B/F: The Drive Thru #8

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• Bristol Faces 'Paramount Challenge' Preparing for NASCAR on Dirt
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• Austin’s COTA officially opens as COVID-19 vaccination hub!

Slade’s crash at Mount Panorama – Multiple Angles!

• Jeep’s ‘Magneto’ electric Wrangler concept is a big tease
• Chief of Cherokee Nation asks Jeep to stop using tribe’s name
• Dodge Offers Software Update For Chargers And Challengers That Limits Them To 3 HP Of Raw Hemi Power

• Volkswagen ID. Buzz, Trinity, SEAT — A Trifecta Of Volkswagen News
• Audi Quattro makes unofficial return to the World Rally Championship

Retro + EV – 100% Electric Porsche 935 Conversion

How VW will recycle EV Batteries

Stig Blomqvist drives new Audi WRC entry

Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] The Drive Thru is GTM’s monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like HPTEjunkie. com, Hooked on Driving, AmericanMuscle. com, CollectorCarGuide. net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine, and many others. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive Thru, look no further than www.

gtmotorsports. org. Click about and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast, Brake Fix, and all the other services we provide.

Crew Chief Brad: Hello and welcome to The Drive Thru, March edition. As you all know, The Drive Thru is our monthly recap episode where we put together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random car adjacent news. For this particular episode to kick off season two, we’ve got a new segment where we’re going to bring on a couple new guests that are going to rotate through.

With us tonight is special guest host Thomas Wendy. He’s the region chief for region one. Region one. [00:01:00] Welcome Thomas. How’s it going? Pull up to window number one for some industry. This, the first article that came up is, you know, it’s a very big one with all the, the different movements and everything that are going on in political correctness and all this stuff.

This is very poignant right now. The chief of the Cherokee Nation has asked that Jeep stop using the name Cherokee when they name their vehicles. This is a big thing because Jeep has been naming the Cherokees vehicle, SUV since 1974, I believe it was.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s not the first time they’ve made this request. Is that right?

Crew Chief Eric: I believe that’s correct. Tanya. They’ve petitioned for Jeep to remove the Cherokee name from the Jeeps several times already. And now it’s come up yet again. I thought it was kind of interesting when I first read this. I had to dig into this a little bit more because I was unaware that they had asked for this before.

And I can understand why I kind of thought it came at an interesting time, you Stellantis merger. Now, you know, being the 4th largest auto manufacturer in the world. It’s like. Mhm. Do they [00:02:00] suddenly have a target on their back? So I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole, but I do agree with their sentiment.

I just am now left with, especially being a grand Cherokee owner. What are they going to call it? What’s it going to become? Because the Cherokee has been a staple in the Jeep lineup for 40 plus years now.

Crew Chief Brad: The Commander, I think, seems to be the most relevant name that they could go back to.

Tom Wende: Jumping over into a different realm as well, military helicopters, like, are those gonna be next in line as well?

All the helicopters are after the different tribe names as well, so you’ve got the Blackhawks, the Apaches, the, uh, Comanches. It goes on and on, like, that’s just the list that they used. For naming all that, but just another thing

Crew Chief Eric: I could see that. I mean, I also thought to myself, you know, if they work out something where maybe they have to pay some sort of licensing fee to the charities or something, exactly to keep the name, then I’m okay with it.

If they decide they’re going to abandon the name, I almost said to myself, I’m busting out the [00:03:00] dental floss and I’m taking the Cherokee off the side of my Jeep. Other than on the sides, there is no other label on the Jeeps as of 2013. forward. So it’s very easy to just remove it from the vehicle.

Crew Chief Brad: But by saying that you’re making it seem like this request is kind of a money grab and not really about the pride of the Cherokee Nation.

Cause if you could just stroke a check for a certain dollar amount and then, Oh yeah, now it’s okay. Now it’s okay. Now it doesn’t hurt our pride because you gave us like 10. 15 million. That doesn’t sit well with me. I am more understanding of it being about the Cherokee nation’s pride. Same with the Redskins and the Florida state Seminoles and the Cleveland Indians and like all these other organizations that are being asked these same requests.

I don’t think it’s about the money. At least I hope it’s not about like money. It’s not a, they’re not looking for a settlement. Yeah. The statement

Executive Producer Tania: that was made earlier, I don’t think this has anything to do with any merger or with. Fiat and all that in Stellantis. It’s [00:04:00] coincidentally occurring, but it has something to do with that.

That’s not what’s driving it. There’s no target on Stellantis back.

Crew Chief Eric: It does definitely open the door and set a precedent. I couldn’t think of any other vehicles that were named after Indian tribes of any kind. I mean, it definitely resonates with me being an owner of a. Vehicle with this name on it. So I don’t, I’m still kind of mixed about how I feel about it, but I’m really interested to see where the dust settles on this whole conversation.

So it’s definitely politically charged depending on how you feel about it, but I’m still very curious to see where this goes, but there’s a lot more news with respect to Stellantis. Let’s call it that rather than Fiat Chrysler and all that.

Crew Chief Brad: This whole first segment should just be the Stellantis segment.

Crew Chief Eric: Shouldn’t it though?

Crew Chief Brad: That’s what it’s looking like to me, the Stellantis segment, at least for the first, like four articles that we’re going to talk about here,

Crew Chief Eric: the next one up on the list got me really excited, which was the talks about the return of Peugeot and Peugeot setting up their dealer networks and all that kind of stuff, obviously riding on top of the Chrysler network that’s already [00:05:00] here.

And I’m like, yes, finally some hot hatchbacks, some French cars, right. Something interesting for a change. And that got canned. Stellantis has decided that they are going to double down on Alfa Romeo. So I am still holding out hope for the rear wheel drive GTA hatchback that they teased two years ago at Salins that’s in the TCR series.

You know, if I can’t get my Peugeot 205 or whatever, at least maybe I can get an Alfa Romeo hatchback instead. So crossing my fingers, we’ll see where that goes.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, going back to Jeep, there’s the Jeep Magneto electric Wrangler concept that was just teased earlier this week.

Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t that an X Men character?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, it is, it is, it is actually. They, they, they pay homage to the X Men character. Actually they don’t. It’s just, it’s just a weird name, I guess. But it’s got an electric motor with a 273 foot pounds of torque, 285 horsepower, which I believe the current Pentastar also has 285 horsepower or thereabouts. So not too much different there.[00:06:00]

The big thing is it’s this concept vehicle, which is electric came out with a manual transmission, and some of you might be scratching your heads as to why would it have a manual transmission is isn’t the first time this has happened. This also came out when Ford did a concept vehicle. I think last year or 2 years ago.

They had a Mustang with a manual transmission as well. So it’s not unheard of. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I haven’t studied the science or the engineering behind how it would work. It’s interesting. Nonetheless, it’s based on the newest Jeep Wrangler Rubicon that came out. It’s kind of cool. I’m all for the EV revolution, at least in concept form.

I’m not ready for it to take over. You know, our daily drivers or anything like that, especially not our track cars, but I think it’s interesting. I think it’s kind of cool. It looks cool.

Crew Chief Eric: So a couple of things I had an issue with this particular article, other than you’re right, it does look cool. Even the specs still are written like a gas motor, maybe to just.

I guess adapt [00:07:00] people or ingratiate people to the whole concept, especially the jeeping community, horsepower and torque out of an electric motor. Shouldn’t we be talking about power output and torque? Basically what horsepower, like what are we talking about here? I’ve had a theory for a while now, and we talked about this a few times about the physical layout of some of these hybrids and electric cars.

I still think. That they’re having issues packing a hybrid platform or even an electric platform into a traditional front mount rear drive configuration, right? A lot of hybrids. A lot of electrics are either positioned rear rear front front. Or even in the case of hybrids, the front wheel drive transverse, I think there’s an issue somewhere in there with the transmissions and the transfer cases and all that stuff that they want to do where I think it makes sense.

In this case, they had to go to manual because it was the only way to give the Wrangler this off road capability with an electric motor attached to it. Now, I’m theorizing here. I’m speculating, but I have a strong suspicion. There’s some sort of [00:08:00] mechanical engineering. Challenge that they haven’t been able to overcome yet with a proper, you know, electric drive train, like we’re, like, we’re used to talking about.

Crew Chief Brad: That very well could be, I know the higher end, more exotic manufacturers are putting the motors at the wheels, the smaller electric motor units at the wheels, but you can’t really do that with a Wrangler, especially if people are going to be forwarding water and stuff like that, a Creek, let’s, let’s be honest, 40, a Creek, not a river.

And all of a sudden, you know, the insulation or something, water starts getting into the battery or the motor or something, and then you’re.

Crew Chief Eric: But let’s take it from the perspective. You know, we talked to drew on the off roading episode this previous month about the other electric offering that was coming out in partnership with GM

Crew Chief Brad: the Rivian.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. The Rivian. If you think about it, that was 1 of those, you know, electric motors, almost at every corner of the vehicle and all that kind of stuff. But. What we didn’t talk about in that episode was how’s it going to hold up? It’s a really cool idea. But if you look at, you know, I got a Dana 44, I got a Dana 60, and I want to go off road and I want to put, [00:09:00] you know, 44 inch tires and all the stuff that Jeepers do to Jeeps, that typical EV layout.

I don’t think it’s going to hold up. It’s not going to work. It really. Is it strong enough? It can make the power, but I don’t think it can hold up in those rugged off road conditions. So this is really cool in the sense that they’re trying to figure out the formula for that classic front mount rear drive config.

But I think the reason is they need to stick with that tried and true layout because there’s no other way to go off roading properly. Let’s, let’s put it that way. And I don’t

Executive Producer Tania: know that they, Rivian, has been advertising that they’re trying to be off roaders. They’re trying to be like a Land Rover, bougie, pretending like you’re gonna go overlanding, but really you’re just driving down to the grocery store.

Crew Chief Eric: They call that mall crawling.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I mean, fine. You might go on a dirt path somewhere on some snow, but they’re not actually trying to go rock crawl. I don’t think they’ve [00:10:00] advertised that way. No, I doubt that they would have built for that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So this might be the first proper EV off roader if we really kind of boil it down.

Right. I mean, I’m sure there’s some other more boutique entries, but from a mainline producer like Chrysler, this is Probably the first of its kind out of anybody at this point.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m pretty sure it’s confirmed the Jeep is going to be coming out with at least a hybrid wrangler. Uh, I thought I heard, I heard there was a

Crew Chief Eric: hybrid Cherokee coming too, or whatever it’s gonna be called next.

The

Crew Chief Brad: high Yes. Is the hybrid smaller mid-size. SUV, that to be named later, .

Executive Producer Tania: Well, what is the Hummer supposed to be capable of doing? Because based on some of its. Little videos and photos. It’s

Tom Wende: doing

Executive Producer Tania: a little bit more extreme things then. Yeah. I mean, that’s really

Tom Wende: kind of supposed to be doing a lot of the generic off road stuff.

I mean, I know just from times that I’ve heard, like people sometimes make fun of the guys that roll up in the homers thing and they’ll get through everything and then they can’t. But when you think of Homer, you’re thinking of pretty heavy duty. [00:11:00]

Executive Producer Tania: I haven’t heard how they’ve been faring, but I believe they allegedly have designed for a bit more rugged use.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe to Eric’s point earlier that, you know, they’re, they’re sticking with the Jeep layout of the, I guess, the, the rear, the solid axles and the. The suspension setup and everything, the front engine rear wheel drive or four by four, maybe because that is the best setup that’s of it that has come out thus far, but maybe it’s not necessarily the best setup ever.

It’s been that setup for so long that it’s been perfected much like the Porsche 911. They’ve been developing that rear wheel drive. You know, rear engine set up for what, 60 years. How’s the 60 years 1964.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s a terrible design. And if you think about physics, it should not work as well as it does, but it does because they’ve figured out how to make it work and it could be the same thing with this.

Maybe just, this is the best setup for now, but it’s not the best setup moving [00:12:00] forward. And like to Tanya’s point, the Hummer, yeah, it is designed to be very off road capable.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, the problem is the article says that it’s based off the 2020 Rubicon. So if you’re basing it off a gasoline powered vehicle, most of the manufacturers, all their EVs are being, you know, they started out trying to, you know, just take the platform they already had and retrofit and all that.

More and more of them are all realizing that they just have to start from the ground up with a whole new chassis design to support EVs. It’s not gonna be the same. So this is a concept. So who knows if they keep going down the path of a, of a Wrangler ev, they might decide that they scrap it and start from a whole new platform.

Crew Chief Eric: But if that’s the case, I think that’s the death knell of the Wrangler at that point, because what you will have after that is no longer a Wrangler. To Brad’s point, I think there’s a formula that says this is what it is. This is what you expect to get. The performance you expect to get out of it, especially as an off road vehicle.

So I applaud them for trying. I [00:13:00] want to say Where this goes, I’m really, really curious because I think if this works, and especially with the manual and all that, that they’re suggesting here, then that means there’s hope for the grand Cherokee and the Cherokee as well, whatever it’s going to be called in the future as well, because that’s a similar layout and they can then translate this formula to that and then have an EV based, you know, mid sized SUV to be named later.

What else is going on at Chrysler there, Brad, as we transition away from off roading?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, Dodge has decided to take the law into their own hands. And they’ve come up with a solution to prevent people from stealing cars, protecting their car owners, mainly the charger and, uh, challenger owners of the higher models, the SRTs and Hellcats and stuff like that from the B having their car stolen.

And basically they’ve created a software update. So here’s where I’m a little fuzzy on the details from the article, but basically there’s a four digit code that’s either prevents or puts the car into a limp mode, [00:14:00] essentially three horsepower, 22 something like that. Uh, basically it puts the car in limp mode, no high speed getaways.

If you’re trying to steal a Dodge charger or challenger, unless you have the four digit code.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Two things. First of all, Chrysler, have you heard of Lojack? Second of all, have you seen the movie Mad Max? This

Crew Chief Brad: is Slow Jack.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, right? But do you remember, like, in Mad Max, he had the little keypad, like, hidden under the fender or wherever it was, and he had, like, he could start the car because he didn’t want anybody to steal it, you know, and his gasoline and all that mess?

Like, this is the same thing, but I really feel this is a day late and a dollar short.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel it’s a gimmick. I mean, Ford has the same keypad technology on their doors.

Crew Chief Eric: Where I was confused like you was whether I needed to put the code in

Crew Chief Brad: to put it into the mode or to keep it out of the mode. Correct.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like it’s exactly. No, you’re absolutely correct. I didn’t understand one way or the other. I was like, what are we doing here?

Crew Chief Brad: Like, I can see this is a valet key, like, this is, this is their version of a valet [00:15:00] key.

Tom Wende: Well, so they already do have the valet key though, because like when the Hellcats first came out, there were videos coming out on YouTube of these pissed off valet workers.

They’re like, Oh man, this is so awesome. I’m going to drive a Hellcat. I’m just going to go up and down the street here. And then they were all upset because they were given the valet key and they like, Could barely even drive the thing. That’s awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: As, as a person who hopes to someday own a Hellcat, I am thankful for that.

Not that I valet park a car very often because I’m not that bougie, but I don’t want some like 20 year old snot nose kid getting in my car and doing burnouts and stuff in the valet parking garage. Yeah. But just go off to his friends.

Crew Chief Eric: But just think Brad, he could leave it on Liquid Metal or some other channel, you know.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s welcome to do that. This, this code does not prevent you from setting my SiriusXM stations.

Crew Chief Eric: Is there really a rash of just challenger and charger thefts going on that we don’t know about? Well, I, I think [00:16:00] so. I mean, I know like

Crew Chief Brad: not as many as the Honda Accord. I was going to say like, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: the Hondas and the Camry is like right behind him.

Right. I don’t get it. I just don’t, I just don’t see the appeal of stealing a Challenger or a Charger, but whatever. But

Tom Wende: the three horsepower limit on those Hondas wouldn’t affect anything. VTEC yo.

Crew Chief Brad: But if you limit the torque though, the most interesting tidbit from this is the. The fact that to get to the 22 foot pounds, they just limit the red line to 675 RPM, not 6, 750 RPM, 675 RPM.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know, what’s cool about that? The Hemi makes 22 foot pounds. At 600 RPM, think about that. That’s actually kind of cool. So when you’re looking at that torque graph and those numbers, I mean, that’s, that’s impressive actually. And still better than anything French from the 1960s. So there you go.

Executive Producer Tania: So the way I’m looking at a [00:17:00] different article, the way it says is you create a four digit code that you have to enter in order to have the car be in normal mode.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: Cause it says the way it works is that the owner sets a four digit code in the infotainment system. This code must be entered before driving away to access the car’s normal horsepower settings. If it isn’t because of thief spoofed the key or stole the key, the engine computer won’t let the engine rev past 675 RPMs.

Crew Chief Eric: So does this become like my iPhone where if I don’t put my pass code in right three times, then my car is Bricked for 20 minutes.

Tom Wende: So they have a demon. Why didn’t they set the RPM limit to 6, 6,

6?

Crew Chief Brad: Because they had to get to that precious 2. 8 horsepower. This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where they’re all running around trying to get access to each other’s ATM cards.

And nobody wants to give out their pen numbers.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently it’s a free installation. So what’s the gimmick? They’re not trying to make money. They’re offering it to you for free.

Crew Chief Eric: So what I understand from [00:18:00] that though is, is if I put my, I have to put my pen in every time I drive the car. So it’s in limp, it’s in limp mode by default.

Executive Producer Tania: When you first turn it on. Well, no, I guess you wouldn’t necessarily, I don’t know. You wouldn’t necessarily have to quote crank it all the way for the accessory position to turn the infotainment system on, I guess.

Crew Chief Brad: So like the Apple iPhones, are they going to next come out with the fingerprint key? So like, if it’s not your fingerprint on the key, it stays in limp mode.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a, it’s in the swells of the steering wheel. You have to put your thoughts. You have to hold the

Crew Chief Brad: steering wheel at all times. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Then you’re going to have all these forensic thieves that are going around with, you know, powder with the powder fingerprints.

Crew Chief Eric: Comes an episode of Dexter, challengers and chargers.

Crew Chief Brad: Instead of stealing your challenger first, they steal your coffee mug.

Tom Wende: So I was going to say it also brings up another thing that’s going to really suck for you if you Have actually put it in to use this and then your infotainment system breaks Yeah, because how are you gonna put it back into regular mode then

Crew Chief Brad: because if we know anything about [00:19:00] chrysler electronics

Crew Chief Eric: And they said 2015 So i’m just like if it was me i’d skip this update and you’re out of warranty at this point Just don’t worry about it.

All right So speaking of bright ideas

Executive Producer Tania: So there was an article earlier about Porsche unveiling that they’re working on a synthetic fuel that will basically have electric vehicle level emissions, obviously, and basically just trying to make cleaner fuel for the ice engines. Obviously, they’re still under development with this.

They’re not too forthcoming with exactly how the process is going down and whatnot, but they do mention that the e fuels will be made out of CO2 and hydrogen and will be produced using renewable energy. So those are all good things. I mean, this is not new, the ability to make longer chain hydrocarbon molecules, such as.

Gasoline from something like CO2, hydrogen, or even just starting with methane. Cause basically they’re going to create methane from the CO2 and hydrogen. [00:20:00] It’s great. I mean, yes. Will it, in terms of running a car powered on this e fuel versus running a car powered by batteries, will it be cleaner than the EV?

I’m not convinced. Will it be cleaner than traditional ice? That’s a good question. Yes, because they will be able to get rid of sulfur and nitrogen that are naturally occurring when you’re making gasoline from crude oil. So you won’t get your SOx and your NOx. So you won’t get all the smog. That part of pollution will be solved.

But the piece that I’m not sold on is whenever you combust something. CO2 is a byproduct. Batteries aren’t generating CO2, right? So I think it’s great. I think it’s positive. I don’t know that the whole story is fully articulated yet. I mean, depending on the manufacturing process and how much energy intensive that is.

They do say using renewable energy, you know, there’s still going to possibly be a footprint, carbon footprint with that [00:21:00] manufacturing process. So again, it goes back to what’s the whole lifecycle analysis on this. I don’t know yet without more information, how does it pan out versus, you know, the traditional way of making gasoline, it might still be better.

And anything that’s better is. It’s good to help the environment one for one apples to apples versus battery. I mean, without seeing the full life cycle analysis, I’m not sure how they’re saying that there is zero emissions, like an EV because combustion is combustion, which is still gonna have its byproducts.

Crew Chief Brad: The thing that stuck out to me is there’s a line in the article that says this will be the same level of CO2 produced in the manufacturer and use. Of an electric vehicle. Now, isn’t that like the big debate, like the whole manufacturing process of EVs? is worse than the life cycle of an ICE motor? I mean, isn’t that one of the debates or one of the arguments against EVs?

Executive Producer Tania: So that’s tricky because it really comes down to if you’re a [00:22:00] coal based in your life cycle, then yes, you are likely probably worse. Versus coal based, you know, making gasoline, but you’re using cleaner energies to do the life cycle for the, for the EVs. You’re actually probably better than in the gasoline.

So it really comes down to what’s your initial energy source, right? There’s context that needs to be added to the conversation that’s usually omitted. So you can’t really make the blanket statements.

Crew Chief Brad: And then they usually say that about like the whole mining for precious metals and stuff to, to make the batteries and things like that too.

They, they try to throw all of those things into the argument against EVs to make EVs seem like they’re the devil or where they’re, they’re worse than ice. You can justify anything if you explain it enough

Crew Chief Eric: to your point, Brad, about the precious metals. That argument holds water on the ice side of the house, too, because you have to mind precious metals to develop catalytic converters, right?

There’s all sorts of materials inside of those. So I don’t think that’s a winning argument on either side because the number of. [00:23:00] Catalytics, especially vehicles now where you’ve got two, sometimes four catalytic converters on vehicles, right. To suppress a lot of that kind of stuff. So I think it all kind of comes out in the wash at the end of the day with respect to that kind of stuff.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, the problem with the way life cycle analysis often done is where your fence lines, i. e. your boundaries for how you’re doing your analysis, how they’re set can greatly change the answer that you’re getting. Right. And so, I mean, I haven’t really seen enough. Of the data to say one way or the other I have seen something saying it really it comes down to You know what you’re saying your base energy sources and if you’re trying to use coal to make the the ebs you’re you’re not winning I mean good on them.

Um Hopefully they’ve maybe cracked the code to make it or because there is a shift the way using more natural gases You know initial power source into manufacturing and whatnot. That’s a cheaper source You Cleaner also, you know, maybe that’s making this more advantageous, [00:24:00] more economical to do, right?

Because this is not new technology. This technology, this process dates back to, you know, world war one or two. I don’t remember which one right now. Um, so it’s been around, but when things aren’t economically favorable to do, you don’t do them, right?

Crew Chief Brad: So who’s going to be first in line to put this new fuel, uh, into their race cars, into their track cars,

Crew Chief Eric: The people that can afford it, they can go to the dealership and buy it at 1.

75 liters at a time at, you know, some ridiculous markup, because where are you going to buy this Porsche special fuel? And can I put it in my car? Yeah. There’s a lot of

Crew Chief Brad: this Porsche, this Porsche special fuel or SRF.

Executive Producer Tania: No, it’ll go in any car. I don’t, I don’t see that being a problem. I don’t see it. It’s not going to be Porsche specific.

It’s gasoline. At the end of the day, they’re creating the gasoline chain. So if your car runs on gasoline,

Crew Chief Eric: the question is, is there going to be a special pump at sheets that says Porsche fuel, like with their logo on it? Like I, you know, [00:25:00] Maybe it’s in partnership with golf, like in the old days, right? Golf and Porsche.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it’s a good question. How are you bringing this to a fuel station? Where is it going to be available? You know, you could, it’s Porsche, so one could argue that it’ll be available in Germany first. And maybe only Germany, which oil refiner are they working with?

Crew Chief Brad: And that brings up my next question.

Are they using Bosch for the electronics?

Crew Chief Eric: I think there’s a better question than that, Brad, much like biofuel. When you burn this Porsche fuel, does it smell like sauerkraut? And when Ferrari comes up with their fuel, does it smell like marinara sauce? It smells like

Crew Chief Brad: Axe body spray and desperation.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it won’t have sulfur and nitrogen in it, so it’d smell better from that.

Crew Chief Eric: So speaking of Porsche, we brought it up in previous episodes of the drive thru where they took a vested interest in Rimac, which if you guys remember, you’ve probably heard that name before because that’s the EV that Richard Hammond [00:26:00] wrecked. During an episode of the grand tour on a twisty road. So Porsche, back when we talked about this the first time, they had just invested 15 percent stock of Rimac, right?

And now they have just upped that number to 25%. So they have a quarter control of Rimac right now. So I have a feeling that that’s going to continue to climb. You’re going to continue to see them using Rimac and working together to advance the technology that they’re using. And we’re probably going to end up seeing that in the Taycan and a lot of other cars.

Speaking of the Taycan, I just recently watched a video on Garage Riot of the world’s fastest C8 Corvette, and the hood managed to stay down during the whole thing, in a drag race against a Taycan Turbo S, or whatever they call it. It’s

Executive Producer Tania: Taycan also, sorry.

Crew Chief Eric: Sure. Touareg, Touareg, it’s all the same. So at any rate, I thought that was a little bit of fun by, you know, the Hoonigan guys or whatever, they were putting it on, but in reality, as you guys are going to hear in a future episode about [00:27:00] drag racing, you know, they gave them kick at the start.

They give them a bunch of other stuff. And I was like, is this really fair? You know, why are we talking about a hugely modified Corvette that makes like almost 2000 horsepower against a stock electric car, but that’s not really what got my interest. It was another video. On the same social network where I saw an EV retrofitted into a 935.

And this was being developed out in California. There’s a lot of companies out there right now that are retrofitting Tesla power plants and other types of EV power plants into old Porsches. The formula makes a lot of sense to your point, Brad. They’ve been perfecting that rear mounted rear wheel drive for a lot of years now.

And a lot of those things Tesla two wheel drives are the same layout, so it makes sense to retrofit the EV pack into an old 9 11 or 3 56 or a beetle or whatever have you. And this 9 35, when you guys check out this video and it’s in the show notes, it is pretty wild. And they said the power to weight ratio is so much [00:28:00] better than what the ice set up because the car was light to begin with.

And now you’re taking away all the weight of that flat six and giving it almost equivalent power. It is just. rocket ship. And so very cool to see, very cool to see that, you know, old cars like that will continue to live on with some of this new technology.

Crew Chief Brad: And a little, uh, Easter egg from this video. I don’t know if you know who BC Moto are, but they’re the ones who developed the manual transmission, twin turbo Honda Odyssey with like 900 horsepower.

They do a lot of unconventional things, but it always looks like high quality, well engineered and well done work.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. That was the only disappointing part about the video was they didn’t actually open the hood. Or I guess the trunk to show us what it looked like, you know, in the engine compartment. It was all pretty kept hush hush.

A lot of the video was done from inside the car. The sound I will say is nothing like a flat six. That’s one thing I would have a hard time getting over is driving an old 9 11 that [00:29:00] sounds like like a wind up toy. Kind of a tough pill to swallow, but overall I thought it was pretty cool.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. So earlier this month, Tesla had their battery day, similar to Tesla Volkswagen had power day as they called it.

So it was a bit of press release on all the great things they plan on doing, you know, in terms of, you know, their EV revolution, this, that, and the other, you know, they didn’t have huge announcements, I guess, on the scale of what Tesla did, but it had a couple interesting things that came out of that. They did talk about.

A plan for, you know, having six battery gigafactories, which the eventual production capacity would be equivalent to four million of their pro performance version of their ID threes. Not that I don’t think we’re getting the IDC on this side, but. Still, they also are announced something they’re calling a unified cell technology planning to launch in 2023.

By 2030, then they would be using this new cell that would [00:30:00] allow them to reduce the battery cost on most other entry level cars anywhere, I think up to like 50%. So that’s pretty significant since they’re saying basically the cost of the batteries is, you know, like a third of the cost of the car itself.

So if they’re able to reduce that, that’s pretty significant. And they had some other announcements, one of which there was also an article today, I think this morning highlighting this as well as they have a partnership with BP, so British petroleum, major oil refiners, they’re partnering with them to basically create charging stations at BP stations, brilliant, because You’re not, you know, creating some station somewhere where someone is not familiar.

You’re trying to bring the EV compatibility of charging to spots that people are familiar with. So I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. So good on them to partner up with that instead of just building random stations in places. I don’t know how well that’ll work. It sounded like they would be tied in with existing petrol stations.

So if that is the case, I don’t know, you know, [00:31:00] how well that’ll work. Cause there’s a lot of undergrounds that go in with. With the petrol stations for storing the fuel and whatnot.

Crew Chief Eric: So it makes me wonder if the European fueling stations are operated differently than those in the United States. I’m not familiar, so if anybody’s listening out there, you know, please comment, you know, here in the States, most gas stations, most power stations, Fueling stations are franchises, they’re buying the fuel from the distributor, be it Exxon, be it BP, be it Shell, whoever.

And they have to run the name on the side of the building, much like if you own a McDonald’s, you’re getting the supplies from them and then you’re delivering the service. So here, I’m wondering how would that work to put in the electric and all that is the gas station owner. On the hook for that, for that cost, is it going to be provided by BP as an example, you know, things like that.

So I just kind of wonder how all that’s going to work unless, you know, maybe overseas the gas stations are maybe controlled by the state or or something like that. Right? So I’m speculating, but I’m just wondering, like, it seems like it’s going to be easy, but on the same token, [00:32:00] like, why is it so easy to do that sort of?

You know, conversion.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I don’t, I don’t know how done in, in Europe or in Asia or other places, the world here, the gas stations used to be owned by the oil refiner. So it said Exxon or mobile, it was, you know, controlled and managed by Exxon or mobile. That’s not really the case anymore. Like you said, yes, there are independent owners that can set the prices.

on the fuel station. So when people blame, oh, man, the price of the fuel, the guy that owns the place might have added a few extra cents on there. So let’s make sure we know who we’re getting upset with. Um, but yes, exactly. They basically pay whatever their branding There’s no control from the, the major oil refiner of that station.

I don’t know in Europe, maybe it’s different. Maybe they still, maybe BP still controls their stations. I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll see how it works here. I mean, maybe in the U S they changed their model a little bit. Maybe the control. Shifts again, maybe there’s part [00:33:00] ownership that goes back in or something.

I don’t know, or maybe here, we’re just going to say, screw it. We’re going to just build whole new stations alongside, or maybe they’ll close some fuel stations and then just completely from the ground up, rebuild them to be just EV. If they’re seeing demand go down, you don’t need these stations.

Tom Wende: It’s just kind of like the phase in of everything.

And I know it’s kind of been discussed previous episodes and everything as well. Yeah, we’re obviously not going to see anything overnight. The initial rollout is most likely going to be horrendous in a lot of the, the situations, but it is something that is coming and it’s, it’s just going to be a matter of how that actually ends up rolling, even with the Porsche fuel.

That’s another one rolled in with it as well. It’s all about the logistic side of it. Luckily, because we have done it before, like, a lot of things are going to get figured out. But, yes, you’re going to have to tear down a lot of things in order to make room for the new infrastructure. I mean, just look at any major city or anything, too.

You start tearing down the old stuff to build the new. And it [00:34:00] comes along, it comes better. We’re just going to have to see gradually go through as it comes, so.

Crew Chief Eric: Now, what I thought was interesting from the power day discussion, and it’s still something that’s on the table. And I know they’re doing this. We talked about it before they’re doing this in formula E where they went to the hot swappable battery packs.

I want to see it go in that direction, honestly, because the build quality on cars has gotten so much better. If you look at a 20 year old car today versus a 20 year old car, when we were first started driving, the build quality is. if not 10, 000 times better. So let’s say I buy a car today in 2020, that’s an EV.

Wouldn’t it be cool that 10 years from now, I have the ability to drop the batteries out of it, put new ones in and go another 10 years. You know, because in this case, I don’t have all those moving parts, all those liquids, all that stuff that, that an ice motor would have. Yeah, maybe I need, you know, brakes, rotors, wheel bearings, all the common suspension parts, but if I kept my car in good shape and I, you know, and it wasn’t abused, then it would, it would almost [00:35:00] last, let’s say forever, it’s interesting to see where that’s going to go, maybe 10 years down the road from now.

Crew Chief Brad: Top gear episode to that point as well, where they were testing in a very small limited market. Driving and changing your battery, like going to the gas station. Yeah. So just swap of a battery is not every like 10 years or when the useful life of the battery is done, but like every time you needed a charge, go to the quote unquote, you know, power station, swap out the battery and along your, your, your back on your way in 15 minutes or whatever.

Tom Wende: I was kind of getting. Go along that line. Cause I know it had been talked about before, like having a spare battery and your, your vehicle for it. But I kind of see it more like what Brad saying, you know, kind of like when you’re swapping out your propane tank for your grill, you just walk up, you give them the empty one, and then you grab the, uh, the full one, put it in.

And you’re on your way. And especially for these longer road trips with the EVs right now, you know, you’re sitting there for, you know, however long, [00:36:00] just at least, you know, get it charged back up. Now, they’re not charging all the way up to 100%. They’re doing that super charge up to about 80 because they’re able to get that much quicker.

But in this case, you might be able to swap out to that full 100 percent and be able to travel a little bit further and extend your road trip.

Crew Chief Eric: My luck, it’ll be like when I go to swap out my propane tank and I Put my empty one in and I get one back. That’s half full. So, you know, Hey, whatever, that’s my luck.

But what I don’t want to see happen though, because there is a trend growing right now about leasing your car from the manufacturer. People don’t want to purchase their car. They’re talking about not being able to purchase a car from the manufacturer anymore is that it turns into that. I forget which episode of black mirror it is, where you just pull up to the station and get out of the car and jump in another one.

That’s been sitting there and charge up and you just drive away. And you’ve paid this. Subscription plan for a type of car that you’re able to drive. Cause all the cars are kind of cookie cutter in the same, right? You just go from one to the next. So to me, that would be like, that would be the end [00:37:00] of just carness as we know it.

Right. It’s just completely soulless appliances that are out on the road, Tesla. But anyway,

Executive Producer Tania: So speaking of that, the other thing that’s going on with Volkswagen is this project as they call it, that is quote, supposed to lead Volkswagen to the financial promised land, taking the company out of the low margin business of manufacturing and into a new business model that offers the rich returns of software as a service.

And so the article kind of goes on and talks about whatever this project is, which is all very vague and there’s not a lot of details. It could allow drivers to choose all wheel drive or extra power on a quote fee for service basis. So basically they’re talking about like how they even have now with their MQB, whatever that the single platform and they’re just.

You know, changing the body on the outside. Sounds like they kind of want to do something similar where it’s like, all right, we got, we build one car and then you can decide if you want silver, gold, platinum, [00:38:00] plutonium subscription, and we’ll give you, you know, 20 year old GTI or golf performance or GTI performance or our 32 performance, which I’m very confused how this works.

No, no, I know how

this works. You’re driving down the road at 60 and

Crew Chief Eric: ads are popping up on the street going, Do you feel like your car is slow? Click here to upgrade now and get 50 more horsepower. So you could do 70 miles an hour for only 29. 99. It’s going to be just like all these

freaking ads on your computer.

Isn’t this

Crew Chief Brad: another black mirror episode with having to generate widgets or whatever, his room, and he’s got to watch so many hours of whatever stupid videos.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, that show is foreshadowing. I’m

Tom Wende: telling

Executive Producer Tania: you, EW says quote, they, the cars will have virtually everything on board and customers will be able to activate desired functions on demand at any time via the digital ecosystem in the car.

I just don’t understand though, because if you buy your, whatever car you want to buy and you [00:39:00] decide, Oh, I want the R32 performance package. Well, the car has to have been built with, so whatever the, the highest performance package that you could subscribe to. You have to then build every single car would have to be an R32 performance package.

And then you decide that, Oh, I’m going to run it in golf mode. And okay. Switches to front wheel drive, blah, blah, blah, disengages differential that you didn’t need. If you just wanted a front wheel drive and like all this extra stuff that you didn’t need. If you just wanted base model, I don’t understand.

I mean, minis and things like that. A lot of the cars have this. Race mode and all that. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo.

Crew Chief Brad: Three more paychecks and I’ll be able to afford turning on the

No, dude! No, dude! No, right? Dude, it’s gonna be like an RPG. We’re all gonna start off with like, tattered clothes. And the more we drive, we’ll earn in game currency.

So we can unlock the horsepower. And then I will become a druid night elf. The equivalent to like, you’re

Executive Producer Tania: making fun, but I guarantee there’s a shit [00:40:00] ton of people that would probably be down for that. I’m at level 20. What

are you exactly? And then you can buy VIP for a month and unlock all the features.

Crew Chief Brad: So, so what is the, uh, in car currency going to be called? Let’s take a moment to try and identify what that is.

Executive Producer Tania: What was that sausage called?

Oh, that’s awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: Strudel. I’ve got 50, 000 strudel.

I got schnitzel. Oh, that’s old currency. Schnitzel’s out. That’s that’s the old, that’s the last mod.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God. Sell all that at

Executive Producer Tania: the trading house. You’re

Crew Chief Brad: never winter Volkswagen. Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know that. I mean, there’s not a lot of. Good information yet on what exactly this means.

It’s a little frightening.

Crew Chief Eric: That would be a good name to replace the mid sized Chrysler SUV yet to be named. I would call it the Paladin. I figured it out now that we’ve gone there. It’s the Paladin. But there’s

Crew Chief Brad: already a Chrysler. Isn’t there already a [00:41:00] Paladin? There’s a Palisade, the Hyundai. All right.

Anyway. Meanwhile, so the postal service has just signed a contract with Oshkosh B’gach. Are

Crew Chief Eric: you

Crew Chief Brad: serious? Oshkosh Defense is going to be doing the new postal truck, the next generation delivery vehicle.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, I looked at this thing and I mean, I’m going to miss the old Grumman Jeeps and stuff that had been around for like a billion years, but this thing is ugly.

Right. I mean, who, who put it in a trash compactor and decided it was a good, a, it’s like a bus got squished. I mean, I don’t understand what it is. It’s, it is ugly though.

Crew Chief Brad: I will say so. So some of them are going to be low emission, uh, ice, and some of them are going to be Evie.

Tom Wende: One thing that I’m actually looking pretty forward to with the, the postal trucks.

So anybody that’s had any experience with any of the Oshkosh trucks, they have some really cool technology in them. Their tires and suspension and everything. So like in the [00:42:00] military vehicles, you’ve got this display unit where you just basically touch what type of terrain you’re going into, and it dynamically changes your tire pressures, your suspension profile, all of that happens in real time so that you’re able to go through different terrain types.

If they were to actually carry this over. With the postal service, especially since even during all these bad weather conditions, they’re still supposed to be out there, you know, delivering mail and packages and everything. This is something that can give those drivers a leg up on Mother Nature. And getting through some of these tougher situations.

So they’re able to get through some of the snow, possibly if they’re in an area where they have to do a little bit muddy drive in or anything like that. Like that’s something that, uh, I think would be really beneficial.

Crew Chief Eric: So what you’re saying is my mailman won’t do a one wheel peel from my house to the next house to the next house anymore, is that what I’m understanding?

Crew Chief Brad: Who knows, maybe this is making me actually want to sign up and apply to be a mail carrier now, just so I can [00:43:00] play with the truck. They’re going

Executive Producer Tania: to, they’re going to have to do something to, uh, secure the packages or do something so that it’s the torque. Is it so insane that they gun it like they do in the, that’s In the vans right now and all the stuff just flies in the back of the

Crew Chief Eric: van.

So I’m going to,

Executive Producer Tania: yes, it’ll be fine. They’re, they’re used to dropping packages.

Crew Chief Eric: If leaving them in the middle of my driveway, cause they won’t walk down it.

Crew Chief Brad: We’re saying all this though, but I think the postal service could have saved themselves 470 some odd million dollars because they don’t deliver packages anyway.

It’s the last time you got something from your USPS that you were supposed to. Personally, I think small around town. Delivery vehicles is the perfect platform for EVs, buses, uh, small, you know, mail trucks, delivery vehicles, people. It’s perfect. I think it’s the perfect platform for it. And that would do so much to help us with our emissions issues.

If everybody was just, if. These delivery [00:44:00] people and everything, these small commercial vehicles were all EVs.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. I mean, in Europe, or well, especially in Italy, they went to natural gas transit, you know, tight vans and little small transporters and stuff years and years and years ago, the problem with natural gas or CNG was that it defines.

Torqueless wonder. And I mean, if, if, if you think like a Honda off VTEC is slow, I mean, then drive a natural gas car. You’ll think it’s a, it’s a freaking race car in comparison.

Crew Chief Brad: But if I’m delivering snail mail to little Susie grandma down the street, I’m not sitting there thinking about my Torquems. I’m thinking about how I’m going to get this mail delivered before lunch.

So I can blow off the rest of the day. A

Crew Chief Eric: hundred percent. And if, you know, with mail trucks being big and flat, if they could finally figure out how to do those solar roofs, so they could charge as they’re kind of start up and go driving, that would be perfect.

Crew Chief Brad: And in addition to the USPS trucks, UPS is also, uh, switching to, or looking to switch to, uh, [00:45:00] You know, an electric van.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. There’s a UK startup that they’ve, I guess, signed a contract with. They’re going to get this UK startups called Arrival and they’ve designed electric van, um, and they’re going to deliver 10, 000 of the Brown vans for UPS. They’re going to be exactly for what we’re talking about. It’s for last mile delivery, meaning they’re at the facility and they’re just going out to your door.

They have 150 mile range. It’s not the interstate UPS truck, tractor trailers going back and forth, but it’s those short bursts. daily travel, which this is perfect for, and it’d be great not to hear the UPS guy slamming down the road. So here’s

Crew Chief Brad: my suggestion. We go back to the railway system. We find a way to run rail railways, you know, cleaner, and then they go into a station.

You know, inside these little towns and then these EVs go out and deliver, you know, to the various little commercial places and residential and everything that they need to. We get all the stupid effing trucks off the damn [00:46:00] road.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, a couple things on that. Trains have been diesel electric hybrids for as long as I can remember.

So the technologies aren’t there. Why we haven’t borrowed from that. Advancement engineering is beyond me. Meanwhile, Amazon continues to buy RAM vans from Stellantis. So I don’t know what’s going on. But you’re starting to see more and more of the blue vans popping up on the streets. You know what I will also say?

Is that this will be the weirdest one lap at the Berg ring in Forza with all these new, you know, delivery vehicles that are gonna be coming out. So, Forza eight, I’m excited. Let’s see what, you know, Oshkosh and the, the arrival and the, the, the Ram vans and whatever. So we’ll see where that goes. Not only is the delivery industry changing, but so is law enforcement.

I heard that. Ford is going to start supplying pickup trucks as a replacement for the veteran Crown Victoria and some of the other vehicles that are no longer available as police interceptors. I’m not [00:47:00] sure if the Exploder is going away or if this is in conjunction with, but the one thing that got me excited is these trucks are going to be set up to do at least 120 mile an hour.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know if they’re meant to replace the, the Crownvix. What are, what are the other ones that they use the charger to, or they used to? The sedans, I don’t know if they’re meant to entirely replace the sedans.

Crew Chief Brad: Ford side, they were using the Taurus. The Taurus was replacing some of the aging Crownvix.

Tom Wende: I think it’s more of a supplemental thing for like special cases and Right.

Because they already have pickup

Executive Producer Tania: truck police responder vehicles. Today they’re gas. So this is just kind of the next evolution for those. Right. And yeah, they did up the, the horsepower, the total top speed from 105 to 120. Apparently it’s, it’s, they’re basically the FX4 off road package. So it’s got enhanced off roading capability, which is, I guess, good depending on which kind of pursuit they’re undergoing, or if they’re using these kind of in more rural areas.[00:48:00]

Or to

Crew Chief Eric: arrest Jeep owners that go on bike trails in California.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I mean, you could be giving these to, um, park ranger, police, uh, those kind of people and they’re going off. The park rangers and

Crew Chief Brad: police, the park rangers all drive square body Chevys.

Crew Chief Eric: Not on Jurassic Park, but every

Crew Chief Brad: single park ranger truck I’ve ever seen has been an early In 80s or early 90s GM.

I

Executive Producer Tania: think I’ve seen I’ve seen some pretty sure I’ve seen some Ford pickups

Crew Chief Brad: Those are personal vehicles.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay But

Crew Chief Brad: since we’re talking about Ford the Mach E which is barely out Is having a recall because they have loose bolts on the control arms. So apparently they did not enlist me to tighten these bolts for them because had they, the bolts would never come apart ever again.

Yeah. If you have a Mach E get it to a dealership just to get it checked out. Yeah. Get it checked out. I don’t think any of them are actually even in service yet. I think, I don’t

Executive Producer Tania: think, I think they caught it [00:49:00] before any of them were released to anyone. So,

Crew Chief Brad: but, uh, Ford, if you’re looking for somebody to tighten your control arm bolts, give me a shout.

Crew Chief Eric: Meanwhile,

Crew Chief Brad: we

Crew Chief Eric: would be remiss.

Executive Producer Tania: We haven’t quite talked about Tesla yet. So we would be remiss not to talk about them. I hate to knock on Tesla all the time. We can knock on them for this one because of their exuberance about touting how they have full self driving capability and all this stuff. And we talked about this before about how that’s bullcrap and that doesn’t exist yet and they really should stop saying that.

And apparently, they wrote a letter to California admitting that their autonomous, whatever the hell they call it, is not autonomous. Full self driving. So finally admitting it. I feel like the damage is already done to people that are, are a little bit too, uh, ignorant [00:50:00] about how these things work, but hopefully, you know, people will be a little more attentive when they’re driving and not like, And some of the stories you’ve heard, like

Crew Chief Eric: what?

Executive Producer Tania: He’s

Crew Chief Eric: flat out. He’s like, they won’t.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, no, you’re absolutely right. They won’t. But one would hope that the stories that we’ve reported on where people rolled the seat back and took a nap, their, their autopilot takeover, you know, hopefully people would stop doing that, but probably not. So yes, of course, they’re still working on, you know, their technology and, and moving it forward.

And the goal is. You know, one day that it is completely autonomous. Um, we’ll see if how far in the future that happens. I’m just happy that they finally admit to what we already knew. And speaking of their autonomous driving autopilot, they had two incidents within like, I think a week of each other this month in Michigan, both were in Michigan.

For whatever reason. The two Teslas that were on autopilot [00:51:00] crashed. The first ended up crashing into, under, into, I guess, under is the more appropriate, under a tractor trailer, so that always ends well. I don’t remember if the person died or not. You’re practically trying to decapitate yourself when you go under your tractor trailer.

But basically, like, That’s not, that’s not how it worked in the Fast and the Furious.

Crew Chief Brad: They didn’t go under the back.

Executive Producer Tania: No, they, they, they basically T boned the, the tractor trailer.

Tom Wende: So I looked at the pictures and that thing is sandwiched underneath there. So basically think like the bottom of the window line crushed underneath there.

It says both people that were in the vehicle survived. However,

Crew Chief Eric: they were sleeping fully reclined

Tom Wende: most likely. So I think this is pretty funny. So the driver was a 21 year old female or wait, no, that was the passenger. So the driver. Was driving on a suspended license. So is her excuse that she wasn’t really driving [00:52:00] so she can’t be charged with the felony?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, shit. Oh, my God. It just gets worse.

Tom Wende: She’s being charged with reckless driving without a license. I don’t know. With

Executive Producer Tania: reckless driving. I don’t know how they survived, quite honestly, because. It’s under, okay, the roof to the back doors is caved down. Like I, I mean, it’s a miracle that those two people lived.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a good thing they were sleeping.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it’s not funny, but I mean, I, you know what, I hope they were reclined and sleeping because that’s the only thing that saved their lives. Well, if

Crew Chief Brad: they weren’t sleeping, they probably wouldn’t have hit the truck.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, there’s that too. I mean, they weren’t paying attention to the car, failed to do its job and to see the tractor trailer.

And there’s been reports of that for the last several years of the cars, not appropriately seeing tractor trailers on highways. And especially if they’re not moving. Or [00:53:00] they’re stalled out or something like that. The second incident was also someone driving with their autopilot on, and there was a police cruiser pulled over on the side of the roadway for whatever reason, and it hit the police car.

Crew Chief Eric: So, I mean, I, I know it’s not funny, but I have to laugh. So are these things turning into like. Heat seeking missiles. Every time they go into autopilot mode, if there’s some stationary object, they’re going to hit it.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s called kamikaze mode.

It’s ludicrous mode and then whatever this is.

Crew Chief Brad: And then the, the, the one who ran into the truck, maybe they didn’t see it.

I’m sorry, officer. I didn’t see that 60 foot, 30, 000 pound vehicle in front of me.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I mean, it was based on the photos for the police incident. It was at night. So you could argue it was night, the cops pulled over, the lights were on, the blue and reds were flashing on the cop car. The

Crew Chief Brad: cherries and berries.

Executive Producer Tania: But then one could argue maybe [00:54:00] that created some sort of interference with the sensors that are being used. Are you saying the Tesla

Crew Chief Brad: was blinded by the light? No,

Crew Chief Eric: but as we know from the story we reported about the Canadian guys in the Tesla that were being followed by the police officer, they accelerate when they see the reds and blues.

So what’s up, ?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, also it, it’s on the full investigation. I don’t think it’s done. The, the driver is claiming they’re on autopilot, so they could also have been not on autopilot, not paying attention and veered, coincidentally, at the same time, they’re near the police officer blaming autopilot

Crew Chief Brad: on Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: But I would think that’s pretty easy for them to figure out because they can go back into the little computer and read all that stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, to wrap up our segment on new cars,

Crew Chief Brad: General Motors has decided to halt production on the Camaro because they can’t find these little semiconductors

Crew Chief Eric: that we talked about last month

Crew Chief Brad: that we talked about last month.

Yeah. [00:55:00] The semiconductor shortage has gotten Chevy all up in arms and they can’t build the Camaro anymore because of these stupid little things.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m a call flag on the play. Let’s let’s be real here. The Camaro isn’t selling well, neither is the Corvette. This feels like 1999 all over again. Early two thousands.

We got to scrap the Camaro to force people to buy the Corvette. Reality, the Camaro is a better performer than the Corvette right now. And if you think about it politically, it just doesn’t make sense to keep it around and the price point and everything else. So to me, I’m saying this semiconductor thing is a great excuse.

What about all the rest of the cars that they’re building? I don’t know what’s going on. Why is GM the only one affected by this? It doesn’t make any sense at all.

Crew Chief Brad: I think GM is the only one that’s most vocal. About it regarding like the changes that they have to make and they have to blame it on something.

So let’s blame it on the semiconductors. I mean, it’s not blaming on the blame on the fact that we make [00:56:00] shitty vehicles.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, they’re not the only ones though that are impacted by it. But I still think everybody else is making headlines.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but to scrap the Camaro. And not, Oh, I don’t know the traverse or something else of higher volume and say, we’re going to put that on pause.

No, we’re just, we’re going to kill the Camaro and that’s going to solve our semiconductor problem, but

Crew Chief Brad: from a business perspective, you got to scrap the vehicles that aren’t selling well to keep the vehicles that are.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, traverse might be selling. They might sell more traverses than Camaro’s. They sell more

Crew Chief Brad: traverses than Camaro’s.

They don’t sell more traverses than any other manufacturer sells any other vehicle, but they sell more traverses than Camaro’s. I thought it was interesting that later on in the article, they mentioned how Toyota. Hyundai and Kia, they’re affected by this, but they’re just dipping into their stockpile. So they apparently planned on this.

They knew about the COVID and they knew this was going to happen. I’m sensing a conspiracy.

Crew Chief Eric: Because you know what, guys? I also found something else very interesting on [00:57:00] the heels of the Camaros being put on pause. You see here in Boomer Town, where apparently somebody Wanted me to get a actual physical magazine, which I probably won’t read And you’ll probably won’t find this article online cadillac on the cover of car and driver is introducing the 668 horsepower six speed manual cadillac Ct5v blackwing Excuse me.

What what is this? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. So we’re getting rid of the Camaro. We got the Corvette. You’re telling me we have a semi conductor problem and now you’re introducing yet another sports saloon?

Crew Chief Brad: I will say, in the article it did say production for the Blackwing was also affected by this.

Crew Chief Eric: Either way, I don’t get it. If you’re going to make the excuse to introduce something like that, which the market for a sports Cadillac, I think is very limited.

Crew Chief Brad: Gordon already owns one,

Crew Chief Eric: but it’s very limited compared to somebody that may be in the market to buy a Camaro or [00:58:00] a Corvette. It, to me, it just doesn’t make sense.

Do they realize they can’t fight the muscle car fight against. Chrysler, like we’ve talked about before, and they just got to stick with, you know, certain flagship vehicles and move on. Or I just don’t understand what’s going on at GM. Again, I, like I’ve said it before, I’m very hopeful. I feel like they’ve been sitting back watching everybody else maybe make mistakes, but there’s certain moves going on right now that I just don’t get it.

I want to say that

Executive Producer Tania: that Cadillac looks a lot better than the

Crew Chief Eric: Camaro. I agree. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not throwing any shade against this Cadillac other than the fact that the first time I heard about it was on the fact that it was on actually on a magazine.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, you got to want that Cadillac just because it’s called the Blackwing.

It’s pretty cool. Got to give it that.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. Enough of that. Enough of that. We got to get into our new newly combined section called.

Crew Chief Brad: Surf and turf, shrimp and grits,

Crew Chief Eric: the extra value. I don’t know, but what we’ve done is we’ve combined all of those other segments that we [00:59:00] had before. Like, would you like fries with that and golden nuggets and all this kind of stuff into a brand new section of random car adjacent news dollar menu hit the dollar menu.

I like that. So 1st article.

Executive Producer Tania: Um, it’s just reporting on another unfortunate incident. There was, you know, a car meet and, uh, tomfoolery ensued that ended up taking the lives of some people as a Camaro driver was trying to show off, kind of doing a hot pull down a feeder road actually here in Texas. And I ended up killing some folks as they lost control of this vehicle.

So it’s a very sad, sad article and incident. And it’s just a reminder to people to not be stupid and don’t do dumb things. Save this stuff for the track. Or the drag strip or, and

Crew Chief Eric: I, I a hundred percent agree. Right. And it’s just one of those things. I mean, safety is paramount in motorsport. We talk about it a lot, but it’s more important on the street.

Honestly, I’m not impressed [01:00:00] if you can do 80 down the highway, let’s go to the track and see what your car can do. And, and in reality, I actually kind of point my finger at the organizers, but. I do tip my hat to folks like grid life and stuff like that, where they’re trying to do some of these meets at locations like drag strips and road courses and things like that, take it to the drag strip, do your cars and coffee at the track strip.

And if you want to go burn your tires to the ground, Do a couple passes because in reality, drag racing is not that expensive. It’s actually probably one of the cheapest motor sports and you can do it with anything. Yes. It’s convenient to go behind the Krispy Kreme or the Dairy Queen and go talk about your car and show off to your buddies.

But I don’t know, man, there’s so many avenues to go have a good time and do it in a safe way. And you can show off and people can go, Ooh, I’ll look at how fast that guy’s Camaro is. And the only. Person that is in jeopardy is you and your car. And Oh, by the way, if you’re worried about bending it, take out track insurance.

And that way, if something does [01:01:00] happen, so be it, you know, but on the street, there’s so many other variables involved. It’s just, it really isn’t worth it.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. Cause to, to clarify, I guess, um, for whatever reason, the driver hit another car. It had a baby inside and basically catapulted that other car into the crowd that then killed two people and injured.

I don’t remember how many. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s, it’s just a disgrace. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, so a hundred miles an hour on a feeder road, it’s been a while, but I’ve actually, based on where they said the location is, I spent many, many, many a year since I’ve been to that area, but it doesn’t matter because any of the feeder roads down here, I mean, you’re, I mean, they’re straight.

Yes. It’s straight and flat, but I mean, it’s Like the speed limit is like 40 miles an hour. I mean, you shouldn’t be doing a hundred miles an hour down a feeder rate. I mean, every, however, not even like a mile, there’s usually a stoplight, like it’s short distances for you to access shopping plazas and this, that, and the other, I mean, this is beyond stupid and it wouldn’t have been any better to be getting on the highway and doing it either.

So people [01:02:00] need to use their brain.

Crew Chief Eric: So speaking of Texas,

Executive Producer Tania: just an interesting piece of news. Um, as, We’re still in the midst of COVID, at least down here in the state of Texas. They’re, they’re really focusing on, on creating hubs where they can do mass vaccination. But now a lot of other states are doing similar to that as well.

So over in Austin, they’re using the circuit of the Americas. I believe it opened earlier or at the end of February as a vaccination hub. So they’re getting not a huge supply of the vaccine, but they’re hoping to get more. And they’re all set up to do as they called it Chick fil A lines, very well organized.

And you can just drive up, get your shot, pull over, do the waiting thing and then leave. Kudos to circuit of America’s track for supporting the vaccination efforts. And if you’re in the Austin area, maybe you can sign up and be able to go to CODA to get your shot.

Crew Chief Brad: Can I get a 20 minute session on track while I’m waiting for the vaccine to take effect or whatever?

At least one lap. You got

Crew Chief Eric: to get one lap of [01:03:00] CODA in there, man.

Executive Producer Tania: Probably some liability issues in there because they want you to kind of hang around to make sure you don’t have adverse side effects. That’s right. You,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s what you drive around the track while you’re waiting. It’s perfect. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Last thing you need is to have an adverse side effect as you’re driving around the track.

Crew Chief Eric: Meanwhile, in lighter news, we’ve brought it up before on our holiday shopping guide and a couple other episodes leading up to that talking about the ridiculous world of car collecting, but I’m talking about collecting Hot Wheels. There is now the world’s most valuable Hot Wheels out there on the market.

And it happens to be a Volkswagen, it’s a type two bus, it’s known as the beach bomb, and it has been valued as the most expensive collector Hot Wheels in history. It is valued at a whopping 150, 000. Can you imagine something you bought back in the 60s or 70s? For a dollar is now worth 150 grand. So if you [01:04:00] happen to have one of those, hold on to it even longer.

If you’re out at Walmart or Target this weekend, grab yourself some Hot Wheels. They might be worth something someday.

Crew Chief Brad: In an interesting little tidbit, this guy is in Maryland. So I’m thinking a, uh, road trip to go see this thing.

Crew Chief Eric: It wouldn’t be a drive thru episode if we didn’t have some fries with that.

Executive Producer Tania: So this first Serving comes out of Toronto, unfortunately. And I, thankfully the person wasn’t hurt. Uh, the same can’t be said for what is very likely they’re completely totaled mini, but apparently it’s young woman, 26 year old nurse. Was, uh, waiting at a light to turn up on an on ramp, I guess, to get onto the highway in her Mini.

And she turned onto the on ramp. But the gigantic dump truck, or whatever it was, who was behind her, at the light, rear ends her. Causes the Mini to [01:05:00] do a 90 degree spin. So now it’s perpendicular with the Low that it should be going in and the dump truck keeps driving. So the dump truck now is T boning this young woman and pushing her up the ramp onto the highway and keeps going.

And there’s CCTV camera that catches unfolding smoke billowing, because it’s like scraping against the cement wall and all this shit, and there’s like dust coming up, apparently, you know, uh, someone else noticed all the cement smoke and stuff coming up and pulled up alongside and saw that there’s this car being t boned.

And thankfully what they did, and honestly I probably would have done the same thing had I seen this, is they out accelerated, pulled out in front and, you know, basically created a roadblock and forced the dump truck driver to stop. And then he got out and was like, I didn’t see you.[01:06:00]

I didn’t see you. And then asked that the cops not be called. And if he could just pay for the damages,

Pay for a whole new car.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, minis are small, but still, The cost of a

Executive Producer Tania: mini is the cost of a mini. I mean, that doesn’t matter how big it is, but okay. And then you, and then, Uh, you know, you read some of the comments and there’s, you know, the trolls are like, well, you know, drivers really need to respect big trucks because, you know, they can’t see you and, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And I’m like, she was in front of this dumb truck, allegedly, and also at a stoplight. He had to have come up to her and they both turned on the same on ramp. And so that whole, oh, you can’t see what he forgot she was there. I’m sorry. This dude’s at fault. I mean, I guess we don’t know the full story exactly what happened, but as presented I get out of here.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s befuddling much like our [01:07:00] next story.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, the next story brings us back into warmer climates down south. Where would we be if we weren’t in Florida?

Oh man.

So, you know, you just read the title alone, Florida Man Strikes Again, as Hellbird Fusion dangerously transports ladder, and someone video recorded this as they observed it.

And you might be asking, well, you know, what was he doing? He like strapped it. He’s like, put it on the roof. He’s holding it. It’s one hand kind of thing. It’s like that,

like that dude with the camera and the light pole.

Executive Producer Tania: Like the dude who was going to take very nicely. Take that fall and light pole to the recycling center

after he hit it.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. He may or may not have hit it. We don’t know. Yeah. So no, no, no, no, no. That might’ve been better. Yes, it’s difficult to transport long items like a ladder in a sedan, or a [01:08:00] not SUV or pickup truck. But he solved this problem by rolling down the rear windows and just sliding the ladder across the back seats.

Uh, across Letting this like probably 10 foot ladder, just hang out the sides of the car and then drive down the interstate. I’m

Crew Chief Brad: okay with this. It’s within the lines. It’s no wider than a Hummer H one.

Looking at the video to me, it is to me, it looks like it’s within the lines. What he should have done is he should have put it through the rear driver’s side window and caddy corner through the front passenger side window. To give himself a little extra, extra space

Executive Producer Tania: wedged in there

Crew Chief Brad: in there.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know much about a Ford Fusion because I never owned one.

However, people have said that the back seats do fall down in the Ford Fusion. So. Probably would have [01:09:00] been better to have it sticking out the rear, at least in a parallel direction with the car, than sticking out the sides to accidentally hit somebody.

Crew Chief Brad: So this Florida man is actually a firefighter, and he’s testing out a new delivery service for the ladder, and he needed to be able to quick release.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, I’m going to assume that this was not strapped down, and so the first off ramp he took, this thing was going flying out the window anyway, right?

Crew Chief Brad: He probably had the windows up to hold it into place.

Executive Producer Tania: Actually, based on this photo, you are right, Brad. It does look like the windows are up. And otherwise, the article says it doesn’t appear that it’s secured by any hoops or anything.

So you’re absolutely right. You take a, you forget and you take a sharp turn or swerve and like that sucker slides

straight out the side into. The backseat of somebody else’s car as they’re driving by.

Crew Chief Brad: Can you imagine? Next thing you know, you got

Executive Producer Tania: this ladder coming at you.

Crew Chief Brad: The banana is [01:10:00] replaced in Mario Kart by 10 foot ladder.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh

Tom Wende: man. Oh my god. In his defense, he’s at least being courteous and staying on the far right lane. So that he doesn’t hit anybody else.

Crew Chief Brad: He decapitated,

he decapitated every cyclist on the shoulder though.

Tom Wende: Well, it’s a, it’s a highway, so there shouldn’t be any cyclists. That’s their own fault in this case.

Crew Chief Brad: And that’s his defense. You dumbass shouldn’t be on the highway.

Executive Producer Tania: What happens when there’s that pulled over police cruiser on the shoulder?

Crew Chief Brad: He’ll get hit by a Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: How does the Tesla handle this ladder that’s sticking out? Laughs.

Crew Chief Brad: That is a very good question.

Crew Chief Eric: What, I, what happens in Florida, people? I mean, somebody explain it to me.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re all bored.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God. I hope I never get old. Anyway.

Tom Wende: Thanks.

Crew Chief Eric: I need that Cadillac. All right. I think it’s time for us to go behind the pit wall and talk [01:11:00] about some actual motor sports news. We are a car and motor sports podcast after all. All right, so if you, if you’ve been living under a rock for a while, we are finally returning to dirt racing in NASCAR for the first time since the 1970s.

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, is this the thing where they’re gonna like bring dump truck loads of dirt onto the Yes. I think we talked about that. You know what, I would watch it for like three laps.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. It’s going to be amazing. We talked

Crew Chief Brad: about this in a previous drive through as well.

Crew Chief Eric: We did. And it’s going to happen at Bristol.

It’s the, I think the first of three that they’re going to do again, guys, this has been done before. This is not new. Everybody makes it sound like it’s something that is new to NASCAR. This was a real thing back in the seventies. If you watch Lost Speedways. On the Peacock Dale Earnhardt Jr. Covers all this.

He talks about the old days of NASCAR and things like that. Even, you know, the, even the earlier days in that, but racing on dirt was not a big deal. A lot of these guys got their start racing on dirt. However, the transformation of Bristol to dirt has been a [01:12:00] massive. Undertaking it used to have a dirt configuration a long time ago, but it’s, it’s so far gone.

People that did that are no longer around stuff like that. So it’s been a massive undertaking for them to convert the track back over. And then they’re going to have to convert it back to pavement again. So it’s not going to stay as dirt. So a lot of money involved, a lot of logistics just for this one race.

So it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens here. There’s a lot of articles out there by auto week and a bunch of others. Following their progress and they’re kind of unsure at this point. They’re even going to get done in time. Crews are working tirelessly to get this going. So we’ll see where that goes, but let’s shift to open wheel racing instead.

Crew Chief Brad: So there’s any car driver Jr. Hildebrand and he races in any car and he’s got 2021 Dallara And he’s going to be racing in the IndyCar series this year. That was a lot of alphabet soup, basically the 2021 IndyCar. All right. He’s going to be taking it. To Pike’s Peak Hill Climb. So the registrant list, the [01:13:00] participant list came out not too long ago.

And if you look through the list, you’ll see J. R. Hildebrand in a IR 18. Personally, I think this is kind of cool. I’m all in on the Pike’s Peak Hill Climb. I don’t really get to watch it or anything, but I love the idea of it. And it’s an amazing event that’s been going on for forever. How long has it been going on?

Decades.

Executive Producer Tania: Is an IndyCar too low for Pikes Peak? I mean, there’s, I mean, we saw Randy props in, in the Tesla go airborne on just a dip and lose traction, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. But then the,

Executive Producer Tania: that Tesla,

Crew Chief Brad: the, the world record lap time there is held by Roman Al and the, the Volkswagen IDR.

Crew Chief Eric: The IDR is an LMP car though,

Crew Chief Brad: but I mean, it’s still still low.

It’s still a race car. It’s a full blown race car. The important thing for me here is why don’t we commission a car for Pikes Peak?

Crew Chief Eric: Because a Miata at Pikes Peak would be super boring. That’s why we wouldn’t do it. [01:14:00] But then

Crew Chief Brad: you can say you did Pikes Peak.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. But here’s the problem I have for you.

With all of this is that Pike’s Peak today is not the Pike’s Peak of let’s say 30 years ago, it much like, you know, Bristol going back to dirt, Pike’s Peak was mostly off road. It was mostly dirt and gravel. There were some tarmac spots in there, but now it’s a fully paved road all the way up to the summit.

So you are starting to see more cars like this taking on the race to the sky, formula cars, Indy cars, the IDR, stuff like that. But. I think Pike’s Peak has kind of lost its luster because now it’s like a public road, just like Tale of the Dragon or anything else. The thing I took away from this though, my first question, much like to Tanya’s point about it being bumpy and hilly and whatnot is, does the IndyCar really have to turn?

Proper turning radius to get through some of those hairpins. I mean, it’s going to be like watching the hotel corner at Monaco where the formula one cars need like a granny gear to get [01:15:00] around, you know, that turn, because it’s so slow. Some of the corners on Pike’s peak are just. Just ridiculously slow.

And they were really designed for a rally car to be sliding around the corner, not approaching it like on a road course. So I just, I wonder how he’s going to fare. I’m sure he’s going to be faster than most everybody that’s there based on sheer acceleration alone and downforce and things like that. I’m curious to see what he does, but on the same token, it’s like.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, the article suggests that this could become a contender for the all time record and it could challenge Dumas and the Volkswagen IDR.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’ll see. I’m happy that Volkswagen holds the record, but, you know, if it gets broken, it gets broken. But I guess we’ll have to tune in and find out.

Crew Chief Brad: If it dies, it dies.

Crew Chief Eric: 100%. Speaking of formula cars, Jaguar! A name we haven’t heard in Formula cars in quite a long while, because most of us don’t pay attention to Formula E, where they have been spending most of their time since about 2017, focusing their attention on their [01:16:00] Formula program. So Jaguar still relevant. You know, the last time I saw Jag was like, you know, the Eddie Irvine days of Formula 1.

Formula one, you know, that kind of thing they have now launched their own racing channel on motorsports. tv dedicated to formula E. So if you really need something to put yourself to sleep, that is the channel to tune into. So check it out on motorsports. tv.

Crew Chief Brad: You put it on and you hear the white noise of the tires.

Cause all you hear is the tires. Oh God. It’s brutal.

Executive Producer Tania: And speaking of formula one, if you haven’t seen on Netflix and you’re interested, the drive to survive series. Season three released this month.

Crew Chief Brad: I have to say watching the episode about BOTUS, I had, I was so sad for him when he won that race and all his people like dipped out.

They’re like, fuck you, man. We’re not, we’re not, we’re not celebrating with you. You, you took that victory from Hamilton. We’re not, we’re not your friend.

Executive Producer Tania: Formula one. I think it’s a good series actually. So.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I [01:17:00] don’t have to watch the seat and watch the actual racing. I can just watch the series. It’s riveting.

I think the, the way they put the show together is actually very good.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe I’ll give it a try. I haven’t even bothered. I figured it was a bunch of guys goofing around in the paddock package, checking each other and just like,

Executive Producer Tania: it’s a documentary basically this season. They actually interviewed a lot more of the drivers.

Like I think in season one, they didn’t. Even talk to Hamilton at all. Like you would see footage. They talk about him, but like, they never interviewed him. It might have been season two,

Crew Chief Brad: a little bit. Season one Ferrari wasn’t even like, didn’t even get permission to be in it.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: but now it’s, this season was

Executive Producer Tania: actually pretty well balanced.

They kept going back to the same races, but like every episode was basically like focused on a different team or a different set of drivers. And then it just kept kind of like recapping what happened to them in like the series of races.

Crew Chief Brad: Really good job of pulling out the different storylines that you don’t really think of when you’re watching the race.

And

Executive Producer Tania: it’s not just about the drivers. Cause they go and talk about like a lot of the interviews are with, [01:18:00] you know, total wolf and you know, the Red Bull chief, yes. And you know, the guys from Ferrari and you know, the, the racing point. Scroll. And now they’re not racing point anymore. And they’re asking Martin blah, blah, blah.

And they cover like all that stuff that went down and, you know,

Crew Chief Eric: So does this series have to exist because the coverage of formula one is so myopic. They’re only focused on Hamilton and the cars that are in the first, second and third position, and you never get to hear about the 20 other drivers that are out there.

Is that why?

Crew Chief Brad: Probably, but I, I’m glad it does exist. And for Toto Wolf, I have a man crush on Toto Wolf. I’m just going to say. Oh my God.

Executive Producer Tania: I think the guy, the Haas guy kills me. He’s, oh

Crew Chief Brad: yes. Gunther Steiner.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh man. He would

Crew Chief Brad: love him. It’s the F word. Every other word. I’m like, dude,

Executive Producer Tania: you need like communication skill, but Hey, you’re good.

You’re getting it done. No matter what. Sorry. That like. You guys have the worst luck ever, but [01:19:00]

Crew Chief Brad: so, so Gunther, what happened in the race? Oh, we fucking socked.

Executive Producer Tania: We fucking saw Jean. It’s okay. You know, all these fuckers Jean after every race, immediately it cuts to him calling Jean house on the phone. It’s like, Oh, did you see a Jean?

These fuckers

Crew Chief Brad: Roman Grosjean did it again. Oh, my goodness. Eric, you gotta go back and watch. Start in season one. It’s really good. I’ll have to check it out. Tom, do you have anything for,

Tom Wende: uh I haven’t seen it, so I gotta check it out as well, so

Crew Chief Eric: All right, you and me both. Viewing party, all right? Meanwhile, my favorite discipline in motorsport had some shocking news in the last month or two.

Oh

Executive Producer Tania: yeah. So the four rings are possibly making a return to rally. There’s only like two people in this. They’re excited.

It’s me and it’s you and that’s it.

Executive Producer Tania: But it’s not, but it’s not [01:20:00] Audi sponsored. So basically the two Swedish guys on behalf

of EKS JC racing team, and they took an A1 and they basically ralified it and they want to enter it in WRC.

Crew Chief Eric: So, I mean, I know I’m probably the only person that understands any of this, or hopefully there’s some other rally listeners out there, Pete Klein, if you’re listening, uh, So they’re going to enter this privateer Audi, which is liveried, just like the famed S1 rally car that won Pikes Peak in back in 87, 86 driven by Bobby Unser, by the way, and Michelle Mouton.

So they, they did it up in the same livery. It’s an A1 Quattro. It’s a 1. 6 liter, 263 horsepower. Quattro all wheel drive, and they’re going to enter in the WRC two class. So I hate to say coverage of WRC three. So WRC two and WRC three, I hate to say have probably the worst coverage out of all, because everybody wants to watch WRC one, the front runners, the, you know, the Oittanix, [01:21:00] the Terry Neuville’s of the world running the Hyundais and the Fords and all of that.

If you log on to Red Bull, you can watch their progress. If you watch the individual driver progress, they may show it in the recaps because the car will be prolific. It’s the first Audi to return to WRC since the 80s. But again, it’s not a factory car. And obviously, Volkswagen Audi group returned to rally many years ago with the Polo.

WRC with, you know, Sebastian and all those guys behind the wheel. So it’s really cool to see this. However, I think the coolest part of this was the follow on video to the debut of this car, bringing out the real Stig, the original Stig, Stig Bloomfist, who is one of the world rally championship drivers from Audi to drive this new A1 Quattro rally car.

And I tell you what. The Stig, he might not have the reflexes he had in the eighties. He might not be as fast, but watching him drive, you just sit back and he is so smooth [01:22:00] and so composed, completely sideways, full open throttle, just having a blast in this car. And he looks like he’s been doing it for a hundred years.

And it’s, it is just breathtaking. It’s not a very long video, but it’s definitely worth watching. And we linked to it in the show notes.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently, um, what he says at the end in his native tongue of

Swedish translates to what a fucking fun car.

Crew Chief Eric: I always liked Stig. He was the more, uh, he was the more playful of the Audi rally drivers. Everybody was very stiff. on that team for the most very talented folks. I me the rural stick Bloomfist et cetera. I mean, a bunch rally drivers came out of maybe audio return, you k out of IMSA basically. An gonna talk about that.

We

So speaking of pulling out and this [01:23:00] speaks to Tom, I’m sure he’s saddened by this, but Mazda has declared that they are done at the end of this season. They are pulling out of IMSA. A

Tom Wende: little disappointed. And, you know, kind of with, with that as well, you know, there was the talk of the rule changes of, Them actually allowing rotaries to be brought back into the competition as well.

So I know at least for all those that don’t know, I wouldn’t say I’m the resident Rotard anymore because we now have Matt Wood, who has now purchased a FCRX7 as well. But you have more though. Well, it’s debatable since the one we don’t even know if it exists anymore. One’s on a

Crew Chief Brad: mechanics lien.

Tom Wende: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Unofficial mechanics lien.

Tom Wende: So, a lot of people in the Rotary community were very excited about this and, you know, it was the thought of, you know, are we going to get that 787 Bravo again, you know, and actually have that competing at that level, you know, even within that as well, you know, was this the [01:24:00] news that we needed to hear that they’re going to be actually coming out with the RX Vision or, you know, What some people are calling the RX nine, you know, as we all know, Mazda is still looking at the Winkle rotary engine.

All the patents that have been coming out have been just for range extenders. So this was kind of that glimmer of hope for us. So now with them pulling out, like it’s kind of up at the top of that, uh, roller coaster, and now we’re just crashing down to the bottom. You know, again, with that, try to remain hopeful with things, but we’ll see where it goes.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And it seemed like Mazda just wasn’t having it when it came to all these rule changes in the, in this alleged classing merge between Insa and WEC or WEC. They also didn’t have anything to compete in the LMDH hybrid LMP class. That’s basically going to be replacing LMP1. So I kind of felt like they were To your point, they were up against a wall and it was like, now what do we do?

I guess we pull out a DPI. Isn’t going to exist anymore. The class is going to change. [01:25:00] It’s almost like rebellion last year, going into P1 with a P2 car, let’s face it, and then say, you know what, this isn’t going to work anymore. I think we’re going to see a little bit more of that until the manufacturers begin to turn over and bring in new cars, which speaks.

to Ferrari. Most people probably are not aware that the 488’s last race was the Rolex 24. So Ferrari has also temporarily pulled out of IMSA and has declared that they are coming back to compete in LMDH with a new hyper car. You know, if you read about it, there’s really Zero details about what this LaFerrari LMP car is going to be, whatever you want to call it.

There’s a lot of nostalgia around the Ferrari 250s. And the reason being, if you’re unaware, that was the last time Ferrari won Le Mans, which was actually in 1965. However, the last time they competed at Le Mans with an LMP car, not a production based vehicle like the [01:26:00] 250 was in 1998 with the famed Momo liveried 3 33 sp So they’re looking to recapture that and rekindle that.

1998 was also the beginning of the, the era of the Mercedes C-K-G-T-R, the the B-M-W-L-M-R-V 12. The, the original Audi R eight R. You guys remember that was an open cockpit prototype car. So Ferrari really couldn’t compete with the new technology was coming. But this new hypercar, they’re gonna. Borrow technology from the production cars that they’re building that do have the hybrid technology from formula one as well.

So I would expect this to be a very similar to a formula one car with a body on it, which isn’t too much of a stretch for Ferrari to do, but I’m excited to see Ferrari come back to Le Mans and it’ll be right on time for the hundredth. Anniversary, which we hope to be at for that race. So that would be really cool to see them and Portia and a lot of these other brands that are going to be coming back to Lamont’s by 2023.

[01:27:00] So that it’s super exciting. Meanwhile, did anybody watch Sebring this weekend?

Crew Chief Brad: I did.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And

Crew Chief Brad: it was exciting in the last hour or so when Corvette got booted and got hit by that giant BMW.

Crew Chief Eric: The school bus.

Crew Chief Brad: I

Crew Chief Eric: just, I meant to watch it. And I’m sure a lot of people did too. The track season has opened back up.

So people have gotten busy again. So I’m, I’m, I’m using that as, as my excuse, even though I was doing something else, it just didn’t draw me in because Rolex was kind of disappointing in the fact that the field has gotten so much smaller. So as much as I’m excited for the next two years of IMSA and the rule changes and all of that, this year just feels kind of meh so far.

So I’m hoping it gets better, but I know that nobody’s going to be introducing anything new because they have to declare that early in the season. And so. It’s Corvettes season to lose in terms of GTLM.

Crew Chief Brad: I guess you don’t care about the, the shuffling of dates then for the MC season, because as we all know, or maybe we don’t know where I’m done.

You heard it here [01:28:00] first folks, or whatever. The running of Lamont has been moved from June, which it’s traditionally Father’s Day weekend. It’s been moved to August 21st, 22nd. Because of this, that shifts a whole bunch of EMSA dates around, uh, namely the, the VIR date and, uh, the Petit Le Mans, which is at Road Atlanta.

VIR, which is usually in August. Is now being moved to

Crew Chief Eric: October the

Crew Chief Brad: 8th, October 8th through 10, but see Lamar is being moved to a little bit later,

Crew Chief Eric: November the 13th. Is

Crew Chief Brad: that veterans day

Crew Chief Eric: weekend thereabouts? Yes. And luckily in Atlanta, it’ll still be warm enough to run the race. So moving it that far out is, is okay.

But that means this NBC schedule has changed. I’m a little disappointed. I always look Forward to Lamont’s being on father’s day weekend. It’s just kind of like my thing it’s in August. I’m going to make a point to watch it anyway. I’m, I am excited to see who enters this year. I have a feeling Toyota is going to take the crown yet again.

[01:29:00] Hooray. We’re going to be

Crew Chief Brad: racing themselves. Who are they racing against?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, exactly. I want to see Corvette. Run in GTLM, even if it’s against privateer Porsches, I want to see something happen in GTLM. But

Crew Chief Brad: the Astons as well. So they’re going to be Astons. And I mean, we all saw what happened when they ran against the Astons a couple of years ago.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. So that’s going to be the race to watch the rest of it. Yeah, whatever. We’ll wait till 2023 when the new cars come out. Now a little bit of other racing news, since we were talking about IMSA and dates and to the 12 hours of Sebring, if you guys didn’t catch this video that was going viral in at least the motorsports community, we linked to it in the show notes and it’s the opening weekend for the Southern version of SCCA club racing series up here in the mid Atlantic and the DMV, we call it Mars down there.

They call it the Sark. And there is a video of a Miata driver that would rival Most of our Forza contestants, it is [01:30:00] absolutely insane. It’s like

opening 10 seconds and you get the whole gist of the video.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re just like, that’s all I need. My first

Crew Chief Brad: thought was Andrew Bank. This is not going to go well.

Crew Chief Eric: And I guess he forgot how to drive. It is crazy. It is entertaining. I do not condone this behavior in any way, completely reckless, but I just can’t believe, you know, that somebody would, would drive the way he did at Sebring.

Tom Wende: So at first I was actually thinking of, it wasn’t that one, it was the other Miata video that somebody posted.

The Wreck at Summit

Crew Chief Brad: Point?

Tom Wende: Yeah, that one was insane as well.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the one where the hood flies up, right? That’s the one where the

Crew Chief Brad: car flips over.

Tom Wende: Oh, right, right, right. So where he did the pit maneuver on the guy, cause he was like riding right on him, and then he pitted him, so that guy went right into the barricade, flipped over, and then hit a couple other cars behind him, so.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s the one with the cool music in the background?

Tom Wende: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man, what a mess. Meanwhile, speaking of wrecks and crashes and bumping and grinding and shake and [01:31:00] bake, there is a video that was also going around from the Mount Panorama 500 where you get some goosebumps watching Slade’s wreck in a factory Mustang.

It’s kind of cool to watch this not because of the wreck and the wreck isn’t really that spectacular. It’s just the fact that It was grabbed from every camera angle possible and you see it for every which way imaginable. And it’s actually kind of cool to see how it unfolds. And he was very smart to pull off when he did lost the wheel, a bunch of other stuff.

I mean, sad that he was knocked out of the race, but kind of, kind of an interesting video. If you like crash videos. But meanwhile, I think we have some sad news to report and I’ll kick it over to Tanya.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, unfortunately, Motorsports

World lost one of the greats, I guess if you will. Sabine Schmidt lost her fight with cancer earlier this month.

So the queen of the ring And is no longer with

Crew Chief Eric: us. [01:32:00] That is a very, very sad day. And if you don’t know who she is, there have been tributes all over Instagram, the web, drive tribe. I mean, you name it. We’re going to post a video from Top Gear. Do you remember the transit van episode where Jeremy Clarkson competes in a Jaguar against a transit van?

That was Sabine driving that. She’s a fan. Factory Porsche driver. She’s driven for BMW, a lot of other, you know, German brands, but she grew up at the Nürburgring and she, she did earn the title, the queen of the ring, and it is unfortunate to see her go at such a young age. She had such a long life still ahead of her.

So,

Crew Chief Brad: and that transit van video inspired numerous races in our virtual racing league. I mean, we don’t go a season without having at least something. That is kind of inspired by that at the ring.

Crew Chief Eric: And as we close out this episode of the drive through, we’re going to wrap up here with some more local news and spread since you brought it up virtual racing.

That’s a great segue to go to Tom, [01:33:00] to talk about the VRL.

Tom Wende: Yep, as we’ve talked about before, you know, VRL, the Virtual Racing League, is one of the, uh, original competitive events we’ve had here in the club and one of the longest running events as well. Just so everybody knows, we are looking to kick off our newest season coming up here May the 4th.

But taking some stuff that we’ve learned from previous seasons. So two seasons ago, we had a Mazda spec series where we ran spec Miatas, as well as the formula Mazdas. And something we really learned from that series was just how closely the competition became. Granted, we still have our front runners and the mid pack and some people in the back as well.

Crew Chief Eric: And then there’s more of those.

Tom Wende: And then Andrew just somewhere and usually going into each of those groups. What we really learned is like each of those groups are having very competitive racing throughout the entire time and with [01:34:00] last seasons what we did is we opened up the field a lot more and we had probably our most participation that at least I’ve ever seen within the VRRL.

I can’t speak for some of the earlier seasons and all but it definitely made things a lot more interesting having. a lot of people there. Granted, you’re always going to have that chaos at the start, but once everything works its way past turn one, it was a lot of fun. And we threw a couple little things in there, uh, with that.

Once again, we’re teaming up with Garage Riot and we are going to be doing a open wheel formula season. And throughout this season, we are going to be taking different types of formula cars and using that as the basis for the race. And we’re doing everything between Different eras of races. We’re going to do a Senna Prost, also the Hunt Lada rivalries, really trying to mix up things, make it not so that anybody gets bored with the cars throughout the [01:35:00] season or anything like that.

We’re mixing around so that we get a feel for all the different formula cars throughout the years of racing. So we’re, we’re definitely looking forward to that. Definitely looking for. as much participation as possible. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to max out the limit on Forza, but here’s to trying at least.

Crew Chief Eric: And Tom, for those of you listening, he’s part of the VRL committee. So there’s a group within GTN that gets together and does all the, the planning, the logistics, the funding. The fighting, the debating, the voting, the bureaucracy that’s involved in putting on these series. And I can’t thank Tom enough for being a part of that and actually reinvigorating the BRL, because we had gone on a hiatus there right around series 10, 11.

We weren’t sure if we were going to continue. And Tom stepped up and said, Hey, we really need to get this going again. And it’s brought some really cool ideas to the table. And with that, we’re making some rule changes going into series 15.

Tom Wende: One of the rule changes, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a change, But it’s an opening up of a [01:36:00] previous rule.

If you’ve ever done any of our VRLs, you know that we have implemented the Forza race regulations. Now, say what you will about it. Yes, it, it has some horrible, horrible moments. Track limitations are definitely not what are realistic within a real race scenario, but it’s being applied to everybody. So it’s leveling the playing field on a lot of it, but we can now set it so that you do not get disqualified.

So we’re probably going to see some extremely high scores by Andrew this season, as far as, uh, how many, how much time he is getting able to rack up on this. But if anybody would like to. You know, compete with him. That’s also an option as well. I mean, he might have a

Crew Chief Eric: prize

Tom Wende: for it.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know. That’s true.

He carries almost five minutes of penalty time between two series. It’s an achievement there. But in addition to that, I mean, Tom, you’re right. We instituted that penalty system. Lots of rule [01:37:00] changes. We found ways to really lock. Down the way we do scoring and, and what we realized, I think, in designing series 15 and a lot of the debate we had was how do we give something back to the racing community?

How do we encourage the middle of the pack and maybe the back of the pack to, you know, maybe fight for that extra couple of tenths of a second or whatever they’re looking for. So I think we’re instituting some new bonuses. We have some, what we call on target, you know, earnings kind of carrying over from our bracket series where we’re using.

Target lap times. And if you can get within a certain range of that target time, there’s a bonus for that, there’s actually a clean racing bonus now get through a race without carrying a penalty. There’s extra credit for that. So we’re looking to give something back because we found many ways to take points away.

But we figured we needed to do a balance of power amongst the rules to give something back to the driver. So again, you know, thank you guys again for hashing that out. And I think the new rule book, which is going to be coming out very soon for everybody to review is pretty comprehensive and I think [01:38:00] everybody will enjoy the changes.

Tom Wende: And it, it isn’t even just for getting the points to the people that are in the mid pack. Another, one of the reasons that we did it is those people that are the front runners. Now, if they know they can potentially get extra points, they may even start detuning their vehicles. So they start pulling back a little bit more towards the pack.

Then we try to get everybody within the same group.

Crew Chief Brad: So to make more competitive racing.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. Tom, before we close out talking about the VRL, I think we need to just quickly recap VRL 14, series 14 for the folks that probably weren’t tuning into the live stream to all the scoring updates, the new scoreboard, a lot of stuff that came out as a result of that.

And, and the bigger thing about that was that was our first co sponsored series. We did that with Garage Riot, but we also did it in the name of. One of our members and their family, and we were raising money and awareness for lupus. We actually met our goal. We had a, uh, what did they call it? A blue bird fly in [01:39:00] at the last minute and shore us up so that we met our actual goal of 2, 000 raised for lupus.

So this member knows who they are, a round of applause for them. I won’t, I won’t single them out, but thank you for doing that. I know you’re a listener of the podcast, so thank you so much. Again, this goes. to our member family as well. You know, we, we really appreciated being able to do this for you, being able to campaign, raise awareness for lupus.

But I also want to congratulate Dave Scherf from our Southern States region for winning the series.

He

Crew Chief Eric: campaigned an LMP car for the most part. He also ran mostly for BMW during our DTM inspired series. But he did not win the LMP class title. His brother, Ben did. So congratulations to Ben from our Northeast region for capturing the LMP one title and a double congrats win to Jordan Furman of the Northeast region as well for capturing the R spec or GTLM [01:40:00] title as well as the B spec title.

But we had some really great showings. From new members, uh, Sean Roberts, who is also now on the VRL committee. He came to us by way of HOD and Garage Riot, a bunch of new people coming on board, things like that. But also I want to give a big shout out to Disco Don from our, our middle and West region for participating remotely.

He couldn’t be with us live due to work and scheduling conflicts. He utilized our phone in system and he managed and. Unprecedented sixth place overall finish just by nailing it in. So congratulations to Don. It’s never been done. That is awesome. Absolutely awesome. Goes to everybody else that’s out there.

If you can’t make up a race, remember, you can always make it up with our phone in system. And those details are in the new rule book. That’s coming out outside of that. Some quick news for everybody’s out there in GTM land. We do have a date for summer [01:41:00] bash. It is going to be the weekend of July 30th through August 2nd.

And now you’re probably scratching your head going four days. That’s right. Four days at summit point. We are joining forces with auto interests who you’re going to hear about next week on the podcast. We’re going to join up for their summer camp at summit point. That’s going to be. Four days on three tracks for a low, low price.

You can check out on their website, auto interest. com. You almost

Crew Chief Brad: fell for it. I almost fell for it.

Crew Chief Eric: We will follow up with any promotional discounts, et cetera, for that specific event in the near future. However, if you’re interested. and hooking up with them for their season opener. At some point, they’re giving anybody listening to this podcast, 10 percent off by entering the promo code GTM at checkout.

So that’s going to be two days on Shenandoah circuit, April 24th, 25th. You know, we want to always give a shout out to our friends at hpdejunkie. com for always keeping the most up to date information about all the [01:42:00] events that That are going on in our area and across the country. And now Canada, I would sit here and rattle off events for April and May, but it’s really not worth doing.

Cause the list is long. Just go to the

Crew Chief Brad: site.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. But the track season is heating up. There are events. All over the place throughout this early spring season leading into summer. If you want to go to the track, now is the time to sign up, get out there. Um, the track season started early this year. A lot of people, even in our area, we’re starting in February.

So if you haven’t registered yet, check it out. A lot of new names. Out there auto interest, just track it max speed. There’s a lot of great groups out there. You can hook up with your area all over the East coast and all over the country for that matter. So check out HPD junkie. com for that information for the GTM members out there.

If you haven’t heard yet and you don’t read any of the emails and you don’t use the website or anything like that. We have a

Tom Wende: website.

Crew Chief Eric: We now are sponsored by rock auto of all places. So we [01:43:00] get a discount. It’s a membership discount. It’s a perk for being part of GTM. You can find that information out by going to our website, GT motorsports.

org, logging in and going to the discount page. The information there does change every three months. So be sure to check. Back often before you check out so that you can get a discount on your orders from rock auto. Meanwhile, our friends, Kip and Rick for the international motorsport racing research center have kicked off yet another sweepstake.

You know, every year they give away a car. It’s a fundraising event to help the research center stay afloat. And they are doing another Corvette this year. It’s a 2021 C8 Corvette. Convertible this time instead of the coop. You can go to www.winac8vet.com and you can, there’s even a new promo code IG 25 IG as in Instagram [01:44:00] 25 for a 25% increase in chances to win that Corvette.

So you can do that and all the proceeds go. To the international buttersworth racing research center. And if you take a cash payout or take the Corvette, that’s your choice. New Patreons for this month. We had one happens to also be our guest from last week. It’s longtime returning member, David Drew Andrews, star of the, all the Torquem’s episode.

We got into a very technical episode about off roading and his Jeep commander and his Mercedes Benz G Wagon and whatnot. There is also a special full length bonus. Pit stop episode entitled Jesus. Take the wheel available on Patreon, where we follow up with Drew and talk about other things outside of off road.

And we talk about motor sports and a lot of other stuff. It’s a really funny episode. It goes right along with the, with the first one. If you heard that you can get that now on Patreon by going to www. patreon. com forward slash GT [01:45:00] motor sports and subscribing, uh, at any level from 5 on up, and that’ll open up the door.

All of the special content we have there. And that episode will probably air sometime months from now, if you’re willing to be patient, but if you’ve got to have it now and you got to hear the second part, go ahead and check out Patreon. We also want to give a special shout out to longtime member, Rob Lors, who his episode came out this week as we’re recording the drive thru entitled the man.

The myth and the little blue Miata. So if you haven’t heard that episode, it’s a great way to check out the behind the scenes with one of our longtime members. And that is also a full length pit stop episode.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, so we’d also like to close out by giving a special thanks to our guest host for tonight, Tom Wendy for joining us this month, and we look forward to more guests hosts and later episodes.

Tom Wende: It was

Crew Chief Brad: fun being here. And of course, we wouldn’t be here today without.

Crew Chief Eric: Is she our co host or our producer now? What, what is she? [01:46:00]

Crew Chief Brad: She’s the executive producer slash co host slash

Executive Producer Tania: consultant,

Crew Chief Brad: consultant slash Evie person slash resident Kimmy.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, everybody, it’s been a blast. Tom, we enjoyed having you here.

We look forward to what’s coming in the rest of season two. Obviously we are four weeks underway. There’s a lot of really cool stuff coming. So if this is your first time tuning in, I apologize. Please check back next week. They get better. I promise you. And on that note, I can’t think all of you supporters, fans, friends, family, et cetera, everybody that’s involved in the greater GTM grand touring motorsports without you guys, none of this would be possible.

So we’ll see you guys next month.[01:47:00]

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GT m, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call our text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our [01:48:00] Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without fans, supporters, and members like you.

None of this would be possible.

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