April 26, 2024 • 50 mins
If you follow any of our social media channels (and why wouldn't you?), you're familiar with the voice Doug Hunt has built around the iRacing brand. The guys sit down with him to talk about how he created the personality you know and love, how much time he's spent in the Magic Kingdom, and what happened to the company rental car the last time he joined Greg and Kevin at the Nurburgring. We've also got details on our latest special events, esports, and much more.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
This week on the I Racing downShip, Greg Speed runs the podcast I
Racing Good. Hey, thanks forlistening to Gyras heaven gets swollen buns out
gunsounds. Next episode, we're allwearing thank cop and Chris cites his sources.
Just go put that note in there, but I'm vouching for us.
All that plus special guests Doug Hunt, it's a strap in. Welcome to
(00:26):
I Racing Downship, Tommy host,Greg West. I'm back with the boys,
Kevin, Bobba and Chris Leoni.We got a great show for you
today. We talked about what's newand exciting and I rasing got some special
events, some special series. Wetalked a little bit about rain. We
brought on Doug Hunt, social mediaadmin master and really jack of all trades
at I Racing. He's our staffinterview for the day. And of course
(00:49):
we'll wrap it up with the esportsas usual with NASCAR co Cole I Racing
Series, Porsche Tagle Esports Supercup andthe NASCAR College I Racing Series. I
got all those right, Dang,dang, that's right. How are we
doing, guys? Good? Good? Just uh came off a big weekend
last weekend. I was at jillEd Stadium for Supercross, and uh,
(01:11):
let me tell you the view fromthe press box, immaculate, great view.
You can also feel the Pyro throughthe press box. When it goes
off, it gets like ten degreeswarmer for half a second. Sound a
little out of breath though, yeah, just a little bit. We were
running around, uh I, poorCisco got his cardio in because we had
(01:33):
some uh last second tech issues thatwe were trying to compensate for. I
think we're all a little out ofbreath right now. If she used a
PC, yeah, maybe you shouldstop using that mac. Yeah, maybe
come over to LA. But hewas actually doing some repairs to my tower
as we speak, So yeah,but that's going to come back and bite
(01:56):
you. He's doing a fantastic fixingwhatever I broke. But yeah, Supercross
was great. I do want togive a shout out to Lee Diffy and
Ricky Carmichael for hanging out a bit. Lee and I go back to the
GRC days and Ricky was a keymember of LCQ league and so we were
just kind of telling stories back andforth with one another about the things we'd
(02:16):
work together on. And I alsofound out I don't know how many people
know this, Kevin, I knowyou do. But one of the first
videos that we ever did here atI Racing explaining what the product was Lee
Diffy was the MC I remember itwell. It was a fun project,
probably in two thousand and eight ornine ish. Yeah, I don't remember
(02:40):
exactly. We might have done itbefore we actually launched. It's possible,
I don't know. Is this likethe circle time? Is that when you
were walking around also with a signin the back of the speed TV?
Yeah, same time frame? Yougot time frame? Yeah, we have
time. We have that clip available, we have that twootage somewhere. Yeah.
Yeah, all right, Kevin.What have you been up to?
(03:04):
Well, a lot. I've beenbusy at I Racing. Lots going on,
but you don't care about that.I went to the Boston Marathon.
I did not run it. Icheered on a good friend and had an
amazing time. Boston Marathon is acool event to go to. If you
haven't been to, definitely check itout, especially if you live in the
Boston area. I've also been doinga ton of push ups because you got
me on this one hundred push upsa day challenge. In fact, I
(03:28):
just did fifty of them while Chriswas trying to sort out his tech issues,
so I'm a little bit winded.So yeah, so I'm ahead of
the head of the schedule because it'sonly two o'clock here. Usually I'm not
done that early, but appreciate thelittle motivation to get it done while Chris
was doing something. I don't knowhow long have we been doing this now
(03:49):
got to be close to too much. I just looked it up. I
think I've done seven thousand push upssince we started, so that's pretty good,
and a lot of push ups.Feeling it got gun show. I
feel like I'm ripped. Yeah,yeah, uns out, guns out.
Next next episode, we're all wearingtank tops. No, we're not.
We're not going to do that,absolutely, are you? Eighteen rating for
(04:10):
the show eighteen. Birdie told meyou play some golf yesterday. I did
play some golf first time out.I had an awesome time, even though
I didn't play all that great,but it was super fun to get out
there and hit the balls into thewoods. How many did you lose?
I lost two balls. I lostfour. I had a bad bad first
(04:32):
outing. Me and the driver didnot I did okay for the first like
six holes and then I then somethingkicked apart. Yeah, just fell apart.
I had a snowman. It's like, oh my gods around that.
As soon as you have a snowmanin your round, you're done. Like
that. It's it's like, allright now, I'm just practicing now that
this round will not be a goodone. Couldn't hit the driver, so
(04:57):
that that's that's tough if you're hittingyour drivers not straight. Yeah, but
still good to get out there.It's all about you. What have you
been doing? Well, I've donea lot of push ups, I've done
a lot of a lot of alittle bit of golf, been racing in
the sem a little bit. Ijust got done playing some exocross nice,
a little little playing the demo alittle bit, familiarizing myself. So that
(05:20):
was that was a lot of fun. Looking forward to play test tomorrow that
spring. Cleaning around the house,a lot a lot of that going on
the purge. It's really sad,Yes, multiple nice. I need to
build some golf clubs. So yeah, all right, well let's get going
because I have a hard stop.We got to get through this, uh
(05:42):
this agenda items or outline that Chrisput together. All right, well,
we'll make it real easy. Iracing good. Hey, thanks for listening
to I forget all right, let'swork down the drink. Well, let's
cruise through it a little bit.Here. We've got a great interview once
again with Doug Hunt, who's ourour we're never in the Senate's title marketing
associate and social media manager. Sowe got a great interview with him that
(06:06):
it took a good bit of time. But let's get into what's new.
Season two twenty twenty four updates.We put out two new micro sprints.
Chris tell us about them. Ohyeah, so now we got four micro
sprints in total. We've got bothwinged and wingless versions of the one hundred
and twenty horsepower stock version and theone hundred and sixty horse power outlaw version.
(06:29):
They're all packaged together. If youalready have the original models, you
got the new ones. They're thesethey're fun little cars to drive. They
work really well on these small quartermile bull rings. You can race the
winged and the wingless stock versions atRookie. They alternate every half hour,
and if you're looking for more ofa challenge, you can go to Millbridge
and the Micro Showdown, which keepsthe outlaw versions so you can race.
(06:54):
You can race micro sprints at leastthree times an hour if you really want
to. At the two different horsepowerlevels, they are a blast to drive.
I was looking at the stats.The one hundred and twenty horsepower version
that's at Rookie is exploding. Everybodyis going in there and racing it.
It's so it is. It's aton of fun. If you haven't had
an opportunity to get in there,it is. Uh, it's approachable.
(07:15):
I mean that's the thing. It'sapproachable. And it's I struggle with on
dirt ovals because I'm just trying toget the car around the track. I
really am. But this I feellike I can place it and I can
go racing versus go lapping. Andso if you have a chance, go
go rip around and at that Rookieseries, but also the one hundred and
sixty it's not bad either. It'snot like going from the three oh five
(07:36):
to ten. It's just a littlebit more pace. But both are all
four of them super approachable, andI once skin on. The outlaw is
at the Millbridge Micro Showdown that runsevery forty five minutes and it's alternating between
the winged and the wingless every week. Oh see, what of the stuff
we got we added. We've addedmore rain tires we got, so we
(07:59):
added the GT three, their fulllineup that races has, and we added
the Ford and the McLaren so youcan see some rain happening in our GT
three races moving forward. And thenwe also launched AI for the SRX car,
just the pave tracks. Obviously wedon't have it on dirt yet,
but that's a good time. Andof course every clip I've seen is not
those cars racing at the tracks thatthey actually raced at, but going to
(08:22):
Daytona and Talladega, because that's whatpeople do. So don't forget road courses.
They're fun on road courses. Theyare a fun road course car.
Yeah, just go put that notein there, but I'm vouching for his
note. Great road car. Movingon, we got special events. We
just had one of my favorites ofthe year, road America five hundred thrown
(08:43):
it back with the Nissan and theAudi ninety. These are not the biggest
hitter as far as you know participation, but the clips and the visuals of
these events are the ones that youwill see played over and over and over
because they are so iconic. Stillhad, you know, over sixteen hundred
(09:03):
people racing, so it definitely wasa good race, and we had a
good amount of staff. This isa fan favorite, staff favorite, Cisco,
You and Corey for the marketing team. You had a pretty good race.
Yeah, you can actually see uson screen there in our Audi that
we drove. But yeah, wehad a good outing, finished second in
our class. After it was along day for us because one of our
(09:24):
drivers ended up having a last minutegoing to have to start using paddles for
their throttle and brake pedal because theirpedals broke. So that was fun.
So we had to go into sortof last minute oh no mode on that.
But that was me, Corey andone of our friends. And then
I think there's some more staff behindthe wheel as well. Greg. Yeah,
justin Malilla, which Chris in hisoutline that's very well bulleted, by
(09:46):
the way, could job Chris props. This is one of the better formatting
jobs you've done. Although I don'tI know Justin you didn't have to phonetically
spell out his last name. Ilike that hehonic spelling for us. Just
make sure, just making sure.But yeah, Justin finished fifth in the
Nissan, and then Nick Bailey theywere racing, they finished third in the
(10:09):
OUTI. So yeah, we hada lot of staff participating, so that
was good. Next up, though, is a big one Nurburgering twenty four
coming up. I just made thepost, but that's coming up May seventeenth
through nineteenth, depending on what timezone you're in. And this is the
biggest field of cars that we've everhad, and it's always difficult because so
(10:31):
many cars race around the ring tofind we know, anything that I choose
or leave out, you know,it's gonna make somebody happy and make somebody
mad. But you know, havingthe opportunity to have twelve cars in there,
that's a huge improvement from even youknow, a year or two ago.
Just made that post. You canfind it in the forums. But
(10:52):
the the classes that are involved,of course, we got a wide variety
of GT threes, Porscha Cup cars, a staple GT four's, a couple
of TC this year, and ofcourse Toyota grighty six, which is a
ball of fun around the ring.This is the question I made the post
four hours ago, and I betI've got twenty five questions already will it
rain And the answer is no,because not all of the cars have re
(11:15):
entire yet, so this will bea dry event. It's hard enough to
get around the Nerve Ring, soyou don't have to worry about that this
this season. But I'm sure lookinginto my crystal ball, I suspect it
will rain at the nrber Ring atsome point in the future. I bet
it rained some points in twenty twentyfour, just not for not for this
particular event, right, But yeah, it's super exciting. I'm getting the
(11:41):
notifications from the post already, soI'm curious who's mad about what? But
yeah, the most number of carswe've ever had, most manufacturer representation,
super excited about it. Let's goon. We also have not just special
events, our special series, Kevin, this one's near and dear to you,
BMW empowered to let's talk about it. Yeah, it's a great series,
(12:03):
fully supported by BMWM Motorsports, ourfriends and partners over there. We're
kind of rotating through all the BMW'sthat we have on the service, switching
up tracks where we this week.I think let's see if I can pronounce
it auser schlaban, Is that right? That's pretty good? Right in the
(12:24):
Z four, which is one ofthe most beloved BMW's we've ever built,
and if you talk to real worldracers who have raced the various GT three
or g G E cars, manyof them will say that was the coolest
one that the BMW built in recenttimes. So cool that that's back in
an official series and getting getting somelove. You know again, BMW is
(12:45):
behind it, They're supporting it.They're going to have some cool prizes for
both the top drivers as well assome participants. I know we haven't announced
with those are, but they're goingto be cool things, uh, things
that you can't get you know,normally. So they're gonna come up some
unique things like that. I can'tget into exact details, but let your
mind go crazy with some ideas.It'll be something that you can't get any
(13:07):
anyplace else. So that's kind ofneat. I got a sample of some
of those things you can't get anyplaceelse. I can't vouch it's cool,
excellent, So yeah, so morecome on that. Yeah, yeah,
there we go. You thought Isay about it. There's nothing to tease.
Oh, let's see what else wegot Creventic. This is a really
(13:31):
cool series of partnership of the twentyfour hour series. It's nice to you
know, kind of like work withBMW, working with people that just want
to do cool stuff. And wehave these four races a year with just
kind of a mismash of cars.They are all twelve hour races and it
kicks off this weekend at Migello,so that one's exciting, but we also
the next four rounds. We're goingto Massano November, We're going to Portamayo,
(13:56):
and then finishing off in December,fan favorite Spa. But it's great
to be able to put on theseevents for them, and we get a
lot from them as well. Youcan see our signage at all their races,
real world and lots of eye racingstickers on cars, and it's just
really cool partnership that's turned into Ididn't realize how big of community events these
would be, so we're pretty excitedabout that. And then of course the
(14:16):
I Racing nerber Ring and Durance ChampionshipRound two. It's going to kick off
the week before the twenty four hourof twenty four Hours, and you'll notice
the cars are identical, So whattrack are they What track are they using?
Masano? Sorry, oh I wasready for your dad joke fu Yeah,
(14:39):
I was ready for tried to getto Yeah, didn't make you stumble
low. Well, I'm here forit. Then. Last thing as far
as series go, this kick kickedoff last week the I Racing rain Master.
It's kind of like the ring Masterdraft Master, a weekly challenge,
but instead the hook on this one. It's gonna rain. It's gonna rain
always, uh in the light,rain all the time. So if you
(15:01):
want to go in there, itfollows the Ferrari Chi rain all the time.
It's not like getting wet or dryer. It's just rain, right,
It's just gonna be raining, likeit's not torrential. You do not need
to, you know, get readyfor a long fifteen minutes, just like
the Ferrari Challenge. It's just likethe Ferrari Challenge, like the challenge,
except that's wet. Got it allright? You couldn't be more clear on
(15:22):
that. Six setups. You know, we've rain tires are default. That
is on. You just got toget in and try to keep it on
track. And it's been a lotof fun. I like, I like
going in and just watching those races. They're they're highly entertaining. All right,
well, let's get into our interviewtoday once again, our pulls up
Notes. Marketing associate and social mediamanager Doug Hunt sat down with Kevin and
(15:46):
I. Oh about forty five minutesago. We talked all things that is
social media on I Racing. Sowithout further ado, let's talk to Doug
Hunt. All right, Kevin andI are back with a long awaited guest,
(16:10):
mister social media admin himself, misterDoug Doogie Hunt. Doug, welcome
to the show. Glad to haveyou. Welcome Doug, thanks for coming.
And it's not like you were voluntoldthat you would be on the show
or anything, but we appreciate youmaking time in your busy day between tweets
and posts and whatnot. So absolutely, you guys told me about it,
(16:32):
I think a week and a halfago, and I've been sweating from then
till now. So that's because youlive in Orlando. That's why I'm sweating.
But let's let's jump right into thisbecause there's there's a little bit of
rivalry, uh and some some somenumbers rivalry. What did you tell us
about the the Alex Horn episode,which did really well for us. Yes,
(16:52):
I've I've heard that's the best episodeso far, but I do have
the keys to the kingdom here,and uh my episode will go farther purely
based on how many times I'm goingto retweet it. So I love it,
don't hate the player, hate thegame. Yep. All right,
well let's get into it. SoI'm following Chris, who's muted at the
(17:14):
moment while he's drinking his allegedly unsweettea. But you know whatever, he
sent me an outline to go fromon this and it starts with the usual
who are you and how did youend up here? Introduction? Thanks Chris,
you got my name. I'm Doug. I've been here for six and
a half years now, I thinktwenty seventeen October. I got here from
(17:41):
my mom finding the position on Indeedand sending it to me to apply too,
and I got across the finish linethanks to Kevin accepting me. So
did your mom drive you to theinterview or she did not know, but
she did the legwork to get meto that, Like without her I would
not have the position. So whodid your resume? Be honest. I
did. Okay, yeah, good, mom, edit it. There's nothing
(18:04):
wrong with that. You gotta havesomebody at at your resume when it comes
to presentation stuff like words and allthat. That's my specialty, not there.
So, like they've been, they'veapplied to jobs within the last seven
years. A few times I'm theone proof reading for them on everyone.
All right, yeah, very goodon this. What's it like interviewing with
Kevin Bobbitt? It's already off therails, by the way in case.
(18:26):
Yeah, it's really this was noton the outline. I feel like in
all the marketing calls we have,I'm kind of like the I would have
left field kind of person with mycomments. So it fits the my script
at least, maybe not you guysa script. But so did he ask
you like how many tennis balls werein a seven forty seven or anything or
no? So that was very Itwas kind of boring actually. I mean
(18:53):
when I applied, it was amarketing associate position, very generic, don't
know what I'm going to do kindof thing, and it was a smaller
company so it was kind of goingto do everything. So I think I
was running my My mom had anan Etsy shop, and I was running
her Instagram account and that was myproof of social media experience. What's that?
And Kevin was like, okay,that's good enough, so he took
(19:15):
a gamble. Uh yeah, Imean when you started, you were doing
a little bit of everything marketing.We were a marketing team of just a
couple of people at that point.So yeah, exactly, Hey we need
to figure this out, uh,doug can you help? And then we
went from there. I think Larryis still cleaning up some of my graphics
across the website. That's that's reallyreally funny. I remember back prior to
(19:40):
uh US having a proper graphic designteam to uh, Dougie's Dougie's graphics.
But now you've done it. You'vedone a bunch of stuff though you've been
over You've done a couple of tripsover to Europe for UH the trade shows
and whatnot. You I've been inbeen at a BMW going around the northch
Life with you in the front seat, not driving. Thank god, we
(20:00):
made it so when all of usgot scared to death, who's that?
Who's driving the jag Dale Dale?Yeah, one hundred and sixty two miles
an hour with no helmets on.Guys, easily the most irresponsible thing I've
ever done in my life, andDoug was there. I appreciate you letting
me have the front seat. Itwas also one of the most fun things
(20:22):
you could do. Yeah, thatwas pretty cool. It was. It
was fun. But you know,looking back on it, you know,
if you were to have a blowout, that would have been bad.
But the best part was trying toeat lunch right afterwards. Oh that was
bad and we were like, that'syeah, it's going to look at that.
No, thank you, no,thank you. All right, well
let's uh, let's keep on goingdown Chris's list here. So, Doug,
(20:45):
who are you when you're not beingincredibly sarcastic and witty on on Twitter
and Facebook and everywhere else? Youknow, what's what's life outside of of
the I racing sphere? You havesome interesting hobbies? Yeah, like you
said, I am down here inFlorida now, So I punch out at
five and I'm in Magic Kingdom byfive thirty. So how many days a
(21:07):
week? Every day, not everyday, but pretty frequently. What do
you want to do all day inMagic Kingdom? Tell I've never been gone
I've gone almost every year since Iwas born. We've gone since we were
kids. But now that we livedown here, A lot of the trips
back then we called the four parkblitz. You've got a four day vacation
(21:29):
and you've got to get everything doneone park a day. Now it's a
lot more casual. You kind ofjust go sit over there and people watch,
grab food and come back. Youdon't even go on rides or anything.
It's just the atmosphere hanging out.All right, Well, I guess
yeah, I've always done the blitzpackage. Yeah, go go, go,
go go and try to time uprides when everyth was at lunch or
(21:51):
when babies start crying at two pm, which is hilarious. Yeah, all
right, well let's keep on rollingthrough here. So this you have.
You have quite the reputation in theindustry of being incredibly good at your job.
Now I hope you can fit tothe door layer as we blow your
ego up here. But how didyou develop this this persona, this voice
of I racing and social because youwill engage with anything and and you're always
(22:19):
it seems like, at the cuttingedge of trends before they actually happen.
So let's talk through your process andhow you developed that that brand on on
social Well. I mean, themost important part of it, I would
say, to the detriment of myown health, is to consume an absurd
amount of social media to be ontop of everything that's happening. So it
(22:41):
doesn't doesn't sleep at any point.So there's always something to be seeing and
always something to be doing. Soeven if I'm not posting, I'm still
making, yeah, lurking, findingmemes, following trends, all that stuff,
putting it away for you said anothertime, So that that's probably the
most important piece, is always beingon top of it. Other than that,
(23:03):
I don't know. I've always foundthat some of the motorsports industry is
kind of just scheduled posts, uh, put it up there, walk away
kind of thing. Uh. Ifeel like that doesn't get as much done
as you can if you're just theretuned into it constantly, uh, engaging
and commenting and and whatnot. Souh, I just lost my spot.
(23:27):
Sorry about that. You know,we're this is a really professional podcast.
We're really good at So how ishow has it changed? You know since
we started? You kind of you'retrying to touched on it there, but
let's expand a little bit. Uh, you know from the scheduled post and
now being like super on top ofit and engaging. But how have you
how have you seen maybe your yourstyle and your approach to social from day
(23:48):
one six years ago to now.Uh? You know what do you think
the biggest change has been? Whatis there's the growth been? You know
walking through that. I mean Iwould say there's nothing thing that has that
I was doing a year one that'sstuck. Even if something's good and sticks,
I feel like you shouldn't do ittoo frequently, like you should just
constantly be changing. So I meanone thing that we kind of we I
(24:14):
say, like the video guys,because I don't make the videos, I
just you know, get them outthere. We came up with the member
highlights and all that, which Ialways refer to as the go pro strategy,
which I mean, you guys knowGoPro all of their marketing is videos
from their users using the product.They didn't go out and film anything.
So people send stuff in and thenthey show it off. So it's a
(24:37):
win win. It's we have likeeyes everywhere because we people submitting stuff,
so we can post endless amounts ofcontent and they get to be featured out
there, and I know a lotof them are very very excited to submit
stuff to Alex and Cole. Sooh yeah, top top ten videos and
not top ten are are huge.Yep. Yeah, those are wildly popular.
They do very well on our channel, So we just stick to that
(25:00):
usually. Other than that, Itry not to. For for for the
World of out Laws game, itwas a little different, but for EE
Racing being a product, I feellike I don't push it as a product.
It's it's more about the community andthe day to day happenings and how
we relate to the larger motorsports spacemore so than just hey, buy this
(25:23):
or whatever. It's like, Idon't like that marketing strategy as much.
Uh, for the for the largermotorsports space, I find that we get
a lot of eyeballs just engaging withwhether it's F one or NASCAR, any
of those series. Just as CocoCocoa and Cam. She's on the ground,
(25:45):
she walked into frame whatever work.Yeah, she'll she'll probably start distracting
me at some point, which actuallyshe already she already distracted. Here we
are all right, son, gooff the rails again here, And I
know the answer to this, butI've always find it really interesting and it's
one of those like kind of thingsthat people don't really understand. As I
(26:10):
mentioned earlier, you're very ahead ofthe game and you're not afraid to interact
with anything. How often do youhave to like type it out, like
oh, and I have to walkit back yourself, or how often do
you feel like that you have tobe rained back in by say Kevin or
Tony, like like where where howdo you developed the line? Because you're
(26:30):
pretty progressive, like you will getin there and and shirp a little bit,
and I can add into this.I mean generally, I mean ninety
nine point nine percent of the time, it's just he just goes right.
And on the rare occasion, he'llsend something to me and be like,
yeah, I don't know about this, and I'll usually we agree, or
on occasion I'll send something to himlike dude, don't touch this, and
(26:53):
he's like, I know, Iknow, but I feel like I have
to just say it, you know, just yeah, to be right.
But I mean we're generally on thesame page. I think Doug does I
mean he spends obviously he's more timewith the community, more time on social
picking up all those trends like youtalked about. But you have managed to
(27:17):
find that line and been pretty successfulat that, and I don't think we've
crossed it too many times. Probablysomething didn't land right with somebody, but
nothing that was like a major crisisor anything like that. Right have you
met Internet people? Of course somethingdidn't land right, But that's it,
you know, marketing one on oneand listen an emotional response. Yeah,
but there is a line, right, Like it's one thing that like all
(27:37):
that I didn't think that was funnysaying oh that was offensive, right,
and that's yeah, that's what.I don't know if I've ever ever gone
into a fence, it's a it'sa it's like chess, like you got
to think five moods that moves ahead. I'm going to say this, what
are they going to say? Like? What? What's what are the next
four to be? Exactly? Soeven if we're like, say we have
(27:59):
a particular issue in the sim II know that whatever I say is going
to be twisted into that or oranother example. Facebook specifically loves dirt content,
so I post anything that's not dirtrelated, and they're going to twist
it into where is this dirt pieceof content? So it's for a long
time it was like where's rain,Right, You'd post something about, you
(28:22):
know, the Nord's life, andthen where's rain? You post something about
and there's always there's always been raining. So what you get one right now?
It's you don't want to say outloud, let's let's let's pull a
pin of the grnade. Come on. Well, so dirt, the dirt
community wants east Bay. Uh andthat will not stop. That is just
non stop east Bay, East Bay, East Bay, east Bay. So
(28:45):
Tyler Hudson himself, he's bugging me, uh oh yeah, because you make
those decisions. Yeah, exactly.He seems every every time that. That's
another thing that's kind of funny.So on Facebook, I make the post,
Tyler will share the comments with melike I'm not seeing them in real
time. He's like, did yousee this? Yes, Tyler, that's
my job. So that's actually myjobe that I wish somebody could see Chris's
(29:06):
face right now because he's dying.Oh my gosh, Cisco hit the button
there it is, Yes, butanyways to get back to the to get
back to the walking the line comment, I find that, first of all,
you can't really find the limit untilyou push it. So like I
have probably stepped over a few times. Yeah, it's exactly like racing,
(29:26):
uh, you know, minus theIt's one thing to drop two wheels,
it's another thing to crash headfirst intoa wall. Right, So it's okay,
you're looking for a one x,but not a four x to bring
it by I racing terms exactly.And so I found that you can push
(29:48):
some things pretty easily. I mean, again, I'm not doing anything that's
that's terrible, but you can getedgy with it sometimes. I would say
probably one of the one of themistakes I've made that came back and hit
me in the face was there wasa NASCAR race and it was might have
been Bowman, but Suarez took abottle of water and threw it in Bowman's
(30:14):
face. And I think in thatsame race, but Suarez's car had caught
on fire. I remember this,So I was like, I basically said,
you should have saved that water foryour car to put out the whatever,
and he snapped back with something Idon't remember what it was. But
when he snapped back, the restof the community snapped back because again it's
it's it's driver versus brand in thatcase, and and that like the brand,
(30:36):
I mean, the driver wins overbrand. So I had to walk
it back, and I think Ihad found an image of Bart Simpson writing
on the chalkboard, you know,when they get punished. I said,
I will not antagonize Daniel Suarez overand over and over again. I managed
to walk out of that one.Yeah, but I bet if you're going
(30:56):
back now and look at the impressions, it was worth it. Yeah.
And that's the thing. I don'tthink we burned any bridges with Daniel.
It was just the heat of themoment kind of thing, and it got
some traction. So again, Idon't mind being the butt of a joke
or pushing stuff like that. Sodid you hear right, Kevin? Kevin
uh consoled me pretty much. Hesaw he's not and he was like,
(31:19):
don't worry about it, don't worryabout It's okay. So, so,
Doug, what what was what's beenthe most interesting day at at I Racing
taxi ride besides the neurburgering taxi ride. I think it's still related to neurburgering
that day. Yeah, so youwant me to tell the whole story,
(31:41):
and like just yeah, we wereat the SIM Racing Expo and it was
the last day and we were leaving. I don't know what time it was,
but and I don't know what timeour flight was at. But we
had a rental car and no notthis, and and Kevin was Kevin was
loading up the car with whatever wehad, suitcases and just stuff, and
(32:07):
as he bent over to put somethinginto the car, he heard a hissing
sound. So he looked down andthe rental car is I think it was
right rear maybe was going down.Like no, so we don't, we
don't have to, you know,stick on whose fault it was for too
long. It was Greg's fault,but we kind of we can move on
(32:28):
past that and the rest of it. So uh. Anyways, we got
into a back and forth with therental company and trying to get someone out
to you know, get us anothertire, and for some reason, how
many hours later, I don't know, it was multiple, multiple hours,
they never showed up. They couldn'tfor some reason, they couldn't figure out
where the Nurburgring was in Germany.They were like, where are you guys.
(32:49):
We're at the Nurburgring, one ofthe most iconic places in Germany.
Uh So they never showed up.So we ended up having to go to
Plan B, which was called WillVincent a race spot, to see if
he could bring us over to theairport in time. And he couldn't because
they were celebrating. They were celebrating. Yeah, they were celebrating the end
(33:12):
of the event. You know,they're over twenty one. They were having
a good time and definitely having agood time. But so Will asked around
the party to see if somebody couldsave us, and Mitchell de Young's father
happened to be there with Mitchell,and Mitchell's a rally cost driver, I
racer big just you know, simracer. His dad volunteered. I don't
(33:37):
think we'll volunteer him, but hemight. He might have also only been
the only sober one at the party. Who knows the three of us were
sober. Phone, Yes, wewere sober. We were. We were
there on a work trip, sowe were. That's not anyways, he
can this up drove us, howeverlong it takes from the neurbour Green wo
(33:59):
hours each way. Yeah, atthis point it was what time was it
we were at we were at theairport. It was very late. So
we took a nap in our hotelroom. Yep. Yeah, So we
got to got to the airport,caught the flight and made it out.
Thank you to uh Mitchell de Young'sfather, which I think we did something
(34:20):
for him, right, thank you, thank you. I think we sent
him something something nice, so creditsomething like that. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, I can. I canadd to this story a little bit.
The rental car company because the holewas in the sidewalk because I scuffed a
curb, so I parked and uhthe we ended up having to leave the
rental car there because they wouldn't comeand get us. They said they drove
(34:42):
by. There was nobody on thisroad. Nobody drove by. They said
they drove by twice. Actually,So we left the rental car, locked
the keys in it and my sunglasses, my brand new Oakleys, as we
discovered, and I took a pictureand dropped the pin and sent it to
the rental car company. So Iwas like, we have to go catch
a flight. And they were convincedthat we had taken the car around the
(35:05):
nurbur Ring. Yeah, and forgota lot of really mean letter which we
did not, which we did notdid not. It was, it was,
but it wasn't in that car.Yeah, it probably would have been
less embarrassing to explain that you youknow, actually took it out on track
instead of just yeah, I nickedthe curb on the way to put some
suitcases in the trunk or whatever.But well, they found every every scratch
(35:28):
on that car and everything, andwe should have taken around for as much
as it ended up costing, becauseyeah, that was a fun phone call
it Tony Gardner. Hey, Tony, if you're listening, appreciate it.
Yeah that was a five figure tire. Oh good times. I forgot.
I didn't forget about that. Butof all the things I thought we were
(35:49):
going to talk about on this episode, that was not on my BEINGO a
good one. It's come up acouple of times on this podcast. I
enjoy it. I'm gonna tell ahazelut water story someday. Okay, well
maybe we should have them on asguests. Yeah, now that's a good
idea. There you goick, Butall right, we're gonna gip ahead a
(36:14):
little bit, but uh, Iguess you know, let's let's circle around
the whole thing. You know,you've been here what almost like six years.
You know, how would you sayyour role has developed? I mean
we've kind of touched on a littlebit, but you know, you do
you do much more than just thesocial media. You're involved. You got
your hands on a lot of things. You know, kind of talk about
how how you've grown within I raisingyou know, the opportunity set that that
(36:38):
has been you know, laid infront of it. Yes, I mean,
obviously Irish social media is the mostforward facing stuff that I do.
But I mean when I when Istarted, I was doing graphics. I
was doing we were going to thetrade shows. I think within two weeks
of being hired, we were overat Vegas for Seema. Uh we did
(36:58):
we did packs one year. Idesigned the booths for that. We had
a Twitch Rivals event a couple ofweeks ago. I organized and set up
that. Getting out creators, Yeah, that was pretty fun in the rain,
but just working with the content creatorsthere, there's lots of lots of
calls with partners and manufacturers and makingsure they get what they need and it's
a lot of you know, righthand man stuff for Kevin pretty much.
(37:22):
So making sure on social too isn'tjust making posts, right, I mean
you're pulling reports and we're looking atdata, what posts work? What?
Don't you know? Things like that. I mean it sounds probably more fun
than I mean, I think youenjoy what you do, but there is
some other stuff to it as well, right, I mean, just just
like people say to me, oh, you just work for a video game
company, well sort of, butit still work. You know, there's
(37:44):
a lot of work, and there'sstill stuff that goes on. You know,
still have goals and objectives and projectsand trials and tribulations and all that.
So there's lots of numbers and analyticsand reports and all that. But
I mean they've only gone up inthe seven years, so's they're always fun
to look at. They're always higher. Not to brag or anything, but
I got I got one last onefor you here, because you know,
(38:07):
getting into working in the subject matter, you know, working in video games
and whatnot, or you know,becoming a content creator an influencer, you
know, working in social for anycompany, let alone something like that.
We do. Uh, there's alot of interest in that. What advice
would you give to somebody, say, maybe in high school or maybe in
college, if this is something thatthey wanted to pursue, you know of
(38:30):
the you know, the school ofhard knocks that you've gone through. What
advice would you give to those thosepeople that are considering this type of role
our career. I mean, themost important thing, I guess is just
following it, like the if you'vegot a particular game that you like,
(38:50):
or I mean again, it appliesto sports in the real world too.
Everybody wants to grow up to bea baseball player or whatever, but there's
so many positions beyond that, likebehind the company, Like you're not gonna
you might not be an esports superstar, but you could be the person creating
the esports or whatever. It's it'sI mean what I did. I got
my business degree with the concentration inmarketing and a little bit of photoshop skills
(39:13):
on the side one of the classesthat I took, and then other than
that it was just applied to Kevinhired me. I don't know, I'm
not sy, but you weren't.I mean, to be fair, you
were doing esports stuff weren't you workingfor Yeah, so Draft Kings or something
you were doing? My what wasthat job? My final year of college,
I actually found a position at DraftKings doing data coordination for the League
(39:37):
of Legends component of it or whatever, which was literally just staying up at
three am watching the Chinese League ofLegends series and coordinating the data and collecting
on all that. But there's somany positions out there that like like that
that are I mean, so thatwas essentially an entry level position, but
I was able to you know,snowball that, and snowball that and snowball
(39:59):
that. Before that, I waswriting for Team Dignitas, which was an
esports team. I was just writingarticles for them that wasn't even paid.
But again, part of that snowball, just getting it rolling, just getting
your foot in the door. Again. Networking is a big thing, obviously,
going to these conventions and expos andall that, and meeting people that
(40:21):
are in the industry already, whetherit's someone like me or someone like way
more important than me. But Iremember that there's nobody more important than you,
Doug, come on, thank you, thank you. But yeah,
I remember talking to people and tryingto like get my foot in the door.
Again, that's the biggest thing,is just getting your foot in the
door. But you got to startsmall, and not that I'm not big
(40:45):
in any sense of it, butI've managed to stick. I've got both
feet in the door now. Soyeah, you've made a career of it,
right, Yeah, exactly for sevenyears or whatever. So yep,
hopefully you'll stick around for seven more. You've got me for life probably,
Kevin probably probably in there just incase. But it's a very, very
very fun company to work for.I think Steve had a tweet the other
(41:07):
day about who's someone's retiring, andhe was just talking about the one person's
retired, first person ever retired fromjust the longevity of it, Like I
I can't think that. I don'tthink I could count on it, uh
more than one hand, the amountof people that have left, Like you're
here and then you stay because it'sjust such an awesome company. So yeah,
(41:29):
yeah, hopefully Tony hears that onetoo. We'll give him the time
stamp to listen to that. Yeahfor sure. Actually, Tony's an avid
listener to the podcast. He alwayscomments and sends me notes afterwards. He's
like, oh, I don't knowwhat he has time for. It must
be in his commute or something.Yeah, he absolutely listens. He's one
(41:50):
of our four fans or five.He's number five, I think number five.
All Right, I have not mom, Sorry, I was gonna say,
I was gonna say I have notlistened through an episode all the way
through. Well, now you're goingto have to. Now you have to
just to hear myself talk again.Yes, absolutely, that's the worst part
of it. I hate listening tomyself. That's not that you guys do
a bad job. I just listenedto you guys enough, like throughout the
(42:15):
throughout the week and all the meetingsthere. Yeah. Yeah, you're in
the marketing call. Yeah, that'slike the length. Pretty not much know
what we're going to talk about otherthan yeah. Yeah, Well, Doug,
thanks for taking the time. Weappreciate it. Now go make this
episode bigger than Alex's Alex if you'relistening, sorry, and uh. On
(42:35):
that note, let's get back tothe show. Always good to sit down
with staff. I think Doug hasmade it his personal mission if if you
didn't notice during the interview, tomake this the biggest episode ever. Chris
is cracking up again. Yeah,Well, can I just say I'm glad
that the Vince de Young story gotin there because I worked with Vince for
(42:59):
the decade and he's one of myfavorite people on the planet. And I'm
so glad that he bailed you guysout to get you guys to the airport.
Well, he definitely we were inwe're in a little bit of a
pickle, and yeah, and thatthings like I get reminded of that story
a couple times a year in opportunetimes, like on a broadcast. Moving
(43:23):
on though, more news at IRacing. I know this because it says
more news and Chris as well bulletedoutline here I Racing one oh one,
very similar to what we just didwith Doug. Chris, let's talk about
it. What what is I Racingone on one? And what's kind of
the goals of it. Yeah.So we've actually got two sort of more
evergreen news pieces going on. IRacing one on one is the one that
(43:44):
I'm leading, and we're doing staffinterviews that Justin Millillo was handling for one
on one. We're trying to delvein a little more on some of the
things that you or I are probablymost of the people listening to the show
probably just know innately because they've beenon IRA Racing for quite some time.
You know, if I say theinitialism inis, you probably know exactly what
(44:05):
I'm talking about. But if youjust signed up in the past year,
you might have no idea how theNASCAR I Racing series works. So we're
trying to talk about things like that. We're talking about ranked versus un Ranked
racing, will profile some of thespecial events, etc. Etc. And
so those will go up on everyThursday. By the time the show is
coming out, I've just got anotherone on one out and then alternating weeks
(44:29):
with staff interviews. Justin just profiledJake Puhlan, who is one of his
co admins in his league FtF.So that was a nice and easy one
to kick it off with. AndJake has a really interesting background. You
know, he's one of those peoplewho really came into I racing just from
developing a skill set in previous SIMracing titles and was a big eye racer,
(44:52):
and you know, just one ofthose people who we kind of hired
based on their experience working with andSIM racing titles, just kind of having
fun. Excellent. Oh it's aI think it's a really good a really
good series. I know what kindof your lineup, and I'm excited for
people to read more about it.But you're right, you're one hundred percent
right that sometimes we have normalized thenomenclature and what is I racing? And
(45:16):
well, with a you know,over two hundred and sixty thousand active members,
there are probably a few new facesthat may not know what we're talking.
So good to get that information outthere. Now. Kevin has a
meeting in seven and a half minutes, so we are gonna we're gonna breeze
through here a little bit. Let'sgo to E Sports. Sorry Cisco skipping
ahead on the outline on you again, But NASCAR Coca Cola EE Racing Series,
(45:40):
h it says, now into thissecond segment of the season with Chris
so. Yeah. So the regularseason in the E NASCAR Coca Cola I
Racing Series is now broken up intothree segments. They're all four to five
races. There's a special bonus ifyou're the top point scorer in any of
those given segments, you get anice little cash bonus. You get some
(46:00):
playoff points. Casey kerwin the formerseries champion. He won the first segment
of the season, so he's gota nice little cushion if he makes it
into the playoffs. I Racing dotCom slash e NASCAR has all your coverage,
including this week's race at Dover.Justin's got those previews and those recaps
on points, so if you needthe latest standings, points, et cetera,
(46:22):
check it out. Check it out. Also Porscha tag here E Sports
Super Cup Kevin Sebastian Joe winning hissecond championship at Monza and clearing up pretty
big check in the process. Yeah, fifty thousand dollars to him. He
had a pretty dominant season. Imean, there were some other good performances,
but he deserved that championship. Alsowon the pole award, so he's
(46:44):
going to get a nice watch fromthe sponsor, tag Hoyer, which is
awesome. Also had a great,great participation in the All Star Race,
which has a bunch of streamers,influencers, and the top finishers in there
also get a cool prize from TagHoyer, which I assume is a watch,
but we'll see. But yeah,great season. It was a little
(47:05):
shorter, a little bit more condensed, but we added mixed things up.
We put a tournament in the middle. We had double points on the on
the finale or extra points anyway,so it spiced things up. It was
fun. I think it was themost exciting season to date. So congrats
to everybody that competed in it.You know, there it's a I know
those guys put a ton of timeand effort and practice, and you know
(47:31):
there can only be one champion.But but hats off to everybody that made
the series and participated all season long. So awesome job there. And that's
not the only only ones we havegoing on. We also have the e
NASCAR College I Racing Series, rightChris yep, And so this is also
about to wrap up the first eightrounds of the season. And this was
(47:51):
the first season where we combined thefall in the spring semesters like a full
year of college, rather than splittingthem up. Logan Klampett took the victory
at nash Bill and didn't have timeto review the stat before the show,
but I think Logan may be thefirst driver to win for multiple colleges in
the series. Cisco, I mighthave to have you fact check me on
that after the fact. Did heenter the portal. Yea, yeah,
(48:13):
he entered, he entered the portal. Oh Man, portals everywhere, Yeah,
portals everywhere. But now works isthe top twenty five drivers who did
those first eight races in the pointschampionship, they're the only ones who get
invited to the finale. So thefinale's going to take us to Homestead,
which my favorite oval on the simfor what it's worth, Friday, May
(48:36):
third, eight pm Eastern, thosetwenty five drivers are going to go for
a championship, sixty thousand dollars intotal in collegiate scholarships on the line.
So not a bad little extracurricular activitywhen you're in a school. Huh.
I can think of worst ways tospend my time. Yeah, I'm just
watching the highlights of Cisco put onscreen there and that's driving through that mess
(48:57):
on the super Speedway. That isuh is a wild increased my anxiety just
watching. Well, thanks for listeningto this episode of the I Racing down
Shift. Don't forget to rate,review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts,
Spotify and anywhere else. Chris hasput this thing. Kevin Bobbit, Chris
Leoni, I am Greg West ohand Cisco and Sean and Drew and everybody
(49:21):
else in the in the truck alsoknown as the studio or whatever, it's
virtual truck, the virtual truck.Kevin's Mike sounds like poop all of a
sudden, but anyway, Yeah,don't forget to rate, review, and
subscribe, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,anywhere else. Chris puts this thing.
I think I already said that wantsme. Who cares? We're not good
at this? Thanks for listening tothe podcast. Let's get out of here.
This week on the I Racing downShip, Greg Speed runs the podcast I
Racing Good. Hey, thanks forlistening to Gyras heaven gets swollen buns out
gunsounds. Next episode, we're allwearing thank cop and Chris cites his sources.
Just go put that note in there, but I'm vouching for us.
All that plus special guests Doug Hunt, it's a strap in. Welcome to
(00:26):
I Racing Downship, Tommy host,Greg West. I'm back with the boys,
Kevin, Bobba and Chris Leoni.We got a great show for you
today. We talked about what's newand exciting and I rasing got some special
events, some special series. Wetalked a little bit about rain. We
brought on Doug Hunt, social mediaadmin master and really jack of all trades
at I Racing. He's our staffinterview for the day. And of course
(00:49):
we'll wrap it up with the esportsas usual with NASCAR co Cole I Racing
Series, Porsche Tagle Esports Supercup andthe NASCAR College I Racing Series. I
got all those right, Dang,dang, that's right. How are we
doing, guys? Good? Good? Just uh came off a big weekend
last weekend. I was at jillEd Stadium for Supercross, and uh,
(01:11):
let me tell you the view fromthe press box, immaculate, great view.
You can also feel the Pyro throughthe press box. When it goes
off, it gets like ten degreeswarmer for half a second. Sound a
little out of breath though, yeah, just a little bit. We were
running around, uh I, poorCisco got his cardio in because we had
(01:33):
some uh last second tech issues thatwe were trying to compensate for. I
think we're all a little out ofbreath right now. If she used a
PC, yeah, maybe you shouldstop using that mac. Yeah, maybe
come over to LA. But hewas actually doing some repairs to my tower
as we speak, So yeah,but that's going to come back and bite
(01:56):
you. He's doing a fantastic fixingwhatever I broke. But yeah, Supercross
was great. I do want togive a shout out to Lee Diffy and
Ricky Carmichael for hanging out a bit. Lee and I go back to the
GRC days and Ricky was a keymember of LCQ league and so we were
just kind of telling stories back andforth with one another about the things we'd
(02:16):
work together on. And I alsofound out I don't know how many people
know this, Kevin, I knowyou do. But one of the first
videos that we ever did here atI Racing explaining what the product was Lee
Diffy was the MC I remember itwell. It was a fun project,
probably in two thousand and eight ornine ish. Yeah, I don't remember
(02:40):
exactly. We might have done itbefore we actually launched. It's possible,
I don't know. Is this likethe circle time? Is that when you
were walking around also with a signin the back of the speed TV?
Yeah, same time frame? Yougot time frame? Yeah, we have
time. We have that clip available, we have that twootage somewhere. Yeah.
Yeah, all right, Kevin.What have you been up to?
(03:04):
Well, a lot. I've beenbusy at I Racing. Lots going on,
but you don't care about that.I went to the Boston Marathon.
I did not run it. Icheered on a good friend and had an
amazing time. Boston Marathon is acool event to go to. If you
haven't been to, definitely check itout, especially if you live in the
Boston area. I've also been doinga ton of push ups because you got
me on this one hundred push upsa day challenge. In fact, I
(03:28):
just did fifty of them while Chriswas trying to sort out his tech issues,
so I'm a little bit winded.So yeah, so I'm ahead of
the head of the schedule because it'sonly two o'clock here. Usually I'm not
done that early, but appreciate thelittle motivation to get it done while Chris
was doing something. I don't knowhow long have we been doing this now
(03:49):
got to be close to too much. I just looked it up. I
think I've done seven thousand push upssince we started, so that's pretty good,
and a lot of push ups.Feeling it got gun show. I
feel like I'm ripped. Yeah,yeah, uns out, guns out.
Next next episode, we're all wearingtank tops. No, we're not.
We're not going to do that,absolutely, are you? Eighteen rating for
(04:10):
the show eighteen. Birdie told meyou play some golf yesterday. I did
play some golf first time out.I had an awesome time, even though
I didn't play all that great,but it was super fun to get out
there and hit the balls into thewoods. How many did you lose?
I lost two balls. I lostfour. I had a bad bad first
(04:32):
outing. Me and the driver didnot I did okay for the first like
six holes and then I then somethingkicked apart. Yeah, just fell apart.
I had a snowman. It's like, oh my gods around that.
As soon as you have a snowmanin your round, you're done. Like
that. It's it's like, allright now, I'm just practicing now that
this round will not be a goodone. Couldn't hit the driver, so
(04:57):
that that's that's tough if you're hittingyour drivers not straight. Yeah, but
still good to get out there.It's all about you. What have you
been doing? Well, I've donea lot of push ups, I've done
a lot of a lot of alittle bit of golf, been racing in
the sem a little bit. Ijust got done playing some exocross nice,
a little little playing the demo alittle bit, familiarizing myself. So that
(05:20):
was that was a lot of fun. Looking forward to play test tomorrow that
spring. Cleaning around the house,a lot a lot of that going on
the purge. It's really sad,Yes, multiple nice. I need to
build some golf clubs. So yeah, all right, well let's get going
because I have a hard stop.We got to get through this, uh
(05:42):
this agenda items or outline that Chrisput together. All right, well,
we'll make it real easy. Iracing good. Hey, thanks for listening
to I forget all right, let'swork down the drink. Well, let's
cruise through it a little bit.Here. We've got a great interview once
again with Doug Hunt, who's ourour we're never in the Senate's title marketing
associate and social media manager. Sowe got a great interview with him that
(06:06):
it took a good bit of time. But let's get into what's new.
Season two twenty twenty four updates.We put out two new micro sprints.
Chris tell us about them. Ohyeah, so now we got four micro
sprints in total. We've got bothwinged and wingless versions of the one hundred
and twenty horsepower stock version and theone hundred and sixty horse power outlaw version.
(06:29):
They're all packaged together. If youalready have the original models, you
got the new ones. They're thesethey're fun little cars to drive. They
work really well on these small quartermile bull rings. You can race the
winged and the wingless stock versions atRookie. They alternate every half hour,
and if you're looking for more ofa challenge, you can go to Millbridge
and the Micro Showdown, which keepsthe outlaw versions so you can race.
(06:54):
You can race micro sprints at leastthree times an hour if you really want
to. At the two different horsepowerlevels, they are a blast to drive.
I was looking at the stats.The one hundred and twenty horsepower version
that's at Rookie is exploding. Everybodyis going in there and racing it.
It's so it is. It's aton of fun. If you haven't had
an opportunity to get in there,it is. Uh, it's approachable.
(07:15):
I mean that's the thing. It'sapproachable. And it's I struggle with on
dirt ovals because I'm just trying toget the car around the track. I
really am. But this I feellike I can place it and I can
go racing versus go lapping. Andso if you have a chance, go
go rip around and at that Rookieseries, but also the one hundred and
sixty it's not bad either. It'snot like going from the three oh five
(07:36):
to ten. It's just a littlebit more pace. But both are all
four of them super approachable, andI once skin on. The outlaw is
at the Millbridge Micro Showdown that runsevery forty five minutes and it's alternating between
the winged and the wingless every week. Oh see, what of the stuff
we got we added. We've addedmore rain tires we got, so we
(07:59):
added the GT three, their fulllineup that races has, and we added
the Ford and the McLaren so youcan see some rain happening in our GT
three races moving forward. And thenwe also launched AI for the SRX car,
just the pave tracks. Obviously wedon't have it on dirt yet,
but that's a good time. Andof course every clip I've seen is not
those cars racing at the tracks thatthey actually raced at, but going to
(08:22):
Daytona and Talladega, because that's whatpeople do. So don't forget road courses.
They're fun on road courses. Theyare a fun road course car.
Yeah, just go put that notein there, but I'm vouching for his
note. Great road car. Movingon, we got special events. We
just had one of my favorites ofthe year, road America five hundred thrown
(08:43):
it back with the Nissan and theAudi ninety. These are not the biggest
hitter as far as you know participation, but the clips and the visuals of
these events are the ones that youwill see played over and over and over
because they are so iconic. Stillhad, you know, over sixteen hundred
(09:03):
people racing, so it definitely wasa good race, and we had a
good amount of staff. This isa fan favorite, staff favorite, Cisco,
You and Corey for the marketing team. You had a pretty good race.
Yeah, you can actually see uson screen there in our Audi that
we drove. But yeah, wehad a good outing, finished second in
our class. After it was along day for us because one of our
(09:24):
drivers ended up having a last minutegoing to have to start using paddles for
their throttle and brake pedal because theirpedals broke. So that was fun.
So we had to go into sortof last minute oh no mode on that.
But that was me, Corey andone of our friends. And then
I think there's some more staff behindthe wheel as well. Greg. Yeah,
justin Malilla, which Chris in hisoutline that's very well bulleted, by
(09:46):
the way, could job Chris props. This is one of the better formatting
jobs you've done. Although I don'tI know Justin you didn't have to phonetically
spell out his last name. Ilike that hehonic spelling for us. Just
make sure, just making sure.But yeah, Justin finished fifth in the
Nissan, and then Nick Bailey theywere racing, they finished third in the
(10:09):
OUTI. So yeah, we hada lot of staff participating, so that
was good. Next up, though, is a big one Nurburgering twenty four
coming up. I just made thepost, but that's coming up May seventeenth
through nineteenth, depending on what timezone you're in. And this is the
biggest field of cars that we've everhad, and it's always difficult because so
(10:31):
many cars race around the ring tofind we know, anything that I choose
or leave out, you know,it's gonna make somebody happy and make somebody
mad. But you know, havingthe opportunity to have twelve cars in there,
that's a huge improvement from even youknow, a year or two ago.
Just made that post. You canfind it in the forums. But
(10:52):
the the classes that are involved,of course, we got a wide variety
of GT threes, Porscha Cup cars, a staple GT four's, a couple
of TC this year, and ofcourse Toyota grighty six, which is a
ball of fun around the ring.This is the question I made the post
four hours ago, and I betI've got twenty five questions already will it
rain And the answer is no,because not all of the cars have re
(11:15):
entire yet, so this will bea dry event. It's hard enough to
get around the Nerve Ring, soyou don't have to worry about that this
this season. But I'm sure lookinginto my crystal ball, I suspect it
will rain at the nrber Ring atsome point in the future. I bet
it rained some points in twenty twentyfour, just not for not for this
particular event, right, But yeah, it's super exciting. I'm getting the
(11:41):
notifications from the post already, soI'm curious who's mad about what? But
yeah, the most number of carswe've ever had, most manufacturer representation,
super excited about it. Let's goon. We also have not just special
events, our special series, Kevin, this one's near and dear to you,
BMW empowered to let's talk about it. Yeah, it's a great series,
(12:03):
fully supported by BMWM Motorsports, ourfriends and partners over there. We're
kind of rotating through all the BMW'sthat we have on the service, switching
up tracks where we this week.I think let's see if I can pronounce
it auser schlaban, Is that right? That's pretty good? Right in the
(12:24):
Z four, which is one ofthe most beloved BMW's we've ever built,
and if you talk to real worldracers who have raced the various GT three
or g G E cars, manyof them will say that was the coolest
one that the BMW built in recenttimes. So cool that that's back in
an official series and getting getting somelove. You know again, BMW is
(12:45):
behind it, They're supporting it.They're going to have some cool prizes for
both the top drivers as well assome participants. I know we haven't announced
with those are, but they're goingto be cool things, uh, things
that you can't get you know,normally. So they're gonna come up some
unique things like that. I can'tget into exact details, but let your
mind go crazy with some ideas.It'll be something that you can't get any
(13:07):
anyplace else. So that's kind ofneat. I got a sample of some
of those things you can't get anyplaceelse. I can't vouch it's cool,
excellent, So yeah, so morecome on that. Yeah, yeah,
there we go. You thought Isay about it. There's nothing to tease.
Oh, let's see what else wegot Creventic. This is a really
(13:31):
cool series of partnership of the twentyfour hour series. It's nice to you
know, kind of like work withBMW, working with people that just want
to do cool stuff. And wehave these four races a year with just
kind of a mismash of cars.They are all twelve hour races and it
kicks off this weekend at Migello,so that one's exciting, but we also
the next four rounds. We're goingto Massano November, We're going to Portamayo,
(13:56):
and then finishing off in December,fan favorite Spa. But it's great
to be able to put on theseevents for them, and we get a
lot from them as well. Youcan see our signage at all their races,
real world and lots of eye racingstickers on cars, and it's just
really cool partnership that's turned into Ididn't realize how big of community events these
would be, so we're pretty excitedabout that. And then of course the
(14:16):
I Racing nerber Ring and Durance ChampionshipRound two. It's going to kick off
the week before the twenty four hourof twenty four Hours, and you'll notice
the cars are identical, So whattrack are they What track are they using?
Masano? Sorry, oh I wasready for your dad joke fu Yeah,
(14:39):
I was ready for tried to getto Yeah, didn't make you stumble
low. Well, I'm here forit. Then. Last thing as far
as series go, this kick kickedoff last week the I Racing rain Master.
It's kind of like the ring Masterdraft Master, a weekly challenge,
but instead the hook on this one. It's gonna rain. It's gonna rain
always, uh in the light,rain all the time. So if you
(15:01):
want to go in there, itfollows the Ferrari Chi rain all the time.
It's not like getting wet or dryer. It's just rain, right,
It's just gonna be raining, likeit's not torrential. You do not need
to, you know, get readyfor a long fifteen minutes, just like
the Ferrari Challenge. It's just likethe Ferrari Challenge, like the challenge,
except that's wet. Got it allright? You couldn't be more clear on
(15:22):
that. Six setups. You know, we've rain tires are default. That
is on. You just got toget in and try to keep it on
track. And it's been a lotof fun. I like, I like
going in and just watching those races. They're they're highly entertaining. All right,
well, let's get into our interviewtoday once again, our pulls up
Notes. Marketing associate and social mediamanager Doug Hunt sat down with Kevin and
(15:46):
I. Oh about forty five minutesago. We talked all things that is
social media on I Racing. Sowithout further ado, let's talk to Doug
Hunt. All right, Kevin andI are back with a long awaited guest,
(16:10):
mister social media admin himself, misterDoug Doogie Hunt. Doug, welcome
to the show. Glad to haveyou. Welcome Doug, thanks for coming.
And it's not like you were voluntoldthat you would be on the show
or anything, but we appreciate youmaking time in your busy day between tweets
and posts and whatnot. So absolutely, you guys told me about it,
(16:32):
I think a week and a halfago, and I've been sweating from then
till now. So that's because youlive in Orlando. That's why I'm sweating.
But let's let's jump right into thisbecause there's there's a little bit of
rivalry, uh and some some somenumbers rivalry. What did you tell us
about the the Alex Horn episode,which did really well for us. Yes,
(16:52):
I've I've heard that's the best episodeso far, but I do have
the keys to the kingdom here,and uh my episode will go farther purely
based on how many times I'm goingto retweet it. So I love it,
don't hate the player, hate thegame. Yep. All right,
well let's get into it. SoI'm following Chris, who's muted at the
(17:14):
moment while he's drinking his allegedly unsweettea. But you know whatever, he
sent me an outline to go fromon this and it starts with the usual
who are you and how did youend up here? Introduction? Thanks Chris,
you got my name. I'm Doug. I've been here for six and
a half years now, I thinktwenty seventeen October. I got here from
(17:41):
my mom finding the position on Indeedand sending it to me to apply too,
and I got across the finish linethanks to Kevin accepting me. So
did your mom drive you to theinterview or she did not know, but
she did the legwork to get meto that, Like without her I would
not have the position. So whodid your resume? Be honest. I
did. Okay, yeah, good, mom, edit it. There's nothing
(18:04):
wrong with that. You gotta havesomebody at at your resume when it comes
to presentation stuff like words and allthat. That's my specialty, not there.
So, like they've been, they'veapplied to jobs within the last seven
years. A few times I'm theone proof reading for them on everyone.
All right, yeah, very goodon this. What's it like interviewing with
Kevin Bobbitt? It's already off therails, by the way in case.
(18:26):
Yeah, it's really this was noton the outline. I feel like in
all the marketing calls we have,I'm kind of like the I would have
left field kind of person with mycomments. So it fits the my script
at least, maybe not you guysa script. But so did he ask
you like how many tennis balls werein a seven forty seven or anything or
no? So that was very Itwas kind of boring actually. I mean
(18:53):
when I applied, it was amarketing associate position, very generic, don't
know what I'm going to do kindof thing, and it was a smaller
company so it was kind of goingto do everything. So I think I
was running my My mom had anan Etsy shop, and I was running
her Instagram account and that was myproof of social media experience. What's that?
And Kevin was like, okay,that's good enough, so he took
(19:15):
a gamble. Uh yeah, Imean when you started, you were doing
a little bit of everything marketing.We were a marketing team of just a
couple of people at that point.So yeah, exactly, Hey we need
to figure this out, uh,doug can you help? And then we
went from there. I think Larryis still cleaning up some of my graphics
across the website. That's that's reallyreally funny. I remember back prior to
(19:40):
uh US having a proper graphic designteam to uh, Dougie's Dougie's graphics.
But now you've done it. You'vedone a bunch of stuff though you've been
over You've done a couple of tripsover to Europe for UH the trade shows
and whatnot. You I've been inbeen at a BMW going around the northch
Life with you in the front seat, not driving. Thank god, we
(20:00):
made it so when all of usgot scared to death, who's that?
Who's driving the jag Dale Dale?Yeah, one hundred and sixty two miles
an hour with no helmets on.Guys, easily the most irresponsible thing I've
ever done in my life, andDoug was there. I appreciate you letting
me have the front seat. Itwas also one of the most fun things
(20:22):
you could do. Yeah, thatwas pretty cool. It was. It
was fun. But you know,looking back on it, you know,
if you were to have a blowout, that would have been bad.
But the best part was trying toeat lunch right afterwards. Oh that was
bad and we were like, that'syeah, it's going to look at that.
No, thank you, no,thank you. All right, well
let's uh, let's keep on goingdown Chris's list here. So, Doug,
(20:45):
who are you when you're not beingincredibly sarcastic and witty on on Twitter
and Facebook and everywhere else? Youknow, what's what's life outside of of
the I racing sphere? You havesome interesting hobbies? Yeah, like you
said, I am down here inFlorida now, So I punch out at
five and I'm in Magic Kingdom byfive thirty. So how many days a
(21:07):
week? Every day, not everyday, but pretty frequently. What do
you want to do all day inMagic Kingdom? Tell I've never been gone
I've gone almost every year since Iwas born. We've gone since we were
kids. But now that we livedown here, A lot of the trips
back then we called the four parkblitz. You've got a four day vacation
(21:29):
and you've got to get everything doneone park a day. Now it's a
lot more casual. You kind ofjust go sit over there and people watch,
grab food and come back. Youdon't even go on rides or anything.
It's just the atmosphere hanging out.All right, Well, I guess
yeah, I've always done the blitzpackage. Yeah, go go, go,
go go and try to time uprides when everyth was at lunch or
(21:51):
when babies start crying at two pm, which is hilarious. Yeah, all
right, well let's keep on rollingthrough here. So this you have.
You have quite the reputation in theindustry of being incredibly good at your job.
Now I hope you can fit tothe door layer as we blow your
ego up here. But how didyou develop this this persona, this voice
of I racing and social because youwill engage with anything and and you're always
(22:19):
it seems like, at the cuttingedge of trends before they actually happen.
So let's talk through your process andhow you developed that that brand on on
social Well. I mean, themost important part of it, I would
say, to the detriment of myown health, is to consume an absurd
amount of social media to be ontop of everything that's happening. So it
(22:41):
doesn't doesn't sleep at any point.So there's always something to be seeing and
always something to be doing. Soeven if I'm not posting, I'm still
making, yeah, lurking, findingmemes, following trends, all that stuff,
putting it away for you said anothertime, So that that's probably the
most important piece, is always beingon top of it. Other than that,
(23:03):
I don't know. I've always foundthat some of the motorsports industry is
kind of just scheduled posts, uh, put it up there, walk away
kind of thing. Uh. Ifeel like that doesn't get as much done
as you can if you're just theretuned into it constantly, uh, engaging
and commenting and and whatnot. Souh, I just lost my spot.
(23:27):
Sorry about that. You know,we're this is a really professional podcast.
We're really good at So how ishow has it changed? You know since
we started? You kind of you'retrying to touched on it there, but
let's expand a little bit. Uh, you know from the scheduled post and
now being like super on top ofit and engaging. But how have you
how have you seen maybe your yourstyle and your approach to social from day
(23:48):
one six years ago to now.Uh? You know what do you think
the biggest change has been? Whatis there's the growth been? You know
walking through that. I mean Iwould say there's nothing thing that has that
I was doing a year one that'sstuck. Even if something's good and sticks,
I feel like you shouldn't do ittoo frequently, like you should just
constantly be changing. So I meanone thing that we kind of we I
(24:14):
say, like the video guys,because I don't make the videos, I
just you know, get them outthere. We came up with the member
highlights and all that, which Ialways refer to as the go pro strategy,
which I mean, you guys knowGoPro all of their marketing is videos
from their users using the product.They didn't go out and film anything.
So people send stuff in and thenthey show it off. So it's a
(24:37):
win win. It's we have likeeyes everywhere because we people submitting stuff,
so we can post endless amounts ofcontent and they get to be featured out
there, and I know a lotof them are very very excited to submit
stuff to Alex and Cole. Sooh yeah, top top ten videos and
not top ten are are huge.Yep. Yeah, those are wildly popular.
They do very well on our channel, So we just stick to that
(25:00):
usually. Other than that, Itry not to. For for for the
World of out Laws game, itwas a little different, but for EE
Racing being a product, I feellike I don't push it as a product.
It's it's more about the community andthe day to day happenings and how
we relate to the larger motorsports spacemore so than just hey, buy this
(25:23):
or whatever. It's like, Idon't like that marketing strategy as much.
Uh, for the for the largermotorsports space, I find that we get
a lot of eyeballs just engaging withwhether it's F one or NASCAR, any
of those series. Just as CocoCocoa and Cam. She's on the ground,
(25:45):
she walked into frame whatever work.Yeah, she'll she'll probably start distracting
me at some point, which actuallyshe already she already distracted. Here we
are all right, son, gooff the rails again here, And I
know the answer to this, butI've always find it really interesting and it's
one of those like kind of thingsthat people don't really understand. As I
(26:10):
mentioned earlier, you're very ahead ofthe game and you're not afraid to interact
with anything. How often do youhave to like type it out, like
oh, and I have to walkit back yourself, or how often do
you feel like that you have tobe rained back in by say Kevin or
Tony, like like where where howdo you developed the line? Because you're
(26:30):
pretty progressive, like you will getin there and and shirp a little bit,
and I can add into this.I mean generally, I mean ninety
nine point nine percent of the time, it's just he just goes right.
And on the rare occasion, he'llsend something to me and be like,
yeah, I don't know about this, and I'll usually we agree, or
on occasion I'll send something to himlike dude, don't touch this, and
(26:53):
he's like, I know, Iknow, but I feel like I have
to just say it, you know, just yeah, to be right.
But I mean we're generally on thesame page. I think Doug does I
mean he spends obviously he's more timewith the community, more time on social
picking up all those trends like youtalked about. But you have managed to
(27:17):
find that line and been pretty successfulat that, and I don't think we've
crossed it too many times. Probablysomething didn't land right with somebody, but
nothing that was like a major crisisor anything like that. Right have you
met Internet people? Of course somethingdidn't land right, But that's it,
you know, marketing one on oneand listen an emotional response. Yeah,
but there is a line, right, Like it's one thing that like all
(27:37):
that I didn't think that was funnysaying oh that was offensive, right,
and that's yeah, that's what.I don't know if I've ever ever gone
into a fence, it's a it'sa it's like chess, like you got
to think five moods that moves ahead. I'm going to say this, what
are they going to say? Like? What? What's what are the next
four to be? Exactly? Soeven if we're like, say we have
(27:59):
a particular issue in the sim II know that whatever I say is going
to be twisted into that or oranother example. Facebook specifically loves dirt content,
so I post anything that's not dirtrelated, and they're going to twist
it into where is this dirt pieceof content? So it's for a long
time it was like where's rain,Right, You'd post something about, you
(28:22):
know, the Nord's life, andthen where's rain? You post something about
and there's always there's always been raining. So what you get one right now?
It's you don't want to say outloud, let's let's let's pull a
pin of the grnade. Come on. Well, so dirt, the dirt
community wants east Bay. Uh andthat will not stop. That is just
non stop east Bay, East Bay, East Bay, east Bay. So
(28:45):
Tyler Hudson himself, he's bugging me, uh oh yeah, because you make
those decisions. Yeah, exactly.He seems every every time that. That's
another thing that's kind of funny.So on Facebook, I make the post,
Tyler will share the comments with melike I'm not seeing them in real
time. He's like, did yousee this? Yes, Tyler, that's
my job. So that's actually myjobe that I wish somebody could see Chris's
(29:06):
face right now because he's dying.Oh my gosh, Cisco hit the button
there it is, Yes, butanyways to get back to the to get
back to the walking the line comment, I find that, first of all,
you can't really find the limit untilyou push it. So like I
have probably stepped over a few times. Yeah, it's exactly like racing,
(29:26):
uh, you know, minus theIt's one thing to drop two wheels,
it's another thing to crash headfirst intoa wall. Right, So it's okay,
you're looking for a one x,but not a four x to bring
it by I racing terms exactly.And so I found that you can push
(29:48):
some things pretty easily. I mean, again, I'm not doing anything that's
that's terrible, but you can getedgy with it sometimes. I would say
probably one of the one of themistakes I've made that came back and hit
me in the face was there wasa NASCAR race and it was might have
been Bowman, but Suarez took abottle of water and threw it in Bowman's
(30:14):
face. And I think in thatsame race, but Suarez's car had caught
on fire. I remember this,So I was like, I basically said,
you should have saved that water foryour car to put out the whatever,
and he snapped back with something Idon't remember what it was. But
when he snapped back, the restof the community snapped back because again it's
it's it's driver versus brand in thatcase, and and that like the brand,
(30:36):
I mean, the driver wins overbrand. So I had to walk
it back, and I think Ihad found an image of Bart Simpson writing
on the chalkboard, you know,when they get punished. I said,
I will not antagonize Daniel Suarez overand over and over again. I managed
to walk out of that one.Yeah, but I bet if you're going
(30:56):
back now and look at the impressions, it was worth it. Yeah.
And that's the thing. I don'tthink we burned any bridges with Daniel.
It was just the heat of themoment kind of thing, and it got
some traction. So again, Idon't mind being the butt of a joke
or pushing stuff like that. Sodid you hear right, Kevin? Kevin
uh consoled me pretty much. Hesaw he's not and he was like,
(31:19):
don't worry about it, don't worryabout It's okay. So, so,
Doug, what what was what's beenthe most interesting day at at I Racing
taxi ride besides the neurburgering taxi ride. I think it's still related to neurburgering
that day. Yeah, so youwant me to tell the whole story,
(31:41):
and like just yeah, we wereat the SIM Racing Expo and it was
the last day and we were leaving. I don't know what time it was,
but and I don't know what timeour flight was at. But we
had a rental car and no notthis, and and Kevin was Kevin was
loading up the car with whatever wehad, suitcases and just stuff, and
(32:07):
as he bent over to put somethinginto the car, he heard a hissing
sound. So he looked down andthe rental car is I think it was
right rear maybe was going down.Like no, so we don't, we
don't have to, you know,stick on whose fault it was for too
long. It was Greg's fault,but we kind of we can move on
(32:28):
past that and the rest of it. So uh. Anyways, we got
into a back and forth with therental company and trying to get someone out
to you know, get us anothertire, and for some reason, how
many hours later, I don't know, it was multiple, multiple hours,
they never showed up. They couldn'tfor some reason, they couldn't figure out
where the Nurburgring was in Germany.They were like, where are you guys.
(32:49):
We're at the Nurburgring, one ofthe most iconic places in Germany.
Uh So they never showed up.So we ended up having to go to
Plan B, which was called WillVincent a race spot, to see if
he could bring us over to theairport in time. And he couldn't because
they were celebrating. They were celebrating. Yeah, they were celebrating the end
(33:12):
of the event. You know,they're over twenty one. They were having
a good time and definitely having agood time. But so Will asked around
the party to see if somebody couldsave us, and Mitchell de Young's father
happened to be there with Mitchell,and Mitchell's a rally cost driver, I
racer big just you know, simracer. His dad volunteered. I don't
(33:37):
think we'll volunteer him, but hemight. He might have also only been
the only sober one at the party. Who knows the three of us were
sober. Phone, Yes, wewere sober. We were. We were
there on a work trip, sowe were. That's not anyways, he
can this up drove us, howeverlong it takes from the neurbour Green wo
(33:59):
hours each way. Yeah, atthis point it was what time was it
we were at we were at theairport. It was very late. So
we took a nap in our hotelroom. Yep. Yeah, So we
got to got to the airport,caught the flight and made it out.
Thank you to uh Mitchell de Young'sfather, which I think we did something
(34:20):
for him, right, thank you, thank you. I think we sent
him something something nice, so creditsomething like that. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, I can. I canadd to this story a little bit.
The rental car company because the holewas in the sidewalk because I scuffed a
curb, so I parked and uhthe we ended up having to leave the
rental car there because they wouldn't comeand get us. They said they drove
(34:42):
by. There was nobody on thisroad. Nobody drove by. They said
they drove by twice. Actually,So we left the rental car, locked
the keys in it and my sunglasses, my brand new Oakleys, as we
discovered, and I took a pictureand dropped the pin and sent it to
the rental car company. So Iwas like, we have to go catch
a flight. And they were convincedthat we had taken the car around the
(35:05):
nurbur Ring. Yeah, and forgota lot of really mean letter which we
did not, which we did notdid not. It was, it was,
but it wasn't in that car.Yeah, it probably would have been
less embarrassing to explain that you youknow, actually took it out on track
instead of just yeah, I nickedthe curb on the way to put some
suitcases in the trunk or whatever.But well, they found every every scratch
(35:28):
on that car and everything, andwe should have taken around for as much
as it ended up costing, becauseyeah, that was a fun phone call
it Tony Gardner. Hey, Tony, if you're listening, appreciate it.
Yeah that was a five figure tire. Oh good times. I forgot.
I didn't forget about that. Butof all the things I thought we were
(35:49):
going to talk about on this episode, that was not on my BEINGO a
good one. It's come up acouple of times on this podcast. I
enjoy it. I'm gonna tell ahazelut water story someday. Okay, well
maybe we should have them on asguests. Yeah, now that's a good
idea. There you goick, Butall right, we're gonna gip ahead a
(36:14):
little bit, but uh, Iguess you know, let's let's circle around
the whole thing. You know,you've been here what almost like six years.
You know, how would you sayyour role has developed? I mean
we've kind of touched on a littlebit, but you know, you do
you do much more than just thesocial media. You're involved. You got
your hands on a lot of things. You know, kind of talk about
how how you've grown within I raisingyou know, the opportunity set that that
(36:38):
has been you know, laid infront of it. Yes, I mean,
obviously Irish social media is the mostforward facing stuff that I do.
But I mean when I when Istarted, I was doing graphics. I
was doing we were going to thetrade shows. I think within two weeks
of being hired, we were overat Vegas for Seema. Uh we did
(36:58):
we did packs one year. Idesigned the booths for that. We had
a Twitch Rivals event a couple ofweeks ago. I organized and set up
that. Getting out creators, Yeah, that was pretty fun in the rain,
but just working with the content creatorsthere, there's lots of lots of
calls with partners and manufacturers and makingsure they get what they need and it's
a lot of you know, righthand man stuff for Kevin pretty much.
(37:22):
So making sure on social too isn'tjust making posts, right, I mean
you're pulling reports and we're looking atdata, what posts work? What?
Don't you know? Things like that. I mean it sounds probably more fun
than I mean, I think youenjoy what you do, but there is
some other stuff to it as well, right, I mean, just just
like people say to me, oh, you just work for a video game
company, well sort of, butit still work. You know, there's
(37:44):
a lot of work, and there'sstill stuff that goes on. You know,
still have goals and objectives and projectsand trials and tribulations and all that.
So there's lots of numbers and analyticsand reports and all that. But
I mean they've only gone up inthe seven years, so's they're always fun
to look at. They're always higher. Not to brag or anything, but
I got I got one last onefor you here, because you know,
(38:07):
getting into working in the subject matter, you know, working in video games
and whatnot, or you know,becoming a content creator an influencer, you
know, working in social for anycompany, let alone something like that.
We do. Uh, there's alot of interest in that. What advice
would you give to somebody, say, maybe in high school or maybe in
college, if this is something thatthey wanted to pursue, you know of
(38:30):
the you know, the school ofhard knocks that you've gone through. What
advice would you give to those thosepeople that are considering this type of role
our career. I mean, themost important thing, I guess is just
following it, like the if you'vegot a particular game that you like,
(38:50):
or I mean again, it appliesto sports in the real world too.
Everybody wants to grow up to bea baseball player or whatever, but there's
so many positions beyond that, likebehind the company, Like you're not gonna
you might not be an esports superstar, but you could be the person creating
the esports or whatever. It's it'sI mean what I did. I got
my business degree with the concentration inmarketing and a little bit of photoshop skills
(39:13):
on the side one of the classesthat I took, and then other than
that it was just applied to Kevinhired me. I don't know, I'm
not sy, but you weren't.I mean, to be fair, you
were doing esports stuff weren't you workingfor Yeah, so Draft Kings or something
you were doing? My what wasthat job? My final year of college,
I actually found a position at DraftKings doing data coordination for the League
(39:37):
of Legends component of it or whatever, which was literally just staying up at
three am watching the Chinese League ofLegends series and coordinating the data and collecting
on all that. But there's somany positions out there that like like that
that are I mean, so thatwas essentially an entry level position, but
I was able to you know,snowball that, and snowball that and snowball
(39:59):
that. Before that, I waswriting for Team Dignitas, which was an
esports team. I was just writingarticles for them that wasn't even paid.
But again, part of that snowball, just getting it rolling, just getting
your foot in the door. Again. Networking is a big thing, obviously,
going to these conventions and expos andall that, and meeting people that
(40:21):
are in the industry already, whetherit's someone like me or someone like way
more important than me. But Iremember that there's nobody more important than you,
Doug, come on, thank you, thank you. But yeah,
I remember talking to people and tryingto like get my foot in the door.
Again, that's the biggest thing,is just getting your foot in the
door. But you got to startsmall, and not that I'm not big
(40:45):
in any sense of it, butI've managed to stick. I've got both
feet in the door now. Soyeah, you've made a career of it,
right, Yeah, exactly for sevenyears or whatever. So yep,
hopefully you'll stick around for seven more. You've got me for life probably,
Kevin probably probably in there just incase. But it's a very, very
very fun company to work for.I think Steve had a tweet the other
(41:07):
day about who's someone's retiring, andhe was just talking about the one person's
retired, first person ever retired fromjust the longevity of it, Like I
I can't think that. I don'tthink I could count on it, uh
more than one hand, the amountof people that have left, Like you're
here and then you stay because it'sjust such an awesome company. So yeah,
(41:29):
yeah, hopefully Tony hears that onetoo. We'll give him the time
stamp to listen to that. Yeahfor sure. Actually, Tony's an avid
listener to the podcast. He alwayscomments and sends me notes afterwards. He's
like, oh, I don't knowwhat he has time for. It must
be in his commute or something.Yeah, he absolutely listens. He's one
(41:50):
of our four fans or five.He's number five, I think number five.
All Right, I have not mom, Sorry, I was gonna say,
I was gonna say I have notlistened through an episode all the way
through. Well, now you're goingto have to. Now you have to
just to hear myself talk again.Yes, absolutely, that's the worst part
of it. I hate listening tomyself. That's not that you guys do
a bad job. I just listenedto you guys enough, like throughout the
(42:15):
throughout the week and all the meetingsthere. Yeah. Yeah, you're in
the marketing call. Yeah, that'slike the length. Pretty not much know
what we're going to talk about otherthan yeah. Yeah, Well, Doug,
thanks for taking the time. Weappreciate it. Now go make this
episode bigger than Alex's Alex if you'relistening, sorry, and uh. On
(42:35):
that note, let's get back tothe show. Always good to sit down
with staff. I think Doug hasmade it his personal mission if if you
didn't notice during the interview, tomake this the biggest episode ever. Chris
is cracking up again. Yeah,Well, can I just say I'm glad
that the Vince de Young story gotin there because I worked with Vince for
(42:59):
the decade and he's one of myfavorite people on the planet. And I'm
so glad that he bailed you guysout to get you guys to the airport.
Well, he definitely we were inwe're in a little bit of a
pickle, and yeah, and thatthings like I get reminded of that story
a couple times a year in opportunetimes, like on a broadcast. Moving
(43:23):
on though, more news at IRacing. I know this because it says
more news and Chris as well bulletedoutline here I Racing one oh one,
very similar to what we just didwith Doug. Chris, let's talk about
it. What what is I Racingone on one? And what's kind of
the goals of it. Yeah.So we've actually got two sort of more
evergreen news pieces going on. IRacing one on one is the one that
(43:44):
I'm leading, and we're doing staffinterviews that Justin Millillo was handling for one
on one. We're trying to delvein a little more on some of the
things that you or I are probablymost of the people listening to the show
probably just know innately because they've beenon IRA Racing for quite some time.
You know, if I say theinitialism inis, you probably know exactly what
(44:05):
I'm talking about. But if youjust signed up in the past year,
you might have no idea how theNASCAR I Racing series works. So we're
trying to talk about things like that. We're talking about ranked versus un Ranked
racing, will profile some of thespecial events, etc. Etc. And
so those will go up on everyThursday. By the time the show is
coming out, I've just got anotherone on one out and then alternating weeks
(44:29):
with staff interviews. Justin just profiledJake Puhlan, who is one of his
co admins in his league FtF.So that was a nice and easy one
to kick it off with. AndJake has a really interesting background. You
know, he's one of those peoplewho really came into I racing just from
developing a skill set in previous SIMracing titles and was a big eye racer,
(44:52):
and you know, just one ofthose people who we kind of hired
based on their experience working with andSIM racing titles, just kind of having
fun. Excellent. Oh it's aI think it's a really good a really
good series. I know what kindof your lineup, and I'm excited for
people to read more about it.But you're right, you're one hundred percent
right that sometimes we have normalized thenomenclature and what is I racing? And
(45:16):
well, with a you know,over two hundred and sixty thousand active members,
there are probably a few new facesthat may not know what we're talking.
So good to get that information outthere. Now. Kevin has a
meeting in seven and a half minutes, so we are gonna we're gonna breeze
through here a little bit. Let'sgo to E Sports. Sorry Cisco skipping
ahead on the outline on you again, But NASCAR Coca Cola EE Racing Series,
(45:40):
h it says, now into thissecond segment of the season with Chris
so. Yeah. So the regularseason in the E NASCAR Coca Cola I
Racing Series is now broken up intothree segments. They're all four to five
races. There's a special bonus ifyou're the top point scorer in any of
those given segments, you get anice little cash bonus. You get some
(46:00):
playoff points. Casey kerwin the formerseries champion. He won the first segment
of the season, so he's gota nice little cushion if he makes it
into the playoffs. I Racing dotCom slash e NASCAR has all your coverage,
including this week's race at Dover.Justin's got those previews and those recaps
on points, so if you needthe latest standings, points, et cetera,
(46:22):
check it out. Check it out. Also Porscha tag here E Sports
Super Cup Kevin Sebastian Joe winning hissecond championship at Monza and clearing up pretty
big check in the process. Yeah, fifty thousand dollars to him. He
had a pretty dominant season. Imean, there were some other good performances,
but he deserved that championship. Alsowon the pole award, so he's
(46:44):
going to get a nice watch fromthe sponsor, tag Hoyer, which is
awesome. Also had a great,great participation in the All Star Race,
which has a bunch of streamers,influencers, and the top finishers in there
also get a cool prize from TagHoyer, which I assume is a watch,
but we'll see. But yeah,great season. It was a little
(47:05):
shorter, a little bit more condensed, but we added mixed things up.
We put a tournament in the middle. We had double points on the on
the finale or extra points anyway,so it spiced things up. It was
fun. I think it was themost exciting season to date. So congrats
to everybody that competed in it.You know, there it's a I know
those guys put a ton of timeand effort and practice, and you know
(47:31):
there can only be one champion.But but hats off to everybody that made
the series and participated all season long. So awesome job there. And that's
not the only only ones we havegoing on. We also have the e
NASCAR College I Racing Series, rightChris yep, And so this is also
about to wrap up the first eightrounds of the season. And this was
(47:51):
the first season where we combined thefall in the spring semesters like a full
year of college, rather than splittingthem up. Logan Klampett took the victory
at nash Bill and didn't have timeto review the stat before the show,
but I think Logan may be thefirst driver to win for multiple colleges in
the series. Cisco, I mighthave to have you fact check me on
that after the fact. Did heenter the portal. Yea, yeah,
(48:13):
he entered, he entered the portal. Oh Man, portals everywhere, Yeah,
portals everywhere. But now works isthe top twenty five drivers who did
those first eight races in the pointschampionship, they're the only ones who get
invited to the finale. So thefinale's going to take us to Homestead,
which my favorite oval on the simfor what it's worth, Friday, May
(48:36):
third, eight pm Eastern, thosetwenty five drivers are going to go for
a championship, sixty thousand dollars intotal in collegiate scholarships on the line.
So not a bad little extracurricular activitywhen you're in a school. Huh.
I can think of worst ways tospend my time. Yeah, I'm just
watching the highlights of Cisco put onscreen there and that's driving through that mess
(48:57):
on the super Speedway. That isuh is a wild increased my anxiety just
watching. Well, thanks for listeningto this episode of the I Racing down
Shift. Don't forget to rate,review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts,
Spotify and anywhere else. Chris hasput this thing. Kevin Bobbit, Chris
Leoni, I am Greg West ohand Cisco and Sean and Drew and everybody
(49:21):
else in the in the truck alsoknown as the studio or whatever, it's
virtual truck, the virtual truck.Kevin's Mike sounds like poop all of a
sudden, but anyway, Yeah,don't forget to rate, review, and
subscribe, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,anywhere else. Chris puts this thing.
I think I already said that wantsme. Who cares? We're not good
at this? Thanks for listening tothe podcast. Let's get out of here.
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