AAH #758 - Do You Want to Learn How to Drive Fast?

TOPIC: Going Racing PANEL: Frank Schwartz, Grass Paddock Motorsports; Eric Ghoukasian, Trackilicious; Alex Della Torre, SCCA; John McElroy, Autoline.tv

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'll online after hours. It is brought to you by
bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your Journey.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi everybody, thanks for joining us today. We're doing a
little bit of a different kind of show. Number one,
Gary Vasselash, my co host, is on vacation for this
week and next week as well, and so I decided that,
Oh and I also should say, this is not a
big news week. Anything earth chattering has happened today. So
we're going to get into one of my passions, which

(00:30):
is driving fast and racing.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
And maybe some of you.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Have thought about doing the same sort of thing. I
think this show will wet your appetite. We've got Frenk
Schwartz here. He's got his own company we'll get into
those details called Grass Paddock. And we've got Eric and
I've got to butcher the name.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Who's the Eric g is the most common way.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Eric, who's got a company called Track a Lit Shiss
and we're gonna get into the details of that as well.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
And then Sewn's here.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Shawn's joining the show, not just doing Auderline daily but
also on Audoline after hours. And you got a message
for anybody that's watching right now.

Speaker 5 (01:14):
Yeah, Yeah, I've got a computer sit in front of
myself right now, and I'm watching the live chat, watching
the show. So if you guys have any questions about
anything we talk about today, please throw it in the
comments and I'll do my best to ask it to
the folks here.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
So, and you guys should jump in anytime, even if
you have to get your elbows out in the in
the discussion. But I don't think we're going to run
out of things to talk about here, Frank what I
kick it off this way and start with you. I
know a lot of people in the audience have got
some cool cars, fun to drive cars, you know, whether
it's Mustangs or Camaros, or Corvettes or Miatas, or Porsches

(01:54):
or g R eighty six is or Brz's and I
mean the list goes on and on that I'll bet
maybe they've had a chance to open it up here
or there they found an empty on ramp or an
off ramp. But what would your advice be the people
who have got a car and have never really had
the chance to test themselves or their car.

Speaker 6 (02:16):
Well, I started a long time ago. I'm on the
way to the beach with my girlfriend and I passed
a parking lot and cars were driving really fast in
the parking lot and I'm like, who are these hooligans
and what are they doing? So I stopped and there
was a fence there and I'm standing at the fence
watching and a guy came over and started talking to
me and he said, hey, you know this is interesting

(02:38):
to you. You can do it yourself. I'm like, I
can do this. This is legal, and he said absolutely.
So that's how I found out about autocrossing. I just
stumbled into it and I autocrossed for many years. So
autocrossing is a great way to get started because generally
the events are designed so that the speeds are low,

(03:00):
so there's a very low risk opportunity for damaging your
car or hurting anybody or anything. And the second thing
is from a time perspective. Autocrosses tend to be one
day events, so it's and if you live in a
reasonable sized metro area, there's probably an autocross available, so

(03:20):
they're local. So you can get up in the morning,
you can drive, you can do the autocross during the
course of the day, you drive home. Time commitments very low,
the fun quotion is very very high, and the cost
is low, typically twenty to forty dollars entry fee covers
insurance and your day, and you get to explore the

(03:43):
limits of the car in a place that somebody has
designed it to allow you to explore the limits of
the car. So they put slaloms in, they put some curves,
they put some slower stuff, some faster stuff. So it's
this really great way to to explore what your car
is and what it can do, and also who you

(04:04):
are as a driver and your ability. And it's funny
that you ask that question because right now the National
Championship of Solo Autocrossing is happening in.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Went to Nebraska right now as we speak, the racing.

Speaker 6 (04:20):
That's correct, And I went last year to the you know,
after all of these years and even though I spent
a lot of my time racing cars on the track,
now I went back and participated in the National Championship
last year and just had an absolute blast. And the
cool thing is anybody can do it. And this is
I think a critical thing that we have to talk

(04:40):
about in the auto industry is when I started, you know,
my car had sixty horse power. The idea of three
hundred horsepower. That was a Ferrari f body or something
like that. You can get a minivan with three hundred
horse power now, so you know, you talk about all
of these exciting cars, the reality is even a Honda

(05:01):
Fit or a Mini Cooper or some of the smaller
cars for God's sakes of Focus or Fiesta from Board
are very capable cars and you can really learn a
lot on how to drive and explore those limits as well.

Speaker 7 (05:16):
You don't need a Mustang.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah, that's right. What got you into it?

Speaker 8 (05:21):
Eric, Oh, that's actually a really interesting story. So we
started off. I used to work for SRT at Fiat.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
Chrysler back then, and just a bunch of people said, hey,
let's go do a track day. I had never done
one before, never had the opportunity to do one before
I didn't grow up at Michigan, And then just turned
into yeah, let's do it, and then couldn't really line
up to our schedule, so we just rented the track
out ourselves. So just a bunch of people who are

(05:52):
super passionate about cars went in and did a track
day ourselves, and that turned into the next year was
friends of friends and friends of friends of friends, and
then it eventually turned into track Delicious, where that's the
goal is just trying and feel passionate. People want to
come hang out at the racetrack.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
So what do you guys think? And I guess I'll
go to you, Frank.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Go karting is another great way to get started, right
and let's just start with d go karting.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
What do you think?

Speaker 8 (06:23):
You know?

Speaker 6 (06:24):
I don't have any personal experience in go karting other
than I used to do an industry event.

Speaker 7 (06:30):
That's how Eric and I met. Actually awesome.

Speaker 6 (06:32):
So I used to rent go kart facilities and I
would bring all the car designers and engineers from the
different car companies together to have a competition, so Ford
versus GM, because I'm up that age where trans am
racing in the late sixties and the portion nine seventeen
and those cars have a huge impact on my life

(06:55):
just watching it on magazines because it wasn't even really
broadcast back then. So we just brought people together, and
it's amazing how the camaraderie that comes up when you
have a shared passion. It's something we kind of mentioned earlier.
Motorsports is the entertainment business, right, It's competition is Disney

(07:18):
and vacations and Harley's and boats and people doing things
with their car. This is what they're choosing to do
with their time and their money instead of, or in
addition to, some of those other things.

Speaker 7 (07:30):
So go karts are a great way to get started.

Speaker 6 (07:33):
And you know, we're both on the road racing side,
but I've done some circle track racing, so even oval
track racing, dirt tracks and pavement track are just wonderful
opportunities for people to kind of test what your limits
are and what your capabilities are. And you don't have
to be really good to enjoy it, right, because many

(07:55):
years ago I was not a very good competitor. I
was so focused on my personal results at the expense
of the people that I was racing with. And I
had one friend who never finished more than midpack, his
named Charles. And I'm sitting with him one Saturday at

(08:16):
Waterford Hills, our local track, and I'm like, you know,
I just won, and I'm not as happy as you
are for finishing seven. How did that happen? And he said,
I have a very simple process. If I come to
the track and I'd load the car on at the
end of the weekend, and it looks like it did
at the beginning of the weekend. If I had a
meaningful battle with somebody, even if it's for just one

(08:37):
lap on the track, even if I lose, it's just
a battle, and I'm a little bit faster than I
was last time. That's all it takes to make me happy.
And it made me realize I was going into every
weekend without a definition of success or happiness. So I'm
a much happier person now when I sit down at
the beginning of the weekend and say, why am I

(08:57):
doing this?

Speaker 7 (08:58):
Right?

Speaker 4 (08:59):
Yea, I share that because oftentimes so we do a
lot of sim racing as well, and oftentimes I'm at
the end of the pack because with wife, kids, responsibilities
and all these things. Whereas you know you're racing, some
people who are single don't have kids, so they have
tens of.

Speaker 8 (09:14):
Hours a week to practice for a race.

Speaker 4 (09:17):
If I'm racing for last place, but I have someone
i'm racing against, the thrill, the excitement, the adrenaline is
still there. It's immense even in the virtual world. I mean,
I've been in a race at Hungaro Ring, which is
a very difficult track to pass at, and had someone
behind me who is probably half a second faster, twenty

(09:37):
minutes drenched in sweat.

Speaker 8 (09:40):
Because a single mistake means that you lose that position.

Speaker 4 (09:43):
And it was for seventh eighth, some midpack number that
didn't really matter, but it was absolutely immense and incredibly
fun to do.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
So talk a little bit about sim racing.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
In fact, you brought a steering wheel in here that
I gotta believe is for a sim set.

Speaker 8 (09:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (09:56):
Absolutely, this is actually the one they show it to
the camera that to me, this is that's the one that.

Speaker 8 (10:02):
You used at the track day.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
So what we do is we set up our simmring
simmering at the track day so people can experience what
it's like the transition between the simworld and the real.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
And describe that because you've got like a big kind
of semi trailer right.

Speaker 4 (10:16):
Right, And that's not how it starts, right, So sim
racing really starts with a pedal.

Speaker 8 (10:20):
And wheel, wheels and pedals, and that's at a desk, right,
That's where I started. Two hundred bucks.

Speaker 4 (10:27):
Used put it at my desk with the computer rollly chair,
and that's how you get started. And the action and
the intensity is still there with that level of equipment,
then you can go all the way up to thirty
five hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment. That's you know,
when you start getting invested into it. So we have
a bit of a lawn chair with three monitors that
people can sit at and a heavier wheel set so

(10:49):
this is a mid tier wheel and base that powers
the wheel and you really get to get that immersion
and the offset of what we don't do as track days,
which is the racing side of things. So for what
you lose in track days, which you can gain racing
doing what Frank does, or or the circle track or

(11:10):
the karting that we'd spoken about earlier, and we do
have some in Lancing not too far from us, so
that's that's great. You get in the sim racing side
and you get that competition, you get that camaraderie, and
you get the race against people.

Speaker 8 (11:23):
All over literally all over the world.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
Our weekly events have Canadians, Americans, Brazilians, Mexicans, Argentinians all
the way down that time zone and some wild Europeans
who stay up till four in the morning just a
race in our series, so which.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Might be Mark stopping as we even he gets into
t sim racing. You know, I did an open track
day with track Alicious and you had your SIM race
a Deer and Frank already mentioned Waterford Hills, our local
road racing track, and what I liked was I go
out on the track, you know, do a twenty minute
session in the car that I brought, and then I

(12:03):
could jump into the SIM chair do the same sort
of track and try different lines. And there's a couple
of I think it's a big band on Waterford, which
is very high speed, right, and I'm a little bit
nervous of trying to do that flat out on my.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Own, But on the SIM, no problem.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
And you can start to pick breaking points, you know,
turn in points, apex points and the like in the
safety of the SIM.

Speaker 8 (12:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:31):
I love the transition between sim racing and track days
and track days and sim.

Speaker 8 (12:36):
Racing both ways.

Speaker 4 (12:38):
I do get a lot of complaints from people who
do drive in real life going into sim racing because
they expect to be one for one and that's not.

Speaker 8 (12:45):
What it's there for.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
It's really a form of muscle memory training and fine
tuning motor skills and learning, repeating learning, focus learning.

Speaker 8 (12:57):
There's a lot of minute.

Speaker 4 (12:59):
Details skills that you'd start to develop, some develop driving anything.
This is just an opportunity to drive more at a
low cost. It's zero dollars once invested into it. And
like I said, you could go from two three hundred
dollars all the way to the tens of thousands of
dollars and really around the two to five thousand dollars mark,
you're in a really really good setup where you really

(13:22):
don't need more. I mean, some of North America's fastest
drivers were in that two hundred dollars setup and I've
raced against them and they've destroyed me, right, And they
showed me a picture right at the desk.

Speaker 8 (13:33):
The cheapest wheel that you could possibly buy.

Speaker 4 (13:35):
It's just a time commitment, and it's exactly that motor
skill that, Okay, I have to learn what to look at,
what to memorize where my breaking points are, Start learning
more feedback from my wheel and my hands and my
visual sense because I'm missing the g forces. I'm missing
maybe some of the sounds and some of the fields
and the smells.

Speaker 8 (13:56):
Right, and then you go to the track.

Speaker 4 (13:59):
Now you have all this additional information. It just makes
you a better driver. It's phenomenal.

Speaker 6 (14:03):
Yeah, it's funny because you can take most people and
put them who have ever driven a car and put
them in a car, and they can basically drive without
hitting anything the first time. It's almost impossible in a
SIM system to jump on it your first time and
not hit anything because you're missing these inputs. So, you know,

(14:24):
they talk about blind people getting a really acute sense
of hearing, and it occurred to me very clearly that
I'm racing one time in my sound card went out
and I wrecked in the second corner because the sound
was giving me an indication if I'm turning the steering
wheel too much or not enough, or if I'm breaking

(14:46):
hard enough. And you don't think that it's that important,
but you know, your body learns to pick those things up.
So you know, in the beginning of SIM raising, I
dealt with a lot of people who said, I tried
it and I hate it. I can't do it. It's
like right a bike, you actually have to do it
enough to get past that scrape knees and all of
that kind of stuff. Now, a lot of people quit

(15:07):
SIM racing very early after they start simply because and
when we talk about SIM racing. I'm going to draw
a gap between sim racing and games, right, Yeah, So
if you're on a PlayStation, that software is in there
and it's purposely helping you, not the wreck.

Speaker 7 (15:27):
When you're talking about a sim system, it's supposed to.

Speaker 6 (15:31):
Try and replicate how a car actually functions. So if
you're going to wreck, it's going to let you wreck.

Speaker 8 (15:36):
Yeah, And I'd like to add a bit of converse
to that. Right.

Speaker 4 (15:40):
So you get people who go into the sim with
zero experience and it's very difficult, whereas going to car
it's a much easier. But when you get people who
do sim racing at a reasonable level and then go
into a car and attract it, you can immediately feel it.

Speaker 8 (15:57):
Right.

Speaker 4 (15:57):
I coach a lot of people, and not to say
that I'm by any means highly certified or as experienced
as Frank is and maybe some other people in the room, but.

Speaker 8 (16:07):
You immediately get.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
Their sense of understanding of what it takes to drive
a car at speed, the lines, the breaking points, the memorization,
all of that hand eye coordination that we're talking about earlier,
and with regards to the gaming aspect of it, I
mean this thing here, right, you could practically snap this
onto a car, a race car, and Fanatic.

Speaker 8 (16:29):
Does make products that are literally.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
Identical that go from a sim setup, snap it off,
put it into a BMW E race car, a GT
three full fledged couple one hundred thousand dollars racecar, if
not millions, and then go racing.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, you know, just to finish up this thing on
Sam's ad Multimatic, which you guys probably know. They're one
of the premier race car builders in the world.

Speaker 7 (16:54):
There.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Their headquarters is not even two miles from the studio here,
and they invited me over to try there.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
I don't I think it's sixteen access.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
I mean, it's got to be easily a million dollars simulator,
and you know, it moves up, it moves down, it
knows dives, it pulls back, it does all this stuff,
and it wasn't quite as real as being in an
actual car.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
So it's interesting to see.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Hear what you're saying, Alex, that Eric that even with
a very simple system you can get the max out
of a sim machine.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah, it's really it's building a lot of skills that
take to be good at driving in real life. I
find myself after a sim race the next day when
I'm driving on the road, I'm scanning more often looking
for things that are happening around me, just because that's

(17:59):
the mentality of developed while I'm racing, because at any
point in time someone can call dive bombing, right, try
to make a pass. So I'm more alert driving just
regular every day because I'm.

Speaker 8 (18:10):
Doing my checks while I do in SIM racing.

Speaker 4 (18:13):
So just a direct translation of a singular skill that
gets developed.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, and I want to get into it more of
that discussion later in the show of how any of
this competition driving or track day driving or sim driving
will make you a better.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Driver out on the regular road.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
You'll be a safer driver, you'll be a more confident driver,
and you can definitely drive faster.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
John, what are you thinking? You got questions or does
the audience have questions?

Speaker 5 (18:43):
While I see one quickly in here, Hofron asked, do
legacy auto companies fund any of this activity?

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Not to my knowledge, I don't think they do.

Speaker 6 (18:53):
I should On the sim side, you could probably say
they make money off of it because they're licensing their
cars and cars likeness and stuff like that into the
side of it. And certainly you know the old idea,
you know, when on Sunday sell on Monday still works
to some level. You wouldn't see Cadillac going into Formula

(19:15):
one right now. It wasn't important to their brand.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
That's right, right.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
But I think getting to what John's talking about, you know,
if if you buy Ford raptor either Lightning or Ranger,
there is what do they call it, their like commando
driving school out here.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah, I don't remember, Yeah, I don't remember the exact name.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
But you do that for free. You got to get
yourself out there. But if you bought one of their vehicles,
they'll put you through the whole driving school. Ford used
to do that with its st models as well. You
could go out and learn how to autocross or and
again you had to get yourself to the track, but
Ford paid for everything else. Porsia has the Porsche Driving

(19:57):
Experience School down in Atlanta, so there it is some
OEM involvement, but they don't sponsor any of the events
or things.

Speaker 4 (20:05):
I think Toyota has some involvement because they have the
J eighty six cups, so there are some link there
between some racing and real life events.

Speaker 6 (20:13):
And you've got to talk about Mazda and when you
talk about all right, right.

Speaker 8 (20:17):
Masda, But I'm not sure how involved they are.

Speaker 4 (20:19):
I know they have the vehicles in I Racing, but
I'm not sure what the link is there.

Speaker 8 (20:24):
But I will say this is a perfect.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
Time an open invitation to anyone who's interested in doing that.
We're facilitating on both sides to try and make that
transition happen. Right, We're actively looking for people in the
automotive world, especially in the industry, to try and get
more interest to do what we're doing to help that
transition and really build early customers. I mean you're taking
people from the fourteen to twenty year old range and say, hey, look,

(20:52):
this is a cool car Mustang GT three, let's drive that,
and they develop this emotional connection to it the road
that ends up being a sale.

Speaker 6 (21:02):
And I would add something if you remember my events
at M one back in the day, so you know
my day job is I'm a consultant in the auto industry.
So I've been working for almost forty years in the
auto industry and as a consultant to automotive suppliers and
automotive OEMs for fifteen years. But I've also been a

(21:22):
racer for about the same amount of time, and those
worlds were kind of separate, but I've always tried to
find some way to bring them together. And you know,
as we talked about earlier, when people buy a car,
they fall mainly into one of three categories. They're buying
a car as a transportation appliance because they need it.

(21:43):
You got to get to work, they got to go places.
They're buying it as a fashion statement because they want
other people to look at them a certain way, or
they feel good about themselves when they get into something
that they've worked hard to afford, or they buy a
car as entertainment. It's like a ven diagram. Three of
those circles intersect to some level for every person in

(22:03):
the country that buys either a new or a used car,
and on the OEM side of it and on the
supplier side of it, the question is how do you
get people to experience that? So what I do for
one of my clients, I rented a local facility and
I set it up for the day where we could

(22:24):
demonstrate our products for anybody in the auto industry who
wanted to try out our brakes or steering systems or
anything like that, and in an industry whereas a supplier,
I'm lucky if I get fifteen minutes with the vice
president of purchasing a year.

Speaker 7 (22:40):
Right.

Speaker 6 (22:42):
One of the OEM vice presidents came at eleven o'clock
and left at nine pm. So you know, for my client,
I had him there for the entire day. So there
are companies that understand the benefits behind motorsports more than
just you know, sponsoring and contingency and owning teams and.

Speaker 7 (23:03):
Stuff like that.

Speaker 6 (23:04):
I've often said everything I learned about business, I learned
from racing. Because racing, the race starts at ten, not
ten oh two, not ten oh four. If I'm not
ready at ten o'clock, I don't race right, or I
start dead last, or I start from the pits or
something like that. I got to motivate people without having

(23:25):
a lot of cash. To motivate people, I can't do
what I do by myself. People have to volunteer and help.
We have some paid people as well. So there's these
commonalities between the auto industry and the automotive OEMs and
the motorsport entertainment side of it. They can't be broken.
They're linked very clearly, and you know, it's the unfortunate

(23:49):
thing that auto industry cycles. So there's times when motorsports
is like super important to the auto industry, and then
there's times when the economy may cause them to cut
it because people don't understand what it does to their
brand image or stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
So, yeah, one thing I would add, UH, and this
is probably just particular to the Detroit area, but in
autocross events, it's not unusual to see a team of
engineers from General Motors, a team of engineers from Nissan,
a team of engineers from Hyundai, because they've all got

(24:24):
engineering operations here. But it's a way, I think for
them to have this camaraderie, this excitement, you know, this
UH participation in UH in competition with their engineers. And
in fact, what GM does is on their corvettes and
they're black wing Cadillacts that they bring out to autocross events.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
They'll use it as a recruiting tool.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
They'll literally say www, dot GM Engineering, flash Hired or
dot com or something like that. They're you know, because
all of the these companies, I don't care if it's
a car company or a supplier, everyone's you know, they're
crying to get the engineering talent that they want new
fresh young blood coming into it, and they're using motorsports
in this case is one way to do that.

Speaker 6 (25:14):
You know, Formula SAE is very very successful and in
this in this environment, and it does have a lot.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
Of corporate sponsors that.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
That does Formula SAE. And what the auto makers have
found is that if they're recruiting engineers and one engineer
happens to have a higher grade point than another, but
the one with the lower grade point participated in Formula SAE,

(25:44):
that's the one that they're going to hire, man or
woman because they know here's somebody who's been involved in
a project that is a total vehicle approach, right. It's design, engineering,
it's manufacturing, it's racing, it's putting a business plan together,
it's running a program. And so maybe that student participating
in Formula SAE wasn't able to hit the books as

(26:05):
much and get a higher grade point average, but they
know here is somebody who knows how to work with
their hands and get things done.

Speaker 4 (26:12):
Yeah, and I can absolutely attest to that being a
graduate of from an SA team. The the the way
to think that you get in the classes is amazing.

Speaker 8 (26:26):
Right in the degree. And that's what you learn to do,
is learn to think.

Speaker 4 (26:29):
But the practical application of that thinking in the essay
is the first real chance that you get. For most
right now, I didn't grow up in an automotive family.
I didn't have a dad with a mechanic shop or
whatever it is, right, Formula Essay was my first opportunity
to really understand what the practical application is. And I
still use that experience from that that program to my

(26:54):
job today as an engineer.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah, just a word of advice for any of you
engineering students working out there, get involved in formula. I've
had numerous, I'm talking numerous automotive executives tell me that
they absolutely give preference to students that they are recruiting
that participated in Formula. There's also I think Formula BAJA.

(27:18):
There's variations of it, solar, solar electric.

Speaker 8 (27:23):
Yeah, the rytric version of it.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
So I know, fantastic anyway.

Speaker 5 (27:27):
Yeah, I wanted to kind of jump back into someone
that's thinking about starting into this and you know, just
all the different avenues that are available to them to
get in. You know, Frankie talked about some of the
parking lot racing kind of stuff. There's track stuff. I'm
curious how track delicious and grasp paddic kind of fits
into that. Like I'm thinking, like, do I want to

(27:51):
get involved.

Speaker 8 (27:52):
In track day stuff first?

Speaker 5 (27:55):
Is it good for someone that's just starting out to
go right into where they're racing with other cars?

Speaker 8 (28:00):
You know?

Speaker 5 (28:00):
How does that sort of fit into someone that wants
to get involved with it.

Speaker 8 (28:05):
If I could get started with it first.

Speaker 4 (28:06):
So basically this is the reason why I brought this
right so.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
So just there is an audio only version of this. Right,
Eric right now is holding a helmet, a helmet, a
racing helmet.

Speaker 8 (28:17):
Correct. Correct.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
So the point of this is that really the only
thing you need to get into track days is a
helmet in your car and.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
A driver's license, and.

Speaker 8 (28:31):
Not always, not always okay, because there are.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
Some younger individuals who get who get licensed in other
ways for racing let's say interesting, and are.

Speaker 8 (28:42):
Able to get a pass on that.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (28:44):
So because Max, for Steven was sixteen when he was
in Formata one, we're talking about that type of entry in.

Speaker 6 (28:51):
This country has a long history with litigation. But in general,
if you're fourteen years old, you can drive a race
car on a racetrack or a streetcar on a racetrack
somewhere in the country, maybe not local to you, but
there is some place that offers it to fourteen years
of age, and there are younger people who do it

(29:14):
as well. As a matter of fact, if you go
and rent a racetrack, depending on their insurance, you can
probably put anybody you want to in a car.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
But yeah, and you don't have to be You don't
have to have a Ferrari or a Portrae to get
on track right, And that's that's the critical point in
that has to have some sports ability to make it
relatively safe on track.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
You don't want big SUVs or anything.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
His rollover risk and things like that. But my first
time on track was with a Toyota Cambriy called it
the Black Stallion. It was quite impressive actually, but it
was just a base sportslader camri and I had an
absolute blast in it, right, and then I outpgraded to
my SRT four and now I'm in a Miata.

Speaker 8 (29:59):
But there are the car doesn't have.

Speaker 4 (30:02):
To be phenomenal, and typically the ones with the lesser
cars tend to have more fun because you're more at
the limit from my experience.

Speaker 6 (30:12):
I've been racing for almost forty years on and off,
and my race cars have one hundred horse power. Yeah,
and I'll argue with anybody who says they have more
fun doing it than I do.

Speaker 4 (30:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:25):
And I'm also curious about you know, training, do you
always recommend training? And I'm curious how you know track
delicious and grasp paddic fits into that sort of aspect
too for someone.

Speaker 4 (30:38):
So I'll finish off my bit and then hand it
over to you from because I think you got a
little bit more that goes into your racing that you do.
So we don't require any experience whatsoever to get onto
the racetrack and that's the beauty of it. Will help
support and John, you've been a part of this, right,
So we set some stern rules and responsibilities of everybody

(30:59):
that is all about safety on the racetrack, right, and
those rules are all designed to help people understand safe
passing zones. So as you get more and more novice,
the passing zones become more restricted to more straight line areas.
And we also have instructors in our events and go

(31:21):
out and let people who are new and I'm proud
to say that. I think every single track day that
we've had, we've had someone who's never been on the track,
which is phenomenal. That's what we're here for. I'm not
a car company, I'm a people company, right. We're there
to help people who are passionate about cars enjoy it
just the.

Speaker 8 (31:39):
Same way we do.

Speaker 4 (31:41):
So we will go through instructions at the start of
the day to say, look, we know this racetrack. Here
are some corners where you should be careful and be
conservative on your approach to be safe throughout the day.
And here are some corners where you know you could
push a little bit. If you make a mistake, you're
not going to damage your car record because there's a
runoff room. So with the car, the helmet and coming

(32:03):
and registering to whether it's our track day or whoever
else it is, that's how easy the entry point is.

Speaker 8 (32:10):
And I encourage everybody out there.

Speaker 4 (32:12):
It took me a very, very long time to have
the confidence to get on track, just because I was like.

Speaker 8 (32:18):
Oh, I'm not a race car driver's intimidating it is.
It is.

Speaker 4 (32:21):
There's a lot of intimidation, but once you do it,
you go, oh, it's not that bad. You know, if
I can control my ego at the gate and not
try to break any records on the first day that
I'm there, because I'm not equipped with the skills, all
the details to really push and push and push. It's
an absolute blast and I don't think there is a

(32:43):
safer environment to do something like that.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Hey, look, we're gonna have to take a quick commercial break. No, no,
about the helmet because it's important. There are different kinds
of helmets. Make sure you have the right kind of
helmet and that's.

Speaker 6 (32:57):
A Snell stickeranctioning body. Every place that has an event
has a different rule, So you've got to make sure
you pay attention to what kind of helmet you have.

Speaker 8 (33:07):
And you can rent them, you don't have to own.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And we'll get into more of that,
but like I said, we got to take a quick
commercial break. We're also going to swap out. We got
a new person joining the panel here. But first a
shout out to our sponsor, Bridgestone.

Speaker 9 (33:23):
Knowing that a little rain won't slow down your day,
that's what really matters. Breachtone Toronto by attract hires confident
control in wet conditions.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's great.

Speaker 5 (33:38):
Go ahead, sit down, I'm going to click this on.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
All right, we're back and as you can tell when
things are live, you just.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
Roll with the punches here.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
But while Alex gets uh okay, we got Alex Delatore
here also with John, do you want this laptop or
the Detroit region SECA right.

Speaker 10 (33:59):
Yep, well as Waterford Hills waterfroad Racing, the local track,
which is two gentlemen are very familiar about it.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, and we've been talking about Waterford too. But you know, again,
anybody that's interested in becoming a better driver, maybe getting
involved in racing and the like, all you've got to
do is get online and type in either SCCA or
Auto Cross or Track Days or track Delicious and you

(34:27):
know you're going to you're going to find what's locally
available for you.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
But Frank, you had some ideas.

Speaker 7 (34:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (34:36):
So you know, there's all these different ways to get
involved in motorsport, and I'm I've done most of them.
We haven't talked about road rallies at all. That's another
way to get involved, and I've done road rallies with
my kids. So road rallies are events where they have
a route which is either secret or it's got some

(34:58):
maybe some math, or you know, it's got something associated
with it. Where you're going from point A to point
B legally on street roads so you're not exceeding local
speed limits or anything like that, but it might give
you instructions like turn right after the third sign that
has a T in it right, or it might be

(35:19):
you know, turn right when there's a rock on the
side of the road, or turn right at mile twelve
point two. So you know, I've done these with kids
in my cars, and I've enjoyed the cars and the
act of driving and.

Speaker 7 (35:34):
That kind of thing.

Speaker 6 (35:35):
So there's all these different ways to get involved, and
all of them don't work for everybody, right, So you know,
competition is like super important to me. So I do
sprint racing mainly because that allows me to go onto
a racetrack and drive at the limit of my ability
for thirty forty five minutes in a row.

Speaker 7 (35:57):
Without a break.

Speaker 6 (35:59):
There are other people who like endurance racing, which means
I'm going to have four drivers in a car. We're
going to run the car for twelve or twenty five hours,
so we don't want to run at one hundred and
ten percent every lap because we'll destroy the car. Or
you have autocrossing, which is you know, going and driving
your personal car on a parking lot at thirty five

(36:22):
to fifty five miles an hour maximum. So track days,
I'm taking my personal car and I'm driving on a racetrack,
and I'm because I don't have the full safety equipment.
I'm and I'm going to drive the car home. I'm
not trying to drive at one hundred and ten percent.
I'm purposely going to drive at eighty five or ninety percent.

(36:43):
So there's all these different ways to get involved, and
the difference between them.

Speaker 7 (36:47):
Is what makes you happy.

Speaker 6 (36:48):
So you've got to ask yourself those questions and if
you don't know, try them all and then figure it out.

Speaker 7 (36:54):
Right.

Speaker 6 (36:55):
The other side of it is there's a cost difference,
right autocross is your per arsenal car twenty to forty dollars, Well.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
It's gone up it's about fifty bucks now, depending on
where you're at in this area, it's it's about fifty
bucks all right. So so even fifty dollars forty to
fifty a track day event is a couple one hundred
dollars on up depending on your.

Speaker 8 (37:20):
Now ninety is where we start.

Speaker 6 (37:21):
Yeah, yeah, and then racing brings a whole nother level
because you have to have a car that's designed for
whatever group you're racing with, so you have that cost.
It's not safe to drive it to the track, although
some people do because you've got a rollcage inside, and
you know, from a safety point of view, a five

(37:44):
point harness without a Han's device is actually unsafe. So
you have all of these things to consider. But entry
fee is between two hundred and fifty and seven hundred
and fifty dollars and they run for a weekend, so
now you've got, you know, lodging and food for the
weekend to consider. So there's also a time commitment. I'm
going to autocross, I can drive my car to the autocross.

(38:07):
They've got a checklist of everything to make my car safe,
so i got to take everything loose out of the car.
I'm going to put it onto the side. A track
day event is pretty much similar, but at a trackday event,
now I'm going to be using my brakes really really hard,
lap after lap after lap. Not every car does well

(38:28):
in that situation, especially older cars, so you might want
to have the right kind of brake fluid in the
car depending on your car, and you'll learn I'm going
into turn one at one hundred miles an hour and
I hit the brakes. Lap one, it feels great. Lap two,
it doesn't feel so great. Lap three, I'm like, something's
not right. I've boiled my brake fluid. Right, So each

(38:51):
of them have different levels of time that you have
to put into your vehicle before you do the event
as well. Right, So we've got a couple of hour
checklists of cars that we go through a car before
we take it to a racetrack. I don't need to
do that couple of hours at an autocross. I should
probably do half an hour or an hour before I
go to a track day.

Speaker 7 (39:12):
So you know, you got.

Speaker 6 (39:14):
Single day events, you got multi day events, and you've
got the cost of the event. So that's the difference.
The idea that you need to start in one and
step up to the rest of them is something a
lot of people think I don't necessarily agree with. If
you know which one you have a passion for, just
go ahead and get started. When I started racing, track

(39:34):
days weren't even a thing you couldn't drive on a
racetrack except in a race car. There were no street
cars on racetracks anywhere in the country, so I didn't
have a truck or trailer. So I jumped in my
Fiesta in North Carolina and I drove the Summit Point,
West Virginia and I did my first driver school, and
then I drove home in my race car. I was

(39:57):
dumb and young. I didn't know any better, not safe.
The suspension was so stiff. Fifteen miles from the racetrack,
the car shut off and I pulled over on the
side of the interstate. I'm freaking out because I just
spent all this money to go racing for the weekend
and my car broke.

Speaker 7 (40:14):
It was so stiff. The spark plug.

Speaker 6 (40:18):
Theoramic broke on the spark plugs, and I had to
replace the spark plugs to drive to the to detractive
finish my driving school.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
So Alex, let's get you in on this.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
You know, the whole promise of the show has been
We've got an audience out there. I know a lot
of the people out there have got some pretty cool cars,
fun cars to drive, maybe have never really seen what
their car can do. Never seen maybe what they could do.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
What's your advice?

Speaker 10 (40:48):
Well, I actually wanted to jump in on something that
you talking about. There's the individual that has the money
to get a vehicle and get behind the wheel. They're
a little bit further than the in the that has
yet no idea which program to get into.

Speaker 7 (41:04):
And motorsports truly.

Speaker 10 (41:06):
Even though it's an individual that's driving, it's much more
of a team sport, right, whether it's autocross, rally, cross
road racing, open track days, it's very much about volunteering.
It's about being part of a team and the person
that helps you change out the tires and fuel up
the vehicle. I always like to tell people when they
want to go racing or they want to go to

(41:27):
an open track day. I compare it to wanting to
be a rock star. You've never been to a concert
hall yet you want to be the headliner. So the
first thing that I do is I invite them out
to one of our race weekends, one of our track
days to get familiar with Hey, where's the restrooms at,
how's the schedule work, how do you get to be
a part of this, how do you get involved in

(41:50):
the sport? And many times It begins with simply volunteering
and being part of timing and scoring, helping people get
on track, helping me suit up before I get behind
the wheel, because oftentimes it's too intimidating to go and
try to get behind the wheel of your brand new
C eight corvette and doing so. So the first thing

(42:11):
that I would do is encourage people to go hang
out in one of these events, be a volunteer, be
a spectator, ask questions, go to the different types of
events and you will feel yourself out. What's the genre
of concert that you want to go to? Well, same
thing with the event. Now, if somebody to answer your question,

(42:32):
if somebody does have on vehicle, whether it's a track day,
track Delicious, Waterford Hills, great instructors, great people that are
going to guide you along the way, SECA dot Com,
NASA dot com, whatever it may be. There's a lot
of great organizations that will guide you how to get

(42:53):
on track. As we speak, there is the National Autocross
going on this weekend right now. The very best in
the country are going, you know, going at it. Press
On Regardless Rally, which is the road rally world and
nation's longest road rally time speed distance going on this

(43:14):
weekend up in Gaylord, Michigan. A two day event as well,
two hundred and fifty miles per day, a little bit
more complex again, no helmet needed, street legal cars, street
legal roads. It's your flavor that you want to get
into it. What's most important is get out there and
get into one.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah, go and try it. So let's come to Track Delicious.
Track Delicious is where you can bring your car and Eric,
you will have rented a track and you get to
do quite a bit of driving. So take it from there.
Describe like a typical day of going with Track Delicious.

Speaker 4 (43:52):
Yeah, and I'll reinforce what Alix said. I've volunteered for
both Frank and at Waterford Hills that have done the
flagging school there. So just if you're passionate about it,
go and do it right. There are always people out,
especially race teams will always take an extra set.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
In fact, I going to jump in on it. There
are people who just volunteer. They never go out on
the track, but they love the camaraderie. They just love
the atmosphere of the buzz. Sorry I interrupted.

Speaker 4 (44:17):
Absolutely with regards to the track days, I'll contradict Alex
a little bit in saying that I will take that
first time Caach driver all day. We have a checklist
that we provide to all of our customers to say, hey,
here's what you should do to make sure your car
is okay. Sometimes people even go to garages that we

(44:40):
have that we could recommend to have that more experienced
check on your car to make sure that it's fit
and ready to go. Generally speaking, a caa car that's
pretty good. Sometimes what you want to do is check
your lug nuts. That's the big, big thing, right, Learn
how to use a torque wrench, and that's probably the
most important thing that you could do because maybe a
shot mechanics not paying attention as much as you'd like

(45:03):
them to. Beyond that, a lot of what you need
to know is spoken about in our driver's briefing, and
I know the Waterford Hills does a fantastic job with
ed at the helm and doing that as well. We
talked about as we spoke before, all the things that
you need to know with regards to the format, Right,
you get five twenty minute sessions at a minimum.

Speaker 8 (45:24):
All of our tracks.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
Say that again, five minutes, and I gotta tell you
if you have not got the track before, twenty minutes
is going to sound like all day long. You cannot believe,
you know how when when you're brand new to it,
twenty minutes is a lot. So to get five twenty
minute sessions.

Speaker 6 (45:43):
You will be swored the next day, right, because generally
you're going to be tense, right, so it's like calisthenics, right.
But secondly, you're going to use muscles you never realized
because you're going to be trying to hold yourself right
in the car while you're seeing g.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
I think you know, shoulders and neck muscles. Yeah, actually, yeah.

Speaker 4 (46:02):
And we try to coach out of that, coach out
of that stiffness, right, because if you're stiff, then your
reaction to the car stiff and you want that looseness
and flow, which again both the gentlemen across from me
are way more experienced than.

Speaker 8 (46:15):
I am, but I know a little bit about it.

Speaker 4 (46:18):
And beyond that, it's it really is that that's how
as far as you have to go to get on track,
And I'll offer that up right now. We actually, as
late as it is in the season, we have a
Waterford Hills track day coming up on September thirteenth, a
week and a half away, which you can still register for.

Speaker 8 (46:36):
You could you out there behind the camera.

Speaker 4 (46:39):
I can literally go on our website and be on
track in a week and a half and have an
amazing experience.

Speaker 8 (46:47):
We're going to Gingerman on September twenty seven, twenty.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Eight, Western Michigan.

Speaker 4 (46:53):
Right so if you're in the South Haven area or
Chicago area, a lot of Chicagos, a lot of indie
people come out to Gingermin and then Gratton on October
fourth and fifth, also west Side, so Grand Rapids people
come out and have some fun. So as late as
as it is in the season, we still have track
days that all of our local Michigan tracks are historic
tracks and one we'll eventually get to involve and one

(47:15):
as well. But west Side, east Side, everybody's welcome and
it's as easy as going on there. Rental helmets are available,
so you don't even need that spring your car and
a good attitude and we'll make sure you're taking.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Care of and Frank grass Paddock your company, you operate
what everywhere east of the Mississippi, right, Well.

Speaker 6 (47:34):
We're kind of national now, so that's the goal is
to be national. So when you start looking at road racing,
the biggest expense after the cost of your car, is
to travel, right, So unfortunately the tracks aren't where the
people are. When people call me or ask me about
I want to get involved in road racing, the first

(47:54):
thing I asked them is what's your zip code? Because
if you're unlucky enough to be born in the wrong
zip code, it is super expensive. So there's a lot
of companies that rent race cars, and they tend to
have semi trailers and trucks, and you know, located in
Ohio or in Chicago and the major metro areas, And

(48:15):
if you want to race at Zebring and Florida, they'll
load their car up in the truck and they'll drive
it down to Seabring and you will pay for that, right.
So my business model is I've got cars in Florida,
and I've got cars in Georgia, and I've got partners
in the Northeast, and I've got cars in California, and
we've got cars in Ohio and Michigan. And next year

(48:37):
we hope to be you know, Pacific Northwest and the
central part of the un and you specialize in minis
currently we have a lot of Minis. When I first
started renting cars, I started renting cars in the nineties
at Waterford when nobody rented cars. I rented fort Fiestas,
and then I left for a while, and when I

(48:59):
started renting are renting Hondas and over time.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Now when you say you're Honda's, you're talking full blown
race prep cars, correct, full roll cages, full harnesses. Probably
a fuel cell too, I'm guessing.

Speaker 6 (49:15):
Not so much fuel cells anymore. So I have a
different opinion about all of that stuff. We used to
require kill switches and fuel cells in every race car.
What's happened is the auto companies are so safe with
what they make now that I would trust a factory
gas tank on a new car before, I would trust

(49:35):
my ability to put a fuel cell in and not
make any mistakes in the process, right, And the same
thing with the kill switch and the ignition. So you know,
cars are so safe now. The stock gas tank is
in front of the rear axle, and it's in you know,
under the rear seat, in a very safe location. And

(49:57):
if I'm going to put a fuel cell in a car,
I'm probably putting it behind the rear wheels, which is
less safe even though it's a fuel cell. So yes,
we rent fully prepped race cars today. We will start
renting track day cars probably next year as we're building them,
because we're starting to find people who don't know how
to drive a manual transmission. So we're starting this winter

(50:19):
we'll be building our first track automatic cars for people
to do track days and stuff like this, because we
had a couple of drivers this year who wanted to
rent and go racing and they didn't know how to
drive a manual. And ten years ago it's fine go
ask a friend to borrow their car, but nowadays hardly
anybody has a manual transmission car for you to borrow,

(50:42):
especially in the major metropolitan areas. Because while I have
a manual transmission car, it was the most miserable thing
in my rush hour drive to and from work, where
I was shifting years one hundred and fifty times between
home and the office.

Speaker 7 (50:57):
So we rent race cars.

Speaker 6 (51:00):
We help people go through the driver school process to
get their competition license. So there's different ways to get
racing competition licenses in the country. There are organizations that
say you do six track days and if we watch
you and we think you were good, we'll let you
do a race where you wheel the wheel and you
can pass anywhere. I run mostly with the SECA, and

(51:23):
their feeling is, you know what, we think you need
to go to a school and learn about flags and
learn about all the workers and learn about safety and
learn about that process before we let you race wheel
the wheel. And then there's endurance racing like Lemons and
some of the others where you don't need anything. You
show up with a driver's license and they'll put you

(51:44):
in a car and you'll go out on track at
one hundred and twenty miles an hour next to people
who are experienced and you've never done it before. So
there's various ways to get involved. We tend to spend
the majority of our time with SCCA for a lot
of different reasons. First off, the SCCA has trained workers

(52:08):
at the track, which a lot of sanctioning bodies have volunteers. Great,
but they're not trained, they're not certified. SCCA has a
great insurance policy where if you get hurt at an event,
you're covered, including stepping in a pothole and twisting your
ankle walking to your race car. A lot of sanctioning

(52:30):
bodies don't have any insurance. So if you have an
accident and you're on your own, and some of them
even if you have an accident and you hit a
wall at a racetrack and you get a bill for
fixing the wall at the racetrack, so you know that's
different as well. So you know, buyer beware, do your
research and all of that.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Alex, if I want to rent one of Frank's cars
and race it on a track, first I got to
go through a driving school, and you guys were on
a fantastic driving school at Waterford Hills. But talk about
that in general driving school and what it all entails
and what somebody might expect to go through.

Speaker 10 (53:08):
Absolutely, so the driving school is really there to teach
you about safety and communication and learning how to get
yourself on track and off track.

Speaker 8 (53:20):
Typically there's some.

Speaker 10 (53:21):
Expectation that you can make your way around on track.
You don't need to come with driver skill. But this
is a three day school. One day classroom, learn the rules,
learn all the different sanctioning ideals you have to work with,
and then it's actually about twelve to sixteen sessions on track,

(53:42):
twenty plus sessions over a two day period. And the
great thing about race car rental teams like Franks is
you don't have to worry about fixing the car, working
on the car. You can truly focus on what am
I learning at school, right, I can focus on myself
as a driver. I can focus on exactly what my

(54:04):
colleagues are doing on track as well. So for four
hundred and ninety five dollars, not including the helmet, the gear,
and the rental of a vehicle, once you're done with
this three day school, you come out of there with
a novice permit, you complete three race weekends, you come
out with a full competition license, which everywhere from the

(54:25):
Pacific Northwest down to Miami you can show up with
your race car or call up a race car rental
team and drive in any of these historic tracks. So
once you have become licensed, you can show up just
about anywhere.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
And go into a little bit more detail. Because what
I love what you guys.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Do is not just cheat teach the fundamentals of driving fast.
You also do some simulation racing as part of the
school exactly so, and I don't mean sim racing, I
mean out on the track, simulating an actual race.

Speaker 10 (55:00):
Eimulate scenarios for individuals. You don't want to experience your
first red flag, which means stop where you are, because
we need to take care of something on track. So
we have all the flag simulations. What if there's a
small emergency on course to a full blown emergency on course?
What happens if the ambulance or the record needs to

(55:23):
be on course while the drivers are out there. We
practice starts right, we practice finishing. We practice driving around
the track side by side through multiple laps, so you
become familiar with what's it like to be close to
another vehicle while it's on track. So we do have
a very much a stare step approach where we practice hey,

(55:46):
start slow, feel the tires underneath you to we culminate
it at the very end to a full blown simulation
race and everything we do in between. So you want
to practice the scenarios. Four you're actually out there by
yourself in a real race with veterans as well.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
So we've been talking about all these different ways that
anybody can get involved in racing. Let's talk a little
bit about driving. If you had to give anybody advice, Alex,
what would be some of the key things keep in
mind when you're really starting to push yourself to the
limits and your car to the limits.

Speaker 10 (56:25):
Absolutely you know. I'm going to boil it down to
three things. Number One, you're entering into a relationship with
the machine, right and how you ask it to do
something is exactly how it's going to answer you. So
you have to be kind in a request, because if
you're violent, the machine will respond equally as violently. Number Two,
performance in racing driving is a very concentration intensive sport,

(56:49):
so very much like reading, your brain will tire just
as much as your body. And once you start making
mistakes and missing your brake markers or your apex markers,
need to come inside and rest right. You need to
leave your brain the opportunity to just relax. You may
have the gusto of wanting to be out there for
two hours, but that's going to be too much for you.

(57:12):
So go out there and learn how to drive in
little bites. Do not go out there and make the
same mistake over and over again, because you're developing a
bad habit, and bad habits are hard and long to break.
Most importantly, you drive with your eyes, so always look
as far ahead as you possibly can. It's like trying
to walk through a room in the dark.

Speaker 7 (57:32):
Right.

Speaker 10 (57:32):
You don't want to have a myoptic vision. You want
to focus on what's coming up, So look as far
down the road as you possibly can. Similar to being
out on the road, you know, be aware of your surroundings.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
Frank, what what advice would you give?

Speaker 6 (57:47):
So a girlfriend and I were driving somewhere the other
day and she was driving, and I was a passenger,
and I'm like, I'm noticing things that I'd never noticed before, right,
And I think we can all relate to that. And
if you can think about the difference when you drive
somewhere and you're a passenger, how much you notice when
you drive a car quickly on a track, especially when

(58:10):
you're racing, when there's other cars also driving quickly. You
develop another level of awareness of everything that's happening around
you in terms of cars potentially pulling out in front
of you. I've avoided more than one accident in my
life because the other thing racing teaches you is the

(58:31):
average driver thinks first with the brake. The racer thinks
first with the steering wheel. It's easier to avoid an
accident by driving around it. Than it is taking a
chance that I'm going to stop in time before I
hit that person. Right, So this is really the biggest
thing that I've picked up over my time driving race

(58:53):
cars and autocrossing and all the other things that I've done,
and the thing that people have given me feedback. I
am probably three accidents less than I would have had
if I'd never been racing, right, So that's maybe once
every twenty years I avoid a serious, major accident because
of my racing background. And it's not racing skill. It's

(59:17):
not even like the best driver will avoid that accident
and an average driver wasn't even an average racer would
have avoided the same accident because they think differently, Right,
They're aware and they think with the steering wheel and
not with the brake pedal.

Speaker 4 (59:32):
Yeah, Eric, what I preach at our track days is
mental budget, Right.

Speaker 8 (59:37):
I ask people to pick.

Speaker 4 (59:40):
One or two things to work on every time they
go out of this session and not try to do
too much. When you're new to a racetrack, there's a
lot of new sensation thoughts, things that you're looking at,
and while your brain's developing that baseline need of what
it is that goes on track, I don't think about breathing.
That's not a part of my mental mental budget because

(01:00:00):
I've been doing it for a long time. But there
are other things that and those type of things develop
as you get onto the racetrack. So first thing I
tell people, if you're in a manual car, don't shift
at Waterford. You don't need to add that complexity so
that you could use what capacity you.

Speaker 8 (01:00:16):
Have left for the other higher level things that you
need to develop. So mental budget is what I preach.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
Pick simple things, Pick few things every time you go
out to focus on so you can get really good
at it and not make those mistakes because you're trying
to do too much. And that really helps you hone
in on improving little by little. And I wanted to
correct something I had said earlier. I said the entry
point for our track days is one hundred and ninety
five dollars, and that is completely a big lie because

(01:00:45):
recently what we started doing is we added a bidding
system so if our track days aren't full, you could
bid as little as one dollar and get into our
and people have done that. We've had people who've come
into our track days at one dollar and it isn't
because that's great for me because that's a big loss
for us from a business perspective, but it gets people

(01:01:05):
to the track. If the money is the problem, we'll
take that out of the equation as well, because once
you come to our track day once you'll understand that
the value that you get is immense for even the
one hundred and ninety five or to two hundred and
two fifty, whatever it is.

Speaker 8 (01:01:19):
But one dollar is the entry point, and we make
it family friendly.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
At the Waterford Hills event that we have, We're going
to have the summary rig out there.

Speaker 8 (01:01:27):
We are actually.

Speaker 4 (01:01:27):
Setting up a power wheels track because I have four
kids and the oldest ones five, right, so I'm setting
up a power wheels course. We have three of them ourselves,
and we invite everybody with families to bring their power
wheels out so that the kids can go out and
race themselves and use the amazing kids facility there. There's
a playground at Waterford Hills which is fantastic. So make
it a family event. Don't use my wife doesn't want

(01:01:50):
me to go as an excuse or my kids and
I have four kids. Very few people have more kids
than I do, so we're taking away all the excuses
and trying to facilt anything that we can to have people.

Speaker 8 (01:02:01):
Out of the track.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
That's awesome.

Speaker 6 (01:02:03):
Yeah, if I could add something to what you're talking
about the mental side of it, the skill that's required
to do this at a very high level. So let's
just take one corner as an example. I'm going to
drive down a straightaway and I'm going to turn right
ninety degrees? Where do I start to break? How hard
do I break? When do I stop to break? When

(01:02:25):
do I start turning the steering wheel for the corner?
What do I aim for? Once I start turning the
steering wheel, when do how far out of the track
do I go at the exit up the corner? When
do I start to turn the steering wheel straight? When
do I start to accelerate? That's eight decisions per corner,
and a track can have fifteen corners. So if you're

(01:02:48):
trying to go out and do a better lap every
time you go out, even I'm not capable after forty
years of improving like that, I have to take it
corner by corner, I'm going to try and do one better,
and then once I do turn one better, I'm going
to do turn two better and so on as I'm
trying to learn. That's why all these sessions are great.

(01:03:10):
People talk about endurance racing, I get two hours in
the car, I'm going to get so much better in
two hours in the car. Well, actually, I'd rather do
five to twenty minute sessions because you you know, the
mind can't lock the changes down if you don't have
a moment of quiet in order to kind of absorb it.

(01:03:33):
So if I go out, I'm going to try three
new things my first session, I'm going to try three
new things my second session. I'll be faster at the
end of five twenty minute sessions than a guy who
does two hours in straight in a row.

Speaker 10 (01:03:47):
Motorsports is like baseball, a game of inches, a game
of tens of seconds which you are striving to improve
by literally tens hundreds, possibly thousands of seconds, to break
a track record, to beat somebody else out on. And
it's fun to watch humans obsess over such kind of

(01:04:09):
microscopic orgerment or.

Speaker 8 (01:04:11):
Your personal best attainable right like you.

Speaker 10 (01:04:15):
Have absolutely how do I get past this mental block
that I know somebody's going two seconds faster than I
am on track? How do I gain one second.

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):
What do I have to do.

Speaker 10 (01:04:26):
You've got to strive and have conversations with people and
get the practice in there so that you can improve yourself.

Speaker 6 (01:04:34):
If you can go half a mile an hour faster
in every corner, it knocks over a second off your
lap time. And by the way, you talked about big
men at Waterford, this fast, flat out corner with a
wall on the outside of it. I had a big
spin there my last time at Waterford. Why because I
was driving a new car to me that is this

(01:04:55):
much wider and I dropped the rear tire off at
the entrance of the turn. So that's telling me that
when I'm in my normal car, I'm at the edge
of the pavement, and when I drove a car that's
two inches wider, I spun right because the tire went
off the edge of the track.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Look, unfortunately, we're going to have to wrap this up.
But I hope you out in the audience maybe got
the bug to go out and try go go to
track delicious, look for a grass paddock, come out to
Waterford or your local SECA, or even if you're out
on the street and you're just driving a normal everyday traffic.

(01:05:35):
Listen to what these guys have talked about. Look up ahead,
get the big picture. Don't be focusing on the car
in front of you, or maybe the car in front
of that. Be looking a half mile down the road.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
If you're on a.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Track, be looking two or three corners ahead, or as
many corners as you possibly can. Take a late apex
and relax, enjoy it. And as Eric said and Frank
has touched on too, a step at a time. Try
one thing, get good at one thing, and then move
on to the next one. But anyway, I want to

(01:06:08):
thank all three of you for having come on. As
you can tell, I'm into this sort of thing and
I hope we wedded your appetite.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
Thanks for watching.

Speaker 7 (01:06:18):
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
I'll online After Hours is brought to you by bridge
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