RaceFactory USA

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[00:00:00] Break fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the auto sphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrol heads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

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

Continuing our quest to spread motorsports enthusiasm. Tonight, we get as close to the asphalt as possible by sitting down with two gentlemen who are on course to redefine the world of carding. Our guests tonight are Dr. Anthony Jechezero. Also known as Dr. T, a 23 year physical medicine and health expert with over two decades of motorcycles and road racing behind him.

He has turned to the world of karting with his partner Race Liberante, who started in karting at the age of four and 21 years later has won multiple karting championships, working his way into stock car [00:01:00] racing and is the reigning SK USA pro tour shifter champion. And as always, I’m your host Brad and I’m Eric.

So without further ado, we’d like to welcome Dr. T and race to break, fix, to share their stories and talk about their latest endeavor, race factory USA and all American carting company and chassis builder. Welcome to the show guys. Hey guys, how you doing today? So Dr. T tell us all about your background, your motorsports history.

You know, it’s funny that you ask that question because my motorsports background started where race is probably is now. I wasn’t allowed to have any of this fun stuff growing up. It’s a really brief history to be honest with you. With my parents, we just really didn’t have the money to do that and, and I was a baseball kid.

Well, I actually got to drive some cars and some bikes and did some things my parents didn’t know about when I was younger. So that’s where the decades comes in. It’s a lot of fun. That’s why I always wanted to do it. I just didn’t have the money to do it, right? Like most, most kids out there. I started when I got out of school and doing some motorcycle road racing.

Ran some [00:02:00] Ducati Heavy Twin stuff and, uh, Yamaha R6 stuff. Jumped into some cars and had fun with that for a while and then just Bounced around to different things. We’ve been doing some things here and there, uh, always. So surprisingly being a motor sports organization, we are very well versed in different disciplines.

Those being, you know, karting, drag racing, rally, road racing, et cetera. Even motorcycles, a surprising number of people in the organization are into bikes as well. So I saw Brad raises eyebrows there as you were talking about Ducati’s and other bikes. So you definitely got his interest, but I’m going to, I’m going to ask the tough questions.

You know the car question. So what kind of cars were you running? Well, we were running some m3 stuff e36 m3 stuff. I still have that car I did some dirt track with a patient of mine who said hey you race and I said, yeah I said come drive these cars Can you do that? Sure I can so Who would say no, right?

So we just got in the car and we and we and we had some fun [00:03:00] doing that Did a little bit of teaching for scca Some of the cars that i’ve had i’ve usually had at least a corvette. I have a 2018 transport corvette now that we did a little bit of Teaching and with that those are the highlights. I guess there’s there’s been a lot of clunkers that we’ve taken around the track So, let me ask this question as a petrol head what would be your ideal car If I could have any car and at some point I will have one of these cars the ferrari 458 And I know it sounds like a cliche today But I got to drive the V10 Audi, the Z06 Corvette, the twin turbo Porsche, the 430 Ferrari, and the 458 Ferrari at an Extreme Experience Day, back to back.

I came in, I bought all the cars, and I bought extra laps in all of them, because I wanted to A B test all of them. And those two Ferraris were the cars. I wasn’t crazy impressed with the Porsche. Sorry to all those Porsche guys out there. I mean, it’s an amazing car But that’s not the one I think about it’s also not the one that’s I [00:04:00] have a picture of it in my office I have a of the of the 458 now the 488 is out So but that that car was just amazing whether it was in manual transmission mode or you know Power shift mode or just in automatic mode if the car does things that it does it before you think it it’s just amazing So it’s funny you mentioned you have it up on your wall in your office.

So what was on your wall as a kid? All of them, there wasn’t a space on my wall. It’s really funny that you asked that question. We were just talking about this every year for Christmas, I would get stock car racer magazine. I would not have it all year, but Santa would bring it for me when I was a little, little kid.

Right. And in my stocking, there’d be stock car racer magazine and we watched stock car racing and it was a big fan of Richard Petty. My grandmother was a big fan. Like I said, my dad wasn’t so much into that kind of stuff. Uh, he was a, like a low and slow guy. I call him, you know, just chrome it. He’s not a racer by any means.

He’s passed a couple of years now, but he would laugh and agree with me on that one. But yeah, so there was that. And [00:05:00] every once in a while we’d be able to get some formula one or some open wheel racing every year, we watched the Indy 500, those cars, and then the muscle cars were always, uh, on my walls.

I’m lucky enough to have a GT 350 Shelby a couple other things too. So there’s that is quite a collection there Out of those motorsports that you mentioned. Is there a favorite that you prefer watching on tv or even let’s say Would prefer to drive in yourself Oh, well, I Formula One, of course, that would be a dream too far.

Surprise race isn’t laughing out loud right now. To be honest with you, the IndyCar series is better racing right now than Formula One is, and I wholeheartedly disagree. And I hope anyone who’s listening to this, someone high up in the FIA gets back to having us some grid girls to Formula One and everywhere else, because.

I don’t see it as sexist. I see it as part of the show, right? You know, who goes to Monaco just to stay in a hotel room? You don’t do that. Well, no, nobody’s going to Monaco right now with [00:06:00] everything that’s going on, right? Well, point being, granted, yeah. But that was before this whole thing happened. I’m like, no grid girls!

What good is a gridwalk? So we’re going to meet in the middle here and talk about carding at the end. But race, you started in karting and have worked your way into cars. And then obviously Dr. T has been in cars and motorcycles and worked his way to karting. So let’s talk about your background in motorsport.

Yeah. So, um, you know, my name given being race, uh, it’s been a family sport, second generation racer. Now, I believe I was three days old when I was first day at the racetrack. So it’s been in my blood since what I eat, sleep and breathe every day since then Started racing at the age of Four got a go kart for my birthday that year.

And, uh, we started practicing a lot and started actually competing when I was five, cause I was the youngest you could be to compete. So, uh, ran the kid cart ranks, which is, you know, four to eight years old, moved up to junior and cadet and, uh, won a few championships locally, started racing nationally, started winning some more and doing pretty well.

And by the [00:07:00] time I was 12 years old, I was in a race car full time. Uh, we started with legend cars. Started doing some circle track stuff, doing some road racing stuff in the winter with them with the, with the series they had together in Vegas, moved up from there, do the ASA speed trucks from there, ran super late models out at Irwindale Speedway in California, won NASCAR rookie of the year that year, our first year in the championship, won a few championships in that road racing the car as well as circle track racing it.

And then, uh, when funds dried up with the family and, uh, I lost my camping world truck ride, I, uh, decided to go buy a dirt modified and start racing the dirt. Something I always wanted to do. My dad hated the mud, hated cleaning. So, uh, I went and bought one of those. I bought a clunker for, 000 and rebuilt the whole chassis by myself with my crew chief, Nick, we went racing for a few years.

I got a, I got an opportunity to go back east and move to Mooresville and run with Ron Hornaday a little bit. And so I started learning a lot from Ron. Trying to again, still [00:08:00] get my way into the NASCAR route, learned so much working with Ron Hornaday, not only about on track stuff, but setups and, and, uh, fabrication and things like that.

And then, uh, after that kind of dried up, I came back to karting. I got an opportunity to race full time again as a factory driver, which I spent a lot of time doing as a kid, doing a lot of development work for other brands. And in that hiatus. Out of karting, I was doing a lot of, uh, R and D and design work for chassis manufacturers.

So, that kind of dwindled into where we are now. Um, that ride fell through a little bit. From there, we had a, I had a lot of customers and, and, uh, a lot of people kind of looking to me for advice and where to go next. And they kind of followed my path. The next step was, was doing what we’re doing now. And that’s, that’s race factory.

So let me ask you this about the motorsport transition there. You know, it sounds, I don’t want to make it sound like it’s formulaic, but it’s a similar story I’ve heard from other drivers, right? Karting and then, you know, early dirt car stuff and an oval and then, you know, trucks and the NASCAR and so on and online.

What Why that path instead of road [00:09:00] racing and potentially going into IMSA and GT cars or something like that. Is it just because of how we’re structured in the States or is it just something you preferred from your family upbringing? So coming up through the ranks, uh, we already were starting to race legend cars and, and that was honestly what we could afford.

I don’t come from a lot of money, like a lot of racers sometimes do. I come from a very blue collar family. We’ve worked for what we had. We, nothing was ever handed to us. So, you know, most of this stuff, if we had to fabricate on it, my, my father’s a very, very smart man when it comes to race cars, a lot of longtime fabrication background.

So we have the tools, he already had a shop and whatnot. So. The legend car thing and the stock car route, not only financially made sense for us, but it was something we could completely do in house with some of the specs on the cars, fabrication was pretty easy. Uh, it’s something I can learn. And if some, we actually had to, we always had a team with other drivers to help fund my racing.

So before I got to drive, I was working and prepping other people’s cars and then mine came dead [00:10:00] last. Right. So. Um, and that’s how we, we went racing. So that’s at the time it’s what we could afford because even, you know, I did a lot of testing in, uh, F2000 series and then Formula Renault, which is things like what Marco Andretti and a bunch of other IndyCar drivers came through.

I was around that same timeframe. You know, when you got to spend 200 grand on a season and it’s, it’s not paid for, for you. It’s, it’s one of those things where we can go spend 50 race and legend cars, or we can go spend 200. And. We’d be out in a year. So it was really the only path we had. We didn’t look into the sports car route because at the time I was at kind of a breaking point where, you know, to go run SCCA, you had to be 16 at the time still.

And the ages hadn’t dropped yet. So I was 12 years old and we’re looking to take the next step and advance my career as fast as possible. And that was really. Financially, our only option. I didn’t love it at first, to be 100 percent honest with you, I didn’t like going around in circles. I practiced for two or three months before we raced, and when we finally raced, I was like, Okay, you know, this is a lot of fun.

I’m having a good time. We’re doing really well. And that was just the path we [00:11:00] ended up taking, because it’s something we could do in house. Again, it was something my father and I could completely do by ourselves, and it fit what we were able to do. This is just a curiosity question. Have you done any road racing at all?

Yeah, so I did, um, I didn’t race any formula car stuff. So I’m from California originally. And, uh, I grew up 10 minutes away from Willow Springs Raceway, which is a historic facility in the West coast. Um, closest racetrack to LA at the age of, uh, what was that? 15, 16. I, uh, was a full time instructor. Um, I actually took some time away from high school to do that job.

I went on independent study and was basically homeschooling myself for a while to go teach people how to drive race cars. So I got to drive. Any super car you could ever think of at a young age, um, was in a lot of formula cars, testing radicals, um, spec Ford racers, just anything you can put on a road course.

I was either teaching or I was actually driving for some people. So my road racing experience actually racing cars is somewhat limited. I [00:12:00] did, uh, some spec seven racing and SCCA. And then we had a series out at Willow Springs called the Southwest Superlates. It was actually circle track pavement race cars that were converted to road race setups.

And we raced at Big Willow. Guys like Boris said would show up, Sheldon Creed. We had a lot of big names that popped in and out of that series when they were, you know, getting ready for a road race or something like that. That was a lot of fun. I won the championship twice in that. Current track record there and whatnot, and a few different classes at my home track.

So that was. That was pretty much the sum of my road racing experience. Again, a lot of it was just miles around tracks. Yeah, no, that’s pretty cool. So do you have a, do you have a favorite out of all those different, you know, disciplines there that you prefer one over the other? Ah, you know, I’d have to say my favorite car I’ve ever driven.

To this day is a Trans Am car. It was hands down where I just felt at home. I, like I said, I have a lot of experience and a lot of different things. I drove some Porsches and some, you know, GT3, GT2 cars, some [00:13:00] LMP cars. And what I felt at home most was, was the Trans Am stuff. Um, it was always what I was fastest in.

Something more like that stock car. Ish background. It was kind of Trans Am is like the perfect mix between the two. Now you’re talking, you’re talking eighties, nineties, Trans Am cars or something more modern than that. Current, current TA1, TA2 cars. Yeah, that’s, that’s right in my wheelhouse. That’s right.

Where I feel like I’ve always belonged coming from cart. You can drive the cart so hard into a corner and it’s so predictable and you get in, you get in some like a Porsche GT three cup car. And with such a small sidewall on the tire and such a stiff tire. It’s not very predictable and it was okay to me.

It was fun. It was a great time. They’re fast. But, you know, I went faster in my 18, 000 stock car than a 250, 000 race car. So that, to me, was just cool. I’m a pretty gritty racer. I’m not about the flash or the wow factor of it. You know, if it turns a lap time around the racetrack, that’s And, and I’m having a good time in the car.

That’s, that’s all I can [00:14:00] ask for. So that was my favorite for sure. So I’m sure our listeners wanna know, what do you drive on the street? ? Oh, no, . Uh, I drive a 2000 , I drive a 2000 Chevy Chevy Express box truck. Uh, no. I have a, uh, mini Cooper s uh, that I rip around the streets. Uh, it’s, it’s a go-kart. You hear that folks?

Front wheel drive. Front wheel drive. Yeah, if I could, listen, if I could put the engine in the trunk, I would. You should see, you should see him drive that thing too. Well, I won’t go too deep on this, but it takes a special kind of driving line to go fast in a front wheel drive, but that’s an argument for another episode.

We happen to call it fun wheel drive around here a lot of the time, but you know, it’s a whole, it’s a debate for another time. So you came up through carting and I can empathize with that because I did a lot of carting when I was younger too. I did a lot of endurance carting as a matter of fact, and flying all over the country, running races, not to the same level that you were at more kind of ad hoc, you know, pretty [00:15:00] amateur stuff, whatnot.

So I will say it’s not for me anymore because my back can’t take it, especially being in the cart for three, four hours per stint, you know, stuff like that.

But the, but the allure is still there. Right. And that’s the, that’s the fun part about how we all got together for this particular episode. Having us having just come off track for about an hour and then bumping into Dr. T in the pits, you know, working on your guys cart and all that. But we got to figure out how you guys met in the middle, how you guys, how the two of you got connected, you know, East coast, West coast here.

So Dr. T, how did you get into carting? I have a kid. Right? So, yeah. It’s kind of a funny story. My son, he sees the cars and the stuff in the garage and in the bikes and things and he’s, you know, he was always talking about how, when can I race? When can I race? When can I race? His name is Anthony. Same as mine.

So he’s 14 now. He was 11 and we went out to pit race [00:16:00] and they had an enduro. And it was in, it was the Thanksgiving Enduro. It was 42 degrees when we started, it was a two hour race and it was 33 degrees when we finished it three hours later, because there was practice and all that kind of stuff. So we go and it was myself, a buddy of mine and Anthony.

Anthony was 11. You needed to be. five feet tall and 13 years old to participate. He was 11 and four foot six. Okay. So the nice part about pit race back then is I’d been at pit race since they first paved it the first time, 20 years ago. So we knew everybody there. So I walk in and the girl says, you know, he, he can’t race.

I said, and I asked for Mike, the guy who was there at the time. And he walks, I was like, Hey, Dr. T what’s up? He said, if you’d like to race, he said, do you think you can do it? I said, yeah, I think you can. Let’s send him out. Do a couple laps if you think he’s unsafe or you don’t think it’s appropriate, you know, bring him in.

I, I would never put him in harm’s way, obviously, but I wanted them to be cool with it. So, we have yo I don’t know if you know what yoga blocks are. Yoga blocks are like a hard foam block. [00:17:00] It looks like a brick. We have them Velcroed to his shoes, okay? He can barely see over the steering wheel. He goes out there.

Long story short, the kid Is going out and he came in early because his hands were freezing. We had to pry him off the steering wheel because it was so cold. The first time we didn’t know anything about wearing latex gloves underneath your gloves, right? Raise. If it’s cold to be able to keep your hand from freezing.

I didn’t know anything. We didn’t know anything about car zero. I’d never been in a car. So we come in the race and there’s four national level carters there in the race and the first team won There was three people on the team was 45 guys a lot of older guys my age, right? And uh, there’s these four national level carters young guys and they win And they the one kid gets the the fast lap and i’m standing there and i’m just kind of thinking looking at stuff and I go Hey who had said who had second fast lap and the guy goes?

Hey, dr. T. Congratulations. It was you I went. Nope So my son had second fast lap the first time in a large cart in a, in a, in a cart basically. And, uh, as we’re watching the race before that happened, [00:18:00] this guy walks up to me and he’s standing right beside me. He doesn’t say hello, doesn’t say anything. He just goes, uh, is that your kid out there?

And I look back out and on the track and him watching, I’m like, yeah. He pats me on the shoulder and, and says, this is gonna be expensive and walks away . Yeah. Swear to God. Right. So. The funny part about that is his son drives for us now, and his name’s Scott Glace, who’s a good friend of Race Factory and of ours personally.

So, he wasn’t kidding, by the way, four years ago, that we would be up to our necks in what has become So where’s the connection between you and Race Liberante? So what we got to, we got to use your last name to not get people confused. Clearly, I clearly, I do not have the pedigree. I moved out to Mooresville for a few years and then ended up moving up to Pittsburgh.

And, um, the team I was driving with previously was based out of Erie, Pennsylvania. So it was kind of a good meal of grounds, my girlfriend’s from Pittsburgh. [00:19:00] So it was kind of making sense why I should relocate to that area. So I actually started coaching and training Dr. T and his son, Anthony, and they became good friends and customers of mine for about a year.

He kind of found out I, I, uh, I lost my ride with this other, other brand I was on, or, you know, we went separate ways and, um, um, He was looking at buying a new chassis and, and a lot, like I said, a lot of people kind of at, especially at our local track, look to me for advice on what’s next. What should I get?

What should I be on? What setup should I be running? So when he came to me with that, I said, well, if you’re going to buy one because of me, I’m thinking of doing something different. And he goes, okay, well, I’m going to do what you’re doing. What are you doing? And I go, well, I can’t tell you I’m in talks with some investors and things like that.

And he goes, BS. Talk to me about it. And I’m like, okay, so we get to talking and he’s, you know, I’d tell him kind of where we want to go with the brand and, and how I want to differentiate ourselves from other [00:20:00] carding brands and really other brands in motor sports in general, bring kind of like a young flair to it, and he was all about it.

The rest so far is, is it’s not in history because it’s still being written, but then that was it from there. We got, we put our heads down, went to work and here we are. What are we now in four or five months later? Since we’ve bridged that gap now, let’s talk about Race Factory USA. And for our listeners out there, you can learn more about this by visiting racefactoryusa.

com. What makes your carts special? What’s so different about them? So to be a hundred percent honest, carts nowadays, we’ve all pretty much found what works in a go kart. The differences on our chassis, it looks aesthetics wise, we give, give different options. So there’s, you know, go karts are as simple as they look.

They’re very, very complex. Um, the materials we use for the metals are all custom made for go karts. It’s not just some off the rack tubing you get at your local patent steel or whatever steel supplier you’ve got locally. This is all special blended material, all chromoly steel. So our blends of material are a [00:21:00] little different.

Our chassis design is a little unique, but the biggest differentiator. From our brand to other brands is really our marketing approach. Uh, is it’s completely different. We’re trying to build a lifestyle brand race factory. Isn’t just a carding company. In fact, we’re in talks with partnering with many different teams for different avenues outside of carding for these kids to grow into eventually when it time to move up to cars, the marketing approach for us is huge.

We want to be. For lack of better terms, the hoonigan of carting, what, what really turned the drifting market completely into what it is today is the young marketing behind it, you know, making it all interesting, making all exciting and really boosting that up the lifestyle behind motor sports. Carting is the purest form of motor sports.

There is hands down because it’s so simple and showcasing that is what we really wanted to do. There’s not another cart brand in the world that does the marketing that we do. To try and grow the sport of karting, motorsports in general, um, this is a, [00:22:00] this is the perfect gateway. If you look at the Indy lineup, actually right now, the entry list for every race this year, every single IndyCar driver race go karts growing up.

Every single entrant. So this is really the start of a motor sports career is in the carting ranks. And it’s actually one of the cheapest avenues of, of racing in general, and something you can do out of the back of your pickup truck. I mean, I started my first business out of a storage unit. I was working on people’s go karts.

You can do this with nothing, you know, a hundred dollars in tools from Harbor Freight. It’s something we want to showcase more than anything. Our, our go kart does have some pretty cool options on it. You can choose between aluminum components or magnesium components, which is standard on most go karts nowadays, but we give our customers the option, depending on their budget, depending on what they’re planning on running, what they’re planning on doing, and we’re in process to give our customers set up manuals.

So that way, you know, they. They’ve got all the tools necessary to go do the best they possibly can out of the box. And, uh, we’re one of the only companies in the country right now that will ship you a race ready, [00:23:00] go cart to your door in a crate, most go carts you have to buy. They come in a box, all unassembled, no instruction manual, no nothing.

And you have to assemble it and kind of figure it out. So a lot of people motorsports because they’re afraid to ask questions. They don’t know what they’re doing. So on and so forth. There’s many different reasons. And we’re trying to give our customers every tool they need to go be successful in the marketing behind it, to help their careers out in the future.

So let’s talk about the carding market space itself. I mean, for the longest time, at least, you know, in my generation, most of the cars were European, right? With either whatever motor you could put in a Japanese or American, from what I understand race factory, everything’s been constructed and designed here in the States.

And that makes it also a little bit more unique than your typical, you know, Soty card or anything else that might be out there. So right now we’re actually, our, our products are made, um, in Italy and Eastern Europe, but they are all designed for our market here. Our tires, our tracks, our engine packages, our, our weights, um, the weight we have to run, our minimum weight is different than Europe.

[00:24:00] Everything is designed for our, our form of carting here. We’re working on actually producing product in the United States. Uh, unfortunately, you know, with The way things are right now, it’s very difficult, but it’s something that we look to roll out in 2021. But yeah, the big differentiator is we design everything for our market, not the European market.

Um, which is, you know, it doesn’t sound like much different, but when you’re on a completely different tire, Completely different engine package. Uh, the asphalt construction is even different here compared to Europe, as well as the weight of the class. It makes it, it makes a big difference when we’re just talking about a different blend of material or a different, you know, two millimeters here, two millimeters there, because everything’s right.

It’s not a car. It’s all shrunk down. So a mil or two is, is all it takes to make or break it. Let me be relatively clear about what’s happening here. I have a career. I don’t need another career. I don’t need another business. So my point being, and one kid’s enough to be honest with you, but my point being no more kids, but the point being, you know, [00:25:00] when, when race and I started talking about this, we, we have a natural affinity for each other.

Number one, meaning that. Like, we’re always jabbing each other. We’re always like, it’s, we, we’ve become friends. And, and, and that’s a, that’s a really wonderful thing from my perspective. He may think otherwise, I’m not sure anyway. So point being this guy’s the real deal. That’s the reason I did this when he talks about their design here, that he does that.

I got involved with this because of the gentleman that we’re talking to now and his ability to do the things that he’s talking about. Uh, I didn’t want to own a cart company. I didn’t, I mean, I’m loving what we’re doing now, but you know what I’m saying? Like, if you got a guy that’s really good at this stuff, this becomes an option and it became an option for us to do this.

What I’ve always been good at in my career, and I’ve owned 10 offices in six states, I’ve owned other companies and other things, I’ve always been exceptionally good at finding good people. You got to go through a lot of them, but you, when you find the right people, that’s what makes the company great. [00:26:00] So I, I, you know, kudos and credit.

To my friend and partner race for being able to do the things that he does because he teaches me every day Right, and I think it’s funny i’ve been practicing for 23 years and i’m 53 years old He’s been in his career for 21 years and he’s 25 So, you know what i’m saying? It’s it’s a very interesting. Uh, It’s a very interesting thing that we do together.

This teamwork that we have is very, very special. I believe he is truly the man when it comes to these things. I am every day. He just blows me away. His knowledge base and what we’re able to do. I do a lot. I ask him a lot. You sure this is going to work? And he says, yes. And I, now I trust him because in the beginning, when we’re, when we’re ordering all this stuff, because the designs are his, The, the types of metal and how it’s put together.

And when he’s taught, when he talks about it’s built for us, it is built for us. There’s no doubt. I, he talks about things like he has an engineering degree. I just wanted to put [00:27:00] that out there that this guy’s the real deal. And I barely have my high school diploma. I knew that too. I don’t bring that up. I was expecting him fully to make a whole analogy about you being a truffle and he was the dog or pig sniffing it out or something, but we’ll leave that where it is.

At any rate, so this is really cool, actually. And I mean, and I’m in awe of what you guys are doing because to me, having come up through carding at a much, you know, many, many years ago, It was always the same thing. It was always the same carts. It was the same engine packages. You knew when you got a dog though, when it was built out of full weight steel and you’re like, what the hell is this thing that they drug out of the, you know, the back alley, but you know, this is cool.

And I got to see your guys cart up close. And I did notice that there are some things that are unique. And I think those probably come from your experience of racing to say, you know, Yeah, this didn’t work. I didn’t like the way this worked when, you know, I was running somebody else’s car or somebody else’s chassis.

So I definitely saw that when I had eyes on and I’m sure other people probably will pick up on that too, that it’s, it’s not the same old run of the mill [00:28:00] go cart that you’re used to, but I want to switch the topic a little bit. And I want to talk about two, two things, one safety and two, how you engage and cultivate the younger generations getting into carts, especially girls, right?

So, cause I got two daughters, but we’ll get to that in a minute. So let’s first talk about safety because when you’re in a cart as a kid, right? Your, your dad or your mom puts you in one for the first time. Chances are, uh, you’re They’re the, the go-karts at the beach or you know, kind of like, it’s like, yeah, it’s like a lawnmower, you know, barely better than a lawnmower engine.

And the things heavy as all get out and it’s wrapped in bumpers and cushions and, you know, and styrofoam and everything else you can think of. So you get a taste of that thrill, of that speed and all that, but it’s not the same. And as you move up in carting, they get faster and faster and faster. And you go from direct drives to multi-speed automatics, to shifter carts, to ethanol, to, to whatever.

I mean, you know. Whatever you got out there. I ran mixed class methanol two stroke the whole nine yards, right? [00:29:00] But every time you start adding speed, it gets more dangerous and you’re not really strapped into a car. You don’t have a harness. You don’t have a Hans like we do in the cars. It really isn’t a roll cage.

So what do you guys do in terms of safety? So, the carding industry, and to give, to give the carding industry credit and the FIA, CIK, um, rules that we use from the Europeans, uh, a lot of credit, they, uh, they, they have done a lot with safety, uh, over the years, you know, so carding, when it started out, there was no bodywork.

It was a tube frame, all put together, there’s nothing there, open wheel. Then they went to Nerf bars, which were just metal bars that kind of stuck out towards the tires. And it was a little harder to make wheel to wheel contact. And then through the 90s and up till now, we have full plastic bodywork around the whole go kart.

Now we don’t have the bumper system that goes around the tires and wraps all the way around the go kart. We have plastic full width rear bumpers that keep a lot of people from going on their lid. Back in the day, actually, one of the things I was taught when I was a 14 year old kid was how to put somebody on their [00:30:00] lid if they disrespected you on track, and that was a thing.

I mean, people could make you flip. So, that was with the metal rear bumper, that was very narrow. Uh, you would ride over the top of people all the time. The new plastic bodywork keeps it more bumper to bumper as long, you know, as far as on track contact. And then, uh, the suits, the, the racing suits, uh, I work closely with a company called liquid sky manufacturers, skydiving suits as well.

They have material that if for some reason you do get ejected from the go cart and you’re sliding on the pavement, it slides, it doesn’t tear. So we don’t allow fireproof suits and carting anymore because they would just tear and it would rip your skin up and things like that. So the suits now slide on the.

on the asphalt much better if you do for some reason end up upside down or on your lid. Nothing really stops somebody from driving it themselves into a barrier, but uh, some of the insurance companies have mandated different things. You know, we, like our home track, we have huge bags full of hay, I think they are, that You know, worst case scenario, you plow into one of those.

You might bend the go kart up, but you know, honestly, I [00:31:00] haven’t seen a, an ambulance ride out of cart track in about, Hmm. I mean, I see one every seven or eight months and I, I’m going to racetrack every weekend. So the safety of the sport. Yeah. Although it’s not the safest thing in the world, cause you’re right.

You’re not strapped in. There’s no seat belts and it’s actually safer that we don’t have seat belts because you do need to be able to roll out of a go kart. If you do end up. upside down or something like that. You know, it’s still not nearly as dangerous as a sport like motocross or even, you know, soccer.

At some point I’ve seen more injuries on, in ball sports. And then I do in carting most of the time, the safety gear, the helmets, you know, uh, Arai, Stilo, some of these other helmet companies that we all use in race cars have done so much for the carting world on their carting helmets as well for impact and things like that.

So the innovation of safety has really. Really gotten so much better. Even in the last five years for carting, we have pushback bumper systems now on the front. So that way you do slam into somebody. It pushes your bumper back instead of all that force going into the next guy in front of you. So yeah, although it’s not necessarily, I guess, the safest [00:32:00] sport you could ever do.

It is leaps and bounds from what it used to be, and it is becoming safer and safer every weekend with everybody working together to to innovate the safety side of things. Thanks. And Dr. T, I want to direct this one at you because I know you’re a chiropractor if I recall. So you can correct me if I’m wrong.

You know, head and neck restraint is a big thing for us in road racing. So we talk all the time about Hans, Simpson hybrids, all sorts of systems that try to keep the driver from basically having a whiplash type incident that would cause them, you know, either to get killed like Dale Earnhardt as an example, or to suffer severe injury due to an impact or something going on inside the vehicle.

Um, Now, having been in plenty of cart races where I’ve been nailed by somebody and you get that sudden either jolt forward or maybe somebody dropped anchor in front of you and you just couldn’t avoid them, or maybe you had to go off road to avoid an accident. There’s always that just severe jostling.

You just don’t have anything. A number one, what, what are some things you can do maybe [00:33:00] to help either subside the pain, maybe some PT, you know, from your perspective, or is there some sort of system, something similar to a Simpson hybrid that would work in a carding scenario? The, you know, the issue that we had, unfortunately with Dale was that in a frontal collision of, of significant impact, the head, think of your head as a bowling ball, right.

On a, on, on a stock. Uh, attached to the rest of your body. And you know, an object in motion stays in motion until acted on by another force, right? So, the head kept moving forward. The belts that hold the upper torso, the five point belts, uh, unfortunately did their job and held him in the seat. The head kept accelerating forward where the torso stayed where it was.

And it resulted in what was called a basilar skull fracture. And what happens is that the bottom of the skull ripped out, unfortunately, and he was killed instantly, which was, which was a, uh, which was a good thing in those types of incidences. In carding, because we’re not restrained, [00:34:00] those types of things, I can’t say can’t, but there’s a very, very, very, very Small chance of anything like that could occur.

The whiplash is definitely something that can occur. And because of that, you’ve seen the neck braces that people use, like the EVS, just the foam. The foam ones are great. The problem with the foam ones is that they limit your, range of motion as far as when you’re in the cart, if you’re looking side to side or what you’re doing.

But the idea is to stabilize the helmet onto the shoulders such that you don’t get large movements forward, backwards, and actually in any range of motion also to an impact on the top, pushing down can cause what’s called a, uh, a maximum compression, either fracture or injury. But I mean, you literally have to land on your head, straight on your head for that to happen.

So, possible. Again, possible. Unlikely. The Simpson hybrid system, you know, that’s, it’s actually not a bad thing. People don’t use them in carding because I think they don’t see the need for them [00:35:00] necessarily. When that first came out, I was a little skeptical to be honest as to, and a lot of guys use them in the ride alongs, right?

When they’re doing the, when they’re teaching. And you may actually do that, do that yourself. They’re still with a three point ballot, like in a passenger car, I have my doubts. I know it’s been tested. I know it’s better than nothing. And maybe that’s the best we can do in that scenario. In carting, maybe that’s something that could be, I mean, definitely could be used.

I don’t know that it’s necessary. I think it’s kind of an overkill based upon the other things that we’re already using. Because you just, you just don’t get those forward acceleration injuries. The, where the skull is moving in the torso is because, you know, you get hit you. If you go to the front of the go-kart, you’re going outta the front of the go-Kart , you know?

Now I’ve never seen that, but you know, I’ve seen it. My son shows it on me and on YouTube all the time. So, uh, I don’t know if that was from years ago or whatever it’s from, but he’s like, Hey dad, look at this. I’m like, don’t let your mother see that. Whatever you. Because that’s a bad idea. So what you said, I think that, uh, I think there’s a place for all of [00:36:00] that.

I think that what we have now, you know, the, the motocross ones are interesting, not to go on, drone on about this, but the motocross ones are interesting because they have a piece that goes down the back and in the front of the, of the chest, right? The torso, front and back of the torso, which limits, uh, posterior and anterior movement.

But then again, you can’t really use it because I have one. Safety is incredibly important to me. I’m 14, you know, my son’s 14. It’s incredibly important to him as well. But there’s, I always say there’s two kinds of people. There’s people with kids and people without kids. And I had no, I didn’t have my son until I was 40.

And you just don’t get it until you have a child and it’s nothing against people who don’t have children. I think about that myself every day, but whether, whether this was a good idea or not, you know what I’m saying? To add to what he’s saying though, the safety wise, we do have Liat braces, which are used highly in motocross, basically the same neck restraint you see on, in motocross riders.

They make a mimic product for carding, uh, Liat, EVS, Alpine [00:37:00] Stars, the list goes on and on. They all make a neck brace to where your head can only go so far down and so far back. It’s not mandatory. Uh, the national level, I mean, personally, I don’t wear a neck support. I like being free to kind of move around.

But he should. I know, and you know, it’s, it’s funny you guys bring that up because I, I had a Sparco one because I’m a Sparco fan boy. So, you know, I had the big thick one designed for cars and that was great for carting because it was a little extra, you know, a little bit of extra thickness underneath my helmet, which means I didn’t move that much.

But what’s funny is in the car world, those neck braces or neck collars or whatever you want to call them, they’re actually seen as no good, at least in our world. They They will not pass muster. So you’re forced to either use a Hans or something like a Simpson hybrid. So, yeah, but it’s, it’s interesting to see the overlap there, what works and what doesn’t let’s talk just very quickly from your professional perspective, what are some things you can do as a Carter from a, from a physical perspective, either to train and get [00:38:00] ready for a race or to help ease the pain after a race?

Like in your neck, your back, things like that. If you were in an incident or just the physical conditioning, you need to, you know, not be overly bruised, damaged after a race. You can’t be too prepared for carding. Uh, especially as like myself being older, cardio is incredibly important, but it’s, it’s more overall.

muscular health, if that makes sense. It’s tough to be squishy in the cart. You know, I mean, uh, bigger guys will have problems with, uh, ribs specifically, especially when you’re trying to learn to drive the cart, it becomes really, I mean, you guys know what I’m talking about, but for anyone who’s listening, it becomes really hard when you’re being thrown left and right all the time.

So it’s usually about the ribs and torso. You got to have, I know this isn’t the question, but the first time I ever drove a cart, it was a KT 100 and this was four or five years ago and I didn’t have a rib vest. So that rib was broken, that day. That was fun. And uh, there’s a whole story that goes with that.

Race knows it, I’m not gonna tell it here, but general conditioning is incredibly [00:39:00] important. I’m not a big guy with uh, ibuprofen and those types of things, but you gotta be rested, you have to drink your water, eat well, because it’s so fast. And when I say fast, I don’t necessarily mean we’re going 100 miles an hour.

You may only be going 30 miles an hour, but the transitions between rights and lefts and looking ahead and the things that you’re doing that Ray alluded to earlier is happening so quickly that it’s very taxing. And if you’re tired, just like any sport, you can’t perform well. You may be sore, and if you’re sore, it’s, you know, it’s ice and ibuprofen, to be honest with you.

You know, we can talk to a bunch of our guys, just the older guys, the young, the younger kids don’t, they don’t, they’re like rubber bands. It doesn’t robber. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But that’s, uh, get your, get your rest. Just all the things your mom told you, right. Get your rest, eat well, be hydrated for sure. And come ready to pay attention to what’s going on.

My other question goes to race in that, you know, rubbing is racing, but in carding, sometimes it’s like, do you really have to? Yes. [00:40:00] You know, it is racing. It’s, uh, you know, you can ask anybody at the car track. I’m not the cleanest guy out there, you know, whatever got to get the job done. But honestly, the wheel to wheel action in carting is, is insane.

You know, rubbing doesn’t really work for racing and open wheel cars. Um, and it, it hardly works in go karting. You know, you see a little bit of bump and run here and there, kind of like you would see at a stock car track. Most of the time, a lot of drivers have a lot of respect for one another here and there.

Yeah. People get a little rowdy, you get a little pissed off on track and you, uh, you know, you reflect that in the guy in front of you sometimes or the guy you’re battling with, but it’s not a necessity. Absolutely not. For the most part though, a lot of drivers nowadays, we have a lot of respect for the safety side of things.

Like we’re talking about keeping each other safe, not trying to hurt one another. As a sport, it’s evolved to where, you know, in the, in the mid early two thousands in the era, I really grew up. You know, as a sponge soaking up information from people I looked up to in the sport or something like that, dirty driving was kind of normal.

They [00:41:00] allowed you to race hard and that everybody had to go off of a respect basis. Nowadays, we have a lot of rules in place that, you know, you can’t use the other guy’s bumper in front of you to get by him and things like that. Our national sanctioning bodies actually have two cameras on every corner of the racetrack, and there’s actual marshals from IndyCar.

These people are hired from IndyCar to come marshal the races, and they actually call penalties to rough driving. So there’s a lot of rules in place. There’s a lot more respect at the racetrack, on the racetrack, and off the racetrack from drivers nowadays. So dirty driving is kind of Becoming a thing of the past.

A lot of people are not only forced to race clean, but choose to race a lot cleaner now. And it’s funny you mentioned that because, you know, every time I get back in a cart and I do enjoy it, I find myself, and I’ve had some other drivers say this too, that, you know, have kind of come up and come away from carting.

They go, man, I’ve gotten slow in a cart because the driving style is totally different. You got to use your body to kind of get them to rotate and stuff like that. But you realize you’ve gotten smoother and you’re a lot more [00:42:00] strategic. Jake. Like I’m always looking way ahead. I’m planning out my move, looking for somebody else’s mistake and they’re driving while I have time to catch up to them because it’s not like a car where it’s like, well, he’s in a Miata and I’m in a Corvette.

So this is going to take all about a half a turn for me to execute this pass. I think when I was younger, it was way more tactical. It was like, I got to take this guy out. I got to get him out of my way. It’s like playing Mario cart, you know, for lack of a better way to put it. But. It’s, it’s just kind of funny.

I think the maturation process of a driver and what you, what you take from every sport and what you bring back to it when you’re jumping from disciplines. So did you see that as well when you moved from karting to stock karting, et cetera, or was it kind of just a natural progression rather than a learn and bring back?

Like I said, I was raised in a way that at the racetrack to drive with respect and race people how you want to be raced. Now, again, if somebody raced you the way you don’t want to be raced, you return the favor. Um, but through my racing career that the stock car world, I mean, those guys will flat out put you in the wall when there’s 10 grand to win on the line.

You [00:43:00] know what I mean? Because, you know, people race like we did. We raced paycheck to paycheck every night. So some people rely on that gas money to get home and it’s their livelihood right on the line out there. So I can’t explain what happens when the helmet goes on necessarily some days. I just, I almost forget sometimes when I’m pissed off and I’m, you know, that extra focused.

I kind of forget about the race once in a while, but, Growing up, yes, the, everything I learned in karting helped me excel even further, um, in any of the next steps I took in my racing career, because I already had the fundamentals down. The karting really teaches you the fundamentals of racing, the race craft.

Like you said, line selection, where you’re looking on the racetrack, that’s a huge one looking way ahead. A lot of people look at the hood pins. That’s, that’s a common. Thing that people look right in front of them and they don’t make the right decisions on the racetrack due to that, not looking ahead and being prepared.

But you learn all these things at such a young age and carding, and it’s almost ingrained in your brain. Like I try and teach these young kids this, and it’s, it’s such second nature to me now, because I, you know, like I said, I’ve been [00:44:00] doing this my whole life, I don’t think about looking ahead. I don’t think about telling somebody to look ahead all the time because.

It’s just in my nature now. It’s just something I do. You know what I mean? So growing up in carting, I’ve trained a lot of racers that started in cars. And I’ve trained a lot of kids that went from carts to cars. And every single time I can tell when a kid came from carting first, because he knows the fundamentals of motor sports from carting, the racing’s closer.

Everything’s happening much faster. You can talk to any formula one driver. They’ll all tell you the best training tool shifter cart, because everything happens. Now, now, now, now, now there’s no second to breathe. There’s no second to stop and think unlike a race car track. Sometimes you have, you know, a place like mid Ohio, you’re on the backstretch for 15 seconds.

You got plenty of time to take a drink, do whatever, right? Carding our longest straightaway. We’re on it for six or seven seconds. And most of the times in a shifter cart, you’re banging gears the whole way down the stretch. So. Everything happens much quicker. Your hand eye coordination gets better.

There’s just so many benefits to the karting side of things. [00:45:00] You know, I actually work with James Hinchcliffe once in a while, Connor Daly, they all come out and still, during the whole, uh, pandemic when racing was shut down, you saw all these IndyCar drivers back in go karts to work on their hand eye coordination.

Continuously. It is still a, it’s a strong training tool. It’s just, it’s a strong, it’s a great learning tool for young racers that are looking to progress into something different. It’s even good for older racers that maybe, you know, do SCCA club events. Or track days or whatever to get in a go kart because they can learn so much that will just do nothing but help them in their, in their racing careers.

I do think though, you’re right. Racecraft is a big one and traffic management is another one and, and, and dealing with cars in close proximity, it all translates to, you know, bigger cars and other forms of motorsport. I think though, what gets lost in translation is the physics, is the weight transfer, actual suspension, right?

Because a cart and a car, nothing alike. in the same corner at the same, nearly the same speed. [00:46:00] Let’s say you could do 50 mile an hour in a shifter cart around a slow corner. You do the same in a Miata. They’re nothing like each other at that same speed. You know what I mean? So it’s, so it’s kind of interesting fundamentals or otherwise you still have to relearn every discipline you move to.

You’re always, you’re always building. So I just wanted to kind of reinforce that point that, you know, We’re always learning and even though you know one discipline doesn’t necessarily mean you know all of them, right? So it’s always good to branch out and learn new things The funny part about that is I was never in a cart until anthony decided he wanted to do coding and we did that So, you know, I was used to doing relatively well, right?

So I had a natural affinity for for driving things So carding Oh, man, this is gonna be easy. I get in the car, I’m like, Wham! Eighteenth. Wait a minute! Like, what? How did that happen? And, and, Race loves to point out, Stop driving it like a goddamn car. Because that’s what’s ingrained in me. Right? [00:47:00] So I, you know, I said, I say this all the time.

I, and I even have, this is one of my, one of the quote, the quote for me on the website is that I, coming from cars, I didn’t realize what it takes to be able to succeed, drive pilots, you know, at any level of carding, not to mention the highest levels of carding. It’s a true Be able to do that. And my, you know, my son now at 14, who is, who is a junior champion at our local track for the last couple of years, he is so much better than me now, after all these years of my racing in general, in race craft, maybe not in race craft, but as far as being able, you know, he’s 14.

He doesn’t think as much as you should just being able to. Pilot that piece of equipment. He just has it in him and it’s not necessarily him It’s because he started here and and now He’s able to go and do whatever he he tested an f4 car last weekend. So it is the first car He’s ever driven. [00:48:00] He’s never driven a car and not to belabor the point, but I do think you know Since we’re talking about, you know disciplines and how they overlap each other.

I do find a lot of times Carting and autocross are very similar because in order to be fast in an autocross, you have to be imaginative and you have to be able to reinvent the line a lot of times because if you’re driving gate to gate or cone to cone, you’re doing it wrong, right? You need to be able to see the path and that’s where driving in cars and going to carts doesn’t work because what they teach you in cars is be smooth, do this weight transfer, and it’s all about managing, let’s say, an average of 30% 3000 pounds around the corner.

You can’t just chuck it in there because it doesn’t work like you can do in a cart or in an autocross or whatever. And I also relate it to what we commented on earlier about front wheel drives, because a lot of people don’t understand how to drive front wheel drives fast because they’re similar to carts.

You gotta chuck ’em in there. Anticipate some understeer and let it put itself where it wants to go and then rocket yourself out of the corner. You’re doing all that other stuff, you know, this and that. And [00:49:00] the principles of, of road racing are the same. However, and not to go too far off the deep end on this, it’s just a different driving style, right?

But they all, again, they all culminate together in this melting pot of experience and carting again is the beginning of all that. So let’s talk about getting kids. Into motorsport. I got two daughters and my eldest by the way. She’s like a giant you’re talking about Anthony being four foot six at uh, 11 years old.

My daughter is four foot four At six years old, right? Yeah, so she i’m ready to put her in a cart man. I mean like so I hate to say though. My littler one is more Inclined more more just more into cars and mechanically inclined. However, I think there’s an interest there You You know, I kind of stuck her in some power wheels in an early age to try to get her, you know, excited about the idea.

How do I get a kid engaged in karting? And number two, motorsport is, let’s just face it, male dominated. How does karting cultivate a [00:50:00] female side of the culture and invite them in? So I’ll pass that to Raze. So, um, it’s actually a funny story. So my, my girlfriend’s little sister is one of the best shifter car drivers in the country right now.

She’s, I think, ranked 20th out of a couple thousand. She’s been carting since she was the age of four. I think, you know, getting children, girls, boys, any into carting in general, it, you know, like you just said, you’re, you’re, you’re youngest one, you know, she’s got that inner to go race. And do something or be around cars and the interest side of it.

The best way I can answer that question is the racing industry in general, whether you’re going into cars or carts is just so inviting. I was raised at the racetrack and I, and the core values I learned being raised at the racetrack, the discipline I had, my father made me learn at the racetrack, the dedication I had to have.

All of the life lessons I learned, the friendships. I mean, I don’t, I don’t even talk to my friends from high school anymore. All my friends are at the racetrack. I mean, that’s, that’s, [00:51:00] uh, hopefully one day a father, I, I don’t see raising my family anywhere else, but. But the racetrack, I mean, the thing, the work ethic I was able to learn and just anything I just spoke of at the racetrack was just so important to me.

I mean, I don’t think I’d be the same human being if I, if I was never introduced to racing and that’s honestly why we did all this, uh, to start. This is why I I’m so passionate about. Motorsports. Um, and just an enthusiast in general about racing, because just, uh, I couldn’t imagine who I would have been, what I would have gotten into the trouble I may have gotten in.

If I wasn’t disciplined enough to take my racing career seriously or be so in love with it. But getting into carting or getting into motorsports, it’s, it’s all about the people around you in reality. I think just getting in a go kart, whether it starts at a K one speed indoor or a fun land where you.

Shoot mini golf with the family and you end up just taking your kid for a ride in a go kart. It’s not the easiest thing to get into, I guess. I mean, finding somebody to rent a go kart, that’s kind of the problem with the industry right now, but that’s something we’re really [00:52:00] working hard to, to fix is push the content out.

So the kids do see carding or the family see carding, get the interest. You know, all the kids we see at the track, we have kids ranging right now at our local club from four to 13. They all hang out together. They’re all playing football, you know, on the sidelines and stuff. It’s just, it becomes such a.

Family atmosphere. It’s such a great place for a family to go and and participate together. Um, everybody’s there to help each other. So it is a super inviting sport. Once you’re trying to get into it, getting into it, getting that that time. Maybe it’s a rental. Uh, like I said, a K one speed ride, something of that nature there, there’s cart shops, almost surrounding every go kart track in the country that, that have a kid cart for rent for the day that you can throw your kid in or a rental cart at the facility, or like I said, an indoor cart track, those are the easiest ways into the sport if you’re trying to introduce it to a child, but why motor sports, why get into carting first?

Why any of this, uh, is, is again, just the life of the lifestyle. I mean, it’s, it’s [00:53:00] irreplaceable. That’s very true. Can’t say the same about golf, unfortunately, just kidding. No, you can’t. I don’t care. You can ask Tiger Woods and he’s not as excited as I am about motorsports. What does the future of karting look like?

Like if you had, you know, races, crystal ball, what do you think the future looks like? As a kid, I never understood why it wasn’t in the X games, why it wasn’t an Olympic sport, why it wasn’t bigger than it is. Everybody, you know, you can walk up to any kid and go, Hey, do you know what motocross is? And they’re like, yeah.

And you go, okay, you know what cart racing is? And they go, You know what I mean? Oh, you mean K 1 speed? So we have, especially in the United States, it’s the second biggest sport in Europe, next to soccer, karting is. So we don’t see it the same way that the world sees it, per se. In America, it’s, I mean, it’s 10, 000, Drivers deep consistently for the last 10 years.

Now that’s people moving up, coming in, et cetera. I see the sport being eventually on television streaming, you know, the same way that you would see an SCCA race potentially, or a Trans Am racer, even a NASCAR race, I think it’s way more [00:54:00] exciting. I think you can put a show on with carting. People often move up to cars and they go, man, this is.

Boring compared to being at the cart track because the racing’s just, honestly, it’s just not as exciting as not, it’s not as, you know, there’s not as much, uh, contact going on. It’s, you know, I think carting is more of a show than honestly, any other form of motor sports on four wheels personally. So when we get our promoters together and we start really working together to grow the sport, I could see the future of this being on television and having a professional side of carting.

Because if. If I’m being honest, I think I work harder to be at the professional level of carding than most race car drivers do. It’s way more physically demanding. My hand eye coordination has to be twice as good because everything’s twice as fast. The work ethics there from everybody, the factory, and now as a factory, we put in.

Tons of R and D work. And the, really the only people we’re showcasing it to are the people within our industry, which is why our focus is more so on the social side and getting people into carting and growing this sport. I think it [00:55:00] takes everybody working together to put that package together to not only, you know, we have to grow the grassroots side of it, which I think again, carting is the grassroots form of motor sports.

You build that base and possibilities are endless. The automotive world is changing every day. We get newer and bigger and better reports about the next EV that’s coming out. Cause I’ve been up and down the West coast running at several K ones. And even in the South, they’re electric for indoor. And that makes sense because you want to be breathing in all those fumes.

But do you see electric as the future of outdoor car racing? Many don’t know, but companies like Bombardier, which owns Can Am, Sea Doo, Skadoo, a huge, huge company, Aprilia, and the list goes on on what they do. They make one of the most successful and best go kart engines right now, and they’ve been working with Bosch currently on an electric platform.

You see these in development constantly. The core karting market It would, honestly, it would break my heart to see two stroke racing gas and and [00:56:00] six speed shifter carts go away. The car market is going to dictate and really what we’re allowed to do with the environment is going to dictate where we go with carting.

I think two strokes are obviously not the cleanest. We’ve been working on some four stroke options. We race four strokes right now and then some of the lower level classes. But I do see a future and I don’t think it’s within five to 10 years. I say it’s 15 years down the road. We’re going to see full electric go karts, you know, electric engines strapped to these go karts.

That’s okay. I mean, it’s whatever the market dictates. Dr. T, how do you feel about the future? I, I, I think that the electric cart is a lot closer. I say it’s within five, seven years, uh, race. And I don’t necessarily agree with that on that point, but I think that’s a lot closer than we think it is. And I think, again, when he said, as soon as it’s adopted by the car companies, then it, which it’s becoming, I mean, let’s look how far we’ve come in the last five years, right.

From the Tesla to, to the new Bolt and the Volt from Chevy. I think the future is bright. I agree with. [00:57:00] Race 90 percent of the time and I think part of what we’re doing here to be able to showcase what happens here That was the one thing like, you know, i’m an outsider coming into this so I get to see this from a different perspective Necessarily than than guys and it happens every day and I get I get guys at the track who’ve done this for For 20 years and I look at them and I ask some questions and there’s one gentleman in particular Who uh, you know, he’s kind of a because it’s always been done this way kind of thing with that That doesn’t make you stand out to anybody.

And it doesn’t advance the sport because it’s always been done that way. I’ve always been the guy that says, well, why not? And why can’t we do that? The thing that makes me excited about the things we’re doing with race factory is we’re very excited about the carts. And we know that what we’ve built and what race has designed is the forefront of carting right now.

And it just. We don’t buy and have made and design a hundred of these things It’s like there can be 20 or 30 of them or 10 even hey this we need we could do this better Well, we’re already leading. Okay, but we could do this better. [00:58:00] So the next order goes in with a totally new design For new stuff. So the constant innovation is really cool for race factory.

That’s what I wanted to be a part of I also wanted to be a part of this as far as the branding of it, right because race factory really needs to be about Bringing new people into the sport. The fact of the matter is there’s no real marketing to people who aren’t in the sport, right? so Step one of this is being on your guys show right now, right?

And your podcast literally, I mean, it’s literally where we want to be and what we want to do, because if you can’t get the new idea to more people, then you’re not going to grow. I don’t have any desire to do what’s always been done. I’ve always innovated to a point, even in, in my physical medicine clinics with medical doctors and nurses and Kairos and like all the types of things.

So I, I’m, I’m excited about. The possibilities, and to be honest, it’s a level playing field. There’s nobody doing this stuff. We are tasked with getting out what we’re doing to more people to be able to bring them in. [00:59:00] I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but for anyone who might be listening, come to a local track.

If you show up and you decide that you want to do anything like this, come to Pit Race where we are, find us, Race Factory. You will find people there who you may not agree with all the time, but if you need something. They’re the first person to give it to you. Yeah, man, take this. You need that. You need that gear.

You need that tire. You need that thing. How can we help you with the motor? How can we, it’s, it’s amazing. And I’ve never experienced that in any other sport. It has a lot to do with the fact that nobody wants to go out on track and do laps by themselves. So you got to make sure your competitors are running.

That way at least you can brag that you beat them, you know, whether they’re, whether they’re band aided or not. Right. I mean, we know that’s the, that’s the real principle behind all that, but I do want to circle back to something important about the future of carding. I tend to agree with both of you and disagree with both of you at the same time.

I think Dr. T’s right. I think the future is a lot closer than we realize for various reasons, environmental, but also they’re going to need to [01:00:00] groom formula e drivers somehow. And they’re going to have to get kids into electric go karts early, right? Because as we know, the power delivery. And the complete mechanics of electric cars, their handling is, is totally different than that of gas, the torque curve, all of it.

So though the principle of carting is the same, having driven both. And I’m sure race you have too. It’s just a night and day difference. If you take the handling off of the table, outside of that, it’s especially important that we’re talking right. The carting world and the automotive world are talking right now that, you know, at least through this medium, through our podcast, we’re talking.

Because we have the challenge of keeping motor sports alive from a grassroots perspective, from the club racing perspective, from time trials, from high performance driver’s education and all that, because as sports cars start to disappear, as the manual start to dry up, as the two door coupes are gone.

And now we’re going to electric SUVs and Ford F 150s and all this stuff that’s [01:01:00] coming out. It means less and less cars, except if you’re into old cars, are going to be on racetracks. And where do outdoor karting tracks generally live? At racetracks. And if racetracks aren’t, aren’t profitable, then the kart tracks aren’t going to be around either.

So we have this weird, and I hate this phrase, symbiotic relationship. It’s mutually beneficial to both of us that both sports continue because the karters go into cars, the kart tracks need to be available to make the karting exist, right? So. Again, it’s a whole ecosystem at the end of the day when you’re talking about four wheeled racing, right?

Motorcycles is a different animal, but still related like, you know, adjacent to what we’re doing. So again, it’s important that we continue to spread this enthusiasm. And I think you guys are on the right track. So I don’t think the future is bleak in any way. I just think that people have turned their attention to other things and maybe are distracted.

I guess the bigger challenge that we all have is how do we bring people back to motorsport? I can answer that. I mean, like [01:02:00] I said, I think what we’re trying to do is, is going to do that. The social media side of things. So if we look at the automotive industry as a whole, karting or car racing, it’s dominantly run by middle aged, old, older people.

You can say boomers. Easy now. Boomers. Old, old men and women. Easy now. With technology not, you know, them living through having no technology to now what we’ve, we’ve got now. I, I think it’s Wait a minute, no technology? Come on now. He just called you a Luddite, right? Thank you, yeah. Yo, he doesn’t understand what Luddite means.

If you know what dial up sounds like It’s what you’re too old to market anything anymore. Um, and it’s just the truth. It is what it is. Everything’s evolving. You know, I’m going to be depressed when we race electric carts because I love my C12 VP race gas with some castor oil. I love the smell of it.

It’s what wakes [01:03:00] me up in the morning, but, uh, you know what, things are going to change, things are going to evolve and, uh, we’re going to have to just build off of that. And that’s where I think the racing industry has fallen behind a little bit. You know, I look at the marketing in carding cause it’s generally driven a lot by younger people.

A lot of millennials now are really starting to run the content side of the carding industry, the drifting world. If you just take drifting. As a sport. It was nothing 10 years ago. It wasn’t a sport, really. It was a hobby. It was a sport, maybe in Japan and some of these other countries. But here in the United States, it really didn’t start growing until you saw the millennials get into it and start creating content with it and start pushing that content on their social platforms.

Again, companies like Hoonigan, Hoonigan’s really taken The sport of drifting and exploded it to the public. So we want to do the same with carting and motor sports in general. I mean, we, we have our hands in some Trans Am stuff, some F4 stuff. We’re always trying to give options to the racers to move up and help market racing in [01:04:00] general.

But I think it’s all in the marketing podcasts are huge. You know what you’re doing here. Like I said, I, we talked before we were recording, uh, I had my own podcast recording. Pushing content, I think, is what’s really going to drive this motorsports to the future, um, because in reality, that’s the form of advertising nowadays.

I mean, our president uses it to advertise what he’s doing every day. In reality that that is our source of advertisement and it’s free advertisement something anybody can do I I stress a lot when we go to these one off carding events for people to to utilize their social media to push content to keep content going in motorsports and And, and try and spread what we’re doing because, you know, again, it’s not on TV as much as you see, like you said, everything’s innovating.

So we’re not, we’re starting to see sports cars go away and electric vehicles come in. And like you said, trucks and the two door coupes are going away and, and whatnot. So. I don’t think racing is going to die because of any of that. If anything, Formula One is, is a [01:05:00] strong platform that, that all these manufacturers use for technology to test in their new vehicles.

So I don’t see racing going away per se. Sports cars are the same thing. BMW houses a team because you know, they’re innovating for the future for their production vehicles. So I don’t see it going away necessarily. I see it shifting. I see it shifting a lot and potentially shrinking a little bit. Can we say motorsports has shrunk in the last 15 years?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I would also say the advent of things like iRacing has probably changed the way we perceive it now, and especially now in the time of COVID, where you were watching IMSA through iRacing and Formula 1 and IndyCar through iRacing, it’s like, wow, well, nobody gets killed. And oh, by the way, I can buy a ringer e gamer, you know, e sports guy to come in and play for me as we, as we allegedly heard happen on a few races there, but there’s something to be said about that too.

And that’s very, you know, dystopian sci fi type of future where racing is now like ready player one and not us actually physically out [01:06:00] on the track anymore. So I often wonder if maybe that’s the end state of all this. Is it gonna be vr, ar you know, it, it won’t matter if it’s electric carts or, or pet petrol carts anymore because we’re all gonna be jacking in like Black Mirror and playing online.

It doesn’t matter how old you are at that point. Right. I, I would agree with you and to some extent, yeah. I mean, listen, we all raced on the sim. During COVID everybody was, I mean, I think stock shot through the roof when COVID happened, but, and so did Fanatec and all the wheels and pedal sets and sim sets you can get, but there’s nothing that can replace the adrenaline that you get in a race car.

There’s nothing that can replace that feeling, even just again, the people at the racetrack. So I think you’re always going to have your motorsports enthusiasts that want to be hands on with it. I kind of. Disagree with you thinking that it may replace motor sports potentially or real racing. I think it’s actually a great Tool to get people into motor [01:07:00] sports I think it’s another platform for people to See if it’s something one they’re talented at two if they’re interested in for a lot less Again labor wise you don’t have to do anything but buy the setup and Put your computer up to, it costs you a fraction of what it would cost to go buy a race car and try it or rent a race car for a day.

So I think it’s a way, you know, look at William Byron. He started on a SIM and now he’s racing cup. I can see both sides of it, but I think they’re always going to be separate in their own ways. I think it’s amazing. I use it as a training tool every single day. I’m getting ready for a race in Sebring next week.

And I’ve been on the SIM every single day driving Sebring. I don’t see it replacing motorsports ever because there’s just nothing like. Touch the feel, the smells, the, the adrenaline there’s, to me, there’s nothing like, and if you haven’t experienced it for any of you listening and you’re just sim racers, I suggest getting in a car and going to a track day and finding that difference for yourself.

You know, there’s only one thing that I, that I’ll add to that because I think, I think race factory is positioned very well. Because let’s [01:08:00] face it, the reason that people don’t get in race cars and don’t go racing, it’s one thing, right? It’s money. It’s always money. Now the VR world has proven that there’s still interest there.

You couldn’t buy a headset. You couldn’t buy a wheel. You couldn’t buy a, you know, during COVID. So, the interest is there. We have to figure out a way to get these people into a low cost racing sport that gives them the same type of thrill, right? That they can get with VR, which is much more, obviously, in person.

And that’s the karting, right? So, if we can get them into karting, that’s gonna be, get them young, Get them in, give the family something to, to do together, which all too many times. Listen, my, my son, he’s just like every other kid. I got to pull the phone out of his hands constantly. I got to get him away from the screen, the screens.

And, uh, that doesn’t happen at the track, at the track. They’re running around, working on cards, going up to see the other cars. They’re actually like, I was, you know, back in the stone ages race, [01:09:00] But, uh, yeah, right. It won’t. Yeah, right. Exactly. So, yeah, I think that our job is to be able to get people into motorsports, in karting, starting them there, giving them, giving families something to do together again, I think race factory is a perfect option.

If we can make it cool enough. And young enough with that young vibe with cool cool shirts like race has on and and good social media I think that we’ll be able to do that better than anybody else at this point and we’ll just see how it goes Race one more for you any tips for drivers things that they could do very easily to maybe make their karting Experience better make themselves faster anything you want to share, you know, some some hidden gems.

There’s some secrets So yeah, I, I mean, my training regimen, whether I was in cars or carts, uh, consisted a lot of hand eye coordination. Um, when I lived in certain areas that had honestly slot cars, I raced slot cars just for the hand eye coordination. When you’re going [01:10:00] on a thousand foot track in 3. 2 seconds, your hand eye has got to be amazing.

And so I think hand eye coordination is, is one of the most important. Some people use video games for that. They even make these new things that I, I just, I forgot what they’re called, but they’re basically little light up deals that like you used to see in an arcade and you had to hit them as fast as possible.

Um, you’re starting to see the, a lot of racers use those physical conditioning. I mean, I, anytime I feel good in the go kart well rested, a lot of it has to do with my physical conditioning too. So pounding labs, uh, looking ahead. You know, I, the list goes on and on, but I’d say the easiest is preparing yourself with, with good hand eye coordination, being relatively physically fit, rest.

Like Dr. T said is a huge one. If you’re not getting eight hours of rest before a race day, I can guarantee you, you’re not going to be as good. Um, and I guess those would be my. My big three that, and, um, I do a lot with nutrition on a race day. I make sure that I’ve got a proper calorie count. I drink enough water.

I’m drinking amino acids, things like that to help me recover even quicker. I may take it a little more serious than most, [01:11:00] but it all is up to that end result. So any tips for going faster in terms of driving technique? Going faster, um, buy a race factory car. Yeah, buy a race factory. No, uh, I would say, um, you know, data is nowadays, especially even in car racing, data is huge.

Um, and I would say being disciplined. I work on, uh, Anthony, Dr. T’s son a lot with his data. And I would say just being self disciplined, being able to self reflect on what you’re doing out there, uh, utilizing your data. To the maximum potential to really go back and reflect on what you’re doing different, but as far as on track to make you better without any of that stuff, I’m a firm believer that you have to find the limit and then dial it back five or 10%.

So I’d say go find that limit. Don’t be afraid. All right. So the last piece here, I give you guys the opportunity to say anything that we didn’t talk about and an opportunity to thank any sponsors, partners, anybody you want to mention at this point before we kind of wrap up and close up. I do want to make a strong point that Race Factory is not just a karting company.

We are a motorsports [01:12:00] brand and you know, I’m actually outside of home. I’m here in Atlanta doing a meeting with some teams for Trans Am Racing. Uh, we’ve had some meetings with F4 teams and F3 teams, Spec Racer 4 teams to branch out into other forms of motorsports to help people grow into, you know, help them give them a path.

To the car world to better their racing careers in the future. And hopefully maybe one day I’ll be a part of somebody’s IndyCar career. Um, between that and, uh, of course we have so many sponsors. Group A Apparel is a huge one of ours. Delta Sport U4K, which is actually a sim racing team that we do a lot with.

Cross promotion. And, uh, we put our carters in their sims and they put their sim racers in our carts once in a while. Um, so those. Guys, Steelo USA, Liquid Sky, Whitehall Health Center, Mr. Dr. T himself. We actually are looking to branch out into a actual physical side of that, you know, tuning on the drivers, tuning on the racer themselves, trying to make the actual driver better through nutrition, [01:13:00] through their physical abilities and things like that.

It’s something that Dr. T and I are talking about strongly getting into in the future. So yeah, all of that combined. Look for Race Factory on all your social outlets, uh, Facebook, Instagram. Yeah. Racefactoryusa. com. And we want to thank you guys for having us on here. Definitely. Yeah. You know, I’d like to thank the people that we’ve worked with so far, everyone that race mentioned, obviously.

And then the people at our local track at pit race, they they’d been incredibly welcoming and, and we we’ve fielded almost half the field are on race factory cards at this point. And I think it has a lot to do with. We talk about being a motorsports brand. We also have take a very family friendly atmosphere.

I mean, it’s a very family friendly atmosphere. When you come and see what we do, we’re very serious about training. We’re very serious about the carts themselves on, on race days, but we’re all, there’s always food and music. And it’s, it’s like an event. For us to be there. So you know what I mean? So when you think about race factory, you can think about some of the baddest ass racers [01:14:00] out there, but you can also think, Hey, this is a place where where your mom can come or your girlfriend or your parents or whoever to come and be comfortable.

And have a good time with us because I think that’s as important as any results. That’s what I’ve chosen. That’s what Race has signed on for as well. I mean, he’s a hardcore racer. He’s a wonderful gentleman. And, uh, I thank him as well for helping me to be a part of, uh, and teaching me personally what it means to be at the highest levels of karting.

But, uh, to, to everyone else that has come out and been so kind. Our social media person, Alexis, she’s incredible and wonderful. And, uh, we can’t. Put this show on without her and for anyone else that I’m forgetting. I, I, I, sorry. There’s a lot of great people we’re working with and this is for me, it’s a side business that is becoming a passion and I’m just really happy to, to be able to be on this podcast with you guys.

And, uh, if there’s ever anything we can do for you personally, uh, professionally, please don’t hesitate to call [01:15:00] me, uh, personally or Race Factory in general. So I think to wrap things up, as I look back over things, I’m reminded of when Ayrton Senna was interviewed. You know, many years before his death and the reporters asked him, what was your favorite race?

What was your most memorable race of all these F1 races and wins and pole positions you’ve had? And he flat answered, karting, right? That’s when he had the most fun. He always viewed it as the most pure form of racing. And for somebody of that caliber with that reputation, with that. History to look back after all those wins and all those years and say carding is where it’s at That’s something we should all take to heart.

We should all think about and I think what you guys are doing is awesome And I think it stems from those types of emotions that that sentimentality there And I and I applaud you guys for what you’re doing and I cannot thank you guys enough for being on the show This has been excellent and hopefully educational for our listeners and hopefully for everybody that’s out there listening that’s got kids We’re [01:16:00] Call up race, call up Dr.

T, look up racefactoryusa. com. See what’s going on. Get your kids involved. This is how we keep motorsport alive is getting the kids interested. And if you don’t have kids, maybe you’ll like karting. Try something different. Get into something new. Call Dr. T for your chiropractor needs after you’re done. And on that note, gentlemen, again, I cannot thank you enough.

It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate it. Appreciate it.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at GrandTouringMotorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you. Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve [01:17:00] seen, heard, and read from GTM? Great. So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going.

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