Hey, it's on. Sure. Hayward Wagner, my friend. What's happening, man? Friend and confidant. I think this is the third show recorded with you at PRI. It feels right, yeah. Mic check one, too. Am I good? Looks great. Good levels, good levels. Levels, levels, levels. I don't know. Red leather, yellow leather, red leather. I don't know what that means. I'm not a stage person. Not a theater kid. How's the show been for you guys? It's good. It's, um, uh, yeah, PRI's done a lot of work to fill this show up. Yeah. And it feels really full this year, and that feels really good. Yeah. We just announced a partnership with them, uh.
Two hours ago. With PRI? What does that mean to you guys? So it's really interesting. Hey, with SCCA, by the way. I am. Yeah, I make all of the decisions that SCCA lets me make. All the ones they let you make. So obviously, PRI, their sports industry, they, I think, feel that they're really deep in circle track and drag and road course. Autocross is a place that I think they perceive they don't have as the depth. I walk around the show and I see Hoosier.
I see road course and autocross. They see circle track and dirt. Right, right, right. So there's a lot of, like, perception challenge in that. For sure, yeah. The bigger part of it is. There's a ton of road racers here, though. Oh, my God, yeah. I can't walk 14 feet between, like, my history and friends in SCCA, grid life people. It's like, there's a ton of road racers here. Well, I mean, let's just take a moment to really process the level of personality you've become in this room. I mean, you are. I don't know what that means. I mean, people like you. I don't know why. I feel like a big, fat phony. Yeah, Abe doesn't like you. Nobody likes me. People like you fine, Abe. So the other part of the partnership that I think is really important for us is we, you know, everybody wants youth.
Sure, whatever. But, you know, recreational motorsports youth is right out of college. It's not 12, it's not 14. It's, I just got to finish college, I'm buying my first car, I want to do stuff. And so we have a lot of people that are coming to us in that space. Intro level of motorsports, car curious. Maybe they just finished an engineering program. Maybe they just finished a management program. Do you see more of that in autocross or Track Night America? Or, like, what is the best space for a person like that?
I think what PRI is interested in is we've got a few of them. And so when they're trying to place people into jobs and making companies stronger, there's a career opportunity here that we're really good with. But from our side, I think Autocross especially, SAE program gets a lot of people exposed to Autocross. I know so many people that came through that. Yeah, more and more clubs, more and more colleges are having sports car clubs. I grew up adjacent to, my dad was the advisor of the Clemson Sports Car Club, which is the second oldest in the country. And so that produces a lot of, and you don't see as much, I don't think of that.
through circle track and drag race channels as you do through autocross and road course channels. So it just is a good alignment for us. Yeah. Cool. What are they going to do with you? They just, I mean, they wrote us a really, really, really huge check. I think. Dang. How do I get on that game? Yeah, it's pretty, it's tough. He's joking. Right now, it's really more about just kind of shared exposure. Okay. They're signaling that they're serious about amateur motorsports on road courses and autocross. Yeah. We're aligning with a business partner that can help us and potentially help our members get jobs and careers and things in motorsports. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. How has, you have a new person on partnership stuff, mutual friend Lee Grimes. Lee Grimes. Saw him. I've.
I've shared a bed with Lee Grimes. We go way back. Due to my professional relationship with him at this time, I can't comment to my Lee Grimes history. It was at a lemons race. It wasn't for very long because we had probably done an engine swap the night before. Lee's a good dude. Lee has about a trillion years of experience on the product side of the industry. And it's really great to be able to sit down with a partner. We were just with Hawk.
And one of the things that Lee did that I think was really powerful in our space is there was about a 20-year run where he came to Sola Nationals every year representing Kony with a trailer, with the ability to support, with all those things. Rebuild everybody's yellows into Ray Specs. Yep. And Kony Lee was an entire brand separate from Kony. Kony Lee, yeah. And helping our partners understand that having that direct personal relationship with our members, that when you hang a banner on a fence, that's fine. When you write a check, that's great. But when you send somebody to the event that can be an expert, that can be a connector. And Hawk obviously does a great job with that with DJ and Mike and all those guys. Yeah, a good partner of Gridlife also. Yep, really strong partner of ours.
Speaking of Lee, I think our biggest show ever, and this was done in the first six months, download-wise, is a show with Lee where he told everyone, here's how you should deal with your shocks. I've had people tell me they listen to that show four times a year because he did such a good job of breaking it down, grasping his little segment of the industry and helping others. That's just his personality. He's in the very short list of humans that when you disagree with them, you have no choice but to reevaluate your position. You've done something wrong. Great dude. I'm glad that's working out. It's been a good show. We're fortunate.
Most of our time here is spent with partnerships we already have. So it's a lot of check-ins and just getting ready for 25. What's new for 25? Anything huge? Drum roll, please. Number one, we're starting a spec Matt Busby class. It's only for Matt Busby. Did you guys co-drive something together? We did. He drove my RX-8 at Solar Nationals this year. Your RX-8's a 13B turbo one? It is indeed.
I'm told there's some other letters in there, like REB or something. I don't know what any of it means. Yeah, it's like a turbo set third gen. Yeah, I don't know. All I know is that when you hit the fun pedal, it's real fun. Yeah. Wooshy noises go and, yeah. So our big thing for 25, our big change, is that we are retiring the, so number one, back up, everything that we're doing with Time Trials in 25 is changing. Okay. Time Trials Nationals is going to Fit Race. Great track. Going from a four-day event to a three-day event. Okay. We're working on some partnerships to bring more spectator-friendly elements to that event. Gotcha. Some car show stuff.
Working with Ultimate Track Car Challenge. When is that? It's like September 17, somewhere around there. A couple weeks before y'all are there. I might need to send a crew and be a vendor. I like that. That might be a good idea. So that's a big shift for us. We're really excited about it. And then the bigger shift is that we are retiring the Time Trials National Tour brand. Okay. Why is that? Is there enough regions that have adopted it? Well, we're just retiring the brand. You ever Googled Time Trials cars? No. You ever Googled Time Attack cars? Yes. There it is. Ah, so you named it, Ron. So we're going with Tyrac.
Time Attack Challenge. Oh, copycats. Yeah, got it. I love it when sanctioning bodies that are in their first 10 years accuse SCC of copying them. It's just so adorable. We're the only sanctioning body that didn't get started as a fuck you to SCC. That is true. That is true. And that's why we're friends. That is a quote that you have said. But we're going with Time Attack Challenge just to be more on brand. Nobody's staying at home playing Time Trials video games. That's true. That is true. But that is going to become what we refer to as a boutique program where we're looking for 60, 70, 80 cards at a time. Does that sound familiar at all? It does.
And then pairing that with a program that we're calling another Tyrak-branded Tyrak Shootout, which is autocross on Saturday, track on Sunday. Because what we hear from our autocrossers is that the all-weekend track consumables are pretty mighty. And for a lot of autocrossers, not to sound how it's going to sound, but two, three track sessions into a weekend, they've kind of figured it out. So it's an opportunity to kind of hybrid those programs. They don't have that desire to just lap and lap and lap. Not as much, yeah. They want to learn something quick and move on to the next. Because they didn't come from a DE as much back. You got it. So it's an autocross-friendly pathway to track. So we're going to do that at four of the events. And then at three, we're going to do a Targa leading into...
the weekend. It's almost like a Dragon Drive style. It's a Target Texas, Target Southland, and Target Chicagoland, where we go to a series of tracks, we do some autocross, we're probably going to do some road rally type stuff. Do you know when the Chicago one is? It is like July 29, 30, 31, leading into the August 1-2 weekend at Autobahn. Dang it, I might not be able to do that. That sounds like something I would do. It's a lot of fun.
And because we're doing them across just two or three days, most of them have a morning and an afternoon activation. So you're autocrossing in the morning, you're in track in the afternoon, you're transiting. And what we're looking for there is obviously, we've got a lot of members that traveling 10, 15 hours for two days doesn't make a lot of sense. But traveling 10, 15 hours, getting three or four tracks across the course of a weekend, bigger, more experience. Super interesting. I hope that goes well.
Because I would like it to continue so I could try it. Yeah, it'd be a lot of fun We did Southland a couple of times in 16 and 17 and we kind of stepped away from that because we were revamping the national tour We're launching national friends. I did that one. Yeah, who's that somebody from Rotary saw across the deaf beer guys They seem like your people. Yes, I think it was yeah Yeah, so those guys the first year we did it did it in a full-on track civic eg civic and they mounted a Residential window unit air conditioner in the back of it and cut holes in the roof to get the fresh air into it now They get the power I we didn't ask questions But the best part of it was they took it out at night and they had a hole cut inside of their tent And so the air conditioner pretty much ran 24 hours a day, either in the car or in the tent. Got a little Honda UI Jenny going or something? I tried one of those swamp coolers. Yeah, those didn't work that great. So that's next. What did you do with your EF? I've got to ask a personal question. You sold it? Yeah, you sold it, right? I sold the drivetrain first. I sold the electronics second. And then a dude who lived in Arizona messaged me and was like, hey, is it still for sale? And I was like, yeah. He goes, what do you want for it? And I threw just kind of the get rid of the price out. And I wish I'd gone with the get rid of the price plus $2,000. Sure.
But he said immediately yes, and this guy showed up with an 80s-era F-100 Ford pickup truck that was lifted with... From Arizona? No, no, no, this guy, sorry. He had a buddy come and get it. The buddy who came and got it. You know that, like, lifted truck vibe that's running, like, the, it looks like about a 195 tire? Like, it looks like it's on tractor tires, not truck tires. Showed up with that and, like...
Like, the dude was just oozing project, like, big project energy. Yeah. So we might have a chance. So you're saying there's a chance. Big project energy. And I'm not done with the Fs. I still daily drive one. Yeah, yeah. I was talking about your race car, obviously. You talked about it on a show a year ago. Yeah. Or so, maybe two years ago. Yeah. I've still got the daily driver. I've still got the trainer for the kids to drive on track. Okay. But I probably got rid of 60% of my Honda parts in that transaction just because I had a willing taker. That sounds nice. And I'm like, when will this opportunity ever happen again? That sounds pretty nice. We were just talking about that shell yesterday, me and Blake Meredith, who built it originally. He's over at MCS.
He's like, you know anybody want some Civic Sedan doors? And I was like, I don't. No, not even a little bit. Not even a little bit. You've already pawned one shell off on me, Blake. Get away from me, Satan. Yeah, I really had high hopes for that car, and I wish that I had the lifestyle to care and feed for it. Dedicated race cars are a lot. They're a lot. My dedicated race car, kind of like the hatchback version of what you have, I've just started driving it to the racetrack just because that's an experience. I mean, it's pretty wild. You should do the starter thing with it.
You should do this target thing with it. You got a passenger seat? No, but I could. You could. There you go. Yeah, I don't have a pedi bar, so I could put one in. But yeah, straight cut fifth gear, ripping down the road. I mean, 7 a.m. It's a good experience. Love it. Love it. Got to use it more than just put it in the trailer, take it off the trailer. Yeah. Steve Eckert does a lot of help with me. Helps me a lot with the arts. Yep. And his shop is about a mile. Well, his shop was about a mile from my house until Helene relieved us of our bridge. Oh, really? So it's a little bit longer now. That's right. How did you do in the hurricane? I forgot you were right there. Yeah, it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Our house is fine. Good.
Kids, dogs, house, everything's fine. You live like Asheville proper? Yeah, we're 10 minutes north of. I didn't think you were improper. Yeah, we got, so we had.
A creek that's usually about four or five feet wide, 18 inches deep. A certified North Carolina protected trout stream. Is that how you say that? Yeah, I guess. Rose 15 feet. Whoa. It lifted two shipping containers off of foundations from a shop upstream from us. Holy shit. And they floated downstream and took our bridge. Holy crap. So right now, in and out of our neighborhood, we call it the goat road. It's a 25% grade gravel road up the back of the neighborhood. Is that how you get to your house? Uh-huh. How long were you stranded at your house? We started working with chainsaws on Friday around 1 o'clock. Right.
And through a bizarre series of transactions, I managed to get our out-of-town guests from Oregon to the wedding they were supposed to be at that night at 7 p.m. Oh, my gosh. So we had to clear about 17, 18 trees off the roads to be able to get. It was grief. It was just bonkers. That's terrible. We could do a whole bit on it. Yeah, I totally forgot you lived there. Yeah. Because I'm like, I don't really know anybody there. Totally forgot you lived there. Surprise! Yeah, just a dude I text all the time lives there. But, yeah, I mean, just to give, like, an overall, like, what has it been like, the kids were out of school for a full month. Really? Yeah, it took.
My daughter's school, 11 days to account for all families. My son's 12, and the high school took 16 days to account for all families. Everybody okay? Yeah, but no. Everybody in our immediate circle is. That ecosystem did lose an entire family, which is obviously tragic. But to get school back, they were drilling wells because the water systems were so damaged. Oh my gosh. And there were meetings about, there was a bucket brigade proposal to get parents to come in as volunteers and use buckets to flush toilets. I promise you, yeah. That's wild. Yeah, it was bizarre. But we're really lucky to be back in school. A whole month off, though. Well, I mean, do you put...
2024 in Western North Carolina in perspective. This week was the first week that a full week of school was offered to my children since the week that began on September 16th. Oh my gosh. Between days off for election and snow and hurricane and Thanksgiving and like all of those things, they basically had, they're having an entire semester that only has four complete weeks offered to them. That's wild. I'm glad everybody in your circle is okay.
Crazy. I have one question for you. What's up? Actually, I have several, but there's only one I can ask you in front of Matt and Renee here. Are you going to Hillclimb this year? I don't know. I'm doing less events. Well, then you can add more. I mean, we're hosting less events. And I replaced myself. Yeah, I hired my replacement. I was told you were irreplaceable. Nah. Chris Stewart told me when I tried to hire you away from him that you were irreplaceable. So if you have proven yourself replaceable, we should talk about your next career move. We're calling someone else Motorsports Director. So that's cool. Who'd you get? My right-hand dude for the last nine years, John Raymond. Awesome. Great dude. He's basically...
Between me and John, we make the racetrack run. So you're retiring. You're going to ride off into the sunset. Now I get to go to a hill climb with you. Let's do it. Which one should I do if I did one? Yes. Okay, that doesn't narrow them down, though. We've got three. Pennsylvania has... What's the best party?
Pine Mountain it looks pretty I could convince my wife to go find out my mountain is gorgeous It's super fun, and it's the one where the most Pennsylvania people in Appalachian people get together. I'm at I love you. It's the fullest paddock It's it's kind of our like yeah It's kind of our Daytona 500. It's one of the kicks off the season. There's a lot of energy there When is that one last weekend in April and then last weekend in June June at Flag Rock Yeah, the paddock is in downtown Norton That's where there is a pizza joint and a bar in the middle of the paddock and so the second year we showed up The bar was just called the loading dock. Yeah, that said I came here for the race, but I got loaded at the dock and so I love that and then dragon dragons like 450 miles from the closest hotel or something crazy like that So you're out in the woods and it's like everybody has that one. No, it's a federal land issue, but I wonder about that, but there's kind of a like
You know, everybody brings their bacon and grills it in the morning kind of vibe to that one. It's a lot of fun. So you can't really go wrong. At Pine Mountain, is it RV accessible? Yeah, it is. That's what I thought. Yeah. When you announced that one, I think you announced it on our show five years ago. And I was like, I got to do that. We had like an event that weekend. You got to do it. It's so much fun. We don't have an event that weekend. So I do have one the weekend after or two weekends after. If it's not on the 21st, there's a chance. I'm not going to get down on a knee, but Adam, will you hill climb with me? If it's not on the 21st, it's my wife's birthday. There's a good chance. It's the week after because I believe the 21st is Easter. I think it was like one day after my wife's birthday last year. Is it rude to take it out during a
Let's see here. Your cell phone, by the way. Not anything else. Oh, that could have been taken differently. Could have, yeah. So what year are we talking about? 25. 25. April. Yep. 26 is the pine frickin' mountain. Oh, man. Yeah, because my worst birthday is the 21st. And she's a lovely person. You should be there for her. Yeah. I think it was 1920 or something last year. It was, yeah. Yeah, that's why I wasn't. And we moved it because the 20th is, in fact, it's not Easter. I thought it was Easter. I think Easter's the week before. But, hey, that might work. You should do it. That might actually work. I like that. I like that. I might be able to do a thing. And it's not that far away, though. It's like $60. It's not bad. It's not bad. Cool. Could be a party. Anything else to talk about in the SEC world? Um...
If you've never done solo nationals, you got to do it. Tell me that every year. Have you talked to Busby about solo nationals? He said it was the best. We were at Thunder Hill like two weeks ago. Matt Busby, Tom Studdard. Neither had ever been to solo nationals before this year. Busby made the Facebook post, Studdard wrote the article in Grassroots. I don't process how hard it is for people to process.
Six runs on two autocross courses. Why would I go spend a week in Lincoln, Nebraska for six runs on two autocross courses? And then and then everybody has the greatest time ever the greatest time ever It was so much fun. We were at Thunder Hill. I think one of the first things he I said you drove a solar nets with with Suttered and Whose car did you drive because I see was there. He was like, I was driving Hayward's cars like I gotta go do this one of these days Hey, I mean if I got to put you in the car I'll put you in the car I did register one time I registered a bunch of years ago, but I couldn't make it work
It's one of those like yeah, I got to do that before it's not a thing there is I haven't named it but there is a solo nationals graph Yeah, and one line is the god. I wish this could last forever line Yeah, and the other is I desperately need this to stop and those lines intersect about lunchtime on Thursday Yeah, and Friday is a tough day because you know you're you've been living out of food trucks and whiskey bottles for four days five days straight Yeah, and it's a real thing. That's how I cut my teeth in life in the last 10 years. Amen. Yeah, but it's a it's a great time You guys do solo nationals. I might work though. I might work. What's that? I might work for me like for real. Yeah
That might actually work. Interesting. Runoffs is back at Road America, which we love. Great facility. Yeah. Unbelievable. We were actually there with time trials also in April. I'm sorry. Time attack. You should come to our Road America festival. Could you move it closer to North Carolina? No. Can't do that. So there's a Helene tie in here. Okay. We spent all day Saturday packing and woke up at like 5 in the morning on Sunday. No power, no internet, no connection to the outside world, no nothing. Right. And just started driving Sequoia with 25 gallons of fuel and strapped to the back, tents, sleeping bags, whatever. Right. And we went to the runoffs. Oh, really? Because we didn't.
So you abandoned your house. We did but but we didn't know if we could get through Greenville We didn't know we'd have to like literally stop and camp along the way to get there But our first we were refugees from Helene at the runoffs which was a super bad experience for my kids You know and they got spend a full week there and golf cart their way around the track, but it's a fun track for a golf cart So what do you guys? Are you at CMP this year? CMP. What's the date? April 10, 12, 11, 12, 13, something like that. So two weeks before. All right, we'll talk. That's your closest to you, right? And then, yeah, CMP. After that, we are at Road Atlanta. Oh, we're going back to Road Atlanta. A support series for Formula Drifts. Nice. Midwest Festival. Mother's Day weekend, Easter weekend? Yes, Friday, Saturday. Mother's Day. So May 10, 8, 9, something like that. Was that where we met? Road Atlanta, that weird GT weekend? Probably. Yeah. Something. Yeah. I think I met you at first there.
But, yeah, and then a whole bunch of things we've already done. So, yeah, looking forward to the year. It's a lot to think about. We've been thinking about it a lot in order to just get to our press conference today. You weren't up there, were you? Oh, yeah, I was right in the front row. I was the one that was holding the sign. Oh, okay. We rented a double room, and we filled it out the last couple of years. We're like, it's too many. We need a bigger room, and then we got in the room, and we're like, this is way too big of a room.
That's incredible. I've said it before, I'll say it again, but the level of respect I have for what y'all have built without having legacy sanctioning body resources behind you is really, really incredible. Wing it, dude. Yeah, I know. But man, the prayer that must have gone without winging is pretty impressive. So kudos to you. A lot of good people. A lot of good people behind us and a really fun crowd. Yeah, and they're all hanging out here right now. Right. Yeah, pretty wild. So I hope PR is good. What are you doing tonight? Anything? I hear there's the Eric Call ball that everyone's going to. I might swing by that.
What's that? He's my cell phone guy. Yeah, it's everyone's cell phone guy. Where is that? You've got to talk to Eric. I can't release his information. By the time this comes out, no one's going to know. That's true. I was sitting on a rock in Acadia National Park in Maine, having lunch with my kids this summer, and I hear someone in the background go, looks like a couple of racers over here. And I'm like, shit, what random SDCA member wants to talk to me about, you know, whatever classing? It turns out it was him. Really? Yeah, he was vacationing up there. That's bizarre. I saw him from a distance. I think he was in the room today, but I haven't face-to-face with him yet here.
Yeah, better call a call. Yeah, my Verizon's working great ever since he fixed all the things. Love it. Yeah, vouch for that. Best business plan ever. Talk to all your racer friends. They'll come find you. Tell them you can fix their cell phone issues. Amen. Anyway, all right. SCCA.com, where do people go? Heard of it. That's the place? That's the place. Okay, cool. Yep. We're also on the Facebook. Okay. And you should not make your decisions about who we are from that.
Sometimes it gets spicy. I get screenshots. Amen. Yeah. The SCCA driver community, that's home for me for a long time. And yeah, I hope to run again this year. I did run an SCCA event this year. You ran one. I didn't host it. I drove in it. I did a track sprint at Audubon. It was so great. I'm going to go to Audubon for the first time this year. It's a great little track. Yeah, I'm excited about it. And the management is one of the greatest managements that we've worked with. And they've only got better every year. Great people to work with. There's this like underground cigar bar here in Indianapolis that nobody knows about. I heard about it. I got invited yesterday by pit race. Yeah. Also, I ended up down there with about...
I don't know half a dozen worth of tracks track management and he was one of them. The Autobahn guys were one of them. They're great. Mike and Kyle. Yep. Good people. Some of my favorite people. They just kind of like give us the keys now. They're like, hey, can we go till midnight? You got digital flag boards. That'd be fine. Yeah, we'd probably do that. So that might be a thing for us. So I can just say to them, hey, Adam said we could go to midnight. Adam said that you guys might be able to let me go till midnight. Yeah. All right. All right. Maybe not midnight, but we're talking about bringing in some light towers and running some stuff at night just to re-experience that. We've done night racing at Gingerman. So here's a fun fact. Ten generators. We bought street lamps and backlit the apexes and that's not enough light.
Do you remember where the Gridlife SCCA conversation officially began? The first conversation. I don't. Y'all wanted us to come run an enduro at night only at Gingerman during one of the early festivals. I barely recall that. And we loved it. We wanted to do it. And there were some lawyer types that were a little nervous about a music festival going on at the same time as a race. That would have been a really bad idea. Yeah, probably would have been a terrible idea. But we loved it. We were in.
I think that's when you announced the bracket racing and yeah like that was the worst idea we're at Maybe not the worst it was one of the ideas can we just say it was the worst it would have to talk about even the worst one of the ideas I've ever seen. Thank you. Thank you All right, thanks for stopping man. Thank you Austin Cabot and Adam jubay co-hosted by Derek Yarbrough and production by Abram Schmucker He mixes all of our terrible audio if you'd like to show you please rate and review us on iTunes and come and find us in the pit secret like to say hello