EP 42 James Schofield

Episode Transcript
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Intro/Outro (00:02):
Let's drop the green flag on this episode of
the talent tank podcast. Withyour host Wyatt Pemberton
bringing you the best, fastest,most knowledgeable personalities
and Ultra4 and off road racing.

Wyatt Pemberton (00:21):
All right, here we go. second installment of the
spring 2021 talent techsessions. I think this is
Episode 42. And on with us whyyou clicked in today, you're
curious about this guy thatyou've probably seen a lot on
the internet lately. Certainlysince February what he's up to
James Schofield. Mr. SchofieldHow you doing, man? I'm doing

(00:43):
pretty good, you know, round alot better than I was two months
ago. But everything's going goodon my end. Well, let's talk.
Let's talk about that. Let'stalk about how is how do you go
ahead and and you know, this isthis is long story. James. James
was co driving for a theinfamous Tom weighs at King of

(01:04):
the hammers here 2021 out inJohnson Valley, California. And
it took a lifetime of yourdedication to motor sports
stuff. Find yourself in theright seat with with Tom ways,
but then you guys took a tumble.
Yeah. And you got your worldrocked. Yeah. Walk us through
what it was leading up to Kweights that ended up with you
co driving for Tom? Well, Imean, it started a couple years

(01:30):
ago, it wasn't

Unknown (01:35):
2020 it was a couple years ago it was I want to say
it was like two years ago. Thatoption came available when he
got the new two seat car built.
It could never work out with mydrag race schedule. You know, I
kind ofpre commitment on drag racing
side and their first race is thesame weekend as the hammer. So I

(01:55):
can't wait to talk about dragracing because that's you you've
you've introduced me to yourworld there. And I good times
with those people. Sobut some of that stuff for Tom.
I mean, if we met back, man,it's probably been, I'd say
2009, something like that. Andwe met at the hammers. And this

(02:16):
is back man. When Nicole Johnsondrove for us at Blue torch. We
had the same radio frequencylike one number off, so he was
getting stepped on by her blahblah. Like she flopped in the
rocks or something like that.
And they were trying to reach usat Pitt and then Tom comes

(02:37):
through Pitt, and it's like,Hey, man, your car's upside
down, down here blah blah andthen we kind of hit it off after
that with him and Greg Husseyold school Hussey Elliott oh
yeah this is this is old schoolTom ways and Hussey you know
chewing tobacco in their mouthtype Rock Crawler guys days and
a hit it off after that and thenTom had the single seat car that

(03:01):
tribe did and shear built andthen he had some tuning issues
with it one kayo H and we werethere like a week early and some
of the tune and stuff that I wasmessing with Tom come over and
this guy kind of opened it uplike Hey, man, if you ever need
anything, let me know type thingand then it turned into Hey,
come fix my you know what, andthen the rest is history with

(03:24):
that whole situation. But I kindof feel like Tom and I are from
like the same side of therailroad tracks if you know like
just good dude. Don't have amillion dollars to raise for the
big you know, big sponsorshipdeal but he gives it his all so
I think that's kind of why Ikind of like him as much as I do
as far as helping him out whereI can you know, I've done

(03:46):
engines for him in the past didthe engine for his new car when
it first came out and we'regonna talk about that to your
motor skills. That worked outpretty good. And then just the
deal with the drag race insideof it, you know that that's a
2526 races a year type of thing.
So you kind of sign upbeforehand, and that's what it

(04:06):
is. It's fixed. So every yearthat Tom asked me to go ride
with him or come to a race withhim, it always has to work
around the nhrp drag race. Yeah,yeah. This year, with all the
COVID Corona crap going on. Theypostponed kimono as not being
the first race of the year. SoTom called me and I want to say

(04:27):
end of November, or Januarysomething like that. And they're
December I mean, and we kind ofput it together and made it make
sense and next thing you know, Ishow up at the hammers and it's
on I show up to Reno to help himrun the valves on his car and
thenkind of look load up his trailer

(04:49):
and his junk show and we had tothe hammers. So I kept
everything on the quiet youknow, now like super quiet, so
yeah.
We met you and I met rightaround that same time that oh
809 his time frame and I thefirst time I you know, raced
with you as you. You called meout of the blue. Like, I kind of

(05:12):
like, Hey, what are you doing?
Was it like this weekend or likenext weekend? It was something
close. Right? And you're like,Hey, we're running a Jeep speed.
The minute was this about mid2011 2010? It's somewhere in
that. I won't say 20 min 2010?
Probably. There's probably 10Yeah. And you said, Hey, we're
running Jeep. Sweet. Do you wantto come on my Hell yeah. Like

(05:35):
Southwest Airlines. Let's go soon a train wreck. And I came
from the airport, right toFremont Street and catch you
guys in contingency line. That'slike, that was like how it's
short notice like, maybe youguys might have called me two
days before and it was like, andget there and, and just had a
blast with you in James karner.
And who was the other khattarJason Carter sorry, Jason.

(06:00):
Jason.
Mikey delora, which was a fabschool kid. That's right. Troy
Johnson. We had Troy's trailer,which we wrecked my bed.
When your fault that 18 Wheelerhit us. I know man.
Well, I want to come back tothat story about how we don't

(06:22):
you know, but so you can seelike the the the history have
been a motor sports for, youknow, offered more sports. We've
touched on some HRA stuff, butso in HRA schedule for 2021
delayed COVID it's Pomona it'sPomona, California. No way
there's going to be a race it'sgonna happen in Johnson Valley,
California, but it does. Andright. And so you help Tom load

(06:45):
up. And I I get out there and Iof course, I'm going to come see
Tom I mean, Tom, you know, abuddy of mine. You know, friend,
I've always loved talking withTom I walk into yells pit. You
guys are working on the three toone car, and you're under the
car. But I didn't see you. Ididn't even hear you. And then
all sudden you start talking tome. I i Hey, buddy, what do you

(07:08):
do? I said, I'm like, Who'sthat? Like?
Like, my ears go up? Or Who'sthat down there? And it was you?
And yeah, like, what are youdoing here? And you're like, I'm
right seeing it, man. I got. I'mworking on this thing. I'm
fixing all atomic junk. Yeah, sowe do a walk around on the car.

(07:30):
Tom tells some stuff you wereworking on? What were you
working on? Was it a dry sump?
You're working on something?
Man, there's no telling theproblem. The problem is, when
you I guess I look at itdifferently coming from like the
drag racing side of stuff. Ifyou don't look at stuff, it's
gonna bite you in the butt. Iwould almost rather look at
every single thing before yourace it to determine that

(07:51):
everything is raisable. Insteadof just assuming that the last
time you put it in the trailer,it was good to go. That's a
novel idea. You know, it'scrazy. But like Tom is on that
same program, he gets it and solike, it's a lot more than
putting a wrench on everything.
There's a lot of stuff we do.
Even on Tom's car or even at theblowtorch cars. When we had them

(08:13):
it was a lot of work. But itnever it never really bitchy in
the butt if you did it. So it'sjust doing your homework, you
know? So yeah, so you guys getthe car. All good. qualify. race
day. Yeah. Walk us through howthat how that morning went?
brush your teeth? Because Ithink that comes into play
later. Right? It does. So yeah,you know, picked out the best

(08:39):
clothes, I could wear under myfire suit, get ready to do the
deal. And we walk over to lineup in staging and all that kind
of good stuff. And they'rewarming up the car and the diffs
and Tom's guys are freakingawesome for what they do and got
us all ready to go. So Tom and Icould kind of take our time

(09:00):
getting over there to stagingand
we started 10th so I think westarted beside man, I can't
remember we were behind Briancomprare I believe but you're on
the fifth row. I mean, you guysare I mean up there. It's in
that first wave of you're gonnaget like worldly side a role
Gomez, I believe and basically,we took the green and we opted

(09:24):
to go straight desert likeeverybody in front of us. And
Tom's car just gets it for whatit's worth, you know, and
we ran a super conservative pacefor the first lap for sure.
Trying not to beat ourselves,you know what I mean to where
the cars not just getting beatand we're making passes that we

(09:48):
need to make when we need tomake them instead of forcing the
issue but make it all the waythrough Cougar buttes coming
back in and we catch Lauren inthe Little Rock trails coming
backto pit one he's there in it kind
of there for the taking. If wewanted to just let Tom go full,
Tom weighs on it it would.

(10:11):
You just Tom's a freaking greatdriver, like his whole demeanor
in the car, like theconversations we had in a car
pretty priceless for whatthey're worth, but redneck
conservative pays, we come infrom pit one, and
I'm sorry, not from pit one. Butback to main pit.

(10:31):
They load us up with fuel andtop everything off. And
after that we go out, start labtwo and well, I want to get off
on a tangent here before we getyou know, towards the the meat
and potatoes of this story.
Yeah, co driving for Tom ways.
There's not a lot of people thathave done that. Certainly not in
the last, you know, you'regreater than 10 years ago. Yes.

(10:53):
Then you had a single seat for along time. What is that? Like?
If you're not a? How do I putthis just Tom's very black and
white? and 100% 100. There'sthere's no gray area? It's
either it's either you're at110% or you're zero? You're
either on his channel, or youare on planet Mars 100%.

(11:15):
So, so what's that, like? It's,I guess there's a there's like a
mutual respect there. So if youas a driver, and as a co driver,
like, you have to have therespect that the guy telling you
where to go,is telling you the truth, you
know what I mean? Where ifyou're a driver, and you're just

(11:36):
counting on the guy sitting inthe passenger seat, you're kind
of screwed if both y'all don'tknow what you're doing. So if
Tom is driving, somebodycompletely new, it would scare
him to death. But Tom driveslike, how I drove when I got to
drive in some of that stuff.
were driving by the seat of yourpants, more or less as Tom

(11:58):
style, but he has a whole lot ofdirt bike experience to to ride
at that level that he does. Likehe said, his if Tom ways is kind
of up there, like the dude willgo for hours without food or
water just to keep going insteadof you know, the average guy
would slow down and take a breakand this and that. But I would

(12:20):
say Tom situation riding withhim. It's a lot of fun. But I've
ridden with Tom in the past. Sothat's kind of not a new thing.
I guess you'd say the new thingat the hammers Yes. But like we
were over in China and stufflike that. I got to ride with
him and kind of went for a wildride over there. So this isn't

(12:40):
my first time ways situationwhere I got banged up a little
bit, but it's part of it.
Right? So Yo, yo, come into mainpit and and then you gas up and
go out of Maine. And then didyou guys got a backdoor then or
did you guys? No, no, we optedto take back door on third lap
and it was playing out to justbe our side of things was trying

(13:03):
to figure out tire life for whatwe're doing or killing the drive
line or not killing drive line.
That was kind of his big fear ofthat. Like, don't tax the car
for what it's worth, you know,we're gonna winch back door
Anyways, let's just winch it onthe third lap when everything's
fresh and kind of go for therest of it. But just try to get
the separation between the firstgroup of cars and like lap
traffic coming in on lap two. Sojust trying to check out where

(13:28):
we could so I think we run infifth or something like that. We
came through main pit after lapone. And how much do you enjoy,
because I'll tell you I greatlyenjoy talking strategy with Tom
ways. So Tom ways has his way ofdoing stuff. And then there's
people that help Tom ways thatare helping him on his pit side

(13:50):
of things that are that nextlevel, you know what I mean?
Where you have the guy that sayswe get two miles a gallon and
then there's the guy that showsyou on paper that it's 2.4 miles
a gallon. That's that's thedifference in the way Tom's guys
are. And then like the notesthat you take in the GPS, like
pulling the GPS out of the car,plugging it into a battery while

(14:12):
you're sitting on the couch andjust putting in all your notes
from the day putting that sameGPS setup in the Raptor truck
running laps and laps and lapsand laps of that as the course
changes throughout the week withall the other races that went on
that shared some of the firstlap and like just seeing how
it's changed from day to day andthen car to car so we go from

(14:34):
the Raptor to the race car andkeep making changes every day
that were big changes yesterdaythat today they don't need to be
that big of a change or a big ofa you know hazard. It's not as
bad as it was two days ago typeof thing where
that kind of stuff is what getsyou you know, and then trying

(14:56):
new stuff in on the car likelet's try a new drive line for
this.
To get more miles an hour, let'stry this for more RPMs let's try
this for it's all kinds of thatstrategy that plays into it
versus just building a brand newcar and hoping for the best. So
yeah, yes, absolutely. And I thepart of the strategy I like

(15:17):
working with him is and he'skind of my go to on this and
he'll tell you multiple calls.
Tom doesn't text but is the likeit started the genesis of this
started when he took a back ofthe pack start at age four or
five, six years ago, I don'tknow how many years ago and and
so so shooting strategy with himsince the you know, right? He's
he's fun to strategize like pitstrategy, Miley strategy, when

(15:40):
to do backdoor when not to dobackdoor. And so it's always
cool to see, you know, the wayhis head works. And he's asking
everybody else to and he maytell you, he's gonna do
something, but he's only tellingyou that because he wants to
hear what you have to say aboutit. So Right, right. So you guys
leave you guys like out of thereand you're in running roughly
fifth, I think we're like fifthoverall, like fifth position,

(16:01):
and then physically fit, Iguess. And then we go out, and
we're catching Rollo Gomez.
Again, we pass him on the firstlap coming out and he passes us
back in main pit. And thengoing around those trails up
against the mountain going tolap two. Coming up the backside
of scooters. That's the nextsection that we were coming to

(16:24):
sprinters and everything's goinggood, like not killing the car
at all or anything like that.
And, man, we hit a hit a big gout and the next thing you know,
that was pretty wild ride thatwe took it felt like it was 10
minutes long. And really it wasonly like 15 seconds and

(16:44):
rest is history. The rest ishistory. And so
you guys tumble you guys are onthat you hit those big, huge
rollers. They're on the NBRhorse at the north end of the
valley, as you guys you know,come out of Emerson. I believe
that's Emerson headed towardsspooners Yep. And you guys just
yardsale Gomez is almost youknow, took the trophy truck out

(17:07):
there, you know, two days beforeI mean, or maybe they did
there's been numerous peoplehave wanted up on those. I've
gone through there and you know,really puckered hard and because
they sneak up we all knowthey're there, we've all hit a
billion times but then they justsneak up on you when you're
going 80 miles an hour It'scrazy how quickly they're there.

(17:30):
And so and Tom's gonna thosehundreds of times at this point
you know quite a few weeks wedid it probably 15 times for
that week of pre running andeverything was fine. So you know
it would it would toss youaround a little bit but you knew
it was there and kept on goingbut this time it threw it up on

(17:52):
the nose and Tom did everythinghe could do to drive out from
under it and when it hooked thefront bumper once it past that
point of like no return it's notdriving out of it hooked the
front bumper andthat's what I think got my
collarbone was that firstinitial hook and then at that
point my left shoulder belt iskind of pointless so I'm just
along for the ride on insidebecause my right side was

(18:16):
basically the only thing holdingmy body back in the seat at that
point so did full revolutionforward front flip slammed down
on the ground slid around did aroll to the side landing on the
or stopping on the passengerside at what point did it end
for you did you go unconscious?

(18:37):
I never did I was actually awakeso you remember it all see Tom
Tom also says he remembers itall but you know I talked to you
know Wayne Wayne is Wilson andcam steel. were two of the first
guys on scene. And Raul Gomezwas the first he was first one
because he was right behind youguys you guys just passed him
and he right so he blockedtraffic he ran up there then cam

(18:59):
steel and cam steel I actuallysaw a video recently of cam
steel stopping you know on fordown riders you know it's it's
what you do you go make sure theguys that wrecked in front of
you are good and then resumeyour race and it was just the
glory to dust to glory. Andthere was a scene in there where
the truck in front of cam wreckbut so they stopped for you and

(19:22):
and Wayne Wayne said y'all wereout cold. I know we don't we
don't remember where we were.
Wait lane said y'all were bothdirt nap in it and
like they were scared. So theyyou Tom awaken you awake, Tom
that gets out of the car, rightand you're you the car comes to
rest on the passenger side. Soyour side of the car is down.

(19:46):
And you get your belts offsomehow and you just crumble
into the window net at thebottom of the car. And Tom is
yelling at you from what I'vebeen told in his recount of is
he's telling you to come on getout of there and you go to use
your left hand to grab thesheet.
lifters in to pull yourself upand you got nothing. There's
nobody home. And what do youwhat did you say to him like,

(20:07):
hey man shitting working overhere, man, probably something
along those lines. And the dashbar the bottom of the dash bar
absolutely eviscerated yourright kneecap. Yeah, I got my
left leg, my left knee cap,and my right knee cap. So my
right knee cap ended up gettingbasically exploded from either
the bottom of the dash or thebottom of the GPS. But that was

(20:29):
visibly you could look through,look at my leg and see that that
wasn't in the right spot whereit was supposed to be. So
basically, we land on thepassenger side, we're talking
back and forth on the radio.
Like you got to get up and I'mlike, dude, I'm trying

(20:49):
something's not right. You know,there's a few things not right,
like immediately not right, butjust trying to pull myself up
from the kind of position myselfto slide my butt down to the, to
the ground out of the seat bytaking the belts off. And
there's nobody home on my leftshoulder. So that didn't help me
at all. And then when I did takemy belts off, I slid around and

(21:12):
got on the ground, but my backfelt like I had like three
gallons Icy Hot on it. So thatdidn't really feel that great
once I got out of the seatbecause of the containment seat.
Butmy knee and my leg didn't bother
me that much, until they got meout. And then when I stood me up
and got me out of the car, I wasstanding there and

(21:33):
they stood me up straight up andoutside of the car and
everything was good. And I wentto take us like move my weight
around the stand up correctly.
And I just buckled there was nostop and my weight going
backwards. Andwhen I did it, I took the top
part of my kneecap and pull itup into my thigh. So that was
pretty excruciating pain forwhat it's worth. So yeah,

(21:59):
yeah, when that when that piecethat's not meant to go up there
goes there, it's not good. Soyeah, and then they drugged me
around to the other side of thecar if you had some fuel leak in
and they were going to try topull the car back over and
waited there for I don't know,probably 10 minutes or something
like that for everybody to medicand all that kind of stuff to
show up and then JT shows up andhe's like, what's the deal and

(22:23):
kind of told him what was goingon with me and the paramedic
cuts my suit off up to my kneeand he said
oh, we need to cover that backup the pieces are kind of
hanging out so we need to justbandage that up enough to get
you out of here and I want tosay it was like 38 minutes or
something like that for thehelicopter and at that point Tom

(22:46):
was gonna kill the guy that wasrunning the paramedic situation
because the guy showed up withlike a fanny pack full of band
aids and Tom ways wasn't feelingthat didn't have any splints or
no that kind of stuff. Yeah,Tom's out of back country stuff
and seen enough stuff in youngboundary Alaska that like hey,
you need this you know, blahblah blah this number neck brace

(23:08):
and blah blah. And the guy'slike all i got like this. It was
like that episode of Joe Dirtwhere he's like, Oh, I got
sparklers. Man. That's kind ofwhat this guy had. We weren't so
for you. So they, the call waswe'll put get you on a truck and
get you to hammer town to getyou on an ambulance. Right?
Yeah, I kind of left it to JTand Tom as far as like, this guy

(23:30):
wanted to wait. And I was like,Man, I'm tired of waiting. So
whatever these guys think is weneed to do we need to get it
because it's sitting in and likereality is hit that I'm hurt. It
ain't good. You know? So I optedto ride out in the backseat of a
Chevy pickup truck that the guythought was a trophy truck and

(23:52):
it was on sothe few in the back of a crew
cab and and you book it acrossyou know it's not that many
miles was three miles south.
beings down here see where thewreck was? Man, it was probably
a 25 minute drive or somethinglike that. Get back get you in
an ambulance. And and then didthey take you straight to Palm?

(24:16):
Palm Springs to Palm Desert?
Straight to Palm Desert? Yeah.
And then from there rolling inthe car and what was the
ultimate prognosis of what waswrong with you at that point in
time? besides the obvious theneed the collarbone so so right
knee left collarbone and thenyour back felt pretty, pretty,

(24:36):
pretty special. Yeah. So they,they wouldn't give me any
medication to like, makeeverything calmed down but so
they cut my fire suit off therest of the way. All my garments
and all that crap and thenthey were actually tripping out
on the fact that I was wearing acatheter and this guy was like,
I don't understand why you putthis on. I'm like, this is how

(24:57):
you do it. When you raiseYou don't stop to pee. And so
that guy was freaking out aboutthat. But when he got all that
crap off, they take me to get tolooking at my knee, they cut the
bandage off. The guy was like,Hey, man, I hate to do you like
this, but we got to stitch thisup before we can get any x rays,
because you're you're bleeding.

(25:17):
I'm like, Okay.
And he's like, you're justfixing to take it like it is
there's no medicine I'm givingyou like, well, I don't really
have an option, if that's that'sthe least of my problems right
now is the stinging from gettingstitches without medication. And
so I took eight stitches, like achamp and then went to

(25:37):
get an X ray, determined that mycollarbone was sitting on my
left long diaphragm area, theydid an MRI on my back. And then
that's when they figured outthat I had five compression
fractures in my back. Andso my knee situation was
something they were going to fixright away and then do my
shoulder at the same time. Andthen they determined that they

(26:00):
wanted to do a rod in my backfor my L One, two and three, and
then my T five and six was okayto heal on its own based on your
ribs are there to support thatarea. So it's it's pretty nuts.
So this all happened like raceday, so there was no like,
figuring out what we're gonna dotomorrow. This was okay, this is

(26:25):
what we're doing. Now you'regonna go in for surgery tonight
for fix your leg. And then we'llfix your shoulder at the same
time because you're already beout type of situation. So I
broke my collarbone. Just tookthe collarbone out, it broke it
in two spots. So that piece wasjust hanging out. And I go in
for knee surgery. So I'm in ICUfor a day, I think. And then I

(26:46):
go the next day. So I was therefor a full day. The next Monday,
I had surgery on my leg, andthen I wake up and my shoulders
just got tape all over it, butit's sitting, like nothing's
happened to it. And basically,they said they tried to fix it
to where it would stay. And itdidn't. So

(27:11):
they later I went in forshoulder surgery, fix that
situation. And then they wantedme to stay to do the back
situation, fix it. And I optedat that point to let the
swelling go down on my backbecause I had like two pool
noodles running down the side ofmy spine and just ready to get
out of California for what itwas worth. It wasn't the

(27:32):
greatest stay of a hospital, Iwould say. But the people that
took care of me did if myunderstanding of Palm Desert was
you know, because it's itslocation and Glamis. They're
really good for compressionfractures. They're back back
there. Er is good. But right nowtrauma was good. Yeah, yeah,
trauma is good. But after youleave the trauma, it's your It

(27:53):
is not good. Then you add inCOVID. That's very suboptimal,
optimal. My toddler Tom, one ofthe points I talked to Tom, he
was sleeping in his truck in theparking lot in the hospital
waiting on like, just to getupdates. They wouldn't let
anyone in because a COVID,right, somewhere in there. Your
wife and I end up talking ortexting. And then it's shout to

(28:15):
the icon guys that iconsuspension, for sure. Which is
Tom Tom sponsors, they get yourwife, April, they get her on a
plane to fly her from Alabamawhere y'all live out to
California to get to you. Andthen she's I think Tom picks her
up at the airport and they goeat lunch together. Because she
can't come into the you know, inthe hospital, but at least she's
now there. Right? Yeah, tell meif my recollection is terrible.

(28:40):
But you know, it's definitelyyour story here. And she is
messaging me about hey, youknow, we're thinking, you know,
what do you think of this? Sheneeds? You know, she needs some,
you know, sane, other people,you know, to bounce ideas off.
What if he didn't do his backsurgery there? What if I bail
him out now? Like, what what if,and, and then she walked through

(29:02):
all of the perils and all thethings that were not really
jiving? Well, you weren'tgetting the best treatment at
the hospital once you know, wesaid this after you left trauma.
And then they came forward andthey said they would release you
at some point they would releaseyou to a hotel, walk all that
through. Man, it was after myshoulder surgery, like

(29:22):
everything was Hurry up, we'regonna fix everything. And then
after my shoulder surgery, itwas like everything slowed down
so there was no hurry up to getyou anything. and blah, blah,
blah. And I I didn't have awhole lot of communication with
anybody other than April at thetime, just because it was so

(29:44):
freakin overwhelming, justeverybody reaching out, but
to try to make something makesense, where I'm on all kind of
pain medication and stuff likethat and they're poking and
prodding you every four hours tosee what's going
went on. And I had a hard timetrying to make it make sense. So
what,it's probably going to cost me

(30:05):
something with my wife. But atthe end of the day, the I quit
taking my pain medication at thehospital. And it was probably 15
pills at a time. And I quittaking it. And I was just, they
would bring me my medication,and it gave me my food, and I
would take my pills. And I wouldjust push them into the mashed

(30:26):
potatoes or the pudding. Andafter, like, two times of that,
I went to bed and I slept like amillion bucks. Because I still
had an IV full of pain medhappening, but the oral side of
it, I wasn't taken. And then Iwoke up at like four in the
morning or something like that,like I was detox and then woke
up with enough mindset to say,Okay, I'm ready to get out of

(30:50):
here. What do we got to do toget me out of here, like I'm
going home. I know, there'splenty of places back home here
in Alabama, that that specializein this. So I'm not taking your
word for you guys, we're gonnafix my shoulder and my knee at
the same time only to find outthat you didn't when I woke up.
So just trying to make sense ofit. Because I couldn't have

(31:13):
anybody at the hospital on mybehalf, like Tom or any of his
guys. I mean, they even tried tobe my family. They tried to say
that they were my brothers andsisters and all this kind of
crap. And they would let them inand then they wouldn't even let
my wife in. So yeah, well, wetalked about, you know, I
brought the like the brushingyour teeth, the morning of the
race. So I want to say it waslike Tuesday or even Wednesday,

(31:34):
racist. And it was Wednesday. Itwas Wednesday. April told me
that you finally were able tobrush your teeth on Wednesday. I
can't. I can't go five hours,you know, into the day of not
brushing. And so your Saturdayand you go five days without a
toothbrush. And then even likethe needing to go the restroom,
you needed help to get up and goto the bathroom. And they didn't

(31:56):
have like a nurse call button.
And I mean, this is like itwasn't great, man. Yeah, so I
hear all from April. It's like,bro, we got to get you out.
Like, like, like, and I'mtelling her like she got he got
if you can get him out of there.
Get him out of there. So shegets you bailed out somehow?
Yes. So I talked to her. Ibriefly talked to you. I

(32:19):
remember and I talked to her andshe was like you're getting out,
like in next day or two. Andthen under the condition that I
can't fly for a few days, like Ihad to wait a week or something
like that to be able to flyhome. And there's a hotel right
around the corner. So I get out,she picks me up from the
hospital and we go about a milearound the corner. And it's all

(32:43):
I can do to get in and out ofthis minivan that we rented and
get to the hotel room and I'mout for it felt like three days
just good sleep and sleeping ina good bed and having somebody
that actually takes care of you.
So it was a rough one at thehospital for sure. So yeah,

(33:07):
there they said, you know, theywere going to send somebody over
daily to check on you. But then,you know, our good friend, you
know, Doug Jackson gives me aring and Doug's like, what's
James's deal? We got you got toget him bailed out there. I'm
like, Yeah, but you know, wewere still the fruition thinking
you were gonna get you on likeon a commercial flight home.
And, and talk to you guys. Dude.
They're not gonna let him flycommercial. Like, like, no way.

(33:32):
He's not had back surgery. Hisback is still broken in five
swats they're not going to froma risk standpoint, liability
standpoint, they're not going tolet this guy on a plane. And on
my Hmm. Interesting. I hadn'tpondered this. So he makes some
calls, talks to AndrewMcLaughlin and Irma golf and
talks to Steve Adams, Adams andSteve Adams has a has a plane

(33:55):
and we start about you know,passing the hat chipping in or
whatever there's this the offercommunity itself just throws in
huge on a you know, someGoFundMe to help you guys out
with knowing full well that youknow, you're self employed.
You're not there's not like abackstop here, there's not you
know, hey, you know, we'resitting on, you know, millions,

(34:17):
you know, and that's fun. So, soyour time passes, I had to get
you on the plane and one of thehurdles was was fuel. You know,
that's a big fuel bill. And DaveCole, Dave Cole said, Get that
Mr. For home. Right. I wasn'tgetting home. And so between
Steve Adams and his plane, and Ithink Andrew mcglothlin came and

(34:41):
met y'all as well flew with youguys. He helped drag me into the
airplane and like him and thenDerrick Baker, so
this is Derek and then Chad thathelps on Bailey's car I believe.
And one other guy that helps himBailey's car was
They're they've met us at theairport and show up and

(35:04):
basically they take the rentalcar back for us after we leave,
but they helped get me and allmy junk into this airplane. And
I mean, it's it's it's toilets,it's wheelchairs, it's walkers.
It's it's an old folks homegoing to Alabama, basically. And
my wife is just like, okay,like, this is how we're doing

(35:25):
it. And it's like, yeah, andlike, I guess the backside of
that is like, my wife doesn'tknow everybody in the office
world. So she doesn't know whowho is who you know what I mean.
So this whole thing like, justblew her mind. When that when I
first talked to her, after youand heard set up everything. She
said, Yeah, I got this guy namedtrip that's trying to get me to

(35:48):
do this and that. And then I'mlike, No, no, that's why it and
she's like, no, this guy's nameis trip. And I'm like, No, babe,
that's triple Nichols. That's555 it's his race number. And
he's like, no, I swear, hisname's trip. But you guys got
all that hooked up. And he gotan airport. And so we'll we're
gonna talk about your wife herein a moment, as we talk about,

(36:10):
you know, growing up and allthat, but I'm April, and I, you
know, talk in she basicallyconfides in,
I don't why I don't know what todo. I'm everyone is trying to
help me. And I keep saying no,and now I realize that it, it
sounds like I'm beingdisingenuous, like, I'm not

(36:31):
grateful for help. How do whatdo I do? And I just said, except
to help people right now,especially in our community in
the offer community and racersin general, it was you on the
Saturday morning of K wage 2021.
It could have very easily beensomeone else. And to be honest,
we just had, you know, anotherrace or got, you know, very,

(36:53):
very, very injured near twoweeks ago with with West Keane,
and his accident where he endsup you know, with with burns
over 60 plus percent of hisbody. And that's, it can be any
of us at any time. We were surewe know when we, you know, this
in our sometimes our wives knowwhat, and sometimes they don't,
but we've caught we've come toterms with the reality of the

(37:14):
risks of putting the helmet on.
Right. And for most everyonelistening to this show, you
know, it's worth the reach.
Right? Right. The juice is worththe squeeze. Exactly.
Exactly. Yeah. So we talked youknow, your wife and I, you know,
we talked we exchanged notes andand then we just kind of started

(37:39):
funneling everyone who wanted toaid into helping her and getting
her comfortable getting her toCalifornia getting just get it
to the point where she can focuson taking care of you and
thinking about you and how toget how to get my husband out of
prison I mean, hospital how toget how to get you to hop to a

(38:01):
hotel that has a you know,handicap capable bathroom how to
get you comfortable how to getyou rested, to where you can
start making decisions and youknow, advocating for yourself
right, you're your own bestadvocate. Right What's wrong,
what's wrong with you what'shurting what's not hurting what
you can and can't do? Right? Andthen just just hand off you
know, in terms of like that soyou know, Doug Jackson reaching

(38:22):
out Dave being like, hey, work.
Yeah, get get him home. SteveAdams got Steve with with a
plane and McLaughlin. I mean,those guys, so you get you get
hauled back home. You're inAlabama. How's that been? Are
you doing how are you doingtoday? Today, I'm doing pretty
good. I got a I got all thehardware taken out that was
external hardware, stitches andstaples and stuff like that. My

(38:45):
knee is healing up fine. Myshoulders. Moving right along,
my back is still there, my Lones taken a little longer than
the other ones to heal. Buteverything is healing on my back
without surgery, which is kindof funny because California was
pushing to put a rod in my Oh,one, two and three. And I get

(39:07):
home and the doctors like man, Ijust don't know what that would
have done for you that wouldn'thave fixed your problem. So take
out a little bit of time at homeyou know, and not doing too
much. just laying in bed lettingit do its own deal is what I've
been doing. So just trying tostay busy doing a bunch of light

(39:28):
duty stuff, whether it's tunedin cars are coming to the shop
and just kind of sitting hereit's kind of a I guess it's your
body tells you when you're doingtoo much. So like the doctor
saying it's gonna be four weeksor four months or whatever it is
to heal. It's, it's at the endof the day. It's up to you what
you can and can't work throughand if you can't do it, then

(39:49):
don't do it. It's kind of mymentality on it. We're not even
at 60 days.
Yeah, and it my wife hatesYou know what I mean? Cuz I'm a
busy body I have bad add on alot of levels and I can't sit
still. So sitting in bed for thefirst two or three weeks was

(40:10):
insane. I was losing my mind. Iwatched every episode of like
Duck Dynasty and shipping warsand all these stupid reality
shows just to do something. Andit I ended up getting her to
take me to the shop one day, andI told her, I said, Hey, why
don't you just go head home,I'll take my truck home, because

(40:31):
I got to be back down heretomorrow. And I weaseled my way
into my truck, you know, bustedto hell and back and I shouldn't
have been driving because Istill want a back brace and
straight leg brace and I'm like,I'll be fine. You know, it's bad
country roads, I, I'll be fine.
I'm gonna figure this out. Youknow, and then after that, bro,

(40:52):
I've been doing it every day. Sojust taking it slow. I mean,
first a little bit with thewheelchair, man, it sucked. You
just, you have no stamina. Likeyou couldn't stand up, you
couldn't like get into the endof the bed was the job. So
getting all that stuff passedand in the past now is working
its way out. But now I'm not ina back brace. I'm just

(41:16):
still have a leg brace on, butnothing that's straight leg
anymore. I've got 30 degrees.
ButI keep doing some stretching and
stuff like that at home to getmy full range of motion back.
But what's the degree of motionthat they want you to have back
in that 45 right now? Yeah,you're 30 now but what we're
currently I'm only allowed 30but I'm at like 125 right now.

(41:37):
But I'm not telling my doctorthat just because he subscribed
you listen to hear this onMonday.
I mean, he seems like a prettycool guy. And he's he's, he's on
my side a little bit. And I'mworking on a buddy of his his
car at my shop. And just a longstory short, I got a phone call

(42:00):
into the guy at my shop to tellhim Hey, man, I've been busted
up. This is a deal. I'm out fora little while. So it's gonna be
a little bit on your car. Andhe's a wanting to know who
you're seeing and where you'regoing. I've got people that do
that. He's a trauma surgeon. Sohe's in the connection. Lupo,
who's the bad guy and who's thelead guy type of thing. So he
gives me this guy's phone numberand he said, I'll call him until

(42:21):
then we're gonna call him andwe'll set something up. So he
calls me back like 20 minuteslater and says, Hey, your
appointments Tuesday at thistime, you need to be there like
okay, and then bring him allyour CDs and all your images
from California. So I go inthere and it was like 1145 in
the morning, I think everyone Ileft at like 630 that night. And

(42:41):
that dude went from the top endof the bottom and and went
through every single thing andwhat we're doing and what we're
not doing and all that kind ofgood stuff. And then I went back
to him last Tuesday just for anupdate got a different leg brace
a month ago that's got degreesin it now and then at 30 degrees
for a little over a month but Igot a two injections in my back

(43:06):
for just a kind of a pain dealnot a
not a fix more or less. It'sjust some kind of way to let my
muscles relax a little bit helpthe healing a little bit like a
steroid injection and thensome more x rays and on my back
and my leg and everything seemsto be healing like it's supposed
to and that's wonderful. Allright, pretty well, your body is

(43:27):
pretty wild, man. If youactually think about it, pretty
robust. You went got your asskicked. So you've got I mean,
literally you've got you know,you're the person you're like I
got a motor guy I'm a motor guyyou got it you know an axle guy.
He got a trainee guy. And nowyou got now you got another
trainee guysurgery. Now you got a guy that

(43:47):
can handle you know just yeah, Imean that's kind of what you
write the specialist and that'swhat we do when it comes to
cars, race cars, or even youknow, your drag cars. Yep, so
right now today the road torecovery you're pretty far along
right? Yeah, right now I'm upwalking around, no cane no back
brace just using a leg bracecan't lift and twist anything at
the same time. So like I picksomething up, I can't turn at

(44:10):
the same time just fora little bit longer. It seems
like just to kind of helpeverything heal but
no surgery is on the horizon. Aslong as the L one kind of comes
around. I go back in four weeksfor an update but
everything so far is good. So myknees swells up like a

(44:31):
grapefruit every afternoon butthat's completely normal. The
doc says it'll probably takeeight months or nine months for
that to kind of go away buteverything on it's doing pretty
good. Oh, that's wonderful. SoI'm gonna ask you now the next
hard question because this thecringe cringe one now that you
know reality set in so you knowinsurance bills started to roll
it you know hospital will startrolling and assurance. Oh yeah.

(44:53):
once every two three days, man.
What does what's that PalmDesert number
Look like like a half a mil. Soit's right there at it. So the
funnel shit. The first bill wasI want to say it was 419 or 490
something I'll have to check,but it was like 419 or 490. And
then now I've got all this outof network because they didn't

(45:20):
take the blue cross that I have.
And so now I've got like thisdoctor's assistants gonna send a
bill and then theanesthesiologist is gonna send
their bill. And it's, it's,every couple days, we get more
so the ambulance ride foranybody that wants to know, was
3800 bucks from the lake bed tothe desert. That seems
reasonable. That's a lot cheaperthan I was anticipating. But

(45:45):
it was worth it in the long run.
But yeah, I would say I'm closerto at the end of the day on all
this, it'll probably be six700,000 bucks. Probably. You
could have a four wheel drivetrophy truck.
And yeah, for one race.
Race, don't ride with Tom layNo.

(46:08):
Wow. No, cuz that's always the Imean, certainly that's something
that is always in the back ofour heads isn't back in my head,
like what that looks like andthen and you don't have a you
know, a number to, to swag atit. But while you just gave us a
data point that absolutelyscares scares me. But that's
what insurance is for. Right?
Yeah, I mean, it's a lot ofother things that go on to with
that, like you have yourpersonal health care insurance.

(46:30):
And then you also have the USACstuff, which you're just about
an idiot if you don't racesomewhere that has legit
insurance. And having done inthe past, I look back and kind
of very glad nothing everhappened like this in the past.
But the USAC stuff is prettylegit. Like the way they handle

(46:50):
everything once ultra for sentin the initial start of the
claim, like basically sayingthat, yes, this happened on our
race course. And this is the guyand this is where he did sign up
for all the insurance in blah,blah, blah. Well, now that
secondary insurance covers justabout every single thing that's

(47:11):
left over from your personalinsurance, besides your out of
normal out of pockets and stufflike that, but it in it'll end
up probably being likeeverything, but like 15% of
every bit of it. And what youcycle cover 15% of a big number.
Still a big number. But that isreally wonderful to hear.

(47:33):
Because I I don't know anyonethat's ever had to, you know,
exercise the nuclear option.
Right? exercise, or sack. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, like when we firstgot home, I mean, they were
calling, like our health carewas calling a couple times a
week just checking in. And thenthe USAC lady, her name's
Nicole, she was right on top ofit, like, Hey, we're sending

(47:55):
this over, fill it out, send itback ASAP, so we can get
everything rolling. And, man itclicks right along now. So yeah,
remember, I couldn't findanything on your sex website for
the insurance and then so man,Allen Johnson was awesome. He's
texting me. Contact Info. I'msharing the contact info for
with April. I mean, April, Aprilgot it on. Well, I don't want to

(48:17):
dig too much further into intothat that line of question
thinking you know, we've talkedabout what uh, you know, how
your life pivoted and changedright? On a Saturday in February
and the desert but you'll beback at it right? For sure.
Yeah, yeah.
So let's let's let's dive intoJames who James Schofield is

(48:40):
young. Everyone knows his heardyour name, but now who you are
and how long you've been inmotorsports. I've known you
since that. Oh, 809 and 10timeframe. Same with wasting
with a lot of folks and a lot offolks know you from your blue
torch fab days. Anyone don'tdoesn't remember that world
doesn't fab works. Sorry. DothanAlabama. In which brings me to

(49:02):
you're an Alabama guy. Right.
You live there. Now. You're fromeufaula Alabama. Now you live
you live outside Birminghamthere. Right? Right. Yeah,
little south of Birmingham aboutdown of 15 miles or something
like that. But I was born andraised in Gambrills Maryland. My
parents divorced when I was infourth or fifth grade fourth

(49:22):
grade and my mom moved toAlabama and little small town
called you follow and went toschool there graduate high
school and then went to work inDothan Alabama working on big
trucks and you're getting waytoo far ahead for me to jump
that fast. Let's walk this backa little bit so as a as a kid

(49:46):
growing up from what I gatheryour family was a family of
racers Anyway, you guys weredrag racers. your this is your
your stepfather. Now my dad,your dad, your dad. Yep.
drag racer. So you were spendingevery weekend every other
weekend that it wasn't rainingout of drag strip somewhere. And

(50:08):
and in you clearly gravitatedtowards it. Did you feel like
you had a choice? Or was it achoice that you were like,
absolutely. I'm all in on thisracing thing. Like the drag
racing side of it as a kid,there was no,
like looking back at itnowadays. I don't know how
anybody could do that. But myparents would go to the track.
And it would be me and my twosisters, my two older sisters,

(50:30):
andthey would basically run their
race program. And then my dadwould make it clear that if your
mother lost, we were leaving,and you needed to be at the
truck when we got back type ofthing. So you can run around
with all the other kids that areat the track all day. But if
your mom loses, you got to beback here. So we're leaving. And

(50:52):
man, it was every Saturday. Andthen if it was in the winter,
like they would build engines orwhatnot. And it was the same
program every weekend to where,if it was snowing outside, my
dad would take us or take me tohis buddy's shop that has a
machine shop that did all hisrace engines. And I bet I threw

(51:12):
away that in his shop, Iprobably threw, I don't know, a
couple $1,000 worth of socketsinto his fat as a kid just being
a little crappy little shitheadkid and just throwing nuts and
bolts that went to this engineproject into this big hot tank
over here that you know, justbeing a kid but as a kid, that's
all we did. There was no socceror football or baseball and my

(51:36):
parents raced. And that was whatit was like the the the local
gathering in the neighborhood.
It was a whole differentsituation at my house like my
dad ran a tight ship and stilldoes to this day. I mean, even
my kids get to go up to see himbut like, racing is what he
does, like everything he's everdone is raced, whether it's a

(51:57):
stock car rental car, or a fullblown drag car, like he would do
it and take your money at thesame time. And then educate you
on why he just be you.
So So when did you meet yourwife? Like not that many years
ago, right? 1213 years ago, 14years ago, and it was 2009. So

(52:19):
we were building years ago. Seeare that blue? Blue torch bill?
For Nicole. I'm going I'll getoff on tangent on that one right
now. So you guys show up. Thatwas an inch and a half inch and
a half to chassis inch and ahalf cromoly chassis that was on
revision about four by the timeit made it to the lake bed. That

(52:40):
final revision was was whathappened you guys were testing
tuning who was driving? Oh, soyeah, so back.
revision, I would say that wasprobably for man. I'm looking at
a picture right now. But likethe, like the shock towers
weren't gonna work with the wayit was made. That means a bunch
of stuff that was like a biglearning curve. That didn't make

(53:02):
sense at the time. But now youlook back and you're like, man,
there's no way that should work.
And we should have known better.
And obviously this sport hasevolved. But yeah, so we get to
we get to the hammers, andyou're working for Dan Dubois.
Yeah, so Dan, is it was his nameon place. Everybody else did

(53:22):
some work on it. But the we getthere and was bender on that car
and bender moved back toCalifornia. Also, there was a
man there's so many people thatcame to help work on that car.
But no, bender wasn't there.
This is a this is a Birminghamcar, Birmingham blue torch car.
And so we moved to Birmingham inoh seven. But at the end of that
project, we went to the hammers,Jason was owner of blue torch at

(53:46):
the time, or majority owner,whatever you want to call it.
AndDan was working his way out of
blue torch. So I'll go to thehammers and make a run with
Frank. Nicole's husband, Frank,I was driving Frank was riding
and everything was going good.

(54:06):
But this thing had like, toomuch steering speed input speed
for a double ended RAM, youknow, so like, trophy truck
pump, you know, zing in the pissout of it and double any ram
like, it's meant to go thisfast. You know what I mean? And
we just were hitting this onesection and the guy on the

(54:27):
outside tuning the shocks wastuning in one way and I would
tell him what we feel on theinside and he goes some other
way. And basically the back end,it just packed up and pass the
front end, about five daysbefore the race or something
like that. And so we load it upand drag it to the fab school we
cut the roof off. Behind the Bpillar, it broke the tube out of

(54:50):
the B pillar so we load up takethe fab school and Troy's like,
oh, no problem. We'll cut thatout, fix it type of thing,
project for the students and allthat kind of stuff and
We get it all fixed and we'dload it up and take it back to
the hammers. And people thoughtwe had a spare car because you
can really tell that it wasfixed. And now I was the same
car, you know, just had the bigrolled roof on it. And

(55:14):
when we got home, the problemwas like the steering just
wasn't going to work. So onceyou drive a car with like a
gearbox or steering rack on it,you don't really want to go
after hydro, you know, and soreidman Troy's prerunner, stuff
like that, you could kind offeel that road feel that you get
and we got home and then we cutthe car apart, put a bigger

(55:36):
motor in it, because that's whatyou need and took the five to
one transfer case out put up. Iwant to say it was a two or
three o in it, and then put somegear in it and put a gearbox
underneath the seat. So TroyJohnson came up with that whole
class eight truck style swingset steering that we had on it,
and it drove like a millionbucks, but it would pick on a

(55:59):
steering box pretty regularly,but like the sector shaft in it,
it would twist it, it wouldn'tring it off, it would just start
twisting it. But once we got itdialed in, it was good to go.
And then we raced Vegas to Renowith it. And we loaded up the
first year that Vegas Torino wasa class with 4400 cars in it and

(56:21):
you know, we put a big sell atthe time in the back, I want to
say it was like 40 gallons orsomething which now that's like
a front tank on somebody's car.
But you know, you put thebiggest tank you could get at
the time and 30 sevens and gofor it. And we made it to that
was a three day race. So it waslike three days and 300 miles or
something. And the second day wehad a first day Jason was

(56:45):
driving and it it exploded thetransfer case. So this is like
the early days of advancedadaptors transfer cases.
cracklin half. Yep, yep. And itwas like the Edelbrock case or
something like that. It was justexploding. You'd have a front
output and then a rear outputthat was still connected to the
trainee. And while they werefighting each other as you were
going over the top of whoops,they were just chocolate

(57:06):
chocolate and it was Chinesewater torture. Yeah, yep. And
then so we changed transmissionsa few times on that and we had a
$700 for transmission and youknow, we're full blown thinking
you got to have gear. So thisguy Mogi I don't know if you
ever heard of him he's like thetransmission guy in Southern
California for that styleChrysler training and or

(57:30):
Chrysler but the 700 or four buthe was a big Chrysler guy
evidently and he was like thisshit will never live you guys
are wasting your time. And sureenough, we went through like
five transmissions that weekendand learning experience for
sure. And then we retired thatcar and then sold it off now did
it's not the car that Peterbaszler rock bounce with a wall

(57:50):
Yeah, you know that car straightout of desert king of the
hammers trim was you know RobMac drove that car. So ride with
him was a pretty wild experiencelearning how to learn how he
navigated stuff and setting upthe car and sharks and things
like that. It worked out reallygood with him and Larry McRae

(58:10):
rode in it with Rob Mac drivingit but doing some practicing
with Rob Mac, it was pretty mindblowing, but you learn how I
guess you kind of learn how thecar works and doesn't work. And
then we kind of left this, thissuspension alone, you don't have
trailing arms and bypasses onit. So Peter buys it and takes

(58:30):
it out to go, rock bounce. Andthen it's like 50 years advanced
for everything else that's outthere with expanded metal
firewalls and stuff like that.
So he puts a weapon on for Ithink two years in a row and
then technology catches up, youknow, that's a car that was
retired out and they'd neverseen bypasses and coilovers it

(58:53):
was air shocks and diamond playand exactly, Dan Dibble and cut
boggers andyeah, that car had wheel speed
that they didn't have and thenthey quickly figured out that
that's what you got to have onin the East Coast mud. So it
worked out and yeah, my storyabout that car is so it was it

(59:13):
was 2009 king of the hammers weshow we got to I want to say
it's after shock I want to sayit's the waterfall and after
shock it was like the first rocktrail and Nicole Nicole Johnson
who went on to you know drivedrive and race monster truck.
She was the driver of the ScoobyDoo for around six, seven years.
Eight years. It was a long timeshe's driving Scooby Doo. So

(59:35):
she's broke on that waterfall onaftershock. And there really no
way around her. And so I'mlooking at She's out of the car,
and it's like this, hey, youknow,
is this cool? And she's kind oflike, gives me this look in the
hands off like, I don't know,like, do whatever. And I had I

(59:55):
drove across the hood of thatcar and I was like
Wow. Because we'd seen that carbeing built on pirate for months
and you were like, Oh my God,this thing is gorgeous. And it
was a gorgeous car. And, youknow, to lay 39 stickies across
the hood. Kind of saddening, butyeah, amazing car so but let's
let I digress cuz I made you Imade you take take that

(01:00:18):
sidestep. So growing up youknow, you're asking about you
know, meeting April, you guysyou guys met and oh nine so
you've been together about 12years. You got two kids. A boy
and a girl. You got the richman's family. I think your boy
is about the age of my daughter.
I think they're both 10. Yep,he's 10. Six, and then Nate.
Nate dog. Yep, mate dog andLexi. I can remember Lexi, but

(01:00:42):
you actually call it Lexingtonis our full name. And I
initially wasn't sure that thatwas a girl. Yeah. Yeah. So So
tell them what are theirinterest today, you know, they
enjoy anything to do outdoorsfor the most part from fishing,
the hunting the just hanging outcoming to the shop, getting to

(01:01:03):
help out build engines here toshop or work on cars type of
thing. Or just hide my tools andhaving fun being kids, you know,
run around the parking lot typeof thing. So yeah, so you've
been indoctrinated. And at leastNate at this point into the, the
motor sports world and you'vehad him helping tune some
motors. Yeah, so he's turned ahandful ultra for guys cars that

(01:01:28):
they don't know that he wasdoing the tune on. So he gets
it, you know, I guess it's anykid nowadays is really hooked to
electronics. So if you can givea kid something that they can
learn, and at the same timelearn and

(01:01:48):
become something at a very youngage, it would just make it
easier down the line. Sohopefully, he can take some
tuning information from helpingme tune cars over the couple
years and use it down the line.
And they often long run becauseI'm pretty sure everybody that
tunes cars wishes they started along time ago, instead of just
here recently, or just a coupleyears ago. You know, if you

(01:02:11):
could get it at 10 years old,you'd be doing it?
Yeah, I think, Well, my motheralways told me this. She said,
you know, get a skill, have askill set that at a minimum, you
can fall back on, you can go tryand experiment with other stuff.
But make sure you have somethingalways fall back on. And for me
that was welding, I learned toweld and I'm somehow pretty good

(01:02:33):
at it. I don't weld everydayevery night. I might work once a
month now. And strictly hobby,like strictly for fun, strictly
an arts and crafts project. ButI didn't start out that way. In
the beginning. I can't say howmuch beer I earned by being able
to weld, right? Or just nothaving to pay somebody to put
roll cages in the race cars forus. Exactly. Or, as you know,

(01:02:56):
you go out and you tear. youtear stuff up. You got to fix
it. It's It's nice when you knowhow to fix your own fix your own
junk, you know, so yeah, sobefore, you know you're gonna
meet in April in 12, you guys,you know, in 2000 I'm sorry, you
guys, two kids today, but youwere you know, clearly you we
skipped a gap between you kindof grown up in the 2009 world.

(01:03:21):
And I think at some point youended up racing and doing some
stuff around the Alabama area,but then somehow in this is how
you introduced me to these folksin HRA j and Shelly Payne they
were running a Top Fuel funnycar at the time Tom alcohol call
and then they had a pro mod or apro on that so we wouldn't saw

(01:03:43):
them in Vegas at one point andthen I went and visited them I
think with you and without like,I shouldn't say with you. You
were there working in Houstonwhen you know we'd have an HRA
O'Reilly spring nationals herein Houston it's uh you know,
it's a mere sea level track soit's usually you get really good
really good Fast Times. And it'sin the spring so you get that

(01:04:07):
you know that cool? very humidYeah. Yeah. So you get some some
fast times. I've been there whenyou were been around generally
paying when you were workingwith them and when you weren't
working with them. We go overthere me and my buddies that was
our thing. We would go on Fridayfor qualifying and walk around

(01:04:27):
carrying around you know, TheFosters oil cans they sell you
know the 36 ounces of beerand go see you know the fire
nice you know j Payne crew andhang out with him and they're
amazing folks. But so butthey're they reached out to So
Cal, how did you get fromAlabama to there and how did you
go from being this kid runningaround races on Saturdays with

(01:04:48):
your dad and if your mom didn'twin, you guys loaded up to
running around on the in HRAcircuit at the very top upper
echelon of naEra, what was the what was the
steps that got you from there tothere seems to be so out of high
school, we, you know, blue torchwas a thing. But it wasn't a

(01:05:09):
full time gig, everybody hadreal jobs and blue torch was an
after hours type thing. And thenblue torch became a full time
gig. I did it for a few years,but it had its issues, you know
what I mean? Just like anygrowing business, and things
weren't going right. And Idecided to make a change. And
that change was and you'reyoung, you're making decisions

(01:05:33):
and one experiment and seespread your wings and fly so to
speak. Right. So in themeantime, like I was racing with
a guy out of Montgomery,Alabama, so north of doeth and a
little bit, but he did a bunchof maturation stuff. And his
style was to just get toqualify, and then get the
qualifying money at big races,you know, it paid you a couple

(01:05:56):
1000 bucks, but a few of thosedoesn't make it fun. You know
what I mean? Like, it's fun togo in and say you're a part of
this, but you're really not.
You're just paying an entry feefor the guy that wins it to have
a purse and I didn't like it.
The guy ran kind of a hack jobtype program. And you got beat
every weekend that you wentsomewhere by somebody that had

(01:06:18):
nicer stuff or was put togethercrew and stuff like that. Sounds
like ultra force sometimes.
Yeah, yeah.
And we raced j and then theyraced Division Two which is
southeast United States andthey would just beat the brakes
off everybody. Like if theyshowed up it was over with you
could just hand them the trophylike racing on paper you're not

(01:06:40):
supposed to do but he could messup and still be you made big,
big power and could manage itand get down any basically any
greasy track in the south. And Iended up leaving the guy I was
working with just wasn't workingout drag racing wise and went to
Las Vegas for their fallnationals. And

(01:07:05):
because they raced there twice ayear, and I go over to Jace pit
and I introduce myself. And he'slike, Yeah, I know who you are a
senior in Division Two type ofthing. And we kind of hit it
off. And he's like, as well,I'm, I'm looking for a job, just
throwing it out there. And He's,uh, well, I'm looking for a guy.
So we got to fit. Now I wantedto go my ambitions was to go Top

(01:07:25):
Fuel racing. But to get anopportunity to go Top Fuel
racing would be great. And Iturned down a bunch of jobs over
the years to go Top Fuel racing,because it's not, you're not
going to learn anything. Soyou're strictly His job is going
to be to pull this head off orpull this clutch out or, you
know, pull the oil pan off.
You're not doing anything.
You're not thinking big picture.
You're just doing one job allday, every day. I decided to

(01:07:46):
stay with Jay, because you wouldwork with Brad Anderson, which
is his father in law thatmanufactures engines and engine
blocks and cylinder heads andall this kind of stuff and is
very cutting edge. And hisdaughter is Shelley Anderson,
the famous female drag racer,right? And then she and j get

(01:08:07):
married. Yep, you have very highsuccess rate just based on the
players in the game right there.
So like, her father is just abadass in general. So when you
put them in, in the league ofTop Fuel racing or alcohol
racing or promo code racing,that's the guy. So why would you

(01:08:29):
go work in a Top Fuel car whereeverybody calls this guy for
input when you could just gowork for this guy. And that's
what I opted to do. And ohseven, so I left blue torch in.
Oh 607 and did a full blownalcohol racing with a funny car
for I want to say we did 24 or25 races a year for all the way

(01:08:51):
up until last year, for the mostpart and off and on throughout
the years. You know, ifsomething came up on my end, I
couldn't make it. They wouldfind somebody to fill my spot.
And then I always had that wantto get back to racing. And
when things changed on my end, Iwas able to do it again. So I've
been doing it the first time youknow, you introduced me to that

(01:09:14):
crew. It was in Vegas, and Idon't I guess it would have been
a spring and Shelley heintroduced me Shelly, Shelly
Payne chili Anderson. And Iactually knew the name I didn't
know j but I knew the name andshe's a our Gosh, I don't know
you know how many years olderthan me she'd be maybe 10 not
not that old, much older butgood looking blonde and she

(01:09:38):
walks out and she grabs thistray and she slaps it over the
top of the motor and she juststrips this motor or while we're
standing there. You'reintroducing us and we're talking
and she I think that she didn'tstop she she pressure checked.
She did a leak down listcylinder and leak down test on
all eight cylinders. Why?

(01:10:00):
We're talking. And then and thenshe tore the thing down. And all
while she's still just having aconversation with you, this
woman tore this thing down. Justjust in nonchalantly did it
like, well, cuz she's done it10,000 times, if it were
more? Well, I think I'd heardthe the statement said to be to

(01:10:24):
master some skill, you need todo it 10,000 times. And so it
should be a master of science.
Clearly, I mean, she taught us.
And before you knew it, thething was back together. Yeah.
Like it was, it wasn't like, youknow, when you think about, you
know, tearing down a motor andput them on a wreck every, like,
hours and hours. Oh, no, thiswas, yeah, I if it took her 30

(01:10:44):
minutes, I would have beenshocked. And so the biggest
thing you got in in drag race inhis time is your enemy. So in
heat is your enemy. So like ifyou make a run, and at the other
end of the track, you have fromthe end of your class, like 65
minutes or something like thatto get back in to the staging
lanes to run your next round. Soit doesn't matter if you've just

(01:11:07):
got to change the oil. Or if yougot to build the motor
transmission and replace thegear set in her in like, you got
the same amount of time. So youkind of got every tool tray is
job specific. So engine wise forthe top and it's in this tray.
If it's bottom, and it's in thistray to take the clutch out,
it's in this tray. This is whereyou stand when you do this job.

(01:11:29):
This is where I stand when I dothis job. And if you're in my
way, you're in the wrong spot.
And that's his gaze it is it's abig ballet because even if you
watch the fuel guys, everybodyhas their place that they've got
to be in for everybody to work.
So that big sewing machines gotto keep running no matter what
you're doing. Oh, I love thisline, this line of conversation

(01:11:49):
where it is a logistical,human capital management, and
and then clock and timemanagement. Yep, dude. I mean, I
remember when I first startedworking with them, they're like,
Alright, you're gonna do bottomin so that's, that consists of
rolling rod bearings in itchecking rod bearings every
single run. So you get back froma run, you drain the oil, you

(01:12:11):
drain the dry sump tank, youpull the pan off, you snatch all
the rod bearings, loose, Rodcaps loose, pull the bearings
out, you measure them, see ifyou're beating them up. Or if
you're not, you turn that intoJay, he makes a tune call. And
then you roll new bearings inand then if it shook, you would
check a rear main, which usuallyback then got beat up pretty bad
because of the clutch weighthanging off the back of the

(01:12:33):
motor, but you would roll a setof bearings in it, or if it went
out and it burned a piston likewe've been known to do in the
past, we'd burn pistons justtrying to make them leaner.
Because lean is power, you wouldburn a piston, well, you would,
you'd have to pull right sidehead off because Shelley doesn't
like working around the mag. Sothe Magneto side distributor,
that's the critical side of thetransaction basically. So if you

(01:12:56):
hit that with the cylinder headcoming off, it's bad. Do you
don't risk it you just replaceit and then
he would pull a cylinder headoff and then you would dive
underneath and you'd push therods and pistons out that are
messed up and then snatch asleeve out. So like all these LS
motors that we have now are allsleeve but they're the same

(01:13:17):
concept aluminum block with asteel sleeve in it, you'd snatch
the sleeve out, you'd pound anew one in and put it all back
together. But your homework wascaught up during the week by gap
and piston rings or getting newsleeves home. That would be
dropping ready. So they're inthe freezer in the trailer. So
the engines still you know 200degrees turn 50 degrees, you can

(01:13:38):
snatch a sleeve out and you candrop in a cold frozen sleeve
into the hole. And then noproblem. Yeah, well, we'll set a
rings up and drop her in. So andwhammo and away you go, for
sure. And that's why I likehaving this conversation. You
know, I don't have like guys onhere that we've talked super
technical about little about,you know, the technical side of
stuff because some people itgoes over their head and goes,

(01:14:00):
you know, past them, but on theflip side, it talks to the
expertise of guys like yourself,that are required to put these
cards together to turn in ultra,you know, like an old for that
can turn 800 850 900 or somebeat on it through a wild course
like Moab and not lose a motornot lose the training, not lose,
not lose an axle. I mean, all ofthose finite, you know, we

(01:14:22):
talked about, you know,clearances and tolerances, it's
all in the detail. And if thedetails just a little bit off,
it cracks, breaks, burns,destroys your day. Game over
your dough. Yep. So like in thedrag racing world, man, you you
work on it every time you startit, period, whether it's

(01:14:43):
adjusting the vows changingsetups, changing the timing
curve changes, changing a fueljet, every time you started the
weather change from the lasttime you started it so you every
time you go out you want youknow if it makes 5000 horsepower
it needs to make 5000horsepower.
Every time you start it not 4500because the weather changed or

(01:15:04):
3000 because you're lazy, likeit's 5000 every time you
started, you said 5000horsepower. You just is boggling
but you know I've seen like thejugs of like the the test the
test bench, where they test likethe fuel delivery, and it's like
a gallon per cylinder. For me,it's, it's, it's, you hit it

(01:15:26):
with a firehose of fuel and hopethe spark plugs they lit
right you don't bounce them anddrown them. Exactly. In ultra
for the the current. So Shelleyyou so I'm currently an ultra
for remind it's it's a it'sBailey Campbell reminds me of
Shelley when you know Shelley'spit posture, like her stature in

(01:15:50):
the pit, when things are whenthey're when they're working on
the vehicle. On the drag car.
You see that in the Campbellpits with Bailey kind of
orchestrating the guys all arethe ones working in she is just
orchestrate and making surethings happen. And so it's kind
of cool to see two differentgenres, two women that do not
know each other, but that theyhave found what works and they

(01:16:13):
know what works. And they'veeach arrived there on different
trains, right. But they'reaccomplishing the same goal. And
that's kind of that's kind of inmy mind, that's, you know, cool
to step back. And wait things alot of that is based on like how
Shannon and Nick and Shannon'sdad run that whole program was
they did it all themselves. Soif you want to do it, you've got

(01:16:35):
to do it. That's right. So thatthat's that's exactly how Brad
was. And you know, Brad is ahardcore guy that Shelley's dad,
but at the same time, he ingrainthat into them that, hey, this
is what we've got to do. If youwant to keep doing it, you're
going to do it yourself. So didhe end up in the NHL Hall of
Fame? I think so. I think sotoo. He's not I don't know if

(01:16:57):
he's not I don't know why he'snot the dude's just a legend all
around.
And that's a big deal and kindof your I remember you telling
me or me you didn't tell me Mattmight have saw it on Facebook.
But I was so excited for youguys. You guys won Indianapolis.
And that's kind of the otherSuper Bowl. Yeah, Jay wanted, I

(01:17:17):
think he wanted twice and thefunny car once in a promo code,
which in the grand scheme ofthings, that's the biggest race
of the year, even though it's inthe middle of the year. But
winning it is pretty awesome.
Because it's such a bigprestigious race. Like everybody
hears of drag racing. It'seither Pomona or Indy and having
won Pomona a billion times. It'snot as cool as Indy. Indy always

(01:17:40):
kind of alluded us on. Eitheryou're beating yourself or
you're overpowering theconditions or the tracking kind
of situation. But we ended upwinning it. Because 2019 2019 we
want it so we won the 65th inthe Indianapolis. That's a
pretty solid a pretty solid winthere. What other things kind of

(01:18:03):
I'd say likenesses between youfor in the drag racing world.
It's got to be traction, right?
Like everything traction iseverything, you know, drag car
traction, is everything in anoff road car. What are the
similarities and crossovers thatyou can pinpoint that match the

(01:18:23):
hurdles? Is it axle size axles?
You know, what are the thingsthat come to mind when I say
traction in one versus tractionin the other application? You
know, it's what are you doingwith it? And how are you trying
to use it so if you're buildingan ultra for car like for King
of the hammers, and then you'realso trying to run it at Reno,
short course race, it's atotally different setup. So it's

(01:18:45):
an ever changing situation. Andthere's guys that run the same
setup at both tracks. Butnowadays, you see guys swapping
out atlases for sts is to try toget a gearing advantage, you
know, make a little bit longerrun out on a gear change or
something like that, but orgoing down to a tire, smaller
tire to get more engine RPMs tocreate more power in a way, you

(01:19:08):
know, so you're not lugging sucha heavy tire, but there's a
million different things thatcross between the two and it's
an all in application thing. So,if today The weather is this and
you can make X amount of powerand you can change your setup to
gain 400 RPM or 500 RPMs basedon gearing or tire rollout or
diameter you would change itjust to get some kind of

(01:19:31):
performance advantage you knowoff the racing beaten path for a
moment. What do you do for aliving man? You got your own
business right? Yep, my own DoIt Yourself fab DIY fab is what
it is. So basically I make youknow as at the end of blue
torch, you know, blue torchesfizzled out or whatever it

(01:19:52):
situation is now. That's allI've done. So selling brackets
and tabs and diff cover And,you know, doing that side of
things is what I've been doingfor a couple years now on my own
and and then you had you alsohad 40 spline? Yep, I had it
too. And thenthat was back when I was at Blue

(01:20:14):
torch and Peter was partneringon it, which he's he still has
it I, I got out of it. Okay,that's still going business. I
figured that business was apretty lucrative business to
just at the time, it made awhole lot of sense, you know,
Peters rocking it, but my sideof business is, man I, I kind of
do the mail order parts thing,I'd rather sell a million diff

(01:20:37):
covers and not worry about it,not have to deal with the stress
of a million employees. So I'llkeep the two that I have and
everything kind of keep rollingand run from there. Yeah. And so
tell me about the line ofproducts that you've got today
cuz I absolutely love supportingyou bunch of gussets and
brackets and tabs. Whether it'sactual tabs, or disc brake

(01:21:00):
brackets, or diff covers, I tryto keep everything under like
150 bucks, just to keep itcheap. And I don't feel that you
need to make a billion dollarson one part, I'd rather make a
billion dollars over a lot ofparts. Keep it simple, man,
don't try to make it somethingthat ain't, you know, and help
people achieve their achievetheir hopes, dreams and goals by

(01:21:22):
supplying them with affordablehearts. Yeah, my goal is to sell
you a part that my wife and kidsand I can put in a box and ship
it to you and you do the work onyour end and everything's good.
You know, your project, notmine.
Yeah, right. And that's part ofthe you know, that's part of the

(01:21:43):
business model and some of that,that you learned in your days at
Blue torch, right? For sure.
What was the coolest thing thatyou built a Blue Origin? I know
I'm gonna dive back to that youbecause blue torch was almost
like, what's the right word forit? It was almost like a reality
TV show. Set type deal. Crewwithout without the cameras you
guys had at one point you rubinto Park Road through there.

(01:22:04):
Yeah. Dan, you built the companyup and sold it to Jason corner
corner and you ran this thingyou guys you do on some racing?
You guys did some UTV racing.
You built a single seater. Iremember. Wow. I'm jumping back.
I can't believe I didn't havethis in my notes. I remember
racing against you, or with youslash at

(01:22:26):
one ultra for racing Kentucky.
And it was we got to mix it up,I don't remember is the heat
race or what it was, but it waswe were swapping position. You
were in a very nimble, agilesingle seater. And I was in, you
know, 5300 pounds at Desertclass. Drive class one on a on a
I've been a rear axle on that.

(01:22:49):
On that race. I cooked a tree at40 or something. But man, that
was not a good time to mess withyou. I remember I think unnerved
you once probablythat little car was fun man it
was. So I took a lot of thestuff that I learned from what
not to do on that big to see carthat we built and the cold drove
and all that kind of stuff. Butthe same basic drive train like

(01:23:11):
the drive train evolve to bigyou know, 430 inch LS motors to
turbo four hundreds from a 700 rfour and turbo 400 to a two oh
Atlas to a one five Atlas to a543 gear to a 583 gear 585
whatever it was and just createdthis torque monster of an animal

(01:23:34):
of a car and then I had thisbright idea to put a steering
rack and pinion on the front endto have that route of road field
back and the guys we had bluetorch at the time. Were all on
the same page. Like let's do itand we made that car and we
could change the gearing inputlike speed input to the rack

(01:23:57):
part to the servo which wouldchange the feel based on what we
wanted it to do. So if we wantedto zing the crap out of it, we
could sing it and it not getdicey. You know you could keep
the input speed down and allthat kind of good stuff which
Joe Thompson's probably losinghis mind that I put a steer rack
on the front end but he's he'sfighting some issues right now

(01:24:18):
on Anca prayer Branca prayer,his new ipfs worker, he was
trying to make it to where theracket in my commentary which
is, you know, totally mental onthis is he did something that
all made sense on paper and butin actuality it was it actually
ended up failing it Joe I loveJoe in the sense that Joe will

(01:24:39):
come out and say this is what wedid. And it didn't work and it
failed. That didn't work rightso here's what I did next. In
here and we don't we're about totest. I love Alsace right now. I
loves right word. We shouldn'tcelebrate failure. I we
shouldn't celebrate it.

(01:25:00):
But we need to address it andaerate and somewhat embrace it.
Because if you're not failing,if you're not making mistakes,
then you're not trying hardenough and you're not pushing
the envelope enough and you'renot learning and, and I made the
post your response to Joe onFacebook about this being we

(01:25:21):
have in this is totally tangent.
I'm sorry, James, is that onFacebook and social media today?
We live in this world whereeverything is glossy and shiny
and success and pretty we'realways on vacation. We're always
life is grand life is perfect.
It's wonderful. And you know,it's the optics in everyone's

(01:25:42):
world are just amazing. Andthey're not we're all all of our
lives are dirty. We all makemistakes. We're human, we're,
we're fallible, we're notinfallible we it just is what it
isn't in in we should be makingmistakes and we should be
learning from them. And I don'tthink we should celebrate
failure. That's not what at all.
But if you're not yet thetrustee on below, you have to

(01:26:03):
push the envelope, right? Andit's when the envelope pushes
back. You're like okay, wellthat didn't work so well. So
exactly what you're talkingabout we put a rack down there
and yeah, it ran great. I mean,I ended up winning a little dirt
right and championship deal withit and
that was a fun car. It wascompletely overpowered in a good

(01:26:26):
way. Like it was balanced. Ithad a whole lot of power and it
was fun.
Kick Ass paint job. It was blackwith blue, blue lightning all
over it. Yep.
I see you're reminiscing rightnow Your eyes are rolling by
your head like oh yeah, I had agood Yeah, I'm looking at two
pictures on it that thing wasthat was a fun car man just

(01:26:51):
kind of situations that playedout you know they are what they
are. But it was a fun car. Wheredid it end up? Anthony Yon
bought it from Peter. AfterPeter acquired it when he got
blue torch and razors now he's ahe's racing a single seat razor.
single seat UTV Yeah.

(01:27:13):
Yes, that car made some changes.
And you know, we changed a fewthings on it. And then Peter
started rock bouncing it, Ithink and put a double ended ram
on the front just to keep thecost down on what you're tearing
up up front. You know? NowAnthony's got it. So he was
really claiming on thisin February that he was the
single seat. UTV champ or, like,no, that's not how this works.

(01:27:37):
that other guy they said thatone time and those are for crap.
I can't remember his name startswith a C his last name starts
with a C Yeah, that's exactlyright. And he that the joke was
somewhat lost on on. All right.
Yeah, you're we're talking aboutYeah. But he wants to you know,
I think this next baja 1000 hewants to Iron Man, the 1000 in

(01:28:00):
the single seat razor and Ithink all sort of like, dude,
you we've blown bubbles by yourkidneys. We'll be hanging out.
Yeah.
I'll clap for I mean, it. It'slike all go for it. Yeah,
absolutely. But you know, theworld is made up of people
telling you not what you can andcan't do. Don't listen to me
telling you you can't do it. Yougotta do it. actually prove

(01:28:23):
prove us all wrong. We want youto practice wrong. Yeah, as a
matter of fact. So what is nextfor James Schofield? Man, you're
gonna, you're healing up, more?
back every time. Right? Solet's, uh, we'll back up to last
Tuesday.
I get a phone call from thisguy, random number in my phone.

(01:28:44):
And it's obviously a black guyon the phone. He's like, Hey,
man, I got your name number fromthis guy, which ended up being a
mutual friend. Andhe said, Man, I'm running this
sweet 16 race in Valdosta.
Georgia this weekend. I need youknow, my Well, when do you need
me down there. He's liketomorrow. And I was like, buddy,

(01:29:04):
it don't work that way. Like,it's Tuesday evening. And now
you want me to come to ValdostaGeorgia, which is like a five
hour drive. And he's uh, yep,just get down here. We'll work
it out. So I call my buddy thatreference to deal and he's like,
Oh, yeah, this guy's legit.
Well, I get down there and it'sFletcher Cox, the some All Star
defensive player for thePhiladelphia Eagles has this

(01:29:27):
drag car. And he owns the teamand has a guy driving it and all
stores short. We hit it off andwe blew up one motor on
Thursday. But we ended upwalking away with the pole
position and set the basicrecord for the class. Eight Mile
race 366 with a seven that203 61 in the Eight Mile. That's

(01:29:52):
a radial tire no wheelie bar.
That's insane.
Dude, it's badass. So I don'tknow what the future holds with
this guy. But he's basicallywanted me to come to all his
races and all that crap now justto help him out and
taking some funny carinformation over to a pro mod

(01:30:14):
car is kind of fun and movingforward, if it works out then.
So be it, buttrying to do some more light
duty stuff that was prettyinteresting, you know, not
really having to do a whole lot,you know, because I can't I
don't have a whole lot of backstamina yet. But, you know,
running the valves and helpinghis guys look for things that
would be normally problematic.

(01:30:34):
And if you didn't catch itearly, you would have a problem.
So did that raced this pastweekend and we ended up losing
in the semis, we just kind ofoverpowered the track for the
conditions, but it happens. Sohe was over. Pretty, pretty
excited about it. But then wewalked away with the with the
record. So we kind of went inhoping to run a low 70. And we

(01:30:57):
were on a 66. So the weatherkind of came to us and
everything lined up right there.
Yeah. So this, this is my lastquestion. And then you can send
me some stuff I suppose. Inultra for what do you think is
the next technological,mechanical, technological
advance? You've seen a lot overthe last 1215 years. You've
messed with a lot of steering,you mess with a lot of

(01:31:18):
suspensions, a lot of motors, alot of balances. Yeah. What's
the next? Where do you think wego? I mean, that's a million
dollar question. You know, Iwould probably say that the next
greatest situation that somebodyis going to figure out is going
to be brakes.

(01:31:40):
And everybody says they got thebest brakes in the market. But
are they there when you needthem later in the race? Are they
there? When they're cold or theythey're only when they're hot
that type of situation isobviously the harder you can
drive a car into a turn in thelater you can break. Most of the
time, you're faster through theturn. But it's kind of

(01:32:04):
temperature driven. So I thinkthe biggest thing is everybody's
making big power now you know,490 inch motors that has you
know, 300 horsepower brakes onit. I don't think that's the end
all be all but I think it's alldrivable. it's manageable, but I
think some of the brakesituation is going to be the
the biggest thing whether it's ahydroboost setup or something

(01:32:26):
along those lines that has realpetal instead of a little thin
rotor that's lightweight for youknow, that kind of stuff.
Alright, so I'll fall down therabbit hole with you. So okay,
one of the biggest constraintswe have there is
a 17 inch wheel and the 17 inchwheels because it gives us on a
39 to 40 inch tire gives us thisoptimal sidewall and this

(01:32:48):
ultimate bias so we have a set a17 inch wheel that we have to
fit in the confines Are youproposing a more robust caliper
maybe in my say robust I mean,like bigger like, you know,
currently calipers are25 to 30% Yeah, around the
radius, are you they may we slapsome like 50 percenters on their

(01:33:09):
half moons that are, you know,eight piston or Yeah, I don't,
I'm totally I'm telling yougoing crazy. And I think I think
it's, I think it's a padcompound. Like, even on Tom's
car, we would try we changedpads to see what the brakes
would do. Like let's change thepad compound and just see what

(01:33:30):
happens. So we change padcompounds and his guys bled this
thing out like they didn'treally do and then still had not
enough brake pressure for whatit needed to be and then I bled
it out the way I've always beentaught to bleed them out and we
got some pressure out of it thateach wheel and I think the pad

(01:33:51):
compound is the biggest keyfactor you know, Tom runs all
the big brakes like all thetrophy trucks guys run but it's
all mechanical, there's nohydroboost or none of that kind
of stuff. So I don't know ifit's a pressure thing that he
could get away with with theprogram setup that he has, but I
thinkhydroboost is something that

(01:34:12):
probably wouldn't be too fardown the line with a legit pad
that doesn't need to be as hotto work or some type of boost
right I mean, maybe it's anelectric boost maybe it's just
just something to get more andmaybe it's dual calipers right I
mean, that one on one on thefront one on the back or
whatever this I don't knowpiggyback I don't know what you

(01:34:33):
write but on a single Speaker Iremember seeing
in this was this was LaurenHealy.
I don't think it was the dragonbut it might have been it might
have been after that, but I sawhim go across the table top and
grab breaks at some event. God Iwish I remember where it was. In
literally they work like it wasin I remember, just mental note.

(01:34:56):
Like, I gotta go look and seewhat breaks he's running because
that's the first timeI've seen breaks right work.
Right, right. I never I've neverhad a car that breaks worked on.
It's like yeah, I mean it'salways been spongy like
everybody's car I've ever beenin the tune. It's like, Oh man,
this thing's latest greatest andyou're like me brake suck and
it's just what it is like theyweren't great when it 500

(01:35:16):
degrees butdriving it around, it ain't got
no brakes.
So we didn't talk about whathappened this past weekend at
Moab. Congrats Brian Crofts onyour first win. That's pretty
awesome to see. You know, whencome out of the Campbell
Campbell stable, but James whatwhat happened was Bailey cool

(01:35:38):
ran a really good race. I knowyou purposefully and
intentionally stayed away fromfrom this Oh, Bailey rensis good
race. But he was running somelines that were liberal lines,
and he ends up colliding.
Because of he grabbed brakes. Heslid for 6080 feet was and hits
Marcos Gomez, who was broke Andoff course. And that was the

(01:36:00):
proof that Bailey was off coursebecause he wrecked into a car
that was off course. Course. Andyou know, sad deal. You know, he
thought it was from minor sayinghe thought it was a legit line.
But he ends up with a DNF atthat point. But that puts Brian
Crofts winning behind him.

(01:36:21):
Darien Gomez. I gottacongratulate during Gomez during
Gomez Flaco Flaco.
Didn't that in seniors old car.
Now that you mentioned it? Fair,Vani seniors card? I don't know
if that's the car he was in ornot? Or that one got sold? I
don't know. I watched it. andmentally. Okay. And then JP
Gomez rounds out the podium. Butyeah, I still get excited about

(01:36:45):
current current ultra for race.
And they were talking about likethe current we always talk
about, like the stories and itwas cool to see Jason shear, and
Jason Blanton, at, you know,series races. That was kind of
cool. But anyway, man,we cover everything you want to
talk about. I marked off everybox I had for you, man, you gave
me more tech and more detailthan I thought I was gonna get

(01:37:09):
and I am greatly appreciative ofthat. Man, I don't have really
anything else. I don't Yes.
Well, I'm glad to I'm glad thatwe can still have this
conversation. And it not be adifferent one where you didn't
make it through that crazySaturday, in February this past
year, you know, your goodfriend, talk to you, you know, a

(01:37:30):
lot years ago, and not as muchhere in the past couple years.
But uh, I think that's his, aswe say, you know, it's, you're
somebody who I go years withouttalking to and then just pick up
the phone and we're good to go.
And, and in February, that'skind of what happened, right?
You know, something happened toyou. And you're like, dude,
that's my buddy. We got to, wegot to make something happen.
And your wife is identical to mywife in this. She doesn't know

(01:37:53):
the racers. Right? Right. Andwe're the only ones I mean, she
does know some because she's,you know, like JT spent
Christmas with us one year or hewas just, that's an insane
story. And so, butyou know, sailing in the islands
with a bunch of racers willallow those racers on that trip.
Those guys are all retired now.

(01:38:13):
Right. Doug Jackson. He's outplay Gil's draft he's out. Yeah,
just you just start running justrattle through them. They've
cold they've coals not even runan ultra for anymore. He's like
crunchy for Bailey. So yeah.
It's just crazy. The world we'reliving in. It may still be his
company may still be hisorganization. But he's a crew
chief. So I'd love to see whatthat chapter holds for him.
Anyway, man, crazy times. James.

(01:38:36):
I'm so glad that we have thisconversation. I'm so glad that
you. You survived. Yeah, a ridewith the venerable Tom ways.
Man, I'll do it again. Nextweekend, if you'd have me. Any
changes? You know, when itchanges single thing, man, like,
all the help that I got fromeverybody in this community? It
was insane. So I don't think itwas just because it was me. I

(01:38:58):
think it would be for anybody.
That's the next guy down theline or girl. So I think that's
a huge thing for the communityand having somebody like you
kind of setting everything upand everybody they've kind of
reached out to my wife in thatwhole situation. I greatly
appreciate it. As we're done. Ithis has been bugging me kind of
the whole interview and no onecan see it online. And so I

(01:39:20):
mean, as you listen to this,it's just because I've run you
know, Skype, and we're watchingeach other.
You are wearing a Mason's hat.
Yep. I don't know anyone ourage. I know. I said, we're done.
But I don't know anyone our age.
That is masons tell. Tell meabout the Masons. My grandfather

(01:39:41):
was amazing. He passed away lastSeptember, and he was 93. I want
to say he's probably theyoungest Mason I've ever known.
And at 93 so you're, what areyou 3838? Yeah, see, I'm spot
on. You're, you're in theMasons. Yep. Tell us about that.
Like this is a this is agenerational a massive
generation.
From gap, I don't know anythingabout him aside from Nicolas

(01:40:03):
Cage and, you know, his moviewas an American treasure was
called, uh, I don't know, it'sprobably probably not accurate.
I'll be honest with you. So,Freemasonry is
nothing more than a bigfraternity full of pretty solid
individuals. It's like theoldest fraternity. In the world,

(01:40:27):
I believe. It's basically,I can't really dive off into it
too much because of what we'redoing. But the it's a way of
making other men better. So, atthe end of the day, the ultra
for community helped me out myFreemason side of things
fraternity helped me out myfamily out. And it's all in

(01:40:49):
good. I guess you'd say in good.
It's nothing bad. And if you getin the reading everything online
and stuff like that, you getlost in you know, we're
sacrificing goats and killingcats type. Oh, I didn't think it
was that at all. Yeah, dude. Imean, it like, like all my

(01:41:09):
fraternity brothers that areFreemasons now that are their
older people. And I kind ofalways hung out with older
people. I always looked up topeople that were successful. And
those people that aresuccessful, always ended up
having something in common, andit was Freemasonry. And the way
they portray stuff to me waslike, Hey, man, you know, you

(01:41:31):
should probably look into that,and a couple years of that, and
not really falling into it. Somy buddies from high school got
into it, and they're like, Dude,this is what you need to be
doing. You need to get intothis, you need to take a look
into it, and I've done it. And,man, it's, it's the greatest
thing I've ever done. I shouldhave done it when I was 21 years
old. The people that I've met,throughout the country, drag

(01:41:53):
racing, the people I've met herein my local town that the lodge
I go tothey're just genuine good
people, and they want nothingbetter than they want nothing
more than for you to be a betterperson. Whether it's your
character or not being a pieceof shit to somebody just being
like a legit person and helpingsomebody out without actually

(01:42:14):
expecting anything in return isa predominantly tradesmen
craftsman. Hands on people.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So it'snothing more than if you're a
Mason, and I'm a Mason, I woulddo business with you. And you
would do business with me, oryou would give me an opportunity

(01:42:35):
to do business with you, or viceversa. Now, it's not saying that
it's a cult, and we're gonna,you know, take over the world,
it is just a way of life. And Iwear a ring every day. And I
wear a hat when I can. So somepeople look at you funny, but
most people understand thatsituation. And if shit went
down, and you needed to talk tosomebody, you could talk to

(01:42:57):
somebody. That's amazing. Sothat is very cool. You know, we
build support networks aroundus. And sometimes they're,
they're personal. Sometimesthey're professional. And
sometimes I don't know the rightword you you gravitate towards?
Will you hold those people inyour life that you crossed paths
with that you might not havesomething today, but in the
future, you know, hey, I havethis issue, I can call him or

(01:43:20):
support. Here, I'll give you anexample. I needed help on a
solar. I'm looking at solar, youknow, solar farm for my house.
And I looked around and there'sa lot of misinformation on the
internet and, or goodinformation that's hard to sort
through sift through. Right? SoI reached out to someone that in
my network that I know is, it'sin their wheelhouse. Derek West,

(01:43:45):
I called Eric West. And I'mlike, Hey, man, this is gonna
sound crazy, but you have a fewminutes. I'm looking at to do
this. And Derek took time out ofhis lifetime and walked me
through it. And then a weeklater, two weeks later, yeah, we
can have later, he hits me upagain with a whole bunch more
information. And I was justlike, man, I don't have

(01:44:08):
anything. You know, I'm offeredDerek on that. But But you know,
I asked the question, Derek,Amelie, he came back with all of
this help. And that is, youknow, I'm gonna tribute to this
offroad fraternity that we havethis, this family of offroaders
that, you know, we if it's out arace, you know, I'd rather give
you the shirt off my back tomake sure you get out onto that

(01:44:30):
course. So I can beat you on thecourse. But then we're gonna
race to the cooler after therace. And then if it's next
week, and you need a part and ifthey're backorder, and I've got
it, let's use FedEx it let'sdrop ship. But let's, let's get
there and forming your mentalhealth standpoint. That's
massive to know that you've gotyou know, that type of reach and

(01:44:50):
Rolodex in your back pocket. Andfor the new racers coming in, to
know that there is thisfraternity that they're new that
some of they're joining in.
In ultra foreign off roadracing, and there's this wealth
of knowledge that you don't haveto, if they want to get in, they
can get in and they don't haveto recreate the wheel at every

(01:45:11):
turn. Exactly. And it's kind ofset down. Now I'm getting
remnants of, you know, sad that,you know, like pirates gone and
that remarry, that free flow ofinformation that we used to have
there. Now, it's not, it's notas accessible. It's not our
fingertips like it was. Butlike, when I was in California,
in the hospital, man, I had allthe ultra for crowd hitting us

(01:45:32):
up, and then all my Masonicbrothers hit me up, and my
sister was watching my kids atmy house. And somehow, someway,
they clogged up the sink. And somy sister's like freaking out
that sinks clogged up and allthis kind of crap. Well, she
calls the plumber, and theplumber is like giving her the

(01:45:52):
run around on getting the sink,unstop type of situation. And
she's like, done all she coulddo to try to clear it out, and
it just isn't happening. SoApril, tells me about it. And
she's like, your sister'sfreaking out, you're gonna be
mad type of thing. And I'm like,How can I be mad? It's a sink.
Like, it's not the end of theworld. But don't, don't get bent

(01:46:13):
over trying to deal with this.
So I'll call a friend of mine,and see if they can come over
and look at it. Just give me afair evaluation on what I'm
fixing to deal with. So I calleda brother Mason over and he's
like, Hey, man, I'll take careof it. And then next thing, you
know, that's it. I can't get abill from him. He won't give me
a bill. You know what I mean?

(01:46:34):
Like, he won't give me a bill.
And he played with my kids andmade sure everything was good at
the house. Like everything good.
Y'all need anything? Nope, wedon't need nothing. So fix the
sink and carry on about yourday, you know, and then on the
backside, he know, he knows thatI would do the same thing for
him, just like this ultra forcommunity. Like, at the end of
the day. Everybody's got theirlittle clicker group. But at the

(01:46:56):
same time, if somethinghappened, everybody is all hands
on deck. You know what I mean?
And that's what I think is coolabout the mason deal. And it's
same as ultra foreground. Wejust do a little different
stuff. Awesome. Well, thank youfor giving me a little bit
insight I normally am preparedfor certain portions and topics
of the conversation. I read knowanything about Mason's like I

(01:47:17):
said, I'm, I know, when mygrandfather passed away this
past fall, you know, we madesure we had one of his Mason
rings that would fit on hishand, and he was buried with his
ring. And it was a big deal.
And, and, you know, I said, hisheadstone and he's got the
Masonic logo, I guess, theprotractor and ruler or
whatever, I don't know, squareand compass, Square Square

(01:47:40):
compass, all the way off, youknow, on his gravestone, but, ya
know, I just didn't I don't knowanything about it. And he wasn't
someone who would ever talkabout anything to anybody about
anything. So I don't I don'tknow. And he seems like when I
would see that, that logo, Iwould always think, you know,
generationally, you know, like,these are World War Two vets.

(01:48:01):
And in light of that age, and tosit here with you at 38. And I
see you when I might, huh, Iknow not I just know nothing
about now. I've got to goresearch some Sonic temple stuff
because interesting. You'd besurprised how many ultra four
guys are masons. Oh, yeah, nokidding. So I'm the one who's
outside like, I'm not aninsider. I'm a total outsider on

(01:48:22):
this one. You know, plenty ofthem. I promise you. Okay. Yeah.
And if anybody wants to talkabout it or has questions about
it, they can ask me Okay, we'rehappy to answer any questions
anybody's got no problem. I havesome more questions for you.
Well, James, like I said, I'mglad I'm glad you survived
through everything in FebruaryTom. Everything counted. I

(01:48:43):
really am very ecstatic aboutit. Not the not the situation by
which I met and got a dialoguewith your wife, but that you hit
it out of the park. Man, you outkick your punk coverage. You
married an amazing woman. Welldone, sir. She's uh, I mean, I
know she's a keeper. But she'sdefinitely

(01:49:03):
Yeah, and I've got a I got a lotof making up to do I did a
Valentine's Day at Del Tacodrive thru in Palm Springs. So
I'm, I got a lot of catching upto do. The only way to want to
build taco there is del taco inBarstow.
Yeah, testing. That'd be great.
A van Well, thank you, James,for for coming on The Talent

(01:49:24):
Tank. Thank you for going deepwith us on some tech stuff, and
given us a bunch of, you know,foray into the HR a world where
you kind of came from, butyou're solidly one of our people
on offer. Oh, that's for sure.
You can't shake it.
For sure. All right, man. Wewill. We'll catch you later. On
that note. We're out.

Intro/Outro (01:49:44):
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