How Kohr Motorsports Turns Engineering Savvy Into Race Wins

If you’ve ever bolted parts onto your Mustang and sworn it “felt faster,” this conversation is going to challenge you in the best way. We’re joined by Dean Martin, owner of Kohr Motorsports and a longtime force in Mustang road racing, plus Chandler Wheat from the Roush Performance team, who lives in both worlds as a portfolio manager by day and a GT4 tire engineer by night. What starts as two “I kind of fell into it” origin stories quickly turns into a masterclass on how real speed gets built, tested, and protected in pro racing. We dig into the relationship between driving and engineering: how a driver learns to describe what the car is doing, why that translation is gold to an engineer, and how the wrong change can waste a session if you’re not honest. Dean and Chandler also get specific about vehicle dynamics and suspension setup, including why “lower and stiffer” isn’t automatically better, how sway bars can be misunderstood, and why coilovers are about corner balance and crossweight, not just closing wheel gap. Dean shares one of the most overlooked steps after lowering a car: neutralizing suspension bushings so you don’t bake in preload that hurts ride, grip, and alignment. From there we zoom out to the part fans rarely see: motorsports logistics. Flights, hotels, tools, wraps, parts, prep, and the chaos of race weekends where a tiny failure can flip you from hero to zero. Dean walks through Kohr Motorsports’ recent plans, teething pains with new cars, A/B testing old vs new hardware ahead of Mid-Ohio, and the emotional swings that define IMSA and GT4 racing, from perfect races that still get stolen to wins you never forget. If you enjoy Mustang GT4, IMSA racing, race team management, tire testing, and practical performance engineering, hit subscribe, share this with a racing friend, and leave us a review.Let us know what you'd like to hear about next!