HPDEjunkie.com

• Who/What/Where/When? – The HPDEjunkie Origin Story

• How to find your first track event

• National/International Events

• Things I wish I knew & First-timer “Mods” 

• Best track to start out on

• CHECK OUT: HPDEjunkie.com – FOR A COMPREHENSIVE HPDE SCHEDULE AS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE and more!
• SHOUTOUTS TO: ApexPerformance, Jim Tramatano “No Money Motorsports“, GLOCK Brakes, Lockton Motorsports and TrackLaps

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.

We here at GTM are always amazed to discover that most people have no idea that track days exist. Sports car owners and driving enthusiasts are missing out on the best part, driving their cars fast in a safe and controlled environment. Well, we aren’t alone. And the folks over at HPDE junkie. com decided something should be done to promote high performance driving events.

So they created a website with the goal of turning HPDE into a household name. And Dave Peters, director of HPDE junkie is here to tell us all about it. And as always, I’m your host, Brad and I’m [00:01:00] Eric. So let’s roll.

Dave Peters: Hey fellas. How are you? Good. How’s it going,

Crew Chief Eric: Dave? Real good. Real good. Thanks for having me.

All right, Dave. Well, welcome to break fix. So from what we know, HPDE e junkie was started in 2015 based out of North Carolina. But that can’t be the whole story, can it? Let’s unpack the who, what, where, when of HPDE junkie.

Dave Peters: So I started it with another guy. His name is john Marsh, and I guess it was after our first track day and we both were car enthusiast and road race enthusiast.

Pretty much our whole lives. I mean, my dad had me at Watkins Glen in 1970 for a F1 race. So it started early for me. You know, thought maybe I’d get into go, go cart racing, but some things changed in, in our lives and that didn’t really happen, but I basically grew up like wanting to be a race car driver and was smart enough to realize that my family, nor I had the money to be race car driver.

So it [00:02:00] just kind of, yeah. So it kind of just remained a dream for me. And. I, you know, was going to a lot of races at VIR and rode Atlanta with my dad. And, you know, loved it. We always had a good time. Had a big group of guys that would go, but still I wanted to drive. And I, at that point, I think track days were already going on.

I just had no idea. So, I guess it was around late 2000s I heard about it and I knew that was the thing for me and I could afford to do it every once in a while. So finally got to do my first one in 2013 and I knew right away one here and there wasn’t going to be enough. John and I had tried to find businesses in the motorsport field that we could start up and literally this kind of came to me sitting at the computer trying to find our second event.

And I had, you know, five, six tabs open, clicking back and forth and comparing prices and times and which track we wanted [00:03:00] most. And, and the light bulb went off and I was like, this is the business we start. So neither one of us were, Really computer experience in the it sense or website sense. We knew you could pay someone to do that, at least, at least build it.

That’s kind of what got it going, but it was also, we loved it so much that we wanted everybody to know about it and know you could do it, but I, I all adamantly wanted to be giving back. something. So, you know, I think that kind of sums it up why it started, how

Crew Chief Eric: it started. What type of information is HP junkie collecting?

How are they updating this information and how are you getting it out to your visitors?

Dave Peters: As far as collecting, you know, the first couple of years, it’s pounding Google and search and track days and HPDE in any way, shape and form I could think of. And You know, looking at all the tracks websites and on their calendars, there would be track [00:04:00] day companies and locked in website.

I got a lot from there. And so basically it was, you know, just collecting it myself with help from my partner at the time. But Yeah, it’s, you know, kind of manually searched every year and, you know, every year I get a little better at it, I guess you’d say, more efficient. So, you know, I have my list of all the companies and usually they’ll start releasing calendars.

Some, they should be starting to come out. In fact, wow, this has gone by so fast, I didn’t even, it dawned on me that. I need to start looking at 2021 calendars and start putting them up, but they’ll start coming out around October and then it’ll kind of trickle all the way into kind of late February.

Crew Chief Eric: So was the idea to evangelize high performance driving or was it to correlate all the schedule information?

Which came first?

Dave Peters: Actually, they came together. I mean, you know, right off the bat, the schedule was part of it. I guess I [00:05:00] didn’t really feel like you could put enough together as a website to get people out there if you didn’t have something a little more. And, and actually at the beginning, we had worked a deal with a safety equipment supplier, you know, selling it through the site and we’re drop shipping.

We had some merchandise and stuff. I think we thought we were going to get rich selling t shirts and stickers, but That doesn’t really happen felt like not only did people need to know about track days But they needed the stuff to go and mainly the dates and the places so they kind of came together at the same time as you know after a couple years I realized that Selling safety equipment wasn’t doing us any good and I’m fortunate enough that I don’t have kids and a wife so I have a little more time on my hands and he has kids and a wife so it was just getting a little bit too much for him and he graciously backed out.

Still does my taxes for me though. You know, we sold a helmet here or there, but you know, So we made different [00:06:00] arrangements with that same company, which is Apex performance, great folks, kind of a small mom and pop, but they’ve been with us since before we went live, just really good, good folks.

Crew Chief Eric: So are you scouring the, let’s say different calendars nationwide?

Are you regional?

Dave Peters: Absolutely nationwide and actually somewhat expanded into Canada for 2020 COVID kind of, I don’t want to say made it impossible, but I was playing catch up with everything else so much that I didn’t get to do the due diligence I wanted to do with that in Canada. I don’t see why in 2021 we wouldn’t have all of Canada up.

But there are some of the tracks there, and I basically ended up listing those events from PCA groups that were American, but doing a Canadian track day here or there. So, so there definitely are some Canadian, uh Well, it’s probably pretty slim now that it’s getting cold, but I mean, I feel like I’ve got [00:07:00] everybody, every PCA region that does a DE, the BMW clubs, the Audi clubs, but I’m always eager to find new ones and they’re popping up all the time.

So yeah, anybody out there that’s got a new track day company or knows of one, we’re not listing, please shoot us an email through the, through the website. We would love to have it. The other thing I kind of wanted to mention is how many groups and how many events there are a year. And if you count, which I do, PCA and the Audi clubs and the BMW clubs as separate groups, I mean, I think they should be since they all have their own schedules.

And there’s about a hundred of those. And then there’s also about a hundred for profit companies in the U S which. I guess I wanted to mention it because it surprises people that ask. And typically the past three years has been right in the 15 to 1600 events a year. Which kind of is telling me that we’re kind of capped out unless somebody can [00:08:00] make more days happen in a year or build more racetracks, there’s not a whole lot of opportunity tracks are booked.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t, they’re booked, but I don’t know that we’ve met saturation yet. Right. So that’s a whole nother, that’s a whole nother thing. So let’s say. You could have 200 cars in a weekend. Yeah, so the calendar days are full, but the number of participants is not. You got 80 cars on track for three days. It’s like, well, okay.

Dave Peters: No, I agree. I don’t think every event is filling. I mean, I know every day that’s not filling.

Crew Chief Eric: If we’re going to talk about scheduling, it poses a whole nother scenario there because I’ve preached for a while that groups that are, that continually complain that they’re suffering, that their numbers are down.

There’s another group the next weekend also complaining that their numbers are down. And I know that everybody wants to be able to make a profit and whatever it might be. I’m not here to dictate how they do business. It would make a lot of sense if those two groups got together, pooled their resources, be it the coaches, be it the investment, whatever it might be.

And then, to [00:09:00] make that event successful. But what ends up happening by doing that is now we don’t have two events that failed where the calendar is full. We freed up a weekend at VIR. We freed up a weekend at the Glenn or wherever it is for another group to come in. So then to your point where the calendar can’t grow because it’s basically maxed out by consolidating events and making the events more popular and more successful, you have basically opened the calendar up.

Dave Peters: Yeah, I, I agree with you. Um, if, if there’s a couple groups that aren’t what we would call filling an event. Now, I sure don’t like when a group overfills an event. Um. And that happens. And, and, I mean, that to me is, that’s just not fair to the drivers. You know, it, it just becomes a completely different thing when you’re at VIR running with, uh, 3035 cars versus 60.

It’s different. Makes it a less experience. But what you’re saying, I agree. You know, there’s a lot of groups that are not selling out and they probably, you know, maybe someone, but [00:10:00] they don’t want to swallow their pride and partner with someone else. I don’t really know. It would be good for the whole hobby and industry if that happened more often.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean i’ll give an example right because I came up through the autocross world and it got to a point there too Where as lots were drying up the calendar got full immediately, especially in the in the dmv, right down Where you are in the carolinas might be a different story I know still in the southwest and in the south like places like texas There’s still an opportunity to have big autocrosses and stuff like that.

But here as You Things changed and open oceans of asphalt started disappearing. It meant that clubs had to band together. And you started to see it early on, especially in the late 90s, early 2000s, where you would all of a sudden have the Porsche Corvette challenge, and you would have the BMW Porsche challenge, and you’d have these groups cross pollinating because their events were suffering.

And the lots, it was a scarcity, right? So it became a game of commodities. And at that point it made sense to merge together, get that weekend, get it full, keep the [00:11:00] excitement of autocross going so that the sport wouldn’t die. Now in our area, SCCA capitalizes on autocross. I’ll just say that they own it.

Flat out, there are still other clubs out there that do stuff. And we partner with them, you know, the Corvette club, et cetera, but it’s not the same draw as going to FedEx field. And you’re still waiting around all day. And there’s 250 cars waiting to get their turn to do the solo thing. I don’t know, again, it’s economies of scale, but I see it in the track world with the smaller driving organizations, where it would make sense for them to pull their efforts together and put on better events.

And again. I would rather come away from a big event as a newbie and say, man, this was awesome. All these cars, all this stuff, the math works out right. 20 cars per mile, 24 cars per mile at VIR. You’re right. That’s 60 cars. That’s easy to do though. You still don’t feel like you’re driving around the beltway.

So again, I’d rather go to an event that was full and full of energy than like, man, yeah, it was a VIR and basically I drove around all day by [00:12:00] myself.

Dave Peters: No, I’m with you, man. I don’t like driving around by myself. It just, there’s just one lap and I’m good. You know, I, I wanna, and not that I have to pass anybody, but at least have somebody that I can see in front of me.

Am I gaining on em? You know, are they gain? And same thing letting people by, but man, I gotta tell you, when too many cars, it’s not that fun at BIR.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. I give you, that mean’s the same at Summit Point. I mean, you get 40 cars in Summit Point, it’s a traffic jam,

Dave Peters: but and then being in the Miata and there were a lot of high horsepower cars, and I, I had a sore arm.

I literally had a bruise on the bottom of my arm from the windowsill from putting my arm out the window all day so much. But all those

Crew Chief Eric: point buys the Miata, you know,

Dave Peters: yeah, well, no, it’s exactly, but yeah, I mean, I want it to grow and I agree with you. There’s room and there are some clubs doing that and some groups doing that.

I know Daytona has a couple, but offhand, you know, I don’t really remember. Listing [00:13:00] any this year that were a dual event except for some PCAs or some BMW and even some of those were, you know, not necessarily PCA and PCA, but there were some PCA and BMW and. PCA and Audi.

Crew Chief Eric: This year, 2020 has been a challenging year for everybody across the board.

And I’m, you know, I got to tip my hat to all the organizations that have come back out to play when the tracks basically reopened in June. They’ve been hitting it hard, you know, every weekend since, and I think turnout has been good. But Let’s face it. Turnout is has also been scaled down, right? So I don’t want to get into the politics of how all that’s working, but I’m hoping that 21 will be a better year for everybody.

And we’ll be looking forward to that new schedule coming out here. Maybe in the fall. Right?

Dave Peters: Absolutely. I mean. I would think within the next month that we’ll have actually, I know I have one or two 2021 events already on the site, but I would think, you know, the regular schedule should be coming out starting in October is typically when it happens.

And, you know, most of [00:14:00] the established groups, like hooked on driving and, you know, They relatively are going to have the same schedule that, you know, the date number just changes by a day or two because of, you know, it’s a new year, but so they’re all relatively at the same places. Yeah. Even the newer guys, I mean, once they’ve get date under their belt, they kind of hold on to it.

Crew Chief Eric: How often is the data updated? Like how often are you getting in there?

Dave Peters: I go through about every two months and just check everybody’s schedules, and you know, I’m on a lot of their mailing lists, so I’ll catch stuff that way and just change it instantly, and I find a lot on Instagram that they’ll post they had updates or changes, so, you know, it’s really just paying attention, and again, about every two months, I’ll just go down the list of all of them and double check the schedules.

And usually they’re, you know, there might be one or two every time I check, but it stays pretty consistent.

Crew Chief Brad: Do any of them reach out to you or do they come to you versus you having to look it up and everything other than the email [00:15:00] newsletters and stuff like that that come out? Do they come to you asking for your help, I should say?

Dave Peters: Yeah, I mean, obviously in the beginning, I would say in the first three years, not so much. I mean, a few did. But now We definitely have them reach out to us. They’re always very humble asking, well, how, how do we get, and I’m like, you just give me your list, give me your list and where you want it linked.

And, uh, I’m happy to do it.

Crew Chief Eric: Which actually leads into my next question. Are you linking through or are people clicking through to motorsportreg or clubregistration. net or directly to, let’s say, Chin’s website? How does that work? You know, what’s the process like once you’ve landed on HPDE Junkie’s website?

Dave Peters: I link to all of the above. Basically, each event listed, which you can look at on a calendar form, or you can look at it through what I call the track search, which will have every event for each track for the year. And whichever situation you can click on, and it is going to send you to either, you know, for instance, Chin has their own registration.

That’s where I send you. [00:16:00] If someone uses Motorsports Reg or club registration. I know that when I’m looking at stuff online, I want it to be the least clicks as possible. Why not just send them

Crew Chief Eric: where they need to go? Let’s talk about chin as an example. We had Mark Hicks on here not too long ago, and he told us all about their registration process and how, you know, they’ve got it basically time gated.

You know, X amount of weeks away from when the event is going to occur. The registration actually opens up, but a lot of us forget that. Right. And even though we’re reminding our listeners of that right now, it’d be nice to get an automated alert to say, Hey, there’s an upcoming chin event in my area, have you thought about signing up?

So is that a function of HPE Junkie?

Dave Peters: It is not at the moment that, and probably a hundred other things that I would love to do that I either don’t have the budget for or the time for, and again, I’m not an IT guy, so it’s not like common knowledge to me. To me to you know, this is out there that you could be doing that’s really easy, but i’m learning and you know I’ve [00:17:00] got friends here and there that kind of will help me out occasionally with that kind of stuff So, you know as it grows these things will happen and and uh will expand but bottom line It’s a it’s a small budget business and I have a I have a day job so Yeah, hopefully someday it’ll take you to the track itself.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, it’s very fortunate because it often seems that in the motorsport world, there’s always a sect of either engineers or IT professionals. And so, you know, our listenership, there’s a lot of IT folks out there. So maybe there’s some people that are interested in helping out, right? And writing some code and whatnot.

I’m not volunteering myself yet, but I’ve got plenty of code to write on my end too. But let’s talk about the kind of traffic that’s coming through the website. What are you seeing on average? Like how many visitors are you seeing per month?

Dave Peters: Yeah, about 9, 000 a month. I would say it’s like 100, 120 a year last year.

I can’t quite remember, but this year has been kind of weird. It was definitely [00:18:00] slow through the COVID. People just weren’t looking. You know, I, I, there was no real reason to, you know, and it did start to pick up once things were relaxing. Yeah. On the average it’s, you know, two 50 to three 50 a day. I think that works out to around nine, 10,000 a month.

Crew Chief Eric: So for the organizers that are out there, you know, the Mark Hicks of the world and, and you know, the David Rays of HOD, et cetera, and the guys over at CCA that we talked to not too long ago as well, is there an opportunity for them to go in on a self-service portal and start adding the information themselves to HPDEE junky, or is it.

It’s still something that you have to do.

Dave Peters: It’s still set up where I have to do it. You know, actually it would be great to have it that way. But quite honestly, I think we’d end up with less events on the website because you know, some of the groups are great about giving me their schedules before I ask, but some of them, you know, I don’t mean this in a bad way, but some of them don’t really care that much.

I don’t think so. I don’t know that they would actually send them to me or, or, or upload them. So [00:19:00] I’m kind of cool with doing it myself. And I guess it is what it is for now.

Crew Chief Eric: Understood. So the scheduling part of HPE Junkie is just one facet of the website. What are some of the other draws of coming to the website?

Dave Peters: I wish I could woo you with something, but. You know, it really, I’ve actually simplified it since the beginning because I don’t know, I just felt like that’s what most people want. And that’s what I would want. If I were a driver using the website, I would want it to be as easy as possible to find my event.

And so I’ve really tried to focus on that. And even to the point of advertising, I don’t want, you know, people are like, well, you should do Google ads and you should do this. And I don’t. I don’t like going to websites and seeing that. So I don’t want to do it. So anything that’s on the site, I want it to be related to the site and something that I would use.

So I guess that’s a bit of one is if you see somebody’s link on my site, I recommend using them or going to them. And I’m sure if it grows, like I’d like it to, and like, I think it [00:20:00] will, I’ll continue to do more features and such. Very cool. So

Crew Chief Eric: one of the things I noticed, you know, coming around the site, And checking things out.

One of the big mottos on there is drive fast, safely. So how does HPDE Junkie promote safety?

Dave Peters: You know, I think I should tell you that when we started the website, it probably had a slightly different meaning than I kind of see it now. When we started out, I, I think we both thought we would be attracting, you know, the new drivers and, and that was kind of a don’t go out driving on the back roads.

I, I really get bummed out by, you know, street drag racing because to me that it’s even more dangerous because there’s so many other people around. But it really, it, the start of it was that. And I guess that still comes into play because, you know, that’s kind of how I see an HPDE is it’s the safest way to drive your car fast, like, and really get the potential out of it.

And I just see driving on the back roads now is [00:21:00] really dumb, but I guess it also, now that I’ve done it for a while, I see it as. Put your stuff on, on jack stands when you get back from the track and go underneath and you know, check as many bolts as you can touch and bleed your brakes often. And you know, that’s how I kind of see it now as, as well is, is literally be a safe driver on the track for yourself and everybody else.

Crew Chief Brad: So what is something you wish you knew as someone starting out in HPDE? Something that, you know, looking back on it now. No, I’m glad you,

Dave Peters: I’m glad you asked that. Don’t do anything to your car. Um, go out there bone stock and you know, I, I didn’t do it. And I just, I don’t think, you know, any better until you’ve done it or unless you’ve really done some research.

Yeah. Cause I mean, everybody shows up. With coil overs and exhaust system and a cold air intake. And, and I did in my Z, I mean, you know, you see all the newbies showing up like that and then do your brakes first, because that was the first [00:22:00] thing that I, I, um, butt puckered on second track day at Carolina motorsports park in the Z.

In the rain coming down the straightaway and pedal went to the floor and turn one is a 90 degree left hand. I’ll never forget it. And I was, I felt pretty humiliated. My instructor was like, so, um, what have you done to your car like mods? And I said, I call air intake and exhaust system and lowering springs and, you know, It was like, you do anything to your brakes?

And I was like, no, it’s got big Akebono four piston brakes. They’re fine.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s go back to one of the things that you mentioned earlier, which was you’re talking about value for dollar. And the fact that there’s a price comparison you can make on HB88junkie. com. So what do you think if you’re starting out and you’re looking at this, track days are expensive.

I mean, let’s call it what it is. Let’s call it spade a spade. What do you think is the sweet spot in terms of track time for dollar? What should consumers be looking for?

Dave Peters: To me, it’s all [00:23:00] based on the track because you know, VIR rental for the day is three to four times what? A track like Ebing Road or CNP cost.

Coda, for example, is like $80,000 a day I think it is. Daytona is $50,000 a day. You know, obviously the more it’s a pro track, the more you got to expect to pay for it to me, what’s a really good deal is if you’re getting more than four hours total a day, you’re getting a lot of track time that would kind of be my best judge of it.

But pricing really, I think is pretty close between the different groups at the same track. You know, you’re going to find some that are drastically higher and maybe one or two that are drastically low, but they’re all pretty close. It’s just probably more of a personal preference, you know, because some guys will like 20 minute sessions and you typically get six of those.

Some guys like 30 minute sessions and, you know, a group will do [00:24:00] four of those. So it kind of, you know, it depends on what you like, you could sit there with a few tabs open and compare one to another and well, this one’s more expensive, but I’m going to get five hours. Track time and this one’s a little cheaper and I think it really boils down to minutes per dollar It’s kind of what you would break it down to our hours per dollar

Crew Chief Eric: What do you think is a good starter track for people that are getting into this and getting addicted to HPDE?

Dave Peters: Wow, I mean, I think any and it really is based on what’s the closest one to you I think if you’re starting and I guess I look at it because if you’re starting out Probably not pushing your car to anywhere close to its limit You You’re likely going to have an instructor in the car with you to keep you safe.

So it’s at least going to give you the chance to see if you like it, which you will beware. But yeah, I think any really any track and I mean, unless it’s full of potholes, but they probably don’t have an events anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: As a track junkie or HPDE [00:25:00] junkie, you’ve been in this now for seven plus years. What has kept you going on top of just your love and passion for driving?

Is there a piece of advice you could give a newbie to say, Hey, Don’t do 27 events a year. Pace yourself. This is how you keep the magic alive. This is how you keep it going. Do you have any advice there to say, you know, this is really how you should space out your calendar?

Dave Peters: I guess the advice I can give is what I’ve kind of come to for myself.

That I feel is comfortable. There were a couple of years I was trying to do spring and summer every two weeks. And it just wore, just wore me out. Um, but it wears the car out too. And you know, then you’re, you’re tired. You’re going through tires and brake pads and oil and brake fluid faster. So what’s been kind of the magic for me is once a month.

And I like to start around March or early April and then quit late November. And part of that is towards the end of the season, I get a little burned out. I kind of feel like the [00:26:00] car needs kind of a good overhaul. And I shouldn’t say overhaul, but it needs to be checked thoroughly. You know, all the fluids need to be changed, checking your ball joints and all that kind of stuff.

But. And, you know, maybe I get a little more burned out because I, I’m really busy at the track. I really try to get around and meet people and talk to people and, but by November I’m, I’m kind of ready for, for it to be done. And then it takes a couple, two, three months and, and then I start itching again.

And usually that’s about when my car’s coming close to being back on the garage floor. And

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, there’s, there’s something known as like the three year hurdle. Oh,

Dave Peters: and you’re talking more in a long term. I haven’t hit that yet. So I can’t really speak on it. I’ve been hitting the once a month for probably a solid four years and I haven’t hit it yet, but I hope it doesn’t happen.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Well, maybe again, it’s, it’s because of a matter of convenience, you know, life changes, but you know, we seem to go through these cycles of every three to four years, especially in [00:27:00] motorsport where people. Kind of like you just see new faces and the long timers. Those of us that are extremely addicted to the sport.

We hang around forever. It seems like so Dave, is there anything that we didn’t cover that you want to go over or is there any thing new coming out that people might be interested in for the 2021 season and also, you know, here’s an opportunity for you to thank your sponsors, shout out to different people, et cetera, as we get closer to the end of our segment here,

Dave Peters: you know, next year.

I will have Canada added. The only thing I can promise is we’ll have every track day in the U. S. that we can find listed. And, you know, hopefully something else will grow from it. And I do, I would like to mention a few people that have, you know, really helped us get the ball rolling. Apex Performance, which I mentioned earlier.

Great folks, and they’ve got some really good deals right now. You know, it’s kind of close out. I kind of prefer to buy the five year old helmet and keep it for five years cause it’s going to stink like hell anyway and get a new one cheap. So I just got a [00:28:00] 2015 helmet at a great price. I know there’s some other ones available.

And if you mentioned HPDE e junkie to them. That will give you at least 10 percent off, probably not the close out stuff, but anything else really great people. I can’t say enough about them. Another guy that’s kind of been really cool and helped me out a lot is Jim Tramitano. He runs with NASA Northeast.

He’s got a blog called no, no money, motorsports blog. And to me, it’s like the perfect. Track day blog, especially for the newer crowd. I mean, he hits all of the really cool, you know, things you need to know, the tires, the little triangles on your tires, why they’re there. Latest one came out today. It’s like 17 things to know about your brakes.

And I scanned through it, all great information. G Lock brakes, been good to us. Lockton Motorsports has been really good to us. Another one that I don’t think a lot of people know about is tracklapse. com. There’s a link at the bottom of our, our [00:29:00] homepage. It has all the, it’s just data of different guys track times across the country and all the different tracks.

So you can either like compare what you’re doing or post yours and watch videos of other people that track. I think it’s a pretty cool resource. And, um, you know, he, he’s kind of been one of those guys that’s been with me since the beginning and just a really nice guy. Yeah. Visit the partners. They’re at the bottom of the homepage.

I wouldn’t have them there if I didn’t think they were worthy of, um, an HPDE reader.

Crew Chief Eric: So what else about HP junkie? Do you want to tell the audience or tell us

Dave Peters: the floor is yours. Wow, you kind of caught me off. This must be the trick question. Those are

Crew Chief Eric: coming, don’t worry.

Dave Peters: You know, I guess I just want people to know that, you know, we’re trying to give an honest thing back to the sport.

You know, we don’t really get a lot from the website. We get some perks. We’re not getting rich by any means. It’s finally where we’re not coming out of pocket for it. Again, you know, it’s kind of like back to the [00:30:00] advertising and the ease of using it. I just really want to provide Trackday HPDEE World with an easy way to find events and Be as comprehensive about having everything that’s out there.

And, and I get a lot of emails that, Hey, thanks for, for what you do. And so for now I feel like I’m doing what I can and just trying to do the best I can at it. Absolutely.

Crew Chief Brad: I was going to say, we hear a GTM fully approve of what you’re doing because we often say all the time that this sport is a sport of convenience and you’re not looking to, Oh, I have to run with PCA or I have to run with.

With HOD or chin or whatever you’re looking for, who’s going to be at this track at this day, and then I’m going to run with them. So I think what you’re doing fits exactly with what a lot of the people that do HPDEs are looking for. And I think it’s going to help, or it has helped bring new people in just because you’ve simplified it so much for us.

I mean, it’s simple to go to your website, pick a date that you want to run. And that’s, who’s running on that date. I think it’s perfect. I [00:31:00] think it’s great.

Dave Peters: Thanks, Brad. And, you know, I, that was my goal. You know, I looked at it like everybody knows the tracks they want to drive, so we have that option of, I want to go to VIR this year.

Well, here’s 30 options, you know, and you can click on each one of them and compare the prices and, you know, whatever makes you happy, how much run time you get, whatever it might be. Then I also looked at it like, well, there might be a guy that is really busy and he finds out he has this particular weekend open and he lives on the East coast.

What’s going on on the East coast. So, you know, at least you got the two options of, you can check it either way.

Crew Chief Eric: So Dave, I can’t thank you enough for coming on. It’s been super educational and I’m hoping that, uh, HPDE Junkie. In the future to correlate all that scheduling information and get their schedule planned out for the year, because like we say, and we’ve said often register early and register often.

And the [00:32:00] easiest way to get to that information is through a site like HB junkie. com. Where you can check out what is close to you. And it is a really unique way of searching out those track events that are close by to you. So again, Dave, I can’t thank you enough for putting that type of service together for the community.

It’s a huge give back and it is definitely something that everybody should be checking out if they haven’t already.

Dave Peters: Well, thank you very much for saying that. Thank, thank you as well for having me on your, uh, podcast. It, it’s been great talking with you. Something I wanted to add really quick when you said about register early is I, I couldn’t agree more because the more the hobby grows, the faster they’re gonna fill and there’s so many, only so many racetracks and so many days in the year.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And you know, that’s that’s been part of our mission since 2014 is to continue to spread motorsports enthusiasm. And that’s in all facets and all disciplines, right? Because if we don’t continue to spread all these tools and all this knowledge and the enthusiasm [00:33:00] behind motorsport to the next generation or to people that just didn’t know and they got cars collecting dust, not being driven the way they were intended or the way they were built, Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Then the sport dies, right? So it’s very important that we continue to evangelize all of this.

Crew Chief Brad: And I don’t want the sport to die because I hate golf.

Crew Chief Eric: I need something to

Crew Chief Brad: do on Saturdays and Sundays. And I, I don’t like golf. It’s boring.

Crew Chief Eric: Me

Crew Chief Brad: either.

Crew Chief Eric: And on that note, I think it’s time to end. So thank you, gentlemen. We will talk again soon.

Dave Peters: Thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey listeners, did you enjoy this particular episode? Did you know you can learn more about what we just talked about by visiting the GTM website? If you want to learn more or just review the materials from this episode, be sure to log on to www. gtmotorsports. org today and search for this particular episode.

From all of us at GTM, never stop [00:34:00] learning.

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 gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from GTM? Great! So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it. But please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization. But we still need help to keep the momentum going.

So that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content. So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can [00:35:00] help.

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

• 00:00 Introduction to Break/Fix Podcast
• 00:27 Discovering HPDE Junkie
• 00:52 Interview with Dave Peters
• 01:09 Founding and Early Days of HPDE Junkie
• 03:36 HPDE Junkie’s Mission and Operations
• 05:18 Challenges and Growth
• 06:11 Nationwide and Canadian Expansion
• 08:30 Event Scheduling and Collaboration
• 20:12 Safety and Best Practices
• 21:28 Advice for New HPDE Enthusiasts
• 27:07 Future Plans and Acknowledgements
• 31:40 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Bonus content available as a #PITSTOP mini-sode.

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