We Won a Race! ft. Tommy Kendall and Jonny Lieberman!

Matt spent the weekend endurance racing with Jonny Lieberman, racing legend Tommy Kendall, and Super Trofeo ace, Mateo Siderman. The result was a surprise to all of them. A story not to be missed. Plus Patreon questions include: Should we regulate the speed of EVs? How did Matt's laps compare to his time in the 750S? When is the next race? Are used R1S a good idea? Should I get a CHEAP Cayenne for a daily? How special does a special edition need be? Why don't we consider "cash on the hood" incentives when we review cars? Can my BMW shifter ever be as good as my GR86? Should automatic lights be required? And more! Recorded December 8, 2025 SHOW NOTES DeleteMe Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to www.joindeleteme.com slash TIRE and use promo code TIRE at checkout. Quince Go to https://www. Quince.com/tire for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That’s quince.com/tire TrueWerk Get 15% off your first order at https://www. TRUEWERK.com with CODE: TIRE Rula Thousands of guys have already used Rula to finally get the care they needed. Don’t keep putting it off - go to https://www. Rula.com/tire and get started today. Take the first step, get connected, and take control of your mental health. New merch! Grab a shirt or hoodie and support us! https://thesmokingtireshop.com/ Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! For a 10% discount on your first case go to https://www.offtherecord.com/TST Want your question answered? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast Instagram: https://www. Instagram.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Instagram.com/therealzackklapman

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Farah?

  What up everybody, welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Off the Record. And if you drive on America's highways and byways, then sooner or later, you are going to get pulled over and you could very likely be getting a ticket that could put points on your license. And points could potentially affect your insurance rates, your employment, your credit score, could affect a variety of things. And you don't want them, trust me. That's why we at the Smoking Tire only use Off the Record. If you get pulled over, don't plead guilty. Go to offtherecord.com/tst. That's offtherecord.com/tst.

• 0:41Matt Farah?

  And we will give you 10% off all legal services with Off the Record. Wherever you got that ticket, Off the Record will assign a qualified attorney in their network to fight it for you. And other than submitting the ticket and a little bit of information, you have to do basically nothing. And if they don't get those points off your record, you don't pay. So many people email me about Off the Record and how they have gotten those points off of people's license. And it could be you next. So go to offtherecord.com/tst. 10% off all legal services with Off the Record. All right, on this episode of the podcast, Johnny Lieberman and Tommy Kendall are joining us in studio

• 1:23Matt Farah?

  because we were class winners at Circuit of the Americas this past weekend. And we're here to download the race a bit and talk about it. It's a good time and we got a very pretty trophy. It's the Smoking Tire Podcast, let's go. What's up? Hi.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 1:41Matt Farah?

  Hi. Johnny Lieberman in studio. Yo. Tommy Kendall is in studio.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Howdy.

• 1:48Matt Farah?

  And two apologies, start up front. I seem to have picked up the racetrack sniffles from being outside.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  You mean sick or like just worn down?

• 1:57Matt Farah?

  Worn down and like I'm a little sniffly. Well, fine, sounds like shit.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  What flavor of COVID did you get in Texas?

• 2:03Matt Farah?

  I don't have COVID. I did take a COVID test this morning. I do add a precaution. I do not have COVID. But I feel a little, a little... worn down um but uh and also the other apology is that uh Tato and Sergio aren't here because they're still in Texas and I'm not trying to like do a show about a thing that these guys invited us to without them but we had to do a show today anyway and I don't want to talk about anything other than the fact that we went to Texas rented a race car and won a race.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Right, some hardware.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Sweet.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, baby.

• 2:40Matt Farah?

  Uh, I mean, this was a good time. Uh, and of course, you know, all anyone wants to know is whether I went faster or Johnny went faster.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Matt went way faster than me. Matt was way faster than me.

• 2:52Matt Farah?

  I went a little faster, but that's okay.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  Tommy, you owe me a thousand dollars. I'm just kidding.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, wait a second. Yeah, Matt, Matt is much faster than I am.

• 3:01Matt Farah?

  It was still, it was fun. It was, I mean, so it was like, it was, you know, practice day and then it turns out like for us, I think Saturday felt like a practice race.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  It was.

• 3:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Like, like dress rehearsal for a Sunday race, maybe, right?

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like how they do it as two separate rounds, you know, because lemons, it's cumulative, right, the two days?

• 3:20Matt Farah?

  Yes, yes.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  And so, um, you know, we, we got all our mistakes in on Saturday for sure.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, the difference, because, you know, Tato, who again, not here, like, he got out of the car both days in P1. When he got out of the car, that car was in P1.

• 3:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  The big difference was, and I'm gonna flate you for a second, Matt, if you don't mind, you got out of the car, uh, when I, on, uh, on the first day at P7.

• 3:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  When you got out of the car, second day was P2.

• 3:48Matt Farah?

  Also that.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yes, so that was the difference, was that you improved radically from day to day.

• 3:54Matt Farah?

  I listened to the data.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:56Matt Farah?

  Which is funny because I actually did, I didn't really.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  I did a little bit. You did because, because you didn't fluctuate. You, you, you, you had, you had no laps that were, you, because, you know, your, your best lap and your best lap on both days was about the same.

• 4:10Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  But your worst lap on Saturday was five seconds slower than your worst lap on Sunday.

• 4:17Matt Farah?

  That's true. My misses got better.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  The cluster was. They were all the cluster was together.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  So that was, you know.

• 4:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah, there were some lessons, some hard lessons learned over wine and data.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I really, I wish that video.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  That was an epiphany, was it not?

• 4:30Matt Farah?

  Well, dude, so this, okay, so, so, all right. So where do we, how do we?

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Real quick, here's where we start. Do you remember, because he doesn't remember. Do you remember when he punched himself in the head four times?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Where's Sergio?

• 4:43Matt Farah?

  I was very frustrated. I was frustrated because I've been taught, I've been taught some lies.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  He went like this really hard.

• 4:49Matt Farah?

  I don't, I mean, I didn't do it hard enough to like hurt myself, you know? Obviously, unless, I don't know, maybe it was permanent. Maybe that's why I was better than that. But, uh, okay, so. How do, do you want to, do we want to tell this chronologically or do we really just want to talk about Sunday?

• 5:04Speaker 02

  You're the boss.

• 5:06Matt Farah?

  I don't know. I don't know. I didn't plan this, huh?

• 5:09Speaker 03

  I say chronologically.

• 5:10Matt Farah?

  Chronologically.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Because I, I'm curious about.

• 5:12Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  Practice and all of it, like, and I haven't, I haven't asked him anything all weekend.

• 5:16Matt Farah?

  And practice.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  And practice, but, but, but the, the race, uh, we got off to a bad start because our team opened throttle, forgot to put gas in the car.

• 5:26Matt Farah?

  I feel bad. The first time we mentioned these wonderful people.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  The best, the best.

• 5:31Matt Farah?

  And the great job they did that led to a race win.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:35Matt Farah?

  The first mention in this show is, is about a mistake and that's unfair. I think it's unfair to them. We had, we had a full, a full day of practice. They brought a bunch of BMWs.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:45Matt Farah?

  Not just our race car. They had a little, they had like an F, an F thirty, like three twenty on good tires and suspension. And I took probably twenty-five extra laps in it just to lap, like, like press launch, like, was that car free? Yeah, like, go.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, that's exactly what it was like, because you're like, is that thing available? I can take it out. I'm, I'm out of here.

• 6:06Matt Farah?

  They also had a, a gutted, uh, uh, E ninety-two M three with like straight pipes on it that I did about ten laps in. Until the brakes completely failed. Uh, and, uh, that thing was a riot. I mean, it was, that thing was like, it's sad.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  And that was what we were supposed to be driving, so. Well, I, I raced with these guys, uh, Watkins Glen in, in twenty-four, and there's a car called Hulk, and that was what we. We were gonna drive and it's a, it's a E ninety-two V-eight. It's, it's a real bully. It's real fast, real powerful. Um, that car got sick and so they had a, we were in a M two-three-five-I Club Sport, which is great because it's like a factory new for their shit.

• 6:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  It's a very new car.

• 6:49Matt Farah?

  And also five hundred pounds lighter than the M three.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, down quite a bit of power.

• 6:54Matt Farah?

  Uh, the M three was faster in the straight, the black one that I drove. But the, the, our car was better in the corners and our car was faster. Like overall, our car's faster.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, could turn a faster lap for sure.

• 7:04Matt Farah?

  So Tato qualified and yeah, like unfortunately, Mike Gorman, open throttle, lovely guy, their whole team. We got assigned this dude Zach to be our, what's the, what was the term? Crew chief? Is that what Zach's role was? Uh, on the radio, organizing the strategy. Um, I don't know, how old is Zach?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Twenty-four.

• 7:22Matt Farah?

  Twenty-four? Wow. Zach was twenty-four.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  And let me, I can find out. I'll let you text Tato.

• 7:27Matt Farah?

  Either way, he's a young man. He was, he's a young man.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just so people are clear, Tato is Mateo.

• 7:32Matt Farah?

  Correct.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yes, Tato is Mateo Siderman.

• 7:34Matt Farah?

  Uh, Sergio, Tato's dad, was on this show a couple of months ago talking about immigration law. It was, it was incredibly insightful and it's only gotten worse, so we're gonna have him back to talk about that. Uh, he's our team principal, Sergio, we could say, and, uh, and Mateo is his son, who's a twenty-one-year-old uh, super Trofeo-driving hot shoe that makes time appear out of air. Um, and is an unbelievably fast fucking racing driver. Uh...

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Tommy, would you second that?

• 8:03Speaker 02

  I would second that, yes. When I told my wife that I was not the fastest in the car, she's like, "What?"

• 8:09Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Uh, so, by the way, he had you by three seconds?

• 8:15Matt Farah?

  Wait, so what, alright.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Pretty close, pretty close.

• 8:18Matt Farah?

  What was your, Johnny, what was your, what was your best lap? Guys, gotta take a quick break for Delete Me sponsoring us today. Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable. Right? So when you sign up for something online, when you get a DoorDash... Any kind of thing where you have to put in a credit card, shipping information, right? These companies then sell your data to data brokers who then sell that data to whoever, right? And that's how you get scam text messages, phishing, spam emails, fake phone calls, all that garbage, right? So, what you do, you go to DeleteMe, right?

• 9:03Matt Farah?

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• 9:47Matt Farah?

  Now, at a special discount for our listeners, you can get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindelete.me/tire and use promo code tire at checkout. That's the only way to get 20% off. Go to joindelete.me/tire and enter code tire at checkout. Joindelete.me/tire, code tire. And support is coming in hot today from Rula, because finding a therapist is hard enough. But finding one who actually takes your insurance, that's where most online therapy platforms fall short, not to mention in-person therapists. Many don't work with insurance at all, which means you're stuck paying the full cost out of pocket or paying for an expensive monthly subscription.

• 10:32Matt Farah?

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• 11:15Matt Farah?

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• 12:00Matt Farah?

  After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them and please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's R U L A dot com slash tire. You deserve mental health care that works with you and not against your budget.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  What was your best lap? Do you remember?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  I have no idea. I didn't even look. I, I, I was not having, when I, I was having a bad day on Saturday. I slept, well, no excuses. I just, I was very slow.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  You flew in from Portugal.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  I flew from Portugal, but I, you know, I just, I just never, um, I, I, I just never got the S's. I never got the S's and I was getting just murdered at the end of the second S. Everybody passed me because I was like, uh, and, and then I was just in my own head. I was very slow.

• 12:43Matt Farah?

  I didn't mean to like harp on it.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  That's fine, yeah.

• 12:45Matt Farah?

  I think it was like a forty-five.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:48Matt Farah?

  I think.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, could have been. I didn't even.

• 12:50Matt Farah?

  I did a two thirty-five-five. It was my best.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:54Matt Farah?

  And you did a thirty, did you have a thirty-three or were you in the thirty-fours, I think?

• 12:58Speaker 02

  I don't even think I was in.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I think you did a thirty-five flat.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  I think thirty-five flats both days, I think, right on the oh, never dipped in the thirty-fours.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  I remember like a thirty-five point oh-six or something like that.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  And there was like a oh-four one day, so they were both right on dead. And I was pretty sure, you know, obviously you never run a clean lap, right?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  So you're, you're, I mean, this, I used to, I used to run lots of clean laps. They're pretty darn close here, I'm like, I said, we got all our mistakes out of the way on, on Saturday. That's actually not true, because I made hundreds of mistakes on Sunday, but they were small.

• 13:34Matt Farah?

  We also gave, we gave Tommy the toughest job of driving last both days. So the car was its most worn out. So, I mean, there's, I'm sure there's time on the table there.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  One set of tires for eight hours and seven.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  And we took, we took some dumb penalties, like I got a, on Saturday, I got a fueling penalty. I didn't have my visor down in the car because I wear glasses. And if I had my visor down and we're sitting there with no airflow, they just fog up. And so I, I don't know why, this is really annoying. You have to like recycle the car, reset the rate, turn the radio on and do the fuel thing. And I couldn't see and they're like, do the.

• 14:10Matt Farah?

  There's a five or six step startup procedure on this car and to fuel it, you have to turn it off.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I flipped up my visor to like look down and poke buttons. And then we got, and Tato had gotten one earlier, I didn't know about. So they, WRL is rad, they give a lot of warnings before you get a penalty.

• 14:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Uh, but he had already had a warning for that and they take fueling seriously. So it's one warning and so we got that and then you got pushed off track or something a couple of times?

• 14:36Speaker 02

  No, I, no, it was all track limits. But it was funny because we were being told there's, there are track limits. And all my experience in practices and so forth was it's a free for all. And so I'm like, so I started my stint, I kinda did it incrementally, using more and more and more.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  They paved it, right?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  And I'm like, I haven't heard, I haven't heard any warnings, I haven't heard anything. With five minutes to go, they're like, you're out of warnings. And so I'm like, oh, so they are watching and they were clearly only there still some places they weren't monitoring or judging it.

• 15:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  And some places they were and I didn't know which was which and so and then the very last one I the the overall leaders were coming up on me and I outbroke myself trying to stay out of the way and I went off a little wide on exit there and I'm pretty sure that was the one that knocked me so I think with two minutes to go we gotta track them.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  Do you want to tell the story of the 10 tenths club or do you not want to tell that story?

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm happy to tell that story.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I saw you there. We all saw you there and I was like, oh, man, I think you won.

• 15:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you said fast at time.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  I was the fastest in the program there.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  And I just happened to like run into you, I was like, oh, man, you smoked everybody and you go, well, no one's watching the back corners.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  When I first got there, so this was last year and it's on the new 10 tenths circuit, but we were running these electric McCons and so they had these coned gates set up and so it was kind of like a hybridized, it was like an autocross. So anyone who'd ever driven the track normally was probably going to be mind effed so and there was one area where they had this gate and then the whole this huge curb and it was like you could just totally straight line it and so I'm like, that's what we're doing. And so I.

• 16:20Matt Farah?

  This is why you need a kid of and a veteran on the team together and then in the middle just someone who won't crash and fuck it all up.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:32Matt Farah?

  That's actually a winning strategy.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so on that deal, Scott Speed, I said, Speed will figure this out and so the first the first and we got two laps of practice and then then it started. So the first round Speed was quick as I was right behind him. Second round Speed was quick as I was right behind him. The third one, I think he might have had a penalty, clipped a cone and also I told my we had I had a pro am, Rob Coffin was my teammate, I said. The cones really don't matter. This thing accelerates so fast that you just want to get this thing pointed and make hay and then be tidy through this stuff. And so in the final one, I was, I nailed it. I come in and Jeff Gordon's there with his screen and he's a part owner there. And so he goes, "You got me by 31,000." I said, "Let me see that."

• 17:19Speaker 02

  I said, "I ran a 27." He goes, "Oh, my God. You got my 1.003." And so, but then Rob clipped a cone, so we didn't make it.

• 17:28Matt Farah?

  You remember Rob from the Audrain thing? He was the one with that insane Fiat. 20-liter Fiat or something he was driving.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  He's got awesome cars.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  That is good advice though, because I did a thing years ago with the guys from Roadkill, where we were doing Kia Rio versus all the Roadkill cars. And we're doing like an autocross. Thing is, no one was paying attention and I was, they were like killing me in all the cars. I was like, "What's happening?" I'm, you know, I'm, you know, Matt, you're faster than me, but I'm not that slow. And finally I looked and they were just cutting off the last corner completely. And then I did it in Freiburger's Camaro and I beat him.

• 18:03Matt Farah?

  Yeah. You've got to find the holes.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  And then I even said on camera, "I'm like, "Man, I beat you in your own car." And they cut that part out.

• 18:09Matt Farah?

  Always be the editor in situations like that.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 18:13Matt Farah?

  Okay, but in fairness to both Johnny and Tato with the visor thing, every race, amateur race I've participated in, someone on the team has gotten a fueling violation.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 18:23Matt Farah?

  It happens all, because doing this with your visor down sucks. If you can't fucking breathe.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Well, and again, my glasses just fog up.

• 18:31Matt Farah?

  So when everyone tries to like, they crack it a little bit. And I raced my whole stint with my visor up anyway.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone does. I think the penalties took us from P9 to P11.

• 18:42Matt Farah?

  I think it was more than that.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  No. The first one took us from like third or fourth to ninth and the second one took us to 11.

• 18:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah, because the fueling one was a lap penalty, a whole lap. Track limits was like 30 seconds. No, plus one lap, you're out of it, basically. Well, I shouldn't say that. Other cars could fuck up. You could break something, whatever.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so that was Saturday.

• 19:06Matt Farah?

  Which is, it was not a terrible race, but for two fairly small penalties that were like consequential.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  This is a good time to say, this is what's so cool about this. You get a glimpse into how hard this is. You watch an F1 race or a high level thing and everything just works so precisely and so. But the reality is, there's so many people doing so many jobs and there's so many opportunities. You know, it was easy, everyone would do it. And so it's refreshing, you know. I was having to think harder than I have in a long, long time. Because everything that used to be just second nature, natural to me was not, because I haven't thought about it in over a decade.

• 19:42Matt Farah?

  A cage race car since.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  I haven't been in a competitive race since, for 11 years. And so I've done a few, you know, corporate events, but you're not hustling that way. You're not trying to find the brake zones and those things. So it was, it was, you know, the brain was working hard.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  We should also real quick mention that, you know, Sergio was sitting right here on the podcast. And we were like, hey, we're doing that race in a few months. Who else is driving? And he's like, Tommy Kendall, but he hadn't actually.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  I hadn't committed yet. And I heard that, I'm like, oh, I guess I couldn't be the a-hole, but.

• 20:19Matt Farah?

  So funny. And in that first race, you know, because of that, because Toto ran out of gas during qualifying. He started P13 of 27 cars in our class and brought it to P1. Yeah. He did a double. He did, he did two hours 40 both days.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  But he's, he's very talented, that young guy. He's young and full of all the energy and very, very fast.

• 20:41Matt Farah?

  And into it. Like he really has decided this is his life's focus.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was inspiring to see because he literally, that's all he thinks about all day, every day. All day, every day. Not most of the time. Doesn't have a girlfriend that I, that I'm aware of. It's 24, and he is the most delightful kid. You know, I went to, I went to Italy and watched him compete in the world finals. And even when things didn't go well, always a smile on his face, always upbeat, always, you know, firing people up and so forth. So really, really, that parenting.

• 21:15Matt Farah?

  Sunday when it didn't go well.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Parenting A+ to, to Lolo and Sergio.

• 21:23Matt Farah?

  Um, but he, I mean, he, he put on an amazing, amazing job. And then, okay, so yeah, so Saturday, you know, not, not terrible. I mean, you know, finished mid-pack, didn't, didn't fucking DFL, didn't crash or break the car, like, not so bad, you know?

• 21:36Speaker 01

  And then we had an eight-course dinner.

• 21:38Matt Farah?

  Yeah, Chef Sergio hooking up the chef at the house, the Argentinian chef.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Reminds me of my grassroots racing days.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  You had the ratio in, uh?

• 21:48Matt Farah?

  Dude, you know, we were, uh, we were pitted next to my old teammate and coach Kevin Madsen, who was working with, uh, what are they called? Rapscallion?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Stack Racing and Rapscallion, yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Those weird Mustang-y things.

• 22:01Matt Farah?

  Leger GT cars, which are these like racing-only, non-production-based sort of tube-fram-y things that look a little awkward, but go pretty fast.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, they look like weird Mustangs.

• 22:12Matt Farah?

  But they had a fucking massage table, bro. That's what I was trying to say. I love Kevin and the cars are cool, but these guys had a massage table and, and had massages going.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  I borrowed some coffee creamer from their motor coach.

• 22:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of-

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Came out of a cow that they had in the coach.

• 22:31Matt Farah?

  Yes, there was a couple of teams that I would feel comfortable openly stealing from, honestly.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we should also mention, like, Jim Farley was there racing.

• 22:39Matt Farah?

  Paint marker.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, Farley was there.

• 22:42Matt Farah?

  We saw Jim, that he was racing a Mustang.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  With Mark Rushbrook as well.

• 22:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and we saw, Johnny and I saw a, uh, uh, uh, what appeared to be an engineering mule of a C8 Corvette that has a round steering wheel. Gotta take one more break, folks, because True Work is supporting us this week. Fall weather is coming in cold, but sometimes hot, but sometimes wet, sometimes also windy. Like, at Cota, uh, this weekend, it was all of those things on the same day. And True Work is performance workwear, built like it matters, because it does. Founded by trade professionals who are tired of wet, heavy gear, weighing them down, True Work set out to make workwear that keeps pros comfortable, capable, and ready for whatever the day throws at them.

• 23:30Matt Farah?

  Designed with advanced performance fabrics for lasting comfort, all-day mobility, and year-round job site protection. And every piece is tested on job sites with trade pros, so when conditions change, you're still ready. Now- This ad is really targeted towards trades professionals, but the fact is, Zach and I have been wearing this Truework stuff and we are not really trades professionals. We're like outdoor people and Zach's been wearing the jacket. Seems to be enjoying it very much. He's nodding his head over there. I've been wearing some of their pants, which I wore when we went on our hike in Utah. I wear them when I'm out doing outdoor stuff. I was wearing them at the track this past weekend and they are light. They keep me both out of the wind, but also warm and cool.

• 24:14Matt Farah?

  It's pretty, pretty awesome. Great for if you're outside all day. And you can upgrade your day with workwear built like it matters. Get 15% off your first order at truewerk.com code tire. That's T R U E W E R K dot com code tire at checkout. 15% off your first order. truewerk.com code tire. And we are brought to you today by Quince, dude. Quince is coming in hot, warm, soft. It's really delight. I'm talking about Mongolian cashmere sweaters. I'm talking about Italian wool coats.

• 24:54Matt Farah?

  Quince pieces are crafted from premium materials and built to hold up without the luxury markup, making the essentials every guy needs. Quince has the Mongolian cashmere sweater, starting at just $50. I got this sweater, in fairness, the one I got was like $80, but it was still a super, super soft, well-fitting and really nice looking sweater for a very, very much one-third price of what it would be in the designers. Plus they've got denim and chinos that fit just right. The outerwear lineup is no joke, from down jackets to wool top coats and leather styles built to last. All pieces are made from premium materials, made by trusted factories

• 25:36Matt Farah?

  that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. But by cutting out middlemen and traditional markups, Quince delivers the same quality as luxury brand for a fraction of the price. It's everything you actually want to wear, built to hold up to season after season. Again, the Mongolian cashmere sweater I got, which they say is as low as 50 bucks. I think in some colors and sizes it is. I got the double XL and I got the luxurious Egyptian like gold. And so I think mine was like 80 bucks, but it's so soft. I've been wearing it all the time in my house. I don't even want to take it outside. It's like I sit on the couch and be warm kind of thing. And they sent me some really nice button downs for fall, some tartans, some plaids.

• 26:21Matt Farah?

  It is excellent. You can get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled at Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com/tire for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I N C E dot com slash tire. Quince.com slash tire. Free shipping, 365 day returns. Quince.com slash tire. And now back to the program. Yeah, but it was a Cadillac wheel. Cadillac wheel, but in the airbag cover was of a fairly production looking embossed stingray airbag cover.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  So you think the engineers are testing round wheel technology?

• 27:08Matt Farah?

  I mean, dude, I'm just saying if they're coming out, if they're decided that they've seen the light. And in fact, things that should be round.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  You think they're doing Cadillac supercar under the guise of C8?

• 27:20Matt Farah?

  No, no, no. So Alex, I forget his name, the former Corvette engineer who's now doing robotics stuff. Like not like Tesla robots, but like factory robots at GM. He's moved on to like they're using AI to optimize that. But he worked on all the Corvettes up through ZR1. He was there with Sean Bailey, who does like Corvette communications, TC Klein and Tony Roma, who was the head of Cadillac V is now the head of Corvette. And that black Corvette, that's going to get a cage and just become a WRL race car. And so there's a round steering wheel and aftermarket seats in it. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying what I saw.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Matt was more excited by that round steering wheel.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Is this kind of car geekdom that I'm learning from?

• 28:09Matt Farah?

  Tommy, in a street car, sports car, what is the correct shape of the steering wheel to you?

• 28:14Speaker 02

  I've only driven around steering wheels, even in race cars. I've never driven a butterfly wheeled car.

• 28:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:19Matt Farah?

  I don't like that.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:21Matt Farah?

  I'm so happy that our, we had a regular steering wheel in our race car. It was a delight.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do a little aside. It was fun hanging out with the two of you guys in terms of this sort of minutia, but you are so clear on what you like and what you don't like, as are you. And I don't always agree, but I like that, you know, it's, yeah. So, but it's, it's pretty good. And race car drivers, I've always said, the best ones are basically the most discerning and AKA best complainers, because you have to be able to perceive what's happening.

• 28:53Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  And describe it. One of my weaknesses is, I was always good at making good with whatever I had. And so sometimes I would just, I can't change this. And then sometimes I wouldn't even remember that it was a complaint. And so, anyway, so it's, everyone has their different styles, but yeah, that's how things get better.

• 29:13Matt Farah?

  I'm pretty good at talking about what the car is doing. When I have a radio, which I didn't.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  By the way, yeah, we should explain that too. On Saturday, so you know, you're the next driver in, so like, get your, get your suit on, and I'm sitting in my suit, Matt's coming in, put your helmet on. And you know, you put the earplugs in, and the sock, and the helmet on, and it was hot, and I'm sitting there, and I'm sitting there, and like, I'm like, I'm gonna take my helmet off. No, no, he's coming in. Dead radio.

• 29:41Matt Farah?

  My, my side of this was, the plan was, for race one, was Tato is gonna do somewhere between two and a half and 2:50. The driver limit for any one driver in a race is three hours. So you can't have some pro in where one pro does whatever, right?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Eight hours, yeah.

• 29:58Matt Farah?

  So, excuse me. So, um, so Tato does, I mean, he runs, is very, very fast, and comes in. I go in next, and, and I'm out for like 25 minutes, and there's like a long full course caution. They're like, come in, we're gonna splash you with fuel. Fine. I do, I go back out. Then my radio completely dies. So I, I then, we're each supposed to drive 90 minutes. Tato does his long one, and then each of the three of us do 90 minutes.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  And that's an eight hour race.

• 30:27Matt Farah?

  And that's the eight hour. But they because they filled me up and because I I don't I'm not like watching the clock but like got a couple gallons left and like I don't have this radio and like I'm not seeing like a pit board come out so I'm like um okay I guess you know when when I'm out of gas I will come you know come in and it never it never really comes and then after like

• 30:52Speaker 01

  They ran out with a pit board and they literally put it out as you passed.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Well, there's there's a lot of green open throttle cars and a TC Klein car that's the same color.

• 31:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah, right, right. So so it was hard to see which green car from far away, blah, blah, blah. So I ended up doing a little longer than I was supposed to.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  It changed nothing.

• 31:13Matt Farah?

  It changed nothing, but but I had radio issues the next day as well and I figured out like I had radio issues, so I'm like messing with my cable on the back straights, which is fortunately they're very long. So you actually have a few minutes to think about that. And then Zach's radio at the other end started dying.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  His battery went out.

• 31:33Matt Farah?

  His batteries are so it was like, oh my gosh, so.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Which would almost cost the race in a way. We'll get to that.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  More insights into all the little things that happen and you don't you never know about if you're even if you're you're at a race that that you have to manage and deal with have contingencies, think on the fly on what do I do? So.

• 31:52Matt Farah?

  Team sport.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  And then one more thing before we get to Sunday was Tato heroically fought for data

• 32:00Speaker 01

  to get the data from open throttle.

• 32:02Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Got the data and like really sat there and was really coaching the three of us, me, Matt and Tommy on like pedal position and you know, braking points and he really takes it seriously. Didn't have any wine. We had these lovely bottles of wine.

• 32:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I had none. He also, and I have to say, I mean, maybe you drove it different or maybe you drove it different. I drove his exact recommended line around the track.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:27Matt Farah?

  Which is slightly different than what my natural body might have wanted to do. And I noticed that nobody else took this line. Which especially coming out of the S's, hugging that road all the way to the left, deep and going up. Nobody else but me, when I was out there, took that way. And that is where I could go from 200 feet from behind the car to 50. It was right there in that section by taking his way. And every single lap, I could confidently go, I'm gonna set up this guy coming out of this corner. Because that gap is like, it closes every lap.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  And so it's funny, like when I walk-ins, you know, we're doing the data overlays. And MJ, who was coaching us then, Michael Ryan Johnson, he was like, show me what Klaus was doing, what he was doing. Then he gets to Tito's line, he's like, just forget that. He's like, that's something else, only he does that.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Well, and this is developed, Tito had never been to Cota before. And he's been running on the sim for weeks. And trying different cars because the exact car isn't available to trying to match up with it. Would it feel like grip wise and power?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'd show up, remember, and sort of, yeah, but we'd show up and he's like, okay, we have an M4 DTM. This is like Hulk. Okay, next week we show up, okay, now we have a Mustang.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:42Matt Farah?

  I told my horror story on last week's episode about how frustrated I got in the sim.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it was horrible.

• 33:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it was not great. But he was, he was studying it very intently. And so, Sunday, we go, jump ahead to Sunday. Uh, starting order was determined by best lap of previous day. So we start P7. And I have the video. I'd love to.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  I can text it to Zach right now.

• 34:09Matt Farah?

  How do you get the video?

• 34:10Speaker 03

  Airdrop it to 2019 at Mac.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Let me find it.

• 34:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Let's, Tito starts in P7 and by turn one is P3.

• 34:19Matt Farah?

  Okay, he did, he did an unbelievable-

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Rolling start or standing start?

• 34:22Matt Farah?

  Rolling.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 34:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Oh dude, his, first of all, he must have come off that corner so perfect because he accelerated past these faster cars.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Like it's-

• 34:32Speaker 03

  He just timed it green.

• 34:33Matt Farah?

  He executed a perfect start.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:34Matt Farah?

  And-

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Verstappen style.

• 34:35Matt Farah?

  The car to beat in our class is an E46 M3 with an LS motor in it. That consistently ran 2 to 3 seconds a lap faster than Tato. Or any, or any of us.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Anybody.

• 34:48Matt Farah?

  All their drivers were like, as fast as us and their car was 2 seconds a lap faster.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Their fastest, fastest lap, so, so the fast lap from the day before, so even Tato, as quick as he is, we were the 7th fastest car, basically.

• 35:03Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  And so, he, he made it happen with that.

• 35:07Matt Farah?

  So he, he, I mean, that's, it was an unbelievable bit of driving because we did not have a horsepower car.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  270 horsepower.

• 35:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. And this, this other car, this M3 was apparently a class higher last year and was just slightly detuned to run it on.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was an LS motor.

• 35:22Matt Farah?

  It might need to be detuned a little more. Uh, we got some, this is from Sentinel, and actually I'm talking to the Sentinel guy later this week about maybe doing something with him for funsies. Um, so that, we, we were actually able to get live stream video from the car, which is cool because-

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Sick.

• 35:38Matt Farah?

  Yeah, because Zach could, you know, a, a coach could wa, like, Tato could get on the radio and go, "Hey, take this curb wider," like, real time.

• 35:45Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 35:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 35:46Matt Farah?

  That's allowed.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  And then we're, um, this is heading into turn 20, so this is the final left before the main straight.

• 35:52Matt Farah?

  Final corner before the start. And, uh, and, uh, pretty good quality video, actually.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  To be able to stream that?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  And then this, this tower on the left is green.

• 36:01Matt Farah?

  That M3 in the way front with the big wing is really the car to beat.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  So they get green right here.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Screaming goats, it's called.

• 36:06Matt Farah?

  So here's green.

• 36:09Matt Farah?

  Dude, watch, watch Tato's move up the left side right here, watch this. Just wide open in the left.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 36:16Matt Farah?

  Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  Right across the blend line, right?

• 36:22Matt Farah?

  And then perfect braking, right here dude. And then look how quick he comes off too, he doesn't give up position. Oh, the clip ends, but like...

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Momentarily second.

• 36:31Matt Farah?

  Sick, right?

• 36:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's bad.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Again, from P7, it's pretty good. In a 270 horsepower car, it's pretty good.

• 36:37Matt Farah?

  Well, a car that's supposed to have the same power to weight as all the other cars. In theory.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  The one in front had better power to weight.

• 36:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it did.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  You can't win the race in turn one, but you can dramatically improve your position.

• 36:48Matt Farah?

  Well, and then, and then, uh, I guess it was, oh, was it the first day where there was a huge crash in turn?

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:55Matt Farah?

  The first day, there was a huge crash in turn two and three that took out a bunch of cars.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  And that was good because Tato did the same move day one. If he'd just held his position, he would have been wiped out in that, in that mob, but he got in front of it. And there was a car spinning behind him.

• 37:14Matt Farah?

  The video that we got, he's making a highlight reel, the video is crazy. So, he goes from P7 to P3 in the first 10 seconds. Uh, holds position, uh, works his way to P2. Um, actually, it makes, we make the pass to P2 while the other car was in the pits. That V8 car was thirsty. So he goes to P2 while the other car's in the pits. I get the car in P2. Tato does 2 hours and 40 minutes. I get the car in P2.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  You got in P1 because, because...

• 37:41Speaker 03

  The other car pitted.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  The other car, the other car came into the garage.

• 37:46Matt Farah?

  Okay, so I got in P1. But, I went out and I did, I did a double. I did a full second tank. I did 2 hours and 44 minutes in the car, which, uh, is the longest I've ever driven a race car for consecutively. It was actually, it was so much fun. I had the best time. Um, and I held the position. Like, I didn't give up any positions. I came in, I came in and gave, and Johnny...

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Well, so, so, so I'm sitting there, like...

• 38:15Speaker 01

  I was slow and Tato again got to P1 and it was like we kinda, I didn't know, on side I didn't know how slow it was gonna be. So I went up to Tommy and I'm like, "Hey." And, and the other thing is I knew Zach in open throttle, they had a really miserable year. They hadn't won anything, not on a podium. And it's, you know, there's a lot of races.

• 38:34Matt Farah?

  That was out of normal for them.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  That was very unusual, yeah. So I went to Tommy and I'm like, "Hey, you know," because we're an hour shorter and I'm like, you know, I'm doing the math. I'm like, "If Tato's like, you know, P1 and Matt does what he does yesterday, you know, and you get in the car and do, you know, "We could get on the podium, we could be P3, you know, I don't, I don't need to drive." And Tommy's like, "No, we're here to have fun." And then I walked up to Matt and I'm like, "You know, and you said the same thing." You're like, "Yeah, dude, we're just gonna have some fun." But then Zach, the crew chief, was like thinking, "Shit, we could be P1," you know? So him and Tato pulled me aside, they're like, "Listen." And before they even pitched, I'm like, "Totally." Like, like if Matt does what he does, you know, improves a little bit, he can hold P1, P2. And yeah, so, and I didn't need to drive.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  And I, years ago, on the C63 Black Series launch, I learned like, "You don't get any more money for being the fastest journalist." You know, like, there's, there's no real, you know, so.

• 39:31Matt Farah?

  You don't.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and you know, I.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Did you not drive on Sunday?

• 39:34Speaker 01

  I didn't drive on Sunday.

• 39:35Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay. He very graciously gave up his seat so that I could do a double and, and keep the car in position. Which I didn't know about because I had no fucking radio.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  He was in the car.

• 39:46Matt Farah?

  I came into the pits, I undid my harnesses and they just go, "No, no, you're staying." I go, "What?" He goes, "You're staying." And I'm just like, "Okay."

• 39:52Speaker 02

  I was there and I was in my suit, but they didn't say anything to me. Then I, I, I said, "He unbuckled." So I jump up, I don't have my helmet on, and they go and they're putting stuff in the back in there.

• 40:01Matt Farah?

  Unfortunately, taking fuel was like three and a half minutes, so you have time to calmly put your shit.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Some, but not a lot.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  But accidentally, it turned out like, like, let's say I was as fast as Matt. Another driver's change, we'll get to it, it would have cost us P1, so.

• 40:18Matt Farah?

  So I did, I had a hilarious fuck up though.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:22Matt Farah?

  Which I will admit publicly.

• 40:27Matt Farah?

  I'm lapping and I'm in an area, there's a full course caution. But very frequently during full course cautions, you find yourself like not where the pace car is. It's fucking huge. And so you find yourself going full speed. You're still going full speed.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  If anyone's listening to this.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  You're supposed to go eighty-five percent.

• 40:47Matt Farah?

  And you weren't going basically full speed. Listen in the drivers meeting, please, okay? Not full, full speed.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  You're supposed to go eighty-five percent.

• 40:56Matt Farah?

  But speed, you're going fast, okay?

• 40:59Matt Farah?

  So, I'm coming around the last corner of the track before the pit entrance. It's turn nineteen, the pit entrance is there, okay? And all of us, and I'm following a white Cayman that's in our class.

• 41:13Matt Farah?

  The corner worker pulls, as I come around the corner, I see them pull out and wave a white flag. As soon as that happens, the Cayman just dives across the track and into the pits. Like last minute maneuver into the pits. And I was like, I have about a half a second to have the following thought happen in my head. Usually, white flags mean the race is one lap from being over.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:37Matt Farah?

  I wonder what that flag means today.

• 41:41Matt Farah?

  And then, and then I go, if I don't go into the pit right now and it means to go into the pit, I'm gonna get a penalty and we're out of the race. I'm in, I'm in P2. We're gonna be out of the race. If I do go into the pit and it means nothing, I'm gonna feel pretty stupid. And we're gonna lose like, I don't know, fifteen, twenty seconds, but like, we won't get a penalty.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:04Matt Farah?

  So I have that whole thought in between turn nineteen, exit at full fucking beans, and the entrance to the pit.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Which is like, a hundred and fifty feet.

• 42:14Matt Farah?

  It's not far. I dive into the pit behind the Cayman. I also, I also, I have a radio. If I was anywhere else on the track, if I was two hundred yards further back, I would have had the answer I needed to what that flag meant.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 42:29Matt Farah?

  But I didn't. So I drove through the pits.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  And what flag means debris on track?

• 42:32Matt Farah?

  No, it means a slow-moving vehicle on track. There was a wrecker circulating on track, which, yeah, see?

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. I thought it was debris.

• 42:40Matt Farah?

  So, you know, okay, you know, sorry guys, you know?

• 42:44Speaker 02

  For clarity, debris is the orange and yellow.

• 42:45Matt Farah?

  Debris is the orange and yellow, yeah.

• 42:49Matt Farah?

  So, you know, I'm on the radio, you know, sorry guys, that's a, that's a fucking bonehead move. I, I picked the lesser of two bonehead evils. Okay, no, no problem, no problem. It caused, it caused like 15 to 20 seconds. This will come into play.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:06Matt Farah?

  Uh, this will come into play. So I, I finished my stint and like honestly, I did pretty good.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you did really good.

• 43:14Matt Farah?

  Pretty good.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  And, uh, P2, I think you got out of the car, P2?

• 43:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I ran very consistently. I did.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  But what was happening during, towards the end of your stint, which determined why you went the full double, is I was sitting with Zach and saying, hey, we're getting close to being able to skip, if, if we stretch this, can we skip a fuel stop? Because we weren't going to beat the screaming goat on speed.

• 43:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  And so I said, can we figure out, because they definitely, they were using fuel, they were going to have to make, uh, three more at that point. I said, can we do it on two more?

• 43:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Or one more.

• 43:46Matt Farah?

  Our car does five miles per gallon.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so...

• 43:49Matt Farah?

  Which is way better than the LS engine car.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  So that's what we were going on. So that's why you went longer. And when I got in the car, they said, and he says, we're gonna, we can go, we're gonna go two hours. I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, I'll get some yellow.

• 44:04Matt Farah?

  It was an hour forty-five. You got in there, it was an hour forty-five.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  And he said, we can go the whole, they're saying, we're good to go to the end. And I'm thinking, hmm. I said, hmm. And so we've got a fuel counter and so we're going and then, uh, and they're asking for fuel readings, fuel readings. And I'm pretty sure I'm like, and then there was a caution, and I wasn't as plugged in as I should have been because, and it took almost two and a half laps to catch the pace car from the thing you were, it's a long lap.

• 44:29Matt Farah?

  You were expecting it to be chill, but really you were humming.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Humming, but not humming enough because there was a car that was holding a bunch of us up. And if we could have caught the tail end.

• 44:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  That would have made the whole, if we would have done our splash that we eventually found out we had, if we would have done our splash then.

• 44:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  It would have been a cakewalk.

• 44:46Matt Farah?

  So, this other car did have to pit, but Tommy did also for a quick five gallon splash.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:52Matt Farah?

  So both cars are out at the end.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  But they got trapped. The key was they got trapped on that yellow.

• 44:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Depending on where the overall leader is, they can split classes. And so, um...

• 45:04Speaker 02

  He got trapped. I was leading now after their stop. He was behind the overall leader and the yellow come out, so he didn't get to go all the way around and catch up to the back of me. And he raced the big gap.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  By the way, for two days straight, all Tommy did was talk about yellow flag strategy.

• 45:19Matt Farah?

  This dude, this dude knows his fucking cautious.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  He's decided so many races. Yeah, absolutely.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  But yeah, I mean, this is literally, right? We spent two days talking about like winning on flags.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Do they do wave arounds and so, because that changes if you wave around and so forth. And more people understand it now, um, but back in the day, not everyone did and you can really, the race. So, and then the next piece is, so now I'm leading, uh, the race goes green. And so I've got better part of a lap, but now it becomes apparent, we're going to actually have to make a splash too.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  And so we make this splash.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  We were like two minutes, 40 seconds up.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  And Tommy has to come in for fuel and has like 12 laps left in the race. So he gets back out. I think it was like, there's 58 seconds gap.

• 46:05Matt Farah?

  I remember that very clearly. When he went out, it was 58 seconds.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:09Matt Farah?

  And there was like 10 laps left, eight laps left, and the other car is four seconds a lap faster than us.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Yeah. So we're just sitting there doing math. I mean, Sergio and Tito were like on the calculators like, uh.

• 46:22Matt Farah?

  Dude, it was a fucking, this car is like humming, you know, Tommy's doing what he can do, but this other car is like just faster.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  It's a 400 horsepower car.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  But I also was not, so what, one of the things I did, I said, I need the information. I need to know the split and I need to know lap minutes left the whole time. And they, they were giving me the split, but they weren't giving me minutes left and I still thought we were good. But because of the track limits thing yesterday, I wasn't running as, I wasn't running flat, flat.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Because I'm like, I can't, I don't know if we have any warnings. I said, I have to be super clean. So I said, if you tell me, I said, I can give, I can give the time back. You don't get extra points by winning for, by more.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  And so, uh, and then when I restarted that thing, I was in the middle of a total shit fight for about five laps. Just chaos and, and so those laps.

• 47:07Matt Farah?

  The restarts are wild. Some of these restarts are wild.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Bigger chunks of time there.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  It's not four seconds a lap now.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  And I always did this when I raced, I asked for all the information so that I could.

• 47:19Matt Farah?

  Right, don't hide it.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  You can't judge risk or reward if you don't know the full picture.

• 47:22Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  And so, it was more dramatic for you guys. I knew what was going on, I knew that the math was gonna work.

• 47:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  And real quick, the restarts, because there's this GPU class, which are these like prototype.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  It's like a.

• 47:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Things. F4 car of the body.

• 47:39Matt Farah?

  Alon prototypes, yeah, they're, they're, they handle amazing, but they have no horsepower. So they can't, they actually can't pass you on the straight.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  But their lap, their lap time overall is shorter.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  But they can also jump, like, like if you're in any, if your wheels turned at all, they just jump you.

• 47:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  And so on the restart, you'll get like four of them coming across your bow. It's wild.

• 47:58Matt Farah?

  Because when they start the race, they started in class order, but in a restart, you're all mixed up.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:04Matt Farah?

  So like, fucking mayhem happens on a restart. It's really, really hairy.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  I love it, dude.

• 48:10Matt Farah?

  It's a, I mean, it's a wild.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  I've only done the Lemons version, but that's wild too.

• 48:13Matt Farah?

  My final lap, my first go lap after the lap, my last restart was mayhem. I passed somebody in the S's, which was one of my goals, to try to do that, and I actually was able to do it. And I was like, I, in my helmet, I was like, motherfucking yeah!

• 48:29Speaker 02

  I'm glad you didn't tell me that was one of your goals. Because I would've said that's, that's, that's a bad risk.

• 48:36Matt Farah?

  It was a bad, no, I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna do it. It was just one of those, you know, I hope this, I hope I'm able to say I did this, yeah. But, no, I mean, and Tommy brought it home and we won by 9.8 seconds, which, and that's when I was like, whoosh, that drive through.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  Oh, right, right, right.

• 48:52Matt Farah?

  That was a nice, nice buffer.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  But again, another driver's change at minimum 45 seconds, and we weren't even that quick. So, you know, and plus you just cycled the car and all that.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  If we, if we had, if we had been, had everything on, we could have done a stop, and then, on that, if we'd done the splash, it probably was, the only way we were gonna do it was this way, was skipping that. But if we had done the splash under that last yellow and put you in, you would've then had two minutes.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But yeah, but it might, yeah, it might have got caught, so, yeah. Look, P1.

• 49:25Matt Farah?

  It was a nail, I mean Johnny valiantly, you know, gave up his seat to, to be, we had a shot at winning the race, which, you know, it was.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Let's, let's go past.

• 49:33Matt Farah?

  That's a, that's a fucking bro move right there. Straight up. That's a team player move.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Look at this picture though. So, so confirms Zach is 24. That Zach. Look how he's talking. I'd never seen more of grown men crying.

• 49:45Matt Farah?

  Dude, I mean, he was, he was, uh, he kept it inside until, until the race was over and then he was like, dude, I just like, I just called a winning race. The Tommy Kendall was driving.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  I said, I said, come here. I'm like, you came up with the winning race strategy with Tommy Kendall in the car and he was just, like was shaking and it was just awesome.

• 50:05Matt Farah?

  And even dude, after the race, when we were drinking beers in the parking lot, he all of a sudden put it together that I was the guy in the superspeeders first to get a ticket video.

• 50:16Matt Farah?

  He's like, I can't believe you didn't say that was a reasonable place to pass at the time. Oh, motherfucker's quoting me back from O7.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  He was nine years old.

• 50:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah, dude. I was not a role model.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  That emotion though, I mean, everyone that has raced knows how hard it is. And I mean, it's, it's just like, you're just maxed out. Whatever level you're at, you're maxed out. And, and so, and you have way more bad days than you have good days. And so that's, uh, that, that was cool to see. A real thing, cool thing for me over the weekend, seeing people, those two officials, Randy Buck and Jim Davis, are guys I've known for 30 years. And so all these people that I've mixed with, uh, I get a Instagram DM on, uh, the morning from a guy says, hey, here's a picture. It's me with this little kid. He says, uh, that 10-year-old is now crewing on the 99 car. And so I, I went and found him and got another picture of me and Ben, Ben Riley.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Uh, and so all these, you know, the grassroots is your, is, is your, your peeps, you know, cause you've, you've built it from, and that's what this was all about. All these people that, that love this because no one's really making money there. There's a few people and it's.

• 51:32Matt Farah?

  The massage therapist is making $3.25 an hour. That's about it, dude.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Horatio.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  So it was really neat to get reconnected with that. And there was a guy in the garage next to us, Matt Giver, that was on setup. The setup show that I did, those Pontiac Solstices. There were two guys in the race from that setup show. So just getting reconnected with all these people and realizing everyone's on their own paths and doing it.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  The other, my favorite, my favorite moment, well, besides the hug, my favorite moment was you said the last time you won a race, if I have this correct, was December of 2004. And Tato was born in March of 2004.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was actually September 11th, 2004. The last, last Trans Am race I did in a, in a full TA car, driving for Rocket Sports in the Jag. It was the finale and I, I was trying, we'd had some mechanicals early in the year. And so I, I needed to max points and General Ozzie needed to finish worse than fifth. And I maxed points, pole, lap sled, fastest lap and all that. And I win and he finished fifth and we tied and he won the tiebreaker for the title. So that was my last win was 2001.

• 52:47Matt Farah?

  What a treat.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:49Matt Farah?

  One?

• 52:49Speaker 01

  2001.

• 52:50Matt Farah?

  One?

• 52:50Speaker 02

  2001.

• 52:51Matt Farah?

  September 11th, 2001.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  2001, yeah. And so I mean, it was, it was 11 years since I really raced anything.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  And I didn't win in the Viper or, yeah, yeah, 2001.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Right, sorry. So Tato's, yeah, okay, wait.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  So, oh. Tato had just been born.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  No, no, because 2001 was 24 years ago. He's 21. We got that wrong.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Oh, no, 2004.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, 2004.

• 53:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah, September 11th, 2001.

• 53:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, something else happened.

• 53:16Matt Farah?

  It might have been overshadowed by something. I don't know.

• 53:20Matt Farah?

  Oh, wow. That's very much not a Jaguar, is it? That looks just like all Jaguars on the showroom floor. Look.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Anyhow, it was just, it was.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  I used to have myself convinced back in the day that the cars we raced looked just like what they were supposed to.

• 53:36Speaker 03

  Same headlights.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Well, this time it did. This time it definitely did.

• 53:42Speaker 03

  So was, was Tato giving you Tommy Data on Saturday night?

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  Was he like, oh, Mr. Kendall, I think you should break, like?

• 53:53Speaker 01

  It was wild for me to watch it because I'm sitting here like.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  What other 21-year-old, like, literally, like, no compunction at all, and he instantly starts with, "All right, Tommy, so what we're doing here in this turn is this."

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Here's what I want to see. Here's what I want to see.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  I like that. I like this here.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  And then there was one point, and he's like, uh, he says, there's these little, these little bounces in the throttle trace in the hairpin. He says, "I'm confused by this." And I said, "Let me explain to you what that is." I said, "With my foot injuries, I said, 'I can't rest my heels on the floor and pivot and use the throttle and the brake.'" So I said, "I'm hanging my right foot in the air, working the throttle. I'm hanging my right foot in the air, working the brake."

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Which is insane.

• 54:33Matt Farah?

  Can you imagine doing that for 90 minutes?

• 54:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:35Matt Farah?

  That's the craziest shit I ever heard.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  And so, I said, "That's actually my foot bouncing on tapping the throttle as I'm trying to trail it in."

• 54:43Matt Farah?

  If you were driving like a Formula car where you're more like laid down, would that be easier on you or harder?

• 54:48Speaker 02

  No. What I do in a car that I'm gonna drive, I build basically like, because most people, your heel is resting, and then you go forward and your foot gets lower, and the gas pedal gets lower with it because of the way it pivots. I build a ramp because my foot slides, so the ball of my foot doesn't get any lower. So I build a ramp that's sloping away from me, and I slide on that ramp so my foot can be supported.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  Now you're not holding your leg up the whole time. You're just pressing for, okay.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  So, my, like, thinking about the weekend, there's, there's, there's time there for me. There's probably, in terms of getting to where I'm super confident I'll be able to shift the weight exactly like I want, and like, like in turn 19, that's really important, how you float the car in there. There's probably-

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Not sure I ever did that one perfect.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, no.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Not sure I ever did it perfect.

• 55:33Matt Farah?

  It's so big.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  It's a tough one, man.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  It's really tough. I mean, it's, yeah, so that, that's the kind of thing where there, there's definitely time there. Um, and again, I was, I was making sure, especially after the penalty Saturday, it's worth, operating on the right side of the risk curve. And, so, that's what that was intended, like, "Oh."

• 55:52Speaker 03

  So is, having all this data, did you guys have this back when you were racing? Or a version?

• 55:58Speaker 02

  We had, we had, pretty close, you know? There was, yeah, so I was the very, when I first started, we didn't. And then that came in, in, you know, the late 80s and early 90s. So we had most of this stuff. There's, there's more sensors now and better sensors. Bill Mitchell was a guy, he was a journalist, but he was really a tech guy. And so he was our, our data guy. And he would, I always tell people, one of the key things on a race weekend, when you see what's happening in Formula One in terms of process, everyone's constrained on time. So a lot of things you just don't do between sessions because you don't have time. One of our secrets is we had everything refined so well. You get the data out of the car, you get it up in a useful form. Cause there's so much data. How do you view it?

• 56:43Speaker 02

  And how can you pull out the areas you need to focus on? And, you know, for, for maximizing gear ratios and so forth. And so Bill would come up with all these different ways to sort of display the data to us based on what we, and some of it was like, yeah, that's not useful. Cool, but not useful. And so, and then, cause it, on the, the sessions, you gotta get it out. You gotta understand it. You gotta understand what's actionable. Then you gotta get the, they'd come to us and they'd say gearbox is out. We need the info. We're like, but we don't have it yet. And so, and, and you've only got two hours for the session. And so every piece of the equation, there's a real iteration. You hear that in the tech world now. The speed of iteration is really useful and some people just can't do it.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Like on this weekend, I wasn't that plugged in, but you, you don't, you can't, you don't have the time to say, hey, this is an issue. Can you fix it? I wouldn't even bring it up because it's just like, if we can get the thing, just everything bolted together, people see time. That's going to be the maximum importance. But so, um, that was a little geeked out.

• 57:42Matt Farah?

  When you, but when you were talking about the, with Bill Mitchell and that type of data, it wasn't more about, it was more about building a faster car than making you faster than something else or?

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, almost all of it was, was, I rarely had a super fast teammate that I could, yeah, a couple of times I did. Uh, well, when I was teaming with Wayne Taylor.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  In the GTP car, I did. And so there, there it was useful. Um, but mostly it was about a faster car.

• 58:09Matt Farah?

  All I've ever used it for is to compare myself to a faster person.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 58:13Matt Farah?

  And it's been incredibly useful every single time.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:16Matt Farah?

  Way more useful to me than video. Tato tried, we didn't have data on practice day, like, they had just bought this car and the track wasn't loaded, whatever the fuck, who cares? Sim car or SD card? We, we didn't have the data of the practice day, so that's why I say like Saturday was a practice race, because we actually had data after that race. But he was trying to do it on video and, you know, he, he, I did his line and he just like went faster at all of it. And I'm like, well, it's, it's clearly not where I'm putting the car. Like, just show me throttle and brake pressure. And like, once I saw throttle and brake pressure, it was like, oh. Yeah.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  Cause they overlay like.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  You had a revelation though.

• 58:54Matt Farah?

  Oh, God.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  At the dinner table.

• 58:57Matt Farah?

  The pounding on my head thing.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  It was, it was wild though, because yeah, Tato's just like, yeah, I start braking here and I hold it for two corners. And that's like, what?

• 59:05Matt Farah?

  So that was crazy. I, you know, when you, when you take, when you go to good racing schools and learn from a lot, a lot of people. And when you're racing slow cars, when you're racing, you know, when you're racing Miata's and E30s, whatever. They're just like, you're, you're either full brake or full throttle. Like those, that's what you are. Like if you, there's no coasting, there's no maintenance throttle. Those are bullshit. That's not fucking, you're not racing. I've heard that over and over and over. And in Saturday race and in, I'm getting, I'm getting like, you know, opposite lock wheel spin out of every corner.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  Tight corner.

• 59:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah, every hairpin.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Confirmed. I was doing a lot of that too.

• 59:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And, and you know, Tato's corner exit speed is much better than mine and his, you know, his throttle pressure is way, his curve is like way different. And, uh, and he's also, uh, he's also doing like multiple places in the track, he's literally coasting. And multiple places in the track, he's dragging like a 30% brake pedal for like two seconds.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Or a 5% brake pedal.

• 1:00:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Wow, on throttle at all, like rally stuff?

• 1:00:10Matt Farah?

  No, no, no.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Just to tuck the front, just a little bit.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Pin the front in, yeah.

• 1:00:15Matt Farah?

  But for like, two seconds.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Um, and so. For instance, you know, at Cota, there's, there's two S's in a row. And at the entrance to the first S, he goes like, I mean, it was like, two or three percent brake. And he holds that out of the second S, never lifts.

• 1:00:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  And it's, and it, and everyone else, you see, their arcs through the S's start getting wider and wider. His just gets narrower and narrower, and he's crushing people.

• 1:00:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, and also just his, he has a, his going into turn one up the hill. I, I, I hit the brakes harder and later than he did, harder and later. And he, and he had better exit speed from the corner, exit speed.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Cause he's braking less, yeah.

• 1:00:58Matt Farah?

  I mean, so, but, yeah.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  One of the big epiphanies was, so, so when he was releasing the brake, he was immediately given a jab of throttle. Cause he's thinking, I, you don't want to go.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  I was, I was going from brake back to gas, real fast.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  And it would get a spike, and that's when he was getting loose, he'd gather it up, and I'd, he'd say, Tato is going to the gas later than you.

• 1:01:19Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  But when he goes to the gas, he gets after it much more aggressively and never, and never pulls out.

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  He doesn't, he doesn't trail on, he's just like, he rolls into it much quicker.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  He's basically letting the car set and rotate a little more, which you do, especially in a heavy car and the longer the corner. And so, one of the, I told Matt, I said, there's one of the fallacies, everyone says, whoever gets on the throttle first onto the straightaways is the fastest. I'm like, no, that's not true. It's whoever gets to full throttle the first onto the straightaways is the fastest. Cause getting to the throttle first is the enemy sometimes of getting to full throttle.

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  Sure, yeah, good point.

• 1:01:50Matt Farah?

  And that strategy, like, actually really did make things a lot better. Like, it didn't make my fastest lap any faster, but it, it, all of those, the difference for me between a two, my best was 235.5. My, my most was like, 237.2, was like, my most meet. The difference between 237.2 and 241 is wheel spin out of the two hairpins. That's literally the only difference if everything else is the same.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  Did it also make other parts of the track just feel more stable, planted, et cetera?

• 1:02:20Matt Farah?

  It made it a lot easier to set that pass I talked about with the Tato line up the red. That pass is complete coming out of the hairpin of 11, passing with better exit speed onto the front straight. That's where that setup ends.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Less dramatic, less dramatic.

• 1:02:40Matt Farah?

  It was, dude, the problem is it feels slow.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:02:43Matt Farah?

  It actually feels fucking slow.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  I joke with people, I said it almost doesn't feel fair that it's less dramatic, it's not as hard, and it's faster.

• 1:02:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Uh, 11 in this photo Zach is the one at the top right corner. So that, you know, is the exit speed from there, which starts back at the up, up, one up to the left. Starts there. That's where that starts, the setup for that.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Matt Farah?

  But yeah, no, his, his, the data was fucking right and his interpretation of it and Tom's.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Now, video, video is new. We had no video, so the video, connecting the video, because we used to only look at squiggly lines. And so, you know, for beginners, that wasn't that useful. And I, I remember having teammates and I was usually the fast guy, and so I wasn't in a hurry to help them figure it out, you know? And so, whereas I'd look at, like, sometimes I'd be faster in nine corners, they'd be faster in two, and I'd be like, I need to figure those two out. And I was pretty good at looking at it, and they'd be looking, and they weren't quite as good as figuring the other part out.

• 1:03:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  And so, and video, video helps a lot.

• 1:03:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Especially if you can click on the line and it pulls up the, the video right there.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  To that, to that end, I used to, when I was driving, I wouldn't let people follow me, because that's the best learning tool is to follow fast guys.

• 1:04:03Matt Farah?

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  And so, and once the race starts, but on, all through the weekend, I would always stay separate on the track. And like, some guys, like General Ozzy, used to always try to follow me. And he'd, he'd go out with me and I'd just pull in the pits and sit. And Bing says, what are you doing? I said, I'll sit here all day. I said, I don't need any more practice. And then eventually he'd go back out and I'd tail him back out, and he, and it used to drive him nuts, because I'm like, I'm not showing, you know, because they'd be even in probably eight corners and there's, your, your edges are in a couple of key spots, and I don't want him to be able to figure, because he probably, like you, you think it's in the places you're really beating your brains out, and sometimes it's not. And once the light goes on, it's like, ah!

• 1:04:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  And so.

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

  Driving schools use lead, follow as a coaching technique, so you don't want to be doing lead, follow with your competitor and showing him where to go.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Nope, nope.

• 1:04:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and getting, you know, getting your exit out of the last corner 20 onto the front straight. It's just a 90 degree, easy looking corner.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  It's not easy.

• 1:04:57Matt Farah?

  For some reason, it's just not easy.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  But that was one too where it like, you know, it was surprising Tato didn't get a penalty there because he was so wide. And you'd watch the video, everybody else is like maybe on the curbing, he's almost over the white.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  On the entrance.

• 1:05:13Matt Farah?

  On the exit.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  On the exit and the entrance.

• 1:05:15Matt Farah?

  I think they only cared about that there if you used it to make a pass on somebody or did something like that.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Well, I'm convinced it didn't care about turn one. I think turn one, do whatever you want.

• 1:05:25Matt Farah?

  Certainly not in the first corner of the race. They're fucking six wide across that thing.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Well, that's what, that made it hard to try to game, you know, track limits. You're like, okay. They're not enforcing it everywhere, but they are enforcing it someplace. They didn't tell you exactly where it was.

• 1:05:40Matt Farah?

  You can be loud as you want on the corkscrew.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, just stay away from, stay away from five and six, yeah.

• 1:05:46Matt Farah?

  Right. Uh, but fuck, I mean, you know, it was, it was such a good time. I mean, the team was super stoked to have, you know, finish the year with, with a win. And this, I mean, this car, it's, it's a factory race car, but like, I think it's a stock engine, just with like cooling upgrades. It's a ZF eight speed auto.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  It had 10 more horsepower than the Hyundai Veloster.

• 1:06:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah, which was very hard to pass. Even you said so. The Veloster, the fucking Veloster was quick, dude. I got by it, but it was tough.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  That Civic SI was tough, yeah.

• 1:06:18Matt Farah?

  Um, and the, uh, and, and it, it just, they said they do oil changes every 50 hours on this car. And one set of tires and one set of brakes for, for a whole race, like not bad. That's pretty good. Yeah.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Props to BMW, right? Cause like, what a very well-rounded car.

• 1:06:35Matt Farah?

  That's a pretty good BMW.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:38Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and and actually, I think I think I had the most fun racing the other because there's a lot of these in our class. I had the most fun racing the other ones because you're like, hey, we're in the same shit here like, can I get by you? You know, how do I get by you with the exact same specs?

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Matt Farah?

  You know, it's fun. Yeah, it was great. And WRL is, I think, is a, I mean, you've raced in so many series. I think this was like a very welcoming and and like well-run series.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Welcoming and well-run. Well said, because, yeah, I've been hearing a lot about it from friends saying this, you know, and as things have gotten more and more expensive, it started with Lemons where people, it was kind of a jokey series, you know, for fun series. But it just showed how much people are thirsting for good racing that's reasonably affordable, if you can say that in racing, you know? And so, uh, WRL has, is definitely the sweet spot on the value equation and.

• 1:07:29Matt Farah?

  And they don't have like a tyrant, you know, I've been to different races where it's like, you just get lectured. The driver's meeting is just a big old lecture.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, RJ is up there saying, okay, and he's super matter-of-fact.

• 1:07:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  And and they follow through on what they say. And so it's bad when they they say, we're gonna really crack down. And then they don't crack down at all. Pretty soon, you're like, yeah, they're not, they they say that, but they don't have the balls to pull the trigger. And here it's like, do what you want to do. These are, it's like good, good parenting. These are the rules and, uh, yeah, no, I think WRL is really, I mean, the field, how many cars was it? Seventy-eight cars?

• 1:08:04Matt Farah?

  Twenty-seven in our class. I think there was like ten prototypes and a bunch of these GTO cars, which are basically like GT4.

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, like an M4.

• 1:08:12Matt Farah?

  M4 GT4, Cayman GT4, some detuned, you know, cup cars. Um, they rip.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I drove the M4 GT4. It's very serious.

• 1:08:22Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  I drove a nine eleven cup. Yeah.

• 1:08:25Matt Farah?

  Yeah, they're awesome.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  Well, those two guys that finished a half a second apart came by me two laps from the end. I didn't know. I would, that would have been nice to know that the leaders are separated by seconds and they're, they're not giving any Fs now. And so, because they caught me right at the end of the straightaway and the Porsche got by me, but the, he was, patience was not an option at that point. And so they were coming.

• 1:08:48Matt Farah?

  Was that class determined by less than a second?

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  It was .5.

• 1:08:51Matt Farah?

  .5.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:52Matt Farah?

  After seven hours.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and for amateur racing, that's insane.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  That's really, that's.

• 1:08:57Matt Farah?

  Super legit. Yeah, yeah. And, and I don't think like for people, I don't, I wouldn't go to this series from nothing. I would probably do a Lemons race or a Champ race or an AER race first. And then go to this one because the speeds are higher and the, the cars are faster. The, the cars, the cars that are passing you are passing in a faster, more aggressive way in the faster classes. So I wouldn't just go to this cold necessarily, although you can if you have a comp license. This can be your first ever endurance race. I would probably do a slower race first, uh, to like get yourself like, you know, in the vibe. Uh, but if like, if you're comfortable driving a race car, these are, this is a fucking fun time. Yeah, it's really fun. And like these, um.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  And also by the way, real quick, like you got to drive a hell of a track. I mean, that was.

• 1:09:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  You know, that was fun.

• 1:09:44Matt Farah?

  It's, it's a track that it's fun and it kind of, it can, it's like, there's parts that really kind of beat you up a lot. And there's other parts that are like pretty chill.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Back straight is like.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  There's a lot of nuance there. Like I, I, this is the first time I've raced there. I've been on it before, but never really hustling. And, you know, I'm, there's, there's still time on the table in some of these places. You know, the S is, the S is one of the great series of corners in, in America.

• 1:10:08Matt Farah?

  That's very, very challenging.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:10Matt Farah?

  Like the, the, the, the way that worked, I mean, ultimately is you, you turn into that first one flat. Hit the brakes at the first one.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Start brushing the brakes as you're passing that first.

• 1:10:21Matt Farah?

  And you're on the brakes again until you start to turn left again. That's that like 10% brakes for two seconds.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  Dabbing, dabbing, dabbing.

• 1:10:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And, and that's that, if you get that right, it feels real nice.

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  It's six corners, back to back to back.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I never got that right, but it, it's a lot of fun.

• 1:10:38Matt Farah?

  But the, the bit over the crest.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so cool. Oh, that green, that green diamond thing?

• 1:10:43Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's the Tommy Kendall cut line is right there.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  That is, that is the best part of the track.

• 1:10:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I, I like that.

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  Did you each have a favorite driving moment?

• 1:10:55Speaker 03

  I mean, you got to pass people on the S's. That sounds like that was your

• 1:10:57Matt Farah?

  I had a couple where I passed. I set up passes against other two series where I said, "Four corners ahead, this is where I'm gonna go," and I did it. And I was like, "That's fuck, I can't believe I just actually made that happen." And so that was like, alright.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  I had my stand, again, I knew I wasn't going so hot, but there was one BMW, and I don't know the number, but he came up on me and I kinda picked up my pace, and then for 90 minutes, it was just me and him together.

• 1:11:25Matt Farah?

  That's fun.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  And it was like, he got ahead of me at one point, but then I got him back, you know?

• 1:11:29Matt Farah?

  I love that stuff, yeah.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  And it was, it was a 90-minute battle, and whoever that driver was, that was me, and that was really fun.

• 1:11:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  And it was great. And it was, it was like, you know, he would kinda get closer to me in the corners, and I'd get him on the straight a little bit, and then, yeah, it was, it was cool. And I passed him on that Tino line.

• 1:11:45Matt Farah?

  Nice.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  That's where I took it back.

• 1:11:46Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that is the fucking line, man.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:49Matt Farah?

  It really is.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  It's a cheat code, yeah.

• 1:11:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Tommy, do you have a moment, do you have a moment?

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  It was more a process, you know, getting out the second day and just stringing laps together, and, and watching the timer in the car, and trying, because, again, hustling down through the S's, at first, you, some of those guys would come, you'd follow the quick guys to the S's, and you're like, "Wow, I need to man up here," and really, and it's, it's subtle, but it's, it, it compounds.

• 1:12:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  And so, really getting the confidence where you really are able to hustle it through there without making mistakes. You could, you can hustle it through there, and you're gonna make some mistakes, some of which are maybe gonna be really consequential. And so, you know, doing it in a, in a smart way. So it's fun to, to kinda, you know, I'm still not razor-sharp, like, I, and so, I, I've gotten good at saying, "Listen, I'm almost 60 years old, I haven't been in a car in 11 years, so give myself a little bit of room."

• 1:12:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  And everyone's expecting you to still be, you know, Senna. And so, to put, to push that stuff at bay, and just, and, and just challenge yourself. Racing, it's funny, racing is a great micro, it's, it's kinda the Steve McQueen line, racing is life, he's meant it differently, but it really is, because it's all this stuff happening at once. It's, it's, it's you battling in your brain on pushing yourself, and, you know, And doubts and this, that and the other. And so it really is fun. There's nothing, there's nothing quite like it that taxes you the same way. And, and the mistakes hurt and the, and the successes feel good. Like at the airport last night, we were all freaking.

• 1:13:18Matt Farah?

  I have never been so tired.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:20Matt Farah?

  I was so tired.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  But there could have also been the 7,000 calories of french fries we wolfed down.

• 1:13:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  But satisfied, you know, it's just this great feeling. I woke up this morning and I'm tired and I'm sore. But my mind's like quiet and it's like, that was, and then you, it, it, that'll get me, that and six bucks will get me a latte. So, you know, but it, it feels good.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:13:44Matt Farah?

  And you're like, uh, uh, it's, it's so, it's so easy to be like, oh yeah, no, we're just fucking around. We're just fucking around. And it's like, we're P2.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  No, get serious real quick.

• 1:13:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah, get serious, serious, real fast.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Saturday night, like Tato was super serious. We drank a lot of wine and I don't know, I wasn't feeling all that serious. And then I, but I remember it was Zach and Tato came up to me after I was like, you know, cause I was like, Matt's running real good. Like you didn't, you know, cause the day before, again, he got in P1 or P2.

• 1:14:11Matt Farah?

  It was inconsistent.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  And it was P7 when I was getting dressed. I was like, all right, you know, it's fine, you know, whatever. Tato's a wonder kid and we're normal humans. And then when you were like P2 and they came up to me and they're like, um, we really got a shot here. Like, would, would you mind if Tommy went in and if there's time of the end, we'll throw you in. And I was like, absolutely. A hundred percent. And then Zach was like, I think Tommy can go the whole time without refueling. I'm going to leave him out. I'm like, totally. That's great. I don't have to take a shower. That's.

• 1:14:36Matt Farah?

  Racecraft.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:37Matt Farah?

  Racecraft. Yeah. It was great. And, and we'll, we'll get Sergio and, and Tato back here. Uh, make sure you follow Mateo Siderman on Instagram. Um, by the way.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Spelled like Spider-Man with no P.

• 1:14:50Matt Farah?

  Yes. S I, not S E I, S I, just straight S.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  Now, speaking of life, we also need to give a shout out. Uh, Sergio's uncle is fighting for his life in a burn center in Dallas. So they were heading straight there. He was in Cancun and had a gas oven on Thanksgiving explode in his face. And so, uh, so cousin Sean, who's a friend of ours, that's his father. So, you know. Yeah. So we're, we're thinking about them.

• 1:15:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that was a crazy story. And of course, there's like, not like laws in Mexico for that kind of thing. So it's like, you know, you can't like go sue somebody. It's like whoopsie. Which is really, really terrible. And on that note, do we have anything from the people of interest? Of course, the patrons, we love so much. Patreon.com slash the smoke entire podcast. Get in the game. Get questions for the live show. Get to watch the live show. Get to watch the show the day it's recorded rather than waiting. Get it to get extra show. Get to get show without ads. All, if you like the show, it's more show. Just all around more show. And let's get to them. All right.

• 1:16:02Matt Farah?

  Okay. Smug de mure.

• 1:16:07Matt Farah?

  New patron, long time listener. I've been living in China for the last seven years and saw directly the sudden change between ice to electric and how incredibly fast Chinese cars improved.

• 1:16:17Matt Farah?

  My only problem with electric cars is they made it possible for everyone to have a sub five seconds zero to sixty and most of the people are not decent enough drivers. Yup.

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  Should this be regulated is basically the crux of the question.

• 1:16:31Matt Farah?

  I don't necessarily think it should be like.

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  I feel like, I don't think we've seen, I think we were all concerned about this and also with hypercars and supercars. The question is, have we seen an uptick in accidents with, as a result of that? Johnny's shaking his head. I agree with him. I think most people, like we talked about in the last show, if you hand a normal person a thousand horsepower EV, they're going to tap the gas and go whoa, and they're never going to touch it again.

• 1:16:55Matt Farah?

  I remember when I started at Motor Trend, we had a C6 ZR1. And a guy who used to be married to a friend of mine was like, you gotta let me drive it. You got, it's my fucking dream car. You gotta let me drive it. I'm like, okay. So we found this straight ass road, middle of nowhere. To four, four thousand RPM shifts, four thousand RPM shifts, four thousand RPM shifts. Fuck, man. That was the craziest moment of my life.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  And I'm like, and I, you know, I wasn't gonna be like, no, go to seven because I shouldn't have been letting him drive. I mean, it doesn't really matter.

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  Wasn't the famous McLaren F1 story, it's like someone-

• 1:17:33Matt Farah?

  Oh, Ralph.

• 1:17:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Matt Farah?

  The Ralph story, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very short. Ralph Lawrence, one of his McLarens wasn't running well, so he did what anyone in 1996 would have done when their McLaren F1 wasn't running well. They plugged in the 14-4 modem to the wall and the car called Gordon Murray, or whoever the fuck they called in England. And two guys in tweed jackets show up and they look at the car, they take it for a quick drive and fiddle on a computer for a second and they go, "Shift higher," and then they leave and fly back to England. And that's the entire story.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:07Matt Farah?

  So, yeah. No, I mean, like, I, I, we just drove the new Rivian Quad and like, I, why a Rivian needs a thousand horsepower, uh, I, I don't know.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I know.

• 1:18:18Matt Farah?

  Why?

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  Cause it's rad, why not?

• 1:18:20Matt Farah?

  So, as long as people are saying that, they're just gonna keep making things with more horsepower. I'm happy that most people aren't using it most of the time.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I think it gets into a bit of, um, and I keep mentioning this guy, but Thorston Veblen, who's an economist from Wisconsin. Theory that leaves your class. I think people are bummed that horsepower has been democratized. Cause if you think about it, like, why should only the ultra wealthy be able to have really, really, really fast cars? They're not inherently better drivers because they're rich. And so like, so Veblen has this thing, theory that leaves your class. The idea is like, okay, um, electric lights come out and only wealthy people can afford to get their homes rewired. So, a electric light dinner was very romantic and desirable. Then, the poorers get electric lights and only the rich can afford to like, burn the candles. So then, a candlelight dinner becomes romantic.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  So, when anybody can go zero to 60 in three seconds, suddenly, I don't care about that. Well, wait a second, that's all you, that's all you cared about for years.

• 1:19:21Speaker 03

  Now, now we're concerned about driver engagement.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Yes, now, now I need to go deaf.

• 1:19:25Matt Farah?

  Handmade.

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  I need to go deaf. I need to be deaf. My car must deafen me.

• 1:19:29Matt Farah?

  Uh, real quick, Leonard- Meredith, uh, when I drove the 750 as a Cota, I didn't, uh, do lap times. In fact, I spent most of my time sideways and it was a great time. And because of that, it made it harder to drive clean in this little race car. I was like, this is a drastically different experience. Uh, Optimus Primate, like, like, all that oversteer on the exit of the hairpins was a great time until Tato told me to stop doing it.

• 1:19:54Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:19:55Matt Farah?

  To be honest with you.

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Um, this is what it's about.

• 1:19:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I've seen this in the videos. Um, okay, wait, hang on. Uh, let's, let's do ones that focus on the, on the day. Start in an unreasonably priced car. When is the next race? Sergio said we should talk about dates for next year.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  Daytona, I hear.

• 1:20:14Matt Farah?

  Daytona?

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  Daytona.

• 1:20:16Matt Farah?

  Bro.

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  Bro.

• 1:20:18Matt Farah?

  Who needs a chef when you've got lollipops, am I right?

• 1:20:22Speaker 03

  I wasn't gonna mention it.

• 1:20:23Matt Farah?

  I'm saying. Bottle service. I would, I've, you know, I've never, uh, driven Daytona.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  It's.

• 1:20:28Matt Farah?

  Isn't that a shame?

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  You've probably, I shouldn't even talk.

• 1:20:31Matt Farah?

  Probably.

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  The first time you go up on the banking and the thing just turns sideways and, uh, one of the biggest epiphanies is on a bank track, uh, forward is up and to the left.

• 1:20:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  So you can't see. And so when you're going really fast, I mean, the lower you sit in the seat, and it's Dale Earnhardt Senior.

• 1:20:49Matt Farah?

  Who put the window? Who put the window up?

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Uh, the 917 had the window up there, yes.

• 1:20:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  And I drove one of Dale Senior's, uh, I was the first person besides him to drive his Busch Grand National car. And there was, it was the weirdest thing. The seat only had a right side on it and the left side went over and the doorbars were padded. And he used to, that was, that was one of his secrets. He'd get down next to the door and he'd look through the side window. And that's why he got caught up, I think, in way fewer accidents on those super speedways.

• 1:21:18Matt Farah?

  In the documentary, his early cars used like seats out of a van. He didn't like racing seats.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:21:24Matt Farah?

  And so he had a fucking van seat in his car. It was crazy.

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  When, when I was in that.

• 1:21:29Matt Farah?

  Way later in the, in time, that car should have had that seat.

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  I, I said, I said, I know what you're doing. He goes.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  Rick Mears told me this wild story one time when it was Daytona 500 and there was like two laps to go and his neck gave out.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  Indy 500 for Mears.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah. And but his like, so his head fell to the left and when he was driving, he could see, he couldn't see anything, couldn't see forward, but he could see like the lights and and then he could like, you know, on the radio, they could tell him like if there was someone in front of him or whatever, but he could, he drove like two laps looking up through the glass.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  Mears, that guy's my hero, one of, one of.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  Soft spoken, nice guy, but just, oh, man, what a gunslinger.

• 1:22:18Matt Farah?

  Oh, that top one was good, Johnny, or Zach, sorry. Chase the Monte Carlo says, if you were to each start a business making movie cars and selling them, what would you make?

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  Oh, the Tumblr.

• 1:22:30Matt Farah?

  What, isn't Jay Ryan selling those?

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, he says similar to the Tumblr.

• 1:22:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Um, I mean, you'd want to sell.

• 1:22:39Speaker 03

  Well, it's like, what do you want to sell and what do you, what do you want to drive?

• 1:22:42Matt Farah?

  What do you want to drive around?

• 1:22:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:22:44Matt Farah?

  Like, the Thomas Crown Affair Mustangs are pretty cool. They're like Safari, you know, Shelby Mustangs. Those are pretty rad.

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  I love the Fast and Furious PreRunner Charger. Like, that's what I want to drive around.

• 1:22:54Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 1:22:55Speaker 03

  Would anyone buy one? Actually, I bet those would sell pretty well now that I think about it.

• 1:22:58Matt Farah?

  Probably could sell a bunch of them.

• 1:22:59Speaker 03

  Tennessee.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I like the S8 from Ronin, but I mean, you could just go get one.

• 1:23:07Matt Farah?

  Huge market for them.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  I want the amphibious Esprit from James Bond.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:14Matt Farah?

  Unfortunately, you know who owns it?

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, we do.

• 1:23:16Matt Farah?

  I don't think he's giving it up.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:23:18Matt Farah?

  Elon Musk owns that thing.

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  Does he? We're gonna make them.

• 1:23:21Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:22Speaker 02

  We're gonna make them.

• 1:23:23Matt Farah?

  Elon Musk is gonna sue you.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25Matt Farah?

  Uh, Johnny E.V. Gerberman.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 1:23:29Matt Farah?

  Uh, I understand the Rivian's R1S Gen 2 is the one to have.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:23:37Matt Farah?

  But if Gen 1s are creeping into the high 40s, is the suspension a deal breaker or is the car still a nice daily for 50?

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  It's fine if you're 50. It depends how you drive, so.

• 1:23:47Matt Farah?

  What happened with the suspension?

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  So, you know, I think they just started developing the truck first and they took 15 inches out of the wheelbase and they had the same suspension pieces.

• 1:23:56Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  So, the R1S rode worse, but also if you pushed it, sir, are you gonna push your car? If you push the car, the rear end steps out, which is a really strange thing to have happen, because it just happened.

• 1:24:07Matt Farah?

  Well, we talked about this when I reviewed it. It's essentially the same steering ratio and everything, but they just cut the wheelbase.

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:15Matt Farah?

  And it drives like a car with a cut wheelbase.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  And so.

• 1:24:18Matt Farah?

  That's like what the Audi Sport Quattro, you ever drive Zuckermans?

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:24:22Matt Farah?

  That's how it drives.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23Matt Farah?

  Where like, you have way more rear action for the amount of input you do at the front. It's weird.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  But it only happens when you're pushing it. Yeah.

• 1:24:31Matt Farah?

  But you can feel the motions that lead to what will happen at lower speeds.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for Gen 2, what they did was they actually changed the rear suspension pieces. So they solved it. So, look, if you just commute around town, it's totally fine. You know, the Gen 1 is fine. I would say get the Gen 2, just because the potential for what they're gonna be able to do with that new chipset is, like, I'm going to Rivian Autonomy Day on Thursday, because they're announcing like their full self-driving and like, you'll have that. Like, my truck will never get that.

• 1:25:06Matt Farah?

  The Quad I had, I used the, you know, lane centering, whatever they call it. Their hands-free system, whatever it's called.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:16Matt Farah?

  I drove to Irvine and back with it.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Matt Farah?

  Pretty good. Honestly, pretty good.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  And so, RJ, last time I talked to him, and it could be a little bit out of date, but like, that same system on my truck uses like 75 to 80% of the processing power available. On the Gen 2, it uses 1% of the processing power. So it's a much better chipset.

• 1:25:38Matt Farah?

  Well. Uh, Ryan's witty username. Uh, great to meet you guys this weekend. Can I get a review of the Victory Whiskey? I don't remember the name of it. It was something from Texas.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  I'd rather. I'd say everybody who wasn't me and maybe Matt really liked it.

• 1:25:54Matt Farah?

  I thought it was fine. I thought for the sip I had of it, it was fine.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Texas whiskey does this weird thing where it's just like, boy, when they were making that, it was too hot out. That's my, that's my impression of all Texas whiskey is like, it's just, it's got a harshness.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  This is the kind of discernment I was talking about. It's lost on people like me. So I thought it was pretty inspired. The Victory Celebration was inside a room, so there was no champagne spraying. But they said, rather than giving them cheap champagne and spraying it, and wait, let's give them maybe slightly better whiskey and they drink it.

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  Again, the open throttle, the open throttle dudes were stoked. They were so, in fact Zach, who Tato confirmed is 24, Zach didn't drink a beer. We were hitting Modelas after the race. Zach's like, I'm waiting for that Victory Whiskey.

• 1:26:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I gave him the bottle.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  Just like the Rolex Daytona, that's expensive whiskey.

• 1:26:48Matt Farah?

  It's earned with the hard work.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:26:51Matt Farah?

  I hate that part of F1 where Brad Pitt like gives back the Daytona. He's like, I gotta watch. Like, alright dude, enjoy living in your van. Down payment on a house.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  You really took that movie way too seriously.

• 1:27:05Matt Farah?

  I, no, because it, because it gets so many of these little minutiae details right and the, the plot of it is so stupid.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  I remember when.

• 1:27:15Matt Farah?

  And big things that get so wrong.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  When Ford vs. Ferrari came out, I interviewed Mangold, the director, you know, and I brought up a couple things. And he's like, you know, I didn't make this movie for you. You already know all this. I made this for your wife. So when you're like, let's go see a car movie, she won't be like, fuck James Mangold. Yeah, very good point. Yeah.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  I learned in Days of Thunder, I watched Days of Thunder and I would, I just tore it apart.

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  Downshift on the straight.

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  And so, and then I, for the next decade, several decades, I'd meet young people like, that's the greatest movie of all time. And like, my, what I know ruined that for me. So I've learned actually to suspend my knowledge and just go in to be entertained. And so, I mean, some of them, but they got, they got so many good things right.

• 1:27:59Matt Farah?

  Here's my problem with that specific scene. IWC is a sponsor. He's not, the guy living in a fucking van is turning down the $50,000 Rolex and the watch he just won. And what does he say? I got one. And IWC is selling that shit now, dude. That's what I'm, that's why I mean like, that is like an unrealistic plot point for a purely commercial fucking reason.

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:27Speaker 03

  Or is it so that he just does it for the love of the game?

• 1:28:29Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah. And the love of this van. You want to come in?

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  To Tommy's point.

• 1:28:33Matt Farah?

  I got candy in here.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  To Tommy's point, counterpoint, I took my eight-year-old to see F1 movie. And like, at some point during the movie, there's a railing in front of us and he starts doing like pushups on the railing. And I'm like, stop fidgeting. And he's like, I want to be like Sonny. Cause Brad Pitt was doing pushups. And I'm like, whoa, he's like connecting, you know, so.

• 1:28:55Matt Farah?

  I won't ruin it for him, okay? But I think we have maybe a slightly more evolved audience.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Well, I was very much entertained. I suspended disbelief.

• 1:29:05Speaker 03

  I enjoyed the movie a lot. I was surprised.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  The only thing, the only thing, again, I thought was stupid was like, we gotta engineer the car to go faster. You know, it's like the old Dan Deardorff quote, like, well, what they need to do now is score more points than the other team.

• 1:29:18Speaker 03

  The whole building.

• 1:29:19Matt Farah?

  You said to me on Saturday, have you tried going faster?

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:27Matt Farah?

  And then I did. And then I did and I didn't.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:32Matt Farah?

  I did it. Um, all right. I don't know. Anything else? Oh.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  I like 12-inch cylindrical.

• 1:29:42Matt Farah?

  12-inch cylindrical? That's really good. That's really good. We get one of those in two weeks. I haven't, have you driven one of those yet?

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  I get one of those in January.

• 1:29:50Matt Farah?

  Okay, cool. It'll probably be the same one.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Same one. And Spike's getting it. We'll have a big party.

• 1:29:54Matt Farah?

  I'm excited to try it. Uh, let's see. The 12-inch cylindrical works remote and drives 5,000 miles. I want to haul a dog, a mountain bike, and a kid. A, uh, I love the idea of an LX 470, but a Cayenne might be more fun for 30K. Don't get a cheap Cayenne. I can't tell you enough to not get a cheap.

• 1:30:15Speaker 03

  It won't be fun when it breaks.

• 1:30:16Matt Farah?

  They're so expen- little stuff is expensive in those things.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, oh, especially like, like, was it like first gen?

• 1:30:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  First gen's insanity, like, somebody told me they did the door, the window motors, and like, it was just so over-engineered. It was like a 24-hour job to open up the doors, to change the window motors and put them back together.

• 1:30:36Matt Farah?

  That was like my Bentley.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah. So, but, but the LX, I mean LX 470, 30, I think they're a lot more than that.

• 1:30:43Matt Farah?

  I don't know.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  I think they're like 60.

• 1:30:44Matt Farah?

  I mean, if you, no, that's for, that's for like a, a nice one.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:30:48Matt Farah?

  The 470s are used, nah, they're.

• 1:30:51Speaker 03

  Okay. Tony Angelo is selling his right now, and it looks awesome.

• 1:30:54Matt Farah?

  I mean, I have no problem with the LX.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  Hey Zach, Zach, when are you getting the Doce Chilindri? When are you getting yours?

• 1:30:58Speaker 03

  Uh, when we get mine.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:31:00Speaker 03

  We, we have to split one.

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:31:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a timeshare situation. Yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  The royal me.

• 1:31:05Matt Farah?

  Oh, here, I like this one. Bush did 997. What is your special, your favorite special version of the special version? Right, so like.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:14Matt Farah?

  Like, uh, a version within a version.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  So C63 Black Series.

• 1:31:17Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:18Matt Farah?

  Okay. Uh, okay, wait, this will take a second, though.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  Okay, let me think.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  Why you think? On Cars and Bids, there are LX 470s as cheap as eight grand.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:31:28Speaker 03

  And they go up from there.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  Get three.

• 1:31:30Speaker 03

  But, yeah, you could get three for 30 grand, so.

• 1:31:33Matt Farah?

  Uh, the Mercury Villager Nautica Edition, I will, I will take.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  I mean, like, you know, I mean, I don't know, like, the Diablo SV Monterey Edition.

• 1:31:42Matt Farah?

  Oh.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  Uh, I've driven, uh, two of those now. Those are rad.

• 1:31:47Matt Farah?

  Okay, uh, yeah, Miura SVJ?

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Uh, sure, I mean, I haven't driven it, but.

• 1:31:53Matt Farah?

  SVJ was actually special?

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:55Matt Farah?

  I mean, not special, rare, rare, sorry.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  There was two.

• 1:31:59Matt Farah?

  There was two, and now there's many.

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Tommy, you got one?

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  I can't really contribute to this, but I, because I haven't driven most of them, but the black series, I own a C63 black series. I drove, I went to the CLK press launch expecting it to be not that much different than an AMG and came away like, oh my goodness.

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  That was the most mind bending car.

• 1:32:22Speaker 02

  Been in love ever since, so I have a C63.

• 1:32:24Matt Farah?

  They're doing manual swaps on them now.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  Also, you know, the classic center, there's that red one.

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got a lot of miles on that red one.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too. I love that red one. You can borrow it.

• 1:32:37Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40Matt Farah?

  Dan Henderson says, do you ever find it tough to review a car with its MSRP in mind with some models having so much cash on the hood with incentives? I mean, conversely, this is not in the question, but you could say with other cars that have ADM on the hood.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure, sure.

• 1:32:54Matt Farah?

  Hard to compare a Rivian with, Rivians are great and have a no BS sales model, but compared to a Lightning with tens and thousands of rebates, it can muddy the water in terms of value. The thing is like, we don't spend a lot of time at dealerships. We're not, we don't get a car to test and then call around 10 dealerships and go, what's the best deal you can give me on this car to find out some kind of a market price, if that's what you could. Maybe someone does that.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  And I have a friend who has driven both, with this model, with this example, he's driven both the Rivian truck and the Lightning and he got a Lightning because it was like $12,000 on the hood. And he's like, you know, he's like, yeah, the Rivian's better, but like, first of all, the Lightning was cheaper to start with and 12,000 off. He's like, he's like, I'll suffer with the Lightning and he loves it, you know?

• 1:33:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, the easiest way for us to work is MSRP. I mean, and although Rivian has a no BS model, like, what's to stop Rivian from changing the price of their car?

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  They do change the price.

• 1:33:53Matt Farah?

  They do all the time. Tesla does it all the time.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Well, Rivian doesn't change their price, but they just come up with like absurd lease deals. Like you can get a dual motor for like $509 a month, which is like, you know, good luck getting a Corolla for $509 a month.

• 1:34:06Matt Farah?

  Which by the way, if that's really a deal, you should get that.

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Well, they did it, you know, they were really kind of struggling like about 18 months ago. They had this, that's why everyone in LA suddenly got dual motor SUVs because it's like $509.

• 1:34:17Speaker 03

  Also, ADM usually gets more press. It goes around the blogosphere and when we hear about it versus cash on the hood doesn't get as much attention.

• 1:34:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Now is the time to get a CO6, by the way.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah?

• 1:34:27Matt Farah?

  Okay, wait. Okay, this is a good one. Cos Cob tuning. I love a Connecticut reference. Uh, I just got a BMW 340i coming from a Toyota 86. Love the speed, space, and cockpit room, but I miss the shifter of the 86, the notchiness. Is it worth chasing a notchier shifter with bushings or a short shift kit? Or enjoy the car for what it is, uh, since the BMW forum said the aftermarket will never be as good? Or the BMW will never be as good as the 86. I don't think it is. Anyway, to, to shift your shifter, I have an opinion on this. Do either of you?

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  I can just say that BMW shifters are rubbery and it's because it's the same ZF thing that's been in production for a hundred years. It's never gonna change and I just think it'll never get better. I think the forums might be right in this instance.

• 1:35:21Matt Farah?

  I have driven several, uh, aftermarket shifters in BMWs. They've all been straight garbage.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:28Matt Farah?

  Uh, the BMW shifter is rubbery and absolutely nobody makes anything better.

• 1:35:35Matt Farah?

  I like, occasionally you have a, a race car that has a super short shift kit in it, which is paired with a very tall lever.

• 1:35:43Speaker 03

  Like Thad's thing?

• 1:35:44Matt Farah?

  And that ends up in like a decent place if you're like literally racing, but on the street for your like car? Just, just leave it, man. You is where you is.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Again, I remember when, remember when Jag had that V6, uh, F-Type for a hot second in the manual?

• 1:35:59Matt Farah?

  That had the, the BMW gearbox.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  It was a ZF, it was the same gearbox. And I remember I was driving, I was with Camisa driving around and I'm like, it's rubbery just like the BMW and, you know, so.

• 1:36:09Matt Farah?

  It was, it was exactly the same.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  It was the same gearbox, yeah.

• 1:36:11Matt Farah?

  Not a bad car, by the way.

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  Not a bad car.

• 1:36:16Matt Farah?

  Oh, this sob story. Zach and I were just talking about this, uh, the other day. The number of cars driving around with their lights turned off at night has become alarming and dangerous. Uh, with all the safety regulations required for cars now, why aren't manufacturers required to have an auto on for car headlights? Um, yeah, I mean, I, I don't know. I mean, because we live in a country that doesn't have laws, just politeness sometimes, really, I guess.

• 1:36:41Speaker 03

  They're all required to have a backup camera now, right, since 2015?

• 1:36:43Matt Farah?

  They are, yeah. And DRLs also, you're required to have DRLs.

• 1:36:47Speaker 03

  I think this should be on their list. Like, just make, make the auto setting mandatory on all the cars. And, and this is definitely a problem in cities, not rural areas. It's dark. Like, you hit something, you remember to turn your lights on.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  And, and going forward will be less and less of a problem as everybody now is the nighttime signature has become like the thing that designers think about so much. Like, I, I took a, a black home last night and it was a new seven series, which I could see from four miles away. But, but you know what? As bad as it looks in the daytime, if you're trying to find one car at LAX at night, man, there it is. Yeah. Really worked.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  Well, to that end, like, I think a lot of issues, people leave their cars in auto. Whenever you valet it, they switch it to off. That's just kind of their standard deal. My wife and her Macan, we were leaving somewhere, we were in separate cars. I said, honey, you're, because that was the opposite. The lights were on, but the, the back lights were, were dark.

• 1:37:37Matt Farah?

  The DRLs were on, because they're mandatory, but not the actual headlights.

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it should, should be in auto.

• 1:37:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, because around here, I do see cars where I don't think they're doing a lot of valet and they're still driving without their lights on.

• 1:37:49Matt Farah?

  There's not one solution.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  That's a nice way to put it.

• 1:37:52Matt Farah?

  It, it would be, it would add cost to cars for sure, because now you have to have the sensor, but I think it probably would be a good idea. Yeah.

• 1:38:04Speaker 03

  Those are the last three.

• 1:38:06Matt Farah?

  Uh, okay. Chudhoun says, on the east coast in the winter, we have to air, add air to our tires because the air density increases with lower temperatures. Why does the opposite not happen in the spring? It's a good question.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  Well, tires lose one PSI a month.

• 1:38:21Matt Farah?

  That's why. That's, that's, yeah. It's a good question, but it's also a good question with a very obvious answer. As it gets warmer.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  People don't know that. Like, like, again, if you, we used to have this guy at Motor Trend, Scott Mortara, who, uh, he went, moved to Seattle, working for the drive shop, but that was, it was like his...

• 1:38:37Matt Farah?

  He was mad at humanity because people wouldn't inflate their tires. He was just so angry at all times, like we'd be somewhere and you could visibly see someone's tire was low and he'd just lose his mind like, "How do they not fill that up?" Blah, blah, blah. But yeah, I mean, your tire, you know, I have a, you know, a bunch of portable air chargers. I just go around once a month.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  And by the way, if you've ever pushed cars around?

• 1:38:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  You know, tire pressure manager, if you care about efficiency and fuel mileage and so forth.

• 1:39:02Matt Farah?

  Try pushing a car around.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're like, you'll check your tire pressures.

• 1:39:06Matt Farah?

  No, I think, yeah, it's because when you add air to your tires in the winter, but because you're adding air anyway, you were only thinking about the temperature and not how long it's been since you've probably added air to your tires.

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:39:20Matt Farah?

  Uh, explorer, I hardly knew her. Will I try to test drive the GR Corolla again when I scout for the upcoming road and track experience? No, I don't need to, I mean, the last GR, I drove three GR Corollas. The last one had spreaders left in the springs.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:35Matt Farah?

  Like from shipping, like the shipping blocks one. This thing rides like shit. But I know what it's supposed to ride like.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Well, they did change it, you know, 25 got way stiffer than 23 or 24.

• 1:39:45Matt Farah?

  It was, but, uh, but I had driven a 25 manual. This was just the auto, like, and so I was like, are there new settings with the auto? And they're like, well, maybe, but also there's a...

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:57Matt Farah?

  No, I'm actually for the next scout, which I'm doing in January, I'm doing, I'm gonna drive a Lucid Gravity.

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  Nice. Have you driven the Gravity yet?

• 1:40:03Matt Farah?

  No. It's supposed to be very nice.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Again, I love Lucid, I like, I like all the people that wear their, blah, blah. They just, they go 97% and quit. And I just, just get it all the way right. Like it's, I don't know, but yeah, Gravity is an extremely great handling minivan.

• 1:40:21Matt Farah?

  That's fine, I'm a pro minivan, you guys know it.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you are. But, I mean, you know, the Rivian, my truck's a fast truck and basically about the same horsepower. It was, it was humbled by the Gravity, like humbled.

• 1:40:36Matt Farah?

  It's also, I'm getting a Grand Touring, which has supposedly a 450 mile range. I think in real world, it's probably in the middle threes, fine.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  No, it's probably like 410, 420, honestly. Lucids go far.

• 1:40:51Matt Farah?

  What I love about a Lucid is it's 300 miles at 90 miles an hour.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:56Matt Farah?

  That I really like. That's a good, because I don't know what I'm going to go for.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  The gravity motors, the gravity's heavier than the air, obviously, but the gravity motors are more efficient than the air motors. I didn't do a range test, I had it, but I mean, it just never even got to a point where I needed to charge it. And we were running around Angeles Crest and filming and everything.

• 1:41:16Matt Farah?

  Well, I'm gonna drive it 1,000 miles across the desert.

• 1:41:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you'll be fine. You'll love it, yeah.

• 1:41:20Matt Farah?

  What could possibly go wrong?

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  You won't turn on because the key's a piece of shit.

• 1:41:24Matt Farah?

  Oh, so just they didn't fix that?

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  Well, the trunk won't open like Jason Finskey's. According to my, uh, my Deep Throat Inside Lucid, like, yeah, they just bought a, again, you walk up to the car and it opens up because it knows you have the key on you, and then you get in the car and it won't turn on because there's no key detected. So what I would say is get the app and do phone as key and that should be fine.

• 1:41:47Matt Farah?

  Um, speaking of minivans, quick review, rented a Kia Carnival, the Kia of minivans. It was the first minivan I've used in six years to not have an automatic power trunk.

• 1:41:59Speaker 02

  I stood next to Johnny at the back of it for a while and Johnny's like, there has to be.

• 1:42:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah, no, I stood, I stood there staring at it.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  So did I.

• 1:42:06Matt Farah?

  It hurts for a minute going, what the fuck?

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  So Tommy, that's how car journalists think.

• 1:42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm like, I think you can just close it.

• 1:42:13Matt Farah?

  I was like, no way. No way, because it wasn't, it wasn't that I'm too lazy to close it. It was, there has to be a button, I'm just not finding it. And then I'm gonna tell people it has a manual thing and someone's gonna go, hey asshole.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's down here.

• 1:42:30Matt Farah?

  The button's right here, you know, it's, it's inside the A on the Kia badge or whatever, you know, just no one told you.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Matt, they're gonna say, hey asshole anyways, no matter what you do, so.

• 1:42:38Matt Farah?

  No, but they gave me a van with a 300 miles on it, brand new van, as nice as it, as it could be, and not a bad conveyance.

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  It worked.

• 1:42:47Matt Farah?

  Carvals compared to all other minivans are luxury items.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  It had kind of a nice intake noise when you got in.

• 1:42:52Matt Farah?

  Got on it, like it wasn't bad. Uh, this, the steer, it had, it, if you tried to go more than five tenths, this thing would push into a ditch immediately, but, but, um,

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  Why are you doing that in a minivan?

• 1:43:03Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I don't know. The only reason I, I bring it up even at all is because I got it from Hertz at Austin, which has the AI scanners now.

• 1:43:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:43:10Matt Farah?

  What's this? Yeah. You, there's, they don't check your car in anymore. You drive through and a little fucking AI damage scanning ring of fire.

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:43:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Oh, that's no good.

• 1:43:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah, this shit's been outsourced to, it's incredibly problematic.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  But that's also, I mean, one of my favorite moments from Lemons.

• 1:43:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  Oh shit.

• 1:43:32Matt Farah?

  Look at that.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  One of my favorite moments from Lemons was, we used to, we used to really race our rental cars.

• 1:43:38Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were like, you know, cause we would get to a track on Thursday and we gotta check out the track and like, you know.

• 1:43:45Matt Farah?

  Well, they, we, we, I, you know, the Thursday, I, I'm glad I didn't go through the trouble because we were supposed to have a practice day at Coda on Thursday and just Quali was Friday, but it was pissing rain all day Thursday. So they, they canceled practice effectively and moved it all to Friday. But at first I was like, can I bring any car on track during practice? If so, I'll fly to Dallas and get a fucking McLaren, you know, and have a good time for the day. Um, and they said, no, you can't. It turns out that wasn't.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:15Matt Farah?

  True.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:16Matt Farah?

  Um, but, uh, we fucking, we've run vans in the HPD for races like a million.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  There was a Wrangler Rubicon.

• 1:44:24Matt Farah?

  Yes, yes. Dude, a guy was in the practice, they had a Wrangler.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:28Matt Farah?

  Coda.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  I followed through the S's. I thought, I thought, I thought I clicked into a video game. I'm like, what is going on here?

• 1:44:34Matt Farah?

  Cruising USA.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  But so, so one time we.

• 1:44:38Matt Farah?

  The Jeep or the Testerosa, they're the same speed.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  One time after a, a long meal, shall we say, uh, we had a Chrysler 300, I want to say, and went over a parking thing. And I don't know what we ripped off, but a lot of fluids came out of the belly of the car, but we were right near the airport. So we had, you know, two rental cars. So, uh, one of, I'll leave their name out. One of the Lemons people pulled in and then I pulled the PT Cruiser right behind it.

• 1:45:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  And like.

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  Touch the bumper, there's no way to see anything. Yeah, we, bye.

• 1:45:06Matt Farah?

  Bye, see you later.

• 1:45:07Speaker 02

  And so that sucks.

• 1:45:08Matt Farah?

  So, yeah, we didn't even have to do, do, you just leave it, you know, and I did not get dinged. Although we did, we did forget to stop and fill it up for gas, and that probably, that cost me like 50 bucks.

• 1:45:19Speaker 03

  Well, to catch Johnny up real quick, the early reports on this tech were that, one, it was finding problems that the human eye couldn't. It was like picking a ding that might have been there. And then the second was, it would basically text people and say, the charge is gonna be $448, but if you pay it right now, it's $239. If you can test it, it might be $448. So it's very...

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  Well, by the way, they don't scan it after the last Hertz employee drives it and gives it to you.

• 1:45:44Matt Farah?

  No, they, they scan it on your way out.

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  Oh, they do?

• 1:45:47Matt Farah?

  I got scanned on the way out. Yeah, yeah, I didn't, I don't, I got scanned on the way out. But dude, imagine, what's worse, what's worse, is go through the scanner with a rental car with no miles on it? Or the rental car with like 25K on it?

• 1:46:02Speaker 02

  No miles.

• 1:46:03Matt Farah?

  I think no miles is scarier, right?

• 1:46:05Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:46:06Matt Farah?

  You think it's better?

• 1:46:07Speaker 02

  Dude, 25K, there's gonna be so many things damaged and...

• 1:46:10Matt Farah?

  That's what I'm saying, it wasn't me.

• 1:46:11Speaker 03

  Well... And, you know, if this whole AI thing's supposed to save money, the processing fee for the repair, this is for a different case, was $125, plus $65 administrative fee. So you're...

• 1:46:23Speaker 02

  What, by the way, what's a $250 repair? Like, they like...

• 1:46:27Matt Farah?

  Probably a scratch, probably a touch up.

• 1:46:28Speaker 03

  They probably just mark it in the computer.

• 1:46:30Matt Farah?

  They probably don't do anything.

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  They don't do a goddamn thing, right?

• 1:46:33Matt Farah?

  Or they just make up the number, yeah.

• 1:46:35Speaker 02

  I will share a car rental damage story. I think statute of limitations has expired.

• 1:46:40Speaker 03

  Here we go.

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  My crew, this is, this is from the 80s. Dan Banks, legend Dan Banks, back in the day, it was Lime Rock, and there was one of these backroads that we used to all take, and I was, this was before I was even with him, and they went sailing through this and they missed it, and they went off into the grass and through someone's yard. The next yard was about six feet lower.

• 1:47:01Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  And they launched and they landed, they landed on top of this wood pile. And it, and so basically now the, the headrests are hitting the, the roof in this, in this Cadillac. And so they take it, they get it off, out of the woodpile and they, and they take it back to the track. They put it, air, uh, floor jack in the, on the seat with some boards and they jack the, there was no scratches on the outside of the car.

• 1:47:28Matt Farah?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:47:28Speaker 03

  They just bent the floor up.

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  Somehow they bent it back ish.

• 1:47:33Matt Farah?

  Excellent.

• 1:47:33Speaker 02

  And returned it, no charge.

• 1:47:35Matt Farah?

  Amazing.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  That's, that's wonderful.

• 1:47:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  That warms my heart.

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  So that, that Days of Thunder, that was the only part of that movie I didn't, I said, that is real.

• 1:47:44Matt Farah?

  Exactly.

• 1:47:45Speaker 02

  That is a hundred percent real.

• 1:47:46Matt Farah?

  Done, done. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  And that's why you, you know, don't buy used, uh, rental cars, don't buy used press cars.

• 1:47:52Matt Farah?

  The, the last and only other time I, I won a sanctioned race or was part of a team that won a sanctioned race was, it was at NCM, uh, in Kentucky. And I had, I had been overcharged by the rental car company for a Nissan, uh, Versa, which was just a tragic car.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:09Matt Farah?

  Cheapest available. And, uh, and so I had been overcharged and I saw my thing and I was annoyed and I was like, well, I'm going to get my money's worth. And I ran about 60 laps of NCM. I fully smoked the CVT gearbox. I fully smoked the brakes. And it was, uh, but the paint was ace, no problem. Tagged, no, tag, no cones, was ace.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  It's all that matters.

• 1:48:31Matt Farah?

  It was all that matters. Yeah, it was good. Got, I got my $500 Nissan.

• 1:48:35Speaker 01

  Is somebody gonna be like, oh, the Versa's not driving as well as it should. It's like, no, fuel's inspect.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  Shift's terrible, check. Bad brakes, check.

• 1:48:45Matt Farah?

  Uh, well, thanks for coming down today, guys. It was a, a good Monday following, following a, a great Sunday. Uh, and an extra special, uh, thank you to Sergio and Mateo for having us and, uh, for the open throttle guys. Doing a great job. They, so, so, uh, for those who don't understand, like, they hear us talking about this race and they're like, well, I don't have a race car. What do I do?

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:49:06Matt Farah?

  So there's like 10 different companies that own the race cars and that run the race cars.

• 1:49:12Speaker 01

  Or more than 10.

• 1:49:13Matt Farah?

  Or, I mean, yeah, however many, for, for each series. You know, pretty much all, almost all the cars in the race, the vast majority of them are operated by teams who sell seats in a race, just like you would get uh, an entry in an HPD track day with your car. Basically, you're, you pay the track day company to do their track day. Well, you pay these guys and they prep the race car. They show up, they run the car, they fuel the car.

• 1:49:37Speaker 02

  Breakfast, lunch.

• 1:49:38Matt Farah?

  They make you snacks. Uh, they make you, they make you snacks. And if, if God, you know, God forbid the car breaks or you, you crash it, they fucking go all night to fix it, get you back in the race and, and you know, you pay a few thousand bucks for, for a weekend. And it's, it's done. You show up and you, and you race. And if you do it by yourself, like you're going to be in a car with people you might not know. Um, or if you do with buddies, you could rent the whole car.

• 1:50:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:03Matt Farah?

  Uh, which I recommend if you can do that.

• 1:50:04Speaker 02

  And there are, there are pitfalls, you know, in terms of if you pay for the weekend and someone gets in it before you and crashes it, you don't get in it. You know, there's different owners deal with it differently. The reality is some of them that are really small, the money's spent getting there.

• 1:50:20Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:20Speaker 02

  And so it sucks. Like someone that, that has deeper, deeper pockets, they might say even, they might eat it.

• 1:50:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  They, they, they, they feel bad for you and so forth. So it's, and there's the, the entire, it's like Airbnb. There's a gradient from the cheapest and it literally goes all the way, almost to Formula One, basically.

• 1:50:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:37Speaker 02

  So in terms of what you get and, and it does, it does, you do well to talk to someone in the space because some people are known as being more shysters than others and, and, uh, you know, other ones are more upstanding and some of them look good. And a lot of polish, but a lot, they don't run as well beneath the surface. So, but you know, it, don't let that stop you is what you're saying.

• 1:50:59Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Sometimes like a, a, a not very good looking race car can be very fast. And sometimes a very shiny one could be run by a bunch of dickbags and the car's not very fast.

• 1:51:07Speaker 02

  But open throttle, we can totally recommend it.

• 1:51:10Matt Farah?

  His team and Zach and, uh, Chris and.

• 1:51:13Speaker 02

  Charlie.

• 1:51:14Matt Farah?

  Charlie.

• 1:51:14Speaker 02

  Well, Chris retired. Chris is moving on to career cup.

• 1:51:17Matt Farah?

  Oh yeah. It was his last, it was his last, uh, race. We got him a W on his last race. I forgot about that. That's cool. Yeah. Everyone else on that team who was cool and whose names I. Unfortunately, can't remember because my brain only has so much space, but lovely group of guys. Yeah. And gals. Excellent, excellent time. Super good times. Um, thank you to our patrons for asking good questions today and everyone else who, uh, for playing along. And, uh, this is gonna go, uh, back to, to, to the Sergio Garage. Uh, I don't think I, I don't think it deserves to live here, but I wanted to have it for the show. Um, so, uh, Splegio, uh, he's getting us all one. Oh, is he? Yeah. Oh, okay. That's fun.

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  Which is pretty magnanimous.

• 1:51:55Matt Farah?

  That's funny.

• 1:51:56Speaker 02

  In my Roush contract, it was written that I do not get the trophies. So, um, I used to try to sneak some out, you know, off the podium. And, you know, when I, when I won the, the Rolex in GT with Paul Newman, um, in ninety, in ninety-five, they didn't get...

• 1:52:14Matt Farah?

  He told this story Saturday night. Hell of a story there.

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  They didn't give Rolexes to class winners then, and they, and...

• 1:52:22Matt Farah?

  Just overall?

• 1:52:22Speaker 02

  Just overall. So I, even with my two class wins there, I don't have a, I don't have a...

• 1:52:27Matt Farah?

  You don't have a fucking watch?

• 1:52:28Speaker 02

  No, no. And so, and then the...

• 1:52:30Matt Farah?

  Normally I wouldn't, I think you should be able to buy a Daytona and have it engraved yourself at this point. Nobody would question it.

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  True. Well, I guess I, I'll tell the rest of the story. So with Paul, um, I knew I wasn't getting a trophy and I knew we weren't getting watches. And then Roush ended up making Paul a replica trophy, but not for me. And, uh, and then I was with him a few, I was with him a few months, with Paul a few months later, and he comes down, he says, "Can you hear right of the track?" I said, "Sure." He gets in the car, he has a brand new Daytona, and I'm like, "I get it. He's the reason everyone wants one." You know, literally. Uh, but, uh, and, and that watch actually just, just sold at auction for, uh, the, the, the old one sold for the crazy money back in the day.

• 1:53:12Matt Farah?

  But the second one.

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  The second one sold that's engraved, that's engraved, that's, you know, Rolex winner ninety-five.

• 1:53:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:18Speaker 02

  Uh, and the, the kick, the other half of that story is, when, when he passed, I thought of, uh, approaching, uh, Joanne and saying, "Hey, I feel weird about this," but I said, "Can I make a donation to the camps and, you know, and, and buy the, the trophy and the watch?" And that was before the the other watch sold for seventeen million bucks. And so.

• 1:53:39Matt Farah?

  She's like, yeah, big donation.

• 1:53:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Once that happened, I'm like, I guess that window's closed.

• 1:53:44Speaker 03

  That sucks. I hope you say Paul would buy you a watch.

• 1:53:47Speaker 02

  Well, the funny thing is, I guarantee you, I didn't, you know, he was super private on the being sick. I guarantee if I'd said, I mean, when you're done with that, I'd love to have that.

• 1:53:56Matt Farah?

  He probably would.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  He took the other one off his wrist and gave it to the daughter's boyfriend.

• 1:54:00Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:01Speaker 02

  So I'm pretty sure he would have wanted me to have those things.

• 1:54:05Matt Farah?

  Oh, man. That's.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  The story, the fact that I can just close my eyes and remember doing all the stuff with him.

• 1:54:10Matt Farah?

  True. Do you, but you think he bought that for himself or you think someone bought it for him?

• 1:54:15Speaker 02

  I think Rolex gave him that.

• 1:54:16Matt Farah?

  You think Rolex gave it to him and not you? That's cold.

• 1:54:20Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  When do they change it, the classmers, I know.

• 1:54:23Speaker 02

  I think like the year after that.

• 1:54:26Speaker 02

  Because.

• 1:54:26Speaker 03

  Ninety-six, yeah.

• 1:54:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, then they gave him to the champions and the Rolex winner. So with that math, I should, because I have five IMSA championships and two Rolex winners.

• 1:54:35Matt Farah?

  Rolling.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I should be rolling it, but I don't.

• 1:54:37Matt Farah?

  Somebody cough one up.

• 1:54:38Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:54:39Matt Farah?

  Someone out there.

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  And then the final insult to injury is for the first two seasons of my career, I I spent all my prize money in eighty-six and eighty-seven buying Rolex subs and GMTs for my Firehawk team, my GTU team, and then my GTU team the next year. I've bought twelve Rolexes as gifts to my to my team and, you know, and so.

• 1:55:04Matt Farah?

  Somebody, we need to go fund me. Go fund me for Tommy's Daytona. Tommy needs a Daytona.

• 1:55:10Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:55:12Speaker 03

  I love, I love all of that. And then if you flashback forty-eight hours, Mateo's like, oh, so what do I want you to do here in the last this time?

• 1:55:19Matt Farah?

  No, for, I got a picture.

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  Here, I'll send you a picture, Zach.

• 1:55:22Matt Farah?

  I called Hannah that night and I was like, it is really weird. And I was like, I was like, I don't know if, you know, if TK is is like being a good sport or is really trying to learn or whatever. But I was like, if I am this dude and like, I don't care how fast you are, twenty-one-year-old. I want, I'm tempted to be like. Tayo.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  Tayo may not know really, honestly, he might be like, this is my dad's buddy.

• 1:55:50Matt Farah?

  Well, for sure, and because I was like, that's Jim Farley, he's the CEO of Ford. By the way, he's Chris Farley's cousin, and Tayo goes, who's Chris Farley? At which point I had to go have a talk with Sergio about his parenting.

• 1:56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, however, as I explained to Matt, Matt owns shoes older than Tayo.

• 1:56:08Matt Farah?

  Well, yeah, so look, here he is with a Fanta.

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  Not drinking wine.

• 1:56:15Matt Farah?

  Motherfucker bought a 24 pack of Fanta for three days in Austin. That's how you know he's 21.

• 1:56:22Speaker 02

  He was drinking grape and orange.

• 1:56:25Matt Farah?

  Alternated, yeah. So, uh, yeah.

• 1:56:28Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, the minute you think you have nothing to learn, it ends.

• 1:56:32Matt Farah?

  No, and also, and also, and also TK had to suffer the mild indignity of attending the rookies meeting, which was, everybody, everybody up there who recognized him was like, the fuck you doing?

• 1:56:48Speaker 02

  Well, then the officials, when they, I, after the media, the Vic, the Price thing yesterday, the two officials says, we were, we were cracking up when we, when we slammed you with that track limousine. They were like, what?

• 1:57:03Matt Farah?

  That was great. Uh, thanks for coming by, boys.

• 1:57:05Speaker 02

  You bet, super fun.

• 1:57:07Matt Farah?

  Thank you, Sergio, thank you, Tayo, and all the crew, that was fucking great. Let's do it again next year, take home another trophy, yeah?

• 1:57:13Speaker 02

  Happy holidays, everyone.

• 1:57:14Matt Farah?

  Happy holidays, indeed. Now it is December. I'll see you guys Thursday. Bye.