Are you a true motorsports enthusiast seeking premium safety equipment? Do you need expert advice to make the right choice? Look no further. Go to ogracing.com. The ultimate destination for high-quality motorsports gear. OG Stocks. It's not OG. OG Stocks products from the largest manufacturers, including Sparco, OMP, Alpine Stars, and much more. OG Racing is offering exclusive 15% to our listeners. Use code SLIPANGLE15 at OGRacing.com during checkout. It's OG, Emma. You'll get free standard shipping on orders over $100. Don't miss out. Visit OGRacing.com and use SLIPANGLE15 at checkout. That's OGRacing.com and SLIPANGLE15 at checkout. Hey, Adam. Hey, man.
It's been a long time since you and I recorded. I've been pushing a month, right? I think so. In that time, I have been to Italy, Mexico, San Antonio, Charlotte, Houston, I think. I didn't know you went to Mexico. Yeah. Let me tell you a story. Oh, you went on a spring break.
Yeah. Tell us the story. I felt personally responsible for this, and I'm not sure why. Well, I would say you are at least partially responsible because Gary had the same problem. And the problem, I think, is because we marked our calendars so early in the year. So let me tell you the story. Last year. Prior to PRI, I asked you for the calendar days for 2024 event season.
You shared with me an internal document and you had indicated that the dates were locked. The reason I needed those days so far in advance is because Ashley has an obligation through her employers to work multiple weekends per quarter. I think it's six days per quarter per company. So she has two companies. So that's 12 weekend days per quarter, which is kind of a lot.
And so we try to balance our schedule so that she's off when I'm going to grid life. That way we don't have to find someone to keep an eye on Sloan while I'm away. You gave me those dates in November and PRI came in December and conveniently, or at least in 2023, the CMP weekend matched up perfectly with Sloan's spring break week where her school is closed. It's like, we basically have to do something because having childcare during that period is not an option. The school's closed. So last year it matched up perfectly. We went from spring break directly to CMP or maybe it was the opposite. We went from CMP. I remember you going to Florida afterwards. Yeah. So we went from CMP to Florida. This year, when I got the dates from you, we looked at the calendar and it matched up so that
Spring break was on the front end, and then CMP was immediately following. So Ashley booked a spring break trip in and out of Atlanta so that we could drive to Atlanta, fly to, in this case, Mexico, be on spring break for a week, and then we would return on Thursday to Atlanta to go straight to CMP. And so it's basically like a seven-day period where we're going to leave our home, go to Atlanta. fly away, come back, uh, and then expect to be on the track. So on the Thursday that we were going to leave on the Thursday, I called you and said, I thought it was so kind of crazy to be packing for so many trips and, uh, have so much going on that I'm basically like packing two separate bags, but we're like, we just got back from Italy and now I'm packing more bags to go wherever. And it was logistically kind of complicated. You said something like, uh, well, CMPs in a week. And I was like,
What? And you were like, no, no, it isn't. I mean, and in my defense, we've been talking all over social media about when CMPS. So it's important for me to say that because I'm a Gridlife admin on the Facebook, I don't see Gridlife posts in my own feed. I don't see them ever. And so add to that, we have an internal project management tool called Basecamp. And for some reason, I was not on the Basecamp associated with this event. So the only thing that I would have seen to confirm when the event dates were was our internal call sheet, which did have the dates on it.
Or our website. Sure. But I was not looking at those things because why would I? I already had the dates. And I know that it's not just me in this case. Were you at the State of the Grid? No, I wasn't. I was working.
Okay, now you came the next day. Yeah, yeah. We also talked about dates at State of the Grid. You're absolutely right. But the Gridlife internal team did switch the dates, but there was no clear communication that that date had changed, presumably because it was assumed that it wouldn't matter to anyone because that change would be affected in everybody's travel plan. But I had already had my travel plans. And the reason that I know it's not just me is because when I talked to Gary at CMP, which was, of course, one week later.
Uh, he was like, no, no, the same thing happened to me. I had the dates and then it just so happened that I was free this weekend too. So that's why I'm here. Yeah. I caught the Gary one like in December though. Oh, well that's, that's lucky. I should say though, it also happened with John, John, uh, John, John Raymond, race control of John Raymond. Uh, he,
He had it like pre PRI. He had a book like based off of that. And then like right before PRI, it switched because of some big car show things. So John couldn't come to CMP because he was already stuck going to Atlanta. I think he was at AMP last week. It should be stated that I drove in and out of Atlanta airport from Louisville for what I thought was going to be convenience, but ended up being a completely unnecessary trip. What else did you guys end up doing? Nothing. We came home. So we had considered the possibility of going to New Orleans for a few days.
because that's what we had done after CMP previously. But we had already been like traveling for, I don't know, like 20 days or I'd been traveling for something like 20 days in the month of, in like the 30 day period, I guess. And I was like, let's just go home. So we spent the weekend at home. And then I was glad you could make it to CMP. Yeah, me too. Now Sloan and Ashley were expected to come with, but because of the miscue, yeah, they couldn't, they were occupied last weekend.
Well, we did get to see Austin. That was cool. Yeah, I was super excited to hang out with him a little bit. It felt like, to me, it felt like old grid life, which was nice. Yeah, and overall, the event was a great event, really. I did not go to the music really at all, except for the awards on Saturday. And probably you can talk about it in more detail, but the audience probably knows that I am a risk-aware person. There was on Saturday night a party with, I don't know, 50 cars.
And 300 people maybe at the fueling station at the track. And people were like smoking cigarettes and cigars and whatever else next to the gas pumps. And I was like, I just I don't want to be here. I just don't want to be leaning against the gas pump. And I think I saw one person smoking a cigarette, but quite a way the way. Well, I saw two people smoking cigars next to the gas pumps. And I was like, I'm I hope no one gets hurt. This is not for me. I just went back to the best. I'm sure you did, but I just couldn't.
So you went to bed early and then Austin and I came back and woke you up. Yeah. And then we ended up talking about whatever for, I don't know, like 45 minutes or an hour. Yeah. It was basically like we did a show without, without recording it. Yeah. We meant to do a show and then like, we've talked about it before, but like at these, especially these bigger events, I was at, I was on site at CMP for like five, five and a half days. And like the whole time I'm like making decisions and answering questions and like running around like an idiot. And like at the end of the day, I just don't really have it in me to talk, even though like that's all you're doing anyway. But like, it just felt like one extra step to bust out the mic and talk.
And we just sometimes we just don't do it. The missed opportunity for us was on Friday. There was a like a media on track rollers type time. And on Friday, that would have been chill enough to do some recording during that period. But by Saturday, like Saturday is too crazy to try and do it during that period. Yeah, we had said we'll try to do it then. And then I forgot that that's when we were doing awards on the main stage.
collecting people and making sure the results were correct. And then all of a sudden it was done. Yep. Basically. So good event overall though. I really, I like, I like operating at that track. It's, it's, uh, it's starting to feel like, uh, like home away from home. So, well, it's probably not a coincidence because the track was designed by the same person and there were a lot of elements of the track that are really nice and convenient. The one complaint that I have from the tower side is that their, their customer wifi for network connectivity is not sufficient for us to do our jobs. Right. And, uh, and
With Verizon on my phone, I only had like middle to low 4G the entire time. Everything worked enough, like using the text message system that we use and stuff. A lot of it we had to tie into the live streams. I think they were cellular bonding for live streams in and out. track provided wifi for like tower service and doing whatever would run sporadically at like two megabits per second. And so I was, I had a more reliable connection that was faster by just doing a hotspot on my AT&T phone. Uh, but there's like, I don't know, five or six people in the tower that at any one point need to come in and like do some calculations or whatever. Yeah. Or send something out to download something.
Yeah, so sell things. That was my biggest complaint there. And I'm really encouraging them to put belting on the tires so the tires don't just explode. If they belted and bolted those tires, I think we probably would have had an extra 40 minutes or an hour of track time because cars would have glanced off of them. It would have been a lot. They would have done their job better. But just have to go out and they literally tie the tires together with ropes. Solid. It's so old school. It's still old school.
Maybe this is a good opportunity for you and I to talk about what I had proposed with the timing team. So a challenge for any one of our events, especially the biggest ones, is building a run group at the front of the weekend that takes into consideration driver experience and speed and all of these different factors to try and stack a run order in a way that's sorted fastest to slowest. It's like a basket. In the driver's meeting, I refer to it as like a... our best guests to where there's minimized passing and stuff versus like a free for all. And it's the only time we really, the only time we do free for all is like if it's bucket raining for the first step and then it's just like, all right, well, whoever wants to go out with sleep open track right now. Man, I yearn for those days. They're so fun. But it's so much more relaxed. The challenge of especially the festival weekends is trying to build a grid order when you don't already have one. And the drivers that you have on your entry list, only some of them are familiar. Right. So we only know 50 drivers out of 110. It's tough. Yeah. And so it ends up just kind of getting sorted by class or whatever. And it.
feels sloppy because it's so subjective and, um, it like doesn't, it doesn't do a good job to ensure that people get clean track time early on in the weekend. And so what I had proposed to you and have already, uh, Ryan has already made substantial progress on is a way to mathematically build a grid order on the basis of previous finishes and a bunch of other factors. And in this, in this case, the other factors I think are the fun parts to talk about. So it's effectively like a driver ratings. Yeah. So we were creating a driver rating on the basis of like,
how clean you are as a driver, how high you tend to finish in the car in which you're competing. And we're also now fully keeping track of your on and off track infractions that maybe influence, you know, your overall rating, let's say. And it's even things like didn't check in with timing and scoring, arrived late and didn't respond previous, or like was rude. Yeah. I love the was rude to timing and scoring. I love that. And Emma is, Emma doesn't forget. So she has a list.
But no, I think it's a good thing because historically we have thought of track battle as this entry to like toe in the water sort of competition. And we were reluctant or I've been reluctant to apply the same standards of behavior that we have now entrenched in GLTC. But yet, if you take a step back and you think about what these drivers are, they are expected to be veteran advanced level drivers who now venture into competition. And so having a similar standard for. behavior and preparedness and courtesy, like it doesn't feel unreasonable to me. No, not at all. Especially courtesy to the staff. Like if you're, if you're rushed and you're late and you're rude to my people because of that, like I should, I should know. And that's definitely good. And so, uh, in during the weekend, that's more of a thing that I actually thought of. Like, yeah, people being rushed late and rude is like, yeah, so, and, and because of this, it won't just be our, like our, um, perception or our.
recollection of things that happened anytime now something happens it just gets recorded and logged right like it just it factors in right and so how would it how would it how would it take into consideration i don't know if you thought about this but um people that drive into completely different classes like say sunday cup and unlimited um ryan has thought of that or we have thought about it and so i believe you have a an entry per class that you run so your name might appear a few places but your behaviors will apply to both right so if you bring a fast car where you tend to finish at the front of the field and you have a slow car where Based on raw times, you finish near the back there. There's a speed factor, basically, and a behavior factor. And the speed factor will largely determine what seed or position you are in in the grid order. But you and I can probably talk about the other factors of a driver rating that, you know, maybe if your rating is too low, you get put on probation or something. Or if it if it doesn't track up, maybe the organization says, hey, this is maybe not the right place for you. Why would you why don't you consider competing in another series, for example? So we're.
uh, Ryan Dunham is a, uh, is an engineer and a spreadsheet wizard and is currently Emma's like, um, secondary on timing and scoring. And I kind of gave him this as a concept and I said, let's just kind of spitball and work our way through it. There's nothing set in stone yet, but let's just like, let's, let's build something and we can kind of tweak it based on what we think is most appropriate. And yesterday he gave me a 2023 driver speed score for all of the Sunday cup drivers, which was pretty neat. So, um, The speed score, I think, is analogous to and he's like a rally nut. He's been on the show before, but the speed score is analogous to a I think it's called a driver seed or something like that for rally. And so drivers in stage rally get to start in order on the basis of their like speed score or I don't know what it's called. Let's see.
And for the audience, you kind of you kind of pitch this like, would it be cool if idea to me on Thursday? And I was like, that would be cool. And then like by Friday night, like Ryan's got it like half done. Yeah. So in Rally, it's called Speed Factor. And there's a website that does all these calculations. But it's not meant to entirely be behind the curtain. My objective is just like with GLTC, where the infractions and penalties are public information. I would like the driver ratings and speed factors to be public information. I mean, I think as soon as you started talking about it in this.
in this lane, like where it's like, like a driver rating. Like I was instantly intrigued because like my daydream is, uh, for all the drivers to never want to fuck around because they want their driver rating to stay high while also going fast. So they're going to keep, they're going to keep it at 10 tenths and not 12 tenths. Yeah. That's what, however, whatever we got to do to like.
and make that actually happen. Like that only makes the competition and the events and everything better. So yeah, give it, dangle a carrot in front of the drivers. So we have now, we haven't published it, but we have now, and I think we should probably use it before the next event, a list of infractions for time attack. There also exists a list of infractions for GLTC. They're very similar, but it includes all kinds of stuff like failure to register or...
pass under yellow or miss checker or miss black flag or, or, or, or there's a whole bunch of things. And what I asked Ryan to do in part was to assign a numerical value for each infraction based on the severity of that infraction. And so when in the incident log, Emma records so-and-so driver passed under yellow, well, there's a point value associated with that now. And all of those things can be reflected on the safety side of the driver rating, which to me actually feels really good. Yeah, I love it. I'm actually like really excited about it.
so small things like um i don't know i'll pull up the list but ryan had like there are minor infractions that don't hit your rating very hard at all but there are like seriously big ones that might uh affect your rating a lot like um at fault contact with another driver on track like yeah that that needs to affect your safety rating considerably right there yeah So, and even things as silly as like, Oh, slow, slow warmup lap causing traffic for all the cars behind you. Like we, over the years, we know people that are guilty of doing that, but now to put it in an incident log and to assign points on a driver rating now, like, Oh, well there's an incentive to not drive that way. Yep. Yep. Exactly. So I'm, I'm actually pretty excited about it. Yeah. It's going to be sick. This is a, it's like a thing we needed. We needed this.
I wouldn't have thought of like a driver rating system. And it's like perfect. It's exactly what we mean. It ties with the concept of the drivers being licensed that you and Chris have proposed at PRI and elsewhere. If the license then had a rating associated with it, it stands to reason that you could lose your license by doing X, Y, Z. Yeah. You get too low of writing, you're up for review. Yep. So exactly. And the same would be true for probations or whatever else.
But yeah, I'm excited about that. We've just been working on that in the background and it seems to already be making progress. Yeah, I love it. I think it's going to make my life a little easier. I'm going to have to...
I'm going to have reason to yell at someone versus just like, hey, you need to stop doing these things. We're worried about you. Like your driver ratings pretty low. And here's why. Here's how you need to improve. You have to improve. Right. So at CMP, I won't name names, but there are some drivers who have what is now quite the reputation for losing control of their vehicle and driving four wheels off track. It happens a lot for some people. And if this were now very clearly captured in a driver log to say, oh, actually, in the last, I don't know, five events, you've driven off track 12 times. Get it together. Here's how it's affecting your rating. OK, well, now.
Now we have some real data to go with what is historically just our memory and recollection. The thing that I'm curious is like, okay, say we're looking at 20 weekends over three years for somebody or whatever, four years, and say they really derfed it up and sucked at the beginning of it. But then we didn't have any calls about them. They were nice. They went fast. They did great for three years.
With whatever's being designed, do they earn points back or they still got that bad first year rate? So I expect it's not done yet, but I would expect that that either the ratings will will average out over time or perhaps we're only looking at the last two or three years worth of data or something. Right. That kind of seems like if if somebody has a clean weekend, we have no calls about them. If they get nothing negative, I think then they should automatically get something positive to bring things up. Sure, sure. And what this also does is we consistently get drivers who are new to the series.
Um, this gives us a useful metric to like decide whether or not to license them in, in the TA way, because TA has so many more drivers. It's more difficult to manage like, um, credentialing process than, than GLTC does because GLTC just has fewer drivers on a calendar year. GLTC probably has, um, it's in the 200s versus 20% of the track battlefield. And so it's like 200 versus a 1200. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a lot. And so in this way, if you have a driver now that's new, uh, it should be understood that they're probationary.
And we create an entry for them on the driver rating. And if nothing is reported negative about them and they're in good standing and they, not even their finished position, but if they're just in good standing at the end of the weekend with no complaints or calls or whatever, oh, well, now we have all that data and now they have a rating. Right. Yeah, that's cool. I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves. Me too. Gonna be great. Gonna be great. I love making steps like this. Sure. And the cool thing is I didn't build it, which means that...
there's at least two people that will understand how the tool works and how to make entries in it. So that's pretty great. Yeah, that's great. What else? I had, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think we've talked since Coda. So I had some bus trouble on the way back in Coda, nothing bad, but there were, there were moments where my bus wouldn't go over like 40 miles an hour.
And then I would pull over and then I'd get back on the highway and it would like rip again for an hour. It was fine, right? So kind of established that the fuel lift pump that brings it up into the high pressure fuel system was going bad. And it was stuck in air, which it turns out it was. Changed that. It was kind of a bitch to change just because of how it's mounted to things and stuff. But that's fine. That's fixed. Didn't have any of that problem on the way to CMP and back. I towed the dyno down with the bus. But I did lose approximately four quarts of oil all over the back of the bus in front of the dyno on the way to and from CMP, which was terrible.
Um, cause it was dripping out one drip at a time. That drip would get sucked into the wind behind the bus and get like turned into a fine dirty mist all over the back of the bus, which is 12 feet high and a lane wide. And then all over the front of the dyno, which is a lot of pieces of steel that people have to walk around. So I spent, I felt like having our cleaning the dyno when I got there. Um, and then when I got home Sunday or Monday night, I went, I put an entire bottle of simple green all over the front of the dyno, the back of the bus, uh, and then let it sit for a while, scrubbed it, uh, with a, with a junky brush and then pressure washed it with hot water. And now we're all clean again. So now I gotta figure it out.
What the heck is leaking? I think it's the prank seal. But yeah, when it went, it went. Good grief. What a freaking mess. So yeah, so that's next. I got to work on my bus. But hopefully I'm going to take apart a bunch of stuff next week. Hopefully find out the problem. Have time to order the part before rev up.
And, yeah, that's the plan right now is freaking fix that stupid bus. I can't deal with an oil leak like that. I can deal with a little bit of drip here and there, but I can't deal with a constant drip that makes a complete and utter mess of the back of the RV. Right. The only other long trip I have is Lime Rock. So I'm not really doing a ton of long trips. Lime Rock and then Mid-Ohio are the only other long ones. Yeah, Mid-Ohio is not even that far from you. What is it, five? No, it's five, five and a half, six hours. But, like, if every one of those trips I have to go for a bottle of something and clean the back of the bus, I'm going to hate my life. Yeah, for sure.
Something that you and I talked about at the event that is maybe worth discussion is the logistics now of the events, given that we have events now all over the country, quite literally, as far as California and as far as Connecticut. Us being centrally based in Chicago is pretty convenient, but it does mean that the physical equipment of the series is all over the place. Right now it's all in the trailer. For this one specifically, the trailer's not going to Willow in two weeks. It's not my trailer.
Last year it worked out nice because we sent it to Willow. It stayed in California for three weeks, and then we had Laguna. It worked out pretty well. So this one, the current plan, unless I hear otherwise, is it's meeting a driver. The driver is going to be paid to transport all of our stuff out there that we need for this event. I pulled all the motorsports things. We're having vinyl produced in California is the current working plan. But we've got about 10 days to figure it out. But yeah, right now, that's the plan. I don't have a plan for Thunder Hill yet, unfortunately. I don't have a plan for Laguna for the Dyno yet, which is my one big piece I want to bring to.
Laguna. For sure. Obviously, the semi-truck is going to Laguna, but it's not a trailer. We hire out loads. Basically, we own the trailer, but somebody hauls the trailer. Got it. But yeah, I got to figure out some logistics plans for some of those faraway ones. But right now, the plan for Willow is that it will be in a van going out to Willow. And hopefully charged.
A nuisance feature of the transponders, which seems to be the transponders that basically everyone uses, is they are on the lowest current draw trickle charge. So the transponders themselves, I'm sure many people have seen them. They're about the size of a deck of cards. But we own now 130-ish units. Four cases times 32, whatever that is. 34.
Uh, what was that? Uh, 132. Is that right? Yeah. That sounds about right. Anyway. Um, the charger is like a specialty plug. It's not like a USB or anything like that, but it's a specialty plug that plugs into the suitcase that, that holds all of them. And it takes, I don't know, 17 hours to charge up the suitcase. And, um,
What it means is like, oh, well, if they're in transit for a while, they just need to be either plugged in while they're in transit or they need to get there super early and plug in. And you like you can't really daisy chain any of them or anything like that. So you have four power supplies in four suitcases and each of them takes 17 hours to charge a suitcase. And they actually didn't send me a power supply with the last one. You just remind me I have to email them. They only have power supply. Yeah, there you go. So the same cord as the decoder, though. So we actually have four. Oh, do we?
I was charging all four when the decoder wasn't plugged in on Thursday. But managing the logistics of those things, I think, is especially challenging because they are an essential component to running an event. I texted Owen at like 7 a.m. I said, as soon as you get to the warehouse, charge those things for the next couple of days. I need them to be charged because they hibernate when you unplug them if they're charged. And they seem to hold a pretty halfway decent charge for about a month. It seems like they start to lose charge after a month a little bit. But they have been plugged in for half an hour at CMP.
And I took one or Emma took one off and it had a two day charge. And that was previously all charged. So I think that we didn't have any, we didn't have any battery issues, and they weren't charged that long. So they held the charge. The people who ran last dash on Sunday were all receiving low battery alarms on the system, but it ended up being fine. I don't think anyone missed any times, but regarding the hardware itself, we have the decoders, we have the computers, we have the transponders, we have their power supplies, et cetera, et cetera. You can run an event without door cards and banners and a whole bunch of things. You cannot run an event without that hardware.
And so there's like a chain of custody sort of dilemma, which is like, okay, how do we make sure that we never ever run the risk of losing this hardware? Because losing it would cost money. Of course, that would be a problem. But like if we could not execute the event without it, that makes it really urgent. Yeah, my biggest stress ever was the one time we shipped everything. I believe that. Yeah, like it's a giant stress. Like, yeah, for one, it's a big cost. Like you said, like we shipped three cases of transponders across the country, right? On a path.
But, uh, but it's also like if a pal goes missing, I can't run the amount. It's impossible to do. So, um, I once shipped an analytical, like a chemistry instrument via a parcel carrier. I won't name names cause I don't know whose fault it was, but it was a $200,000 suitcase essentially. And I shipped it the way that the vendor told me to basically put a label on it and shipped it out with the vendor. And it was over Christmas time. And that $200,000 piece of specialty equipment that there's probably 20 people in the country who would even have a use for it.
that piece of equipment went missing, gone forever. And, uh, I don't know where it went. I don't know if it was stolen. I don't know if it was lost or damaged or what it was, but like this thing just disappeared. So it's not outside the realm of possibility that like the thing that you really, really, really need to get to that place. It just doesn't make it. Yeah. And that's where like,
I'm of the mindset where like, say the driver that wants to go out to California. I won't say who it is. A regular driver of ours running a touring cup. Say he changes his mind and isn't going. My backup plan is to just throw everything in my Honda Fit and drive to California. It's not a great plan. It's not a great plan, but I know the event can happen. Sure.
Or literally to rent a brand new car and drive out to California. So like, and in this case, having spares doesn't even save you because there's like the actual movement of the physical things from place to place that has to be considered. Yeah. And I can't have a spare $85,000 timing system because my company doesn't exist. Right. There's just no company that has that much cash. It's so much money. And yeah, there are rental items. Obviously you need them to run the event. You rent the transponders to people. They eventually pay for themselves. Sure. But like, it's a huge chunk of money floating around. Same thing with the dyno, like the dyno to replace it right now.
We didn't pay this much, but to replace it would cost me like $80,000. Speaking of, at Coda, you were talking about hub dynos for a while. What did you learn about hub dynos? That they're very expensive and they take a long time to load. Oh, sure. To load cars. Which would be difficult for us.
It'd be nice to be able to just throw them in the semi-trailer. Sure. Sure. But it's also probably a requirement that wherever you are doing, if you were going to put a hub dyno somewhere, it would almost essentially have to be flat. And it is not always the case that the parking lot where the dyno is parked is flat. Or the garage or whatever. It'd be nice because they'd be more compact and changeable and move around. But I believe they need big power.
Uh, some brands I know need water sources for cooling. Sure. Yeah. Um, like there's other pieces involved in it. The nice part about our dyno, it's a dyno jet T48 on a trailer is like, you can actually run that thing off of one, 110, 10 volt outlet, like one regular, like if you can run a coffee maker, you can run the dyno. Which is awesome, right? The only thing it really needs is, uh, it, it has an air compressor. And so it uses air power to power the air brake. And that's really all it is. Other than that, it's a couple of simple USB powered sensors. Yeah. You can run it without the fans. Even the fans take the most power, but you can obviously do a couple of holes without fans, but, uh, the fans are inflatable tube man fans. Yeah. Yeah.
um so i got a couple of fans and i i just swapped to a harbor freight like ultra quiet compressor which is great um versus my old makita compressor which was not great yeah yeah it used to be it used to have 12 volt compressors on board um and they took forever they if it rained uh like you had to like take the lids off and get the sand out of them like and they got hot So I just ended up going to a regular, like, regular pancake compressor, effectively, like, you know, carpenter compressor. I wonder, can you, you might simplify things a lot if, and maybe even speed it up, if we could tee off the outlet of that compressor to use it to inflate the tires to the target pressure. Like, if I just had a chuck for inflating tires and a hose for that, that would make things a lot faster. Because those portable air pumps, they do work, but it's just like another piece of equipment that you need, and it's a thing that takes time.
yeah i can come up what you're talking about is in for gltc for impound dynos technically cars need to be at 35 psi right per the rules yep um yeah i can easily make a uh like a splitter and then a separate uh like air filler yeah that would um i mean and then if we had what 50 feet of hose or whatever that would be awesome and then we just we just inflate the tires and we're done i actually want to get a couple of new hoses because the hose that i have is like a nice hose but it's way long um i really need like two 20 foot hoses instead of one 50 foot hose yeah sure um yeah i should buy a couple of hoses and make a attachment before midwest fest that'd be nice sure and then just have a we could literally do it a three-way splitter, it fills the air tank on the trailer and then it has a tire filler on either side of the dime. That would be awesome. Um, I haven't paid attention. Are we doing, yeah, we are doing GLTC at Willow. Is that right? Yeah. How is the field looking for that? So back when we had, I want to say it's around 20 cars. Back when we had, uh, tickets through sea tickets, I was an admin and I could see everything. And now like I might be able to, but they're buried somewhere in Torque Hub. So I don't really know. So I ask you, uh, and I ask Emma or Kyle. Gotcha. I'm not, I'm not good at sea tickets. I'm not nearly good enough to figure it out via my phone.
Gotcha. I actually have an alarm set for tomorrow at noon or three, it's like, for Emma to pull data. Well, something that is relevant for the GLTC competition is we now have a lot more potential GLTC races on the calendar. I'm excited that it's not festival only anymore because I think it gives us some additional grassroots competition capability. A benefit of all of these events being possible for accumulating points is...
people can now be quite strategic about where they go in order to secure enough points to see themselves nicely in the championship at pit race. Which is kind of what, uh, what people are, what somebody is doing for big Willow. Yeah. This driver, this driver who I'm sending things with most likely, he is currently taking his car apart to make sure that the head, they fix the head gasket. So that's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the, uh, I think it's what the best 14 races of the year for each driver. Um,
plus the finale at pit race where all races count is the, uh, the season points for the year. So I'll be interested to see if this actually works out, but given that it's best 14 and given the number of events that we're running, it is theoretically possible that multiple drivers have 14 wins. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's that's the thought is like, I don't want it to be possible for, for somebody to like.
have locked up the championship by august right but because of that so it's is it best 14 and then they go to pit or how does it how does it work explain it um so what it says here is the regular season champion will be determined by a driver's best 14 races of the regular season along with the full points of pit race finals event where if everybody if there was a four-way tie going into pit pit race to your best whoever does the best at pit wins overall got it um and then points from the best individual races will accrue for championship points uh tiebreakers will be first tiebreaker bonus points of qualifying races because we award three two and one for p1 two and three points for qualifying uh and best finishing position at midwest festival as the second tiebreaker so uh obviously you can't have a tie all the way into midwest festival um and i did finishing position at midwest versus points at midwest because you can tie for points in an individual event sure you can't tie for finishing position so gotcha yeah It's a really exciting year. I'm excited by the season points races, the season point for GLTC. I'm excited that I think this is going to be kind of the final.
the final way we do it um and obviously we have some we have some races scheduled at thunder hill in november that's going to be the first round of 2025 but will also be the last round of our our upcomingly announced fcp euro west coast championship oh um so that fcp euro is going to sign on as or has signed on as the presenter for the i think they're calling you the pacific championship okay but uh for time attack that will be laguna willow in a couple weeks uh and the thunder hill round for gltc it started with coda it'll be willow it'll be laguna and it will be thunder hill so neat um yeah so it's four rounds for gltc three rounds for i think that'll be really neat and then all those will count for national points but uh obviously like midwest festival won't count for the pacific championship it's just because they're 2 000 miles away we thought well a lot of those drivers aren't going to make it but if we want to keep building family tackle and keep building gltc um we got to make it mean something to some of these drivers where if they win you know the grid life pacific championship uh maybe they get sponsors maybe they things like that like all of our championship drivers everywhere else and you know our national championship drivers like almost all of them are like successfully like
selling to sponsors, helping their programs out there. You know, it means something to people when they win a championship with grid life now, which is wild, but it is wild. It's weird to think, but back when I won, no one cared. Well, you care. I mean, I did. And you probably mentioned it more than I do, which is too many times. Well, I, uh, I think we almost did a podcast. I have to go back to work. All right. Well, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to be stuck in spreadsheet land from now until forever. So.
we should do more of it since you work from home a little bit more now. Um, and I work solo, uh, we should do more of these. I don't, I don't want to keep talking because I'm going to step out into rain and wind. So it's going to screw up my earbuds, but I can say that during, during the lunch hour, it is pretty easy for me to record. And it's probably much easier for me to record during the lunch hour than it is at like 10 PM at night because I'm tired. And, uh, same, especially lately yesterday you were like, you want to record a show tonight? And
i felt yesterday like i felt physically fine but you know i drove like 14 hours the day before or something 13 hours um actually i drove three hours and then like 11 hours i slept somewhere in north carolina um but or south carolina i drove about three hours from the track but like i woke up yesterday feeling like a like i felt like a tired child meme you know that like meme of like little kid being dragged around as they're crying by the merry-go-round or something like that's that's the meme i felt like mentally there was there's nothing going on in my head i was i was mentally stupid so yeah that's why we did i didn't want to record yesterday it would not have been good not that this is any good So the one thing I want to plug before we finish the show is I now have, um, many, many t-shirts, uh, both track tuned and slip angle shirts. They are the, the ultra premium first edition versions or equivalents, um, that I had made a few years back. I saw several of them in the paddock this weekend. Um, they're for sale. We don't make much money on them, but they're very nice. And if you could support the show by buying a shirt, go to track tune.com. We'd really appreciate it. Or, uh, if you sign up for a Patreon and you sign up for like a one year commitment, I'll just mail your shirt.
So, um, if you do either of those things, I'll get a notification or if you sign up for a Patreon, just ping me and say, Hey, I want a shirt and, uh, I'll just ship it to you. So obviously we're not the best people at putting out Patreon shows, but, uh, we're good at making t-shirts and give them to you. And we really appreciate the support. So, um, we appreciate everybody and, uh, shout out to the two guys that bought shirts in the last week. Um, I hope you really enjoy them and I love seeing them in the paddock. We see a lot of them in the paddock. I met a bunch of listeners last weekend, which was sick. I love, I love it when somebody comes up and they're like, Hey, I've been, uh, I've been emailing. I'm the guy who was emailing. I had like four people.
who I've emailed with randomly or like Facebook message with, because they like got a question or comment about the show. And I think it's so cool to meet them in real life. So it's working rad. Well, we, we appreciate you all listening. Thanks for supporting us in 2024. If we can get into a routine now that all of the work things have changed, uh, hopefully we put out some more shows this year and, uh, we, we, we love talking and we appreciate you guys listening. Yep. Awesome. I appreciate your time during lunch. Yep. See you, man.
Slip Angle was created by Austin Cabot and Adam Jubey, co-hosted by Derek Yarbrough and production by Abram Schmucker, who mixes all of our terrible audio. If you like the show, please rate us and review us on iTunes and come and find us in the Pits of Gridline to say hello.