Morgan Performance Group’s GT Celebration

Rob Morgan - Founder for Morgan Performance Group (MPG racing)

Morgan Performance Group (MPG) was built from the ground up utilizing both experience and passion with one mission; deliver a unique racing platform for drivers and teams to compete in a safe, adrenaline-filled, unforgettable environment. MPG features dozens of manufacturers and a wide range of race cars that compete in one of four series.

Contact: Rob Morgan at Visit Online!

         

• Tell us about the who/what/when/where of Rob Morgan, how did you get into cars & racing? Did it start as a kid? Did you come from a racing family?
• What led to the founding of GT Celebration? Why start your own racing series?
• What is the program like? Classes of Racing?
• Where does GT Celebration race (tracks/schedule, is there a “home track”) 
• What’s the difference between GT Celebration and SRO World Challenge and IMSA?
• What’s next for MPG and GT Celebration? What do the next 5 years look like? 

and much, much more!

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

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

Crew Chief Eric: Unparalleled passion for sports car racing is what GT celebration is all about. Founded by Rob Morgan, president and CEO of Morgan Performance Group or MPG for short, he worked to build this racing series from the ground up, utilizing both experience and passion with one mission. Deliver a unique racing platform for drivers and teams to compete in a safe, adrenaline filled, unforgettable environment.

MPG features dozens of manufacturers and a wide range of race cars that compete in one of four series. And he’s [00:01:00] here tonight to explain how it all works and joining me as co host is Charlie Stryker from Max Track Time. So I want to welcome you both to break fix.

Charlie Streicher: Thank you for having

Rob Morgan: me back on Eric.

Thank you. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Eric, Charlie, Charles, not sure what you go by, but yeah, thank you guys for having me.

Crew Chief Eric: So like all good stories, there’s always a beginning. So Rob, tell us about the who, what, when, and where of you, Rob Morgan, the petrolhead. How did you get into cars? How did you get into racing?

Did it start as a kid? Did you come from a racing family?

Rob Morgan: My mom said the first word I ever uttered was car. It’s imprinted in my DNA. Car, motorcycle, anything with wheels. I love cars, love racing, grew up around it. My dad actually started in motocross in the 70s. Ended up blowing out both knees and ended up going to four wheels.

I’ll jump ahead a little bit and say that’s actually when MPG was first founded. Morgan Performance Group is actually what he raced under when he started doing SCCA and uh, M-A-G-T-U and Es Dawson. [00:02:00] So, yeah, so I grew up around it, grew up at the racetrack, a lot of trips in the motor home to the racetrack, and it was just an amazing experience.

Not only did I love the cars. And love everything. I couldn’t wait till I could drive them myself, but it was just fun because that’s what we did as a family as well.

Crew Chief Eric: If I’m not mistaken, I detect a little bit of a Southern accent there. Did you grow up in NASCAR country?

Rob Morgan: Well, I did believe it or not grew up in Arkansas.

So I would definitely say that’s NASCAR country for sure. But I, I didn’t drive in NASCAR till. After a lot of years, sports car. So my dad race sports cars. I grew up racing sports cars. That was always what I wanted to do. Not much road racing going on in Arkansas back when I drove. There wasn’t really Cardi.

In Arkansas, I mean, there was probably a little stuff, but that didn’t interest me at the time. So I didn’t really start driving until 1992. I went to driving school at road Atlanta the month after I graduated high school, and then entered my 1st person, fire, [00:03:00] later, so kind of thrown to the walls, but my dad always had the theory that instead of going from an 80, C.

C. 2 stroke. Might as well go straight to the 2 50. My racing career was in cars was pretty similar. So I went from doing Firestone Firehawk to jumping right into an MCGTO car like a year later. So, yeah, I was racing New Orleans Grand Prix street race. I think it. 19 years old when I went NASCAR racing, it was the same way.

I mean, I’d never driven any ovals, definitely not a short track, which was quite the experience doing it for the first time, but went straight to doing the truck series, did some races with Kevin Duran and David Dollar who ended up being my partner later on. But in 1997, I raced a Ferrari 333 SP for a full season.

And then. About five or six truck races. So I don’t think you can get much different and the cars that you’re driving [00:04:00] prototype pickup truck. So it was fire hose. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So you mentioned going to school and racing at the same time. That had to be hard because obviously you need to study at some point and all the races are on the weekend.

And if you’re super committed on the big stage, it’s a week long affair for some of these races. And it’s hard to just drop in, arrive and drive and go. I mean, some people do it, you know, they have that talent. They have that ability. Was school the building block for what became MPG? What did you go to school for?

Rob Morgan: My degree is in marketing management from the university of Arkansas. I was lucky enough to have a lot of good pledge brothers that when I was going off racing, they were taking good notes and I could stay fairly up to date with what was going on. But yeah, I mean, we would leave typically. On a Wednesday afternoon, and I would miss Thursday, Friday, for sure.

And then depending on when we got back, sometimes a Monday, but yeah, it was tough, but that was always the deal with my parents. It’s like, okay, you can race, you can follow this dream and do this. But our caveat is you got to get a [00:05:00] degree first. I mean, you’d have to have a degree to keep doing it.

Crew Chief Eric: So if you grew up in the golden era of sports car racing, as we like to call it around here, who were some of your heroes?

Who were some of the people you were looking up to during those times?

Rob Morgan: I always love John Paul, Jr. The transition from, let’s say, the 935 to the prototypes was always just incredibly interesting to me. And I just thought the prototypes were may came out the March and 962 and some of these other cars were just, I mean, they look like spaceships to me.

And then to go to walk and squint and before the bus stop, watching 962 go down the back straight away and the little whistle that it does when you shift the gear. I mean, it would just give me goosebumps.

Charlie Streicher: Yeah, sounds like you have a bit of a driving background there. And so how did you end up making the transition from being a driver to starting a series

Rob Morgan: back in 2001 when I stopped driving and the craftsman truck series full time, I started a company in Orange County, California called true speed.

True speed when I started, it was [00:06:00] basically just pre own sales of specifically air cool courses and it was kind of before they were cool. I mean, everybody sells them and they’re worth a ton of money now, but I started down 2001, focusing on the 9, 9, 3, specifically turned into quite a business. The euro was so strong to the dollar 06 to 08.

God, I was selling 30 cars a month to Germany. We were selling the car so fast. I started my own service department mainly for our own cars, which turned into clients, which turned into getting a 27, 000 square foot facility. And then I was like, well, I’m doing sales and service to street cars, let’s do race cars.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a logical conclusion.

Rob Morgan: Yeah, especially it’s an opportunity. Maybe get back in the seat. Right? So, I started that for North America is in Santa Ana, which was close to where I was. Went and met with those guys at the time, the [00:07:00] program I wanted to put together was just basically buy and portion cup cars, refurbishing them through portion motorsport, North America.

So they get the seal of approval and, you know, you’re buying a good car at the time. He’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll do that. Then they said, well, what we’d really like you to do is start a premier track side service for cup car owners. Southern California, so that’s kind of what started true speed motorsports, which is still around sold it to my GM back in 2013, they’re located out at the thermal racetrack now.

But, yeah, so I actually went from driving to team owner to sponsor to actually in 2017 did work for world challenge. I was a class manager. Work for Greg Gill and those guys. And from there, and just, I saw an opportunity, it started with the GT three cars, continue to grow it today.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ve had Greg Gill and a lot of other people on the show.

So I’m really kind of interested to compare and contrast GT celebration and some of the other classes [00:08:00] against your experience, obviously in IMSA, but also in world challenge. So what facilitated starting up a whole nother sanctioning body of racing?

Rob Morgan: You know what? It’s a great question and it, and it was very calculated.

So with my experience with True Speed bought and sold a lot of three cars of course, but we ended up doing a lot of race cars. I mean, I bought and sold probably a hundred race cars during that period. And then when I went to work for World Challenge, I noticed that, okay, the new generation of the GT three R comes out the dot two.

Well, to race and pro racing, you got to have the latest and greatest to compete and to win. And so these. 1 cars are still absolutely amazing cars. There’s no reason they should be put to bed. And so they were ended up in gentlemen, racers hands. With the growth of social media and everything else, I see all these cars.

And I’m not taking anything away from NASA or SCCA club racing, but when you got a [00:09:00] $400,000 GT three R racing against or on the track with a Mazda Miata, I mean, the right front corner of the GT three R costs what the, the Miata costs. So I put myself in those. If I were to be able to be in a position to buy one of those cars.

Would I not want to race against light cars? So that’s kind of where the concept came from and providing them a fun and that’s the key word of fun. Because none of these guys have to do it a fun, but professionally run series where these guys, because these guys are obviously all very successful. Well, to do like, things structured and so that’s basically where the idea came from was given these.

And I used to always say this when I was starting it, the guy you’re racing against knows what the car costs. The guys you’re racing against knows what it costs to get the car prep to get to the racetrack. And most importantly, he knows what it costs to fix it. And our guys, a lot of them, they could be running them.

So they could be running SRO. They definitely got the funding and the ability and some of them, like I say, some of [00:10:00] them do have the ability, but just don’t want the hassle.

Charlie Streicher: You know, you mentioned professionally run. So a thing that I was interested to hear about, how do you guys handle the homologation and the BOP?

Do you stick pretty close to how it was back in this series that they were running before? Or do you have your own kind of setup of rules?

Rob Morgan: Nick Lester is obviously my partner. It was a porcumiter for, for many years in Honda and GM. He is the technical side of things, but I’m, I’m technical enough to, to understand what we need to do to make it fine.

Right? And so there’s no way you’re gonna B-O-P-A-A 2012 Audi R eight GT three to a dot two, GT three R. So, what my idea was, and Nick’s drawn the line in the sand where these cars are divided, but we have a red and a yellow. So there’s a split there just because of the generation of the car, the 2012 are a.

Is running against the 997 GT3R, which that alone makes it a [00:11:00] lot easier. And it’s obviously for all models. I’m just using the Porsche and Audi just because I’m more familiar. But then we also, we have this saying, we want to make tech fun again. We know we have to manage and balance these cars somehow, because they were never meant to be run uncorked.

I mean, if you run a GT3R against an uncorked Evo Lamborghini. It would be a joke, so we have to do something. But 1 thing we do is we kind of start look at what SRO and answer doing as far as baseline. We don’t dive deep into the details. What we do is we do a way a minimum ride height and restrictors.

And that’s it.

Charlie Streicher: Allegation question was always the one that was interesting to me. Cause I don’t, you know, like for the P3 car, for example, if you’re testing, you got to move the camera back from where it’s homologated to B& M so that you can actually see the driver’s hands and whatnot, and then move it back to the race, you’ll get a safety infraction.

Have you relaxed any of those [00:12:00] rules specifically around the cars to allow people to Service the car that they want to have, I don’t want to say it’s

Rob Morgan: run what you brought. I mean, it’s definitely an LMP 3 homologated car, preferably 1st generation. We will allow the new ones, but we’re also letting the Orica, the old LNPC open cockpit cars run with us.

So that’s our prototype class. And then we have a prototype light, which is for revolutions, radicals and stuff like that. What I said earlier, let’s make tech fun again. We’re not here to make people jump through hoops for no reason. Quite frankly, as far as like, you mentioned the cameras. I mean, yeah, we want to forward facing camera.

We would love a rear facing camera just because if things do happen, but no, we’re not going to get into the minute details. 1 thing I’ve always said is this is going to morph into whatever it morphs into. Some of that stuff may be needed down the road. We may have to get a little more strict and we may have to change things and which is fine.

But if it’s for the betterment of the sport [00:13:00] and of the series, we’re okay with it. If it’s just do it to do it to say, we can do it. No, that’s not how we do things.

Charlie Streicher: You know, with a lot of these cars, you know, recently out of homologation, they were running on a spec tire, kind of strict rules. Do you guys have an open tire rule or how do you guys manage that?

We’re

Rob Morgan: sponsored by Pirelli. Couldn’t do it without them. They take really good care of us and quite frankly, the early days went to a lot of races and supported us when they shouldn’t have. Just renewed with them for another few more years. The GT Celebration, Cup Celebration, M2 Celebration, all run on the Pirellis.

Pirellis. 1 thing we’ve noticed with the LMP cars is a lot of those guys don’t like running the Pirelli’s on them for whatever reason. Pirelli claims that, and I’m sure the right set up needs to be drastically different from running on a Michelin, but we just don’t want that to be a hiccup. So our prototype class, and then also to with the revolutions and the radicals has a tire for it, but it’s in Europe.

And so we’d have to bring them all [00:14:00] over here. So, to try to motivate people to come over and try us out in the class, we just felt it was best to leave that open and a ratio and everybody really North America, but in Europe was nice enough to allow us to do that. Which they didn’t have to, so we really appreciate them doing that.

At the end of the day, they succeed if we succeed. They looked at the bigger picture, and even though they may not agree with our, where our mindset is, they allowed us to do it, which was very nice of them. If somebody’s cheating at this level, it’s like, there’s no reason for you to be there. But it’s more about having fun.

But we also take the liberty, as well as, we want it to be fun and exciting for the guys. We don’t want. An Andy Wilsock, a Brent Martini to just lap the field, which they can do sometimes, because those are two guys that can definitely race in the upper leagues. But the guys that are maybe not as experienced, have good cars, putting the time in, go to the races.

[00:15:00] We may help them out, help them with restrictor, help them with weight. And it’s mainly just to keep it more exciting for them. We want them to come back. I’m not saying we’re going to let them go 30 miles an hour faster down the straightaway. That’s not what we’re trying to do, but it’s our goal to have the whole field come by within a legitimate amount of time and not the winner’s already in pit lane and the last place guy is crossing the finish line.

Crew Chief Eric: So Charlie segued right into talking about. The logistics of the program itself. So let’s unpack that a little bit more and talk about how the MPG series is broken down. There’s obviously four different classes in there, but you mentioned even within your GT three class, you split between a red and a yellow.

You’re talking multi class in the same session, or is there a run group specifically for red and one for yellow, or how does this all break down? How does a day of racing play out?

Rob Morgan: What we did at our last event, Dakota is kind of a prelim of what we’re going to be doing this year. 1 thing we did, we’ve noticed Nick and [00:16:00] Kelly and I is for this series to grow.

You got to have a different product. You can’t just have 1 product running on the track. I mean, you’re limited as to how much that can grow. So we realize. Over the last few years that having our own product, developing our own product, controlling our own weekends is key to grow in this and making it successful.

Let’s use celebration because that’s at this point now, it’s just a class within MPG. So celebration is GT 3 cars, red and yellow GT 4. And we’re considering now with all the new GT 4 cars coming out, eventually splitting those as well. 1st generation Afton Martin sure as hell can’t keep up with the new GT 4 Cayman.

There’s just no way. I think that’s down the road, but we can see that coming. And then what we’ve done the last 3 years, it will run. When we do have prototypes, we’ve run the prototypes with the GT cars. We’ve moved on from that, and [00:17:00] now we’re going to have a prototype celebration class, a cup celebration class.

Some events we’re going to do into celebration, the BMW 2. so that’s mainly West Coast. A typical Friday is 340 minute sessions. Saturday Sunday is the same schedule, which is a 30 minute practice 20 minute qualifying and then a 40 minute long race. With the prototypes, it’s a little different because a lot of those drivers also have pro coaches like Colin Braun and Matt Bell and some of these other guys.

So we want to find a way to incorporate those guys into coming to some events with their drivers that they coach. So, Saturday event for the prototype will be a 50, 60 minute Enduro. The gentleman will qualify it. The pro will start it. But the thing is, the pros got to bring the car back in one piece for the gentleman driver.

So that’s why we did that, because you put the pros in at the end of the race, might not have all the cars on Sunday.

Charlie Streicher: You partially answered my question. I was going to [00:18:00] ask if you guys were ever considering doing something like an Enduro format. Are you guys ever looking at doing any sort of special events where you run along with another series or something like, you know, like F4, F3 will go and run with any car at a time or something like that.

Is that on the radar at all?

Rob Morgan: A little bit, I mean, our

Charlie Streicher: our

Rob Morgan: road

Charlie Streicher: Atlanta

Rob Morgan: event is with formula drift and so it has been for the last 3 years and it’s actually an incredible weekend. I mean, they’ll bring in 30 to 50, 000 spectators for that event. You go through the festival area road Atlanta before you come back down the hill.

I mean, they’ve got 10 set up. The drivers just love it. Because they actually feel like somebody is there to watch them. And then after the race, a lot of the fans come down to our paddock and look at the cars and get exposed to it. Something they don’t see every day. So we’ve done that a little bit. We tried to do an event at Sebring a few years ago, the week before the 12 hour.

It was with MSAL and P3 and we were going to be a support event. We couldn’t get the traction. Kind of find out. We just think with IGT and PCA [00:19:00] that’s going there that time of year. It’s just. Seabirds overdone, but, yeah, we’ve had some opportunities to go and do that. I mean, we run with the use that guys Porsche sprint challenge from time to time really like working with those guys.

Great group of guys. But as far as big time events, probably not. And here’s why it’s because, like I said earlier, a lot of our guys. Most of ’em for that matter, could, like I say, do SA or SRO, but they choose to run with us because it’s, you don’t have the jacked up hotel prices, you don’t have all this crazy security.

They go, they have fun, they race against their buddies and it, it’s just a low key weekend, and that’s what they enjoy.

Crew Chief Eric: All of this is really exciting. And so I like the fact that you’re giving the opportunity for some of these older cars to still come out and play and folks to be able to utilize the investment that they’ve made in these cars.

So my question is how old is too old? You know, you mentioned driving. The trucks and then a 333 [00:20:00] SP, if somebody was willing to ensure something like a 333 SP to come out and run and prototype, is that allowed? Or is there like a minimum age that these cars need to hit to be allowed to run in the, in the different series?

Rob Morgan: No, it has to fit within that window with that type of car, that type of class. With the prototype edition, we’ve been asked, well, can we do Daytona prototypes? Well, at the end of the day, we have to be able to police it. And we also don’t want it to look like a run. What you brought, we want the cars to look similar, be similar, have similar performance, and that’s where I was talking about.

If we got to split classes up based on the age of the car, then we’ll do that. I mean, we all need car count, right? But at the same time, you got to stick to what the series was founded on and what’s bringing the customers there and why they’re interested. I mean, we’re getting a lot of LMP 3 interest from guys that have been doing HSR and some of these other classes because they’re taking their LMP 3 cars to these events, but they’re classified with.[00:21:00]

LMP two and LMP one. I mean, they’ve gotta beat an LMP one, Audi to . You know, the podium, you’ve gotta draw the line somewhere. It’s gotta fit into that mold.

Crew Chief Eric: And the GT classes obviously make sense. GT three, GT four, like you said, some of the older GT two cars by today’s standards are probably as fast as a GT three car, even though there were class ups.

So I’m sure you guys make exceptions for all that. But I’m really curious about the cup class. Is that specifically relegated to Porsches or do you have like M four competition in there, maybe some S fours, other vehicles like that, that may be competed in world challenge back in the day, what qualifies for cup classing?

Rob Morgan: I’m going to use next terminology. It’s as delivered from Porsche. However, we don’t have any affiliation with portion motorsport North America. And I don’t want this to sound bad, but quite frankly, don’t want to. And the reason I say that is because there are so many cars that have had engines rebuilt [00:22:00] by autometrics out of South Carolina, not rebuilt by portion motorsport.

Well, that car that’s had an engine rebuilt by Gordon and those guys can’t run in a Porsche sanctioned event. And to answer your question, we’re going to go from a 997. 2 to a 992 cup is our window, but the engine doesn’t have to be sealed by Porsche. The gearbox doesn’t have to be sealed by Porsche. It’s given these guys another place to go run.

And some of the mindset behind it was once autometric started racing with us pretty much full time. They’ve got a very large contingency that they take to these bigger events. Road America, for example, there would be 70 cars.

And it’s gotten to be pretty physical. It’s not quality track time, which is what we provide and what we pride ourselves on. It’s not only a lot, but quality. I mean, the most part of me, you want to put on Laguna [00:23:00] 25 to 30. I’m not going to sell a 40 car field at Laguna. I mean, we’re just not going to do that because it starts taking away from the product.

What we’re doing is giving these guys another option because if you have a 991. 1, pretty much the only place you can race it is NASA or some other type of PCA, POC, but just giving them another place to go look at, to go run the car.

Crew Chief Eric: Going back to the race weekend, you mentioned, you know, when you partner with, let’s say formula drift, you know, you have tens of thousands of spectators.

What’s it like for a spectator coming to an MPG weekend? Are there spectator fees? Are the races televised? Like, what would somebody expect going there for the 1st time?

Rob Morgan: So we are starting to get traction. I mean, like I say, we’re going into our 4th year. We do have people that either look at our website or follow the tracks website that we’re going to see that we’re coming and we get quite a few emails about.

What the costs are, but no, we don’t charge a gate fee. The track may, it’s something [00:24:00] like the Formula Drift. They don’t charge a gate fee to get into our paddock. We’re in the old paddock outside the front straight. But most all of our events are come hang out. Check it out. Did have an incident. We were at VAR with USAC.

The track was getting so many people coming out and wanted to see it that the track started charging. Of course, USAC and us, we didn’t see a penny of that, but we don’t care to. And then as far as the TV, I mean, we would love the live stream. It’s not as much for sponsors, which we do have some. Also, we’re going to be announcing some new ones, some pretty nice ones actually come in the next few weeks, but it’s mainly for these guys to say, hey, tell their buddies.

I’m going to race my car this weekend. Check it out on this YouTube channel or what have you. It’s mainly just another avenue to build interest and keep this thing going.

Charlie Streicher: Sounds like the big impetus behind a lot of this is to give guys a fun place and experiential place to race. Is there any sort of hospitality or anything provided by the series to kind of elevate [00:25:00] that?

Rob Morgan: We have a very nice 53 foot transporter that we take to the events. One side is hospitality, the other side is for tech. We always have a, uh, Either a Friday night or a Saturday night beer and wine party with food and some races we barbecue for everybody. Like, because the formula drift thing we run during the day and then they run at night what we’ll do.

I think it’s Saturday night. We do it. There is we’ll do a barbecue have fun, have some drinks and then everybody will go in the golf cart or whatever and go over the formula drift thing. But we’re not far long enough yet to have a typical Ferrari challenge or a career cup type of hospitality.

Definitely looked at it. Yeah. And it’s definitely something that’s interesting. It’s a whole nother event in itself. We’re a small organization. It’s full time. It’s me, Nick and Mallory Kelly pops in every now and then. But yeah, we’re a small organization and we’ve got a business office, but it’s for the most part, we’re doing what we can do to keep this thing rolling between really the [00:26:00] 3 or 4 of us.

Charlie Streicher: I host test events where I offer catering and all that stuff, and I hear you 100%. The second you add hospitality in, it’s a whole other level of community for sure.

Rob Morgan: It is, and it’s nice, and we would all love to do it. It’s just, you’ve got to have somebody full time just taking care of that.

Charlie Streicher: And that actually raised another interesting question.

So it looks like you’ve got some really cool tracks here lined up. I’m seeing Apex Motor Club, you’ve got Spring Mountain, you’ve got Sonoma, Utah, which I love that facility. And it looks like I saw Flat Rock, I think, somewhere on there. Yeah. What goes behind your track selection there?

Rob Morgan: Fly Rock’s interesting.

I’ll get into the other ones as well, but we’ve been talking about our Road Atlanta event. At Road Atlanta, we’re also with Global Time Attack and we see this guy out there running his Cayman GT4 and we walked over to him and said, hey, why don’t you come race with us? And he goes, well, I’ve never done wheel to wheel.

And then we kind of Kelly talked to him a little bit and understood what his experience was. And we said, well, why don’t you come around with us? He’s like, okay. And actually brought 1 of his buddies to, and it was rusty Bill, who [00:27:00] is actually the guy that’s doing the track. We knew that track was coming quite a few years ago, actually.

But, yeah, that’s how that came about. Rusty’s been a good supporter of ours, and I think it’s going to be an amazing facility. I think they’re doing it the right way. Little concern. They’re having supply chain issues and some weather issues. So I hope that doesn’t. Throw a kink in it, but we’re excited about it.

Everything else is destination at the end of the year. We put out a questionnaire. Where would you like to go? I mean, some of the places you’re just, you got to go to. Right? I mean, you got to go to Laguna and red America, which we’re not going to either this year, but there’s stories behind that. But, yeah, there’s just places you got to go to.

We got a lot of feedback and people wanting to go to Watkins Glen. So we’re going there. Obviously, people love, so we’re going to go back there. Laguna, which is my favorite track with their repaid and rents for we quite frankly, couldn’t get a date because we have to run unlimited sound. And with the repaid, they’re given all those unlimited [00:28:00] sound dates to IndyCar teams to test there.

We got put on the side burner with. Elkhart, we just couldn’t get a date. There were dates there that we could nab, but they didn’t make sense with what we already had in place. But the big thing is we listen to our customers, see where the teams are that run with us and try to maximize that.

Crew Chief Eric: So I was scribbling down names cause you’ve been.

Name dropping tracks left and right, you know, between road American road, Elena and the Glen and Coda and Laguna and Sebring and BIR and flat rock and a spring mountain. And I mean, the list goes on and on. Is there a track that you call home?

Rob Morgan: I would say Laguna a couple of years ago, we ran that twice. A lot of the teams like true speed and some of these other flying lizard used to run with us a lot because we were specifically just West Coast the 1st year.

So we got a lot of West Coast support. So I would say Laguna. I love Sonoma. We struggled there a little bit the attraction and I don’t know why and they’re quite frankly, 1 of the best tracks to work with. But yeah, I would definitely say Laguna.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s talk [00:29:00] about the key differentiators between the MPG racing series, which includes GT celebration, cup celebration, prototype M2, et cetera, versus SRO world challenge and IMSA.

What really sets you apart from those other organizations?

Rob Morgan: I know this sounds kind of cliche ish, but we want it to be fun when Greg Gill and I work together. I always told him, especially growing up around it. I saw it. The backbone of sports car racing was built on the gentleman racer. And they’re the ones that provide these guys, the opportunities field, the cars.

I mean, quite frankly, the manufacturers come in there sometimes and screw that up. The gentleman racer and having fun and go by boat. And go by an airplane, you can just travel. So what we want to do is provide a place that it has structure. We don’t want to be the level of structure of or and so our guys could do that.

I mean, they definitely could. They have the funding and the ability, but they just don’t want to. [00:30:00] Again, I’m not taking anything away from club racing, but they don’t wanna necessarily run club racing anymore. They’ve all done it ’cause they’ve had to get the experience somewhere. We’re between that club level racing and that.

S-A-S-R-O usac, we feel there’s a real gap there that needs to be filled and that’s what we’re trying to provide. Another thing we pride ourselves on is. Kelly Collins, myself and Nick are all owners of the series. We consider ourselves and this is another thing that series don’t typically have the ability that we’re nimble.

I mean, if something comes up, something needs to be decided, whether it’s even changing the schedule of the weekend, 3 of us will sit down in a room, talk about it. And if we feel like we’re not all on the same page, we’ll have a vote majority wins, but we’ll make a decision quick and easy. I mean, it wrote Atlanta this year, whether it looked iffy for the afternoon race.

So we swapped the schedule around, talked to the drivers about it. They were all cool and made qualifying a [00:31:00] race. We ended up saving a race. So you, the other, the guys are going to be out there in a rain race. And at this level, I don’t think many of them would have gone out, quite frankly. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: a great service.

And I think a lot of us see that as well, but it also gives people stepping stones. So you’re not jumping straight out of a spec Miata. Into IMSA, you can work your way up through the system if you want to. I mean, if you have the ability and the talent and the funding to jump from one to the other by all means, but this is a great way to make your way through the system, you know, with a stop in GT celebration or an M2 or whatever it might be with your organization.

So I think this is a really great thing.

Rob Morgan: Thank you. And I mean, uh, you look at a guy like. Let’s say Jason Harward. He ran his 1st race with us. He’s zealous. Motorsport runs in GT America and SRO young guy. Very successful ran actually his 1st semi pro race with us. I knew we weren’t going to keep a guy like Jason in the paddock.

I mean, he’s young fit. Well, to do, we knew it was going to move up, but yeah, [00:32:00] exactly what you said. We knew we could provide a place for him to run and gain experience and go on to the next level. But let’s look at a guy like Jim Slavik or Kevin Westcott older guys per se, they’ve got ability. They can win races, but they have no desire.

To go run in SRO, and I’m sure I’ve had plenty of opportunities, teams beating them up and coming to do events, but it’s not in their wheelhouse and what they’re interested in doing.

Crew Chief Eric: That makes a very valid point. Not only can you move up the ladder, you can come back down too. So if you feel like, you know, the big stage is too big and you want something a little bit more relaxed, you don’t have to go all the way back down to, you know, SCCA if you don’t want to, that you have this stop gap in between, which is great.

But it begs another question because you see it in IMSA and SRO, which is the classification of drivers. So do you guys utilize a metric or a system like a gold, silver, or bronze qualification for drivers or as drivers, just drivers, the car BOP is what it is.

Rob Morgan: Let’s start with [00:33:00] GT celebration, which was the original series and kind of what sparked all this.

GT celebration was founded on bronze drivers and below. What’s crazy is you look at a guy like Andy Pilgrim, you’re technically a bronze, but there’s no way Andy Pilgrim is a bronco. It’s founded on bronze drivers and below, especially in the GT 3 class GT 4, we’ve kind of let some of the, like, Andy’s and some of these other guys come in.

Johnny O’Connell is probably a bronze. James Sopranos is bronze. You get those guys in there and some of the other drivers like it. Hey, I raced against Johnny O’Connell. I raced against Andy Pilgrim, but then. Other guys don’t like it because it’s taking podium spots away from so it’s happy balance. And like I say, as far as BOP and what we do, we really, really try to keep it bronze and below.

If we do have a true silver that wants to come, we’ve crossed that a couple of times. We run them an exhibition. We just put an exhibition class on and they don’t care. Those guys that are at that level aren’t coming to win [00:34:00] trophies. They just want to get the track experience or test or whatever. And they typically don’t care.

But yes, prototypes a little different. I mean, we’ll let pros, we’ll let goals, we’ll let whoever because we want to help motivate. Them to bring the guys that they coach, they’re gentlemen drivers. And the reason, quite frankly, we don’t do an enduro with the 3 cars is they’re just so expensive to operate.

They’re expensive to fix. 1 of those guys don’t want anybody else in their car unless it’s their process and a data lab or something like that. They don’t necessarily want to pay for driver damage. Have a race from Joel Miller getting in the car. Not that Joel would hurt a car, but getting in the car and having something happen.

So where are the prototypes are a lot more cost effective to run.

Crew Chief Eric: Since we’re still sort of talking about differentiators between the MPG series, SRO and MCI, et cetera, as we spent a lot of time last year with world challenge and following them around and being part of the press corps and things like that.

So you kind of learned the inner workings of the series as well. And one of the things that just. Baffled [00:35:00] me outside of not being totally thrilled with balance of power as a concept in general was the way they conducted the restarts of their races. So they do tend to follow a lot of the rules from the European side of SRO, which is interesting into itself.

And I see how IMSA does things, right? If there’s a yellow condition, people check up. And then when it goes green, everybody goes green again. You’re kind of where you are behind the pace card. There’s not this, Oh, we’re going to take a lap and catch up and reorganize and all this kind of stuff. So I saw a lot of fire drills happening in the other series.

So I’m wondering how do you guys handle caution situations and the restart of a race? Cause you know, event after event, it was an interesting debate as how they were going to handle that.

Rob Morgan: At our level. Luckily, it hasn’t been as much of an issue. A gentleman club racing is much different than top level pro racing.

Definitely understand what you’re saying. Been there, done that, wrote the book, but with us, quite frankly, it hasn’t been much of an issue, but my experience with the world challenge, I [00:36:00] was in race control quite a few times and voiced my opinion of what should be done. And I wasn’t listening to, but I know where you’re coming from and I know what you’re saying, but.

If we see that there could be an issue, because we know our group, we know who’s running with us. If we got a slower GT 4 guy between 2 GT 3 guys that we’ve been watching, they’re going to end up racing each other for position at the end. I’ll notify Casey or Kelly will, because we’re watching what’s going on with everybody.

And we’ll say, hey, will you talk to the guys on pit lane and just see if so and so will give so and so a wave bye. And at that point, it’s up to the, uh, the driver, it’s purely for safety and for equipment and they don’t have to. It’s just a question, but we do as much as we can. And with Kelly and myself being racers, we see what’s going on.

We see what’s transpiring. We’re paying attention. And so we try to avoid that stuff as much as we can been lucky so far as car count increases. Those incidents are going to increase for sure, and SRO definitely has a lot of cars. [00:37:00] So that’s going to be an issue. And then we just do what we can to manage it.

And then not to say that that’s an issue, but hopefully someday we get enough cars that we really got to start paying attention

Crew Chief Eric: to that. It becomes a good thing, right? When you get to that point. Which is actually a great segue into our penultimate question here, which is what’s next for MPG and GT celebration?

What’s the next five years look like what’s on the horizon?

Rob Morgan: Verbally agreed. We’re going to have a fuel sponsor. Sunoco is going to be our fuel sponsor. And then Ironclad has always been a, uh, product sponsor buyers and they were. Team sponsor when I had true speed, but they’re big supporters, they did a lot of activation.

They really enjoyed that. They’ve got a new company that bottom out that’s progressing, which is always a good thing for us. When I had this concept and I started it, it was always the intention to grow it into other classes and other. I don’t want to say serious, but additional classes and so now that we’ve [00:38:00] made that step, and this is our 1st full year of controlling all the race weekends ourselves, controlling our own content, it’s going out there and perfecting the product, making it a destination place where people do want to come listening to the driver team owners, what they’re looking for as a place to go race and take their customers.

I think our base is now built and what you see is what we’re going to have for the next 5 years. We’ve got one other exciting thing going that maybe one event this year, we thought it was going to be three, but I think it’s going to turn a lot of heads if it comes together, it’s going to be pretty cool and that would be a VAR.

But, but yeah, it’s just perfecting the product and getting people to come to the racetrack and try us out and I don’t want to sound like I’ve got a big head or anything, but once they do come try the series out, they love it. I mean, the guys love it. Of course, you’re going to have a few here and there that.

Didn’t like this or didn’t like that, but nobody’s perfect. But I mean, it’s a lot of track time. It’s good track time. It’s well [00:39:00] run. And like you said earlier, we got a good tracks.

Crew Chief Eric: So since we’re talking about futures, let’s just take one more quick look down the past. So Rob, if you could. Give some advice to aspiring racers, folks that may be looking to get out of SCCA and NASA and whatever.

And as you look back over your career, maybe some do’s and don’ts for these younger drivers, as they’re coming up through the system, you know, any words of wisdom,

Rob Morgan: it’s all about seat time. If you can get in a Mazda Miata and go drive it all day, Saturday and Sunday, go do it. It’s all about seat time, perfecting your craft.

One of the things. I always used to get asked from, especially when I was driving and NASCAR was who do you think the best driver is in the world? And my answer was always he’s sitting on his couch at home. They look at me like, what do you mean? I said, this sport is not like a stick and ball sport where you can just have the talent and make it.

And that’s where you got to have the funding and the resources to get that shot, to get out there and do it. As much as anything advice [00:40:00] would be is just don’t give up. If you can’t afford to, to necessarily drive, help out on the team, just have that mindset and never give up. And any opportunity you can get seat time, no matter what it is, hop in it.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, with that Rob, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t covered thus far?

Rob Morgan: Touched on a little bit earlier, just Corelli and Orazio and Bob at Frisbee. And like I say, those guys, they’ve stuck it, stuck it out with us. And I cannot thank them enough. And like I mentioned earlier to went to quite a few races where they had no business being there.

I know they lost money. Really appreciate them and those guys sticking with us. Been a growth for us and everybody at MPG and GTC. We’ve been lucky enough to have a few teams that have really supported us and what we’re doing. And Chicago performance with Al has been a great supporter with his driver, Michael.

Speed Club. With Rex and Paul and true speed, of course, my old team and autometrics [00:41:00] is really coming on board and supporting us. And quite frankly, and changing a lot of their program around to be centered around us. So it’s exciting stuff for us. And we just continue that to grow, but couldn’t do it without guys like Alex and Gordon and Paul and Rex and Tyler and the list goes on.

But those guys have been really supportive of what we’re doing. And we, we really appreciate it. Quite frankly, our whole team, just the dedication from Chris and Brock, our logistics guys. I mean, they’re making trips daily. Chris is rebuilding all of our scale pad equipment, reorganizing the tractor trailer truck, and Brock doing all the shuttling.

I mean, it just takes a team effort. Chris Lester, Nick’s son, does a lot of our financial forecasting. Pam, back in Arkansas, does all of our business side of things, and sure as hell couldn’t do it without her. And of course, Mallory, I mean, Mallory has been a godsend, definitely couldn’t do it without her.

Um, great group of people. We get along really well, but when we get to the racetrack, we take care of business, but at the same time, have a good time.

Crew Chief Eric: Where racing, [00:42:00] fun, and camaraderie come together. Racing that’s been designed by enthusiasts. For enthusiasts, that’s the Morgan performance group motto to learn more about GT celebration and the other programs in the MPG series and how you can become part of them.

Be sure to check out www. mpg racing. com or follow them on social at race MPG on Instagram. At Morgan performance group on Facebook and at GT celebration, 3529 on YouTube. So with that, I cannot thank you guys enough for coming on the show, especially Rob for coming on and sharing the newest, hottest racing sanctioning body that’s out there right now.

You know, personal favorite for me, sports car racing. So this is great to see more cars out there, especially these older ones back on the track. Giving them a second life and opportunity for all these drivers to get out there. And thanks to Charlie for coming on the show and co hosting with me and kind of digging deeper into this story.

So thank you both for doing this. No,

Rob Morgan: thank you guys for having me. Uh, really appreciate it. [00:43:00] And I’m glad you guys are behind what we’re doing and believe in it. So thank you very much,

Charlie Streicher: Eric. Thank you for having me back out and Rob. Thank you for sharing the story. This sounds like a really cool series. I think the idea behind creating a fun environment for bronze is to bring this recently out of homologation cars.

Sounds like a great value.

Rob Morgan: Thank you. We believe in it. We’re going to keep charging forward.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at GrandTouringMotorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at 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 [00:44:00] 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 Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

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