Let’s talk Touring Cars with Jim Jordan

Jim Jordan - Series Director for SRO Motorsports - TC America

With a career in motorsports that spans everything from working for a major auto manufacturer, to time behind the wheel of a race car, to finally team ownership - Jim Jordan brings a wealth of experience to his role as the SRO Motorsports GT America, Touring Car Series Director.

Contact: Jim Jordan at jim.jordan@sro-motorsports.com | N/A | Visit Online!

          

• Early Cars you’ve had/raced; We heard that you raced in a Pinto? Let’s unpack that.
• We interviewed Dean Case a while back, and he spoke about his time on the design team at Mazda, we came to find out that you were also involved with Mazda for many years as well?
• One of the things we haven’t explored yet on this show, is the BUSINESS side of Motorsports, many people often forget that there is more to this than just cars going around in a circle. Tell us about your experiences, as a driver and a team owner, and the business of motorsports.
• The motorsports world can often feel small, and it’s not uncommon to rub elbows with celebrities – let’s talk about the time you’ve spent with Patrick Dempsey & at LeMans.
• We should probably get back to talking about your involvement with SRO, you’re in charge of the TC (Touring Car) portion of the program.
• Can you explain what TC is (or isn’t), the regulations, we asked Greg Gill “what is a TC car?” What are the differences between classes like TCX > TCR > TC and TCA?
• Lets talk about BOP
• We often joke on our Drive Thru about “small cars” like the Chevy Spark (which is finally on its way out) and have asked some other drivers during our Pit Stop questions “would you drive one?” and the answer is generally a flat “NO” followed by an awkward pause then “but if it was a B-SPEC, I would” – you had some involvement in B-SPEC racing – would you care to expand on that, and talk about what you’d hoped for that series?

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. The following episode is brought to you by S r o Motorsports America and their partners at a Ws CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School. Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.comortakeashortcuttogtamerica.us And be sure to follow them on social at Gt underscore America on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook and catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT World.

With a career in motorsports that spans everything from working for a major auto manufacturer to time behind the wheel of a race car. To finally team ownership, Jim Jordan brings a wealth of experience to his role as the SRO Motorsports GT America [00:01:00] Toing Cars Series Director. And in this week’s episode of Break Fix, Jim explains his role and how his previous experiences have shaped his outlook as he helps to guide s r O into the latest golden age of sports car racing.

So please join us in welcoming Jim Jordan to break fix. Thank you very much. It’s, uh, great to be here. So like every break fix episode, we love to get into the details around people’s origin stories because let’s face it, everyone has a story. So let’s talk about Jim, the Petrolhead. How did you get into cars, into motorsports?

Do you come from a racing family? I don’t come from a family that raced, although I will say, uh, first race I ever went to is the Trenton Speedway in Trenton, New Jersey, which was the old New Jersey fairground. So I’m showing my advanced age now where I saw Mario Andretti in the Dean Van Lines special when the Trenton won 50.

My dad liked racing, [00:02:00] so my dad was a racing fan, so he took my brother and I to Trenton Speedway, took my eldest sister to Trenton Speedway. Well, it still existed. He was a fan of the Trans Am series during its huge heyday. He owned a 65 Mustang JT convertible and that was his, you know, the car he loved.

And, uh, so I went to first road races Watkins. And it was a combination, S E C A National TransAm race and saw Mark Donahue win in a Penske Camaro. So, you know, just a great time TransAm racing and just kind of became a huge fan. And you know, as a kid there’s pictures of me in a Halloween costume that, that my mom made as a race driver with the traditional Goodyear stripes on the side.

So been a fan for a long time and been very fortunate to have turned into a career that kept me and my family going for a very long time. So I hear rumor [00:03:00] that in your early days of racing and getting into motorsports, some of the grassroots racing that you did, that you raced a pinto. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

My first real race, I had done some S E C A driver schools and I had a clapped out M G B E production card that I was trying to get my license with and met a guy named Rich Gano. So Rich Gano, if you’re still around, hey buddy. Thanks. You put me on a nice path and Rich Ano had a Ford Pinto that was built for the I S A RS series, which again, most people now have no idea what the heck it was, but it was a, a racing series ancestry, very close to what I’m doing now, where we had small compact sedans racing around.

So I raced a Ford Pinto in a three hour, I think it was BF Goodrich Radio challenge at that point. But IMSA Race, And that was the first race he ever did. And yes, it was Ford Pinto Race. Ford Pinto for several years. Again, met people such as Alan [00:04:00] Marsh, who, uh, the huge guy early in my career cuz he gave me a job at his gas station, let me pump gas at at night.

Worked on my cars a little bit, paid my, my early racing career. Again, my family didn’t put money to my racing. Whatever I did, I had to do it myself. So working at a gas station at Port Pento was about all I could afford. I completely sympathize with racing on a budget when the budget is yours. It’s very, very challenging.

So I wonder, while you were racing the Pinto, were you racing against Lynn St. James in her Pinto? Actually, no, because she was running a showroom stock Pinto, and I’m good friends with Lynn. So w we did share a few weekends at the same track, but never in the same class. And it wasn’t until just a few years ago as a program that, uh, John Dunin, who’s now head of i s a Dean case who works with us at the s r o and myself put together, uh, we put together a deal at the 25 hour [00:05:00] long whatever NASA calls her 25 hour race at Thunder Hill.

We just thought it’d be fun to have 25 drivers. So every driver drove one hour. And Lynn St. James and I both drove our hour. I tease her just a couple weeks ago when I had dinner with her that we actually cod drove a race Lynn. Uh, we were hours apart in our stints, but, and some great people came outta racing Pintos cuz the Pinto was a, uh, it’s a very competitive car in that type of series back in the day.

It’s sadly become a joke now. But Pinot was just a good handling car, you know, in some ways, like a Miata, no horsepowers, you had to keep cornering speed. So it’s, it was a good car to learn on. Like the American G T I. Yeah. Well, no, GTR was far better than you know, but yes, when it comes to momentum and not a whole lot of power, but that’s honestly in my opinion, how you learn how to drive.

And that’s one of the reasons, and that so many good drivers come out of class is like, You know, currently like spec Miata because you have to [00:06:00] maintain mins. It’s all about min speed. As long as you go as fast as possible with the corners, the straits take care of themselves. It’s just that, you know, the highest possible minimum speed of any corner is that.

That’s why driver like Pat Long is so good because his min speed’s higher than virtually anybody else. We’re gonna transition a little bit and we interviewed Dean Case a while back and he spoke about his time on the design team at Mazda, and we came to find out that you were also involved with Mazda for many years.

Do you wanna go ahead and expand on that? It was Mazda North America, although I had a couple different names when I was there. As Mazda went through uh, three organizations and the rest, but really fortunate to work for Mazda for 26 years. Had some really good bosses during that timeframe that. Taught me a heck of a lot about the car business.

And while that whole time was going on, I was still involved with racing, at least at one level or another. Generally club level stuff, but occasionally helping other people on some pro [00:07:00] stuff. But started out with mon technical training, I responded to a classified ad. Want to add? In the uh, LA Times and it was for Mazda corporate that they wanted someone who had teaching experience and understood the rotary engine.

A couple years previously I’d been a special ed teacher. That’s kind of what I did right out of college. My dream of being professional race car driver took over and I had my own shop for a while and we specialize on Mazda Rotary stuff like, uh, lots of young enthusiast people that shop couldn’t pay the bills.

I met a woman I wanted to marry. So all of a sudden, well, I better get a real job. And, and, and so just applied for a job at Mazda, my resume. I typed it up and just mailed it with a really good cover letter. I’m a decent writer, so great cover letter. The funny thing about that was I looked at everything after I sent it and realized that I forgot to put my phone number on my resume cuz I wasn’t really planning on, you know, sending a resume.

But here’s this job that describes me. [00:08:00] So I said, ah, there’s no way I’m ever gonna get it. Two days later there’s a letter from Mazda saying, oh, Mr. Jordan, we’re quite interested in you. We forgot to give your phone number. And I’m thinking, well, you know, this had to be fate because in most people’s world, that would’ve been instant disqualification.

I will say though, that I got the grammar right and I must have spelled everything correctly. So I worked their technical training. I went out to the field. Cuz in general at that era, I dunno what it’s like now, but if you’re gonna go in any kind of executive position, they want you to have some field experience.

And when we say field experience, they’re talking about going out to dealers and, and interfacing with the customers directly. Two types of customers. One customer is a dealer, of course, the other customer is, uh, the end user, the person that buys the car. So, I had that role as a district service manager, which meant that I would be yelled at by customers who weren’t satisfied.

And that’s a skillset I take to this day of not getting to upset when people yell at me. Cuz if you’re in a position of responsibility in any [00:09:00] sort of job, people are gonna yell at you. So I used that quite effectively just a few weeks ago at Nero Race. But also just how to, uh, motivate people, uh, how to fight for shelf space and honestly that fighting for shelf space.

At that time, Mazda was a smaller brand, still not a big brand, but a smaller brand where we shared dealerships with other brands. So you’re constantly fighting for the attention of the dealer and then the attention of the customers. So, worked my way through all the field jobs. Possible. Did parts, parts service, then ended up in sales.

Was a district sales manager in both, uh, Northern California and Southern California. Then moved into the corporate environment. But for about the last eight or 10 years, Motorsports marketing was my responsibility. So I worked in the corporate marketing department. I basically had sponsorships, special events, placements and movies, some real fun stuff there.

But Motorsports was my passion and so was in just a wonderful position with some really good people [00:10:00] too. And we just accomplished really great stuff. And Dean was absolutely part of that by the time, uh, he came back in after we were a little bit onal role, but we had so few people. But we had engaged top management, our c e o and a senior vice president named Robert Davis.

They believed in what we did. They supported what we did. As long as we can make an argument and show how it would help the company, they let us do just amazing things. And I still look back on that. The one story I’ll tell and, and it’s one of my favorite stories, it was a 24 hours of Daytona, I think it was 2008 or 2009, Sivan, Trombley, and a, uh, a three rotor RX eight won the race.

So we ended up with the trophy and it was, uh, John Dunan again, uh, head of him, uh, myself, head of TC America over at the s r o Dean case, who works for us in the s r o and a guy named Steve Sanders, who’s now retired. That was Mazda Motorsports. There were basically just four of us, and we’re [00:11:00] driving out of the paddock at Daytona.

And we see all these Porsche trucks. It’s just like trailer after trailer after trailer, which was Porsche Parts, Porsche engineering. We looked at the entry list. Every good Porsche driver in Germany had been cleared out and was over at Daytona to run. And we just started laughing just hysterically with how crazy was it that we were driving out with the, and again, it’s fun for me to just see, uh, the success that John Dunan had.

It’s so much fun to be working with Dean Case. Again, Steve Sanders, I don’t talk to you enough, but talk to him a little bit now. And then Robert Davis, who I just mentioned, he’s now also working for the S R O. He’s now one of our race steward. Just amazing quality people. Timing was right that we got a lot of lot of the right people at the right place at the right time.

Again, you look at all the things we accomplished with the Masero to Indie Winning Championships in Grand Am, which is now sort of what EMS has become. Winning races, the MX five Cup, the Mazda [00:12:00] Motorsports ladder, all that stuff that, just a small group of really motivated people sharing a vision and some just amazing executives.

Jim O’Sullivan, I miss you man. Robert Davis too. They just help us, uh, make something very special that I’m very proud of. So there’s a question I asked Dean that I’m gonna ask you, because I’m going to find the answer one of these days. We’re talking about your time at Mazda. Are you responsible for Zoom?

Zoom? No. No. I do know the story though. Would you like the story? Absolutely. We’d love it. Please. Yeah, so I was in the marketing department, so I do have some insight there. Mazda was going for a pitch. You know, we want a new ad agency. And so whenever you do that, you bring in several different agencies to do a pitch to do their best work.

A smaller agency outta Detroit that didn’t have a car account that I know of at that moment, but they did have some Ford Regional work, so they were very automotive focus, [00:13:00] but the donor people were actually the ones who came up with Zoom, zoom, and it was part of the initial ad pitch for the company. And it’s one of these things, they did this video that was just so emotionally moving.

And it really captured the spirit of Mazda right then. But Zoom, zoom was originally an ad pitch. It wasn’t even, you know, that’s how Donor got the business, honestly was the whole Zoom, zoom thing. And, and at that point I was out at the region doing marketing and I still remember just seeing the video just going, oh my God, this, you know, makes me cry.

It was just extremely well done. That was a really fun time to be part of Mazda because, you know, we had a new agency and we were really working to define who we were and where we were going. We had some challenges and I think we did a great job of turning things around and, you know, Mazda seems to be successful today, but I think part of that’s left over from Zoom.

Zoom Donor Agency eventually got replaced with agency that’s now Garage Team. Mazda obviously a great agency, but [00:14:00] uh, zoom, zoom has basically gone away. But that you even bring it up, it just shows how powerful that messaging was. And at the time how appropriate it was for Mazda. It was just really special.

That was one heck of a pitch, I must say. Oh, I know, absolutely. It’s like reminiscent of, of mad men, right, where it’s just like the one scene that’s the only thing out. Right, exactly. Exactly. Since we’re talking about Mazda and the business side, one of the things we haven’t really explored yet on the show is the business side of motorsports.

Many people often forget that there is more to this than just cars going around in a circle or around a road course. Can you tell us about your experiences as a driver and a team owner from the business perspective, not necessarily the racing perspective in motorsports. And I think there’s a good story for Mazda within that too.

If you look back, the history of Mazda, and again, I’ve been racing Mazdas I guess since, uh, 1981 was the first time I raced the Mazda, Mazda [00:15:00] Rx three. But Mazda was always very supportive of grassroots racing. Even back then, the guy was head of Mazda Motorsports when I’d be at a race, come over, shake my hand, thank me for racing a Mazda.

Uh, Damon Barnett was the gentleman’s name. When Mazda would get big and have big factory programs, they’d end up getting too excited, spent too much money, and then cut everything off. But they always kept the grassroots program alive. And to this day, they have an outstanding grassroots program. We had a small committee within Mazda, this is pre John Dunan, and we would, we would have meetings and it was.

People were enthusiastic about motorsports, but we had these meetings that we’d always put a fake name. It was sort of like Fight Club. First rule of these Mazda Motorsports meeting is, there is no Mazda Motorsports meeting because the grassroots program was doing well and they were staying alive. And we, you know, you almost kept your head down because they were doing fine.

They were a profit center, so you don’t want to touch them. But how do we get Mazda back involved with racing [00:16:00] again? And so that eventually built into the various programs that I talked about before, from pro-level racing and the old Grand Am and then s a and and all that sort of thing. And early world challenge.

So the Mazda Proteges and Mazda Sixes and World Challenge. But again, they were all based out of a very quiet. Small group of people within Mazda as we had a little bit of success we could talk about a little bit more and more. And I will say though, that one of the reasons we were allowed to do what we did, especially early on, was the, uh, competition part sales were quite profitable.

So Mazda set up an early program that allowed Mazda racers and you have to produce results and things like that, the Mazda racers to get discounts on parts. So you basically get parts at it, roughly. Dealer costs, maybe a little bit over. Depending on your deal, and you also get technical support. There’s guys and, uh, uh, not any women yet, but hopefully there will be soon on the, on the telephone that will help you build your race card, give you [00:17:00] advice, that sort of thing.

And because of that strong grassroots support program, it made minings, the executives allowed us to take the profits out of that and put ’em into racing. And, and you look at, you know, the, uh, the direct connection program was parts program for Dodge and Plymouth, and that program’s actually back, and I think they’re building some turnkey race cars now.

So there are other brands that had similar things. I will say career wise, one of the moments I’m proudest of, at least from the motor sports side, was when I got a phone call from Honda and H P D and Honda basically said, look, when we. Wanted do better at something, we benchmark a company and see if they’ll share with us some of their learnings.

You know, Honda called Moz and said, your grassroots program’s better than we are. Will you help us? Will you teach us? And again, another name I’ve already mentioned went to Robert Davis, who by that point was a senior vice president, said, Hey, Honda called and they wanna know what we know [00:18:00] and, you know, can we do it?

Because again, the whole Japanese philosophy of a rising tide lifting all boats is very strong. And he said, yes, give them 98% of what, you know, the really tough 2% they’re gonna have to learn on their own. We, uh, uh, had a really good relationship with Honda. I think they still do, but again, I’ve, I left Mazda almost exactly 10 years ago, July 1st, 2012 when I left Mazda.

You know, I, I, I talked to those people, but my relationship’s not nearly as close. And Robert Davis isn’t there anymore, and John Dunan isn’t there anymore. Seeing cases in there anymore. They have a lot of good people there that I communicate with now, but I don’t have that type of relationship. But again, to have a company like Honda reach out and say, Hey Mazda, you’re doing a better job.

I feel like I’m one of the lucky and few unfortunate people at Mazda have ever had that happen. So listeners, if you’ve been filling your backpack with all the names that Jim has been dropping, it’s getting full really, really quick to the, to [00:19:00] that end, the motorsports world can often feel very, very small.

But it’s not uncommon for many of us to rub elbows with celebrities. Why don’t we just take a moment here to diverge for a second and talk about some of the time you spent with McDreamy, I mean Patrick Dempsey and others at. Famous places like the 24 Hours of Lamont’s. I tell people all the time, and I’ll say this publicly on on this podcast, that most of the great things that I have in my life are directly attributed to Mazda in my time at Mazda.

And the density thing is that way too racer, who I actually helped him start his career. He lied, but his check cleared. So back when I was a team owner, he started driving our race cars and he’s gone onto a great career, but a guy named Charles Espen Lob, who if you’re a racer, you know him. Not exactly a household name, but just really good driver, really great guy.

So Charles Espen Love was working at the old Panos School. [00:20:00] Patrick Dempsey had been to the Panos School. Charles Esmond Love and Joe Foster, another great driver. Those two, uh, kind of said, Hey, Patrick wants to go racing. Let’s see if we can figure something out. First off, it’s Patrick. Okay. You don’t wanna embarrass him and you don’t wanna embarrass us.

So is Dempsey a good driver? Yeah. Yeah, he’s good. And he is getting better. Okay. So I put together a deal because again, I was now in the corporate marketing department, put together a deal where Patrick Dempsey did voiceover work for Mazda. And by that we paid him with race cars, race car parts and money, a combination.

And it was the craziest contract I’ve ever done in my life. But it worked and it was great. And Charles, because he had driven for my team, understood that I was pretty good at race car strategy, especially in endurance racing. What was good for them was they couldn’t pay me cuz it would’ve been a conflict of interest.

Can’t favor one race team over another. But I love race car strategies. So again, my conflict of [00:21:00] interest statement that I’d put together for Mazda every year was several pages and one of ’em was explaining my relationship within Motorsports, cuz everything, like you said, it’s a small family. I’m gonna add Incestuous family to that.

So I would call strategy for Dempsey’s team. I spent several years on the radio with Patrick. One of the stories I love to tell is 24 hours of Daytona. Again, just. Fantastic race by that point. Running an RX eight. And Patrick gotten pretty good. He’s now very, very competitive, very quick. But he also didn’t have a ton of experience, especially at the front.

We’re out there and I’m calling the race and all of a sudden he goes into the lead. Someone else has a problem, all of a sudden he’s leading. But I’m not gonna tell him he’s leading, cuz I know he’ll get very excited with leading and it may or may not be what we wanna happen. So basically he was in the lead for about an hour and you know, all the TV reporters are coming up, how’s it going?

You know? Yeah, yeah. Everything’s good. [00:22:00] I call him and I go, okay Patrick, it’s gonna be a full service pit stop. We’re gonna do fuel tire and driver change. And he goes, well wait a second, wait a second. Do I need to wait for the wave by? And the wave by is a procedure where the lower class cars get waved by.

So you know, so you stay on the lead lap. They try to keep everybody on the same lap. And I said, Patrick, You are not getting a wave by, cuz they don’t give away by to the leader of the class. So you’re good. You just sit there, you just, you’ve been doing great. I, the, he was like screaming over the radio and it was, uh, it was just very fun.

It was a race. We almost won. We ended up third, we had a technical issue and lost a few laps, but came back and finished third. And so that was Patrick’s, uh, first podium and emsa, or, well, it was Grand M at the time. Granda, we’ll use them a little interchangeably. We had a strong enough relationship when they decided to do a documentary, which is on Amazon since Amazon Web Services is a great partner of the sro.

Make sure to rush over to Amazon and look for [00:23:00] Patrick Dempsey Racing Lama. And we did a great documentary and that was Patrick’s journey to Lama and that’s where I ended up in the box. They’d switched to Porsche for the whole World Endurance Championship. So they had a German engineer, Patrick Dempsey couldn’t understand them, his accent was strong and Patrick couldn’t understand him, so they decided to bring me in.

So I spent two years in the box at Lamont, just basically taking, uh, German engineers and translating it in a way that. Patrick could understand and do, and that whole experience of Lama, it’s in the documentary. Again, just a wonderful time. I will say it was better when we finally got on the podium several years later.

But the documentary, what, what I admire is how honest it is. There were certainly moments of it where we all looked bad. Patrick just allowed that to happen. He wanted it to be an honest portrayal of what it’s like in racing and trying to get sponsors. You’re trying to put together deals you end up with, uh, interesting [00:24:00] characters.

Uh, I, I heard one interesting character was edited out of it, but that’s story for another day. So Patrick and I are still friends today. I had lunch with him last week. He is, Starting to think about getting back into racing again. So we’ll see. We’re trying to make it happen. So there was a lot there. But I, we love Patrick Dempsey around here.

I think he’s a great guy. You know, I’ve been following his, he’s a great guy. Been following his, uh, career a little bit, you know, watching the Lamont races, always rooting for him and his teams and everything. What he meant to say was watching Grey’s Anatomy. That’s what he Yeah, exactly. I have a story there too.

Uh, uh, I’d love, I would like to invoke my Fifth Amendment rights, but diving into that a little bit, I think you mentioned calling race strategy. Can you talk a little bit more about what that is, what that means? You know, the role that you played in calling race strategy for the Patrick Dempsey and the, the various races that you were involved in.

With race strategy, you obviously wanna have [00:25:00] the fastest driver in at the correct time and, and honestly, you’re just trying to stagger drivers, stagger pit stops in such a way to give the team the best opportunity to win. Would I say when you’re calling race strategy, you’re just running thousands of what if scenarios in your head, like, what if the track goes yellow?

Now what do we do? You’re paying attention to how much fuel the car’s using, what lap times are because you’re trying to. Check for tire degradation. Really as race strategist, you’re just running what if strategy after what if strategy. So that’s on the more engineering side. The other thing you’re doing is you’re being a psychologist because you’re talking to the driver, you’re his communication piece.

And so depending on the driver, some of them want lots of information, some of them don’t wanna be talked to whatsoever. But it’s my job to make sure when something’s important to give them that information. You’re part engineer, part psychologist, you just try to give the team the best chance of winning.

I hear a lot of [00:26:00] like talking about internally being a psychologist and giving information to your driver. How much of what you do in calling race strategy is predicated on what your opponents are doing? Like how much are you looking at what the other guys are doing and how much are you thinking psychologically?

Okay, like a chess match. If I move my pawn, are they gonna move their rook or they, you know, stuff like that. Yeah, that’s very true. And the analogy of a chess game’s just dead on. You’re playing chess and obviously you’re trying to do everything possible to, uh, put yourself in the best position and when possible, put people in the bad position.

I will say that great 24 that we led for so long that we are just talking about. What I liked was, you know, Patrick’s an extremely likable guy. The whole team, I think we were pretty likable. It came down to us and another car just battling for the lead. Well, there’s certainly no villains in the paddock.

Let’s just say we were a much more like [00:27:00] team than team. We were battling, and I still remember, it’s probably 2:00 AM and we’re slow. We had a car that was three quarters of a second per lapse, slower than the Porsche we were battling with. But by strategy, by timing, pit stops by just doing. A little bit out of the ordinary stuff sometimes.

I managed to keep the Porsche LA down basically all night long. We’re not as fast as a Porsche strategy, and some luck got us into the lead. But I still remember Will Turner, who’s just a great B M W team owner coming to the pits at 2:00 AM and just saying, you just keep doing what you’re doing. You keep that guy a lap down.

Because again, just our, the personality of our team, Patrick and everybody else was, you know, they, they were all cheering for us and they were probably almost as heartbroken as we were when we had the technical issues. And, but again, we fought back and finished on the podium. So very proud of that. But, but you’re right, it, you hear it once in a while in some of the NASCAR races, if you’re not [00:28:00] fast enough, you can’t do what everybody else does cuz you’re gonna lose.

You’re just looking, uh, to be opportunistic and whether that means not stopping when everyone else does. If you’re the last car on the lead lap and you get a full course yellow, you always stop for fuel cuz that’s gonna give you a much longer window. You know, you fight for track position. You, the other thing about race strategy is you basically, you’re calling the race backwards.

Uh, and what that means is, you know when the race is gonna end, it’s all timing and you have a rough idea of laughs. But yellow flags, the stuff I did was all timing. And so you’re racing to that final. Stop and you’re trying to time the final stop such a way that you get an advantage, but you run the race backward.

Everything at the start of the race is aimed to get yourself hopefully into the lead for that final stop. And when you make that final stop, you’re putting pressure, like you said, on everybody else. If they’re watching what you’re doing and you’ve done some stuff. So you’re in a position where you only have to make one stop and [00:29:00] they have to make two.

It’s fun to watch their horror, uh, when you realize that. How many times during your experience in races and everything have you had to call an audible, or you’ve had a game book, you’ve got your plan, and you just take it and you toss it right out the window because something has happened either to another team or to you, and tell us some experience that you had like that.

Every race, there’s not a single race that goes to planned, so again, that’s why the What if strategy, you know? You know, in essence, the Carl got sego 55 minutes on a load of fuel. When we were running the Michelins and Michelins, you could generally double stint them. So that was great. You know, you’re watching a weather report, you’re watching the temperature, you have a plan, not a super detailed plan, but a basic plan of how it’s gonna go.

And every race within three laps that goes out the window. So, so then you’re just adapting, you know, you get hit on the start, you get a tire puncture, your main competitor blows a motor, and that just changes [00:30:00] your strategy. I work for other teams also, and CJ Wilson, who was a baseball player, owns a Porsche dealership up in Fresno.

Great guy. He had a young team and he’s trying to make a name for himself. And so I would always ask the team owner, what are you trying to accomplish? Because at the end of the day, they’re the ones paying the bills, so they may have a different agenda, you know, and he said, I want TV time. Okay, I’m gonna do everything in this strategy to get you as much TV time as possible.

So we’re like 10 minutes ago in the race, it was full of yellow flags. At one point we led, overall we were in a smaller class. Cause you know, I was gonna keep the car in front of the class as long as I could. But there was so much yellow flags. I basically could have gone the whole race without stopping for fuel, which is of course against the rules.

So with about 10 minutes to go in the race, I just have a couple of I SSA officials just standing there giving me the evil eye, like when the hell are you gonna pit? And I knew as soon as we pitted, we [00:31:00] threw the race away. But again, CJ told me he wanted TV time. And you watch the race on tv, they kept talking about this car and kept showing the car.

I got him so much TV time. Another example that was early Patrick’s career. Joe Foster was a great coach for Patrick, did a really good job of bringing Patrick along. And so again, what’s our objective, Joe? And he says, Let’s get Patrick out in front and let’s let him have pressure of leading a race for the first time.

And so we’re New Jersey Motorsports Park, again, with yellow flags and how you pit, not pit you can make things happen. First thing, a yellow flags, it was far enough in the race that most people pitted. And I left Patrick out. So all of a sudden Patrick’s leading the race and he was under intense pressure from a bunch of drivers, but he, he held firm and it took, you know, it was, uh, I can’t remember the driver, but someone you’ve heard of spent like four laps just trying to get by him into the lead.

And we’re sort of thinking, well, I hope he [00:32:00] gets by him because he’s gonna lose patience really quick. That gave Patrick the experience he needed to, uh, be successful at Lamas. So, So, I hate to say in my career as a strategist, hasn’t been always about winning the race, done a lot of strategies, trying to accomplish something different, whether it’s a driver development long term, you know, or team development.

Long term. If you want publicity, I can get you publicity and I’ll still remember a guy named Jay, Jay Schafer. Now we’re back to my own team. We were lucky enough to be sponsored by the late Great Circuit City. They sponsored our car and World Challenge and we had a Masa protege we were running, and Jay Schaffer’s advice before the start of a race is, well, if you can’t win crash, so at least I get lots of coverage.

And so we didn’t crash on purpose, but let’s just say if we weren’t having a good day, we’d try to do something exciting that we knew we’d get a little bit of time for Circuit City at a NASCAR level. Of course, it’s all about just winning, but at the level I was, uh, I was racing [00:33:00] at, it’s a little bit of, uh, trying to accomplish other goals.

I’m, I’m assuming you, you’re familiar with F1 and you watch F1 racing and whatever. Yeah. So this question is really simple. Christian Horner or Toto Wolf, Oh, I would probably do Christian Horner only because he has a lot more experience of not being the fastest car early in Patrick’s career. Before he got fast, I, I had a lot of experience in getting laps back.

You know, I used to joke, that was my specialty was how are we gonna get laps back? By the time Patrick got fast, that was never an issue, but early in everyone’s career against that level, that just happened. So Hoer, you know, the Red Bull team’s obviously very good, but it normally doesn’t have quite the pace in the Mercedes, and he had to just enjoy so much early this year when they lack Louis Hamilton.

That just, yeah, you know, a again, so I’m gonna just say Horner because of that. I know Eric’s rolling his eyes cuz he’s a huge F1 fan.

My time has passed [00:34:00] for f1. That’s all I’m gonna say. I think I’d probably be embarrassed to share my racing strategy with Jim, although listening to his upbringing in Motor sports world, he might approve of it. It’s very simple. Step one, check for loose nuts behind the wheel and on the car. Step two is pray.

And step three is if all else fails, drive flat out. Yeah, exactly. Tha that’s good. And to be honest, you in a few words basically said what took me half an hour now to talk about. Um, but yeah, your philosophy’s dead on. Dead on. Well, with that said, we should probably, I. Get back to talking about your involvement with sro, talking about the, the present and the future.

So you’re now in charge of the touring car portion of the program. Yes. So when I had Greg Gill on, I asked him to please define what exactly a touring car is in 2022. Would you care to share with our audience Sure. What exactly that means? [00:35:00] Sure. And I’m just gonna say up front there is a little asterisk, but fortunately right this very second, there is no asterisk.

Basically how I define touring car is a sedan or coop comes from the factory with a back seat that, you know, we go out and we do sprint racing with. In the s rro world, we obviously came out of the world of exotic cars. So you know, the, the top GT three class cars are Ferraris and Lamborghinis and those sort of things.

And then the GT four class, which is a fantastic class in the SRO world, it’s kind of in between cuz you’ve got some McLaren’s and you’ve got some Porsches, some. Audi, RH and Mercedes Benzes, but you also theoretically have Mustangs and Camaros. So it’s kind of a nice tweener class. And then the touring cars, again, the cars have back seats for the most part, no asterisk needed right now.

The cars come with the backseat. Sometimes four doors, sometimes two doors, sometimes three doors. They’re basically every person’s car. So you look at the brands that [00:36:00] are racing in TC America, BMW and Honda are the two biggest ones in terms of numbers, but we have many very successful ah Mazda. They’ll show up now and then and and is showing some really good potential.

Hyundai is a great supporter of the class. For the most part, come from factory built. Brian heard of racing. We’ll build you a Hyundai Elantra N for our series. They send out tech support and it’s a turnkey race car. So same thing. Honda h p d will happily sell you either a, uh, TC level, civic type R or TCA level.

They have their new Honda four-door Civic, which just came out. And so these are the cars that everybody drives on the street. You fell asleep when you were younger with pictures of Lamborghini and Ferraris, uh, on the wall, but mom or dad took you in the carpool in a Honda or Toyota or uh, or a Mazda. And so those are the cars that race in touring, car racing.

Now, touring car in Europe is slightly different. B T C C, the [00:37:00] S T C C, and even the touring car stuff that happens in Italy and France, you see a lot more. The TT R stuff, you see a lot more hot hatches, right? With names like Ciro and then Renault and Volkswagen and, and Skoda and, and things like that. So yep, same, same but different.

There’s more cars available in Europe than there is here in those types of classes. British Train Cars a really cool series. I will say though, it’s a spec series. I mean, they’re all now basically using the same engine. There might be a few little variations, but it’s a spec series. You know, the B O P is very easy because if you’re all running basically the same powertrain, it makes it easy.

Uh, TCR is a very cool series. We actually tried it. The problem with TCR is the cars are relatively expensive to run and for us, You start looking at what a TCR costs versus a GT four car. And since uh, the SRO owns GT four worldwide, we created the class and we own it and tcr we have to pay [00:38:00] licensing fees on.

It just became apparent that as soon as the price point of TCR gets on top of GT four and it almost is, it just didn’t make any sense for us. So we let our license from. TCR laps. And again, I love TCR cars. They are badass, really cool cars. But we saw that our place in the world is entry level. So I call our T C A class the gateway drug.

If you’re someone that wants to go pro racing, you can go to many, you can go to Honda, you can go to Hyundai, you can uh, get a, one of the new Subaru B Zs. You can get one of those cars. You buy the car, it’s fully ready to go, ready, race, ready, and you go racing and you have all the, the cars well-engineered.

You have the tech support you need and you go racing. Again, it’s a relatively affordable way to go. Most parts you’ll ever need are at the racetrack with the, the brands doing it. You know, Hyundai and Honda both have engineering people on staff that come to all the races and do it, and [00:39:00] everything’s relative.

So TCA is, it’s a relatively cheap way to go. And then we had people that worked their way up through T C A to TC and tcx and you know, I look at the GT four field and now in the GT three field you have someone like Samantha Tan, an outstanding young woman racer. When I started at my job with the S R O, she was racing at Kia in T C a and then she moved her way up to GT four and a BM W and now this year she’s running a GT three, BM W and she’s running that both with us plus some of the international series.

That’s not uncommon to see someone when they’re starting their career run our TC and we teach them what it’s like to be a professional racer because we’re F I A sanctioned the license that we have and the races that we do allow them to build a resume with the F I A so they can race anywhere in the world.

It’s a good place to be in and, and one thing I’m proud of, you talked about all the cars in Europe. So what’s happened in the S R O world again, [00:40:00] Stefan Ell, who’s. The SR of the s r o saw what we were doing in the US with TC America. A couple people worked for them, said, Hey, let’s bring that concept to Europe, to France.

Last year for the first year, there was TC France. And so TC France is very similar, although I will say that their advantage in disadvantages. In Europe, there’s so many manufacturers that have had one make series. Like every manufacturer has a one make series. And so then what happens is those make series, they decide to do away with them.

So all of a sudden these people have cars and no place to run. So at TC Francis has done is they’ve taken those cars, they BPD ’em to basically a T C A level and a TC level. They’ve done B O P. So all those cars, those were no twins or you know, seasat and whatever those cars are, we’ve given them a place to run.

And so first year, and they averaged a little bit over 20 cars, a race, and it’s great racing. And it was at the front, it was. I [00:41:00] think it was a real fast Reno kind of semi TCR type car versus a BMW M two, similar to what we did, and it was just great racing. So that’s just kind of something I’m proud of, is they’ve taken TC America to the world and so we’re in France now.

There are some inquiries about other things. Our level of tcs, just a lot less expensive tcr. So Jim, it’s actually really great that you brought up all the other SRO series that are available, especially in Europe. And I’d like to remind our audience that if you’re interested in learning more about those, obviously check out the sro-motorsports.com website.

There’s also some great YouTube feeds and things like that, but I happen to catch most of those races on motorsport.tv, and so that’s how I stay plugged in with TC France and all those races, and they’re awesome. You can watch, you know, Reno Cleo’s running around Zolder and Belgium, it’s fantastic. You’re not gonna get that on ESPN eight, the OCHO or whatever, you know, whatever the latest, you know, subscription is that we need to have.

But Motorsport tv, if you wanna learn [00:42:00] more about touring car and see how it’s done around the globe, because there’s even Asia series and things like that, you can check it out there. I feel like T C A, that lower class in touring car might be the stepping stone for somebody that’s coming out of, let’s say Spec Miata or spec E 36 or something like that and want to move on to something else, would that be a great avenue into the S R O program for somebody that’s used to running a bmw, a boxer, a Miata, something like that?

Yes, definitely. If you could run upfront in something like a spec Miata, a little bit to the boxer, but I’m just gonna use Spec Miata because there’s so many of ’em. If you could run upfront and spec Miata, you could climb into one of our TCA cars, you’ll be in the top five pretty quickly just because all the skill sets that you learn in the lower club racing classes are all applicable to what you see on the pro level.

I will say though, if you think you’re gonna come in and and be on the [00:43:00] podium, the first race, no, it’s much tougher than people think it is. A level of competition is much tougher. When I owned my own race team back in the day, we would jokingly call these people the, uh, local heroes, local champions. They won every race at the track in a similar car, so they just think that they’re gonna get.

You know, just kill everybody. And you know, they don’t know me from Adam and you know, I’m not a MR of the epitome of health or anything. So, you know, even at that point I probably was carrying 20 pounds too many. And without fail, we’d smoke ’em just because, you know, you rise to the level of your competition.

In the TC America class, we have some of the best turn car racers out there, but even some like Kevin Bom, who’s leading the TC class right now, Kevin was a multi-time s e c a national champion and he came in and it took him half a season to get to the pointy end of our series. And [00:44:00] again, these are people that aren’t household names to anybody except other competitors in that field.

But you certainly learned great racecraft. Someone whose career I really enjoyed watching is Sally McNulty. Sally McNulty came in from the time attack world and she was very fast in time attack, uh, had, you know, one of these 600 horsepower Subarus and go out there and just run really fast. She came in and her first race, I remember watching her at Circling the Americas and going, oh my God.

Oh my God. Because she was, she went from a 600 horsepower car to a 200 horsepower car. Takes a lot more finesse. And I’m not gonna say skill, but it, the carry momentum through turns, it’s a different skillset. So, but now I look at Sally. She’s gonna be on the podium this year. She’s gonna be fighting for wins, thinks she’ll be fighting for the championship all year, but it’s taken her three years.

This is her third kind of full-time season with us. And so again, it, it’s a great place to [00:45:00] start. Again, there’re lots of people that have moved up and great place to start. So many of the GT four top teams came out of TC America. And I gotta add my little jab in here. I think the great equalizer is all these folks that have to come over and suddenly relearn how to drive, because now they’re in front wheel drive cars.

Not that there aren’t real wheel drive cars in touring car, but it is an entirely different animal when you get behind the wheel of a front wheel drive and they are asked to go fast. I, I just gotta say it. Yep. But that does lead us into kind of a sideways segue into a topic that I talked to Greg about on his episode, which was balance of power.

How do you level the playing field? These folks coming out of different other branches of local motor sport into touring car and suddenly are behind the wheel of a Hyundai, a Honda, Volkswagen, or something else, and go, how is this fair? How does this work? I wanna get your take on B O P, on the balance of power, balance of performance, blame other people.

I’ve heard a million different ways to [00:46:00] dissect this acronym. Get your feeling on that and what it means in the touring car arena. Yeah, so balance performance, as I call it, is very much misunderstood. What it really does is it gives every car an opportunity at one race or another to win. And the whole point of b O P is, as I say, the last race of the last lap.

We want the best teams with the best drivers to be fighting for the win no matter what car they’re in. Whether you have a Honda, whether you have a Hyundai, whether you have a mini, whether you have a Subaru in tca, whether you have a Honda, a Honda, a Mazda, and ttc, BMW and tc, they’re gonna change the weight of the car.

They change ride height. They change horsepower level. Cuz you know, I used to hate turbo cars as someone who competed against turbo cars. I used to hate them. Now I love turbo cars because with the turbo car, We [00:47:00] can give them whatever horsepower we want it. It’s like Honda h p d, they’ve done a great job.

We have five different horsepower settings and we could say, okay, for this track we need to use setting number two. And that’s because we know where the Honda’s fast, we know where it’s not fast, we know where its strengths are. It’s the same thing with the Hyundais. It’s the same thing with many, it’s a balance of how much horsepower we give them versus weight versus ride height, so that the potential lifetime potential per car ends up being very, very close.

It’s all data driven. I would like to say that Mr. Wizard goes in and finds the right settings, but it’s data driven. We know how each car accelerates. I talked about min speed earlier, so we know, uh, what the cornering speed is, depending on the type of corner for every car we play with, factors that affect all those horsepower.

Ride height and weight are the three biggest things. We just vary those to make sure that [00:48:00] no car has too much of an advantage or too much of a disadvantage at, at every race. Talked about front wheel drive. The challenge that we had previously was we always had to make front wheel drive cars a little faster than the rear-wheel drive cars because as the race went on, the front wheel drive cars would use up the tires, and so then it became.

Okay. If we don’t have any yellow flags, you know, last five laps, they’ll be perfect. Cause the rear world drive car will be a little faster, but it’s gotta get around the front wheel drive car. What’s happened was probably’s developed such a great tire now that that’s sort of gone out the window, uh, the degradation that we see is much less than it used to be.

So now it’s actually made Joe Wigan, who’s, uh, the guy that does b o P for us here in uh, TC America, has made his job a little bit easier cuz he doesn’t have to try to extrapolate how many yellow flags we’re gonna have and that sort of thing. To add another crazy element to b o p people and racers always think that I’m gonna get the best car and that, I mean, [00:49:00] I did the same thing when I was a younger racer.

I will say for the most part, that doesn’t exist anymore. The best car is who’s got the best support in the paddock, who has the best contingency program because our job as an organization is to make sure every car, uh, has an opportunity to win. So isn’t that where we see the convergence of the business side of this equation, kind of overriding the technological engineering side of it?

You talked earlier about Formula One and the heyday, and I look at the heyday of Formula One as the pre V 10 era where they all became basically the same car at that point. And I mentioned this to Greg when we spoke, you know, you had the six wheeled teel and the chaparrals of the fans underneath and all this crazy stuff where folks like Lotus were pushing the boundaries of engineering because they were breaking rules that didn’t exist.

And then suddenly rules were written to, to stop them from doing things. That’s the charm, that’s the allure. That’s the mystique behind racing is what new crazy thing are we gonna come up with next. And that trickles down to our road cars. So when I look at balance of [00:50:00] power, it makes for great television, but it doesn’t make for great racing.

Or does it? Well, I think it makes for great racing because you have a variety of cars going, you know, nose to nose, and I also think it highlights the driver. Everything you’re talking about highlights the engineer. So if you’re someone who likes. Absolute cutting edge engineering. Then the current Formula one is where it’s at.

And, and you know, I would say the craziest that I was experienced was a W E C in about 2015, uh, when as Porsche versus Audi Toyota was just starting to come in. And those cars were insane with the technology. But what happens is, you know, technology costs a lot of money and our whole. Focus for us is customer racing.

So we want it to be attainable, affordable, reliable, and we’ll give up some engineering in order to make it more accessible and [00:51:00] easier to drive. That’s one of the challenges, uh, that we’re working our way through with GT three. But a GT three car is very technological. Uh, so for a lot of drivers, if you didn’t grow up with the ground effects, car carve with a lot of arrow.

It becomes hard to drive because the faster you go, the higher the cornering speed because you have more down force. You can go around, pull more Gs in the corners. That doesn’t apply to TC America because we do have some aerodynamics, but it’s much, much less, our cars become much more accessible to drive where GT three car, the pros love it because it’s easy, it’s taken a while for the, uh, the ProAm drivers who have jobs outside of Motorsports to figure it out and, and they do.

The best ones do. But I think that’s why GT four is also so popular because the GT four cars are much less a dependent. So I don’t think I’m going to give you an answer that’s gonna satisfy you because, uh, again, I, I love the technology that I saw. [00:52:00] The Porsche prototype Car 2015 was just one of the most amazing cars I’ve ever seen.

But it got too expensive, and again, it was unsustainable. And we’re all about sustainable racing. We’re all about putting a race show together where as many people as possible can participate, and it’s just enjoyable for everybody. And there’s a reason Porsche and Audi are no longer running in w e C right now probably cuz it was getting too expensive, especially to be at the front.

Yeah. And even the, the new cars that are coming out because we’re gonna start seeing some of the, um, the hybrid systems back. But even the, the hybrid system is a one size fits all system. So whether it’s Porsche or whether it’s, uh, peo it’s the same hybrid system. So it’s not like in those crazy days when Audi was, uh, racing so hard against Porsche where they had completely different systems and different fuels.

You had Audi diesels running against Porsche with tiny. [00:53:00] Gasoline motors boosted the heck out of them with crazy hybrid systems. That’s all really fun until the bills all come due and then all of a sudden, you know, someone in, uh, Germany had to justify how much money they were spending. It’s just not sustainable.

Our whole business model is based upon sustainability means close competitive racing. It means the manufacturers understanding that they’re gonna have a fair fight, that we’re gonna make sure that they have an opportunity to win. And the manufacturers compete on customer support and customer service as much as they compete on everything on the racetrack.

It’s a completely different business model than I grew up on. It’s a much different business model than when I was at Mazda. I will say though, that everything I learned about customer racing at Mazda is applicable today. It’s just, it’s at a higher level than it was then. Although, I will say our, our RX eight program is, Pretty prototypical to what we’re now doing in the s r O world where you had customer cars all racing out there, all helping each [00:54:00] other.

So it’s a good business model, but it’s not quite as sexy as six wheel tear rolls, unfortunately. I don’t think there’s anything sexy about a six wheel tear. We can agree on that, that’s for sure. We may never agree on balance or performance, but we can agree on that. To bring the conversation back to, you know, the, the TC class and the, the small cars, we often joke on our drive through about small cars, like for example, the Chevy Spark, which, you know, a spoiler alert is finally on its way out.

I mean, we hear break fixer fans of small cars, especially front wheel drive, but we’ve asked many of our, the guests and, uh, other drivers during our pit stop, uh, portion of the the episodes, would you drive one? And the answer is generally a flat out resounding no, followed by an awkward pause and then.

But if it was BS spec, I would. And you had some involvement in BS spec racing, would you care to expand on that and talk about what you hoped the series would be? Yeah, yeah, [00:55:00] absolutely. So back in the day, Mazda was contacted by Honda about our grassroots program between the two companies. We were looking for a program that we can kind of do together.

And so at that point, the Mazda two was coming out. The Honda Fit had just come out in the automotive world. That’s the B segment. So the guys from H P D and the guys from Mazda sat down, Hey, why don’t we try to put together, uh, kits for these B segment cars and let’s go race them and let’s invite anybody who’s got a B segment car to come and join us and we’ll all see if we put the series together.

So that’s what we did. And we, uh, And Honda debuted it at the NASA 25 hour. These, uh, Mazda two versus Honda Fit, no BP had been done at that point, but we just wanted to do it. I still remember Simon Pow sneaking into the Honda Fit and just embarrassing everybody because you think you’re really good till someone like Simon [00:56:00] Pano gets into a, a Honda Fit.

And he was so much faster than anybody else. Always loved Pano because of just said he’s willing to get to a B spec car. But we ended up getting a bunch of manufacturers were all un interested. We did a B O P test at Gratton outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan. And the manufacturers were all totally transparent and we all just said, okay, this is it, blah, blah, blah.

And we created B Spec. We were just so excited about the class and ran a little bit of pro racing. World Challenge had it when I started T C B. We just loved the concept, cheap entry level, that whole thing, but it just kind of sat there. It wasn’t really widely accepted up until maybe four years ago, and all of a sudden people rediscovered.

Plus the cars got cheap. By this point you buy a, uh, You know, now a seven or eight year old Mazda two or Honda Fit, and all of a sudden the cars are cheap. Or you know, it was a Ford focus and, uh, the Minis came in and so you could [00:57:00] buy the cars pretty cheap and they are so fun to race because at that point they were factory engineered chassis.

You know, the, the suspension was all done by real engineers. We get back, and they’re not quite six year old te olds, but they were real engineers, uh, made sure that these cars had the ultimate performance for what they had, and they’re just an absolute blast to drive. So the B Spec class, honestly was created by the guys at H P D and the guys at Maza Motorsports looking for a way to work together for the better of motorsports.

And, uh, we create B specs. So at the runoffs, I think they have like 60 somethings runoffs license. Here. They had so many, and again, uh, John Dunan and I are texting each other. Well, it took a little while, but it was a good idea after all. Cause it’s like any good idea. Sometimes you question and a lot of my good ideas, it turned out to be not good ideas, but that one, it took a little while, but it, it turned into quite a success and it’s really fun to watch those guys.

And I was actually looking at some [00:58:00] S E C A data a few days ago and I b spec right the second, fourth, or fifth biggest class in scca. So it just shows that a fun, affordable car always will find a market eventually. Amen to that. So Jim, let’s talk a little bit about the future of touring car racing within sro.

What are some of your thoughts and your plans going forward? Right this very second? TC and T C A are both healthy classes. Brands are introducing second or third generation car built to the SRO rule set. So the challenge I have right now is building a new class, and that’s the TCX class, the the BMWM two, any BMW m, anything is the ultimate sedan, if it’s in that class A car.

So we built Tcx to be a place where. Brands that compete against the Bmwm two in the showroom, give them an opportunity to compete versus, uh, BMWM two on the racetrack. So Tcx, we’re trying to build the ultimate Tour car [00:59:00] Championship, and so far BMWs just had the race all to themselves. We have a big 9, 10, 11, 12 car, looks like a spec class, although I will say because I come from the retail automotive world, Being a district sales manager, I’d look at cross sale reports like crazy to determine who my customers are looking at and how to compete against that brand, that car.

So to me the BMW M two is a benchmark for every single sport sedan. So let’s get, uh, the best from Acura, Lexus, Mercedes, Cadillac, any of those cars should be competing versus e M two in Tcx. I think I have one brand that’s extremely close. Hopefully by the time this airs, there’ll be a second brand.

That’s my challenge, is to make it the ultimate turning car class where the best sports sedans and motorsports are the same best sports sedans competing in the showroom, cuz that just gives better justification [01:00:00] for manufacturers to build great cars for our customers to race. So Jim, any other shout outs, promotions, or things that you’d like to tell our audience that we didn’t cover in this episode so far?

Really excited for a new program, uh, that Toyota just announced as part of s r o Toyota has announced that they’re gonna run in 2023, the GR cup. And what the GR Cup initially is, and I’m not, I’m saying initially I can’t give you what it may even look like down the road. That’ll be up to Toyota to talk about.

But the GR Cup, it’s a single make series. It’s gonna run on SRO weekends. It’s all gonna be for the first period of time, GR 86 s. They’re developed and built by T R D. So T R D builds the cars, services the cars, sells the cars, and they’re gonna be doing sprint racing within the S R O race weekends next year.

So 2023, really excited. And for me personally, [01:01:00] I spent a good part of my life, we haven’t talked about it much, but the maser to Andy, the Maza Motorsports Ladders were programs put together that I was a big part of where we gave opportunities to young racers. And so when. Toyota contacted us a year ago about what they wanted to do.

I was so wanting it. I wanted the program so badly. Obviously, there’s other groups that wanted the program too, but from my perspective, it’s a program that lets me take everything I’ve learned in my career and put it into a great series. The whole focus is giving young drivers a place to race. Toyota’s putting good prize money in every aspect of TRDs involved in this.

So the, the, the people that are involved in recruiting and finding the next talent, Jack Irving, this is their baby, and that they’ve trusted us at the s r o to help them manage this. Just a huge program for us and just [01:02:00] really excited to be a part of it. And again, I feel like, uh, my whole life has led up to, uh, creating another series.

I did create the Mazda X five Cup back in the day. That was my project. Helped Mazda take over the Atlantic Series back in the day where we took it over from Toyota. Again, Dean and John Dunan and I were all working really hard together on both the Motorsports Ladder. So, so now a new chapter with Toyota.

I’m just so excited for the new program. You know, the information’s coming out in little spurts, so, uh, either come to the SRO website or go tot r d website. We’ll have a ton of information on buying the cars. If this is the first time you heard of it, I would be contacting Mike at t r D immediately because, uh, the biggest problems, I think there’s gonna be a bigger demand for these cars.

Uh, then availability. So, uh, if this interests you, then reach out to the guys at T R d immediately. Go to the T R D website, get your deposit in on one of ’em. It’s gonna be a great series. It’s been [01:03:00] fun working with Toyota and the T R D people because they figured out who the S R O is their involvement with emsa, nascar.

They understood those programs really, really well, but they really didn’t really know about the S R O when they super came out and was successful in GT four and they sold a bunch of cars over in the s R o. They all of a sudden got excited about it and that’s led us to the position now where we were selected to help them with their, uh, GR program.

This is who, uh, the s r O is. These are the opportunities, but you know, IMSA’s a fantastic place to race for many people, E S A is better than we are, just depending on what your objectives are. We’ve carved out a really nice spot for us in the motorsports world, a growing spot. The same can be said about W E C and S A too, even though there’s a weird marriage going on there too.

If you’re an imsa, people will go, well, wcs better than nimsa, so, but they’re all stepping [01:04:00] stones. Yeah. It depends on, yeah, where you want to go as a driver, right, at the end of the day. So, yeah, I think, I think some of that stuff is irrelevant. If you’re a fan of GT and prototype racing, all three of the series combined makes sense because that’s where all the action is, right?

There’s nothing else, like multi-class racing. I’m disillusioned with Formula One. I’m still a diehard WRC fan, but I’m like the only person, right? I think in the dmv that’s a rally fan, so whatever, I’ll leave it where it is, at least in our organization. I know I’m the only one, but when it comes down to it, I’ve personally converted a lot of people that were either NASCAR fans, IndyCar fans, or Formula One fans.

I’m like, you need to come check out GT Racing. And they see their first Rolex or whatever it is, and they’re like, I didn’t know this was a thing. And I’m like, you didn’t know this was a thing. It’s been around for like 60 years. Where have you been? Well, it, I, it’s enthusiasm from you and people like you and these podcasts.

We’ll educate the fans and Absolutely. I, I think all of Motorsports [01:05:00] right now is really seeing surprising growth. I, I mean, I look at. The, uh, number of spectators and EMS has been getting a number of spectators in our events so far this year has been significantly higher. You know, you always wish you had the magic button for why it’s gotten so much better.

Yeah. You know what I attribute it to? It’s two things. It’s, one is accessibility, which you cannot get anywhere else anymore unless you’re going to like World of Outlaws or something like that. You can’t get in the paddock, you can’t meet drivers, you can’t get close to the cars and anything else but GT or prototype racing.

It’s just, it is what it is. One of my favorite stories since I took over this job, it was in our paddock at Road America. There was just a family wa looking at the TC cars as they were lining up ready to go, and a mom is saying to her daughter, look, they’re racing our car. You know, they drove to the track in a Honda Civic and there was a Honda Civic ready to go on the racetrack.

And [01:06:00] just to see probably a five-year-old young girl’s eyes just wide open. That’s mommy’s car that’s racing. Yeah, exactly. And so it’s accessibility at both levels. It’s it’s accessibility that the paddocks are wide open, that you could talk to drivers, talk to teams, talk to mechanics. It’s also the accessibility, especially in TC America, of course, that we’re racing the cars that everybody drives.

So I say in our paddock, you have the dream cars that everyone always dreamed of driving the Lamborghinis, Ferrari. Yeah. Portions. But you also have the cars that everyone drives. The Hyundai, the Mazda, the Honda. And I think the second part of it, well, let’s put cost and all that kind of stuff aside. You said it best, it’s the circus part.

It’s that spectacle of racing that you go to an F1 race and there’s like this Olympic village that they create, right? And you’re like, eh. But everything’s super pricey and out of reach and you know, you’re like, okay, well, I’ll buy the, it’s bougie. It’s bougie. Yeah. I guess I’ll buy the new cleric polo, but it’s like $900 and you’re like, you don’t wanna do that.

It’s harder [01:07:00] to be a fan of a driver in GT racing, cuz you’re not sure, is it Rob Holland? Is it Andy Pilgrim? Is it this is it that, who is it? But you go Ferrari Mini B BMW Porsche, you can associate with that. Right? Again, that accessibility. But there’s still that spectacle. You’ve been to Petite Lamont’s, you’ve been to Sail.

There’s always that village. There’s the games, there’s that whole family field to it that doesn’t exist at an F1 race or a NASCAR race anymore. When you look at who did it right. Uh, I think everybody’s still trying to emulate I a, because they’ve got the formula down, they’re able to repeat it everywhere they go.

And I thought it was really telling Matt Martelli, he runs the Mint 400, which was originally the oldest off-road race in the us older than Baja, all that kind stuff. So they took that over and when I met with him, he greets me and he’s like, so what do you think? I’m like, wow, this is the only other race I’ve been to that feels super familiar.

And he, and he’s like, and, and I’m like, I feel like I’m at an IMSA race. And he goes, we [01:08:00] did that on purpose. What? And he goes, yeah, we copied a lot of what they do because we see that the type of pull they have and the audience that they built. And so when you go to the mid 400, these off-road races, you’re like, this is eerily familiar.

Right? And I think you guys are working towards that. But as that builds out, I think s r O will become more of a household name. And I will say the crazy thing as an organization right now is, uh, Valentino Rossi’s running our, our World Challenge in Europe. And that’s taken a whole new level of engagement.

And I know Swan and bad. So, and again, dins a good friend, but that Ross’s running with us and that we’re running the series, I’m very. You know, I’m competitive too, so Nice. Love you, John. But, but I’m very happy that we have Rossi in the GR series, so we’re, we’re happy you have Rossi too. This season, we’ll see more than a hundred races run under the SRO Motorsports group banner.

And you can follow all the racing action by visiting [01:09:00] www.sromotorsports.comortakingashortcuttogtamerica.us. Be sure to follow them on social media at GT America. On Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook and at GT World on YouTube. If you have questions about touring car, what it’s about, how to get involved or drive in the series, be sure to reach out to Jim Jim dot Jordan sro motorsports.com.

And remember, all of this information will be posted alongside this episode in our follow on article on gt motorsports.org. Well, Jim, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show and telling us about your corner of the motorsports world, and we wish you the best of luck as you continue to grow out the TC America Program under the SRO Motorsports banner.

Also, we will be seeing you on site this year at several of the SRO races. So for our audience out there, look for more from us and from Jim Jordan as we visit with him at [01:10:00] these SRO events. And if you wanna come and check them out as well, be sure to check out the calendar on SRO Motorsports. Thank you.

Had a absolute pleasure. Great time. Thanks. Thanks, Jim.

The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their partners at aws CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School. Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.comortakeashortcuttogtamerica.us and be sure to follow them on social at Gt underscore America on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook and catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT World.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. [01:11:00] 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 crew chief gt motorsports.org.

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