Shane T and Craig Campton talk about their experiences with Level 5 Motorsports

MoTeC tuner Shane Tecklenburg has over 20 years of success in many forms of motorsports. He’s helped produce the world’s fastest four- and six-cylinder drag cars, America’s fastest street-legal Pro Mod, and the NHRA Pro Mod national speed record, to name just a few of his accomplishments. Craig Campton is the owner of HyperSports, the manufacturer of extreme performance Outlaw Drag Racing snowmobiles, and has worked with Victor Cagnazzi, Jim Yates, Johnny & Shane Gray, Jeg Coughlin and many other notables in the sport. Together, Shane T and Craig became part of a legendary team at Level 5 Motorsports, and each recount their endeavors toward breaking the 2-minute barrier at Road America in the DSR Program as well as what it took to secure the top spot in the 2012 SCCA Championship. Join Rico and Ken for a fascinating conversation with these two talented and accomplished insiders.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Skinny with Rico and Kenna is a production of
I Heart Radio. I'm Shane Tecklenberg, I'm Craig Campton, and
this is the Skinny from the bath Heads I Wear
Studios in Speedway, Indiana. This is the Skinny brought to
you by Toyota, Rhino, Classified, General Tire and Dream Giveaway.

(00:25):
This segment of the Skinny is brought to you by Toyota. Welcome,
ladies and gentlemen to another edition here of the Skinny.
We're looking forward to today's show for sure. A couple
of clowns on here with us, but boy they are
sharp at third job. No, I'm not talking about Rico.
I told you were talking about us. Hold on a minute. Here,

(00:45):
of course, Rico sitting alongside Kent's stout. We have Shane Tecklenberg,
who's the first repeat here on the show. Appreciate him
coming back. And Craig Campton is also going to join us.
A couple of names that you might not be familiar with,
by the way, they're not necessarily household names in terms
of motor sports, but a couple of guys that are
behind the scenes definitely have been a huge part of

(01:08):
some very successful teams and continue to do so. So
it's nice to get the guys that are in the
trenches to come in here and tell some of the
stories along the way. So right off the bat, I
want to start off on a subject that's near and
dear to Shane Tuckenberg's heart. You were working on an
f A motor here just recently, an older Couseworth. Can
you talk about that. I was contacted by this company

(01:29):
that does that does historics, I think in the middle
of the summer, and they said, look, we've got this
old Couseworth turbo um Indy Car motor and we need
you to come into it. We're gonna, you know, convert
it over to mo Tech and you know, stuff like
when they ran those. So that thing was from as
a matter of fact, that actually is and and it

(01:51):
came from the car that vill nefdrov in the in
the Indy Car series. So it's you know, it is.
I don't know if it's the engine, but it certainly
is of the type that they ran at Indianapolis in
the nineties. And the engine management systems and control systems
or whatever they used in those days, they're outdated. Um,

(02:14):
you know, it's just thirty odd years ago by now,
or at least twenty five, and the people that that
we're able to adjust them, manipulate them, and worked on
them in those days have either passed on or at
least moved on to the point where there's there's no
support for them at all. So if you're a historic
racer and you have one of these things and something
goes wrong with it, you literally you've got no way

(02:37):
to fix it other than convert it to something that
you can actually adjust now, which is how I got
involved with it. So this company are in motorsport from Michigan,
that's what they do. They do historics, uh and and
they had actually the engine was over in Livonia at
Rausch at Roush Racing and Roush was doing the engine

(03:00):
and so we ended up going to Rousch to run
this thing on the on the Dino and tune it.
And it was really kind of bitchings that had all
this cool stuff on it, like from that era that
I never ever thought about doing to like help improve
throttle response, and you know, those things were limited. They
had a pop off valve on top of the intake
manifold to limit the boost and depending on the engine type,

(03:23):
you ran a certain amount of manifold pressure, and the
pop off valve was supplied by the series to control
the manifold pressure to keep the horse power in check. Right,
So if you had a causeworthy ran a certain amount
of boost like the little stock block Indie V six
buicks that um that Menard ran. Those had more. Obviously
they could run more manifold pressure. There was another like

(03:43):
a Honda, It could run some other manifold pressure. So
the manifold pressure was limiting factor on the power level,
so they could keep all the cars competitive with each other.
And this thing had all kinds of cool in it,
like a ninth throttle blade and the plenum after the turbo,
and it had these really cool like clamshell looking guide
veins that led air into the turbo charger compressor, which

(04:06):
was like blew my mind. And you know, there's no
there's no like manual for this thing. These guys just
get this engine and it's a pile of whatever it is,
and they have to figure out how to put it together.
So it took a little bit of a while to
figure out how to get the guide veins to work
like they should, you know, and not block the airflow
into the turbo um. But this was all manual controlled stuff,

(04:28):
like I had cables and linkage is and all kinds.
It was just so cool. Um and you know, it
made like whatever, I don't know, seven fifty horsepower or
something like that. And it was just fun to work
on and see how they did things at that time.
I remember when you were doing it and watching it
and I was like, oh my god, dude, that is
so awesome. I mean it's it's so archaic now what

(04:49):
you're saying, but at the time that was cutting edge,
I mean beyond cutting edge stuff. It was. It was
super cool to watch you. That was the thing to
have that lot of causeworth I and those were the thowners.
That's that actually comes from World War two Russian like
fighter jets. It's called it's called a swirl throttle used

(05:12):
in the mid nineties and IndyCar and you can currently
buy for a over the road diesel. They use a
drive by wire motor basically hooked to that swirl throttle
to control the turbo charger and control e g R
into currently road driven diesel engines. So the technology is

(05:33):
starting World War two. They're still using it today. It's
great stuff. I just remember watching that video and I
just wanted to touch on it, um and so we
could post a video up here and we'll send people
off to UM to your side as well. I know,
I think I saw it maybe on Facebook. You probably
have on Instagram or or maybe another site somewhere. Tuned
by Shane What's what's Shane T tuning today? And he

(05:54):
was tuning in one of those cause Worth engines. It
was pretty Aweshile, I get to work on some pretty
awesome stuff. Man. I pinched myself all the time. I
can't believe I have this job and I can actually
make a living doing It's crazy. So for the folks
at home, uh, and myself, by the way, I am
part of this group here. Craig Campton has joined us
here on the show. Greg Phillison, Man, give us a
little bit of history where you come from, how long

(06:17):
you've been in this deal, what you primarily do, and Uh.
For the fans that are listening and wondering what direction
we're going with with this show. Now that we're past
Shane te Um, we're gonna focus in on the Level
five experience that both Shane T and Craig, Uh, we're
part of at one time. And yeah, that noise, that
background noise, By the way, I'm convinced that that's Shane's

(06:41):
that Shanes either his facts machine or his dial up.
It's I think it's actually I think it's actually his
dot Matrix printer going to hell in a handbasket. He
took his phone outside that clearly was not yet Actually
actually it's uh, it's all of his money trying to
get out of that squeaky wall at screaming. What alt

(07:02):
so Phillis and Craig tell us about yourself, man Um,
I was a public works employee for a long time.
I started a small business back in the mid nineties
which was called which was I named it hyper Sports.
It kind of went with my personality at the time,
and uh, you know, did that deal until the early

(07:24):
two thousand's, maybe two thousand and four, and I was
at a point for public employment that I was, you know,
I kind of advanced and and didn't really have a
lot of options, uh to move forward. Had thought about
going full time with the hyper sports deal, uh, but
was nervous whatever. And in two thousand four, a good

(07:45):
close personal friend of mine Joe Hornick, who at the
time was in a transitional period from the Greg Anderson
Jason Lyne KB racing over to kag Nazi. Uh, he
asked me to come down and speak with him, and
and there were some opportunities there, and at the time
it didn't really make sense. Uh. There was some stuff

(08:09):
that that happened where my supervisor was a great man,
was looking at retirement and just the way the public
employment deal was going, and stuff at Hypersports was doing fine.
But that opportunity came again in two thousand and five,
and UH I went to work for Victor cag Nazi
and did uh I guess about a three and a

(08:31):
half year stint there. Uh. Following that, I did some
privateer stuff for Jim Yates and Ryan and Draco, and
then in I think two thousand and nine or two
thousand early two thousand and ten, I was hired by
Johnny and Shane Gray. Uh joined up with those guys,
which that was that was an incredible ride. Had a

(08:53):
lot of fun with those guys, and UH, soul excuse me,
moved from at the when I finished up there with Cagnazzi,
I moved back to Wisconsin, kept my home in North Carolina,
and uh, and came back here and I was flying
in out, in and out of the national events, and um,
the deal came about with the Kelly Moss Level five

(09:18):
DSR thing right when I was kind of still involved
with the drag race and stuff, and it just seemed
like a good opportunity, a good point. We had a
fair bit of momentum here at the shop because I
actually opened shot back up even though I was flying
in and out to the national events. And uh, we
just kind of took took one of my passions, which

(09:39):
was snowmobiles, and one of my other passions, which was
drag racing, and merged the two and we've been making
we've been making outlawed drag race snowmobiles turnkeys, uh for
for coming up on ten years now, I guess so.
Uh that combined with the numerous unique contract at labor

(10:00):
jobs that we get involved with, whether it be road
racing or tractor pulling, uh, still some drag race stuff. Uh.
You know, we try to try to focus primarily on
our snowmobile stuff, but but certainly in in years of past,
it wasn't always enough snowmobile work to keep us busy
full time like it is now. But I've been I've

(10:23):
been very, very fortunate here in this little niche market.
Um we are. I feel like we're we're at a
point in our business right now that uh you know,
we're we've been backed up on builds. We've got ten
new builds, turn key builds which we physically make and

(10:43):
manufacture not only the chassis but the engines, um and
uh man, We're surrounded by great, great customers. This is
the best customer base I've had in years. And uh,
I don't have anybody that you know currently that that
is undesirable. So when the phone rings, I mean, it's

(11:05):
it's good to talk to my customers, and it's good
to have the cool and unique builds. I you know,
I probably once this skits O when I was kind
of dog cussing the supercharger deal there. We've we've built
a supercharger sled in the past, and we just, uh wow,
is that you shane? That noise um as it is,
I don't know. I can't hear the aliens are landing,

(11:29):
That's what it sounds like. You know, whenever you go
to marketplace and you buy that laptop for a hundred
and fifty bucks, you know, Yeah, and you don't have
it only makes a noise once in a while. Yeah,
it only has some demons in it. So we're gonna
take a quick break here. But but for our fans
at home that maybe don't don't recognize some of those names,

(11:50):
and he's talking about tech Nasty and Yates. Uh, he's
talking about some of the biggest postock raizors of all time,
of course back in the day. And then uh, of
course move forward on with his own companies and the
uh in the outlaw drag racing for snowmobiles. So plenty
more to go. We're just getting going here in this episode. Uh,
the the payday is gonna be Level five Motorsports. We've

(12:12):
got a couple of incredible stories that these guys, these
guys are right in the middle of. So we're gonna
take a quick break here. We'll be back on the
other side and we'll get talking about some incredible sports
car racing. This segment of the Skinny is brought to
you by General Tire. For over one hundred years, General
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(12:35):
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(12:59):
welcome back to the Skinny. By the way, we want
to remind you about the one hundred thousand dollar Challenge.
Fat Heads I Wear has been named official sponsor for
the inaugural Who's Your Classic fat Heads I Wear one
hundred k Challenge. Who's Your Classic will host a trifecta
of open wheel pavement racing featuring champions print cars on

(13:20):
Friday August, Champion Midgets on Saturday auguste, and the us
ACT Silver Crown Series held later that same day. Set
to take place in conjunction with Brickyard four hundred Weekend,
it will be a very busy weekend. Of course, drivers
will compete on the oval at Lucas Oil Raceway when
two of the events claim a bonus of fifty grand

(13:40):
win all three and take on the top prize of
one hundred thousand dollars. You can pick my good friends
sitting on the other side of the desk pocket he would. Uh,
he's the one that posted it up there. One hundred k, baby,
come and get it. Do remind me again how much
was that? I thought it was a thousand dollar do

(14:01):
somebody had a zero to this thing. Now it's going
to be a great event, you know, and uh, they've
got a lot of cool things leading up to it. Uh,
Lucas Soil Raceway is really building. Uh you know, they're
building back a lot of the heritage and a lot
of the things that they used to have back in
the day that made Lucas Soil Raceway what it is today.

(14:24):
We are very proud to be involved with it. And
Mr Casey Cohler that is the uh is the track
guy that runs every all the tracks for the nhr A.
And Uh, I don't know what Shane's doing, but I'm
gonna strangle him the next time I've seen and uh,
anyhow so now, but yeah, so we're we're we're excited

(14:47):
to do it. And uh it's amazing the entry lists
that are coming out for this. So for all of
you that remember Thursday night, thunder and uh, you know,
I got to watch a lot of those uh great
duels out there, you know, whether it was with our
friend Danny Dryning or our buddy Tony Stewart. You know

(15:08):
you're gonna see a lot of that. And uh, you've
got the Swanson boys go on at it. So um,
I don't know if they win, if they'll last for
lesson sponsorship, but I don't know anyhow. Oh, that's great.
You're actually able to turn it up now if you
figured out haven't turn it up, Shane, Sorry, let me

(15:30):
remove my fat heads. I wear um luckily, thank god.
I can't hear it. I don't so it doesn't think No,
I don't hear anything on my end, which is great.
This is this reminds me of the story that my
wife tries to tell me about me snoring. Yeah. See,
I don't ever hear myself do that either. I don't.
I don't. I don't think. Yeah, bother me a bit, Craig,

(15:54):
Are you guys possibly running a snowball bill on the
dino right now? We are not chases preference some blacks
and we have the four of us. Three of the
four of us can hear it loud and clear. I

(16:14):
was thinking that maybe it's getting closely, maybe it's getting
close to feeding time, and this is possibly Shane's stomach growling.
Just a thought. Is there ever a time that's not
close to feeding time for Shane's stomach. I mean, I
can relate, I can relate. But there's three fat guys here, dude,
we get it. Well, maybe four listen. I'm just I'm

(16:38):
just glad that you guys have this to pick on
me for, so that you don't find anything, you know,
actually that's relevant to pick on me. Just because we
found this doesn't mean we rule anything else out. So yeah,
we've got a laundry. Legs Kin's got papers over here,
by the way, So as we um as we move
forward here. When you know, whenever you talk about a
team like that that was so successful in doing what

(17:00):
you guys did at that at that extremely high level,
I think this falls in line here with level five motorsports,
very very successful team. But only a handful of guys
even that make it to the to the highest levels
of whatever discipline and motorsports they may be in. Only
a handful of guys really get involved with the team
that will look at them and say, budget isn't the

(17:21):
issue as long as we win. If we can win,
I'm not gonna bitch about the money. If we spend
the money, we don't win. Now, now we're gonna have
a talk and we've got a problem here. But and
correct me if I'm wrong. But I got the feeling
that that's how Level five Motorsports was Scott Tucker and
the boys. Whenever they decided to pull the trigger and go, man,
it was give me the absolute best you can give me.

(17:43):
And he had the best of the best working on
that team. That the Level five deal was so unique
in that it was truly the biggest team effort that
I had ever been around it, and it was the
support within the organization for for wild and crazy. Uh,

(18:08):
it was unbelievable. And I mean obviously they had assembled
a bunch of veterans, I mean a bunch of people
that were that were very well seasoned and knew what
was going on, and uh, it was it was. I
think it's safe to say that I will never experience
anything like that again, just where you you know. So

(18:31):
Tucker certainly was properly funded to do anything that that
he set his mind out to do um and just
the people that they put in the places to accomplish
the specific goals. And it was cool because they they
broke the whole deal down. I remember when when when
they walked in the shop out here, and this was
this was prior to them even really deciding exactly what

(18:56):
they were going to do, and and they were talking
about doing a stroke three cylinder DSR combo and I
knew nothing about DSR, and I'm like, where's the rules?
So that they I think Kipley handed me the rules
and and I looked at him and I'm kind of
going through them like, oh, that's dumb, that's dumber. That sucks.
I'm like, wait a minute. You can run a four cycle,

(19:19):
four cylinder six fifty ish cc turbo charge engine against
these NA engines. Well, yeah, Mike, we're not talking. You
know that, this is it? Well are you sure about that?
I said absolutely, I'm sure, you know so, And it
was that that was kind of the start of it.
And uh then then to watch you know, David and

(19:41):
Jeff and and Tucker. I mean, they gave you every tool,
every opportunity, uh, every they gave you everything you needed
to be successful. All you had to do was just
own it. Just just just make it happen. And they
didn't that. There was no time for excuses. UH, just
make it happened at whatever the costs. Maybe, so it was,

(20:03):
it was unbelievable. So well, I'm gonna set this up
here a little bit for people that aren't familiar. Level
five motorsports and extremely successful. UH sports car racing team
really dominated in American lamon Series LMP two category, A
ton of wins, a ton of championships along the way.
Uh Tucker one I believe won a championship setting like

(20:26):
a ten race winning season or something like that around
two thousand nine, two thousand ten, um they ran the
role X twenty four. A matter of fact, two thousand fourteen,
I think they won the twenty four of Daytona, which
would have been grand damn at the time if I'm
not mistaken. So I mean a very high level team.
But at some point they also ran LMPC. I think

(20:50):
they won a championship with that as well. But at
some point they decided to play When you mentioned it,
the ds car, the DSR car, so the sports racers
DSR standing for d Worts Racer. There's a c sports racer.
I know of those two, and I remember around that
time my son was in sports cars as well, and
I was looking at some of those sports racers for uh,

(21:11):
for really a test card, just to help him advance
and his and his driving ability. But looking at them,
I realized how advanced some of those were. Like that's
when the store had come into play, and and it
was a pretty expensive car. Carbon fiber was working its
way into the deal, so it definitely got got out
of my price range for sure for us to even

(21:33):
look at it and go compete. But UH point of
trying to make is it's a super super cool car.
They race it at a club level with Sports Car
Club of America sec A, but it's a really fast,
uh club level car, and for the most part, they
used the one thousands of cc motorcycle engines in the
back of them, so they're pretty durable car. They're pretty

(21:54):
cost effective to run if you're can afford the car,
lightweight card, but but a lot of fun to walk,
to watch and also of course to race. So that's
what you mentioned, and I want to kind of set
the platform, the foundation for the d sports racers for
the people that are listening might not be familiar with
what's going on. And whenever I say expensive, um, I

(22:16):
don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think
I think like maybe a brand new, state of the
art winning car was maybe around a hundred grand or
something like that, maybe ballpark And correct me if I'm
wrong here, guys, but you could probably find like a
really decent used car for probably in the sixty dollar
range somewhere there. But the stores I think had really

(22:36):
kind of taken over. So, um, I mean, it's it's
a lot of money. In terms of racing, it's not
a lot of money, but in terms of club level racing,
it's it's a high it's a pretty expensive car to
go out and play with. So but whenever you hear
this story about what Scott Tucker, the Level five Motorsports
team decided to do with this d sports racer, when

(22:56):
they I mean they blew away forget about any budget.
There was no budget. I mean, I mean easily five
thousand dollars in this thing by the time you got
done right probably Yeah, I would say ten to fifteen times,
and it it was well. I mean I heard one

(23:18):
helped me out here, But I heard one story where
it was on. It was in the wind tunnel for
two days. It was on the Shaker rig for two days,
and then there was some sort of program they headed
on with. Was it Did I hear this right? Forty
two or forty three computers logging stuff? I don't know.
There were three computers doing CFD design. And by the way,

(23:38):
all of the Shaker rig, wind tunnel seven, post Shaker,
all of that stuff happened with a that was not
the car we ran. That was the one they bought
just to see what it was they they bought. So
so look, first of all, to the end of Level
five and we know that we know we know that
Tucker's money came from wherever it came from. That's a

(24:01):
totally separate issue, totally separate story. But everything Craig is
telling you about the budget Listen, I worked for sheiks,
okay sheiks in the Middle East that had unlimited budgets,
even they weren't as unlimited as this deal with Level
five was. From the standpoint of every single thing I

(24:24):
ever mentioned, uh, there was no question about it except
is that the absolute best thing you can think of
to do that job? So I was Tucker as so
good guy bag? What was what was he? What was
he about? For me? For me, Tucker was great guy. Look,

(24:45):
I probably talked to the guy five minutes in the
whole uh nine months or ten months that we ran
this program. I saw him at the race track for
about three and a half minutes getting in and out
of a car. He was totally cool. He came to
me the very first time he met me and said,
you know, thanks for agreeing to come on board and
be a part of this. And it's like this is
like the best job ever. Are you joking? But you

(25:07):
know he was really cool, really personable, very nice guy.
What you're about to tell us all happened in about
nine months from buying mule cars and developing to the
final race at the runoffs sec A Runoffs in two
thousand twelve. Okay, go, short story is they call me
and say can you come up? I think I was

(25:28):
at the I think I was actually at the maybe
it was October um, but I was. I was at
the Texas Mile running the four GT. And so I
left the Texas Mile and I flew up there to
their shop in in Madison, and we started looking at
what they had well they had this engine, the allowed

(25:50):
turbo charged displacement was six seventy c C. There is
no six seventy, right, there's bike motors or six seven
fifty thousand, this of six seventy. So how they came
up with six seventy I don't Maybe they were trying
to stop anyone from trying to build one because they
no one makes one, So they they had Rick had

(26:10):
figured out if he used parts from a seven fifty
and a six hundred, he could make a six fifty
relatively easily, so that we would have a test mule
engine to play with. And at the time they had
gone and looked for the only turbo that would fit
that size of an engine from Garrett and I don't

(26:31):
even I think it was maybe like a GT twenty five,
or maybe it wasn't even a g T twenty five.
It was like a g T twenty two. It was
a tiny little thing there was for that size engine.
There was literally only one choice for a turbo charger.
And you know, I had connections with Precision and they
didn't make anything that small. I had connections with some
of the other turbo manufact Nobody made anything that little.

(26:53):
So there was literally it was like, there's one turbo available,
and so if it doesn't match the engine, well it
won't perfor warm well, right, But but they asked me
while I was there, They said, listen, the normally aspirated
engines to make two and twelve horsepower two fifteen horse power.
What do you think we we can make with you know,
one of these as a turbo. So, I mean, I'm

(27:13):
trying not to shoot myself in the foot and put
give them some you know, pie in the sky number
that we can never achieve. That they'll hold me too,
and then just say I don't know what I'm talking
about when it doesn't do it? So, like, how how
much does it normally aspirated one of these make? It
makes like a hundred and five horse power? Like all right, well,
fifteen pounds of boost it will make two ten and
thirty pounds of boost will make three hundred. They're like

(27:34):
three hundred. And I said, well, I I mean, I
think I think so, I don't know. I mean, we're
gonna have to try it and see, guys, we'll find out.
So they said, all right, let's do it. So from
that point it was, you know, here, we need to
put a wastegate here, put an intercooler here, put the
turbo here, and I'll see you in a month and
a half or whatever, and we'll we'll dine to it.

(27:55):
And I'll just stop at this point so Craig can
chime in with anything he used to chime in with,
and then we'll take it from there as we started
to play with this thing, because I'll just go for
an hour straight if you just let me, So I'll
stop let someone else have a chance. So so to
you know, what what Shane said is absolutely accurate. The

(28:17):
we were a little bit and I'm not going to
say who, but we were a little bit hand tied
of when we got to go on talking about the
turbo chargers, because I think if I remember correctly, I
think it was like sixty or something turbo that we
started with. Um but it uh, you know, they were

(28:38):
they were asking the same questions when they were here,
and this is prior to get going. And then once
once we kind of got stuff situated in the car
and and laid out the orientation of the turbo and
and where the hot stuff was going, where the cold stuff,
and where we're putting coolers and things like that, uh,
you know, and and then it kind of kind of
got that stuff going. Rick was building mule motors. Now,

(29:00):
mind you, in the process of trying to develop this
six seventies CC deal and build a mule motor, they
are also in the process. And I don't recall, Shane,
maybe you do, but I think they built ten or
eleven of the n A motors just to have just
in case for the other car that they were building.

(29:22):
I mean this, this was the wildest display of spending
money likely ever in this this period of time, likely
ever in the nation, if not the world. I mean
that they were spending the amount of money they were
spending per week, uh rivals what what nhr A pro

(29:44):
stock teams spending a year literally And that was the
plan going in. We're gonna do two cars in parallel,
a lightweight normally asprated in this turbo thing, and whichever
one we think we can win with. And the the
goal when we started, we're two main goals. Number One,
they wanted to win the runoffs. Number two, they wanted

(30:07):
to run less than two minutes a lap in competition,
because no one had ever done it before. If we
could run less than two minutes a lap at road America.
That was gonna be you know, a major, major bonus
to the whole program. So that was our two goals
the whole time. So so I'll just go a little
bit further and I'll stop again. We're gonna have to
trade back and forth otherwise we're gonna just hear ridiculous

(30:29):
amounts of time on each person's version of the story.
Uh So, when I got there to run the engine
the very first time with this turbo, which is I'm
looking at the turbo, going there's in things. It's not
big enough to make the power we want to make,
but we're gonna try it. So we ran the engine,
uh the very first Dino session. It made two eighty

(30:53):
nine horse power. They couldn't believe it. And and the
turbo was upside down. So so I'm saying, listen, if
we can get a turbo that actually works for this
size engine, we can make way more than this amount
of power. Okay, this is just we just ran to
the limit of what this turbo that's not a good

(31:14):
match for this engine is capable of doing. So we
need to investigate, figure out a way, you know, to
get the turbo built and and That's where I got
in touch with my my guys at Forced Performance, Robert
and his group down in Texas and had them build
us custom turbo chargers specifically for this application. And when

(31:39):
we did that, When we did that, uh, we ultimately
were able to make four and thirty horsepower with this engine.
And that killed that killed the normally aspirated side of
the project. From that point on, the the the engineer
Jeff braun It came to us and said, the normally

(32:00):
aspirated setup, we're going with the turbo and let's just
focus on how do we make the turbo uh win,
I mean, whatever we have to do, We're doing this.
This is the right way that other ways not worth chasing.
So yes, they had ten, twelve, fourteen, however many engines
they thought they were gonna need normally aspirated to make
it through all of that testing and development and the race,

(32:23):
and they stayed on the shelf while we focused on
how to get the little turbo engine to live. So, Craig,
I'll let you go now at this point if you
want to say something, yes, So I just want to
add to that that that once once we switched the
turbo chargers, that it. I mean it was we we
had more power. We had more power than than what

(32:46):
we needed to absolutely flip the class upside down. Um.
And then it was to to focus and concentrate, uh
to keep the header from falling apart, to keep the
exhaust valve seats from falling out the cylinder head. Uh.
So So that so there was a lot of stuff.
You know, the thing made enough power that that we

(33:06):
could likely you know, I'm surprised we didn't drive over
the crankshaft, you know, honestly, just with with with what
we were doing endurance wise, because because we were making
drag race displacement wise, we were making drag race power
levels uh in an endurance application, which you know everybody

(33:27):
knows the stuff that's associated with that. So that that
was Rick's deal. And uh Rick, Rick is not here today,
He'll be here tomorrow. I wish he could have been here.
He would have got a kick out of this. But
the the amount of of burning the candle at both ends,
the burning the midnight oil, if you will, I mean

(33:49):
it was it was not uncommon two you know, to
be sixteen seventeen hours a day, seven days a week,
trying trying to get all the little issues of a
small displacement engine operating at this power level to trying

(34:12):
to get through all the issues and uh yeah, so
by the way, but when he's talking about the power
procute inch, he's not talking about pro stock power. The
bike motor will do better than that when you buy
it from Suzuki. Okay, this thing was it was forty
one cubic inches. Okay, we made four horse power with

(34:34):
the mule motor, right, the cobbled together out of the
Junkyard six seventy and uh sorry, seven fifty and six hundred, which,
by the way, Craig, I don't know if you remember this.
At one point because we started with that six hundred
bottom end, the clutch wasn't ready for this on the
engine Dino, so we made about two hundred sixty or
seventy horsepower and then it started making less every time

(34:55):
we turned the power up. It's like all the saying,
what's going on here? Like the engines on the Red limitter,
but the Dino says it's only at nine rpm, right,
that's because the clutch is slipping, So how do we
fix that? So, you know, take the three drag race
guys think about it for two or three minutes, like, no,
the clutch is slipping. I got an idea, What if
it doesn't have a clutch anymore, Just drill it and
stick bolts through where the clutch back is so it

(35:18):
can't slip. We don't need a clutch. We started, we'll
rev it up, kick it in gear like a dirt
bike on the Dino, and off we go. So that's
what we did from then on. So we didn't have
a clutch slipping problem that road. No. But so what
happened was Rick had figured out how to make this
seven fifty stuff go in this six to make it
a six fifty. When we built the real engines for

(35:39):
the car, we used either the seven case or I
think we used the thousand case and turned it into
a six seventy with a with a custom crank, custom Rods,
custom piss. This was this was This was actually brilliant
because Rick is clearly a died in in in the
wool pro stock normally aspirated. He's talking about I mean,

(36:04):
I remember having a conversation with him the first time
about well, what you know, what shall we put for
in it for camshafts, And I'm like you got the
stock shafts from the junk Yardota and he's like yeah,
and I go just put him in. He's like, well,
that's never gonna wright. Listen, it's got a turbo, you know,
don't even do anything to any of the internal parts.
Just we're just gonna hang the turbo on. So he couldn't.
He could never get over that, right, he couldn't. He's like,

(36:25):
he couldn't. He just couldn't accept it in his mind.
And then he built this magical six seventy which is
the custom crank, Custom rods, custom, every single badass piece
of bitch in this you could ever buy for any engine.
And we put that on the Dino and it made
four forty, like five horsepower, and the hunk out of
the junkyard with a cobble together crap made four thirty.

(36:49):
And then he suddenly he's a believer. And yeah, but
it was so funny for me and Craig. Craig knew.
Craig had must have screwed with it enough to know.
So we're trying to tell Rick and he's listen, he
trusts us. And that was the thing with Level five
in this project. Every person you were working with you
knew was an expert, so you could believe in him.

(37:10):
You didn't have to You didn't have to think that
they were full of crap whatever they were saying. You know,
it didn't always work that way, but almost always, but
Rick was. He was trying to be nice and he
was friendly. By then, we were pretty good friends. And
he's obviously friends with with with Craig, and you could
but you could see the doubt. He's smiling, but you
can see he's gonna know. There's no way better parts

(37:34):
are not going to make more power. And they did
make more power. But listen, when when you start a
turbo project and and someone doesn't tell you beforehand, don't
run more than this boost or don't run more than
this horsepower, it's all you can do to not at
the end of it, haven't one more Dino po. I
just need to check one thing moment, so you Oh sorry,

(37:58):
I typed the hundred in there. I meant to type ten. Oh,
but check it out. It made six. That was pretty good,
so I don't know it. No, it never made that
kind of power to my knowledge. It never did. But
it didn't make four or forty five. The big motor
I have the data because I just looked at it
for the first time in almost ten years from the

(38:19):
six fifty mules, so I know it made four thirty
one from memory. The other motor made four forty five.
It didn't make a lot more. It made a little
a little bit more, But I don't. I have all
the Dino runs, but I don't have the horsepower number.
But I could if we if we could get back
in the Dino data, we coul figure out which one
it wasn't see what it made. But to my knowledge,
it never made that big number. Uh, I think it

(38:41):
made four forty five with you know. And and so
here's what happened, guys. We we well, so they were
they were simulating all of these things. So there's you know,
CFD work going on a body that they're working with
Multimattic up in Canada. They're using their F one simulator.
They said, they build the cars in simulation and they

(39:04):
go drive it on the F one simulator, which is
like a video game but with full movement. I mean,
it's like a five million dollar mint video game. Okay,
it's the best one ever in the world. So they
build the car and they run it and and they're
up playing with the simulator. It's multimattic. Jeff Braun and
Colin Braun is driving the car in the simulator. Uh,
you know, they've got Road America simulated. So we're as

(39:26):
as close as we can to the real thing. They're
running the car, we're running it on the diner. This
is the second week when we got the second time
in the diner, when we got the new custom turbos.
So we run the first one. We call him up.
We're like, yeah, I guess what it made. They're like, awesome, Okay,
So they put that in their simulator and they simulate
for a while, and then we call him back there like, yeah,
it's after lunch now we made like three seventy five.
They're like, oh my god, that's crazy. So then they

(39:48):
run that. So then we call them at the end
of the day they call We don't call them. They
call us, like, hey, how come you guys didn't call us,
Like we just finished, Well, how much you make fot
They're like what? So so they slimulate this thing, right,
and they figure out we don't need anywhere near that
kind of power in fact, to to do what we
want to do. To run less than two minutes of

(40:10):
lap in this car, it wrote, America, we only need
about three fifty horse power. It's like, okay, so now
we can turn the boost down right and call the
turbo guys and tell them, listen, here's the boost pressure
we want to run. We now need a turbo that
is the most efficient you can possibly build us in
this range between this boost pressure and this boost pressure,

(40:33):
between this mass flow and that mass flow. So they
can recenter their compressor and build us something that is
dead nuts in the middle of where we're operating to
give us the best efficiency. Right. So that's first of all,
that's awesome minute of itself. No one ever gets to
do that. They just buy the one turbo and then
they run it and it is what it is. You
don't get to send it back, give them the data

(40:54):
that you've developed. You know. I had sensors on this thing,
measuring temperature and pressure up stream of the compressor, temperature
and pressure after the compressor, temperature and pressure after the charge, ever,
heat exchanger, turbo cheft, speed, exhaust manifold pressure, turbine inlet pressure,
turbine outlet pressure, turbine inlet temp turbine outlets, every single

(41:15):
thing you need to develop a turbo charger and turbine
to drive it, along with you know, waste skate position
and you just you name it. I have every sensor
in the world I can imagine, because that's my way anyways.
And these guys are like, look, we don't care what
you spend, it's just gotta be awesome. So I'm like, well,
I'm getting everything I've ever wanted. So I can supply
this data to to to Robert Young at Forced Performance,

(41:40):
and he can for the first time in his life,
he's got actual, real data to work from to build
another compressor. So the guys are working on the simulations
for the car up a multimatic. I'm working directly with Robert,
and it's a closed loop, like he's building me a
compressor based on the data on get him. We're testing it,

(42:00):
given him more data. He's building another compressor, We're testing it.
It just keeps going through this loop and everything just
keeps getting better. Meanwhile, Craig is doing you know, HiT's
part of It's like every time we put the thing
on the diner or go to the racetrack and the
header brakes or the intercooler brakes or the INTI medical brakes,
or whatever it is. Craig's finding another better, stronger or
lighter or whatever. It is usually just stronger way to

(42:24):
make this thing live. And the big problem we had
is the exhaust side of the cylinder head. These engines
were manufactured and designed to make a hundred horse power.
We're trying to make three times that amount of horse power,
so we're basically trying to get rid of three times
that amount of heat. And that became the achilles heel
of that engine. Uh in the end, because we raced

(42:49):
on a cool day, we only needed to use about
horse power to do what we did with it. But
at that power level, we figured out that we could
only naked about fifteen laps, like sixty or something like that.
Whatever the mileage turns out to be. It's like four
miles of lap. We had to go laps, so it's

(43:10):
forty miles and we could make it like sixty before
the exhaust side of the head literally would just turn
to butter and fall out. I mean, we ran them
long enough in testing that they would have no compression
at the end of the stint because the exhaust side
of head just the valves had moved, the vowel seats
had moved around so much that they they didn't seal anymore.

(43:32):
Really incredible stuff, because you guys are really focusing obviously
on on the engine side of things and then the
mechanical side of things for Craig to try and make
this thing live. As you mentioned before, though, they're working
on arrow for the car, they're working on suspension for
the car. You mentioned multi Matic of course, one of
the best of all time, and and that incredible simulator
they have um And then I also heard that the

(43:55):
dampers that were on the car were of F one
technology as well. They made sure that we had access
to that technology for the suspension. So you know, there's
a couple of funny things about this. So first of all,
when I was brought on, I mean I I knew
just from the mere fact that they had hired me
to work there and the level and quality of people

(44:18):
that I was working with, that anybody that was involved
with the project would have been a high level expert,
highly accredited, you know, someone that you can commands your
respect right off the bat. And you know, they didn't
hire dummy, they didn't They could afford to hire the
best there was, you know, and so that was a
pat on on your back if you worked for them.

(44:39):
But also it gave you the ability to just literally
trust anything anyone told you. We're gonna take a quick
break here because if you were like I am, I
want to know the payoff to this story, did in
fact they break the two minute mark? And did in
fact that this car lasts for thirteen laughs? We'll have
that on the other side. This segment of the Skinny

(45:02):
is brought to you by Rhino Classifies. Tired of all
those ads and random stuff that shows up when you're
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(45:25):
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country in we got you at Rhino dot com. So
let's move along here because we've we've covered a lot
of ground here with this DSR program from Level five Motorsports,
and of course the big payoff that they were looking
for as the aliens have clearly come back into Shane
Tecklenburgh's house. But the big payoff that we're looking for

(45:49):
is the whole program was built, as Shane mentioned at
the beginning, around two goals. One was to break the
two minute mark at Road America and the other one was,
of course, to win the ACE. It was the Runoffs
Championship sec A race for the year of two thousand
and twelve. And uh, without further ado, I'm gonna cut
over to Craig this time and let Craig fill in

(46:11):
towards the towards the end of the story, and we'll
see if they accomplished the goal. It was surreal. It
was I am certain that that nothing that that I
will ever be involved in, uh will likely ever be
to this level. You know that the Tucker setting his goals,

(46:31):
which which had first seemed uh seemed a little bit
uh maybe maybe a little bit out there, a little
bit unreasonable, um, But for the goals that he had set,
and then to watch to watch him put the power
and the and the money and and the trust in

(46:56):
all of these all of these different personnelity at ease
and all of these different people, uh, and and to
watch and to be part of these people jelling together
and rising to the occasion and him achieving his goals
was it's it's it's it's still mind boggling and and

(47:20):
and you kind of it's good to reflect back on
this because you know, we're approaching ten years uh since
since this magical date, and uh, I don't know, it's
good to reflect back on it. It definitely, uh definitely
was a highlight of of of my uh motor sports

(47:41):
career for sure. And uh, it's just I don't I
don't know if anybody will ever take the money and
and the people in the resources ever again and and
compile them in a in a manner to win any race,
whether it be a scc A deal or a uh
in any sort of professional motorsports. So that the bottom

(48:04):
line was is they they accomplished their goals, and it
was there. There was no words. The emotions that at
the end of the day were We're off the chart.
And uh, very very fortunate to be a part of it.
You know. I mean, let's face it, the money that
was spent and and what was done here should never

(48:25):
really be done at the club level. But I marvel
at the fact of whenever you see a Ganassi or
a Pinski or a whatever big name team that you
want to come up with and whatever discipline it may be.
If you wonder how good these guys are, well, this
was a good look at a professional level with no
budget team going against club level guys, and without that,

(48:49):
the benchmark would have remained, say one, oh one, the
weather was cool there. Maybe they get to h I'm
sorry to oh one. Maybe the bench Maybe they get
to a two minute flat or something they're like, oh,
got closer. Maybe they even break it and they go
a minute, you know, fifty nine point nine, you know,
whatever the case may be. But to see what can
be done when you assemble the right people and let

(49:11):
them go at it was nothing short of spectacular here.
They have to understand the mindset was we need to
control every variable and use every tool we can think
of to do this job. So there was no like, oh, well,
let's not use spotters because no one else has one.
Was like, there's no rule against spotters. Let's have taed,
you know, let's let's have two a radio communication with

(49:33):
the driver which actually ended up not working real well,
but there was there was again, there was no stone
left unturned, no amount of money. Uh that couldn't be
spent to do the job better. And you had twenty
or experts, uh, very high level, forward thinking people and

(49:58):
everyone thinking to the to the best of their ability.
How do I do or how do we collectively do
this job better? And I've never been a part of
anything like that, and and and and this is now
ten years later, and I've been a part of some
pretty awesome teams and some teams that were very close
to that, but nothing before or since has has been

(50:23):
as as amazing as that was. And you know, maybe
no matter how long we sit here and tell you that,
maybe we can never convey what that actually means. I
guess you kind of had to be there. But yeah,
I look back fondly on that time at Level five
and what we and what we did, and I especially
look back fondly at all of the acquaintances that I made,

(50:43):
like like Craig you know, and Rick Kipley and and
Jeff Ron and some of those guys who are literally
now I could send text messages to and say, hey, Hey,
what you're doing. We worked on other projects since, uh,
doing things because you know, as you go through this
life and motorsports, you get this rolodex of badasses, you know,

(51:05):
in in in their particular field. And then when you
get on another project and you need something, you say,
you know, I know the guy that knows how to
do that. Hang on. So you're up and at road America.
In in Wisconsin, Elkhart Lake. It's a chilly day in
the fifties. It's cloudy. Rumor has it maybe even misty?
It was they were talking about rain and it could

(51:27):
rob you, guys of the opportunity. You've yet to tell
us did it did he break that two minute mark
in the race, and did he survived laps? So you're
absolutely right forgot all about the rain that so that
was the deal. We have everything cover. But like we've
done everything we can do, we're gonna do it. Like
you just have to have a positive thought in your

(51:48):
head at this point because you can't control whatever happens
from here on out right, you can stack it up,
someone can hit him, who knows whatever, And next thing
you know, we're feeling rain drops and it's like, guys,
so now fourteen of us are all standing there on
our phones. Everyone's trying to look at their weather app
and everyone's trying to be the weather Man and say, oh,
I think it's gonna it's gonna be in forty five minutes.

(52:09):
I will make it almost through the race, will make
it ten whatever. So the rain and in the last
I checked, phones don't work that great there. That's true.
That that's the thing. You've got fourteen of us all
looking at arguably the same app on the same kind
of phone, and every one of us is going no, no no, no, no.
Mine is not gonna rain, mind, but mine says they're

(52:30):
just gonna rain. So we're hoping the rains not. We
can't do. If it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain. Short story,
doesn't rain. Uh, grain flag drops. Tucker has about five
hundred feet on second place when the inter turn one. Uh.
We ended up going in about the second or third

(52:52):
lap a minute fifty nine, so we went under two
minutes lap. Officially, I think the quickest he went a
lap or two later was like minute fifty eight six
some eight, something like that. And at that point, because
by then the second and third place guys, which are
the closest guys to us, one of them spun and
something happened to the other one, or maybe we just

(53:13):
by then we were that far ahead of him. But
we basically started telling Scott, okay, back off, back it off,
you've got we've gone in her two minutes of lap.
Just you know, short shift the thing, take it easy.
They're way behind you, uh, and just let's finish the
race because we have to make now another like whatever
nine more laps of this place, and who knows what's
going to happen. And so short story, really long, but

(53:38):
as short as I can make it in the last
five seconds. Yes, we won the race by like thirty
five seconds over second place, and and we achieved the goal,
you know, And it was yeah, it was a small thing.
Like again, it was like we were basically in our
own race. No one else had a turbo there, no
one else was even close. Uh, but it was nonetheless awesome.

(53:59):
And uh, you know anybody that is a naysayer and
and thinks that, you know, that shouldn't have happened, and
uh you know that uh shouldn't be allowed to do that,
well there's jealous because I can just about promise you
have level five and phoned them up to come and help.
They'd have been on the next airplane to Matthison. That's
exactly right. And I will you know, we've we've all

(54:21):
given the respect to the club level guys. I get it,
we shouldn't. You didn't go there, like you said that
just pummel those guys that they dangled the Carrett. You
went there for for. The goal was was to break
the two minute marks and and of course win the race.
But here's what I will say, for all the people
that were in that category that read the rule book

(54:42):
knowing that there was an option to put together a
little smaller motor and utilize the turbo charger, it was
lane right there. What would have gone as fast as
that car with all the technology that everything that you
guys put into it. Probably not, but I bet you
there was more than enough horsepower laying there on the
table for any one of those club level teams to

(55:04):
find and still break that two minute mark. A couple
of teams had tried it and they had scattered, you know,
the engine or whatever it happened, who knows, you know,
I mean, but listen, it wasn't. You weren't just going
to do it by hanging a turbo on whatever. Any
car wasn't going And I think that probably was how
the efforts were done. Before. I mean, I don't know,

(55:26):
but I would say now for sure you could do that.
The big problem was the exhaust side of the cylinder head.
So we were in the works to go back and
race in two thousand thirteen in the same class with
a billet cylinder head that we were going to have
enough water flow on the exhaust side that this wasn't

(55:47):
an issue, because I think Tucker somehow was involved with
West and they were talking about trying to supply a
car that people could you know, not what we had
run something, but something turbo charged, like basically make it
viable for someone to buy and actually be able to
maintain and run themselves. But that that never that never materialized.
And you know, that's okay because that means we're the

(56:08):
only ones that ever really ever tried to do it
and actually succeeded at it. And so that car is
in your garage? Now, where is that thing? I wish
it was? UM? A few years after that they called
me and I feel like someone from Chicago had purchased
the car by then, of course, uh And I think

(56:30):
maybe the next season S C. C. A UM, at
the urging of probably everyone else in the class, had
put a restrict on the turbo. I mean that was
part of the other great thing about this was that
the rule book was basically, okay, here's your rules, six
seventy c C go. We had to run a fuel.

(56:50):
We had to run fuel that you could get at
at road America. So we couldn't run alcohol because we
thought of that, or or ethanol, but we could we
had so we had to run gasoline. But you can
get like a hunter eighteen octane gasoline. So that was it.
Hundred eighteen octane gasoline six C do what ever you want, right, So,
I mean, you know, this was this is basically basically
this is nineteen seventy turbo era Formula one all over again.

(57:16):
Here's this. You can have this weird small one and
a half lead turbo, or you can run a two
three lead or whatever it is, normally aspirated engine. And
once someone tries the turbo and it makes like, you know,
five times the power of the normally aspirated engine, then
the whole field switches to turbo. You know. Just we
were the only ones running DSR with an F one budget.

(57:37):
Time for a quick break, don't go away. This segment
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muscle and paying the federal taxes so the winners don't

(57:57):
have to for do You can jump in the game
and part of that goes to charity. You'll have a
chance at winning some of the coolest cars on the planet.
Check it out at dream giveaway dot com. So Craig
switching gears here a little bit, uh your current your business.
They're building the drag sleds. So the first time I

(58:19):
ever watched those guys run was at BRAINERD at the
national event with the nhr A and I I am
I on the right page here with you you are.
We actually we build slits for all surfaces. But Glenn
Hall who Shane knows him as well. Uh, Glenn has
been with me for for several years now, and uh

(58:41):
Glenn has kind of owned Brainerd, you know for you
check out that Facebook video that's on our page. I
think Glenn's video is I don't know, approaching eight million
views organic, non advertising, non boosted. But Glenn is uh, yeah,
Glenn is he of the man in n hr A
pro stock for sure, has been for quite some time. Um.

(59:05):
But that so that the asphalt and hra A stuff
is one aspect of our business. But the biggest percentage
of our sleds uh are our snow drag race five
foot snow drag race stuff. Uh. And these are maximum
effort uh kind of a no rules type of deal,
some rules, but extreme performance. You know, four hundred and

(59:30):
the machine weighs four hundred and seventy pounds a thousand,
fifty horsepower, fire breathing dragons of whether whether it be
turbo charged or supercharged. Yeah, it's uh that that that's
how we That is our primary source of income here.
We do a lot of engines as well for the

(59:51):
snowmobile drag race world. But the brunt of our business
is building built to deliver turnkey. Uh. We show up
and hand you your sled and you go race and
you go you go win. That's that's what we pride ourselves.
And we got to kind of like when we go
to lunch at that one pizza place. We used to
always go to that brunch place and you know, we'd

(01:00:12):
would spend some time talking about the thing we're working
on a level five, and then we spend some time
talking about this exciting two cylinder insane thing that that
Craig was working on with the turbo, you know, in
this in our spare time, so you're always on. So
he's working on something, you were working on something, and
and you you kind of focus on that, but then
you start collaborating about about other things or or maybe

(01:00:34):
it's just a pipe dream, you know, like what if
we did this, or what if we had one of these?
And and it just continues to spiral. And that's the
beauty of of the of the brilliant minds working together
that that were you three guys in this particular case.
It's it's just super cool. I mean, I love to
hear these stories. I love to hear you know, how

(01:00:54):
do how does somebody for a club guy, just a
normal guy And you look at Carl like, how how
did they possibly do that? How do you get a
car to go that fast or make that much power?
And and it's just those baby steps of everything that
you guys have learned over the years, and you all
collaborate and work together, and man, it's it's a possibility,

(01:01:15):
and it should it should be noted too that that
you know, there was there was a lot of naysayers,
that there was a lot of people at the club
level that that thought, you know, Okay, these guys are
taking this path and there is no possible way that
they will succeed and there's no way you can make

(01:01:38):
X amount of power out of uh you know, point
six seven leaders and uh so, so for sure needs
to be said that you know, we did granted, it
was a very professional approach to to a s c
C A type of race. However, everything was done to
the letter of the law, you know, I mean, it

(01:01:58):
was the interpretation of the rules from Shane's standpoint to
two ricks to to bronze too. I mean, it was
just that there was a lot of a lot of
motivation too to kill it, you know, to to absolutely
on this deal and to smash it out of the park.

(01:02:19):
And and that that's an arena that that that's exciting
for myself and I know for Shane and and and
certainly you know we've touched on Rick many times and
and everybody that was on the car side was was
was killing it as well. But you know, Rick Kipley
and I wish he could have been part of this today.
But soft spoken man of of oftentimes not not a

(01:02:44):
lot of words. And and for him to sit there
and and be the you know, to to deal with
Shane and I and the and and some of our
language and the prefer profuse f bombs and all and
all the craziness and and Rick, and Rick's a Rick
is a you know, he's a Christian, He's a he

(01:03:05):
is a soft spoken If Rick swears we've got a problem,
you know, it was that yeah, we we Uh. It
was a beautiful, beautiful blend at least at least in
the engine development UH and from the engine management to
the to the turbo stuff too. It was just the

(01:03:28):
in my opinion, it was the dream team for for
the three of us UH to be able to to
work together on this project. And and like Shane says that,
there was never a point when I thought, Wow, Shane,
you're really for Rick, You're you're crazy. It was it
was it was the thing of beauty. And it's uh,

(01:03:50):
we we've carried that through, you know, many years later.
And and Rick is a big part of hyper sports
and and for UH, for him and I to to
carry on and to conduct our days in the same
manner that that that Shane and I and Rip dead.
It was awesome and you know, and and in our
past frequently crossed throughout the year. I mean I will

(01:04:13):
reach out to Shane and and he helps me out
on a lot of things that if we get puzzled
there there's something that that's perplexing or uh maybe maybe
something that we haven't experienced. It's just you take you
take a this DSR project, and you the acquaintances that

(01:04:34):
that you have gathered from a crazy project like this,
and and it just kind of you know it, it
burns into your mind and you remember those people and
you reach out and and it makes you, uh, a
better person, makes you makes you a more capable person
because now you have got more resources. And uh often,

(01:04:57):
I mean there's days that whether we're working with a
customer on a snow bill deal or or a custom
contracting deal. But the resources in today's world, that's what
makes you who you are. And uh, I've said this
a hundred times, but the motorsports deal is a very
very small community. People think that you know, it's uh,

(01:05:18):
through through all the different arenas of racing. People think
that there's hundreds of thousands of people that excel in
what they do, and quite honestly, it's quite the opposite.
You could take every you could take all of the
small groups of people that are great in their specific field,

(01:05:39):
and we could we could have everybody standing in our
shop here and and nobody's gonna be running into each other.
And it doesn't matter if you're in cup or you're
in a world of outlaw, or you are a micro
sprint racer, or whatever the case may be. So, uh,
this was an amazing, amazing project. Is very very fortunate
to be involved, met some some absolutely amazing people, and uh,

(01:06:05):
very very blessed and and Shane and and we met
Shane out of this, That's what I was gonna say.
I was gonna say that, um, you know, being a
part of that project elevated everybody's game. There's no question
from my standpoint, I got smarter. Everybody else may not
have from me, but I certainly got smarter by being

(01:06:26):
around all of them. Uh. Now to the point of
Rick cussing, uh so, I've never heard the guy say
entirely one cuss word. We were testing the DSR like
we I think we tested a week or maybe two
weeks before the race, and we blew it up because

(01:06:47):
we decided, I don't remember why we decided we're gonna
try to run fourteen thousand five DRED or fifteen thousand
rpm or something and see if we can. I don't
remember why we decided we're going to rev it up.
For whatever reason, it made, it made power there on
the dino, so we thought, let's rev it up, change
the gears. We went, we did it. It flung itself apart,
and so it comes in and it's smoking, smoking out

(01:07:07):
the back. Right, that's your first clue that it's hurt.
So it comes in, it's smoking out the back. Then
you know, you rev it up, and it sounds like
the fifty pube station wag with a hole in the muffler. Yeah,
it's definitely got a dead hole. Okay, kill it. So
he shut the motor off and Rick goes he didn't
get the whole word out, and I looked at him
because I've never heard him cuss at all, and I

(01:07:29):
looked at him. He's like, he's like, you don't know
how much work that just created. We have. Now we
have to take this into anyway. That was as close
as he ever got around me to cussing. That was
as bad as it ever got. So once again, special
thanks here to Shane Teckling Bird check him out. Tuned

(01:07:50):
by Shane T. Shane T. What's Shane T? Tuning? Today's
all over Facebook, all over Instagram. He's very easy to
find and extremely talented. He is a freelance operator and uh,
if you have the money, there's a pretty good chance
he will come over there and help you out. Also
special thanks to Craig Campton. Sounds like he has a
plenty of business up there in Wisconsin, but certainly look

(01:08:12):
him up as well if his talents his talent talents
are aren't required by your needs, so look into both
of those guys here as good as they come in
the motorsports industry. Hope everybody had a great time. Thank
you very much for spending your time with us here
on the Skinny. Special. Thanks to all of our partners
as well along the way. Some incredible stories and you'll
only find them right here. So now you know the

(01:08:34):
skinny on the Level five Motorsports the s R Program.
Thanks for being with us here on the Skinny. This
episode has been brought to you by Toyota. Rhino classifies
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(01:08:57):
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