Touring Car Champ: Colin Garrett

• How and why did you get started in Motorsports? Did you come from a racing family?
• What was your progression path? 
• How did you get involved with Rooster Hall Racing?
• Jumping ahead to the 2023 season – you crushed it! 285 points, securing the championship in TCX – congratulations? Any war stories you can share from the season, the good, the bad and the ugly? What did you learn over the course of the season? Do you have some favorite/worst tracks on your list now? 
• Let’s talk about the 11/11 veterans project – what is that about? How are you working with them?
• The liveries are getting wilder every year, we’ve seen things ranging from making “Tactical Tan” as Andy Lee likes to call it, a fashion statement, through Samantha Tan’s Van Gogh inspired BMW, but you’ve showcased the first-ever Braille paint scheme. How did that come to be, and why? How does that work exactly? And what does it say? 

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder, how did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their partners at AWS CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School. Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.com or take a shortcut to GT America us and be sure to follow them on social at GT America, on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook.

And catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT world. [00:01:00] The last time we saw our guest, he was suiting up to attack the track at Virginia International Raceway behind the wheel of the Rooster Hull Racing BMW M2 in his inaugural season. Fast forward an entire year and Colin Garrett is the newly crowned TCX Class Champion in the SRO World Challenge.

TC America series, and he’s here to share some incredible stories of racing, discuss new trends in motor sports, and bring you up to speed on his unique mission of advocacy and social impact. And with that, Colin, welcome to break fix.

Colin Garrett: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I’m excited.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, like all good break fix stories, there’s a superhero origin.

So let’s talk about the who, what, when, and where of you, how, and why did you get started in motor sports? Did you come from a racing family?

Colin Garrett: No, no one in my family actually raced. Always been the mystery of where I got this racing bug from. It’s just been something I’ve always loved. I had a neighbor that was my babysitter at the time and they all watched NASCAR.

And I think it [00:02:00] was when I would go over there that I would watch NASCAR with them and I just got glued to it. It’s been something that I just can’t get enough of. We grew up with South Boston Speedway, the iconic short track. It’s 20 minutes from the house. And then VIR is 15 minutes from the house. You know, you’re right in between two historic tracks.

And I grew up going to both of them. I was more of a NASCAR fan at the time. So obviously South Boston was the place I really loved. And I’d go to VIR when the big NASCAR guys would come out to go test out there for the road course stuff back in the day. So yeah, that’s just kind of what I always loved.

I think that’s how I got it. And then. NASCAR ended up lowering the minimum age to 14 for the weekly series. So South Plaza Speedway is a NASCAR track. I convinced my dad to buy a pure stock. It was a Nissan 240 SX, 4, 000 bucks or whatever. It was the car trailer, like everything. We went racing.

Crew Chief Eric: So you started that at 14 years old, you were racing in that Nissan.

Colin Garrett: Yeah, yeah. It was the first thing I’d ever raced.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re in your mid twenties now. So let’s say 10 years of progression. What did you do after that? How did you end up in world challenge?

Colin Garrett: Start off in the pier stock and the pier stock car. Like it was [00:03:00] not good at all. The last two races of the year, we actually, we threw our illegal computer in the car.

To see, cause the car was so slow. We’re like, we’re not going to like win the race. Let’s just see, you know, if I can race with these guys. And we threw it in and ended up actually being pretty decent. So the next year we’re like, all right, let’s get like a real race car. So the next year I was actually racing for my local hero at the time, Peyton Sellers, Sellers Racing, I was.

Kind of running out of their shop with the pure stock. They primarily ran late models. So they’re like, once you come around a limited late models, the same car, just a smaller engine. And so 2016 started off in the limited late model progressed through there. Ran 2017, ran limited late model again, and late model stock.

I won the championship, South Boston limited that year. Won a bunch of races, track record, won a few races up at dominion raceway, but Fredericksburg. We went and ran all kinds of races that year, 2018. We decided that we were going to run the full season at dominion and four or five canons pro series races back when that used to be a thing, the old NASCAR can and pro series, we had a team out of our shop that Sam Hunt racing.

[00:04:00] It was Hunt sellers racing at the time. That was kind of like the natural progression that was just. In the shop, we started to do that. We start racing and we get to Langley for the first canine race. And we ran like second or third, I think like the whole race. And then ended up, I think six after a shuffle at the end and the restart.

And that was like my first canine race ever. And we’re like, Holy crap, this is pretty cool. So we decided to go full time for the rest of the year. We missed the first two races, but we went full time for the rest of the year. We struggled a lot. Just the team wasn’t, I don’t think prepared to go full time that quickly.

And so we probably shouldn’t have done that, but everyone was like, screw it. Let’s do it. We all learned a lot and that builds up to the next year. So through it in the middle of 2018, we moved the shop down to Morrisville, North Carolina, the hub of NASCAR. We started running down there, 2019. We came out rocking.

We almost won the first race at New Smyrna that year. We got taken out by a current cup driver. Didn’t get to win that race is what it is, but. At the end of the year, we ran a bunch of K and N races that year. And we were some struggling trying to keep crew chiefs on board. Cause all the guys, you know, as soon as they get national series deals, they just go and run [00:05:00] national series stuff.

It just, it pays more and it’s more lucrative than a K and N deal. The amount of money that was just being spent on K and N and stuff. It was like, we can go rent an expensive car for the same price. And make an insane amount. Like I finished third at South Boston and at Canaan car and got like 600 bucks.

And it was like, what is it? We went Xfinity racing at the end of the year at homestead with the Sam Hunt racing guys. So we broke off, moved to Charlotte, built the whole Sam Hunt racing deal up. Got an XFINITY car. That was old TriStar car. I think we’re not qualified 14th, out qualified three of the four DRM cars, junior motorsports cars.

And it’s like 20th, 21st. We had a loose wheel on the last pit stop of the day. And I don’t know where it run it before that, but it just killed our finish. 2020, still driving the NASCAR stop running trucks, running whatever here and there, it just costs so much to do it. And 2020, we go to Daytona, built a brand new Gibbs car.

It wasn’t brand new, but Gibbs gave us a car, Joe Gibbs Racing, awesome car. And. We went down there with a crap set up and we missed the show by 0. 01 or something like [00:06:00] that. And it was bad. We had no straightaway speed. That kind of, I think killed us for a while. Cause that would actually put us in points cause that COVID hit and the world kind of stopped when we went back to the tracks, we could race.

Cause they added like four cars to the field or whatever. So they would have a 40 car field and we could race our person’s only 4, 500, no matter where you finish. So if you won the race, it’s 4, 500 bucks. It’s stupid. So we did that and that just kind of killed us throughout that year. I actually went to work for Sam Hunt racing as interior mechanic.

So I did that for a while. And then also racing just got to a point where it just costs so much to race five extended races throughout the year. Go get to the track. And these guys have been running 33 weekends in a row. And I’ve, you know, haven’t been in a car in 10 weeks. And I’m like trying to learn the car for the first third of the race.

And I get back in and I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing here. Two thirds in, you’re like, all right, I got it now. And then the field’s already settled into where they’re going to be. And that just kind of is what it is. So

Crew Chief Eric: for everybody that’s keeping score at home, there’s a lot of roundy round happening here in the last [00:07:00] eight to 10 years, how do you jump from the NASCAR Xfinity truck series.

Into a BMW where you got to turn left and right

Colin Garrett: at the end of 21, you know, I was saying we’d the whole money thing and everything to run five, six races. It was just insane. I guess it’s actually started in the spring of 21. I was sitting in my apartment and I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw.

Hammer Motorsports, Tim over there, he posted a thing on Facebook. Like, Hey, we need somebody to come drive her. I think he was running Audis at the time. And I was like, Oh, you know, that seems kind of cool. So, you know, I messaged him on Facebook. I’m like, Hey, what’s this all about? So on and so forth. And he’s like, Oh, we’d love to have you come down like for VIR or something.

I was like, ah, schedules don’t work up, but you know, I’d definitely be interested in some later on. So later that year, I think like November, he calls me. Hey, we have a deal for WRL. Coda in the BMWs. And I was still on the NASCAR route. And I was like, well, NASCAR is running Coda. I think they maybe were going to Coda for the first time the next year or something.

I can’t remember. I was like, well, that seems like a smart thing to do is go get lasted [00:08:00] Coda. So, and he was like, Danny Suarez is running the car. And I was like, all right, cool. So we’ll go down there. And Daniel and I showed up as kind of the roundy round guys ran. This BMW GT4 for the first time, like I’d always loved like F1 and stuff.

So it was super cool to like, kind of be in that sports car world and, you know, have the steering wheel with all the buttons and stuff on it. It ended up, my dad met this guy 40 years ago, working for Edward Jones. They’ve been friends for years and years and years. He’s since went out on his own. Started his own firm.

He raced and dad didn’t really know what he raced, but he just knew that he club raced or whatever. And when I started racing, we kind of met with him. It was like, oh, you know, just as friends. Well, I hadn’t seen him in like five years. We pull up to Koda and the Hammer Motorsports car and his car are side by side.

I was like. I know you guys. And so it was Todd Brown, the owner of Rooster Haw Racing. And it took them for a second, I was like, Oh crap, like, Hey, what are you doing here? And I was like, Oh, I’m running this thing. Like, I don’t know really what it is, but you know, I’m running it. And I was like, Oh, awesome. It was whatever.

Like we saw him throughout the weekend and I ran that WRL car. [00:09:00] We’d go on throughout the rest of the winter. And I was like, well, I guess, you know, we’re just going to focus on NASCAR here. Well, then Todd calls us in late December. I think, I think dad and I were actually going hunting. We’re like in the truck, driving to a farm that we rent.

And he was like, Hey, do you want to come down to Sebring and run a BMW M2 for PBOC for a few days, it’s like five days. That seems cool. Like why not? So we’d go down there for PBOC. My first laps of Sebringer at night, never seen the place before in my life. I had iRacing or whatever, but it was still at night.

I’m making laps around there. Like, Oh my God, what is this? So anyway, I ran for five days there. We ended up throwing a 450 stick in the car and it had a ton of power. And I was like, Oh, this is cool. Day four or whatever. Johan Schwartz, he had his M240 there coaching some other people. And Todd kind of got my dad and Johan and all them together.

Like he’s kind of good. Why don’t we go pro racing with this in TC. And I didn’t know what they’re talking. I saw like brain meeting over there happening. And I was like, I don’t know what’s happening right now, but I knew it was about me and I didn’t like it, but finally they called [00:10:00] me over like, what do you think about this?

I’m like, yeah, I mean, why not? So that was January and in January, two weeks later, I think when we decided like, yeah, all right, let’s do this. They found a car, I think, down at Texas and here we are.

Crew Chief Eric: So making the transition from asphalt, oval, then to road racing, what have you learned along the way and what’s been the toughest thing to acclimate from the oval track to the road circuits?

Colin Garrett: It was. Different it wasn’t, it wasn’t like last year at the beginning of the year at Sonoma, when we showed up for the first race, the whole paddock environment is just way different. And that’s probably like in the garage. It’s everyone’s right there. That’s like, it’s spread out. There’s so much stuff going on.

There’s bajillions of cars going around and whatever. Like it was just, it was a little overwhelming, but getting out there, like the cars, I mean, it made sense. Like test shifters and I threw track control off on the cars and they would do the same things. Nothing too crazy different. Didn’t have to learn a lot.

So I thought going around Sonoma, you know, we’re doing things and finished. All right. There’s a deal with the [00:11:00] tire manufacturer where they didn’t bring enough tires for us. So the Sunday race, I was the only one that didn’t start on stickers or something like that. It was weird. I had one sticker and.

Three tires that were somebody else’s practice tires from that weekend. We get to Nola though. A couple of weeks later, we get running. Now that I had a weekend under my belt, our engineer at the time, he sits me down. I was like, all right, so we’re going to start working on breaking and everything at this point.

Now we start just going on it. And I won the race that weekend. It’s different now, now that I’ve, you know, have a year or two, two seasons of these things. Now I’m not even close. Like I’m running, I racing, like I’m having to learn how to oval race again. Cause like the breaking is just so much different.

These cars, you’re just hard on the brakes coming off of them easy. As you’re getting to the effects, whereas the asphalt stuff, you easy into the brakes all the way in. And it’s just, it’s so different. So same thing, just little stuff. It’s actually funny how many short track techniques that you use when racing people.

I side draft a lot of people and I think it’s. Scares them because that’s what I did in the extended cars and going to Talladega and whatnot, like you’d sidetracked the hell out of [00:12:00] people. I kept the lead last year, actually Jacob and I were fighting for the championship last year at Indy and coming onto the front stretch there, Indy, he passed me and I was like, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to.

Like he just had so much more speed down straight away and I ended up just side drafting him and I had him back cleared by the time we got to turn one. So that’s really the only like big track stuff I have. And I still do that this year. And you can see people, they get scared and they like get to go away from me.

But as far as like the short track stuff, man, going into those corners, I mean, you’re going like 50 miles an hour, 20 miles an hour or whatever. I use my short track stuff all day. I can run them wide, pinch them or whatever. Like it’s just what I’ve been doing for the last decade. So,

Crew Chief Eric: but you’ve also got two other tools in your tool belt.

One is human and the other digital. And you’ve mentioned both of them so far. Johan took you under his wing to do some pro coaching. He’s a famous pro coach. He’s brought up a lot of drivers over the years. So you got him. Working with you, obviously you got the engineers on the team working with you. And then you have iRacing on the other side where you can practice some of the tracks before you get there.

So let’s talk about the coaching a little bit. What have you learned from Johan? What were some of the things you struggled with?

Colin Garrett: [00:13:00] Johan’s been a super big help. Yeah. I’ve also had another coach that came on this year who ended up becoming our engineer due to some. Personnel changes within the team. So Vijay Merzayan, he was like Grand Am and stuff back in the day for factory mini and Turner and stuff.

So we brought on Vijay, actually we brought on 2020 when COVID hit and all. This was our first real year, like working together. So I’ve had Johan kind of helped me out all last year. We didn’t really know each other. He was on the GT4 program and I was running the TC car. So I was doing my own thing, but you know, he upped a little bit there.

And then this year actually co driving with Johan. And then having Vijay come in, you know, so I have these two guys who are obviously phenomenal racing drivers sit there and coach me everything. They have a lot of differences for sure in their driving. So it’s a little difficult. I just take bits and pieces from both of them.

Crew Chief Eric: I think when it comes to drifting, Johan’s got the record.

Colin Garrett: Johan’s got it. Yeah. Yeah. Pun intended. Yeah. That’s actually funny because we run our traction control at like the lowest of anybody. I think like the BMW factory guys run it at like. Six and we run that like one. So that may be [00:14:00] the cause of some of our finishes this year, but it’s fun.

Pulling their little pieces of information together and putting them towards what I’m actually doing is really cool. Johan’s been a super big help. Obviously he’s driving the same car, so we can bounce back and forth ideas. Thankfully we have kind of the same driving style, which is really aggressive.

We’re on the same page most of the time. So actually along the track control thing, I was. Committing to traction control a lot and just hammering down into it at a few tracks this year. And Johan was like, I don’t feel like that’s comfortable at all. I was like, man, you just got to sack up and do it. So there’s been a few times where, you know, I’ve helped him a bit, but he’s, he’s been a huge help this year.

And obviously then VJ coming in, he’s, you know, been a performance coach. He’s helped me a lot mentally working on all of it. I think that’s. It’s been a real game changer in the TC program, TC last year. You know, I did what I was doing. You know, I didn’t really have much coaching. Like I said, Johan was there, our engineer at the time, Brent Tedder.

He’s really smart and with the data and everything, it just wasn’t like [00:15:00] a complete program. Like we were. Fast. We won half the races, but it was our championship to lose basically last year. And, you know, we did get screwed by the officials one time and whatnot, you know, throughout the year. But this year it was just a whole new game changer.

We came in swinging, we did not have the best car at a lot of the races. Obviously with the Honda BOP, I should have won. We were the best car. If you take the Hondas out of it, just, Hondas didn’t exist for an entire year. We were the best car or best BMW for 13 or 14 races.

Crew Chief Eric: Glad you brought up BOP because all the guests we’ve had on the show from SRO, to include Jim Jordan, we’ve asked them about balance of performance.

Would you like to share your thoughts on how it really works and how it makes you feel as a driver?

Colin Garrett: It doesn’t make me feel great. You know, I can’t say much, but I wasn’t too thrilled with the way it was handled this year. Obviously Honda’s put forth a lot of effort and money into the TC program for next year, building the new Acura TCX car.

And I get the BMW field is down. I don’t have like any [00:16:00] ties with BMW. I’m not employed with BMW at all, but like when three quarters of the field plus is BMWs and it’s been like this for years. You come in to the first race and I’m not knocking any of the driver’s abilities, but they just gap us. And, but they’ve never raced touring car or like full size cars at all before.

And we go to Nolan, they’re 48 seconds ahead of us before the caution. This is before the caution falls with 12 minutes to go. And then we go green with like two laps remaining. By the time we come across the checker, there were another like 10 seconds ahead of us. Dude, it’s something like we were racing for second place most of the year.

So anyway, that’s TC. It was a whole thing. We should have won a lot more races is what it is. GT four though. I feel like the BOP for the BMW is really good this year in GT four, at least. So, I mean, BMW won a lot of races and I think it’s a little unfair to a few racetracks where, you know. And it was BMW, I think one, like every category.

And so I think it was most of the cars on the podium too. It was pretty bad. A BMW didn’t end up winning the championship and Pro Am either, which was interesting, but they gathered it pretty well. And I [00:17:00] think GT4 is probably the best racing we had this year. There was a lot of times where BMW wasn’t the best car at the track.

I think for sure that being Andy Sebring, Sebring, we were definitely not the fastest car ourselves. We’re definitely not the fastest car. We were terrible. BMW in general was not the fastest car though for those races. So it’s interesting to see how it balanced out. So I think there’s enough data between all the manufacturers that they can come up with something great.

And we see that in GT4. So I see what happened in DC is a little inexcusable. It’s what it is. So

Crew Chief Eric: we’ll put a pin in that for now and BOP is a hot topic, but let’s go back and talk about how iRacing has helped you. And in some ways, now that you’re spending a lot more time, especially road racing on the track, where’s the big difference lie between, you know, everybody says how great it is.

And you could just, you know, even the new Gran Turismo movie showcases how you can go from a video game or a simulator to the track. Is that really real?

Colin Garrett: It’s good. I’m not going to say it’s great. It’s a good learning tool. Plenty of examples. Roger Carruth [00:18:00] being one of them. William Byron, I don’t know if you can really say he was iRacing to success, but Roger Carruth, definitely.

He’s a current truck series driver. I don’t know his full story, but I’m 99 percent sure he came from iRacing, like. Four or five years ago, I think he’s got a full time Xfinity run next year. I mean, he’s really good. So there’s been a lot of learning obviously for him, but God, he’s really freaking fast and trucks and stuff this year, as far as like, personally, I’ve never had the best time on there.

Like I got into it really big and 17, I ran it like 17, 18, 19 ish, and we got to 20. We had a lot of friends on there that we’d get on there and screw around, including some current Cup Series drivers that I’m not friends with anymore. And we, uh, just have fun. We do hosted races. We crash each other. We did in real life.

So it wasn’t like serious to us when COVID hit and it had a massive influx of just people, we’d still be doing our same shenanigans and then people would get really upset with it. And so I just kind of stopped. I was like, whatever, this is not, this is stupid. Like it kind of got ruined, but. I started getting back into it a little bit later on last year, I guess, actually it was [00:19:00] when the whole TC program happened.

I’m like, well, I guess I need to start, you know, running these tracks. So I started doing that and I’ve gotten back into it. I’ve been running some official races. I can definitely use some of my racing knowledge. Like if I’m racing cars and stuff, I can have race craft with it. But there’s still the fact, like I go to a track that I know, and I’m doing everything that I do in real life and the car that I drive in real life.

And I’m not even close to the people that I’m racing with way off. And I’m like, all right, this is a little really like, there’ll be like five seconds ahead of me. So then I have to kind of like change my driving style to like our racing standards. So, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: I agree with you there. I’ve always found that that’s the biggest drawback, especially if you know, attract, you know, where the breaking zone is, where the turn in point is exactly to hit the apex.

The speed you should be carrying. It’s like the BOP. How are they 12 seconds ahead of me? Are you jumping over the turns? Like I don’t get it. Right. So to your point, there is a different driving style. And I think other than the physical part of it, where you can’t actually use your senses, your touch, your smell, [00:20:00] your sight, feeling of gravity and motion that you have in a real car in the digital space.

Even if you had a motion rig, it’s not exactly the same, but the point is there’s loss in translation there. But for you to learn tracks, you’ve never been to probably the best tool you can find.

Colin Garrett: Yeah. Like it’s been really good for just visual imagery of a lot of the racetracks that we go to, like, okay.

Like. There’s a tree here. This is where the boards are. This is where the flag stands are, you know, so on and so forth. Road America, this is where the bridges are. You cross the hill and you know where the track goes. Like, you know, I went to Sebring for the first time at night. Like I obviously didn’t, my first lap around there ever wasn’t at night.

Like I’d been on the Sim running laps there a bit. So when I got there, yes, my first real labs were at night. I still like had an idea of where the track went. I didn’t know, like maybe how far the straightaway was in real life, but I had a general idea of it. So it’s been really good for that. I’ve been fortunate enough to run on Toyota Racing Development’s bajillion dollar race sim.

It’s super awesome. You [00:21:00] are literally in a car strapped in, ready to go. The whole room is a screen. You’re wearing 3d glasses. You’re wearing your helmet, like everything. You’re talking to the guys back at the shop. It’s really cool to see like what they have. Was it still accurate? Not really. It is way better than just generic iRacing or your, you know, normal salmon stuff.

I mean, you’re in a car driving around and it helped a lot. And when I got through the racetrack, I was like, Oh, this is pretty accurate. However, though, like when it starts crashing and stuff, like it’s hard to save the car, like, cause you just can’t quite feel it. I got loose going into three at Michigan on the TRD sim.

I couldn’t save it. And how realistic is it or how realistic looking I guess I should say it gets flung back to the fence. I brace like I was actually crashing because it was such like a shocking thing. It’s pretty cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s take a look back into the 2023 season. I mean, you absolutely crushed it 285 points.

You secured your championship spot in TCX. So congratulations on that again.

Colin Garrett: Yeah, thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: Any war stories that you can [00:22:00] share from this season, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly, what did you learn? Do you now have some favorite and some worst tracks on your list?

Colin Garrett: Well, Road to America was my least favorite track after last year’s ordeal.

I made a move on the opening lap there last year that was not approved by race control and Everyone else ever in the paddock and not in the paddock says it wasn’t a bad move. So whatever. But coming back this year, I had that track kind of circled. I was like, I had so much redemption. I wanted to go prove that because I knew we should have won that week.

And that would have been our championship. I mean, that killed our championship when I got that penalty. So going into that race this year, I was like, I have to fricking do something here. And I slept the weekend. Now I kind of like it and we should have won all four races that weekend. I won both TC races.

I got taken out in the GT four car, leading the first race. And then the second race, we should have cycled out to the lead after pit stops and we had issue on pit road and we ended up not, but it was like, Holy crap. Like it was actually a really good [00:23:00] track for us. Sebring has always been really good to us.

Swept all the TC races that are library. So it’s been really fun. I mean, nothing really happened this year. That was too crazy. I had one incident at VIR with my main championship competitor. It’s another one of those tracks where it should have been more wins, but you know, it is what it is. That was really our only run in throughout the year.

We ran really well with each other all year. We ran well last year, but. That same corner last year and this year in the same race, we collided both times. It’s the exact same corner. Rolls were reversed. Stewart says it was his fault. I’m not gonna say whose fault it was, but Stewart says it was his fault that time.

So apparently we can’t race in it. Like we can race everywhere else. I mean, we ran side by side up the S’s we ran through Oak tree side. I mean, we did everything, but that one fricking corner, we can’t get through together. So other than that, I mean, there was really no war stories. There’s a lot of. The Honda thing.

I mean, there was a lot of tension throughout the paddock with that, you know, no disrespect to the drivers, but I didn’t really like them either. I didn’t have a reason not to like them, but just because, you know, [00:24:00] they were winning and they shouldn’t have been or whatever, you know, it wasn’t bad this year, it was really cool.

Having Vijay as my mental coach for all this year, he helped me a lot, just, you know, mentally being prepared for all those races, I went into it and drive my car, I mean, just doing my own thing. So it wasn’t too exciting. So, I mean, if you saw me get out of the car, I mean, even after we won the race at Sebring, I was like, it was cool.

Like I knew we’d lock up the championship, but that’s what we came there to do. I mean, the only reason I ran this year in TC was to win the championship. Cause last year kind of pissed us off. We’re like, all right, we have to win the championship now. So. We’re going to say we have two championships, but it was the job that I had to be there for.

Like I said, I got the car at Sebring. I knew I won the championship and the guys were all really happy. That made me happy, but I had a job to do. I had to go get a GT4 car in like five minutes. So it was like, cool. We won the race. I got to go do this now. Wasn’t much to celebrate.

Crew Chief Eric: Like all drivers, we could probably spend the rest of this episode chatting about races gone by and the one that got away and you could have done this and they’ve got to take that apex [00:25:00] like that.

But you know, we got some other things to talk about. Let’s switch gears here, get a little bit deeper into your backstory, especially coming from a military family and then how you got involved with the 1111 Veterans Project. What’s that all about? How you’re working with them and all that.

Colin Garrett: Both of my brothers are active army down at Fort hood, Texas, or Fort Cav, I guess for short, the new Fort hood down in Texas, he’s a company commander, flying Apaches and stuff.

Other brother was in the Virginia army, national guard, but he also worked for DITRA in the DC area. Did all that. I did the contracting stuff, had a family member in every major American conflict since like the revolutionary war. So cool fact there. So 1111 is founded by myself. And we brought on my brother who worked over at Ditja to be the CEO of the company, essentially.

So when he got out of the army, we brought him on to head the program. So where 11 11 came from was we were already working with Racing for Heroes. It’s been on my car since like 2019, I think. And the Rosie Network, [00:26:00] we’ve since added Tech4Troops, Helios, a bunch of other companies that we’ve been working with here in recent times.

But we’re trying to help Racing for Heroes. We’re trying to help Rosie Network. We’re trying to add. Bunch of different companies and we’re like, we can do this better. Cause it was just kind of weird. Like we just had them on the car and like, wasn’t promoting it much. So what we ended up doing was kind of inventing 11, 11.

And what 11, 11 is, is we are the middleman, I guess, for everyone. So we go to a veteran or veterans come to us. We’re like, Hey, what do you need? Like, do you need this service? Like, so, you know, we can go through our list of people like racing heroes. They help guys just get back into the family environment.

If they want like to learn or work on race cars or cars or whatnot, you know, that’s where you go, you know, if you want to learn more about comedy or, you know, try to use that to heal, heal areas uses the power of comedy to heal wounds. The Rosie network. They work with military families. So like spouses and veteran entrepreneurs who are trying to work and build their own company and stuff.

So we’ll help them out and try to, you know, build their own deal. And tech for troops, they [00:27:00] teach guys, you know, how to work on computers and different data programs and whatnot. So they teach them, you know, how to take that into like the fields when they’re getting out, when they’re transitioning, so guys come to us.

We’re like, Hey, what do you need? We can send them to name what you want and want to do need. We can send them out to where you need to be. So that started a few years ago. Like I said, we were trying to figure out how to like do this better with everyone. Cause we, like I said, we had a bunch of people in the car, but it was like, it’s kind of stupid.

We need to have like one place that people can come to and then go from there. And we’ve since partnered up with bunches of companies. We’re just up an event for veterans growing America up in Northern Virginia. He has veteran pop up shops. Veteran entrepreneur families, they come in there and they have a bunch of little shops and stuff in the town.

And it’s right like it’s across from the Apple store and Starbucks and like everything. So it’s like right there. It’s really cool. Kind of what 1111 is all about and trying to help these veterans and veteran families. We’ve recently brought on TikTok and Instagram famous guy. He’s got like 600, 000 followers.

Mandatory fun day. Yeah, he’s pretty cool. So we’ve recently brought him on. He’s starting to work with us. We had an 11, 11 pitch [00:28:00] contest a few months ago, and we had some budgets come out and pitch ideas to us about what their business was. We’re doing a crowd funder for a guy and he is a comic book writer out of Iowa.

He pitched this comic book idea that we really liked. And we started the crowd funder to help funding for him to build his little deal. He actually wrote me into it. So I’m a character, my favorite car is a BMW E30. So I think the characters drive at E30 in the book and stuff. Yeah, but the book is about, you know, fighting veteran suicide and it’s not a political book, but it’s like, you know, how the government could be better and doing all this stuff.

It’s, you know, it’s a big, cool story. So

Crew Chief Eric: what’s your goal to. Are you putting together, let’s say, a registry of all these organizations and the services that they offer? Are you brokering that? Are you looking to expand out of the mid Atlantic? Like, for example, we had Peter Klein on the show a while back, and he heads up BET Motorsports, which is based out of Ohio.

So there’s all these different groups. Are you working to tie them more closely together?

Colin Garrett: For sure. So, you know, we’re already working with nationwide companies [00:29:00] doing this. So a lot of them are, I think the Rosie Network is actually out of California. So we’re already working kind of nationally on this deal.

And we have events all over the place. We were sponsoring an event in Las Vegas for the Hilarious. They have their finale. So they had a little contest between different comedians in each city that they stopped on their tour throughout the country. And we’re sponsoring that. But in the grand scheme of things, kind of like what 11.

11 is trying to do is we’re trying to bring in A big company, and I’m going to make this up, we’re trying to bring in Target or somebody. And, you know, Target is trying to increase their veteran outreach and hire X amount of veterans for the year or whatever, or they really want to support or show their support for veterans.

So they’re gonna basically sponsor these guys to put their names on the car. So that’s what we do is we try to like have their names on the cars. Like if you look at any of my race cars. They don’t have any big companies or anything on them. They had this year, we had 1111 and unbroken, which is command sergeant major Gretchen Evans, her team.

They were on the world’s toughest race, Bear Grylls deal. So we had unbroken on the car this [00:30:00] year, racing heroes, Rosie network and different companies scattered throughout, but we’re trying to have a big company come in and support this. So every week we can, you know, have. A veteran company on the car and kind of showcase them every week, switch it up.

You know, we’ll have 11 different companies come in and do a pitch contest or whatever, and whichever one target like likes best or whatever. And like I said, I’m making the target thing up, but that’s kind of the whole plan here is trying to help the companies as much as possible and get their name out as well as trying to get support from a bigger company that can help everyone.

Crew Chief Eric: Outside of the events that you’re putting together for these pitch contests and things like that. What’s the best way for people to get ahold of you, share their story. Do you prefer phone call an essay and email? How do you want to be able to engage with these sorts? So there’s so many different people out there with so many different needs.

Colin Garrett: You know, we have the 1111 veteran project Instagram, and that’s been kind of a hub. We have a lot of guys. We actually sponsor a pro shooter. He just got out of the army. Great friend of ours, but he’s [00:31:00] going around and he’s got a lot of guys kind of involved with 1111 if they need something, they can come to us.

So that’s kind of what we’re trying to do is put out these little cells too. Like. All right. This guy, you know, he can help the law outreach in this niche community of the gun community, you know, at the shooting ranges, then they come to us, you know, whether that be through our buddy, John, or, you know, he can come to us and like, tell us about him or they just send us a thing on Instagram or, you know, on our website, 11 on venture project.

com. I mean, tell us your story and, you know, we can help in any way. I mean, that’s. That’s definitely, you know, what we’re trying to do here.

Crew Chief Eric: Something else you did that’s really unique. And I want to highlight this because it goes right in line with what we’ve been talking about. You look at all the race cars and you were talking about the different liveries that are out there and they just seem to be getting crazier and wilder every year.

We had Andy Lee on who runs a GT four for flying lizard. And he was joking about how they made tactical tan, a fashion statement, you know, with the Aston Martin that he was running. And then you have on the other side of the extreme, you have Samantha tan with her van go inspired BMW. you that I know you’ve [00:32:00] run against her, you did something totally different.

You showcase the first ever Braille paint scheme. How did that come to be and why did you choose that? And what exactly does it say?

Colin Garrett: Yeah, so it was cool. So we have a big network on. LinkedIn and kind of what 11. 11 is about is trying to connect people as much as possible. And a lot of service members are blind, you know, they’re blind through service.

The reason why we did Braille Paint Scheme wasn’t because of that. So we met a guy named Hobie Wedler. Hobie was a born blind. He was an entrepreneur. He was a chef. He had like different sauces and stuff. And he did all sorts of stuff. We started working with him like, Hey, this would be kind of cool to like, have your company on the call.

Car and try to help the 11, 11 program, help people out with all this stuff. He loved that idea. He came to Daytona and this was my, I guess, third to last, second to last six venue race ever. So came to Daytona in 2021. And we’re like, we’ll be super cool here is if [00:33:00] he. Could read the car when we got there, what we did was you see in Braille all the time, the numbers and my name and everything, we’re all still there.

We put a little dot on each of the cars. So the problem with a lot of the wraps is they build the dot like into it, or they build everything’s just one piece. So this kind of took a little bit more work. I had to overlay a Braille letters on everything. So they had to come back through with all the dots and put them out and put them in the right places and stuff.

So when he got there, he could actually go through and read this. He could read the number and then my name above the passenger door was in braille. So he went over it. We didn’t tell him what any of it said and he’d go over and he told us and it was really cool. Do my number and he could feel my name and all kinds of stuff.

It was really awesome to do that at a place like Daytona.

Crew Chief Eric: The purest engineers would have argued that all that braille was actually giving you an aerodynamic disadvantage and all sorts of reasons not to do it. But I think this is super cool and it’s very unique. So well done.

Colin Garrett: Daytona is one of those places where you kind of want to get away.

A little bit of stuff now I’m forced like that. [00:34:00] So it actually, you know, might be an advantage there. People might start doing Braille paint schemes now.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you can say you did it first.

Colin Garrett: Exactly. It’s the reason why people run 10 tear offs instead of the average six. So I didn’t say that.

Crew Chief Eric: Kind of been hinting at it.

You’ve got a long road ahead of you. So what’s next for Colin Garrett?

Colin Garrett: You know, I don’t know. You know, we’re at a position where I can do a lot of stuff. I love NASCAR. I’d love to go back to NASCAR. I love sports car racing now. I’d love to keep on doing sports car stuff. If I had everything I wanted, I’d be forming a one racing next week.

You know, I can’t obviously do that, but I’d like to run GT four again next year. So if we’re going to go to sports car route, I’d love to run GT four again next year, full time kind of do what we did with TC this year. So I ran TC was learning it. And then this year I mastered TC and was learning GT4 where this next year I’d like to master GT4 in a perfect world, maybe run GT3 some or whatever, or maybe run the SRO GT3 deal where it’s not a ton of races, but at least [00:35:00] be learning GT3 and then in 25, go full blown GT3.

I don’t know. Realistically, you know, I’d like to run GT4, like I said, full time, at least. I’d like to run more stuff. I’d really like to run on the double headers. Jumping on a TC car, going in a GT four cars, a lot of fun. And I felt like I was doing something while I was at the racetrack last year in the TC car.

There was a lot of downtime. You have practice in the morning and you have another practice at like 5 PM. It’s like, what am I supposed to do all day? There’s a lot of downtime where this year I was like constantly, it’s like, all right, I got another session here in like an hour or back to back or whatnot.

Coming to the track. And I just ran GT four. I’d be like, this is kind of sad because they also drive like half the time. So I don’t know if that’s particularly what I’m going to do.

Crew Chief Eric: If you don’t end up going back to NASCAR and you stick with sports car racing, do you see yourself in IMSA?

Colin Garrett: Yeah, for sure.

You know, SRO is obviously the global sports car series. I guess they’re it, but in the U S they’re not, it kind of sucks. You know, a lot of people, you know, like SRO, what is that? And I’m like, I call it Euro IMSA. And it’s basically what it is. For sure. I see myself going to IMSA at some point, [00:36:00] whether that be in GT4 or GTD, I guess they call it over there.

It’d be cool. I’d like to run the Rolex. I went to a Rolex this past year and I was like, I don’t want to come back if I’m not racing. I hate going to races and not racing. It’s the dumbest thing in the world. People are like, Oh, let’s go to the racetrack. I was like, I don’t want to go to the racetrack. I do it for a living.

Why do I want to go? I’ll go to Southbawn Speedway now. I haven’t done that in forever. I am at the point now where I like want to go back and race at South Boston. I’m like all the time, like I’m going to run a late mile race so bad. So like, I’ll go over there and watch that. I love watching people crash and short track stuff.

All my friends beating and banging us up. It’s awesome. But yeah, I definitely see myself going to IMS at some point, always going over the, or trying to get the lucrative factory drive that everyone always talks about wanting, and, you know, it’s probably next to impossible of getting it, unless you go and run a full season in hypercars or whatever now, I mean, it’s just, you go and look through.

The BMW factory drivers and it’s like, Oh, they won Le Mans before they started being a factory driver. So it’s like, I’m not going to go race Le Mans, let alone win it. If I’m not affected, basically, like, I just don’t have the support. Like hopefully I do have one day have [00:37:00] the support to do that, but I don’t foresee that without the factory support.

Crew Chief Eric: To add to that. Any bucket list cars or tracks that you’d like to drive on or race on?

Colin Garrett: Nürburgring for sure. So the iRacing thing, I get super bored on iRacing running VIR. I work over at VIR. I work for Skip Barber. I work for Racing for Heroes. They have a for profit site called RFH Tech and Mobility. I do all the driving training and stuff over there.

I race VIR. All the time. It’s boring. I’ve been to all these tracks on iRacing a bajillion times. I can only drive in circles by myself so many times. I go to the Nurburgring and like a cup car. Oh my God. Nurburgring in a cup car is the coolest thing ever. Like in the old, not the old school, but like the, uh, gen six cup cars, I guess.

Those are the best cars to run in Nurburgring. You’re shifting, you’re bouncing around doing all sorts of that. It’s so much fun. Or like old F1 car on the Nurburgring, something like that. I’d love to go there in real life. I hate kind of the feeder series that you have to do to run it in real life. You have to go run TC, GT4 and then whatever.

So that kind of sucks. But other than that, Spa would be cool. I’m [00:38:00] trying to do Pike’s Peak. So I’ve been trying to convince the owner of Rooster Hall, Todd Brown all year to let me go run Pike’s Peak in one of his cars next year. That’s I think we started that deal back in. I guess it was at VIR. It was like the week before Pike’s Peak or a couple of weeks before Pike’s Peak.

I got, for some reason, I don’t know where I got it from. I was like, I need to run Pike’s Peak. And I’ve been at it for like all year. I like, I have to go to Pike’s Peak next year. And, uh, every time we get in a conversation, I’ll just throw a Pike’s Peak into a conversation. He throws them all off guard and he doesn’t know how to respond.

And he’s like, I guess we’re going to Pike’s Peak. So I don’t know whether we’ll do that or not, but that’s another place I want to go. There isn’t many tracks that. I mean, like I’ve driven a lot of them in the States. There’s a handful that I haven’t, and I think I’m at like 52 tracks that I’ve driven on.

So there’s obviously still a bunch that I want to tick off, but I guess we’re going to Barbara next year if I’m on SRO, so I’ll get to take that one off. So

Crew Chief Eric: other than that, there’s

Colin Garrett: not many, I’ve raced a lot of them. It’s been super cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you mentioned Lamar and you come from a NASCAR background. So I got to ask you this, what did you think of the Garage 56?

Colin Garrett: So, like I said, VIR is like beside my house. I think it’s like [00:39:00] six miles as the crow flies. And I was out hunting one morning. I guess it would have been about 8 AM. Cause that’s when, what time track goes green there. Oh my God. Mike Rockenfeller was there in that G56 car and he pulled out on track and I thought he was in my field.

It was so loud. It was insanely loud. I mean, I have a video I recorded on Snapchat. It sounds like, I mean, you can hear going through the shifts. I could tell where he was at on track. He was coming out of Oak tree and I heard him get a bunch of wheelspin coming out of Oak tree and I was like, Oh God, I mean, I have it all on video.

You can hear it. It sounds like I’m outside the racetrack. Insanely loud is the coolest thing ever. It’s the perfect place for Chad Canals, who is way too good for NASCAR. He’s over there cheating every week. Cause he can make it faster. Like he knows how to make the cars better and why not send them to a place where it basically has no rules.

I mean, it literally had no rules. So do whatever you want, make this thing the fastest, coolest thing ever. Um, he did. That’s really cool car. They need to make like a spec series for that. It’d be really cool to see. I didn’t follow it too closely. You know, I’d see the. Posts and stuff. I saw posts all the time about it, but I didn’t like religiously follow it.

But I [00:40:00] like the interior of it, man. Interior was like full blown sports car and stuff. I still have like little stock car fuel. It was really cool.

Crew Chief Eric: So Colin, on that, I get to ask you our final question, which is any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t covered thus far.

Colin Garrett: I forget how much stuff I’ve like really done in racing and we could go forever and talk about whatever. So if you ever want to have a question about anything, I probably have an answer to it. As far as like shout outs and promotion stuff, you know, obviously I talked about the crowd funder thing we’re doing with essential studios.

Who’s the graphic novel group we’re doing that 1111 retching projects. You know, we’re working with them, all those guys, the guys who were working on my car all year, they’ve done a lot. They worked their asses off all year. It was well earned our championship. I feel like,

Crew Chief Eric: well, folks, there’s more to motor sports.

Then just turning laps. Remember that when you’re watching Colin’s next race, he’s out there racing to help veterans, military families, and the disabled access resources that support healthy and happy lives. To learn more about Colin Garrett and his mission, visit www. colingarrettracing. [00:41:00] com. And 1111veteranproject.

com or follow him on social media at Colin Garrett Webb on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. With that, Colin, I can’t thank you enough for coming on BreakFix and sharing your road to success story with us. And what’s great about this is you still have a long road ahead of you. Such a young man, young racer.

And what’s great about what you’re doing is you’re doing it now while you’re able to, not when you’re retired, looking back going, I need to give back to the community. You’re giving back to the community while you’re racing and you’re racing for a cause. And I commend you for it. And it’s awesome.

Colin Garrett: Yeah, thank you.

I don’t feel like I have a long way to go. I feel like my career is dwindling to the end because there’s kids now that, you know, I see that are coming up and I’m like, Oh my God, he’s going full time extremely racing. He was in a legend car like two years ago, but turns out it was like eight years ago. So it’s crazy.

So I forget how young I am sometimes. And I forget how long I’ve been around, but yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me on. It’s been a [00:42:00] blast.

Crew Chief Eric: The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their partners at AWS, CrowdStrike, Fanatec, Pirelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School. Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www. sro motorsports. com Or take a shortcut to GT America dot U S and be sure to follow them on social at GT underscore America on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook and catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT world.

We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcast brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at gtmotorsports.

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Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to BreakFix Podcast
• 01:01 Meet Colin Garrett: From NASCAR to TCX Champion
• 01:37 Colin’s Early Racing Journey
• 02:30 Progression Through the Ranks
• 03:47 Challenges and Triumphs in NASCAR
• 06:54 Transition to Road Racing
• 12:34 Coaching and iRacing Insights
• 21:21 Sim Racing Realism
• 21:46 2023 Season Highlights
• 22:07 Road to America Redemption
• 23:08 Rivalries and Incidents
• 23:50 The Honda Tension
• 24:07 Mental Coaching and Focus
• 25:02 1111 Veterans Project
• 32:03 Braille Paint Scheme
• 34:16 Future Aspirations
• 37:04 Bucket List Tracks and Cars
• 38:53 Garage 56 Experience
• 40:05 Shoutouts and Promotions

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