MaxSpeed Track Days

Phil Ingalls and Brendon Blake - President and CEO, Co-Founders for MaxSpeed Track Days

Smaller Run Groups, Less Traffic, More Quality Track Time! - “Experience the MaxSpeed Difference.”

Contact: Phil Ingalls and Brendon Blake at maxspeedtrackdays@gmail.com | N/A | Visit Online!

         

• Who/When/Where is MaxSpeed Track Days (MSTD)? What is “the MaxSpeed Difference”? 

• What is the MaxSpeed HPDE program like? What expectations should a new student have coming into the classroom for the first time? How do you become a coach for MSTD?

• How do you learn more, and register for MSTD events?

• MaxSpeed Rewards, Apex Pro and the MaxSpeed Garage Club

• Track-Day Prep, COVID Rules, Advice for 1st timers and more!

• Get on the MSTD mailing list!

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts, but we’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we want to share our stories with you. Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast, Brake Fix.

Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. I wanted to give you a heads up before we head into this episode that we did have some technical issues with the audio. We’ve done our best to make corrections so that it’s easier to listen to, but unfortunately, you know, there’s always challenges with internet connection, the different systems that people are using, the audio quality.

So please, by all means, sit back and enjoy this episode. The content in it is amazing, but our apologies for the quality right up front.

Smaller run groups, less traffic, more quality track time. Experience the MaxSpeed difference. MaxSpeed [00:01:00] Track Days delivers on those elements with great southeastern venues, stellar customer service.

as well as the curriculum and coaching to enhance anyone’s high speed driving skills.

That’s right, Brad. And with us tonight is Phil Engels, president and CEO of Max Speed Trackdays, along with his co founder, Brendan Blake, to explain how their program works.

And as always, I’m

your host, Brad, and I’m Eric.

So let’s roll. Welcome to the show. Phil and Brendan.

Hey guys.

So let’s get into it. Tell us all about max speed, the who, the what, the where, the when people want to know what it’s all about. So how did you guys get started? Where’d the name come from?

Well, the name came well after the concept, put it to you that way.

In 2017, I had an injury and Brendan Blake is a physical therapist. He owns a couple of practices here in North Georgia. And ended up in his physical therapy office. Having him work on my knee and I’m sitting there on the table. He’s working on things and he’s got all these pictures of cars on racetracks [00:02:00] and way back in my youth.

I’ve not been on something with a motor and wheels since I was a child, but I used to race motorcycles late teens, early twenties, and then I got into a law enforcement career and that’s not conducive to support a racing career. So anyway, long story short, I ended up on his table. I’m looking at all these cars and racetracks in his office.

And I said, Hey, Doc, is this you? And he said, yeah, I said, do you race? He says, no, I just do track days. And I kind of vaguely remember doing some track days when I was younger after I got out of racing. I was like, okay, we got to talk. Next thing you know, he invites me to a track day. He says, look, me and my buddy’s gonna be at a track, I think it was a week away or two weeks away.

He said, come on out, it’s at Road Atlanta, hang out, tell me what you think. I showed up, and of course, having been in racing and involved in motorsports back in the day, as soon as I showed up at the racetrack and the community and the sights, the sounds, the smells, the fuel, the burning rubber, all of that stuff.

I go back home and my wife says, Hey, how was it? What’d [00:03:00] you think? I said, shook my head. I said, I’m screwed. I’m going to have to buy a Miata and build a track. Like most good wives. She rolls her eyes at me. And just says, okay, baby, whatever. And walks away. This is November of 2017. Come Christmas. She buys me a helmet and racing gloves.

And he says, Hey, why don’t you be happy? Go do what you got to do by January of 2018. I had a Miata by March or April of 2018. I went to my first track night in America at AM. I’ve just dove in headfirst. I went and did a few more track days. And then that summer, July or August 2018, I’m at Road Atlanta doing a track day.

Brendan is there with me, and he’s up a group. He’s, he’s an intermediate or something. I’m an assistant instructor that morning. A couple sessions, the instructor cut me loose, so. That afternoon, the organizer allowed Brendan to pump down in the novice, because we have basically identically prepared. [00:04:00] We just chased each other around the track.

It was probably the most fun I’d ever had. And then that afternoon, we’re sitting there in the paddock, feet propped up. He said, what are you gonna do when you retire? And I said, I have no idea. And was legitimately thinking about starting a septic tank pumping company. But you know what the joke is that right on that one.

So. Anyway, he looks at me and he says, you ought to start a track day company. And I made the move. My wife did. I rolled my eyes and I laughed and I was like, okay, whatever. But I could not get the idea out of my head. So

I see that much like Brad, Brendan is probably the same. Silent partner in this and in a lot of cases,

I’ve been itching to tell like my version of the story.

I’m just waiting for just a break.

Well,

I

figured I’d

give you

that break. So let’s

hear

it.

So the way that the story goes is we’re sitting, we’re talking about the track day and he mentions a septic idea. And then I just had to take it and say, Phil, that’s [00:05:00] a crappy idea. I mean, how’s the next day? So if you’re passionate about something, you’re rolling customer service, organized events to where the person feels like they get a lot of bang for their buck, and you appreciate the people who are spending money with you, it’s going to be a home run.

If we focus on trying to incorporate what some of the driving schools teach us, Trying to incorporate it into an HPD event, then it only makes sense to try and bring up a quality, like, company out of this. It can’t grow into a space just to offer some more people time on track. And the idea just birthed out, and it’s been on fire.

Wrote a business plan, put it all together, had an idea of how many track days we’d do in year one, two. Three and so technically this was a concept two and a half years ago. So I started doing some research and did some due diligence and, and, and just, you know, looking at what all was involved. Is it viable?

Can I make it happen? Running a track date company supplement. [00:06:00] my retirement income was longer. About a month in L. S. C. Was formed.

I’ve out that you’re very close guests of the show. You’r Peters from H. P. D. E. J a little bit of credit fo this madness.

I was gonna end of this thing. I won’t It’s to experience every type of track day that’s out there.

I just passed ideas off of him. I’m like, Hey, what do you like about this group? What do you not like about that group? What makes you tick when you’re on track? Not just with Dave, but with, I tapped as many people as I could. I spent a lot of time with the Ron Z of discovery parts in his trailer at Rhode Atlanta, at NASA events and at other race events, his brain and figuring out how can we make, The very best track day company, period.

The best one that we can make. How can we do that? We held our first event in August of 2019.

Within

one year, we were on the track. And we held our January [00:07:00] event this year at Roebling Road. It just kind of exploded from there. There was a lot of buzz in the community, social media took off. Just last weekend, we hosted at Carolina Motorsports Park and we sold out our first event.

Congratulations! That’s four events in for MaxSpeed and our first sold out event. And based on what I’m seeing coming up April, we go back to Carolina Motorsports Park in mid April. It looks like it’ll be sold out as well. The name came from, I didn’t want it to be a name, one of our names, anybody’s name.

I just wanted it to be something that immediately when you heard the name, there was no doubt about what was going on. There was no such thing as maxretrackdays. com. So I thought I was lucky in landing that. That’s the genesis.

It’s always funny that company names are often decided by what domain is available compared to the names that we’re used to here in the DMV max speed is going to be new to a lot of our listeners and a lot of the people tuning in here for the first time, you guys are probably one of the newest, if not the newest [00:08:00] HPDE facilitator on the East coast.

So what have you guys learned from the other groups you’ve been to? And how did you turn that into quote unquote, the max speed difference?

As Brennan was saying, the, the customer service aspect, we do a few things differently than other groups and you know, I know one of the things that we do that I’m serious about is we limit attendance.

You can only have comfortably X amount of cars on any given track, and people feel comfortable, make passing easy, don’t have a whole lot of trains holding people up because everybody’s there to go fast. Everybody wants to try to put down a good lap and, and see what they can do. And you can’t do it in traffic.

So number one, we limit attendance. We simply just, we will not oversell a run group. That’s the smaller run groups, less traffic, more quality track time deal. That’s what you get when you come with us. The customer service and hospitality aspect is the best we can provide at all levels. What I call touch points.

Any interaction that somebody has with MaxSpeedTrackDays, whether it’s how quickly and how professionally an email gets answered, or [00:09:00] what happens from the moment that they show up at the track to go to driver check in, how they’re greeted, how well we’re organized. That’s I will say we’re actually just a family business.

It’s me, my wife, him, his wife, his daughter, behind the table, taking care of our customers. And we’re going to treat our customers the very best we can. One of the things that I loved when I first started going to track days, And the thing I noticed when I went to visit and hung out is he had friends that were driving, but there were plenty of people that weren’t driving that were just hanging out and everybody shooting the breeze, having a good time talking about cars, walking around the paddock, that community and camaraderie that is naturally interwoven into the car hobby and or racing or or all of that in general is, Is great.

So, since it’s a social hobby, we wanted to foster that at our events. If you go to most events, there’s all these little clicks around the paddock. There’s these little groups. They get together as a Mustang club over there. There’s a Corvette club over there. There’s some Porsche guys over there or [00:10:00] whatever.

We just got groups of friends. What we wanted to do was bring all of those people together into 1 place. So, in all of our events, We have a hospitality. It does a couple of things for us as organizers to if anybody has an issue, they don’t handle it in the paddock. They bring it to us. We will then deal with it.

He he or I will go handle the situation or send 1 of our instructors to handle the situation, but we want all the contact to come through us. So we give them a central place to do that. You make that place inviting and it has a woman’s touch on it. My wife is the 1 kind of decorates in there, but we literally roll out.

Open up tables have bun double burner coffee pot going for morning drivers meeting with pastries out and, uh, snacks and refreshments all day long. And that’s just where we want people to come. And that’s tends to be what happens. Everybody comes there and hangs out and shoots the breeze between their sessions.

So, that’s 1 of the things where another thing that we do different and, uh, and then Saturday evening, we have a social. So we just got a couple [00:11:00] of big coolers of beer and invite everybody into and it’s all it is. It’s complimentary. That’s part of the maximum difference. Nobody pays for snacks and pastries and coffee and waters and coats and whatever.

It’s all part of the experience and why you come to us

while you guys are down in Georgia. Does that make road Atlanta your home track? What do you call home

is in our backyard? And I mean, literally right now. If there were cars running on the track, we could open up our shop door and you could hear him.

So our garage club is located less than a mile from road. And of course, he’s probably got more laps there simply because he lives right around the corner as well. We got our start at road because if you’re a brand new track day company, and you don’t have any money.

You go where you can afford,

you go where you can afford to put on an event.

And, uh, so we, we went there. That was our first one, not a moneymaker, but a good proof of concept. We kind of knew going in, we weren’t going to make any money off this. And then it’s, it’s just, you know, let’s see if we can make it happen and do it safely and have everybody [00:12:00] have a good time. And so that was a great proof of concept.

We like to think that any track that we go to is going to be our home track for the weekend. We like to invite our friends and track day family to the event. Just like you didn’t invite your friends and family into your home.

Brendan having a lot more track experience than Phil has. Do you have a favorite track?

Is there a track that, you know, you would go to time and time again, and let’s expand on that a little bit. Is there a bucket list track that you want to go to?

I have a question. With Road Atlanta being right here, there’s a character to Road Atlanta that’s just purely exciting. Every time you drive there, you’re learning something new.

Every time you go, you’re trying to accomplish something different. And there’s a smile that’s just a little bit extra whenever you’ve spent some time there. Every track that I’ve gone to, it’s now a challenge to try to improve our times. And I’m sure that we’re going to talk about the Apex Pro here in just a little bit.

Every track that You and I want to talk to you. There’s some drooling that goes on. There’s something exciting about every [00:13:00] corner. There’s something exciting about trying to learn something new. At Road Atlanta, it’s just exceptional. It’s funny, having been

on motorcycles at Road Atlanta when I was younger, and I talked to people that, like, say, is there a bucket list track?

Or one that’s their destination track. They went from there and they always talk about it was kind of scary, all the elevation and there’s all this concrete and to me, I don’t even think about that because that’s been the place that I’ve been on more than any other track in my life. I love it. I mean, everything about that track makes me happy.

Like he said, we’re competitive. Imagine that people would go to the track and their cars are competitive. Purposely as we built them over the past, or as I built mine and he’s built, he has them going, we’ve kept them as close as possible mechanically so that when we put them on the track, we’re testing who who’s, who’s better that day.

Yeah. So basically if you’re slow that day, it’s on you. It’s not on the car. So it’s always the car’s fault. Always, always, you know, you had slightly stupid

[00:14:00] tires.

Yeah, he’s always a little more tread than the other guy, right? Maybe slower rolling resistance and all that, but you know, it’s really funny that everybody we’ve talked to so far that’s from the South or from the Southeast, you know, the bucket list tracks they talk about much to your point about Road Atlanta being a bucket list for folks like us and we have gone down there and we hope to return soon.

We always get the I really want to go to Watkins Glen and we’re like, Dude, I’ve been to walk in stud like a thousand times. It’s not that big of a

deal. Because you’re naive when you start a track day company, you think you’re going to get a whole lot of track time. No, you’re going to give a whole lot of people track time.

Honestly, our events Sunday afternoon, when people start packing up, and then generally we get a couple of good sessions on Sunday afternoon. That’s kind of about it. So we have to visit other people’s events. The things I told him early on, as I said, I would love for us to be in a place at some point where we can pack up the trailers and just take our cars to Laguna Seca.

I mean, make two week trip out of it and go drive out there. There’s there’s so many tracks. There’s one up the Pacific Northwest. I want to drive and of course. Oh, yeah. [00:15:00] And

that’s always a surprising 1. I’m like. Georgia to V. I. R. Is it really that far? I mean, it’s not that

far. Um, I don’t just want to drive there.

I want to host there. So, yeah,

but you know, going back to your point about hosting though, it’s kind of like the old saying, right? The most miserable person at any party is the guy that’s throwing it. Something to be said about that.

Yeah.

I wanted to talk about your footprint. So we’ve have heard a couple of the names of the tracks.

That you guys go, but like how far north do you go? How far west? How far south do you do anything in Florida? What’s max speed footprint for track days?

It’s growing . Right now we’ve only hosted at Rowland Road and CMP. Literally received the contract today for Road Atlanta, and I have. And we’re waiting dates and contracts from Barber Motorsports Park and National Corvette Museum Motorsports Park.

There was a lot of interest at this last event because we had the racing for ALS driver Scott Lloyd there. He likes [00:16:00] to run at the hour a lot and apparently a lot of people that know him like to run at the hour. So everybody says, Yeah, that’s on the radar. I hadn’t reached out to him yet because I’ve been, I mean, literally, we got back, we just unloaded my trailer this evening before starting this podcast.

So just got the car out of the trailer and back in the shop today. I’m overwhelmed and excited and happy that we have, uh. So

we talked about, you know, where you guys came from and humble beginnings and all this and things are still have that new car smell. So let’s talk about your guys D. E. program and expectations that a new patron of max speed would expect when they get there or even veterans from other organizations coming in.

What’s it like at a max speed event?

We’ve learned from every event we put on. Like I said early on, I will listen to anybody who has something to tell me it has to do with the driver education industry, period. I don’t care who they are, what piece of input they have, I’ll listen. But we’ve learned through going to events, [00:17:00] hosting events, and then some of the connections in the industry, we’ve completely revamped our DE program from what it was two and a half years ago.

Our DE program starts early with students receiving the Max Speed Novice Playbook. And this is 2 to 3 weeks before an event. The novice playbook, it’s a short study guide. It’s just a few pages long, but it helps them prepare before they arrive at the track and includes a knowledge check that they have to complete and turn in when they come to their 1st classroom session.

It covers everything from vehicle, and safety flags, corner stations, safe passing and point buys as well as a little bit about the tire contact patch. And how that changes the inputs to the vehicle and writing that and I didn’t do it by myself. I bounced that off of several people that I got connected with through the instructor summit.

1 of them drew reigns over an apex probe. Very helpful in helping me craft the novice playbook and the goal is. To improve safety for everybody at the track when [00:18:00] you think about showing up at a racetrack going through a half hour, 40 minute classroom session and now you’re strapping into a car with an instructor to go however fast your car can go.

It’s overwhelming. There’s a lot of information, a lot of new terms that they have to learn. And so sending them that information 2 weeks early and give them something to study. It brings them in well prepared and we found this out because I’ve totally revamped curriculum was just unveiled last weekend at CMV.

And I had great feedback from instructors and students about the program. So that’s where we begin with us. Like I said, it’s heavily influenced and draws upon decades of knowledge brought together from the instructor summit and their new, it was just released the HB curriculum about a month ago, I guess.

As soon as it was released, I started completely rewriting our knowledge group. Part of my law enforcement career, I’ve been teaching multiple disciplines since the mid 90s. Whether it’s firearms, defensive tactics, driving, EVOC, emergency vehicle operations courses. So, I’ve been [00:19:00] teaching adult students most of my adult life.

Teaching driving is just a, you know, it’s just a new lesson plan.

Since you guys are owner operator, does that mean you’re also the classroom instructors, as well as the CIs?

Currently the classroom instructor, and I guess you would call me the CI as well. As a coordinator of our instructor cadre, I introduce the students to them.

At that time, I do an e introduction between the students and instructors, the novice playbook. That way they can talk to their instructor for a couple weeks before they show up at the track, kind of get to know them. If there’s personality conflicts that come out, we can get ahead of that and reassign somebody before they come to the track.

One reason I act as our chief instructor and instructional instructor right now is because we haven’t found somebody that can commit to our schedule yet. If I can find somebody that can commit to the MaxSpeed schedule, we can wrap their head around the whole customer service aspect that we’re trying to provide.

If it’s the right person, then I will gladly give up that duty to somebody else that’s been doing HP instruction longer. So I [00:20:00] can go out and make the rounds through the paddock and be face to face with our customers more. Absolutely.

You say you can have a sold out event and you limit the amount of people on track and the different run groups and everything.

How many students do you usually have? And what’s the student to instructor ratio?

10 to 15 students is where I cap it at. And that’s determined. A, on how many instructors I’m going to have, because for most DE groups, that’s probably the hardest thing is to make sure that they can get a good cadre of instructors that will come to their events on a regular basis.

We have a 1 to 1 student instructor ratio and generally 3 to 5 additional instructors that are just surplus. And so having a surplus is great because you inevitably need 1 that has to give somebody a check ride to advance or, or come to you and say, hey, this guy in that car did something super stupid in this turn or on that straight away.

And then we have to go have that talk with somebody then to confirm whether or not it was safe or unsafe. [00:21:00] We’ll put an instruction to receive and then deal with whatever happens after that, whether it’s a run group demotion or what have you. That’s, you know, always a touchy subject, but. It has happened in our events and at the end of the weekend, the person that got demoted was actually thanking us for giving him an instructor and making his weekend more fun.

So if we can accomplish that demoting somebody, then we’re pretty happy about it. And he became a safer driver. Yes, absolutely.

That’s going to lead me into my next question about the progression model. You know, a novice student comes out. How do they progress through the different run groups? Up to ultimately advance and maybe even becoming an instructor themselves.

We only run three run groups and that allows us to give everybody access to a lot more track time than most of the DE organizations out there. Well, the novice group that we have includes both novice solo and novice students that go out in the same group. We have an intermediate and advanced group. So with our three run groups.[00:22:00]

I’m currently working on putting together an intermediate and an advanced playbook as well, so that drivers coming in have something to manage their expectations. What is expected of them to advance from novice to intermediate? And then from intermediate to advanced, it all focuses around awareness and safety and individual driver technique and skill.

But the awareness is the biggest differentiating factor between which run group you’re going to be in, in your management of traffic.

Just me jumping in here, Phil, I think 1 of the keys here is that we’re very careful with who we actually allow into the different wrong groups. So it starts with your selection process and just really vetting them and just making sure that they belong in the right group.

So that makes it easier. And then we have several of the instructors that we trust that will go and do a check off flight and that’s then say, yes, they can agree like to go on to the next one.

You talked earlier about limiting the size of the run groups and of the event itself. Do you figure that [00:23:00] size out by the ratio of cars per mile?

Do you have some other way of determining or do you just have a fixed number and say, hey, We want 20 novices and we’re happy with 20. How do you keep your run

group small? It does go somewhat by the length of the track and also the configuration. So at Roebling road, which is 1. 54 miles or something, we want that to 30 people per run group, period, novices, medium, and experienced.

At CMP, we were at 35 per run group of being 2. 24 mile track. At DIR, we might allow as many as 40. You know, I don’t think I would put any more than that on any track anywhere. That would be my limit. But it is based on track length and configuration. you have some tracks at amp. Atlanta Motorsports Park.

It’s a great track. You can’t put more than 30 people on there. It’s just too technical. There’s not enough long passing zones. And so we would limit that to 30 people as well. Gotcha.

So in addition to that, you’ve got the coaches peppered throughout the three different run groups. They can run wherever they like.

Yeah, our instructors can run in any group that they want [00:24:00] to, but I’ve yet to have an instructor hold up traffic. Yeah, I’m going to have an instructor, you know, somebody come over and go, Hey, that instructor was holding me up all.

Yeah, I guess this question goes back to earlier about, you know, students and instructors.

Is there anything right now that we should know about with respect to this post code would world any special rules or anything like that?

We don’t enforce rules any stricter than whatever region or state or county that we’re hosting in. And it’s changed from county to county, but our overall.

Recommendation is that our attendees assess their own level level risk, follow CDC guidelines. We provide these guidelines with our information packets prior to the events and any venue specific guidance on COVID is relayed with our final pre event email to our customers. We do and have since we did our first COVID affected event, I guess we kind of got lucky because we only had one event on the books in 2020 and it was in August and it was [00:25:00] at in June.

The governor here kind of opened up the state and local places to do what you think is right in your particular county. We were able to get through that pretty unscathed and host an event in August at road and road. We did have sanitizing stations in various places. So we put out hand sanitizer and instead of like, in our 1st event, when we had coffee and pastries, we actually went and got donuts from Dr donuts and they were fresh.

Everything was prepackaged, um, and it has continued to stay prepackaged for multiple reasons. We found that it was easier that way too, but it’s safer and cleaner, you know, we’d also like food that people can start with this prepackaged. Hand sanitizing, recommending masks, if you can’t maintain social distance, if you’re indoors, especially as far as the instructors and students, they can determine what, what level of risk you have with a full face helmet on sitting next next to somebody in a car.

So, we don’t do lead follow and I just wouldn’t do it just based on my experience with what I said, the instructor [00:26:00] summit and knowing and bouncing ideas off so many instructors, especially some that were forced to do lead follow in some organizations. And then they come back from it and they realize, well, that student didn’t quite get as much quality information and coaching as he could have if he’d had a new structure in the car and could affect safety and it’s not something that we want to do.

We want it. We want to get as possible. So we’re going to do in car and I think we’re getting really close to having enough vaccine in this country for everybody. So hopefully it will be behind us by summertime and we can all go back to enjoying our hobby the way we used to.

We talked about instructing a little bit and the DE program so far, you know, both Brad and I are coaches.

We’ve gone through a multitude of different certification processes, et cetera. So we’re always interested and we’re always asking on the behalf of all of our friends that are coaches, what’s it like to coach with max speed? What are you looking for in a coach? What are the requirements to come to you guys for the first time and say, Hey, I’ve been to road Atlanta 10 times.

Can I come coach for you? What’s involved in that process? [00:27:00]

Like I said earlier, I got invited to go to the instructor summit. I drove around the expo, or actually he introduced me to Eric Meyer and then, you know, that community is once you get in there, and I actually went to the instructor summit in December of 2019 here at Atlanta and a whole lot of the other principles of different companies here in the Southeast as well as.

Awesome instructors with some that I’ve known from coming up through the DE ranks myself, and then I really wrap my arms around the instructor summit and the information they provide because I’m kind of like a sponge. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll learn anything from anywhere. So, as part of that process, Brendan and I have both started our MSF Level 1 goal to become MSF Level 2 certified.

And then ultimately, I’m working with the Scott Elkins right now about getting max speed certified to run our own MSF Level 2 instructor curriculum course so that we can bring people from novice to intermediate to advanced and then [00:28:00] straight on into instructing should they desire to do that.

Everything’s based on information brought down from the instructor summit. As far as people coming to instruct with us. If they got an instructor certification from another Organization, if it’s PCA or BMW, or NASA, SCCA, whatever, if they’ve got something like that from another organization, we’ll allow them to instruct for us.

I know some people that don’t have instructor certification that are competitive racers and have competition licenses. that are probably better at relaying that information to some of the instructors, I know. So we do have some competitive racers that also assist with our instruction.

Very cool. Well, that’s good to know.

And it’s always nice to have reciprocity because a lot of us as coaches do invest time in going through these certification processes. So we want to make sure that they’re accepted in other places. And obviously, you know, nationally recognized programs like NASA and SCCA, they carry a lot of weight, you know, along with Uh, all the other ones that are out there.

So that’s good to know. I’m happy to know that you guys are welcoming us with open arms. [00:29:00]

So if I’m ready to come out to a track day and I want to come drive with max speed, how do I do that? Where do I find you all? How do I find your calendar? Obviously HPD junkie. I’m sure. Well, are there other places, your website and things like that?

And then how do I register?

I would say the best way to find us is by visiting our website, speedtrackdays. com. If you go there, the very first thing you’ll see on the homepage is a register for events button. Click it, it drops you down to our events calendar. Once you’re there, each event has a description, how much it’s going to cost, where it’s going to be, the date, time, etc.

And once you click register here, that takes you to clubregistration. net, which is who we use for our registration platform. We also list events on motorsports. They allow, of course, the calendar listing, even if you don’t use their registration services. So we’re, and then HPDEjump. com has virtually every track in North America.

So I’m just there as well.

So you mentioned you’ve got three run groups. So what does that equate to [00:30:00] for average session length? What’s the average weekend or day cost? And then I guess the dollars per session, dollars per track time. How’s that all play out?

At all of our events, our current full weekend events.

We’re supposed to have access to six hours of track time over the weekend. It’s a lot of track. Most, most people don’t hang out for the second half of Sunday. But yeah, so everybody gets six 30 minute run sessions or run group sessions per day. They’re spaced out with three run groups for, so you run for 30 minutes, you get an hour to chill out and relax, and then you’re back on the track for 30 minutes.

Total cost for our most recent event at CMP was $450, and uh, that’s a full weekend. That equals a per session price of 37 50 or a buck 25 a minute, which we kind of think is pretty great value for our customers tracking dollars.

I think that’s the most accurate breakdown we’ve ever gotten on the show.

So thank you for that.

I was like, that’s also the lengthiest amount of track time for a weekend as well. That is very true. [00:31:00] Six hours is a lot of track time. It’s definitely the longest we’ve heard. It’s part of, it’s on our website

too, all of these things that we put out into the public space, whether it’s through social media or on our website or whatever, our goal is to provide the very best track time and driver education in the HPD industry, period.

And we’re young and new, but that is our goal. Every day. Brendan is invaluable as an advisor in a business mind. The fact that we started 2. 5 years ago, and we’ve only run 4 events. I’m always looking three years down the road. Where do we position ourselves in the market so that we can give our service?

We like thinking we provide a service and we’re privileged to be able to do it. So bring these people together, give them a good safe environment to go out and enjoy the racetrack. And then on top of that, encourage that camaraderie and that friendliness in the paddock and in the hospitality pavilion.

We like seeing smiling faces at our events. And we just want to keep bringing that to the public.

So you’ve got smiling faces on the other side of a laptop on your website, getting ready to [00:32:00] register for either CMP, Roeblood Road or Road Atlanta, which is what I’ve heard so far. So what comes next? Are we doing tech?

You talked about the playbook, doing some e learning type stuff up front, which is really cool. How do we get from, I click the button and put in my credit card number to my first session out on track, what happens in between?

We don’t inspect. Our participants cars for a couple of reasons, but mainly that responsibility is left to them or a mechanic of their choosing.

They must sign off on our tech form and waiver certifying that they have inspected all the items we list on our tech form and waiver, making sure that they’re safe and to assure their vehicles safe for high speed driving. It just goes back to in the past, it’s better to put that onus of responsibility on the customer.

For me to say, I don’t know what every single vehicle on the planet requires, you know, where, where the, where this is on that, or what that is on a different car. They bring us the tech form. They say, yep, it’s ready to go. And if it breaks, it’s on, we let them go with that. It also allows us [00:33:00] to not spend an hour Every morning, the cars, so it’s a, it’s a time saver, which allows us to put the 6 hours of time on in the weekend.

As long as they sign off and run.

That’s right. And I know 1 thing is for certain. If you are leaking blinker fluid, you have a problem.

Oh, absolutely.

You know, we talked about the registration process. We talked about tech and things like that, you know, safety is paramount. It’s something that it’s the front of everybody’s mind, but it’s also the thing that keeps most people from coming out to events like this and the other thing is usually, well, I don’t have the right car.

Well, you know, many people have said, run what you brung and you’re going to have a blast. So we can just kind of discount that from the word go, but it’s always the other side of it is. Well, I can run what I brung, but I need to make sure I’m covered in some shape or form. If something suddenly happens, like this is my daily driver, I can’t afford to wreck it, you know, whatever.

And then suddenly a few years back, the idea of track insurance was born, you know, thanks to folks like Lockton and [00:34:00] Haggerty and so on down the line. So we want to get your opinion as an organizer about. How you feel about track insurance? Do you recommend it? And if you do, is it part of your registration process or do you have a recommended track insurance partner that you tell people that they should look into before coming to a max speed event?

I think it all starts with the attitude of the organizers for safety. I think it comes down to the quality of the instructors and the mindset that you have with your instructors for the students, for the classroom sessions. So there’s an overall kind of an atmosphere or a mood that comes down from the top down.

And I think one of the most critical things that we put an emphasis on that maybe we didn’t see with some of the other groups that we’ve like participated in is how do you deal with issues? How do you deal with problems? If there is a driver in a particular run group that’s causing issues and problems, what is the best way to deal with that situation?

And we take it seriously because we want quality. We want everyone else to have [00:35:00] fun. And there’s a way that you can solve issues without causing a major issue. And I think it’s the way that it gets dealt with. Being as new as we are, we don’t

have any partners per se. We have, the way that I look at it, the way that we look at it is that we recommend that each attendee research the market based on the vehicle’s value and what level of financial risk they’re comfortable with before they put their vehicle on the track.

You know, that’s just solid advice. He and I both drive 20 year old Miatas and if I total it, I will drag it back from one of the trailer. I’ll buy a new tub next week and I’ll put all my goodies on it and I’ll go back to the track. I had the GT3 probably doesn’t feel the same way. You know, they might want to come out and get track insurance.

Uh, we make it known that it’s available. To our customers, but we don’t require it. We don’t recommend a particular provider. We do at least give them the idea that this is available. If you’re concerned about your track. The other thing you pointed out at the beginning of that question was. Safety, I think a lot of people don’t recognize how safe it actually is [00:36:00] part of a track day.

And explore its limits and your, your limits as a driver, if you’re going to do that, do it on track where, you know, if you lose it, there’s, you know, sand pits and tire barriers and things designed to keep you safe. Should you happen to have it off plus the fact that the road of safety achieved by everybody going in the same direction under the same rules.

It is truly safer on track because of the gear we use, the training we have, the environment itself, then these folks that are running around on the major highways at triple digit speeds, weaving in and out of cars, there’s a higher probability of something happening on the street in a fluke occurrence that somebody is not paying attention.

They’re not situationally aware, all these kinds of things. I mean, we could wax both ways. Poetic about this for probably an entire another episode. Although I think we’ve already done that before. So the idea there is, is to remind people again, that in a lot of motor sports and all the disciplines that we’ve talked about on this show, HPDE, along with a [00:37:00] lot of others is some of the safest out there.

And the skills that you learn at a DE are second to none. They’re not like anything you would have. Learn in driver’s ed or anything like that. And I think it, it pays people dividends to come and learn what a car can really do and learn to not be afraid of it. It’s a tool. It’s not an appliance, right?

That’s always my big thing. And you need to learn how to. to use that tool appropriately and DE is the right place to do it.

Have you thought about with max speed doing some sort of tie in with street survival and with like teenage defensive driving and kind of using that as a way to curate and bring people up into the HPDE hobby?

I have. I’ve actually spoken with Ron Z. He’s on the board at Atlanta Motorsports Park. Atlanta Motorsports Park has a very good teenage driving course that they put on at their facility. And it is something that we’ve discussed that Max Speed might eventually sponsor [00:38:00] something like that at Atlanta Motorsports Park for just that purpose.

Hasn’t come to fruition yet as we’ve been busy getting the ball rolling and getting our name out there and getting a customer base that, I mean, obviously we keep selling out events. It’ll allow us the flexibility to spend resources elsewhere on things like that that aren’t necessarily. They’re not going to make your money back for the day, but they’re going to help you give back to young drivers and.

And honestly, anybody that comes to an HPD, not only are they going to learn great skills, I believe they’re going to leave a safer driver on the street. Because once you have driven your car at speed on a racetrack, there’s no way you can duplicate any of that on mountain road or anything with the level of safety involved.

And I find a lot of people that leave HPDs. They talk about, you know, I can’t even speak on the street anymore.

Let’s talk about other services that MaxSpeed offers that our listeners may not be familiar with. Those that are already comfortable with DEs, you know, have an idea of what they should expect.

What’s something else that really [00:39:00] stands out about MaxSpeed?

One of the things early on, like I said, I Raines, who was one of the founders of the KX Pro, a digital driving coach. Through that relationship and bouncing ideas off of him about what he thought the HPVE industry needed. What could he help us bring to the market?

We became retailer for or dealer rather for Apex Pro. Brendan and I use it all the time to compare our own data because we’re in such similar cars. If 1 of us has a session and, you know, we’re 3 or 4 pence faster than the other 1, we will sit down in the paddock and take out our phones and we will literally overlay data and look at who was, you know, okay, you carried X amounts of speed for this corner versus me.

What am I doing? So, we use that to help us become better drivers and then we share it with our customers. And once you get out of the novice ranks and you’re really, you know, you’re an intermediate or advanced driver and you’re trying to shave tenths of a second, you need something to help you do that.

Some sort of driver aid. And [00:40:00] I just really like the Apex Pro platform. So, uh, we carry that. We carry a lot of products to support the platform. We have hosted Data and Donuts event here in our Max Speed Garage Club. We invited people in that didn’t even use an Apex Pro. Using any into, so whatever they use to, to gather data racers and.

HPD folks, it didn’t matter what data platform they used, data is the same. It’s just how you gather it and then how it’s represented back to you. You can use a laptop or computer, or can you do it on your phone or an iPad? Screen we put up, we show them a speed trace, we explain to them what’s going on at the top and the bottom of the speed trace.

How you can actually look at a speed trace and say, Oh, I know what racetrack that is, based on the speed trace. Because you know where your high points and your low points are. Like I said, very heavily involved with the Apex Pro. And helping drivers use better their driving skills.

So several times you’ve mentioned the garage club.

Then I also noticed by looking at your website, there’s something known as the max rewards program. Do you want to [00:41:00] unpack both of those for us?

The many things that we do, you know, encompasses the difference. Is our max rewards program. We understand that people have a choice and where they spend their dollar.

There’s a lot of providers out here. And honestly, the biggest thing now is good viable dates. At racetracks, we need more asphalt. We came up with a, a loyalty program basically. So, the max rewards program gives our customers 10 percent cash back on every dollar they spend with us. So they spend money with us when they accumulate a 1000 points.

We send them a 100. Max Rewards Visa gift cards and just to choose here at CMP last weekend during our drivers meeting, we gave out three and some of those points that’s not just on the next can earn points by buying an apex pro through our website or buying accessories or any track day purchases for HPV or any purchases made through our website.

Our customers can accumulate max rewards points. That’s our max [00:42:00] rewards. And the garage club, the garage club, I think that was his fault. This, this whole thing was his fault because he’s the one that swayed me away from having a septic tank company, you know, clean up crap right now. So, uh, but basically he lives in a neighborhood where they won’t allow you to park your race car in the driveway.

And. He had his race car and, or his race car, his HP or he’s, he’s parked in the storage place over here around the corner. His tools were all in the garage. So the garage started a place for us to get our cars, tools, go karts, golf carts, and other things out of our lives garages and we rented a, it’s about 1800 square foot shop.

It’s a one mile from the front entrance of road Atlanta. We moved our tools and our cars in and started meeting on the weekends to work on our track day cars. Then as often happens, we decided to have a lift because we’re old and I don’t want to crawl underneath my car. So we [00:43:00] bought a lift and we installed a lift since we both have full time jobs and we weren’t using the place much, except on the weekends, we thought, you know, we got to put some buddies to do this too.

And so we invited them over and. And essentially our buddies and track day friends and stuff like that joined the club or started using them. And so we, we just kind of split the room amongst ourselves. And well, we didn’t at 1st, it was can we do this? Is it legal? More research due diligence insurance? Uh, how do we take care of that?

What kind of liabilities involved got all those pieces of the puzzle figured out and. And the Maxpeed Garage Club was formed. So right now, it’s just a few of our friends and us and we basically split the rent. But as soon as I retire from the feds and devote 100 percent of my time to this endeavor, the Maxpeed Garage Club will be exploding, expanding, put it that way.

We’ll be looking for other spaces and offer vehicle storage, full service mechanic work. As well as the opportunity for people that want to do self service mechanic work to be able [00:44:00] to utilize a lift and tools and such that will have that’s going to grow as soon as I can. Give it 100 percent of

my time.

We stage out of here as well. When we do a track day at like Rhode Atlanta, um, you know, there’s a lounge area here that has an air conditioner and a heater and a refrigerator and it’s just a comfortable place with several couches just to, uh, just to spend some time like between runs at

when we’re, when we’re not, when we’re not hosting, if we’re spending, if we’re going to something, you go to somebody’s track day, in August and it’s 100 outside, you can sit around the paddock in some shade or pull off the track.

We drive one mile down the street, pull into our garage, hop out, go into the air conditioned lounge. Have a nice cold water, compare data, sit around for an hour and 20 minutes. And then we jump in our cars, put our hands and helmets on and we’re driving right back to the restaurant. Nice. It’s pretty convenient for that.

So Phil and Brendan, as we wrap up the segment here, you know, we always want to give people the opportunity to [00:45:00] thank their sponsors, shout out to different people. So now’s your chance.

We don’t have any actual sponsors. We are open to have some, if anybody wants to come, you know, do some or something, we’d be down for that.

We have a lot of great mutual agreements and like mutual promotion agreements and, and mutual promotion things in place with people. You mentioned him earlier in the, in the show, and we are friends. Dave Peters from HPE Junkie. Like I said, he, he lists virtually every track day in North America, but he has been a huge resource in helping us get MaxFeed launched as far as the format that we put out and, and the whole.

Touchpoint feel that you get if you come to a max speed event, Dave’s been part of helping us craft that and put that in place. Andrew rains at apex pro once again, invaluable resource when we were just when this was just a concept. And, uh, of course, we, we are an apex pro dealer through that relationship.

So racing for ALS, Scott Lloyd, he was at our most recent event, and we actually have a friend, a personal friend who [00:46:00] has a shop right here across from us. Who’s wife recently got a very, uh, ALS diagnosis. So having them there, having her there, it’s been a great relationship. And so we want to help raise awareness.

So,

you know,

shout out to Racing for ALS and them. Carl and Sylvia Metz run Toby Anna’s Guardian Angel Rescue, a 501c3 that rescues dogs all through the Carolinas and Georgia. They’ve just been really good friends. He’s helped promote us a ton. He knows. He’s been doing this hobby for 30 years and racing champ car and lemons.

And you can get it. So they run that rescue. And as part of it, we do a touring lap segment where we raise money for their charity. And he’s got a multi thousand dollar bill every month. So, so we do what we can to help them out. Last but not least, Anika Carter of Anika’s Racing. She was big on social media for us early on to help get the word out.

Ron Zagdorf. Discovery Parts, Ethan Jew, Violence Racing in Savannah, Georgia, and Michael Gallagher is the president of Power Dynamics Consulting and a NASA racer [00:47:00] who runs late model stuff. He and his wife, who owns Violent HD, were huge in promoting us around Roebling, which, like you said earlier, we don’t really have a home track, but we have been there three times.

We love hosting there and those people down in that region have helped us tremendously. So shout out to all of those people. We appreciate your help.

So Brendan and Phil, I got to commend you guys for jumping into this market, you know, stick, sticking your necks out there and, and trying something new and Setting yourselves up for retirement in this world of HPD.

It’s a very rewarding one. It’s very educational one. I think you guys are on the right track. You’re doing all the right things, checking all the right boxes, and we wish you the best of luck in this endeavor. And we want to see where you are next season and the season after that, and so on. And we’ll see you guys.

We’re looking forward to coming and joining one of your events here in the near future. So we’ll be keeping an eye on your schedule. And for those of you that are listening, if you want more information on max speed track days, remember to visit max speed track days. com or follow them on [00:48:00] Facebook and Instagram at max speed track days.

Or if you want to get ahold of Phil and Brendan use their online contact us form on their website as a special note for all of our listeners. Anyone that subscribes to the Mac Speed newsletter, those folks are automatically entered to win a free track weekend, 100 visa gift card or other merchandise, swag, et cetera, just for following Mac Speeds progress along the way on this epic journey that they’ve taken on in the HBDE world.

So I can’t thank you guys enough for coming on the show, sharing your story, getting people to know you better. And again, we wish you the best of luck.

Eric, Brad, we want to thank you for giving us the opportunity, helping us spread the word about Maxpeed. And we would love to chat more, say a year, 18 months down the road and see, see where that vision is taking us.

We want to see you guys at VIR.

Hundred percent. I want to see us at the hour as [00:49:00] well.

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