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Yeah, that was probably 34th grade for me, too. You probably played a couple years after me. After that, the school got a whole bunch of Apple IIs, I think. Yeah, the ones that looked cool? Yeah. Not the iMacs, but the Apple IIs, which were just like... Obviously not an iMac. What? Obviously not an iMac. Yeah, iMacs are like 97. No, iMacs came out when I was in 6th grade. Really? Yeah. I didn't think they were that old. Well, iMac meaning they were translucent little TVs. The ones that was in the Jennifer Lopez music video that was in the swimming pool. Yeah, those came out when I was in 6th grade, pretty sure. Yeah, they're cool colors, and you could see inside of them.
The files are in the computer. This is a flashback. You better be recording. Oh, yeah. I started recording a while ago. I got to pop it back in because I'm going to get on my headset. Houghton's always popping out and popping back in.
It's been a, it's been a super long week for me. Yeah. You didn't respond to Facebook messages all day. So I knew you're having a hard one. Well, I'm starting a new job in a week and I've gotten like a soft start already. So I was at like a global team meeting for the last three days and it has occupied me basically from 7am until about 9pm for the last three days. Waking to sleeping. That's hard. Pretty much. How are my levels? I mean, levels, levels, levels. They're leveled. I don't know.
uh you're on your sim rig james i am um in real life do you prefer to be called jim or james because i've called you both and i don't know which one i like more so i was always jim or jimmy my family was probably more jimmy and my friends are more jim and then facebook happened in 2006 and then you were james and then every single person that i met after that that knew me off of Facebook before they knew me in person called me James. And now I don't know who I am anymore. I have a similar conundrum, actually. AJ? Yeah. My entire growing up until, like my entire growing up, except for my friends, like my entire family and like at work, everybody called me AJ forever. And they still do. Is it like the Facebook thing? Is that what's happened? Well, it was like, you know, people in school didn't call me AJ. They called me Adam. And then same thing with Facebook. Yeah. But was that because you were introduced when like, you know, you go to grade one or whatever. Right. They don't call you AJ.
My middle name is John and my last name is Jubei. So there's two ways to be AJ. But yeah, I think I'm going to transition into AJ. I have a similar story. You can be anything you want nowadays. I have a similar story, actually. The neighbor at my house a long time ago when I was in elementary school used to call me Abe and no one else ever did. Not ever. And after I finished my PhD in Chicago, I was like, well, I think going by Abe is much easier than going by Abram because no one ever messes it up.
And so it was a, that was like a weird transition period where I made a conscious decision that I will just go by Abe to everyone that I introduced myself to henceforth. And I was like, I don't know, 25. Is that, do you still do that at work and stuff? Yeah, I try to. You're kind of like a 50, 50 mix at grid life. Like people call you Abram, people call you Abe. Yeah. I think I've called you both pretty regularly. Adam, do you ever call someone on the phone? That's like, you're not calling from your cell phone. Maybe you're calling from like your work phone or something like that. No, I don't have a landline in my life anymore. Is that like a Canadian thing, Jim? Do they, do they have landlines in Canada?
Of course. Well, we canceled ours because one of my subcontractor buddies, he still has a landline. And landlines used to cost $15 a month or $10 a month. His wife pays his bills and his wife's crazy and doesn't pay attention to the bills or anything. They've never had any kids. They're almost retirement age. And the other day, he looked at his AT&T bill. You know what they charge for a landline now? No.
His landline was $256 a month. No way. I'm not kidding. And he called me. They were like, well, that's what it costs now. We don't have that. We don't maintain that infrastructure in your area. Really? I mean, they can do it with like VoIP or whatever. Right. But he's like on the 1995. The old school copper line. I actually thought about whether we should get a permanent house phone. It doesn't have to be old school landline, but obviously Sloan doesn't have a cell phone. I don't think maybe Emma has one. I don't know, but no, I'm not going to get one for a while. How do you, how do you teach?
children how to like answer the phone and do those things you're almost not gonna have to all three of us have kids and there will be a period at some point in their life not too far from now where you're gonna like have to run to the store and they're gonna be old enough to stay behind you probably still want them to have a phone but you may not want them to have a cell phone Yep. I'm almost there. We've been thinking about like, you know, she can probably make calls from her iPad, but, or I've been thinking about it. I haven't talked to Sarah about it, but I don't know. That sounds like next week's problem. I got too many other things going on. Look at that. Anyway, we got the, we got Jimmy Hotan, James Houghton.
stay tuned tsx and sometimes time attack driver extraordinaire what's up buddy how you doing good good so something i was glad to see that you did this year that has been a little while is that you after an event put a watermelon on your head and there were people at our events who had been coming for a while that did not know why your helmet is a watermelon and so i think it's important to keep the tradition alive just to make sure that people understand the joke well you have to win to put the watermelon on your head you could spend more time winning i'm gonna try what what was the first watermelon uh helmet was that grid life that was 2018 2017 2017 that's a different world i didn't want to go out for the saturday afternoon session yeah and grant was there with us and he says i have a good feeling and for some reason he was on the radio when i went out for that session grant professional awesome yeah yeah and i was like he's like just go out just like put some laps in the car He's like, just see what happens. So before you go farther, I have to interrupt, and I know it's rude. Grant is very much a practical, very matter-of-fact sort of person, so I'm surprised that he could motivate or be motivated by a good feeling. That seems very out of character for a person that is so practical. Knowing Grant, I had the same thought. I think Grant is probably smarter than some, and he probably values the driving of the car more than some time attackers do, right? I think so many people are skipping sessions all the time.
this is back when you were in like a 700 horsepower k-series integra just fyi just for the listeners yep but that would db tires regularly and you would park that shit on the track and make me endlessly frustrated i can't drive around when splitter is on the ground that's true you can't sorry man those days were hard we sucked at everything but um so i think that you know there's a lot of people myself included that have skipped sessions or not put their all into a session because they're like well the track's hot okay well let's say the track is a second off the pace But what if we're three seconds off the pace? Or six or eight. Whatever. There is so much skipping of sessions on hot days. It's like, go learn something. Especially if you have a reliable car. Which the Integra never was.
Well, the Integra, she was a little bit ahead of her time, and she was making some pretty good jam, in the words of you. No Unlimited Car ever competed at that level and went to that many events in a row. Probably ever, and maybe will never happen ever again. At least not in the U.S. I am not saying bad things. You were awesome. The Car was awesome. All the things were awesome. What I will say, though, is the amount of work that you had to do at an event to continue running the event was a lot. You go for a session, and it would be like a 50-50 whether the trans or the engine would blow.
Yeah, I distinctly remember at least 12 times coming over to your pit and your guys are all like crabby and mad and they're hustling and the head's off or the trans is off. Normally the trans. Yeah, but the head's off or the trans is off is one or the other. Yep. It's a hard life. And I know that we're talking about old stuff at this point. Early on in the Gears and Gasoline videos, you did an interview that I think was related to a Gridlife South video, but it talked about the amount of commitment that a person... That was late on. That was like the end of the Gears and Gasoline documentary stuff. I mean, if you compare that to now...
yeah um it was grid like south 18 so that was the two main years they did some stuff in 19 but it was a different vibe yeah they transitioned into driving yeah yeah the two main years were 17 and 18 the the obsession of time attack might have been the most thoughtful honest um racing advice that I've heard from someone in the grid life universe, right? Like you can, you can show up and you can drive and you can have fun and you can do all of those things. But if you intend to win and you intend to push the envelope, like this is, this is how you probably have to be. It has to ruin your life. Literally. Maybe less if you build a club TR car. I think the club TR guys work very, very hard to be as fast as they are. I agree, but they don't break that much stuff. 100%.
Way less broken cars. Jim and I have talked, we randomly talk if he's got a rainy day and he's not oil spraying cars and I can answer the phone. We randomly talk about rules things because he's kind of like me at CTAC. And so he's got input from up there. He's got obviously input on GLTC. He's one of like the dozen drivers who I regularly talk to you about rules things. And so we talk about a lot of rules things.
dude you constantly rave about like i wish i could just simplify my life and just build the baddest club tr car because it's the best class in the world that's the best class in the world it's the best class in the world so you probably heard on a show recently that adam and i created that class while i was unemployed and he was standing on the top of a ladder in one day i remember distinctly having calls with you two guys yeah yeah it was like a couple day period we were like we gotta make a class fucking what's the dopest class ever i think it had already the conversation had already started and it was like at the same time i came to you guys and was like why don't we have a gltc type time attack class and you guys were not wanting i think it was still kind of hush hush and you guys were like yeah um yeah i kind of sort of were thinking about things and i think that it was already well underway at that point yeah there was like a period of time where like uh falcon was sponsoring sunday cup and they're like we really want to you know like we really want to make splash and time attack and chris was like what about like the coolest class ever animal figure it out and i was like oh no um and so me and abe started talking like all right what's what what's not
like at the time we had what street we had we didn't have street t i don't think no no we did street street tt sunday cup obviously and then track modern unlimited obviously super unlimited which is like the class that isn't a class but sort of is and uh i have some interest in some cars at ctac this year to for like making that a class i think super unlimited is going to be the thing in the next couple years too because there's so many cool like two frame non-production things but there's like talk of a cup car a 911 cup car coming out there's talk of a couple radicals coming out and we had some cool stuff at laguna too we definitely do reason yeah but yeah club tr it was like what's not covered and when you think about it like like the cars that couldn't really they didn't have a home in time attack it was like a bunch of levi browns with k20 I remember that conversation with you. I was like, this is literally the most common track car in North America. It literally has no home anywhere from Time Attack. Swap Miata, swap Civics, BRZs. BRZs with Arrow, they get pounded on a street mod. They get pounded on a street almost. Now that they've developed, they're pretty fast. I still have a dream to build the nastiest built motor K24 Civic of some sort for street someday. You kind of did that with your brother-in-law's car? No, just my buddy, Russ. That's actually whose house I was just at moving the arcade thing.
I thought somehow you were related to him or something. That was the car that you drove at Speed Ring a few years back, yeah? Yeah. That was the triple weekend where you drove three classes, right? That was fun. Can we do that again? I'm trying. An event like that makes a lot of sense when you have somebody pouring unlimited money into it, and it's hard to do when you're like, hey, let's go get that money and give it to everybody. That was a pretty special time. Chris told me that we own the rights to the name, which is a start. Yeah, he bought the name for nominal consideration. I think it was a dollar.
that's so good that you guys have that just in case like it'll be it'll be a thing like it's probably this year this year seems like it might be tough because all these companies are closing their pockets up you know um because like i don't know everybody's worried about everything and uh yeah we'll see where it goes it does need it needs like an almost philanthropic backer to be what it was um but i think i think there's probably there's probably a prize money path forward someday in time attack just just gotta keep the company afloat and evolve into it you know i mean i'd like to i'd like to talk about something like to change that's what we're here for like to talk about something because you and i have this conversation often because i am a psychopath i'm a barbarian we've talked about that yeah fact and i always can't help myself but think of the car that can break the glass and i think that's probably why we talk about things a lot because i like to lust after being very wealthy and being able to build glass breaking cars have you telling me that's not allowed anymore and then i build the next one so i should also say though that despite being a barbarian you are a you are a student of racing and adam may but i definitely do ask your opinion on things because i think you personally can separate your barbarian nature and quest for like
individual benefit from domination from like how is this actually good for the class does this make sense we talk all the time there are only a few people uh for which i think that applies and i like there are probably three people that i would ask their honest opinion and expect a genuine response right the i think the the class breaking like brain like the brain that goes towards the what would i build if i could um obviously james got that um but also like the class breaking mentality of like let's f it all up and burn it to the ground he doesn't have that He's got the, let's make it the coolest thing for 10 years so I can ruin my life for a decade. That brain. And that brain is valuable as someone who has to actually publish the rules. That's a valuable insight. It's mostly for two reasons. It's also similar to how I feel and how I think too. It's mostly for two reasons. It's because I respect the hell out of you guys and what you're doing. And secondly, because I don't have enough money to do it.
Well, and you've got to race somewhere, so you might as well be someplace fun, right? Absolutely. It's a similar way to how I think about rules, especially when I was more aggressive and competing and stuff a decade ago. You just build a better mousetrap and educate yourself on all the potential mousetraps. But yeah, I love that line of thinking. And I think that's probably part of the reason that our bouncing off of you and several others are similar. It's probably part of the reason that our rules have semi-maintained for a decade and six years, five years now for GLTC. And they've evolved.
They're kind of the same as they were back in the day. I did bring a pretty weird car to Kota 2020, that's for sure. I don't think I brought the car that anyone else thought. You were the only one that tried that path that we were like, I think that path might be pretty cool. And it was just a little bit cooler than we thought it was. That was back when Hoosiers were the thing. It was cooler than I thought it was going to be. We had given, Giles was like, just give, it was like 40 millimeter on Hoosiers. Just give the street tires 40 mil. I think it was 50 mil. I think it was 245 Hoosiers if I would have ran Hoosiers and it was 295 street tires. And it was 50 mil and 4%.
he was like give it a lot see what happens that might be too much but nobody tried it what was your what was your modifier when you came into that event like what percent minus seven minus seven negative six minus seven and todd cayley was like uh he's like a four or five or something four or five or something like that yeah was he p2 that weekend he was and he would have actually beat me that weekend because of our tps sensor failure in race three but then he had he he found out that he had like a limp mode for a really low coolant temperature like sorry for a overheat but the overheat temperature was like not hot like it was like going into limp mode for overheating at 205 water temperature oh yeah i think i remember talking about that and in race four i just was like i knew that i had to win or i knew i had to beat him i think And I drove past and I was like, what just happened? Yeah, it just worked. It was like, he just like, you know, I think he was probably down 50 horsepower or something. It was pretty good racing. Like you, you lurched ahead of everybody because your tires were there and nobody else's were. And then they just clawed back at you as theirs came in and you're starting to fall off. Some of that might have been artificial. Well, I'm not going to, I'm not going to point fingers at anybody else, but it was fun to watch. But it also, it showed some of the lack of knowledge. I will say I wasn't very concerned that I was going to get past Adam. How about that?
I get that. I talked to you about that. But also, like, it was like, well, I don't, you know, we didn't know how different Hoosiers and 200 Shred were. Because even back in, you know, four years ago, five years ago, NASA guys, like, nobody was using 200s. 200s were like, most of them were like not even that great. You know, it was very different.
So going into my brain and thinking about optimization and stuff like that, I go into a subject that I probably make people irritated with in the GLTC chat sometimes. And I go into the argument about people commenting on, well, I have to do this to be optimized, or you need to be doing this to be optimized because it's not being penalized, or you need to be doing this to be optimized because it's not being penalized. And I don't think anyone really like... looks on the scale in a grand enough way of what is optimized. Say more on that. What does that mean? I think that people look at a car that's doing well and assume that it's optimized. And I think they have no idea what they're talking about. Because I think that any car that has ever set a record in Grid Lifetime Attack or in GLTC...
has literally hundreds of thousands of dollars that could still be put into that car. Oh, for sure. Well, that's a fact. And if you listen to our... Like no gray area parts at all. I'm talking straight up black and white legal stuff. And you could spend $300,000 more on it that is literally going to yield time. Things like wind tunnel and shaker rigs and things like that, but also like testing and really smart engineers and testing and testing and testing and testing and testing and testing. That doesn't happen at our level. So, James, I don't know if you listened to the show that we did with my friend Peter, the author of that Racing Hell book.
We spent a lot of time talking about this silly notion of drivers driving at the limit, and this is, I think, kind of similar. For people to think that they're getting close to the performance potential of their car is unlikely, given that everyone would agree that if they spent 50K, the car would be faster. yeah not even to say that what if they spent 500k what if they could they'd find places to put it you know what i mean so so even one other thing that's even simpler than all those other expensive things so if i would you say that a plaid almost defies the laws of what people think is possible like uh what's his name i forget what his name is that came to good life this year but i followed him oh yeah that car's wicked so that doesn't make sense right but it's also like pretty much stock like that car doesn't make sense would we agree agree in acceleration terms and in lap time for a 5 000 pound car like he was wicked in a mile the way it handles with that much weight is nuts Right. So let me tell you this. So it handles well because A, it has very good geometry, but B, because its center of gravity is ridiculously low for its weight. So it's not like normal weight, right? Yes. So why doesn't anyone take an Integra and spend, I'm not talking wind tunnel shaker rig money. I'm saying take an Integra and make it 1,900 pounds without the driver.
and make it probably can it's a lot of work yeah but it's not like it's not a hundred thousand dollars yeah if we're talking like gltc you can do you can do a lot you can get the weight down real well a lot carbon roof and you know you can do a lexan windshield if you hate yourself and punch holes and all the all the ancillary uh like support structures you can do a lot of stuff right you can totally build a 1900 pound integra Maybe not with a cage. I think you can. I think it's got magnesium wheels and carbon panels and carbon doors. And I think it's 1,900 pounds and 2,100 pounds with driver. And then you put 1,000 pounds below the floor. Because you're making like 230, 240, somewhere in that range. But the center of gravity is now lower than any car in the field. I don't care if you bring a Lotus out. It's lower than that. If you put 1,000 pounds below the floor.
You know, like one inch plate steel on the beach floorboard, whatever that is. Abe can do the math on it for us because he's a doctor. No, there are people in the grid life field that can. I can find a calculator here in a few seconds. But anyways, it doesn't matter whether it's one inch or three quarters of an inch. I would imagine one inch, like an eight by eight sheet of one inch steel is pretty heavy. Oh, yeah. Eight feet by eight feet. And all of a sudden now that center of gravity is like defying the rules. Like what if a plaid weighed 3000 pounds?
it would be of anything right now it'd be pretty good the torque is a separate thing but there's so many ways to skin the cat on this and i'm not saying that i necessarily would build a 3151 integer myself because it'd probably be hard on knuckles and this and that whatever and it's not like you know it's gonna break the trailing arms and stuff right but i'm just saying that sort of theory with this sort of thing right it'd be very good and there's so many ways to do it you know we've talked about gearing we've talked about flat tunes we've talked about optimizing arrow optimizing free arrow sorry everyone um everybody that saw your spoiler but like these are the things like you know only one person protested your spoiler and uh for people that don't know your spoiler what's our spoiler limit 250 square inch 250 and that one yours is 244 yours is 240 it's below 250 but it's kind of big but then you look at it and it's got a lot of slits cut in it i just like there's one person that's protested like like are you really gonna allow this and i was like yeah i think it's dope what's the difference between that though and using the the rules to achieve a larger sweater blade though
same sort of thing that same person might be in the same ballpark i love that person yeah yeah but like seriously though like i don't you know it's just there are so many things right yeah it's all it's almost like a never end and it's also like part of the fun part about this like I don't enjoy stressing about events. I don't enjoy stressing about rules. I don't enjoy stressing about, like, making sure everybody's safe and, like, the ingest and the parking. Like, there's so many things about it that I don't enjoy. But I do enjoy, like, the mental pursuit of, like, what would I do if I could? And it's probably the thing that I enjoy the most about the entire process of what we do is the building the mousetrap, all the potentials, the if this, then that, and everybody's opinion on them. As long as they're being polite about it, like, I think it's the funnest conversations. It's, like, fun, but also I ruin your day sometimes when you, you know, that's a fact. And I'm like, but what about.
this car you're like uh one of the other drivers grid life competitors that i ask questions about and very much admire and respect their opinion is let me guess he owns a shop somewhere no well that person also yes but um no he's he's not as as hard on the rules as alex moss and i knew you were talking about alex i love alex um i love alex to death but he gave me a really hard time basically not like protesting Dana's car, but advocating for certain modifications to Dana's car on the basis of rules. And it, it really, I thought it was clever, but I just like, I was in a position where I was like, no, we, that, that cannot be allowed. We just cannot do that. It was the thing where you had a, an awkward definition of the sentence structure was awkward for air dam in.
the glossary and like the word etc he said uh that's not an air dam that's an etc therefore it doesn't the other day we literally just talked about this like two days ago i was like that uh he also said or argued that it was not an air dam and it was a bug deflector Oh, Alex. It also makes like, I know I could kill Alex with my bare hands, but I love him so much. So I also know he listens to the show. He messaged me last week. So Alex, if you're listening, we do love you very much. Don't make me kill you with my bare hands, Alex. Yeah, I do. I love like that brain where it's like, all right, well, it's written. See that comma? See that comma right there? When somebody looks at a comma and thinks it's a performance advantage, like that's a brilliant brain. I love that mindset.
When they look at like the, yeah, the, just the sentence structure and they're like, well, it could mean this. It says it in the rules. He's kind of a trendsetter too. He's got some pretty dope mud flaps on that S2000. Uh, yeah. And there have been some, I don't know about the mud flaps.
you should yeah maybe you'll see the car again maybe you'll check out the mud flaps yeah yeah and i've seen similar mud flaps uh on other vehicles since that time i i think this kind of stuff like this kind of stuff doesn't fly in other amateur motorsports um and i think largely we're in the we're in the gray area in the fuzz of the rules and stuff like these things aren't most of these things are like they're really nothing burgers like if you miss the apex in turn one you blow the advantage of 12 of these nothing burgers but i just think it's so cool i think it's just the other series that you're talking about that wouldn't allow this probably a lot of their competitors are straight up cheating in their horsepower and weight. It's just absolutely dead. Yeah. Because they don't have the means to even scrutineer the rules that they've made, you know, like not talking about any series in particular, but like almost most series, they don't have the means to scrutineer things. Like, and if they did, they would be pushing their competitors away because they'd be sending their cars home in a handbasket. Like with, you know, like similar to like after national championships in NASA and SCCA, like half those cars go home with the heads off and the bottom ends apart. And it just takes all the fun out of it. Like we did that every weekend. Like, okay, nobody's going to come anymore.
But, yeah, I just think there is, like, there's something really fun about this mindset. Did you know that you can put a knack-a-duck in a window? Yeah, obviously. Lots of people have done that. It's pretty cool. What are you going to do with that knack-a-duck? I'm going to put it in the window. What are you going to do? Why are you going to do that? I don't know. It seems like what you do with a knack-a-duck. Where's it going to aim to? I don't know yet. You're not sure how many are you going to put in? As many as I can fit. How much money do you spend on knack-a-duck since October? Yeah. Yes is the amount of how much money.
Yeah, we've also recently been talking about safety measures on your car. I want to be safer, Abe. Let me hear about it. Yeah, let's hear about the safety. I'd like to be safer, Abe.
no i'm concerned that seems reasonable i'm concerned about uh things flying in the front windows of the cars yeah side side window passenger driver side yeah i'm concerned about that okay how concerned are you we'll see i feel like i'm the straight man in your comedy routine we'll just see how it goes we'll take some pictures of a dakota and then maybe we'll podcast again yeah i want to hear about it now well we're talking about window nuts we can can we stick this can we cut this out and put in the in the patreon only one uh yeah i'm gonna timestamp this right now all right we're back We're back. Sorry, we had a tangent of Houghton's thoughts and cheatiness on Patreon. That's not a nice thing to say. It's not cheaty if it's not actually cheating. Whatever. I mean, rules say things. You can bring it to the nth degree. So I think we jumped into that by talking about...
your next aerodynamic modification that is actually a safety modification. And you didn't want to talk about it in the main podcast. You're assuming, so this is true. You're assuming that people still listen to this show. I think there are a few, but there are a sister and spinoff podcasts that have divided and conquered, so to speak, in terms of audience. And so we're doing fine. Yeah. Like this is the greatest ever. Did you listen to the show that we did with Peter about racing in the Nurburgring?
If you didn't listen, that was the biggest mistake of your life. I haven't listened to it yet, but that's pretty because I listen to Slip Angle about once a year and I listen to all of them. And I don't know why I get out of the habit and then I realize that I'm so far behind and then I listen to podcasts all day, every day for weeks. That's how I listen to 10 Tense podcast. And then they usually talk shit about me on every podcast. I love it. I want to ask, there has been some ongoing discussion with Adam and I and a couple of drivers about what it means to be an unlimited car.
And obviously you have an opinion on the subject. I'm interested to know, do you feel like it is a requirement that an unlimited car must start life as a road car? Yes. So Abe, for clarity, what would be the alternative? GT4 Club Sport. Or a GT3 Club Car. The problem is with a GT4 Club Sport, it's very easy for that to go down a rabbit hole.
So the problem with that is I couldn't care less about a GT4 Club Sport. That's kind of a... To anyone that owned a GT4 Club Sport that's listening, I apologize for this, but it's a meh car. That's not a... I chose it because it's not an insane car. That's specifically what I meant. What if I bring a GT LM 911 out?
and then i put a gt2 rs motor make that motor to the crazy sequential and make it make about a thousand wheel and then i i have porsche continue the engineering on it or whoever the engineer that was working on that program continue on it and i have that driver come out and drive it and now time attack no one cares but did it did it start life as a vin chassis a gtlm would not have correct but that's what you're talking about here right right well no we're talking about like uh x pro cars or but a gt4 car doesn't have a gt4 club sport doesn't have some of them do like not maybe not gt4 club sport but a club sport would i think But some pro-built cars have VINs. And that's the weird middle part. The reason I ask, Jim, is if you apply such a stipulation, then it is, in fact, limited. It's not unlimited. It's limited because it has to be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, Unlimited, we can't bring a Formula One. Well, the argument I made to Adam was everyone, including all the people that drive in Unlimited, would agree that if Jeff Brown showed up and he engineered with Multimatic and Level 5 and Unlimited Time Attack car, everything that we know about Unlimited Time Attack would be nothing by comparison. If you showed up with those people and a $10, $20 million budget and a VIN chassis and 25% of your bottom floor, which is basically our two requirements in Unlimited right now, they could run shit. Correct, but that is less likely to happen because that is many millions of dollars. Sure, for sure. And it's not that expensive to buy a used 15-year-old LMP2 car and put a nasty engine. Well, no, an LMP2 car is not what we're talking about. No, we're talking about like a VIN chassis Gallardo or Aventador or some pro car. Where do you draw the line? Yeah, or like a McLaren GT4 car, McLaren, I don't know, whatever else they raced in that would have a VIN and might be really well set up and maybe is even a factory-supported driver, but is like...
uh started life as a pro car but has a van that's the weird like we've had we've had a few unlimited drivers say hey that sucks maybe the thing that and then homologated is not the right word but what i'm thinking about are cars that have a road going equivalent so like a p2 car does not have a road going equivalent but uh 911 like a gt3 car a gtlm car does though well yeah but doesn't have a vin vin vin and some floor from original is what we're talking about and that's that's like a few imsa cars and a few sro cars and uh and we've had some people argue that like those cars are too good out of the box they can you know with less horsepower they can beat us and we were like i don't think so um but it is it's a topic so the one the one that comes to mind is that um closed wheel ktm like bubble cockpit thing ktm expo but it looks like It looks like a prototype, but it has a VIN, and it can be a road legal car in Europe. That car doesn't make me near as nervous as other cars. Well, I mean, it was awesome at Laguna, but it was not as fast as you might think. A GT3 Huracan with a turbo kit makes me way more nervous. That makes me real nervous. Not crazy power, like 8, 900 wheel, not like 1500, not like roll racing car, like 8, 900 wheel in a Huracan GT3 could, and you can buy that, or let's say a Gallardo, not a Huracan, let's say a 10-year-old Gallardo GT3 car.
with a turbo kit on it is not the most, like, the Integra probably costs more. Doesn't that suck to think about? Terrible. But, like, seriously, right? Like, that is not an unimaginable thing to do. Yeah, you put a sheepy kit or something on it. No, I think, though, the reason that the conversation is even being had is, is Time Attack, or competing at that level of Time Attack, exclusively for people who build cars? Or is it for people who might also just want to drive cars? Yeah, people who bought cars. So I'll say this, I'll say this.
But Ferris is down on a very intriguing path, and he is now, as of this evening, ninth fastest all-time at Sakuba. How fast did he go? Like a 49 or something? 53.1 so far. Okay, cool. That's ninth fastest of all time. There's only one true Time Attack car that's ever gone sub-50, and that is Fire Ando in the white Evo, which is incredible. And then the HKS thing, which is not a real car, right? It went 49.4 on a full slick. So that's not really part of the whole Time Attack deal over there. But Ferris is a hell of a driver, and he's a hell of a builder.
But if Ferris hung a couple of turbos off of a GTL, I know that the GTL-M isn't really the thing, but let's say there was a GT3. Well, there is now. The C8, they have a GT3 version, right? But let's say that a C7 or a C6, whatever, GTL-M car was a GT3 car. and the arrow was already all figured out and the shocks were already all figured out and the spring rates and the sway bars and all that stuff was already all figured out right um if he hung a pair of turbos on that i am very confident in his driving but like he doesn't have a 50 million dollar budget to figure this stuff out over the course like and i'm not saying they had a 50 million dollar budget for one year but what everyone i've made this argument to people before they say well they only spend x amount per year but they've learned everything they've learned they have notes from every year they've ever done right from back that's why they set up when they go when an f1 team goes to a track base setup is the easy part and then they're just like tweaking Right. So if you, you know, if you took a C6 GTLM car over to G-Speed and they hung a couple of turbos off that and probably changed nothing else. Double the horsepower. Yeah, it's probably game over. It's probably just, like, game over. But the GTLM car isn't going to be a VIN chassis. But I'm just saying that's the same type of thing as the Huracan with the turbos on it, right? Or whatever, right? Like, if that existed, it would only be marginally slower. You know, the GTLM were not that. They were mostly, like, power and weight difference. But, like, tire and air and stuff like that was not that much different. So that's still, like...
There's a lot of those cars out there. And I'm not saying that, like, I'm saying this without not a dog in a fight anymore. I'm not building, I don't know what the current car is. Well, you drove an unlimited car, like, recently. Correct, but it's not going to be a time attack car anymore. It's done in its time attack career. Probably never coming back. It's going to be a race car. You're talking about the Evo, right? Evo race car? The Evo is going to Guyana to be a wheel-to-wheel car for its life.
You live a weird life, Jim. And you're probably going to go down and drive it, right? That's correct. It's going to be exciting. Drive a 870 horsepower Evo at the equator in a 15-minute race should be intriguing. Yeah, that's a whole deal, dude. Big, rad, big fans. I think the fans are 40 amps per fan. How many alternators? One 270-amp alternator from DC Alternators in California. Why don't they put a couple of them, like run one off a drive shaft or something? Because this is a bolt-on type of deal. 270 amps.
That's a big amp alternator. That's a big amp alternator. That's like a 15 horsepower alternator. I've just heard about, I just found out about him recently, but he was into drifting and he couldn't get an alternator to stay together in his drift car. And he started building alternators in his garage and it's like turned into a thing. And now I guess like almost every car at the Baja has one of his alternators on it. DC alternators? DC alternators. I'll have to look at him. That's cool. Speaking of. But anyways, I don't really have an iron in the fire, but to me. You also like might drive your Integra someday again with a chop up. Correct. But I feel like, you know. Man, you've been talking to Luke too much. You keep saying correct.
Yeah, I have been. Luke says correct all the time. Luke McGrew. I love that. I think that part of what makes Unlimited special is the path that Will went down, the path that I went down, the path that Ferris is going down. I agree. And I think that when you hang a couple of turbos off a GT3 car...
and then you hire a professional driver i don't think that that's i don't believe that that's the path and i believe that if you uh buy a huracan and turbo it and then have to figure out your own coilovers and have to figure out your own arrow and your own sway bars and your own everything that car's not going 15s at road atlanta on the first day but i'm not convinced if jeff westfall drives a 1000 wheel horsepower gt3 huracan with a professional team that set it up i'm not convinced it doesn't go 15s on the first day at road atlanta yeah there's there's this weird like gray line of unlimited time It feels a little bit like it's attempting to be this exclusive club. I don't really like that you might say it's not unlimited because they didn't build it themselves. That's not going to be for everyone.
rp 968 like barton or whatever his name is did not build that car no but they had they figured it out yeah and they figured it out for a decade porsche didn't figure it out they figured it out yeah those crazy people that put too much money that weird old like 968 front engine yeah that weird old front engine porsche like they figured things out and like and i think that's what makes it special yeah well but again like this is gonna make me unpopular but you're you're arguing that in order for it to be time attack it needs to be done inefficiently because Well, we've already, as humans, we've figured all this stuff out already. But it only counts if you do it by figuring it out again. That's kind of every driver in Gridlife, though. Realistically, that's almost every single car. It's most of them, yeah. It's many of them. I forget what it was, but some judge ruled about pornography. I can't define it, but I'll know it when I see it. I don't know what a limited car is, but I'll know it when I see it. How about this? I'll counter you, Abe. I'll counter you. I would accept that an overall Gridlife record was held by a super unlimited car. Okay.
I wouldn't dispute. We already have that at Streets of Willow. We have that at Laguna. I'm okay with the overall grid life record being not an asterisk, like straight up. This is the overall grid life record. So then in your opinion, how does the unlimited rule book need to change to capture the spirit of what you're talking about?
i don't i think the unlimited rulebook is perfect as is personally i think it's i think unlimited basically is do whatever you want start with a vin chassis leave 25 of the floor or roughly i forget exactly what we said but like a vin chassis a little bit of unibody still or floor or whatever you decide to build it out of um and that's that's a car that evolved into a race car versus like wait though is um i i can't remember i know that i should have this memorized but i don't if you bought a honda civic uh tca car from honda yes That also can compete in Unlimited, and none of us are disputing that right now, right? No, that hasn't been. Are you sure?
I don't think a body in white has a VIN. I don't think they do. I think a body in white has a VIN. It's not a road legal VIN, but I believe it has a VIN. How about this? I believe that grid life and what makes grid life special is having common sense. And I think that grid life knows the difference between a GTLM Corvette and a body in white Honda Civic. I think, I believe that, and we're talking about a specific case, but I believe that one does have a VIN. But there are some things like Ryan's Subaru from Japan that doesn't have a VIN or had like a weird VIN and it's not real.
They make them run Pro Comp in GTA. And I think that's weird because that's just an old Subaru. You know what I mean? I don't think that is. I think that's a thing, that car. No, that's just an old Subaru chassis. It's like an old Hawkeye chassis. I don't think that that's a regular. I think that that was a purpose-built race car. Well, it was. It was like a body in white from Subaru. I think one of the reasons why that car is what it is is I could be wrong, but I thought that car had weird pickup points in all sorts of ways. Maybe it does. I don't actually know. I'm not positive on it, but I think that that car would probably be legal to run in.
maybe in grid life unlimited i mean that i think it has actually but it feels like to me that feels like a limited time like who cares pick up points whatever but that comes back to the common sense argument the i don't disagree with the common sense argument but it is difficult to enforce consistently if if you're being challenged regularly and you're having to rely on well it's it's my rodeo so i'll just do it how i want it i don't want ta1 cars and i don't want gt3 cars how about that Yeah, sure. I don't know. Because if you brought a turbo TA1 car out, like, what is... That's a super unlimited car. Right. But I just feel like a GT3 car feels like it belongs in the same place as a TA1 car. Oh, it depends on the year of GT3 as well. Like, those things have evolved a lot. Yep. Even a 10-year-old GT3 is a pretty good car. Probably true. Probably, you know...
I don't know when GT3 even started. I will say that I rode in... I know they're very different, but I rode in one or two of the GT4 competition class cars, and I was not impressed with how powerful they were at all. Which ones did you ride? The FCP cars. The only thing that I admired about those cars was how well the brakes were. The braking. Holy smokes, did they stop. So one thing I noticed, I did the iRacing roar before the 24, and I ran the... What did I run? I ran the...
bmw gt4 car and it went 167 miles per hour 166 somewhere in around there before breaking for turn one and then uh we were doing the 24 hours atona i never got to drive we got wrecked before it was my stint um but it's incredible the different how they make speed so it only did 174 but it does it's like 165 way early and it's an air wall and the gt4 just keeps on humming all the way along it just keeps on and on and on accelerating because it's such low drag and low horsepower you know probably at some point the the gt3 versus the gt4 is probably 20 miles an hour difference but then it's that air wall is is something in in your opinion uh you've driven daytona the one time that we did it with the season champions yep is that like a good Is there a good track for, like, a benchmark for, you know, obviously, Imset has a bunch of BOP between the Roar and the 24-hour. Like, what's your thought about a track like that versus, like, a track like Mid-Ohio? Oh, sorry. I thought you were asking if it would be a good track for JLTC. No, I think it actually probably would be a pretty good track for JLTC. I think any track where you have draft creates amazing racing. Yeah. As long as it's not, like, locked draft like Spectrum Auto. Yeah, I'm kind of curious your thoughts on that track versus, like, a Mid-Ohio or Road America. Like, those are three very different places. I think that Road America is seemingly not as drafty as I would expect it to be.
I think that, you know, the next, it is happening there, but I think because of our relatively low top speeds and because of just quite the length of the straightaways, I feel like if they were another 300 feet longer, man, you could really do some stuff with the draft, but not always is it as effective as I think it would be, excuse me, cool to be. But I think Daytona... the draft would be exciting because i think a car that's maybe not quite as fast because the straightaway so long might get in between two cars and all of a sudden still maybe i'll be able to make a move on you know into the braking zone or something like that where it normally maybe couldn't yeah i could be wrong but i just i see the how different cars are on iRacing when you're when you're running that and sometimes how different they are in straight line speeds and stuff like that but they can still hang around in the draft and i think that's intriguing what do you think of that place in real life when you drove k24 honda fit that we had there I was so excited just to experience Daytona. I remember as soon as I got out on track and then I came out on a NASCAR turn one, I guess it is, or I guess it's kind of between one and two. I remember thinking, this is so cool. I wonder how high it feels when you go up to the wall. And I just turned right. I didn't turn right, but I just like open the wheel and let it go straight up to the wall, like 10 feet off the wall. And I tried to peek down to my lap a little bit. And I was like, wow, this is cool up here. You're like three stories up. It was so cool. One of the biggest regrets of my time being connected to grid life was not going to that.
Dude, it was nuts. I know. That's why I regret. They gave me the crappiest stint, too. They gave me the worst stint of all time. It was so memorable. I'm so happy that I got it. I go out on track. It's my fault. No one told me the wheel offsets were different wheels. As I'm getting in the car, they're pulling the right front wheel off. I forget exactly, but I have this weird memory of you saying the brake rotor's cracked. As soon as the wheel came off, the brake rotor broke.
i don't worry about that i just remember we put a different tire on the right front yeah we put we put like so we had like 205 like n fara something tires on there and then we put a 245 rival on the right hand outside so someone asked me my opinion of if the car would be weird no one told me that the wheel was a different width the wheel was a different offset and the tire was a different width they just asked if i thought that a next rival and a rival would be like would make the car feel weird and i was like the way daytona is It doesn't have a lot of transition stuff or anything like that. You're in one corner or another corner other than the bus stop. The bus stop was kind of easy in that car anyways. It was great, actually. And I was like, these tires are both so close to similar peak grip levels. I was like, I would send it. And you went out and came right back in. And then they were like, it's a different offset. It's a different width. The tire's a different width. The tire's a different height. I'm like, why didn't they even tell me that? The biggest problem, the only reason I came in, it wasn't grip. It was that the brake rotor, it was knocking the pad back so bad. Because as soon as you took the wheel off, the brake rotor broke.
and it had this like quartering gap yeah we changed it afterwards but i think also you remember you saying that it was pulling because of that one wheel on the well i would hit the brakes and once i pump the brakes up uh then the car would uh like effectively turn right like up into the wall which was weird um i did a couple i did a couple laps while you guys got ready but um yeah my first lap like everybody everybody we had like four or five driver changes and everything was fine except for we had like fuel extra because the car didn't take fuel very well i think we're putting nine and a half gallons in it or something like that yeah we were like six and a half or something we had to like do two fuel we did basically we had to fuel it twice versus our competition we still like we still finished like 14th out of like 110 or something it was incredible uh the um car was really pretty good except for when it like cocked out on you if you like pussyfooted it you had to beat on it or else the thing went into lint mode um it was weird i never got lint mode i'm proud of that yeah i got it one time when i was learning the racetrack because the well because the brakes which i'll talk about in a second um so i did one i did like half a warm-up lap behind that vw bug that was like down it was pitted like
five paddock spots to the left of us or five pit spots to the left of us it was so slow so i go out behind this vw bug and a bunch of people are passing us so i do the entire infield behind the vw bug just because i'm like i don't even know where i'm going and there's a bunch of cars freight training me i'm gonna find a gap right we get up on the on the oval you do the left out on the oval and nascar 2 or whatever and i'm coming up on the bus stop i'm like this bus stop looks easy i'm gonna do this thing flat i do the bus stop flat i still have not touched the brakes because i'm behind a vw bug through the entire infield um and i'm going around and the sun is in my eyes so i would round like the the back turns before you come on the front straight and i would pull my left hand up and like hold my left hand over my eye or like block the sun and then i would come on the front straight this is like the sunset like i'm on the front straight the first time i'm passing all the pits pit stop or pit lanes uh spots and i'm like man this is so cool i'm at daytona and i go for the brakes and the pedal just goes clunk on the floor and and like it literally like made a clunk that i heard and i was like oh and i scooped it up with my foot and i pump it was like the first pump was like almost to the floor the second pump was almost something and then the third pump was like oh we're locked up now we had a four-wheel lockup and i and i basically like formula drifted my first entry into turn one i don't know how and i it was full lock counter steer i was like all locked up it was completely out of sorts and it was just a mess and it was because the the broken rotor had like kicked the pads back so bad
So I got on the radio and told them that they had to change that. And then they put the old tire back on, and then the car was like, fine. It was kind of boring, actually. That car probably would have been, if it had a Gear X 806 gear or an 856 gear or something like that, that car would have been like three seconds a lap faster, I think. And if you could take decent fuel, we would have won that race by 7, 10 laps. Yeah, if that had a fuel cell in it and a 6 gear in it and nothing else changed, we would have won that race. It was so fun. It was just a fun event. I was impressed.
Well, for a strut front solid rear axle car, it was pretty good. Yeah, fits are pretty good, man. Sunday Cup cars can rule. They're just pretty fun to drive. They don't suck at all. Anyway, well, we should probably put Abe to bed because he's going to turn into a pumpkin. Cole's notes. Your cars are not optimized, so don't complain about getting a percent for something because you're so far away anyways. How much is a percent worth anyway? Three quarters of a tenth. Three quarters of a tenth on what kind of track? Two mile long.
I've been telling people it's one-tenth. It's not quite a tenth. No, I know. We've looked at a lot of data. It's not quite a tenth. So when you say that such-and-such needs 1% or such-and-such needs a percent back or whatever, just remember your cars probably could go a second faster with more optimization.
I'm trying to be so nice with these percentages also. We're trying not to upset the apple cart too much, but also we're trying to inch our way towards parity. It probably doesn't surprise anyone who listens to this show. Adam and I take a dramatically different stance on how to move the needle. Abe is like, get stuffed. And Adam's like, don't be mad at me. Probably the biggest parity swing that we've ever made in GLTC ever was 3% for Nexons. And everybody's like, what the heck? And in qualifying, it's probably still not enough.
But if you look at Nexon's on their first laps, their first hate cycle, that's a 5%, 6%, 7%, 8% tire. It's wild. It's so much better. It makes me so mad. I should have never allowed it, and maybe I won't, unless Nexon wants to give me money. I think that it's very impressive. The Kumo and the Falcon are probably going to be more of the main tires this year because people are afraid of 2.5 tenths, even though it's probably 5 tenths faster. But I think that it's incredible that we have a Falcon and a Nexon, or sorry, a Falcon and a Kumo that seemingly get faster as they wear. Yeah.
I also had a call with the head of Falcon about 6 o'clock tonight about there's a new Falcon coming. There's some things coming from Falcon. I think Falcon's going to have a really good 660 about April or May. It'll be lighter, same compound, but lighter and probably better in many ways. Maybe not earth-changing.
you know what the exciting thing about this is that i'm excited about is that it doesn't say there might be rule changes mid-season it says there will be rule changes mid-season and i think that i think that that's really cool because it's um you don't have to hum and haw whether you know if you think something that needs a percent or minus two or this or that whatever um i think that it's great to know that you're kind of probably will be like well yeah we're gonna do it because it says we're gonna do something yep adam do you want to talk about uh horsepower calculation Yeah. Yes. Fine. Talk about whatever you want. I'm on the show. I'm here. It's still alive. There is a calculator. It exists. It seems to be pretty good compared to when you go to the calculator. It is pretty good. We're ready yet. Yeah. Well, also the reason I didn't want to go with a calculator immediately was that no one has that info from their dino graphs. Like they don't have that Wimpep.
It's basically an Excel spreadsheet that they put into this calculator. They don't have it because we haven't sent that data. And no dino shop sends that data. They just send a graph. So maybe over the next few months, we'll build some data. Yeah, I think everybody that gets that dino on our dino will get sent the entire file. So we'll have all that data. And then over the next couple months, we play with...
a bunch of different cars and make sure we like where the calculator is and make sure we like the parity. And I think that's probably going to be a part of the mid-season revision. One thing that I find a little bit comical... And that will assign the percentage for modifier and whatever. One thing that I find a little bit comical is when you use the calculator, some of the people that are begging for the calculator the most...
We'll call it the calculator instead of calling it. Might not go well for them. They might be better off now. And maybe those people are, you know, truly, truly happy with just legitimacy and they're not worried about that. But I just find it funny that some of the people that are loudest about it might be getting a couple more percent with the calculator. Well, we got to play the calculator a little bit, but yeah, right now they might. The interesting thing.
What I found most incredible was the amount of RPMs that we were checking and how little it was changing it. It was not doing what I thought it was going to do at all. That was the biggest thing that I was amazed by. 25 to 32 to 35. Do you want to give a quick 10-second explanation of how the calculator samples things? Because you, myself, and another driver have effectively, we're the only ones that play with it, a couple other drivers. So it's basically where we're thinking right now is it looks at your best 32 points. It looks at the dyno in 100 RPM increments, and it looks at your best.
32. And we also played with it at 35, at 40. Yeah. And it seems like, I think that when we look at data from all the different tracks, it seems like 32 is probably the number that's the best for the entire field. And you put those 32 in and it gives you a modifier. Yeah. It's based on average based on that. Yeah. And so it's incredible. You know, I think that people are always loud when it comes to, you know, any rule changes or anything like that. But what's pretty cool is, is when we look at the, you know, through all the dynos data that we have.
or that you have, I should say. we've looked through a lot of stuff yeah i've taken a bunch of dyno data out of a computer i wouldn't say that other than one outlier that we won't talk about just yet uh that's really flat incredibly flat like laser level flat right the rest of the field is probably almost every single car is within one percent of where it is going to be with the current 20 and the outlier the outlier that you're talking about was not a v8 that was not a v8 the v8s were not not near as flat as this laser level yeah i don't the laser level is an impressive tuning from a certain person. I'm not familiar. His name is Rick. Might have been a really good K24. Rick's pretty good at flat-tuning and a K24. It seems like it. Anyway, now that we've talked about all the nerdery, what are you excited about for 2024? Because we've not started, but we're in it, and we're almost to Dakota. What do you think about James?
i'm really excited about the best 14 instead of the best weekends because i think that at our level of grassroots racing people explain for people that don't know the rules okay so last year it was your best five of eight events and when someone's won three right off the bat the season's looking pretty wrapped up like in june it's not it's not decided but it's it's it's real on its way to being decided um and this year it's going to be your best 14 individual races plus pit race and all four of the pit race races will count i like that and i and i know on a personal note um we did pretty well at coda and race number one and we did pretty well at coda and race number three um but because of a hub failure in race number two we might as well have not gone to coda yeah and i think that for the average gltc racer that's not life cycling out engines that's not life cycling out transmissions with ab you'll be very happy we are now life cycling out final drives in our transmission i think you'll be very very happy to hear that yeah that bums me out to think about that though man high power heavy big grip front wheel drive thing you know it's still worth something when i sell it it probably costs me uh if the transmission's out anyways just in the part
it probably costs me about $400 to life cycle it out because I'll sell it. It makes sense for sure. But we just aren't doing that in all of our parts, right? So you're going to have failures unless you're spending an exuberant amount of money. Is that the right word? Exorbitant. Is that what it is? Exuberant is with enthusiasm. You could be really enthusiastic about money. I think that is correct. So I think most people are changing parts as they feel it's needed. And when you're changing parts as you feel it's needed, eventually you're going to go to a really far away track.
and you're going to have a couple of good races, and then James Houghton's going to plow into you at New Jersey Motorsports Park and ruin the rest of your weekend, and that's a shame that that made it not good for that event. Why'd you do that to him, James? It was terrible. Terrible. You were the saddest dude I've ever seen. I was just, like, crying. He had to, like, console me while we were waiting for the tow truck, because I was crying. Yeah, you were so sad when you hit Eric Denson. I'd never hit anyone before. Yeah. Didn't you lock up and just smash into the back of a car?
I missed the first car. He was the second car. It was so dirty and dusty offline because it hadn't rained in a year. Yeah, it was really dry. And everyone checked up crazy for that left-hander at New Jersey there. I can't remember what turn number it was. And I was like, I can't. I'm not going to slow down 200 feet earlier than normal. And if I would have been tight to them instead of going, I was trying to give them lots of space. And I got so far over, I was more in the dirty stuff. And I went to the brakes. And I was really appreciative of Robert Thorne. He's like, it didn't look like you braked at a crazy spot. He's like, but your car just didn't slow down.
Yeah. I thought that was nice that Robert kind of gave me the benefit of that. He's like, it didn't look like you dive bombed anyone. He's like, sometimes it just doesn't work. I would say that I'm extra careful. If you look at my, you know, braking for back straight at Coda in 23, I was probably too careful most of the time, but I'm just not willing to accept risking hitting someone's car again. It just, I mean, it could happen someday from a failure or whatever, you know, oil down or something like that. I'm not saying it could never happen again, but I'm going to try.
harder than you would imagine would be necessary to not hit cars because it was you were the saddest boy you were so sad and then we had to drive all the way home and it was tired and hot and everything it was the hottest weekend of all oh and i love loved beef and shatters from arby's this is this is gross but anyways i love beef and shatters from arby's and i had them always not like always like i'd have four a year yeah and we had them on the way down and throughout that weekend not only did we have cranky trigger errors and i crashed the car and it was hot but i had the worst case of the d i've ever had in my entire life for two weeks after that beef and cheddar i still had it when we went to mid ohio we fixed the car we went to mid ohio we raced we won and i still had it It was incredible. I've never had Arby's again and I will never eat Arby's again. I bet that's what it was. Yeah. It was incredible. It was probably the Arby's. Did you have the Jim Jams? They're, it's falling out of you. But, but I really think that that best races for what we are trying to appeal to. I don't think you're trying to appeal to people life cycling out stock K24s yet. I don't think that's what we're looking for. I don't think you're wanting people to take wheels off that seem perfectly good because they might crack someday. You know, so I think that that's probably, I mean, we want people to maintain a solid race car.
For sure, for sure. But you don't want them to spend an extra $50,000 a year taking off good parts and throwing them in the bin. So part of the reason that I wanted to go towards, oh, everything counts, and then, oh, mostly everything counts, was there's that argument that, oh, if everything counts, then everybody's going to be super clean, right? But it doesn't prove out in actuality. It doesn't actually extrapolate into clean racing. Guys, keep talking. I've got to grab a phone charger cord. I'll be right back.
so the top 10 the top 15 the top 20 even like they aren't the problems that's not where people are really fighting for the points almost never hit anybody right and the people that are maybe not you know inside the top 10 top 15 top 20 are probably you know if they have a boop here and there you know we want them to be better of course we love them yeah but they might be they might just be driving over their head they might be driving or they're just in an area there's a lot of cars close to them or whatever but i don't think that that's changing i think a mid in the back of the pack is actually probably the toughest place to race because so many cars they there's so much more disparity in the way they make speed but they're all around the same lap times they're always around each other uh versus like the top five they start to get nose to tail and you're chasing it's a perfect example of it race for gentlemen i started from the back probably should have not even bothered racing but we were just kind of thought well what the hell go out drive and i think i can't remember it's lap one or lap two turn one um someone checked up really hard because they were trying to give space and i was just i wasn't attacking i was just like kind of rolling you know eight and a half out of ten pace i was of course trying to pass cars when you start from the back you're not out there to finish last with a car that runs towards the front normally and i kind of checked up and then let the you know like i say eight and a half instead of ten out of ten the car behind me pushed really hard the car in front of me was being even more careful and then somehow there was another car i think that was kind of wide and kind of came back in and all of a sudden we were four wide in turn one and i don't think anyone was trying to do anything wrong there
right it was just a thing that happened and i went and we made it through and no one touched anyone and it was great but like that that you know whether that race counted for points or not or anything like that it wouldn't have changed what happened in that scenario no one was trying to be a bozo there it just yeah the mid in the back of the pack is hard like it's the hardest place to race yeah so i think that i think what you're doing is great um i think that it will make people happier you know i think i think back to race one 2022 coda we come back after not being there for two years we win our first race back blow the motor up in the second race and we might as well if not gone right But like, it's cool to still have, you know, some recognition for that win. Yep. Yeah. If it's just weekend points and you're, we're still building our own cars. Like, yeah. Reliability should be a thing, but also we should recognize successes when individual races are so hard to do well in. They're just, they're hard to do well. We tried really hard in 2022. We had our issues, but we tried really, really hard in 2022. And you had some good weekends. We had a really fast car, but we only won two individual races the whole year, right? It is hard. You had like five great races and like 10 bad ones and 20 terrible ones. Yep. Yep. So.
I think that regardless of what people think, see, whatever at face value, I think when people kind of see the points and how they're adding up and stuff like that, I think that everyone will be pleased with what they see because they will be rewarded for their good finishes. And I think they'll be rewarded for good finishes. There's a lot of ways to skin the cat in season points, but the compromise and like the if this, then that kind of stuff, like we've changed, or I specifically changed my mentality on a lot of that in the past couple of years based on like seeing all these efforts and these programs and stuff like that and demanding perfection. And like, it just results in like, the season championship not meaning a whole lot because they, they won it in July. Um, and also like the competition is not that great.
technicalities shouldn't win championships. It should be fun at the end, in my opinion. When you look at the best 14, a person could have a really strong first four weekends, and if a person goes on an absolute tear at the end of the season, they could still kind of bring it down to pit race. I would love if the championship was decided in the last race. We almost had that a couple years ago. That's what I want, and I also want, I don't want if somebody has one bad race.
to throw a weekend away and then feel like, well, what's the point in doing this? That's the biggest thing. So anyway, Abe, you still there? Did you die? I'm here, but I think it's about time to go to bed because I've got to export this and then sometime tomorrow night, I'll probably release it. It's 11 o'clock and Abe's got to go wine and dine some people from Spain in like five hours. No, it's not global. It's only North and South America. So they're all going home tomorrow, but I still got to be at work by like 8 a.m. So I appreciate your staying up late for it. Cool. I'll see you guys later.
I really appreciate you guys having me on. It's fun. It's always fun. Who do you got to thank real quick, James? You got 10 seconds or we're going to cut you off. It'll be the Oscars. Unit 2 Fabrication, K-Tune, Levine Motorsports, Falcon Tire, Koenig Wheels, Link ECU. Out and rest control. Out and rest control. Vern and Diane Houghton and my lovely wife. Yeah, amazing people. Ivan's Auto Service. Nice. He doesn't even know how many sponsors he has. Hang on, give me two more seconds and I'll thank them properly.
Travis Schmidt, our wiring guy, the best. G-Lock Rake, the best. C-17 Auto Armor that have been wrapping my stuff for a million years. Team Rip for their great transmission things. SimTech for all the great CFD, machining, all that sort of thing. Those are our people. Those are our main crew. If you deal with any one of those people, you will be a happy camper. Man, everybody loves Canadians. Nobody's going to be upset. So if you made it an hour and 20 minutes into this show, just know that there's another 20 minutes or so on Patreon. Thanks, everybody. There's some good stuff in there. All right, good job. Goodbye.
Slip Angle was created by Austin Cabot and Adam Gibe, 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.