and didn't
know at the very last cornerlike somebody was was coming up

(02:02:25):
on me but I got over the finishbefore he ended up getting that
big trophy. You know, like theyhad this big championship trophy
for that one race because it's ashit show. Yeah, you know,
there's 35 cars and they're alldifferent classes. They just
throw them on the one friggindeal Yeah, what
did they call it? Like when thisbroke Jews and pro fours like
the World Cup or something likethat? Yeah, like the same kind
of shit. They did the same shitwith all the UTVs Have you ever

(02:02:47):
had that like, mental focus likewhere you were just locked in?
I mean, I felt like that at theminute for sure. Yeah, like just
calm cool and collected notstressed out you know what I
mean?
It's so It's so crazy becauselike as a racer, you want that
all the time but it doesn'talways work out always
work because there's a lot offrustration you know feeling
flustered Oh, somebody orsomething like you know you take

(02:03:12):
the wrong line or gettingsomebody's does and give you
blow a corner you lose the startoff the line, you know, all
these different things and thenyou're kind of chasing the whole
time. But ya know, when you getin that groove, it's killer.
Do that. Yeah, I couldn't Istill wish I had that. All
right. What's your favoritesnack? gushers Oh, big. Gotcha.

(02:03:34):
All right. I didn't expect that.
Yeah, I love Gushers.
Nice.
Supercross and motocross.
Supercross Supercross for sure.
Biggs, who are you going withright now? Like, have you been
watching and keeping up?
I mean, I always I love rocks.
And you know, just watching him.
So did you?
Were you pumped that he wonlast? Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah.
What about you Jason? Have youbeen watching it all keeping up?
Yeah, the last couple times? Ihaven't. No, but now just been

(02:03:58):
inundated with work. Yeah, Imean, we usually we usually
don't miss like an A one. Idon't think we've missed an a
one in forever. So hedid though. Dude, it's been
knocked down drag out like theracing this year has been pretty
insane. Um, I sawthe Deegan, you know, taken out
a thing Yeah, taken out his ownteammate saw that one. Those two
kids were on the same team,right? Diegans

(02:04:21):
Yeah, but I mean our Yeah, youcan just once a win I mean,
like, I mean, he's hungry. It'skind of crazy. But yeah, like I
was so pumped when Kenny wonlike because he's like my guy to
like, and maybe I don't know ifit's the same reason for you,
but I like him because he's beenthrough so much and he's never
given up he's definitely notgiving up it's rad. It's so
cool. And you can even see likeI saw some sort of video like a

(02:04:44):
long time ago when he goes tolike put his I don't know what
the chin strap on his helmet on.
You can see his arms don't worklike
they should like none of thoseguys and I was working like they
show candidates especially brokebut like Dude, it's all those
guys that I mean all The guysthat we've known over the years
like Nathan Ramsey and and yeahMcGrath and read all the people

(02:05:06):
that we're friends with and youknow, they're all put together
Bolton pins I mean every singleone of them,
dude. Yeah, it's crazy, right?
Yeah. Let's see here. Oh wellother former racing would you
like to try her? Um, Imean, I drive a UTV sometime for
sure. I didn'tthink you were gonna I thought
you're gonna pick jetski racing.
Oh No way. No way too old forthat speed
motor dragster speed boat.

(02:05:28):
Dude, he's this guy likes water.
I love water did they got theygot a big old badass boat next
door? Really? Yeah. What is thatas a fountain or is there
limits?
I don't know what that is. Butis that cool? All right. Final
question of the night did andthis means that if you answer
incorrectly This means we're notfriends. chips and guacamole or

(02:05:49):
french fries and ketchup, chipsand GWAC. All right, we're
friends. All right. Well, yeah.
So let's, let's kind of closeout the show. I think you should
probably give a big thanks toall the people that helped you
at least propelled to the man400 victory but honestly, it's
all the years leading up to thattoo, right?
Yeah, no, I mean, this doesn'thappen without tons of work and

(02:06:11):
sacrifice from everybody. Youknow, obviously my wife Diana,
thank thank you so much my dogstrophy and trick. They're named
after Trophy Truck and tricktruck. Oh, perfect. They, they
give me a lot of support. Solove them. Robert Caden, he met
Taylor of course, it's all youknow, my family for all the

(02:06:31):
support my brother, everythingJared puts into this. You know,
it was awesome. wouldn't be ableto do without him. My little
nephew Cole excited for hisfuture. And that is cool. He's
doing a great job. You know, andof course, our sponsors, you
know, the heart and auto group.
They do a killer job, Kingstonfury, pro Eagle, Jax Gibson
exhaust box of tools.

(02:06:53):
You got a lot of people to helpyou out. I'd like to personally
for you on your behalf. I'd liketo thank Jason Merrill for
calling your phone. There's somany times that unconditional
love night when you're out inthe middle of the ocean. Right,
right. But yeah, those thingsare like, that's just friends.
Right? Those things are so coolthat you guys have been through
so much. And he's still sittinghere. Just hashing it

(02:07:15):
funny. A lot of the dumb thingsI've done, Jason's been there
for Yeah,go. I figured that was coming.
Right? That's expected, I guess.
Oh, my God.
But it is cool, man. I love tosee that. And that's what the
dirt life is all about. Right?
It's getting behind the scenesand understanding all the people
that are really here. You know,like, do you really know Eric
Gardner, Jason Merrill, when yousee him at the track? Maybe? But
most likely, you don't until youget to have these conversations.

(02:07:36):
So every everybody has a story.
Yeah. 100%. And I appreciate youguys, Sharon today. So that was
awesome. All right. So you guyscan always go check out our
sponsor deals page on dirt lifeshow.com Hit that you can learn
how to get sponsors, you can getall kinds of deals for your
products, whatever you guys wantnext week, we don't necessarily
have a show. We're gonna see ifwe're actually down in Mexico on

(02:07:59):
Monday. So tune in for that payattention on our social media.
Thank you to everybody here atHardin motorsports Robert Kayden
and all the guys thank you forcoming down to the shop. Thanks
for having us. Yeah, and thanks,Jason. For coming down.
No problem. Glad you one. Gladyou pulled it off out of them
passed out watching you thewhole time. Like he's gonna get
it. He's gonna get it come onthere.

(02:08:21):
We did. Everybody was so highman even I was
hyped because I you know, like,like, obviously we have our
friends from school, but theyjust don't get it. They don't
they don't get it.
We get to the finish line. Allthese people are crying. I'm
like, what? What's wrong? What'swrong? We won. We made it.
There don't they don't realizelike what it took to get there.
Yeah, you know, years. Yeah.
years time, money energy. Like,just, you know, it's just crazy.

(02:08:44):
That's why That's why it's like,like when he finished when he
passed a finish line. Andthey're like, he won. I was
like, dude, yeah, like textingthem blowing them up, like, Bro.
Got it?
How many messages you get onyour cell phone? Still coming
through?
Pretty much everybody I've metin my whole life. You know, the

(02:09:04):
social media stuff blown up, butyou win them in 400. And you're
famousfor racers get it? Yeah. People
that race. People that go outand do it. They get it? Yep. You
know, totally well, and I'm surepeople that are close to you,
whether they do race or not.
They're still stoked. They seeit. Yeah, they get a they see
the commitmentfor sure. The hard
work. Well, actually, I forgotto ask that. So like what's next
for you? You're just gonna keepracing.

(02:09:25):
Um, Cole's racing, the morerace. I think it's April 29.
Last week in April and the 16th.
Honor, I think I'm going to racefor Frankie out there also. And
then I mean, I think our nextbig race is going to be the
California 300. The mortalitiesrace in October, you're gonna
take the big trucks. big trucktrying try and get that triple
crown. I haven't seen thepoints, but we should be
probably second.

(02:09:47):
Yeah, explain that a little bit,because Robert was trying to
explain it to me a little bitearlier, like, so you guys are
still in the points for thattriple crown, but how does it
work?
I mean, it's the hand king ofthe hammers, the mint 400 And
then the California 300 andWhoever requires the most points
wins I think there's a bigperson so if
you if you win the California300 You get second place you
probably take itYeah, I mean depending on how
Adam does you know householderand where did he finish and the

(02:10:09):
minute you got third third wewon the hammers and got third
fourth and the hammers are youlike one point behind him or
something? I'm not sure it'sgonna be close you know?
So if you won the next one thatwould probably cure it I would
probably doit that's actually kind of crazy
to think about the logisticsbehind it because you finish on
hammers fourth and he finishedthird so you're right there yeah

(02:10:32):
on the hammers.
So yeah, so he's so yeah, so ifyou want you guys would be like
appointed to for him. Yeah,there were a few more entries
though. I think at the likethree more trophy trucks at the
at the hammers and there werethe but still like that brings a
whole different logisticalequation. So like you're paying
attention to Adam the wholetime. Yeah, you know what I

(02:10:52):
mean? Like you obviously want towin the race, but if all of a
sudden like he's dropping back,Oh, I better keep the truck
alive.
Yeah. Or if he breaks then allyou got to do is finish.
Yeah, I think yeah. And Barrsaid on how the points break and
anything can happen in Barstowyeah Parsons shit show you that
track was fun last year though.
It was it was it burntonce it burned in I liked it a

(02:11:13):
lot more than you knoweverybody's giving credit scared
a lot of guys away when it wassuper tight pre running and all
that but you know, I'm excitedfor it next time.
When are you going to have yournew card on?
I gotta buy it first.
You got till October. Let'sget a guy I have some scan. So
we scan a couple cars and we'rejust playing with some stuff

(02:11:34):
right now. I don't I don't know.
I got I got some stuff. I got aI got Yeah, I got a whole bunch
of new machines at the shop. SoI got a new press break. Got a
welding robot I got a CNC lathe.
So I'm learning how to do a lotof stuff real fast,
dude. Yeah, that's kind of coolthough that you're actually
doing all that stuff. Benefitall the people like that you're
helping out like hey, Danburybuild in America. Yeah. Made in

(02:11:55):
America in America.
All right. So thank you toeverybody for joining. We really
appreciate it. Man. This was agreat show. Glad that you guys
can hang out with us. Reallyappreciate it. Always hit us up
in the DMS app to dirt life showand let us know who you guys
want to talk to you guys want tosee and what we could do better.
Thank you to all of oursponsors. Thank you for living

(02:12:16):
your life with us. We'll see youguys next week. Thanks for
listening to the dirt life show.
See you next week.

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Episode 155 - Eric Hardin - Mint 400 Trophy Truck Winner

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 155 - Eric Hardin - Mint 400 Trophy Truck Winner