October 15, 2020 • 48 mins
Shane Tecklenburg is a legendary MoTec tuner and engine management systems expert; Danny Drinan was a top-level USAC Sprint & Midget driver who is now a renowned designer and manufacturer at Drinan Racing Products. Together in our studio with Rico Elmore, Ken Stout and Georgia Adeline, Shane and Danny talk about their experiences and contributions with the record-holding fastest piston-engine wheel driven car in the world: Speed Demon.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Don't forget to check out the Benton House and one
at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield, Illinois, presented by
fat Heads I Wear. We'd love to see out there Sunday,
October eighteen. This is Danny Droning. I'm Shane Tecklenberg and
this is the Skinny from Fathead Studios and Speedway, Indiana.
This is the Skinny once again, Welcome to the Skinny.
(00:24):
We have a couple of great guests that will join
us here today, Ken stat Rico Elmore and of course
the lovely Georgia Hannabury sitting between She is the rose
between the two thorns that we will have with us
here today. A name that you might not have heard
of in a while, Danny Dryning has joined us here.
Great to have him inside the studio. Actually has his
business Dryning Industries here located pretty close to us here
(00:46):
in Speedway. And then another name that if you're in
the industry you would certainly know, but if you're not
in the industry, certainly not a household name. His name
is Shane Tecklenberg. One of the guys that's behind the
scenes more times than not with any team that you
may see but we could pick out a subject if
you want, and we could talk about just a couple
of his accomplishments. And this is just a couple of
(01:07):
quick ones. Here, Hold on a minute, is that last
one tuning Kent's car for nothing? No, that was Paul, y'all.
He introduced me to Paul. You also again without Shane.
I mean, none of it ever happens. He's in charge
of the entire motorsports world from time to time. But yeah,
great to have both of you guys with us. Thanks
for making the time, Thanks guys for having us. Yeah,
thanks for the invite. Man, I got excited for a
(01:28):
second that he said there was some really important people
going to be on and I thought, who else are
they gonna When did they get here? Right? I can't
wait to meet him. It's the astronaut over your shoulder.
They'll talk in a minute. Said that was your dad. Actually, yeah, ye,
he's That's how we preserved him. So it's nice to
have him here. I always point out the fighter jet Yeah, yeah,
he was one of the first classes to go through
(01:49):
jet fighter pilot training in the Air Force in the fifties,
so one of the one of the coolest stories and
I'll make it quick. Was you know, they would fly
in and they would they would call in the approach right. Well,
so it's the fifties and my dad calls it and
my dad was a captain by the time he came out,
but he calls in, you know, Elmore and Yeager on approach. Well,
(02:13):
they land and there's about, I don't about five hundred
people waiting on Chuck Yeager to get out of the plane.
But it was Bill Yeager that was flying with my dad.
You're not Chuck Yeager anything, No, this is Bill, dude.
I don't I don't think you don't need to mention that.
I think it's way better if you say, yeah, my
dad flew with Yeager man good stuff. So, as it
turns out, I've known Shane for a number of years.
(02:33):
He helped us out with our race team. I guess
it was back probably around two thousand, twelve or so thirteen,
somewhere in that general area. So we've been buddies, you know,
ever since, and uh kind of keep up with some
of the stuff that he's done countless countless countless world records,
be a drag racing or on the salt, whatever the case.
May be and was part of the speed Demon team,
(02:53):
and they set a record here this year in the
Salt as the fastest piston powered car on the planet.
And then, as it turns out, he says, he says,
do you know a guy by the name of Danny Dryning?
And I said, why do I know that name? I
know that that name is so familiar, but I can't
connect it to a discipline and I don't know why,
just off the top of my head. And he said, well,
he ran a bunch of sprint car stuff and ran
(03:14):
some indy car stuff. I'm like, oh, yeah, absolutely, okay,
makes sense. So it turns out that Danny Dryning is
also on the speed Demon team. I'm like, oh, I
had no clue. So we just got the chatting about it.
But congratulations to both of you guys on on quite
an accomplishment on the Salt here this year. You know,
it's a result of really a bunch of brilliant minds together.
You know, nobody, nobody, a single person made the difference,
(03:36):
but everybody putting their heads together brought it about this year.
It's it's several years worth of evolution because they had
a you know, they had a car before this, the
the old speed Demon and that car was fast and
they set lots of records with that car too, before
I ever was involved with him. Um, and then that
car crashed in two thousand and fourteen. I think the
first time you do it, you always think of ways
(03:57):
to do it better next time. So that's kind of
how this car came to be. And I mean, we
just keep making it better every year. And it's it's
a group of people that all have that are all
basically experts in some area, even though we all race
in different disciplines, but everybody brings something to the table
and there's a level of respect that's given. That's like
(04:19):
when you step in the door. It's not like so
there's no there's no big arguments about what to do
with this or that. It's always like, you know, somebody
has an expertise in a certain areas, like, well, what
do we do to fix this? And somebody knows because
they that's what they do. So it's it accelerates really
fast as far as development goes. So that's that's why
it's able to do what it's what it's able to do.
It takes run after run to really see how those
(04:40):
those systems are going to affect things, you know, and
a lot of times you put a safety in place
to make sure something catastrophic doesn't happen, but that enabling
that action can bring about another problem. And you know, uh,
as many times as you try to put safe fail
safes in place, um, they bring about something that you
didn't expect. And that was you know, a lot of
(05:01):
what we went through in the first couple of runs.
Might as well throw our friends at Lucas soil a
little low because they sponsored this this car as well,
so heavily involved. Absolutely all the lubricants on the car
are for us by Lucas, and I mean we have
custom stuff for that car for that application that Tom
brewised for us to use, and some of it's and
like try this, try this, and try this, and tell
me which one is better. Some of it we've already
(05:22):
been through that process. But every single lubricant on that
car comes from Lucas, and most of them are bespoke
for that application. So here, let's watch the thing make
a pass here, right, so stop it. All of those
(05:47):
speeds you have mile too speed that's really the average
speed between the first mile and the second mile. So
in reality, I mean that's your speed at the mile
and a half. Two and a quarter is your speed
by looking at the top time between the second mile
and the two and a quarter mile marker. Your three
mile speed is your average speed between two and three,
(06:08):
Your four mile speed is your average speed between three
and four, and your five mile speed is then your
average between four and five. Exit speed is a hundred
and thirty two ft long trap speed trap hundred thirty
two ft before the fifth mile, right, So your exit
speed is what you're ending the mile at, your entering
the mile at something less than that, and the average
over that distances for sixty nine. So in this case
(06:28):
you might say it's eight mile an hour less than
sixty nine. It enters at sixty one at the end
of the fourth mile excess at four seventy seven. Average
ends up being by the way you qualify for your
record return run. If you qualify and you screw up
on your record return round, you don't get the record.
You start over qualifying, you don't get to try again
to get the record, you know, And this this actually
kind of goes back to n h R A. I mean,
(06:51):
I know, I don't remember when they actually changed the rule.
But you know, you used to have to back up
your record within one percent. I mean that was forever
and ever and ever, And just a few years ago
they finally said, okay, listen, our timing system is solid
enough now that the backup within one percent it's always correct.
The first time he did it is probably correct. Let's
just go with the first time. So now you can
(07:12):
set a record on on your first effort if you
are able to get over it under dependent on et
your speed. But they clearly have not adjusted on the
Salt rule that once one and done, it's they've changed it.
They've adapted it to the Facebook rule, which is if
you do it once and you put enough qualifiers on it,
(07:34):
this is the world's fastest blue Mustang with tires on
the back and tinted windows and a small block with
twin turbos on alcohol and chrome three injectors, crags with
one rusty spoke. Yes, that's good. I like that, but
I mean very technical. It's pretty amazing that you know
all the parameters that you have to fall within too
(07:56):
to make it all happen. And then, like you say,
they have all of the issues. You know, when people
don't know unless you're out there on the sault with
that team, knowing everything that they're fighting their way through.
You know, you're you're at home and you're kind of
paying attention. Oh man, it looks like they ran a
pretty decent number, and then all of a sudden, you know,
you see the four twenty nine and it's like, all
of a sudden, four sixty nine is like, oh man,
you know there's a spread, and you know, you know,
(08:17):
it's a pretty big window what happened on the first one. Now,
you know, when it looks like it's doing well, it's
so hard to even qualify or you know, it's just
set a record that you don't often want to look
the gift horse in the mouth if you qualify and say,
let's just not even go to impound. Let's try again
to do because we think we can do better, because
you're you're just sort of asking for it, right, But
(08:38):
there is some strategy involved in it where it's sometimes
we do because here's the thing. If we go to impound,
we're done for the day. We don't get to try
again until tomorrow. The hardest part at the same time, though,
is when you go into impound all right, now you
have some time to go through the problems with the car,
but you have also have time to look at the data. Okay,
and the hardest decisions made are done right then because
(09:00):
you have to decide, all right, we we we we
saw this, we can change this, we can make these improvements.
But at the same time, if you go to too greedy,
you could blow the second round and ruin the whole thing.
So it's it's a balancing game of sometimes you have
to pull the reins back and say, look, you know,
let's be comfortable with this, so let's make this little
tiny improvement so we can verify what we just did
(09:22):
instead of trying to go for broke. So it's tough. Yeah,
there's a fair bit of strategy that goes into it.
But at the end of the day, you know, we
finally got almost everything right, and it ran that run
that you had up there, that four seventy seven exit
and four sixty nine would then be. That's what it
was termed the six nine run because that was the
next qualifying run on our new two day old four
(09:43):
thirty nine mile in our record. So we went four
sixty nine on our own four thirty nine a day
later when we fixed all the stuff that was that
we thought was wrong, and then we are an impound,
like Danny saying, and we're looking at that going oh,
well that's screwed up and this is wrong and that's
not right. So as we're fixing these things and concept
of just it's fast, leave it alone, you can't. You
(10:04):
can't leave it broken, like we have to fix it
and when we fix it, we may overachieve and screw
ourselves up when we fix it, right, I mean, he
was part of the guys, the group of guys that
found the exhaust leak, you know, on the on the
one side of the engine, which was another reason why
we weren't making the boost we were supposed to make.
So when he finds exhausta I had already made a
decision to go change the spring in one of the
(10:24):
waste gates. There's a preload spring and I thought I'll
even this thing up by turning one spring in. So
once he found the leak, it's like, well, there's the problem.
I need to go now undo the spring change I
made to put it back because now we fixed an exhaust,
but don't know what we're gonna get And then it
turned out what we got was way more than we expected.
And on that last the fix had more effect than
we were leaking, more than we thought we were, and
(10:46):
we thought we were so what were you how much difference?
So it made like I want to say, like thirty
four pounds of boost on that run that he just
had up at four seventy seven, and the next the
next morning. Because we fixed the exhaust leak, it ran
into the next safety, which was cutting the boost control
off if it got to thirty eight pounds. So the
(11:06):
entire way down the racetrack on that return run, it's
going thirty eight pounds, shut the boost control off, thirty pounds,
turned back on, thirty eight pounds, turned back off, go
down to thirty turn back on. All the way down,
just like this, like every two point four seconds is
cycling back and forth. And this is one thing it's
really awesome about this whole team and having all of
these kind of guys show up from different disciplines and
different genres. Somebody says, you know what, why is Shane
(11:31):
at the starting line and when the cars at the
other end of the track, we gotta wait for him
to come all the way from the starting line to
get his laptop on the car and get the data out.
We could be way faster at turning the car around
if Shane was at the finished line instead. So Shane,
from now on you're gonna be at the finish line
in the finish line truck, which turned out to be
completely rad because that thing comes by at that speed. Dude,
it's like, there's there's no nothing in my life I've
(11:52):
ever seen when you're down there at that end and
that thing goes by you just watching it on TV.
It doesn't do it justice. I just can't imagine sound
like where I'd be standing close enough to watch it
go by and hear it where I still feel safe,
knowing if something went wrong, you could be in the
wrong place and there's no getting away from it. The
closest you can get is a quarter mile to the
side of the course, so we're a quarter mile away
(12:13):
from the car. But it sounds like a P fifty
one dive bomb in your ass. I mean, it's like,
I can't even it's so awesome. Every time it happened,
I'd be outside the truck, they'd be get in, Get in,
we're gonna go. We're gonna go, oh yeah, yeah, sorry
forgot for a second. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
You could have just heard it two hours earlier. And
when it goes by again, it's like, oh my god,
(12:36):
it's phenomenal. I hope to get there one day to
go see that. By all means, like, if you are
into cars in any way, shape or form, you deserve
to treat yourself to going to Bonnaville at least one
time in your life. If you go, you guys should
do that. You know, there's one one really amazing part
of the whole bottle of experience, and that I've been
(12:57):
in motorsports most of my life, all right, And when
you're at the racetrack, you know, people are friendly, they
will say hi, whatever, but they don't want you in
their pets per se. They don't want you looking at
what they're doing. They don't want to tell you what
they're doing. But when you go to Bonneville, it's a
complete one degree spin. The people all but drag you
into their pits to show you how they built it,
(13:19):
how what they did, and it's just a whole completely
different mindset. It was really really refreshing to be around
a new group like that. How many people didn't take
to make that happen. How many people are on the
teams from different areas, from different as, different disciplines, and
some of them from the shop that work on it
(13:39):
on a continual basis during the rest of the year.
And three or four or five you guys that flew
in just strictly for Bonneville. Kenny is uh the carbon Kenny.
He's the he's the genius of the carbon world. His
brother Keith runs the Hendricks fabrication shop. Um, so there's
there's experts from every every area coming out there to
(13:59):
make it carbon carbon. Yeah. I saw it on his
stuff too, right, he's on that, Yeah, Kenny dut Whiler.
You guys mentioned. The nice part is, um, there's such
a respect level. Like when it's time for an engine
change where there's been a failure, we don't talk. We
just everybody knows what to get do, what to do
and make it happen. Nobody worries about that finger pointing
(14:21):
and oh that you screwed that deal up or that's
his fault. It's like everybody just like we know why
we're here. Stuff happens, how do we go, how do
we go better. First of all, engine change stuff. They've
got that down to a science with that car. I
mean it's like a drag car. It's like the only
Bonneville car that's built like a drag race car. They
can have the old one out and the new one
in and that means go from big to small block
if you want, or put the same kind of engine
(14:41):
in and they can have that done in I think
an hour and five. They did well. We we had
we had the motor change done the first day with
going from the big motor to the next one up
in the list in about forty minutes. Okay, and that's
changing exhaust systems, wiring everything for the from the turbo attachments,
everything that has to happen. Um. So it's it's a
(15:01):
pretty good system. Wow, that's really good system. And then
after they figured out they could fix the big block,
they took that one and it's not hot. Right. We
now are making a list because we can't remember next
year what we were talking about that we needed to
fix this year for next year. But right now I
think that list has nineties six items on it. Some
(15:24):
of them are really somewhere related to the car. Summer. Hey,
we need this wrench, we need this tool, and some
of them are how do we run the car better?
Let's let's look into why this is happening, you know.
So again we have a huge list everybody's ideas combined.
Everyone that went sent some number of items to make
better the team better as a whole. And so we
(15:45):
got to work through that between now and you know
when we when we go run again, what's the goal
for next year? Uh, when you go eight one, there's
one number that screams at you immediately, and that for
sure it is the goal in my mind unless someone
because I mean I don't know what the actual goal.
I know my goal is. My goal is let's see
(16:06):
if we can go five hundred. Now, that's not on
line with what everybody else. I'm like, how do you
go for any one and not say I think we
can go five and from Shay and I could probably
back this up if you look at the data there
there's a lot of areas we could still make it well.
And clearly we had a chance to talk before the show.
Shane's Shane's actually staying with me for a couple of days,
(16:28):
so we were we were chatting about it and and
you're right. I mean all the little things that have
gone wrong that if you make all of those right,
you know, I mean there's there's big games there. Well.
We have these alarms that come up that you know,
tell you if something's wrong with the car. So you know,
you don't go make your record return run with a
cylinder out because the dash is telling you, hey, number
one cylinder is not running and you can choose to
(16:48):
do something about it or decide if it's lying or
whatever you're gonna do. So from time to time, when
you power the car up, it will flag an alarm
because it it just crosses the corner of the thresholds
as the sister him is booting up and it's not
all the way up. So it did. They turned the
car on for the record return run and it had
an alarm on the dash, and since I wasn't there,
Kenny didn't know how to clear. There's a button on
(17:10):
the dash it says, okay, alarm. If you just press
that button, the alarm goes away. Everything's normal, but the
alarm comes up, turns on all the warning lights. The
warning lights have priority over the shift lights, so it's
got the red warning lights flashing in George's face, and
there's the in car, you know, I mean, they told
us about it, but the in car afterwards, it's like
so painful to watch because George's point, you know, you
can't hear the audio, but you could tell what's going on.
(17:32):
He's like, look at look at the dash. Kenny leans
over and he looks at it, and then Kenny goes
like this, and George goes like this, and silent movie.
And then and then Kenny goes ah and he leans
in and he tells George, and you can just make
out he's like, just shift it on the shift light
or you know, just shift it on the revolomitter. So okay,
that's what he does. He runs it out, runs it
into the revolomitter, let's sit on the limitter, plugs it
(17:52):
in the next gear. Wait, still, it hits the limitter,
plugs it in then. So sometimes he let it sit
on the limited coil and I can't take anything away
from and you tell him to put it on the
revlotter and he does what he's told. So I mean,
it is what it is. It's back to if I
had been there, I could have fixed it. If the
alarm wasn't there, which was part of me programming something
beforehand and deciding what was gonna be fine, but also
(18:15):
a part of the issue that you know, you're on
a five mile course, you're at the finish line and
no radio communication because you're too far away. Yeah we
have a radio, but I don't think they even thought
to get on the radio because they were starting the
car to go make the run, and I think they
just instead of shutting the car off and stint, it
was like, hey, you know what just shifted when it
hits the revolar. So that run from the time George
(18:37):
comes off the truck, which I'll tell you another story
about this too, but when the time George comes off,
the truck goes full throttle until he pulls the shoot
is sixty nine and a half seconds. Sixty and a
half seconds full throttle, right He's on the revelomter for
thirteen and a half of those sixty seconds, So we're
not accelerating at the rate that we could accelerate it
(18:59):
had we not been on the revlement or so, so
right off the bat, if you fix the silly things
that happened with that run, my guess is we're gonna
go six seven mile an hour faster out the back,
so it's gonna go out the back at seven it's
gonna average probably two or three mile four seventy three average.
Without turning it up. Really, you're just making it do
(19:20):
what it's actually supposed to do, and at the turbo
stated a steady boost, all of these things are going
to be better, right, and then if you turn it
up from there. I mean, we made a run earlier
in the week that went about four It was a
about two thirds full power. We gained about a thousand
horse with a thousand horsepower gain, and it can't even
(19:40):
say it was a full thousand because the boost is
up and down, up, down, But if you use the
average of thirty four, that's about a thousand horse power increase,
and we gained sixty exit speed from that thousand horse power.
We probably, realistically, without changing any hardware on the engine,
have another three or four hundred horsepower left, and if
we put but turn her bow on that can is
(20:01):
more efficient. For that size engine, we could potentially have
five or six hundred more it's power left. So with
five or six hundred more horsepower, assuming we went four
eighty six out the back on that run. I'm not
that good at the math, but I'm guessing that that
might be enough to go over five hundred. And then
what you're looking for is nineteen, So maybe there's enough
to And if it's not, then whatever I'm wrong, I'm
it's always wrong anyway. So it's also relative to the
(20:24):
moisture content of the salt. Awesome, awesome has to be good.
If the salt is good like it was this year
or better, I'm pretty sure we can do it. Now. Again,
you saw how hard it was just to do what
we did this year. How many things are gonna go wrong,
but everything goes right and the salt is good, I'm
pretty sure we can do it. I don't think we
can average five hundred, but I definitely think we can
exit it five months. So what do you look for
(20:45):
in the salt, Well, it's the moisture content. You know,
it was the driest it's been in quite a while
out there, because um, when it gets moist it loses grip.
Imagine that you're just running in slush in a sense,
and the tires are round. There is a flat contact
spot on the bottom of these tires. So the actual
area that's touching the ground is maybe a half inch wide. Okay,
(21:08):
so that on salt, which is not solid anyway. Um,
the detraction the available grip is so minimum minuscule. When
you add moisture to it, it just gets horrible. So
having dry salt is a big part of having the
grip to go that fast. The thing makes thousands of
pounds of down force, but you have thousands of pounds
of horsepower trying to rotate that round tire on a
(21:29):
on a no grip surface. So it's really important to
have the grip of the of the surface itself. So
we're going thrown it out there right now August seven
through block off on your calendar. You don't have to
come for the whole week, but definitely come earlier a week.
We got to be there for the Yeah, that's right.
(21:49):
Thanks for the pressure, Georgia. And what's the ride on that?
I mean, I know that it's somewhat smooth, but well,
this year is reasonably smooth, but there's other years where
it's terribly terribly rough. Um. And like the year Danny
Thompson went forty eight or whatever he did, you could
see him making corrections in the wheel that are like
(22:10):
insane and it's like is he even moving because nothing's
vibrating or shaking around. And years before that, it's like
it's bumping and shaking around and it's crazy. And then
I can't even see how he could focus at all.
I remember when Raleigh was still with USAC and Usak
used to time that am I right by saying that, yeah?
He actually I've ran into at Kokomo a couple of
(22:31):
weeks ago, sitting together, and he was talking about that
part of it that he used to really enjoy being
out there and being part of USAK taking care of it.
I remember when he told me that we were at
some event and he goes, yeah, he goes, I gotta
get out of here. I'm headed a bottle there. I said, oh, cool,
going to check it out he is. Now we do
the timing for it. So yeah, And just to follow
(22:51):
up really quickly, So just to for the fans that
are listening, listening in and possibly watching, Shane is really
the data acquisition guy. You are the computer guy. You
pay attention to a lot, I mean one of the
guys and pay attention to that end of it. Uh, Danny,
I'm guessing your master fabricator guy. Your what is why
did they bring you onto? The started off when they
(23:13):
went to build the new car. UM Steve Watt, who
sort of uh is a leader of this whole ship. UM.
He owns Maxwell Industries. We've been friends for many years,
and he said, look, he goes, there's a bunch of
systems that I need somebody to come out and build. UM,
like the canopy on it has done very much like
a jet fighter. Okay, UM, I designed and built that stuff.
(23:35):
There's a lot to do. I built a majority of
the stuff in the cockpit, control systems, UM and many
parts of the car all the way through. That was
the fabrication end of things. But this year I kind
of got asked to take on a different role, and
part of it was maybe be a mediator liaison between
Shane and Kenny Duttweiler UM and through my experience and
(24:00):
to sports UM, I very respectfully observed Shane and Kenny
and what they were seeing data wise and offered some
sort of racers advice on occasion. And UH, it was
very difficult position to be put in. At the last
minute they called me and asked me to do it,
and I was like, oh God, you can't possibly ask
(24:21):
me he goes in between two of the best in
the world and tell them what to do, and that
you I'm divorced, right, I mean, so it was. It
was a great challenge of mine to go out there
and first of all earned their respect, um, and learn
the system. Shane knows it like the back of his hand. Okay,
(24:42):
he instantly can respond to anything he can see on
the screen. He's done it so long and he knows
it so well. It's it's really refreshing to work with
somebody that knows their their their whole program so well.
And I probably wore him out with questions for the
first couple of days, trying to pick his brain to
see how he looked at things. And I just was
(25:02):
offering the racers point of view on a lot of things. Um,
they know how to make big power, but a lot
of times from a racer's perspective, it's about how to
get to the to the finish line. And I hope
that some of my inquiries will put it helped change
things this year. Uh. Look, I think I know what
I know because I've built it all on on logic.
(25:25):
Maybe some of it is experienced, but most of it's
logic and you know physics, and but sometimes there's a
gray area, and even just in explaining it to someone,
you go, oh, wait a minute, it can't work that way.
Just by having the words come out of your mouth
and tell somebody go, oh that doesn't that can't be right,
and now you rethink that now of a sudden, you
straighten that little error out that you had in your thinking.
And so for me, I welcome having because a lot
(25:48):
of a lot of my enquiries if you were where
when I would see something in the data. All right,
he's got hundreds of channels of data to look at
and to try and analyze all of that in we
have thirty minutes, okay, is an enormous job. But for
him to try and have to do all of that
and come up with suggestions for changes, it's just, truthfully
(26:09):
asking too much of a guy. So for me to
be able to sit there and look at things and
respectfully ask a question to maybe trigger something in his
mind to steer um that direction, I think our chemistry
worked really well together. And you brought that up. You
brought that exact scenario up where you said, you know,
it's still of me trying to figure it all out myself.
The way we work on this team is I tell
(26:30):
everybody what the problem is, because somebody might locate the
problem that has nothing to do with my end of it,
and then I can go verify that what they said
is correct. And you said that was exactly the scenario
one time. There's seven fifty channels of data between me
and Kenny. There's no way we can We're falling down
the wormhole of whatever that most obvious problem is with
the car right now, and we're in the middle down
(26:50):
here with our heads in the you know, in the hole,
trying to figure out where the problem is. And someone
standing back could look and go, hey, what's going on
with the oil pressure right there? And then I can't
even look there. I'm busy, I'm beyond the all pressure.
I'm way down here looking at this other problem, and
they steer you back into the realm of hey what
about this, Oh man, that's really what's wrong. We could
fix it, and we would have made another run and
(27:10):
made a mistake, but we took one. One guy found
one thing that made it worth it. So so let's
talk about Danny drining for a moment. We'll go back
in time and accomplish youth stack racer number of wins
inside of a midget and chasing a championship. At at
one point a matter of fact, it looked like you
were gonna win one. You've also attempted to twice to
(27:32):
uh qualify for the five D and and both instances
things didn't go a little bit wrong. They went They
went pretty big wrong. Yeah, there's been a lot of
bumps in the road all the way. Um back in
two that was the first picture we're seeing here on
the on the wall. Pressure move that I truly put on,
(27:54):
that I put on myself, the pressure of winning the championship.
It meant so much to me. I made a stupid mistake.
I put a move on. Mahoney, they're going into the corner,
which I never would have done or never should have done,
and ran over his tire and and about ended things
for me. Um, but uh, it was gave me the
drive to get back. I mean, that happened in August,
(28:17):
and it separated my arm at the elbow, and it
chopped my finger off, and it crushed the retina in
my eye and broke my pelvis and made a mess
of me. But in November I was back in the
race car. I really I won the first heat race
back in the car, trying to prove to myself that
I hadn't lost it, which was not really true. Um,
(28:39):
there was a lot of head injuries from that incident
that took a couple of years to work through and
uh get my confidence in my my my game back.
But I think it was ninety four, Tony Stewart and
I were having a very active year, we'll call it.
There was quite a few incidents that he and I
(29:00):
had together. Um wanted a dirt race down in Richmond, Indiana,
where I led it till about two laps to go
when there was a restart and he went up through
the infield and blasted me out of the way. So
I went down to the next corner and punted him
and parked him and spirited they call that. I think
that's a spirited battle at sassy out there, and uh,
(29:24):
I just couldn't see that in you if don't piss
him off. So the most difficult part and what changed
my whole career was what USAX decision that followed this. Okay,
I was sponsored by i w X. The owner of
i w X came to me, and he had a
(29:45):
whole plan laid out for me that was gonna be
two years in US act. Then I was going to
run the NASCAR Trucks Busch Series and Winston Cup, and
I was the one that he chose to do it with. Well,
the very next race after all the happened, there was
two races in one weekend. One was Odessa, Missouri, the
other was Kansas City. And he had already purchased fift
(30:07):
tickets for his employees and his best customers to come
to these races. Well, they suspended me from him for
the actions on the racetrack, and the owner of i
w X, Steve Coulter, called uh. Capel's was the head
of the ship at the time. He said, look, he goes, well,
we're on your only corporate sponsor in this series. You know,
have an understanding suspending from the next two races. There
(30:30):
have all all these people coming. Um, all this was
in place, and Capel said, no, our decisions final, and
so he called us and he fired us, and he
shut the race team down, and that whole plan for
my life was over. And I can't I can't blame
anybody then then myself because I'm I was a driver.
I made the change, the changes the choices, um, and
(30:52):
it changed the direction of things. So then ninety six
came around when the I r L started, and I
think it was their way to sort of make up
for what what they know they did with their decision.
They came to me and said, look, if you can
put a driver development program, because you have background in
the indie cars, um, well we'll get you in a
(31:14):
ride if you can help get some other drivers through
rookie orientation. So I called some friends of mine from
Colorado and they brought a car down that was an
extra Newman Hass car UM, and I did my r
OP thing and at first, and then I did Tys
Carlson and they did. Andy Mitchner helped those two guys
get through, and then they had me set up to
drive a car for Scandia. So I went down and
(31:35):
got fit up for the car for Scandia, and the
guys from Colorado came to me and they said, look, Um,
Carlson's of asked us some offers us some money to
try and get him qualified for the five hundred, but
he doesn't really have any seat time. Would you shake
the car down and get it trimmed out for qualifying.
I said, sure, no problem, you know you guys helped
me get here. I'll do whatever. And I, uh, it
(31:58):
was probably made him a mistake. At that point, my
mind was already thinking about the next car of the
ride and everything that was put in place. And I
went down and I did about a six lap run
in the other car had a pretty big understeer, so
I said, hey, let's take some tab off the rear wing.
I said, I gotta get a balance in this thing. Well,
(32:18):
the simple fact that I said it was a pretty
big understeer. Normally you changed the rear wicker tab in
fifty thou increments okay, which doesn't sound like much, but
it's tons of down force and a big balance change
in the car. Because I said big, they took off
a hundred thousands. I didn't ask, they didn't say. I
went out of the pits and first time by going
(32:39):
in to turn one, the car swapped ins, flipped upside down,
crushed me up pretty bad. And did it break your
your hip? Crushed my hip? I have three steel plates
and forty screws holding it together and one drill bit
did they leave it in there. Did they forget when
I when I went in for the first meeting at
(33:00):
the doctor after the surgery, He's got all the the
X rays up on the wall, right, He's like, look,
here's the plates that we put in you, and here's
the screws and blah blah blah. And I'm pretty good
at understanding fabrication, all right, So well that one there
doesn't look like a screw. It's like, yeah, he goes,
I broke it real bit off in you. But it's
(33:21):
stainless steel, so we just left it in there. No worries,
It'll be fine. What could go wrong? I mean, there
is good news and all of this though from that
time period till now. If you're the guy that did
the cockpit on Speed Demon and you're the same guy
that put the battery and we have to turn the
car upside down to get it out, you definitely made
some improvements. There is light at the end of the
(33:43):
tunnel for you, after all, Danny. I appreciate that. That's
that's one thing I've always known of Danny, and I
mean I've been around us a long long time. And
Rick Payne, there's a mutual great friend of ours that
had bars here and still has bars in Indianaples has
always helped Danny out and and and to this day
(34:03):
still speaks about you. You know, he came in and
of course he's Hollywood man. He's he's got things moving
and shake and as usual and uh, but you know,
he comes in and we we always always shared Danny stories.
But I mean just some of the things that Danny
would show up with at the track. You're like, man,
what is that? And I'm telling you he would go
(34:25):
out and he would do a man, I mean, amazing
things with it. Rick was actually a big part of
the very first uh Aerol car that I built. Um
it was. I worked in the IndyCar industry for a
long time and I was like, I've had enough of this.
I want to go off and pursue my career. So
I didn't plan it really well. I rented a shop
(34:46):
and I had a toolbox and that was about it. Okay.
So I started a fabrication business and we used to
go to Rich's restaurant mc Gilbrey's right up the street
here for lunch every day and we created a good friendship.
But I was like, man, I want to build this
new car. You know, is there in a way you
could help me out? Well, he went to this extreme.
He got a five thousand dollar a loan for me.
(35:07):
He goes, look, goes, you gotta make the payments, all right,
he goes. If you don't make the payment, he goes,
I'm gonna kill you. But we always made the payments.
But it was that five thousand dollars that gave me
the capital to build that first car and get me
going it. He's been a huge part of my life. Yeah,
that's cool man. In sixteen when the speed Amon, the
(35:30):
new speed Demon got built and we were gonna go
to Montoville, and I didn't know you had anything to
do with the car before that, but Steve's like, yeah,
we're gonna have you know, carbon Kenny and his brother Keith,
and we'll have Drying in and we'll have this. And
I'm like, drying and drying. Why don't why do I
know that name? Like drying and like trying and who
Danny Dryning? Danny drying it like that the Indy car guy,
because I remember you from that when I was like
(35:50):
I was like twenty when you ran Indian and I remember,
damn are you sorry? But still was like, really, you're
gonna bring that guy just I don't know, it's just
something I always stuck. The name always stuck with me,
and I think because you were a basically independent coming
there to run, so you always go for the underdog.
(36:11):
I appreciate that it was there was you know, I
had some couple of other opportunities in UM. The Baker
team called me and asked me if i'd run, and
we missed the race by two thousands of a second,
which was disappointing, and then I thought I finally got
my golden grace UM. I worked for Ron Hamilgarn hamilgarnd
Racing UM for a couple of years running his team
(36:34):
before I started my business. And in two thousand, Lee
Kuonsman called me up and he says, hey, he goes
uh Hamilgarn wants you to run the second car with
Buddy Well. They had just run that won the championship,
and I thought, oh my god, this is this is
the Holy Grail. I finally got the deal. But the
unfortunate thing was it was the first year of the
(36:54):
three year cycle and the new cars were out and
I got the one year old car and the new
cars were six miles an hour faster, and I was
the only guy in one year old car and we
just didn't make it again. But how many people, though,
have do you know that have ran an indie. I
mean I've had, yeah, I mean, I've had opportunities that
(37:14):
I feel blessed to have. You know, I didn't make
the race, but I've been able to do things that
very few guys get to chosen to do. Robin Miller
was in here sent more Shane Is, which is, uh,
we we cut it to the PG version of Robin Miller,
but he was talking about that. He was talking about
the the you know, the guys that make it right
(37:35):
or the guys that get to run that track. And
he's like, he's like, you're in another group. You're in
a whole another program right there. And and I you know,
I I remember that, I remember Buddy and I had
a I had a guy that I used to race
go cards with. It was on Buddies team, and and
so I remember all that stuff. But yeah, I mean
(37:56):
it's it's it's one of those things that you know,
you wish you could have, what a but man, at
that you know, looking back, it's like, yeah, there's there's
not many people that get that opportunity to do some
of that cool stuff. So talk to me a little
bit about what We'll stay focused on you for a moment.
We're gonna flip over to to Shane, who's a wild card. So, uh,
(38:16):
Drying in industry is going to give you a little
bit of plug here and let people know what you're
doing now obviously with all of that history, but I
kind of cruised through the website a little bit and
I see something called a combuster housing, like, well, I
don't know what the hell that is, but it looks
pretty freakent cool. And then an aircraft carrier waste recovery
to a cause Worth, IndyCar exhaust side pot oil tank
(38:36):
for sixty gurney and then stay in the steel handrails
and fencing. I'm like, well, that covers a gamut of
and don't don't forget the Many are the Many wind
tunnel too, and the Many Wind tunnel. Yeah, yeah, super cool.
And then clearly you do a lot of fabricating on
the speed demon and the cockpit and stuff. So I
mean it's a a wide variety of options that drying
(38:58):
in industries that that you produce we existed for quite
a few years just building race cars and race car components. Okay, Um,
from a business perspective, there was a lot of pride
in it. Our cars want a lot of races, all right.
And I found out I was really living off the
pride rather than the dollars and cents of it. Um. Unfortunately,
(39:22):
the industry doesn't have very much of a profit margin
in it. So then I finally took my eldest sister's
advice and started looking other directions. And that's what sort
of took us that you know, to the real world,
if you will. Um. I still love motorsports and I
still have my fingers involved in it in many directions,
including my son's stuff. But um, to make money at
(39:46):
it is pretty tough these days compared to what we
could we can do in the real world. And speaking
of your son, what's he running now? Where are you at?
He's a senior this year and he wants to pursue
an engineering career. He a senior? Yeah? Is that amazing?
And so now I remember coming to the shop, I
mean it's been a few years ago and seeing the
(40:08):
maybe the quarter midgets or something, and and Danny's explaining
to me how he's getting thrown out of the quarter
midget races because he's engineered around every one of their
rules and has them all upset and they're throwing his
son out of these races. Clearly. Well, you know that
was a big part of what what makes up me.
(40:29):
All right, right when through the midget stuff, sprint cars,
everything was all right, if this is your rule book,
all right, that's my guidelines. And if if I can
use my mentality to think of something that doesn't offend
these rules but fits in them, so be it. So
there's a lot of use act rules that were written
(40:50):
after the fact. Was something that we brought out as
absolutely hilarious as I'm I mean, I know what he's
talking about. But then and tell of me. I mean,
he was still at it with this sun stuff. I'm like, Okay,
I get it, I get it. Well, the rules said
tires had to stick out two and a quarter inches
(41:11):
outside of the body, so that's where they were. Okay,
at bigger, Well, it's about placing his body weight in
the right location. So this goes back to the battery. Well,
now that the thing that bothered me with the whole
quarter midget deal was um and it's been that way
since I drove him a long time ago. The kids
(41:32):
hang out the side, Okay, to me, it's a safety issue. Sure,
there haven't been horrible things, but most every change in
matter sports comes about when a horrible thing happens. So
why don't we get ahead of it. So instead of
having him hang out of the car, I completely offset
the chassis so and laid him down like he wasn't
in any car. So I had more left side weight
(41:53):
percentage than what they had hanging out, but he was
completely contained. So I think I killed two birds with
one stone. I had a super safe packet for my son,
but I had something that was a little advantage. It's
funny that when the Swanson's were on here, they were
talking about their dad, Mike, that ran super modified. Uh,
Mike Swanson while he he told him, you're not running
(42:16):
quarter magics. He said, I'm not getting you out there
on the track. You hang in your head, and so
it's it's saying I made a point to say that too.
You know, there's a huge group of die hards that
want things to stay the way they've been forever, and
I I've been in that position at parts of my life.
But I've always looked at something. You know, if you
(42:39):
look at my career, it's about finding something is a
little better than what exists, right. I know you don't
have anything cast in stone here, but what any any
upcoming really cool projects are you, Shane? Uh? I mean
really cool. I've got some stuff coming out. I was
telling you guys earlier. I'm going to work on this
Indy car engine or something in a couple of weeks.
It's an old are historic whatever causeworth yeah, causeworth the
(43:02):
a V eight turbo um and other than some drag
race stuff with some of the teams that I worked
with that's coming up in November. Um, it'll be whatever
happens to fling by in the days between now and then.
I mean, it's kind of like you, guys. The schedule is,
you know, you kind of know you're gonna be doing
stuff at this time of the year, but you don't
exactly know what. And you might have a clear schedule
(43:23):
on Monday and by Tuesday your booked for the month.
So it just kind of how it goes. But I
do everything, you know, so uh, Porsche Club thing I
do with some guys that have a shop right down
by where Ike. Pike's Peak was awesome. I got. I
always wanted to go to Pike's Peak. Um, but I
never wanted to go unless I thought I could go
with a team and be success. I didn't just want
(43:44):
to go there and being also ran basically and not
the inergec. But you know the guys uh that run
dollin black. Yeah, okay, those are the that's the same
guys that brought the car here that I drove and
that you did good car, that actual car that I
drove here at the speedway one there. Yeah, that's awesome.
(44:06):
So there's the tie in Pike's Peaks. At Pike's Peak
is another thing, just like Bonneville, there is it is
not just simply about the racing. It's about the history
and there's something that affects you deep down when you
go to that place, like like seeing uh Niagara Falls
or maybe going to this track. You guys gotta have
(44:26):
this little track, this little oval over here. It's that
same kind of feeling connection with something way bigger than
what you are, well above and beyond all the awesomeness
of the racing. And Pike's Peak is the same way
you go there and it just sort of it's I
can't even describe it other than you just need to
go so you can feel it for yourself. That's same
thing at Bonneville. But I'll never forget my first experience.
(44:47):
First of all, I drove up a in a in
a rental car, and at one point, I don't know,
maybe eleven thousand feet or something, I have the rental
car on the floorboard because it doesn't have any more power.
It can barely go up. It has no air to breathe.
I pull the car over, hop out of the car.
It's a little brisk, of course, and I see this rock.
You just gotta go down this little valley and up
(45:08):
over to this rock. And then I was gonna be
able to see like a couple of turns more. You know,
it's just gonna give me a better vantage point. I'll
be able to sit down. It's gonna be awesome. I'm excited, man,
I'm excited. So I start over towards this rock and
I get like up to the top of the first
little knoll. I mean we're talking like I don't know,
maybe it's fifty yards away or something like that. And
(45:29):
by now I can hardly breathe, I can hardly walk,
and I see that rock where I want to go,
I'm like, yep, that's never happening, not gonna happen. But
I was blown away at just how difficult it was
to function and do anything because they're just quite literally
no air to be had. You notice it right away,
I mean, man, even without even hardly exerting anything. When
(45:51):
you go to the top of that place and go
to the like the gift shop, you park the car
like you're saying, and walk fifty ft and you're winded,
and by the way, you're dizzy, and it's like, what's
going on And all you've done is walk across a
parking lot fifty ft. Yeah, So it's that's obviously that's
the exciting part of the challenge for me to tune
the engine and make it run like it's supposed to.
And the car that I was working under, the team
that I was working with, had turbo's on a Porsche,
(46:13):
and unfortunately we crashed out both of the last two
years that we tried to go up there. Um, which
you know, that's that's a completely different story and it sucks.
But the mirror fact of being there and experiencing. I
can't wait to go back, and I hope they want
to rebuild the car again for the third time so
we can go. Because it's awesome and they are a
(46:34):
team who is, like the speed Demon team, motivated to
do what it takes to win, and that's what I
want to be a part of. I want. We're strange.
When you started talking about the motor or not and
have enough air, I instantly was thinking about what it
was going to do with the driver up there. You're
thinking about the motor. Absolutely, I'm an engine guy, but
the driver but fabricator of course, but still from a
(46:54):
driver's point of factive in my perspective, all right, and
I'm not afraid of heights, but the out of doing
what I do on a racetrack doesn't bother me at all.
But to not know what the next corner really is
like or how far down it is, that's beyond my courage.
We'll say that's why I don't drive either. It's well
(47:14):
beyond my courage to do any of that. Way easier
to look at swiggly lines and go, oh, we need
more power here, or you need to hold the throttle
open longer there than it is to Actually, why did
you do it? Yeah? Exactly, Well, once again, thanks for
taking the time fellas to come out here. Great great stuff.
I know the stories are just just scratching the service
with both of you, but we'll get you both back
(47:35):
on here at some point time. We got to get
you and Paul on here at one point, and maybe
we get the two of you guys and get Kenny
Dut while they're on here and let him tell some
stories and George and uh and just dig a little
bit deeper. But awesome stuff. And again, thank you so
much for coming on here, thanks for the insight behind
the teams, and it's just all great stuff. Man, Thanks
for having us. And it's been a blast. Like I said,
(47:57):
so anytime, anytime there's an opportunity to do it again,
I'm game, cool man all buddy of beer. Oh sounds
like a plan, Carl, Thanks buddy. Don't forget to check
out the Benton House and one at the Illinois State
Fairgrounds in Springfield, Illinois, presented by fat Heads I Wear.
We'd love to see out there Sunday, October. Be sure
(48:17):
to check out all the latest son An Optical I
Wear at fat heads Dot com special thanks to our
sponsorship partners at Elliott's custom trailers and cards. To watch
the video versions of all of our shows, please visit
our YouTube channel, fatheads TV. This has been a production
of Fathead Studios. Please remember to subscribe.
Don't forget to check out the Benton House and one
at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield, Illinois, presented by
fat Heads I Wear. We'd love to see out there Sunday,
October eighteen. This is Danny Droning. I'm Shane Tecklenberg and
this is the Skinny from Fathead Studios and Speedway, Indiana.
This is the Skinny once again, Welcome to the Skinny.
(00:24):
We have a couple of great guests that will join
us here today, Ken stat Rico Elmore and of course
the lovely Georgia Hannabury sitting between She is the rose
between the two thorns that we will have with us
here today. A name that you might not have heard
of in a while, Danny Dryning has joined us here.
Great to have him inside the studio. Actually has his
business Dryning Industries here located pretty close to us here
(00:46):
in Speedway. And then another name that if you're in
the industry you would certainly know, but if you're not
in the industry, certainly not a household name. His name
is Shane Tecklenberg. One of the guys that's behind the
scenes more times than not with any team that you
may see but we could pick out a subject if
you want, and we could talk about just a couple
of his accomplishments. And this is just a couple of
(01:07):
quick ones. Here, Hold on a minute, is that last
one tuning Kent's car for nothing? No, that was Paul, y'all.
He introduced me to Paul. You also again without Shane.
I mean, none of it ever happens. He's in charge
of the entire motorsports world from time to time. But yeah,
great to have both of you guys with us. Thanks
for making the time, Thanks guys for having us. Yeah,
thanks for the invite. Man, I got excited for a
(01:28):
second that he said there was some really important people
going to be on and I thought, who else are
they gonna When did they get here? Right? I can't
wait to meet him. It's the astronaut over your shoulder.
They'll talk in a minute. Said that was your dad. Actually, yeah, ye,
he's That's how we preserved him. So it's nice to
have him here. I always point out the fighter jet Yeah, yeah,
he was one of the first classes to go through
(01:49):
jet fighter pilot training in the Air Force in the fifties,
so one of the one of the coolest stories and
I'll make it quick. Was you know, they would fly
in and they would they would call in the approach right. Well,
so it's the fifties and my dad calls it and
my dad was a captain by the time he came out,
but he calls in, you know, Elmore and Yeager on approach. Well,
(02:13):
they land and there's about, I don't about five hundred
people waiting on Chuck Yeager to get out of the plane.
But it was Bill Yeager that was flying with my dad.
You're not Chuck Yeager anything, No, this is Bill, dude.
I don't I don't think you don't need to mention that.
I think it's way better if you say, yeah, my
dad flew with Yeager man good stuff. So, as it
turns out, I've known Shane for a number of years.
(02:33):
He helped us out with our race team. I guess
it was back probably around two thousand, twelve or so thirteen,
somewhere in that general area. So we've been buddies, you know,
ever since, and uh kind of keep up with some
of the stuff that he's done countless countless countless world records,
be a drag racing or on the salt, whatever the case.
May be and was part of the speed Demon team,
(02:53):
and they set a record here this year in the
Salt as the fastest piston powered car on the planet.
And then, as it turns out, he says, he says,
do you know a guy by the name of Danny Dryning?
And I said, why do I know that name? I
know that that name is so familiar, but I can't
connect it to a discipline and I don't know why,
just off the top of my head. And he said, well,
he ran a bunch of sprint car stuff and ran
(03:14):
some indy car stuff. I'm like, oh, yeah, absolutely, okay,
makes sense. So it turns out that Danny Dryning is
also on the speed Demon team. I'm like, oh, I
had no clue. So we just got the chatting about it.
But congratulations to both of you guys on on quite
an accomplishment on the Salt here this year. You know,
it's a result of really a bunch of brilliant minds together.
You know, nobody, nobody, a single person made the difference,
(03:36):
but everybody putting their heads together brought it about this year.
It's it's several years worth of evolution because they had
a you know, they had a car before this, the
the old speed Demon and that car was fast and
they set lots of records with that car too, before
I ever was involved with him. Um, and then that
car crashed in two thousand and fourteen. I think the
first time you do it, you always think of ways
(03:57):
to do it better next time. So that's kind of
how this car came to be. And I mean, we
just keep making it better every year. And it's it's
a group of people that all have that are all
basically experts in some area, even though we all race
in different disciplines, but everybody brings something to the table
and there's a level of respect that's given. That's like
(04:19):
when you step in the door. It's not like so
there's no there's no big arguments about what to do
with this or that. It's always like, you know, somebody
has an expertise in a certain areas, like, well, what
do we do to fix this? And somebody knows because
they that's what they do. So it's it accelerates really
fast as far as development goes. So that's that's why
it's able to do what it's what it's able to do.
It takes run after run to really see how those
(04:40):
those systems are going to affect things, you know, and
a lot of times you put a safety in place
to make sure something catastrophic doesn't happen, but that enabling
that action can bring about another problem. And you know, uh,
as many times as you try to put safe fail
safes in place, um, they bring about something that you
didn't expect. And that was you know, a lot of
(05:01):
what we went through in the first couple of runs.
Might as well throw our friends at Lucas soil a
little low because they sponsored this this car as well,
so heavily involved. Absolutely all the lubricants on the car
are for us by Lucas, and I mean we have
custom stuff for that car for that application that Tom
brewised for us to use, and some of it's and
like try this, try this, and try this, and tell
me which one is better. Some of it we've already
(05:22):
been through that process. But every single lubricant on that
car comes from Lucas, and most of them are bespoke
for that application. So here, let's watch the thing make
a pass here, right, so stop it. All of those
(05:47):
speeds you have mile too speed that's really the average
speed between the first mile and the second mile. So
in reality, I mean that's your speed at the mile
and a half. Two and a quarter is your speed
by looking at the top time between the second mile
and the two and a quarter mile marker. Your three
mile speed is your average speed between two and three,
(06:08):
Your four mile speed is your average speed between three
and four, and your five mile speed is then your
average between four and five. Exit speed is a hundred
and thirty two ft long trap speed trap hundred thirty
two ft before the fifth mile, right, So your exit
speed is what you're ending the mile at, your entering
the mile at something less than that, and the average
over that distances for sixty nine. So in this case
(06:28):
you might say it's eight mile an hour less than
sixty nine. It enters at sixty one at the end
of the fourth mile excess at four seventy seven. Average
ends up being by the way you qualify for your
record return run. If you qualify and you screw up
on your record return round, you don't get the record.
You start over qualifying, you don't get to try again
to get the record, you know, And this this actually
kind of goes back to n h R A. I mean,
(06:51):
I know, I don't remember when they actually changed the rule.
But you know, you used to have to back up
your record within one percent. I mean that was forever
and ever and ever, And just a few years ago
they finally said, okay, listen, our timing system is solid
enough now that the backup within one percent it's always correct.
The first time he did it is probably correct. Let's
just go with the first time. So now you can
(07:12):
set a record on on your first effort if you
are able to get over it under dependent on et
your speed. But they clearly have not adjusted on the
Salt rule that once one and done, it's they've changed it.
They've adapted it to the Facebook rule, which is if
you do it once and you put enough qualifiers on it,
(07:34):
this is the world's fastest blue Mustang with tires on
the back and tinted windows and a small block with
twin turbos on alcohol and chrome three injectors, crags with
one rusty spoke. Yes, that's good. I like that, but
I mean very technical. It's pretty amazing that you know
all the parameters that you have to fall within too
(07:56):
to make it all happen. And then, like you say,
they have all of the issues. You know, when people
don't know unless you're out there on the sault with
that team, knowing everything that they're fighting their way through.
You know, you're you're at home and you're kind of
paying attention. Oh man, it looks like they ran a
pretty decent number, and then all of a sudden, you know,
you see the four twenty nine and it's like, all
of a sudden, four sixty nine is like, oh man,
you know there's a spread, and you know, you know,
(08:17):
it's a pretty big window what happened on the first one. Now,
you know, when it looks like it's doing well, it's
so hard to even qualify or you know, it's just
set a record that you don't often want to look
the gift horse in the mouth if you qualify and say,
let's just not even go to impound. Let's try again
to do because we think we can do better, because
you're you're just sort of asking for it, right, But
(08:38):
there is some strategy involved in it where it's sometimes
we do because here's the thing. If we go to impound,
we're done for the day. We don't get to try
again until tomorrow. The hardest part at the same time, though,
is when you go into impound all right, now you
have some time to go through the problems with the car,
but you have also have time to look at the data. Okay,
and the hardest decisions made are done right then because
(09:00):
you have to decide, all right, we we we we
saw this, we can change this, we can make these improvements.
But at the same time, if you go to too greedy,
you could blow the second round and ruin the whole thing.
So it's it's a balancing game of sometimes you have
to pull the reins back and say, look, you know,
let's be comfortable with this, so let's make this little
tiny improvement so we can verify what we just did
(09:22):
instead of trying to go for broke. So it's tough. Yeah,
there's a fair bit of strategy that goes into it.
But at the end of the day, you know, we
finally got almost everything right, and it ran that run
that you had up there, that four seventy seven exit
and four sixty nine would then be. That's what it
was termed the six nine run because that was the
next qualifying run on our new two day old four
(09:43):
thirty nine mile in our record. So we went four
sixty nine on our own four thirty nine a day
later when we fixed all the stuff that was that
we thought was wrong, and then we are an impound,
like Danny saying, and we're looking at that going oh,
well that's screwed up and this is wrong and that's
not right. So as we're fixing these things and concept
of just it's fast, leave it alone, you can't. You
(10:04):
can't leave it broken, like we have to fix it
and when we fix it, we may overachieve and screw
ourselves up when we fix it, right, I mean, he
was part of the guys, the group of guys that
found the exhaust leak, you know, on the on the
one side of the engine, which was another reason why
we weren't making the boost we were supposed to make.
So when he finds exhausta I had already made a
decision to go change the spring in one of the
(10:24):
waste gates. There's a preload spring and I thought I'll
even this thing up by turning one spring in. So
once he found the leak, it's like, well, there's the problem.
I need to go now undo the spring change I
made to put it back because now we fixed an exhaust,
but don't know what we're gonna get And then it
turned out what we got was way more than we expected.
And on that last the fix had more effect than
we were leaking, more than we thought we were, and
(10:46):
we thought we were so what were you how much difference?
So it made like I want to say, like thirty
four pounds of boost on that run that he just
had up at four seventy seven, and the next the
next morning. Because we fixed the exhaust leak, it ran
into the next safety, which was cutting the boost control
off if it got to thirty eight pounds. So the
(11:06):
entire way down the racetrack on that return run, it's
going thirty eight pounds, shut the boost control off, thirty pounds,
turned back on, thirty eight pounds, turned back off, go
down to thirty turn back on. All the way down,
just like this, like every two point four seconds is
cycling back and forth. And this is one thing it's
really awesome about this whole team and having all of
these kind of guys show up from different disciplines and
different genres. Somebody says, you know what, why is Shane
(11:31):
at the starting line and when the cars at the
other end of the track, we gotta wait for him
to come all the way from the starting line to
get his laptop on the car and get the data out.
We could be way faster at turning the car around
if Shane was at the finished line instead. So Shane,
from now on you're gonna be at the finish line
in the finish line truck, which turned out to be
completely rad because that thing comes by at that speed. Dude,
it's like, there's there's no nothing in my life I've
(11:52):
ever seen when you're down there at that end and
that thing goes by you just watching it on TV.
It doesn't do it justice. I just can't imagine sound
like where I'd be standing close enough to watch it
go by and hear it where I still feel safe,
knowing if something went wrong, you could be in the
wrong place and there's no getting away from it. The
closest you can get is a quarter mile to the
side of the course, so we're a quarter mile away
(12:13):
from the car. But it sounds like a P fifty
one dive bomb in your ass. I mean, it's like,
I can't even it's so awesome. Every time it happened,
I'd be outside the truck, they'd be get in, Get in,
we're gonna go. We're gonna go, oh yeah, yeah, sorry
forgot for a second. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
You could have just heard it two hours earlier. And
when it goes by again, it's like, oh my god,
(12:36):
it's phenomenal. I hope to get there one day to
go see that. By all means, like, if you are
into cars in any way, shape or form, you deserve
to treat yourself to going to Bonnaville at least one
time in your life. If you go, you guys should
do that. You know, there's one one really amazing part
of the whole bottle of experience, and that I've been
(12:57):
in motorsports most of my life, all right, And when
you're at the racetrack, you know, people are friendly, they
will say hi, whatever, but they don't want you in
their pets per se. They don't want you looking at
what they're doing. They don't want to tell you what
they're doing. But when you go to Bonneville, it's a
complete one degree spin. The people all but drag you
into their pits to show you how they built it,
(13:19):
how what they did, and it's just a whole completely
different mindset. It was really really refreshing to be around
a new group like that. How many people didn't take
to make that happen. How many people are on the
teams from different areas, from different as, different disciplines, and
some of them from the shop that work on it
(13:39):
on a continual basis during the rest of the year.
And three or four or five you guys that flew
in just strictly for Bonneville. Kenny is uh the carbon Kenny.
He's the he's the genius of the carbon world. His
brother Keith runs the Hendricks fabrication shop. Um, so there's
there's experts from every every area coming out there to
(13:59):
make it carbon carbon. Yeah. I saw it on his
stuff too, right, he's on that, Yeah, Kenny dut Whiler.
You guys mentioned. The nice part is, um, there's such
a respect level. Like when it's time for an engine
change where there's been a failure, we don't talk. We
just everybody knows what to get do, what to do
and make it happen. Nobody worries about that finger pointing
(14:21):
and oh that you screwed that deal up or that's
his fault. It's like everybody just like we know why
we're here. Stuff happens, how do we go, how do
we go better. First of all, engine change stuff. They've
got that down to a science with that car. I
mean it's like a drag car. It's like the only
Bonneville car that's built like a drag race car. They
can have the old one out and the new one
in and that means go from big to small block
if you want, or put the same kind of engine
(14:41):
in and they can have that done in I think
an hour and five. They did well. We we had
we had the motor change done the first day with
going from the big motor to the next one up
in the list in about forty minutes. Okay, and that's
changing exhaust systems, wiring everything for the from the turbo attachments,
everything that has to happen. Um. So it's it's a
(15:01):
pretty good system. Wow, that's really good system. And then
after they figured out they could fix the big block,
they took that one and it's not hot. Right. We
now are making a list because we can't remember next
year what we were talking about that we needed to
fix this year for next year. But right now I
think that list has nineties six items on it. Some
(15:24):
of them are really somewhere related to the car. Summer. Hey,
we need this wrench, we need this tool, and some
of them are how do we run the car better?
Let's let's look into why this is happening, you know.
So again we have a huge list everybody's ideas combined.
Everyone that went sent some number of items to make
better the team better as a whole. And so we
(15:45):
got to work through that between now and you know
when we when we go run again, what's the goal
for next year? Uh, when you go eight one, there's
one number that screams at you immediately, and that for
sure it is the goal in my mind unless someone
because I mean I don't know what the actual goal.
I know my goal is. My goal is let's see
(16:06):
if we can go five hundred. Now, that's not on
line with what everybody else. I'm like, how do you
go for any one and not say I think we
can go five and from Shay and I could probably
back this up if you look at the data there
there's a lot of areas we could still make it well.
And clearly we had a chance to talk before the show.
Shane's Shane's actually staying with me for a couple of days,
(16:28):
so we were we were chatting about it and and
you're right. I mean all the little things that have
gone wrong that if you make all of those right,
you know, I mean there's there's big games there. Well.
We have these alarms that come up that you know,
tell you if something's wrong with the car. So you know,
you don't go make your record return run with a
cylinder out because the dash is telling you, hey, number
one cylinder is not running and you can choose to
(16:48):
do something about it or decide if it's lying or
whatever you're gonna do. So from time to time, when
you power the car up, it will flag an alarm
because it it just crosses the corner of the thresholds
as the sister him is booting up and it's not
all the way up. So it did. They turned the
car on for the record return run and it had
an alarm on the dash, and since I wasn't there,
Kenny didn't know how to clear. There's a button on
(17:10):
the dash it says, okay, alarm. If you just press
that button, the alarm goes away. Everything's normal, but the
alarm comes up, turns on all the warning lights. The
warning lights have priority over the shift lights, so it's
got the red warning lights flashing in George's face, and
there's the in car, you know, I mean, they told
us about it, but the in car afterwards, it's like
so painful to watch because George's point, you know, you
can't hear the audio, but you could tell what's going on.
(17:32):
He's like, look at look at the dash. Kenny leans
over and he looks at it, and then Kenny goes
like this, and George goes like this, and silent movie.
And then and then Kenny goes ah and he leans
in and he tells George, and you can just make
out he's like, just shift it on the shift light
or you know, just shift it on the revolomitter. So okay,
that's what he does. He runs it out, runs it
into the revolomitter, let's sit on the limitter, plugs it
(17:52):
in the next gear. Wait, still, it hits the limitter,
plugs it in then. So sometimes he let it sit
on the limited coil and I can't take anything away
from and you tell him to put it on the
revlotter and he does what he's told. So I mean,
it is what it is. It's back to if I
had been there, I could have fixed it. If the
alarm wasn't there, which was part of me programming something
beforehand and deciding what was gonna be fine, but also
(18:15):
a part of the issue that you know, you're on
a five mile course, you're at the finish line and
no radio communication because you're too far away. Yeah we
have a radio, but I don't think they even thought
to get on the radio because they were starting the
car to go make the run, and I think they
just instead of shutting the car off and stint, it
was like, hey, you know what just shifted when it
hits the revolar. So that run from the time George
(18:37):
comes off the truck, which I'll tell you another story
about this too, but when the time George comes off,
the truck goes full throttle until he pulls the shoot
is sixty nine and a half seconds. Sixty and a
half seconds full throttle, right He's on the revelomter for
thirteen and a half of those sixty seconds, So we're
not accelerating at the rate that we could accelerate it
(18:59):
had we not been on the revlement or so, so
right off the bat, if you fix the silly things
that happened with that run, my guess is we're gonna
go six seven mile an hour faster out the back,
so it's gonna go out the back at seven it's
gonna average probably two or three mile four seventy three average.
Without turning it up. Really, you're just making it do
(19:20):
what it's actually supposed to do, and at the turbo
stated a steady boost, all of these things are going
to be better, right, and then if you turn it
up from there. I mean, we made a run earlier
in the week that went about four It was a
about two thirds full power. We gained about a thousand
horse with a thousand horsepower gain, and it can't even
(19:40):
say it was a full thousand because the boost is
up and down, up, down, But if you use the
average of thirty four, that's about a thousand horse power increase,
and we gained sixty exit speed from that thousand horse power.
We probably, realistically, without changing any hardware on the engine,
have another three or four hundred horsepower left, and if
we put but turn her bow on that can is
(20:01):
more efficient. For that size engine, we could potentially have
five or six hundred more it's power left. So with
five or six hundred more horsepower, assuming we went four
eighty six out the back on that run. I'm not
that good at the math, but I'm guessing that that
might be enough to go over five hundred. And then
what you're looking for is nineteen, So maybe there's enough
to And if it's not, then whatever I'm wrong, I'm
it's always wrong anyway. So it's also relative to the
(20:24):
moisture content of the salt. Awesome, awesome has to be good.
If the salt is good like it was this year
or better, I'm pretty sure we can do it. Now. Again,
you saw how hard it was just to do what
we did this year. How many things are gonna go wrong,
but everything goes right and the salt is good, I'm
pretty sure we can do it. I don't think we
can average five hundred, but I definitely think we can
exit it five months. So what do you look for
(20:45):
in the salt, Well, it's the moisture content. You know,
it was the driest it's been in quite a while
out there, because um, when it gets moist it loses grip.
Imagine that you're just running in slush in a sense,
and the tires are round. There is a flat contact
spot on the bottom of these tires. So the actual
area that's touching the ground is maybe a half inch wide. Okay,
(21:08):
so that on salt, which is not solid anyway. Um,
the detraction the available grip is so minimum minuscule. When
you add moisture to it, it just gets horrible. So
having dry salt is a big part of having the
grip to go that fast. The thing makes thousands of
pounds of down force, but you have thousands of pounds
of horsepower trying to rotate that round tire on a
(21:29):
on a no grip surface. So it's really important to
have the grip of the of the surface itself. So
we're going thrown it out there right now August seven
through block off on your calendar. You don't have to
come for the whole week, but definitely come earlier a week.
We got to be there for the Yeah, that's right.
(21:49):
Thanks for the pressure, Georgia. And what's the ride on that?
I mean, I know that it's somewhat smooth, but well,
this year is reasonably smooth, but there's other years where
it's terribly terribly rough. Um. And like the year Danny
Thompson went forty eight or whatever he did, you could
see him making corrections in the wheel that are like
(22:10):
insane and it's like is he even moving because nothing's
vibrating or shaking around. And years before that, it's like
it's bumping and shaking around and it's crazy. And then
I can't even see how he could focus at all.
I remember when Raleigh was still with USAC and Usak
used to time that am I right by saying that, yeah?
He actually I've ran into at Kokomo a couple of
(22:31):
weeks ago, sitting together, and he was talking about that
part of it that he used to really enjoy being
out there and being part of USAK taking care of it.
I remember when he told me that we were at
some event and he goes, yeah, he goes, I gotta
get out of here. I'm headed a bottle there. I said, oh, cool,
going to check it out he is. Now we do
the timing for it. So yeah, And just to follow
(22:51):
up really quickly, So just to for the fans that
are listening, listening in and possibly watching, Shane is really
the data acquisition guy. You are the computer guy. You
pay attention to a lot, I mean one of the
guys and pay attention to that end of it. Uh, Danny,
I'm guessing your master fabricator guy. Your what is why
did they bring you onto? The started off when they
(23:13):
went to build the new car. UM Steve Watt, who
sort of uh is a leader of this whole ship. UM.
He owns Maxwell Industries. We've been friends for many years,
and he said, look, he goes, there's a bunch of
systems that I need somebody to come out and build. UM,
like the canopy on it has done very much like
a jet fighter. Okay, UM, I designed and built that stuff.
(23:35):
There's a lot to do. I built a majority of
the stuff in the cockpit, control systems, UM and many
parts of the car all the way through. That was
the fabrication end of things. But this year I kind
of got asked to take on a different role, and
part of it was maybe be a mediator liaison between
Shane and Kenny Duttweiler UM and through my experience and
(24:00):
to sports UM, I very respectfully observed Shane and Kenny
and what they were seeing data wise and offered some
sort of racers advice on occasion. And UH, it was
very difficult position to be put in. At the last
minute they called me and asked me to do it,
and I was like, oh God, you can't possibly ask
(24:21):
me he goes in between two of the best in
the world and tell them what to do, and that
you I'm divorced, right, I mean, so it was. It
was a great challenge of mine to go out there
and first of all earned their respect, um, and learn
the system. Shane knows it like the back of his hand. Okay,
(24:42):
he instantly can respond to anything he can see on
the screen. He's done it so long and he knows
it so well. It's it's really refreshing to work with
somebody that knows their their their whole program so well.
And I probably wore him out with questions for the
first couple of days, trying to pick his brain to
see how he looked at things. And I just was
(25:02):
offering the racers point of view on a lot of things. Um,
they know how to make big power, but a lot
of times from a racer's perspective, it's about how to
get to the to the finish line. And I hope
that some of my inquiries will put it helped change
things this year. Uh. Look, I think I know what
I know because I've built it all on on logic.
(25:25):
Maybe some of it is experienced, but most of it's
logic and you know physics, and but sometimes there's a
gray area, and even just in explaining it to someone,
you go, oh, wait a minute, it can't work that way.
Just by having the words come out of your mouth
and tell somebody go, oh that doesn't that can't be right,
and now you rethink that now of a sudden, you
straighten that little error out that you had in your thinking.
And so for me, I welcome having because a lot
(25:48):
of a lot of my enquiries if you were where
when I would see something in the data. All right,
he's got hundreds of channels of data to look at
and to try and analyze all of that in we
have thirty minutes, okay, is an enormous job. But for
him to try and have to do all of that
and come up with suggestions for changes, it's just, truthfully
(26:09):
asking too much of a guy. So for me to
be able to sit there and look at things and
respectfully ask a question to maybe trigger something in his
mind to steer um that direction, I think our chemistry
worked really well together. And you brought that up. You
brought that exact scenario up where you said, you know,
it's still of me trying to figure it all out myself.
The way we work on this team is I tell
(26:30):
everybody what the problem is, because somebody might locate the
problem that has nothing to do with my end of it,
and then I can go verify that what they said
is correct. And you said that was exactly the scenario
one time. There's seven fifty channels of data between me
and Kenny. There's no way we can We're falling down
the wormhole of whatever that most obvious problem is with
the car right now, and we're in the middle down
(26:50):
here with our heads in the you know, in the hole,
trying to figure out where the problem is. And someone
standing back could look and go, hey, what's going on
with the oil pressure right there? And then I can't
even look there. I'm busy, I'm beyond the all pressure.
I'm way down here looking at this other problem, and
they steer you back into the realm of hey what
about this, Oh man, that's really what's wrong. We could
fix it, and we would have made another run and
(27:10):
made a mistake, but we took one. One guy found
one thing that made it worth it. So so let's
talk about Danny drining for a moment. We'll go back
in time and accomplish youth stack racer number of wins
inside of a midget and chasing a championship. At at
one point a matter of fact, it looked like you
were gonna win one. You've also attempted to twice to
(27:32):
uh qualify for the five D and and both instances
things didn't go a little bit wrong. They went They
went pretty big wrong. Yeah, there's been a lot of
bumps in the road all the way. Um back in
two that was the first picture we're seeing here on
the on the wall. Pressure move that I truly put on,
(27:54):
that I put on myself, the pressure of winning the championship.
It meant so much to me. I made a stupid mistake.
I put a move on. Mahoney, they're going into the corner,
which I never would have done or never should have done,
and ran over his tire and and about ended things
for me. Um, but uh, it was gave me the
drive to get back. I mean, that happened in August,
(28:17):
and it separated my arm at the elbow, and it
chopped my finger off, and it crushed the retina in
my eye and broke my pelvis and made a mess
of me. But in November I was back in the
race car. I really I won the first heat race
back in the car, trying to prove to myself that
I hadn't lost it, which was not really true. Um,
(28:39):
there was a lot of head injuries from that incident
that took a couple of years to work through and
uh get my confidence in my my my game back.
But I think it was ninety four, Tony Stewart and
I were having a very active year, we'll call it.
There was quite a few incidents that he and I
(29:00):
had together. Um wanted a dirt race down in Richmond, Indiana,
where I led it till about two laps to go
when there was a restart and he went up through
the infield and blasted me out of the way. So
I went down to the next corner and punted him
and parked him and spirited they call that. I think
that's a spirited battle at sassy out there, and uh,
(29:24):
I just couldn't see that in you if don't piss
him off. So the most difficult part and what changed
my whole career was what USAX decision that followed this. Okay,
I was sponsored by i w X. The owner of
i w X came to me, and he had a
(29:45):
whole plan laid out for me that was gonna be
two years in US act. Then I was going to
run the NASCAR Trucks Busch Series and Winston Cup, and
I was the one that he chose to do it with. Well,
the very next race after all the happened, there was
two races in one weekend. One was Odessa, Missouri, the
other was Kansas City. And he had already purchased fift
(30:07):
tickets for his employees and his best customers to come
to these races. Well, they suspended me from him for
the actions on the racetrack, and the owner of i
w X, Steve Coulter, called uh. Capel's was the head
of the ship at the time. He said, look, he goes, well,
we're on your only corporate sponsor in this series. You know,
have an understanding suspending from the next two races. There
(30:30):
have all all these people coming. Um, all this was
in place, and Capel said, no, our decisions final, and
so he called us and he fired us, and he
shut the race team down, and that whole plan for
my life was over. And I can't I can't blame
anybody then then myself because I'm I was a driver.
I made the change, the changes the choices, um, and
(30:52):
it changed the direction of things. So then ninety six
came around when the I r L started, and I
think it was their way to sort of make up
for what what they know they did with their decision.
They came to me and said, look, if you can
put a driver development program, because you have background in
the indie cars, um, well we'll get you in a
(31:14):
ride if you can help get some other drivers through
rookie orientation. So I called some friends of mine from
Colorado and they brought a car down that was an
extra Newman Hass car UM, and I did my r
OP thing and at first, and then I did Tys
Carlson and they did. Andy Mitchner helped those two guys
get through, and then they had me set up to
drive a car for Scandia. So I went down and
(31:35):
got fit up for the car for Scandia, and the
guys from Colorado came to me and they said, look, Um,
Carlson's of asked us some offers us some money to
try and get him qualified for the five hundred, but
he doesn't really have any seat time. Would you shake
the car down and get it trimmed out for qualifying.
I said, sure, no problem, you know you guys helped
me get here. I'll do whatever. And I, uh, it
(31:58):
was probably made him a mistake. At that point, my
mind was already thinking about the next car of the
ride and everything that was put in place. And I
went down and I did about a six lap run
in the other car had a pretty big understeer, so
I said, hey, let's take some tab off the rear wing.
I said, I gotta get a balance in this thing. Well,
(32:18):
the simple fact that I said it was a pretty
big understeer. Normally you changed the rear wicker tab in
fifty thou increments okay, which doesn't sound like much, but
it's tons of down force and a big balance change
in the car. Because I said big, they took off
a hundred thousands. I didn't ask, they didn't say. I
went out of the pits and first time by going
(32:39):
in to turn one, the car swapped ins, flipped upside down,
crushed me up pretty bad. And did it break your
your hip? Crushed my hip? I have three steel plates
and forty screws holding it together and one drill bit
did they leave it in there. Did they forget when
I when I went in for the first meeting at
(33:00):
the doctor after the surgery, He's got all the the
X rays up on the wall, right, He's like, look,
here's the plates that we put in you, and here's
the screws and blah blah blah. And I'm pretty good
at understanding fabrication, all right, So well that one there
doesn't look like a screw. It's like, yeah, he goes,
I broke it real bit off in you. But it's
(33:21):
stainless steel, so we just left it in there. No worries,
It'll be fine. What could go wrong? I mean, there
is good news and all of this though from that
time period till now. If you're the guy that did
the cockpit on Speed Demon and you're the same guy
that put the battery and we have to turn the
car upside down to get it out, you definitely made
some improvements. There is light at the end of the
(33:43):
tunnel for you, after all, Danny. I appreciate that. That's
that's one thing I've always known of Danny, and I
mean I've been around us a long long time. And
Rick Payne, there's a mutual great friend of ours that
had bars here and still has bars in Indianaples has
always helped Danny out and and and to this day
(34:03):
still speaks about you. You know, he came in and
of course he's Hollywood man. He's he's got things moving
and shake and as usual and uh, but you know,
he comes in and we we always always shared Danny stories.
But I mean just some of the things that Danny
would show up with at the track. You're like, man,
what is that? And I'm telling you he would go
(34:25):
out and he would do a man, I mean, amazing
things with it. Rick was actually a big part of
the very first uh Aerol car that I built. Um
it was. I worked in the IndyCar industry for a
long time and I was like, I've had enough of this.
I want to go off and pursue my career. So
I didn't plan it really well. I rented a shop
(34:46):
and I had a toolbox and that was about it. Okay.
So I started a fabrication business and we used to
go to Rich's restaurant mc Gilbrey's right up the street
here for lunch every day and we created a good friendship.
But I was like, man, I want to build this
new car. You know, is there in a way you
could help me out? Well, he went to this extreme.
He got a five thousand dollar a loan for me.
(35:07):
He goes, look, goes, you gotta make the payments, all right,
he goes. If you don't make the payment, he goes,
I'm gonna kill you. But we always made the payments.
But it was that five thousand dollars that gave me
the capital to build that first car and get me
going it. He's been a huge part of my life. Yeah,
that's cool man. In sixteen when the speed Amon, the
(35:30):
new speed Demon got built and we were gonna go
to Montoville, and I didn't know you had anything to
do with the car before that, but Steve's like, yeah,
we're gonna have you know, carbon Kenny and his brother Keith,
and we'll have Drying in and we'll have this. And
I'm like, drying and drying. Why don't why do I
know that name? Like drying and like trying and who
Danny Dryning? Danny drying it like that the Indy car guy,
because I remember you from that when I was like
(35:50):
I was like twenty when you ran Indian and I remember,
damn are you sorry? But still was like, really, you're
gonna bring that guy just I don't know, it's just
something I always stuck. The name always stuck with me,
and I think because you were a basically independent coming
there to run, so you always go for the underdog.
(36:11):
I appreciate that it was there was you know, I
had some couple of other opportunities in UM. The Baker
team called me and asked me if i'd run, and
we missed the race by two thousands of a second,
which was disappointing, and then I thought I finally got
my golden grace UM. I worked for Ron Hamilgarn hamilgarnd
Racing UM for a couple of years running his team
(36:34):
before I started my business. And in two thousand, Lee
Kuonsman called me up and he says, hey, he goes
uh Hamilgarn wants you to run the second car with
Buddy Well. They had just run that won the championship,
and I thought, oh my god, this is this is
the Holy Grail. I finally got the deal. But the
unfortunate thing was it was the first year of the
(36:54):
three year cycle and the new cars were out and
I got the one year old car and the new
cars were six miles an hour faster, and I was
the only guy in one year old car and we
just didn't make it again. But how many people, though,
have do you know that have ran an indie. I
mean I've had, yeah, I mean, I've had opportunities that
(37:14):
I feel blessed to have. You know, I didn't make
the race, but I've been able to do things that
very few guys get to chosen to do. Robin Miller
was in here sent more Shane Is, which is, uh,
we we cut it to the PG version of Robin Miller,
but he was talking about that. He was talking about
the the you know, the guys that make it right
(37:35):
or the guys that get to run that track. And
he's like, he's like, you're in another group. You're in
a whole another program right there. And and I you know,
I I remember that, I remember Buddy and I had
a I had a guy that I used to race
go cards with. It was on Buddies team, and and
so I remember all that stuff. But yeah, I mean
(37:56):
it's it's it's one of those things that you know,
you wish you could have, what a but man, at
that you know, looking back, it's like, yeah, there's there's
not many people that get that opportunity to do some
of that cool stuff. So talk to me a little
bit about what We'll stay focused on you for a moment.
We're gonna flip over to to Shane, who's a wild card. So, uh,
(38:16):
Drying in industry is going to give you a little
bit of plug here and let people know what you're
doing now obviously with all of that history, but I
kind of cruised through the website a little bit and
I see something called a combuster housing, like, well, I
don't know what the hell that is, but it looks
pretty freakent cool. And then an aircraft carrier waste recovery
to a cause Worth, IndyCar exhaust side pot oil tank
(38:36):
for sixty gurney and then stay in the steel handrails
and fencing. I'm like, well, that covers a gamut of
and don't don't forget the Many are the Many wind
tunnel too, and the Many Wind tunnel. Yeah, yeah, super cool.
And then clearly you do a lot of fabricating on
the speed demon and the cockpit and stuff. So I
mean it's a a wide variety of options that drying
(38:58):
in industries that that you produce we existed for quite
a few years just building race cars and race car components. Okay, Um,
from a business perspective, there was a lot of pride
in it. Our cars want a lot of races, all right.
And I found out I was really living off the
pride rather than the dollars and cents of it. Um. Unfortunately,
(39:22):
the industry doesn't have very much of a profit margin
in it. So then I finally took my eldest sister's
advice and started looking other directions. And that's what sort
of took us that you know, to the real world,
if you will. Um. I still love motorsports and I
still have my fingers involved in it in many directions,
including my son's stuff. But um, to make money at
(39:46):
it is pretty tough these days compared to what we
could we can do in the real world. And speaking
of your son, what's he running now? Where are you at?
He's a senior this year and he wants to pursue
an engineering career. He a senior? Yeah? Is that amazing?
And so now I remember coming to the shop, I
mean it's been a few years ago and seeing the
(40:08):
maybe the quarter midgets or something, and and Danny's explaining
to me how he's getting thrown out of the quarter
midget races because he's engineered around every one of their
rules and has them all upset and they're throwing his
son out of these races. Clearly. Well, you know that
was a big part of what what makes up me.
(40:29):
All right, right when through the midget stuff, sprint cars,
everything was all right, if this is your rule book,
all right, that's my guidelines. And if if I can
use my mentality to think of something that doesn't offend
these rules but fits in them, so be it. So
there's a lot of use act rules that were written
(40:50):
after the fact. Was something that we brought out as
absolutely hilarious as I'm I mean, I know what he's
talking about. But then and tell of me. I mean,
he was still at it with this sun stuff. I'm like, Okay,
I get it, I get it. Well, the rules said
tires had to stick out two and a quarter inches
(41:11):
outside of the body, so that's where they were. Okay,
at bigger, Well, it's about placing his body weight in
the right location. So this goes back to the battery. Well,
now that the thing that bothered me with the whole
quarter midget deal was um and it's been that way
since I drove him a long time ago. The kids
(41:32):
hang out the side, Okay, to me, it's a safety issue. Sure,
there haven't been horrible things, but most every change in
matter sports comes about when a horrible thing happens. So
why don't we get ahead of it. So instead of
having him hang out of the car, I completely offset
the chassis so and laid him down like he wasn't
in any car. So I had more left side weight
(41:53):
percentage than what they had hanging out, but he was
completely contained. So I think I killed two birds with
one stone. I had a super safe packet for my son,
but I had something that was a little advantage. It's
funny that when the Swanson's were on here, they were
talking about their dad, Mike, that ran super modified. Uh,
Mike Swanson while he he told him, you're not running
(42:16):
quarter magics. He said, I'm not getting you out there
on the track. You hang in your head, and so
it's it's saying I made a point to say that too.
You know, there's a huge group of die hards that
want things to stay the way they've been forever, and
I I've been in that position at parts of my life.
But I've always looked at something. You know, if you
(42:39):
look at my career, it's about finding something is a
little better than what exists, right. I know you don't
have anything cast in stone here, but what any any
upcoming really cool projects are you, Shane? Uh? I mean
really cool. I've got some stuff coming out. I was
telling you guys earlier. I'm going to work on this
Indy car engine or something in a couple of weeks.
It's an old are historic whatever causeworth yeah, causeworth the
(43:02):
a V eight turbo um and other than some drag
race stuff with some of the teams that I worked
with that's coming up in November. Um, it'll be whatever
happens to fling by in the days between now and then.
I mean, it's kind of like you, guys. The schedule is,
you know, you kind of know you're gonna be doing
stuff at this time of the year, but you don't
exactly know what. And you might have a clear schedule
(43:23):
on Monday and by Tuesday your booked for the month.
So it just kind of how it goes. But I
do everything, you know, so uh, Porsche Club thing I
do with some guys that have a shop right down
by where Ike. Pike's Peak was awesome. I got. I
always wanted to go to Pike's Peak. Um, but I
never wanted to go unless I thought I could go
with a team and be success. I didn't just want
(43:44):
to go there and being also ran basically and not
the inergec. But you know the guys uh that run
dollin black. Yeah, okay, those are the that's the same
guys that brought the car here that I drove and
that you did good car, that actual car that I
drove here at the speedway one there. Yeah, that's awesome.
(44:06):
So there's the tie in Pike's Peaks. At Pike's Peak
is another thing, just like Bonneville, there is it is
not just simply about the racing. It's about the history
and there's something that affects you deep down when you
go to that place, like like seeing uh Niagara Falls
or maybe going to this track. You guys gotta have
(44:26):
this little track, this little oval over here. It's that
same kind of feeling connection with something way bigger than
what you are, well above and beyond all the awesomeness
of the racing. And Pike's Peak is the same way
you go there and it just sort of it's I
can't even describe it other than you just need to
go so you can feel it for yourself. That's same
thing at Bonneville. But I'll never forget my first experience.
(44:47):
First of all, I drove up a in a in
a rental car, and at one point, I don't know,
maybe eleven thousand feet or something, I have the rental
car on the floorboard because it doesn't have any more power.
It can barely go up. It has no air to breathe.
I pull the car over, hop out of the car.
It's a little brisk, of course, and I see this rock.
You just gotta go down this little valley and up
(45:08):
over to this rock. And then I was gonna be
able to see like a couple of turns more. You know,
it's just gonna give me a better vantage point. I'll
be able to sit down. It's gonna be awesome. I'm excited, man,
I'm excited. So I start over towards this rock and
I get like up to the top of the first
little knoll. I mean we're talking like I don't know,
maybe it's fifty yards away or something like that. And
(45:29):
by now I can hardly breathe, I can hardly walk,
and I see that rock where I want to go,
I'm like, yep, that's never happening, not gonna happen. But
I was blown away at just how difficult it was
to function and do anything because they're just quite literally
no air to be had. You notice it right away,
I mean, man, even without even hardly exerting anything. When
(45:51):
you go to the top of that place and go
to the like the gift shop, you park the car
like you're saying, and walk fifty ft and you're winded,
and by the way, you're dizzy, and it's like, what's
going on And all you've done is walk across a
parking lot fifty ft. Yeah, So it's that's obviously that's
the exciting part of the challenge for me to tune
the engine and make it run like it's supposed to.
And the car that I was working under, the team
that I was working with, had turbo's on a Porsche,
(46:13):
and unfortunately we crashed out both of the last two
years that we tried to go up there. Um, which
you know, that's that's a completely different story and it sucks.
But the mirror fact of being there and experiencing. I
can't wait to go back, and I hope they want
to rebuild the car again for the third time so
we can go. Because it's awesome and they are a
(46:34):
team who is, like the speed Demon team, motivated to
do what it takes to win, and that's what I
want to be a part of. I want. We're strange.
When you started talking about the motor or not and
have enough air, I instantly was thinking about what it
was going to do with the driver up there. You're
thinking about the motor. Absolutely, I'm an engine guy, but
the driver but fabricator of course, but still from a
(46:54):
driver's point of factive in my perspective, all right, and
I'm not afraid of heights, but the out of doing
what I do on a racetrack doesn't bother me at all.
But to not know what the next corner really is
like or how far down it is, that's beyond my courage.
We'll say that's why I don't drive either. It's well
(47:14):
beyond my courage to do any of that. Way easier
to look at swiggly lines and go, oh, we need
more power here, or you need to hold the throttle
open longer there than it is to Actually, why did
you do it? Yeah? Exactly, Well, once again, thanks for
taking the time fellas to come out here. Great great stuff.
I know the stories are just just scratching the service
with both of you, but we'll get you both back
(47:35):
on here at some point time. We got to get
you and Paul on here at one point, and maybe
we get the two of you guys and get Kenny
Dut while they're on here and let him tell some
stories and George and uh and just dig a little
bit deeper. But awesome stuff. And again, thank you so
much for coming on here, thanks for the insight behind
the teams, and it's just all great stuff. Man, Thanks
for having us. And it's been a blast. Like I said,
(47:57):
so anytime, anytime there's an opportunity to do it again,
I'm game, cool man all buddy of beer. Oh sounds
like a plan, Carl, Thanks buddy. Don't forget to check
out the Benton House and one at the Illinois State
Fairgrounds in Springfield, Illinois, presented by fat Heads I Wear.
We'd love to see out there Sunday, October. Be sure
(48:17):
to check out all the latest son An Optical I
Wear at fat heads Dot com special thanks to our
sponsorship partners at Elliott's custom trailers and cards. To watch
the video versions of all of our shows, please visit
our YouTube channel, fatheads TV. This has been a production
of Fathead Studios. Please remember to subscribe.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.