MPG – 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!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports.

Unparalleled passion for sports car racing is what GT Celebration is all about. Founded by Rob Morgan, president and c e O of Morgan Performance Group or M P G 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 here tonight to explain how it all works. And joining me as co-host is Charlie Stryker from Max Track Time. So I wanna welcome you both to break Fix. Thank you for having me back on. 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. [00:01:00] 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? My mom said the first word I ever uttered was car. It’s imprinted in my D n a car, motorcycle, anything with wheels. I love cars, love racing. Grew up around it. My dad actually started in motocross in the seventies. 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 M P G was first founded. Morgan Performance Group is actually what he raced under when he started doing S C A and uh, M A G T U and S Dawson. 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 and couldn’t wait till I could drive ’em myself, but it was just fun because that’s what we did as a family as well. If I’m not [00:02:00] mistaken, I detect a little bit of a southern accent there. Did you grow up in NASCAR country? 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 with sports cars. So my dad raced 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 oval stuff, but that didn’t interest me at the time, so I didn’t really start driving till 1992.

I went to driving school at Road Atlanta the month after I graduated high school and then entered my first Firestone Fire Walk race a month later. So kind of thrown to the wolves, but my dad always had the theory. Instead of going from an ADCC two stroke, might as well go straight to the two 50. My racing career was, and cars was pretty similar, so I went from doing Firestone Firehawk to [00:03:00] jumping right into an EMSA G T O car like a year later

So yeah, I was racing New Orleans Grand PR Street race, I think. 19 years old. Wow. When I went NASCAR racing, it was the same way. I mean, I’d never driven any ovals, definitely not a short track, uh, which was quite the experience doing it for the first time. But I went straight to doing the truck series, did some races with Kevin Duran and David Doller, who ended up being my partner later on.

But in 1997, I raised a Ferrari 3 33 SP for a full season. And. About five or six truck races. So I don’t think you can get much different in the cars that you’re driving. prototyped to a pickup truck. So it was fire hose. Yeah. Yeah. 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 is, 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 [00:04:00] drop in, arrive and drive and go.

I mean, some people do it, you know, they, they have that talent, they have that. Was school the building block for what became mpg? What did you go to school for? 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 on 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 gotta get a degree first.

I mean, you have to have a degree to keep doing it. So if you grew up in the Golden Arrow 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? I always loved John Paul Jr. The transition from, let’s say the [00:05:00] 9 35 to the prototypes was always just incredibly interesting to me, and I just thought the prototypes when they came out the march and the 9 62 and some of these other cars were just, I mean, they looked like spaceships to me.

And then to go to Watkins Glen and before the bus stop watching 9 62 go down the back straightaway, and the little whistle that it does when you shift the gear, I mean, it would just get me goose bump. You know, it 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, uh, starting a series?

Back in 2001, when I stopped driving in the Craftsman Truck series full-time, I started a company in, in Orange County, California called True Speed. True speed. When I started, it was basically just pre-owned sales of specifically air Cool Porches. I mean, it was kind of before they were cool. I mean, everybody sells ’em and they’re worth a ton of money now, but I started that in 2001, focusing on the nine 90 threes specifically.

Turned into quite a business. The Euro was so [00:06:00] strong to the dollar. Oh six to oh eight. God, I was selling 30 cars a month to Germany. We were selling the cars 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, if I’m doing sales and service to street cars, let’s do race cars. It’s a logical conclusion. Yeah. Well, especially me, it’s an opportunity. Maybe get back in the seat. Right? So, so I started that course. Motorsport North America is in Santa Ana, which was close to where I was. Went and met with those guys at the time.

The program I wanted to put together was just basically buying Porsche Cup cars, refurbishing ’em through Porsche Motorsport in North America, so they get the seal of approval and you know you’re buying a good car at the time. He is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll do that. Then they said, well, what we’d really like you to do is start a premier [00:07:00] track size 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, I actually, in 2017 did work for World Challenge. I was a GT class manager.

Worked for Greg Gill and and those guys. And from there and just, I saw an opportunity, it started with the GT three cars continue to grow it. Today 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 in some of the other classes against your experience, obviously in M S A, but also in World Challenge.

So what facilitated starting up a whole nother sanctioning body of racing? 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 [00:08:00] 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 gotta have the latest and greatest to compete and to win. And so these.one cars are still absolutely amazing cars. There’s no reason they should be put to bed.

And so they were ending up in gentlemen racer’s hands with the growth of social media and everything else. I, I see all these cars. And I’m not taking anything away from NASA or S E C A club racing, but when you got a $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 wanna raise against like cars? [00:09:00] So that’s kind of where the concept came from and providing them a fun, and that’s the key word, a fun cuz none of these guys have to do it a fun but professionally run series where these guys, cuz these guys are obviously all very successful wells, 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 prepped, to get to the racetrack, and most importantly, knows what it costs to fix it.

And our guys, a lot of ’em, they could be running s, they could be running sro, they’ve definitely got the funding and. The ability. And some of them, like I say, some of ’em do have the ability, but just don’t want the hassle. You know? You mentioned professionally run, so a thing that I was interested to hear about, uh, how do you guys handle the ham allegation and the b o p?

Do you stick pretty close to how it was back in the series that they were running before or do you have your own kind of set up of rules? Nick? Last year’s, obviously [00:10:00] my partner, he was a Fortune Motors for, for many years, and 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 fun.

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 drawing the line in the sand aware, these cars are divided, but we have a GT three red and a GT three yellow. So there’s a split there just because of the generation of the car.

The 2012 RA is running against a 9 97 GT three R. Which, that alone makes it a lot easier. And, and it’s obviously for all models. I’m just using the Porsche of the Audi just because I am more familiar. But then we also, we, we have this saying we wanna make tech fun again. We know we have to manage and balance these cars somehow because they were never meant to be [00:11:00] run uncorked.

I mean, if you run a GT three R against an Uncorked Evo Lamborghini, it would be a. So we have to do something. But one thing we do is we kind of start look at what S R O and M S A are doing as far as baseline. We don’t dive deep into the details. What we do is we do weight a minimum, right? Height and restrictors.

And that’s it. Allegation question was always the one that was interesting to me. Cause I know, you know, like for the P3 car for example, if you’re testing, you gotta move the camera back from where it’s some obligated to bm. So, so you can actually see the driver’s hands and whatnot and then move it back to the race so you’ll get a safety infraction.

Have you relaxed any of those rules specifically around the cars to allow people to. Service the car that they want to have. I don’t wanna say it’s run, which you brun. I mean, it’s definitely a LMP three homologated car, preferably first generation. We will allow the new ones, but we’re also letting, uh, orca, the old LM p c open cockpit [00:12:00] cars run with us.

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

We would love a rear facing camera just cuz if things do happen. But no, we’re not gonna get into the minute details. One thing I’ve always said is this is gonna 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, if it’s for the betterment of the sport and of the series, we’re okay with it.

If it’s just to do it, to do it, to say we can do it. No, that’s not how we do things. You know, with a lot of these cars, you know, recently out of them allegation they were running out a spec tire, kind of strict rules. Do you guys have an open tire rule or how do you guys manage that? We’re sponsored by [00:13:00] Pelli.

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 ’em for another few more. The GT celebration, cup, celebration, M two celebration, all run on the pellis. One thing we’ve noticed with the LMP cars is a lot of those guys don’t like running the Pellis on ’em.

For whatever reason, Pelli claims that, and I’m sure they’re right, setup needs to be drastically different from running on a, a Michelin, but we just don’t want that to be a hiccup. So our prototype class, and then also too with the revolutions and uh, radicals. Pelli has attire for it, but it’s in. And so we’d have to bring ’em all over here so it to try to motivate people to come over and try us out in the l and p class, we just felt it was best to leave that open and Tio and everybody at Pelli, and not only Pelli 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 [00:14:00] 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, 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. And Andy Wilk, a Brent Martini to just lap the field, which they can do sometimes, cuz 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.

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

So Charlie Segwayed 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? What we did at or last event, COTA is kinda a prelim of what we’re gonna be doing this year. One thing we did, we’ve noticed Nick and Kelly and I, is for this series to grow, you gotta have a different product.

You can’t just have one product running on the track. Cause I mean, you, you’re limited as to how much that can grow. So we realized over the last few years that having our own product, developing our own product, controlling our own [00:16:00] weekends, Is key to, to growing this and making it successful. Let’s use GT celebration because that’s, at this point now, it’s just a class within mpg.

So GT celebration is GT three cars, red and yellow, GT four, and we’re considering now with all the new GT four cars coming out eventually splitting those as. First generation Afton Martin sure as hell can’t keep up with a new GT four 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 three years have run when we do have prototypes, we’ve run the prototypes with the GT cars, we’ve moved on from that, and now we’re gonna have a prototype celebration class, a cup celebration class. Some events, we’re gonna do M two celebration, the B M W M two, so that’s mainly West coast.

A typical Friday is three 40 minute sessions. Saturday, Sunday is the same schedule, [00:17:00] which is a a 30 minute practice, 20 minute qualifying, and then a 40 minute long race. With the prototypes, it’s a little different cause a lot of those drivers also have pro coaches like Colin Braun and Matt Bell and some of these other guys.

So we wanna 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, uh, 50, 60 minute in Enduro. The gentleman will qualify. The pros started, but the thing is the pros gotta bring the car back in one piece for the gentleman driver

So that’s why we did that. Cause you put the pros in at the end of the race, might not have all the cars on Sunday. You partially answered my question. I was gonna 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 F four, F three will go and run with any car at a time or something like that?

Is that on the radar? A little bit. I mean, our, our Road Atlanta event is with [00:18:00] Formula drift, and so it has been for the last three years, and it, it’s actually an incredible weekend. I mean, they, they’ll bring in 30 to 50,000 spectators for that event. You go through the festival area at Road Atlanta before you come back down the hill.

I mean, they’ve got tents set up. The drivers just love. Because they actually feel like somebody’s there to watch ’em. 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, we’ve done that a little bit. We tried to do an event at Seabring a few years ago, the week before the 12 hour it was with M l and P three and we were gonna be a support event.

We couldn’t get the traction. Come to find out, we just think with I G T Ensa PCA, that’s going there that time of year. Seaburn overdone. But yeah, we’ve had some opportunities to go and do that. I mean, we run with the . Porsche Spring challenge from time to time. Really like working with those guys. Great group, group of guys.

And, but as far as big time [00:19:00] 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 M server, s r o, but they choose to run with us because it’s, you don’t have the jacked up hotel prices, you don’t have all the 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. , 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 3 33 sp if somebody, you know, was willing to ensure something like a 3 33 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?

No, it has to fit within that window with that type of car, that [00:20:00] 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 with you wrong. We want the cars to look similar, be similar, have similar performance, and that’s where I was talking about if we got a split classes up based on the age of the car, then we’ll do that.

I mean, we all need car count. But at the same time, you gotta stick to what the series was founded on and what’s bringing the customers there and, and why they’re interested. I mean, we’re getting a lot of LMP three interest from guys that have been doing HSR and some of these other classes because they’re taking their LMP three cars to these events, but they’re classified with.

LMP two and LMP one. I mean, they’ve gotta beat an LMP one. Audi to get to get the podium, you’ve gotta draw the line somewhere. It’s gotta fit into that mold. And the GT classes obviously make sense. GT three, GT four, like you said, some of the older GT two cars by [00:21:00] today’s standards are probably as fast as a GT three car, even though they were class up.

So I’m sure you guys make exceptions for all that. But I’m really curious about the cup. Is that specifically relegated to Porsche’s or do you have like M four competition in there? Maybe some S four s, other vehicles like that that maybe competed in World Challenge back in the day? What qualifies for cup classing?

So I’m gonna use Nick’s terminology. It’s as delivered from Porsche. However, we don’t have any affiliation with Porsche 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 Porsche cuff cars that have had engines rebuilt by Autometrix outta South Carolina, not rebuilt by Porsche 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 gonna go from a 9 97 2 to a 9 92 cup [00:22:00] is our window, but the engine doesn’t have to be sealed by Porsche. The gearbox doesn’t have to be sealed by PORs. It’s given these guys another place to go run.

And some of the mindset behind it was once Audiometric started racing with us pretty much full-time, they’ve got a very large P c A contingency that they take to these bigger events. Road America, for example, there would be 70 cars. In a run group with Cup Cars, Caymans GT three Rs, 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 cars to me, you wanna put on Laguna 25 to 30. I’m not gonna sell a 40 car field at Laguna. I mean, we’re just not gonna do that cuz it starts taking away from the product.

What we’re doing is giving these guys another option because if you have a 9 9 1 0.1, pretty much the only place you can race it is NASA or some other type of P [00:23:00] C A P O C. But just giving ’em another place to go look at to go run the car. Going back to the race weekend, you mentioned, you know, when you partner with, let’s say formula drift you, 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 first time? So we are starting to get traction. I mean, like I say, we’re going into our fourth 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 gate fee. The track may at some, like the formula drift, they don’t charge gate fee again to 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 instant. We were at V I R with usac.

The track was getting so many people coming out and wanting to see it, that the [00:24:00] 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 Simon. Also, we’re gonna be announcing some new ones, some pretty nice ones actually coming 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, or what have you. It, it’s mainly just another avenue to, to build interest and keep this thing going. Sounds like the big impetus behind a lot of this is to give guys a fun place, an experiential place to race.

Is there any sort of hospitality or anything provided by the series to kind of elevate that? We have a, uh, 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 cause the formula drift thing [00:25:00] 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 and 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. 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 and, but yeah, we’re a small organization.

We’ve got a, a business office and, but it’s, for the most part, it’s, we’re doing what we can do to keep this thing rolling between really the three or four of us. I host test events where I’ve offered catering and all that stuff, and I hear you a hundred percent the second you add hospitality and it’s a whole, another level of grief for.

It is and it’s nice and we would all love to do it. It’s just you’ve gotta have somebody full-time just taking care of that. And uh, that actually raised another interesting question. So it looks like you’ve [00:26:00] 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, uh, track selection there? Flat rock’s. Interesting. I’ll, 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 GT four, 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 for a little bit and understood what his experience was. And I said, well, why don’t you come wrong with. He was like, okay. And actually brought one of his buddies too, and it was Rusty Biddle, who 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 gonna be an amazing facility. I think they’re doing it the right way, little they’re having supply chain issues and some weather [00:27:00] issues, so I hope that.

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 gotta go to, right? I mean, you gotta go to Laguna and and Rhode America, which we’re not going to either this year, but there’s stories behind that.

But yeah, there’s just places you gotta go to. We got a lot of feedback of people wanting to go to Watkins Glen, so we’re going there. Obviously b a r, people love b a r, so we’re gonna go back there. Laguna, which is my favorite track with their repave and rims sport. We quite frankly couldn’t get a date cuz we have to run unlimited sound.

And with the repave they’re given all those unlimited sound dates to IndyCars 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 map, but they didn’t make sense with what we already had in place. But the big thing is we listened to our customers, see where the teams are that run with [00:28:00] us and try to maximize that.

So I was scribbling down names cuz you’ve been. Name drop in tracks left and right, you know, between Road America and Rodina, and the Glen and Kota and Laguna and Seabring and v I r and Flat Rock and a Spring Mountain. And I mean, the list goes on and on. Is there a track that you call home? I would say Laguna couple 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 cuz we were specifically just West coast the first year. So we got a lot of West Coast support. So I would say Laguna, I love Sonoma. We’ve struggled there a little bit to get traction and, and I don’t know why and they’re quite frankly, one of the best tracks to work with.

But yeah, I would definitely say lag. Let’s talk about the key differentiators between the MPG Racing series, which includes GT Celebration, cup Celebration, prototype M two, et cetera, versus S R O World Challenge and imso. What really sets you apart from those other organizations? I, I know [00:29:00] this sounds kind of cliche-ish, but it.

We want it to be fine. When Greg Gill and I worked 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 and screw that up.

If the gentleman racer in and having fun, he can go buy a boat, he can go buy an airplane, he can just travel. So what we wanna do is provide a. That it has structure. We don’t wanna be the level of structure of S R O or M S A. Our guys could do that. I mean, they definitely could. They have the funding and the ability, but they just don’t want to.

And 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 cuz they’ve had to get the experience Some. We’re between that club level racing and that M S A S R O, usac, we feel there’s a [00:30:00] 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 to do. We’re nimble. I mean, if something comes. Something needs to be decided, whether it’s even changing the schedule of the weekend.

Three 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, at Road Atlanta this year, weather 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 our. We ended up saving a race, either the other, the guys are gonna be out there in a rain race and at this level, I don’t think many of ’em would’ve gone out, quite frankly. That’s 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 M S A. You can work your way up through [00:31:00] the system if you want to. I mean, if you have the ability and the talent and, 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 M two or whatever it might be with your organization.

So I think this is a really great thing. Thank you. And I mean, uh, you look at a guy. Let’s say Jason Harward. He ran his first race with us. He’s zealous Motorsport, runs in GT America, and s r o young guy, very successful, ran actually his first semi-pro race with us. I knew we weren’t gonna keep a guy like Jason in the paddock.

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

And [00:32:00] 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. 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, S C A if you don’t want, you have this stop gap in between, which is great.

But it begs another question because you see it in M S A and S R O, 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 is drivers? Just drivers? The car. B o p is what it is. Let’s start with GT Celebration, which, 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, he technically a bran, but there’s no way Andy Pilgrim is a Brock. It’s founded on [00:33:00] bronze drivers and below, especially in the GT three class, GT four. We’ve kinda let some of the, like Andy’s and some of these other guys come in.

Johnny O’Connell is probably a bronze. James Sopr says bronze. You get those guys in there and it, 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 cuz it’s taking podium spots away from. So it’s happy balance and, and like I say, as far as b o P 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 times. We run ’em in exhibition, we just put an exhibition class on ’em and they don’t care. Those guys that are at that level aren’t coming to to win trophies. They just want to get the track experience or tests or whatever, and they typically don’t care. But yes, prototype’s a little different.

I mean, we’ll let pros, we’ll let goals, we’ll let whoever, because we wanna help motivate. Them to bring the guys that they coach, their gentleman drivers. And the reason, quite frankly, we don’t do an [00:34:00] Enduro with the GT three cars is they’re just so expensive to operate. They’re expensive to fix. A lot of those guys don’t want anybody else in their car unless it’s their pros set in a data lap or something like that.

They don’t necessarily wanna 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, and having something happen. So where the prototypes are a lot more cost effective to run, since we’re still sort of talking about differentiators between the MPG series, s R O and and SSA et cetera, is we spent a lot of time last year with World Challenge kinda 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. Baffled 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 S R O, which is interesting into itself.

And I see how IMSA does things, right? [00:35:00] If there’s a yellow condition, people check. 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 gonna 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 because, you know, event after event.

It was an interesting debate as how they were gonna handle that at our level. It 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 World Challenge, I was in race control quite a few times and voiced my opinion at what should be done, and I wasn’t listened 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 gotta. A slower GT four guy, between two [00:36:00] GT three guys that we’ve been watching. They’re gonna end up racing each other for position. At the end, I’ll notify Casey or Kelly will, cuz we’re, 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. At that point, it’s up to the, uh, other driver. It’s purely for safety and for equipment and they don’t have to. So it is 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 increase. Those incidents are gonna increase for sure. And S R O definitely has a lot of cars, so that’s gonna 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 gotta start paying attention to that.

It becomes a good thing, right when you get to that point. Yeah. Which is actually a great segue into our pen. Ultimate question here, which is, [00:37:00] what’s next for M P G and GT celebration? What’s the next five years look like? What’s on the horizon? Verbally? Agreed. We’re gonna have a field sponsor. Sunoco is gonna be our field sponsor, and then ironclad has always been a.

Product sponsor of ours, and they were a team sponsor when I had true speed, but they’re big supporters. Coda, they did a lot of activation. They really enjoyed that. They’ve got a new company that bought ’em 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 wanna say serious, but additional classes.

And so now that we’ve made that step, and this is our first full year of, 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 [00:38:00] race and take their customers.

I think our base is now built and what you see is what we’re gonna have for the next five years. We’ve got one other exciting. Going that maybe one event this year, we thought it was gonna be three, but I think it’s gonna turn a lot of heads. If it comes together, it’s gonna be pretty cool and that would be a v r, 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 they 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 gonna have a few here and there. 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 run. And like you said earlier, we go to good tracks. 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 S C C A and NASA and whatever. And [00:39:00] as you look back over your career, maybe some dos and don’ts for these younger drivers as they’re coming up through the system.

You know, any words of wisdom, 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 sea time perfecting your craft. One of the. I always used to get asked from, especially when I was driving in in 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 sport, you gotta have the funding and the resources to get that shot to get out there and do it.

As much as anything advice 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 a and never give up. And any opportunity you can get seat time, no matter what it is, hop in it. Well with that, Rob, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that [00:40:00] we haven’t covered thus far?

Touched on a little bit earlier, just Corelli Orio and, and Bob at Frisbee. And like I say, those guys, they’ve stuck it, stuck it out. And I cannot thank them enough. And like I mentioned earlier too, 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.

It’s 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, and what we’re doing and Chicago perform. With Al has been a great supporter with his driver, Michael Feed Club, with Rex and Paul and true speed, of course, my old team and Atrics is really coming on board and, and supporting us and, and quite frankly changing a lot of their program around to be centered around us.

So it’s exciting stuff for us and, and we just continue that to grow, but couldn’t do it without guys like Alex and Gordon. Paul and Rex and Tyler and the list goes on. [00:41:00] 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 bracketing all the shuttling. I mean, it’s 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 has helped.

Couldn’t do it without her. And, and of course Mallory. I mean, Mallory’s been a god. Sam 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, we have a good time. Where racing 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 dot [00:42:00] mpg racing dot. Or follow them on social at race mpg, on Instagram, at Morgan Performance Group on Facebook, and at GT Celebration 35 29 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 favor 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, an 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. Oh, thank you guys for having me. Uh, really appreciate it and I’m glad you guys are behind what we’re doing and, and believe in it.

So thank you very much Eric. Thank you for having me back on. 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 these recently outta home allegation cars. Sounds like a great. Thank you. [00:43:00] We believe in it.

We’re gonna keep charging forward.

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