Your friendly neighborhood Driver/Coach

Andy Lee - Pro-Driver & Coach for Andy Lee Racing / Flying Lizard

Race driver coaching. Personalized driver coaching. Racing School. ... Andy can work with beginning drivers all the way through experienced professionals.

Contact: Andy Lee at Visit Online!

       

• Let’s talk about your petrol-head origin story? The who/what/where/when/how of Andy Lee? Did you come from a racing family? Was there a car, driver or race that inspired you? What was that poster-car on your bedroom wall as a kid? 
• What led to getting a job at Bondurant? You started as a Mechanic? How did you transition to Coaching? 

• Let’s pause and talk about something near/dear to my heart – 2008/2009 – Volkswagen TDI Cup!
• The jump to Pro Racing – how did that happen, what was it like? What are some of the challenges?
• You’ve been with World Challenge, now SRO for over a decade. What is sportscar racing like at the Pro Level? How has it changed? How do you see it continuing to evolve? Your thoughts on BOP (Balance of Performance)
• You’re racing for the famed “Flying Lizard” team. People might recognize them from the 911s and the R8s. But there’s some other cool cars in the stables at FL. Let’s talk about “Princess Sparkle Farts” (and it’s return). Let’s talk about driving the Aston. 
• You’ve also worked with OpenTrack (the HPDE / Track Day insurance group); What did you do there?

• Doing some digging, we also came to find out you’re behind the group TRACK REKORD – for those that are unfamiliar what is that all about
• What’s next for Andy Lee?

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports. The following episode is brought to you by S r o Motorsports America and their partners at a W s CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School. Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.com or take a shortcut to Gtam America us and be sure to follow them on social at Gt underscore America on Twitter and Instagram at SRO gtam America on Facebook and catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT World.

With over a decade of coaching experience at the Bonderant Racing School, our guest has worked with thousands of drivers during every coaching session. His goal is to make UF faster and ultimately safer driver with a variety of techniques that he’s picked up throughout his racing [00:01:00] career. With over 100 professional starts, 29 podium finishes, competing in TransAm M S A and S R O World Challenge.

Coming up through the Brinks at Bonderant Driver and coach, Andy Lee made his move to pro racing in 2012 with a support from Chevrolet Bondon and a Phoenix based IT company called Best it, and he’s here to share his story with. On break fix. So welcome. Thank you Eric. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

So like, all good, break fix stories. They start with an origin. So let’s talk about the who, the what, the when, the where, and the why of Andy Lee, the Petrolhead. Did you come from a racing family? Definitely didn’t come from a racing background. I grew up in Colorado, mostly in the town of Colorado Springs.

I grew up there with my mom, single mom, I had a little sister. We grew up with her brother, my uncle, and he was kinda like my father figure of swords growing up. He was a huge motorcycle enthusiast, motorcycle racing enthusiast, and car racing too. But I grew up watching Motog [00:02:00] World, Superbike, AMA Superbike, you know, I a man, like, to me, those guys were gods, you know?

And. The dream when I was a really young kid to race motorcycles, everybody in my family drove for a living though. My mom, a lot of the jobs she had were were driving jobs. She drove heavy equipment and dump trucks and school buses and stuff like that. My uncle drove heavy equipment, so I was always around people that did it for a living, just not racing.

Growing up in Colorado Springs, that’s home to the famous Pikes Peak Hill climb that was probably in your backyard, did that have an influence on you wanting to be in motorsports? Yeah, I mean, that was one of my earlie. Motor sports memories. I’d say just sitting on the side, go up there with my uncle. I’d just be covered in dirt from head to toe, you know, because as a little kid you got nothing to do while you’re waiting for cars to come and go by, you know?

So you’re playing in the dirt the whole time. That was cer certainly an influence for sure. You haven’t done that race that’s high on the bucket list of races I’d like to do. So were you more interested in the bikes going up to the summit or the cars? Both. Everything that went by at that speed to me was [00:03:00] awesome.

I was like, yeah, this is great. So back then it was all dirt, you know, they hadn’t paved any of it. My uncle actually worked on pike speed. He plowed the road and maintained the road that went to the top. So we would always be on that mountain all the time as a kid, you know, up in dump trucks, riding with them and stuff.

It was, it was awesome. It was a great place. So what do you think of it now that they’ve paved it? I get the arguments to a degree why they pav. To me, it just kind of changed the nature of it. It demanded a lot more back then on dirt. The chances of just simply sliding off the thing was a real possibility and uh, so I kind of missed the intensity of that.

Or cars were just sideways the whole way up. I think the pavement has brought a lot more speed to the event. Obviously it’s faster, it’s probably makes it maybe even a little more dangerous, but I kind of miss the dirt days for sure. And a different variety of cars too, cuz now the fun wheel drive, I mean, front wheel drive guys can participate at Pikes Peak as well, right?

Yeah, yeah man. Just one of those events, you know, it was. Cool. And part of my childhood and, and you know, at one point I, I guess I, maybe I could [00:04:00] be wrong, but I, I think it was part of the IndyCar Championship at one point, wasn’t it? The Hill climb. And so how cool was that? You know, back then when those, that was part of the deal, like you had to do well at Pike Peak, you know, on top of going to all these other tracks.

They still do that. I believe we talked about that on our previous drive-through episode where a couple of the Indy car drivers were going up in those open wheel cars. Still to this day, they’re doing that. It’s pretty incredible that that’s like tradition. It is, yeah. It’s a great event. Let’s talk a little bit more about little Kid Andy, the Petrolhead sitting on the sidelines of Pike’s Peak.

So when you got home, you know, covered in dirt after you got out of the shower, what was the poster on your bedroom wall? I think when I was a little kid I probably had a poster of a Lamborghini Kuta. I bet. Nice. I bet that was probably the car. You know. And as far as like racers or drivers, Of that nature.

I, I remember a lot of the Moto GP writers back then, like Rainy and Mick Duan and, and those guys probably like the guys next to the Kuta, you know, eventually I started to fall in love more and more with car racing too. And my uncle would take me to racing events [00:05:00] to, they built those Track Pike speak international race, race, P P I R when I was still a kid and Trans Am came there when Trans Am was still kind at the tail end of that heyday where it was like Tommy Kindle and Dorsey Schrader and all those guys.

We went there for that race and just came down to the last lap, last couple corners. I remember rooting for Tommy Kindle cuz he had this bright green all sport car, you know, it was like the coolest looking car. And he got taken out like one of the last corners, one of those races where I remember being on the edge of my seat watching to the last.

I hadn’t been engaged in a race like that ever before and, and when we left that event, it was like, I wanna do that. I mean, that’s what I want to do. That had to be tough growing up in Colorado too, because just like there’s a lot of beach and not a lot of ocean in the land block state, there aren’t too many race tracks.

P P I R and high planes are the two that come to mind. Yeah, that was it, man. I didn’t even know high plans existed. I don’t think it, did it exist back then? But there was like some podunky sort of tracks, you know, here and there. We’d go to you. They’re cone tracks and stuff, but, uh, yeah, P P I R just kind of brought the real guys pros to the state for the first time, but that didn’t last very [00:06:00] long.

Leo, that track held a handful of pro races and kind of deteriorated after that. So Lamborghini Kuta, we joked that that is the car for Petrolheads of a certain age. Like if you grew up in a certain era, it everybody had a kutas or a Testa Rosa up on their wall. And then there were the nerds like me that had a nine 30 turbo.

Right. Because it was right there kind of along with those cars. Mm-hmm. But I wonder in your mind and in your imagination or even today, is there still that car that you reach for that you go, man, that is the top of the summit, that’s at the top of Pike’s Peak for me as a car that you’d like to own or drive?

What is that bucket list car or what is that sexiest car of all time? Oh, well now you’re talking about nerd cars for sure. Because, you know, the car that I would love to own is very different than the car like that I’d like to race or be on track in. You know, that car I’ve always wanted is like a Dotson five 10 station wagon.

I’ve just, I’ve always loved that basic five 10. Body style is just, ugh. I love it. So that’d probably be the car I’d have, but that’d be very different than racing few laps of driving that on track. [00:07:00] I’d. Eh. Yeah. The a hundred horsepower that it makes, it doesn’t quite compare to what you drive on the weekends, right?

No, no. I remember a little kid too, on my uncle’s buddies had like a two 40 Z with the sunken headlights, and he had like racing harnesses in the thing, and I just thought that was one of the coolest cars too. I wouldn’t mind, you know, one of those. Yeah, I guess closet dots and fan I suppose. So that money is no object car.

What’s that? Money? No object man. You know, it’d probably be, when I think of cars for my childhood race cars, you know, like the Camel GTP cars money was no object. I know it’s not new, but I’d love to have like that Jaguar with the the rear wheel covers and that would be the car I would Oh, the XJ two 20.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a poster of it downstairs actually in my garage. Love that car. That’s excellent choice. Excellent choice. So let’s talk about how you went from the motor sports enthusiast as a kid to landing a job at Bonderant. What happened in between there? How did you end up at Bonderant?

I had like a, a phase when I was growing up where [00:08:00] I was, I was always getting in trouble. I was a really bad student, terrible grades, struggled for sure. And I, I kind of like fell in with a bad group of kids. Started getting into a lot of, I started getting suspended from school eventually, basically getting asked to leave more or less expelled, for lack of a better word, just cuz I had caused too many problems and not like, I was like, I wasn’t violent or anything like that, or it just, I, I’d always disrupt class.

I was. A terrible class clown too, and just, or at least I thought I was. And so I eventually just dropped out, dropped outta high school and you know, obviously there was no future of becoming some academic. There was no path going to college. Back then. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. And during that summer, a buddy of mine, one of the kids in that group, which wasn’t necessarily the best kid in the world, like we were all kind of getting in trouble, but he had a garage and he was building his own car.

Uh, he was building like a fox body Mustang. And I was like, sounds fun, you know, I’m into cars and that’d be great. Let’s do that. Got a kind of a junkyard fox body Mustang, and we built these two cars next [00:09:00] to each other in, in his garage all summer and out of junkyard parts and scrap parts. And when mine finally started, it burned more smoke and oil than it, than it did gasoline.

But it ran, you know, and, and that was kind of a cool feeling. It. To take something. And at that time in my life, I wasn’t starting and finishing a lot of things, you know, and to take that car from nothing and build it and finish it, and it ran and drove and that was cool. So my buddy wanted to go to a mechanic school after high school.

He also had dropped outta high school. We were both a couple losers and, uh, so, so I was like, oh, you know, maybe I’ll go with you. I’ll go. So we, we both enrolled at Universal Technical Institute in Phoenix. That’s when we made the move to Arizona. I guess when I was younger though, even despite all that, like not doing well in school and really didn’t appear like I had any kind of future, I still thought that I was gonna do something in racing.

I just, I loved the sport so much. Anytime I’d ever tell anybody that obvious. The state of my school and my terrible grades, they would always say, you’re not gonna make it in racing. Like, are you crazy? After a while I just stopped [00:10:00] saying it to people, but inside, like I knew, I don’t know, just something drew me to the sports.

Something I just, I knew I was going to, knew I was gonna make it one way or another, I was gonna make it. And when I went to uti, I did really well there, actually finished that program and I got a job as a mechanic at Bondra originally, and that’s how I. Involved at the school. That’s kind of the beginning stages of how I got in, just working on cars more or less.

So you’re there turning wrenches at Bonderant. Mm-hmm. And suddenly somebody walks up and taps you on your shoulder and says, Hey kid, get your helmet. Let’s go. Right. I mean, it can’t be that easy. So how did you work your way up through the system being there employed at Bonderant, I was broke and I think back then when you, you were an entry level mechanic of Bondra.

I think my hourly salary was like $7 50 cents or something, an hour, barely enough to pay my rent. I always looked for like side job and working on people’s cars for extra money on the side. And there was a, a guy that was a chiropractor by trade, his name’s Barry, and he had a group of racing enthusiasts.

They all had their own racing go-karts. It was like a little club that they had formed and he [00:11:00] needed somebody to help him prep the carts, maintain ’em, get ’em ready for the next event. And so it was like, yeah, I’ll help you out with that. After work, I’d go over into his house and help get carts prepped and work on ’em and learn about ’em and.

And one day he was just like, Hey, you know, I can keep paying you to work on these carts or if you have any interest in taking one to the track and racing one, I’ll trade you. You know your time and you can take one of the carts and go play. It took me about a millisecond to say Absolutely yes. And after that, him and I just kind of formed a really close bond and relationship.

It kind of became a mentor of mine and Shepherd made from being a, just a very immature, young adult and kind of helped turn me into a full-fledged, you know, functioning adult, a real person. And when he took me under his wing, he introduced me to the people in that group too, the other members. And they were all mostly affluent guys.

Business guys own their own companies. And so when I started to do really well in the, the local go-kart track in that go-kart finishing, well some of those guys would come up and. They’d hang out and next thing you know, they’re like, well, let’s see. You know, you’re doing pretty well here. Let’s see how you do at a big national event.

They’d give me a [00:12:00] little extra cash for some tires and fuel and entry fees and stuff like that. And then I’d do pretty well at the national event, see how you do for a whole season, and, and just kind of kept snowballing from there. But I, I really have to give a lot of thanks to Barry for opening that door and kind of helping me through.

And meanwhile, you’re still turning wrenches at. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still a mechanic. That the time was like a dream job to me. I would call my uncle, I’d be like, you’re not gonna believe I work on a car. As soon as I’m done, I get to go test it. I get to go take it out on track and drive the thing like, you’re not gonna believe this.

I get to do that, and I get paid for this. To me, it was just dream come true. Yeah. And back then, what were they using for the school in terms of cars? Because Skippy always had the Miatas and the formula cars. What was Bondai using? I got there at the tail end of the Mustang phase. They were just kind of transitioning from Mustangs to the Chevrolet contract at the time, to Corvette’s.

So it was good times and the Mustang days back then, because we got all those cars for free, you know, like Ford just gave ’em to us, hundreds of ’em. The whole place was just covered in Mustangs. After hours too. Things would just get outta hand. Other coaches [00:13:00] and instructors that worked at the school and some of the mechanics and we’d go out on track and race each other all the time, bump each other and, and hit each other and, and then come back into the shop and try to patch it off and you know, get ready for the next day.

So nobody would notice. I got a tremendous amount of seat time just learning from those guys, playing around. So at some point somebody did tap you on the shoulder and said, Andy, we need you to coach. So how did that. Yeah, at the school we’d have these big corporate events a lot. And so companies would bring out 20, 30 employees or management teams, something like that.

So those type of events, they always needed extra helpers. So there just wasn’t enough instructors to do the normal class load and then also take care of this big group. And the type of drills that the groups would do are very basic stuff. Autocross driving, go-karts. And so they’d always pull a couple of guys outta the shop to help just shepherd the guys people around, move around to one event to the other and, and give them little brief ground schools on how to get in and outta go-karts and you know, don’t hit cones and this is how you buckle your seatbelt.

Like basic stuff. So I started doing that a lot at the school and eventually one of the [00:14:00] instructors noticed that I could speak, okay, like I talked to a group. I wasn’t afraid to talk to people. And my ability to, to get in front and talk to these groups of people allowed me to kind of get in the door as.

Coaching more and more and more and just kind of grew from that point on. There’s something in this story though, before you became a pro that is near and dear to my heart. Growing up in a Volkswagen Audi Porsche family, I was looking at your resume and buried in there it says Volkswagen, t d i cup. So how did you get absorbed into that?

Was that your first time, let’s say pro racing, or was there an opportunity before then? That was the gateway right before that series started, I had just won a carding title i’d. I’d won this, what they call the Florida Winner Tour, which is like this big off-season racing series. After I’d won that, I found out that Volkswagen was looking for people to send in videotape of yourself, kind of just explaining what you’ve done, and they wanted cart racers and club racers, autocross racers, like if you, as long as you didn’t have any pro racing background, they wanted you to [00:15:00] kind of submit a video about yourself and if they liked you, they would invite you to a big tryout.

Eventually, the faster drivers would get to compete in the series. I did a video and at the time, Bob at the school had this Volkswagen thing and it was always parked in the little museum of the school. Cuz the way he tells the story is he used this Volkswagen thing to lay out the track configuration for the school track when they moved the school from Sonoma to Phoenix.

So this thing’s just been sitting in this museum. I hardly ever even started. I got the thing started, drove it up, put that in the background of my video. I was like, well, at least if I put this Volkswagen back there, maybe they’ll at least notice my tape. I guess it worked. And so they invited me out to do the tryout, which coincidentally enough ended up being right next door to bond round.

So there’s a couple different tracks that are test tracks, if you will. I like club racing tracks right next to the school, and they held the tryout at one of those tracks. I’ve driven that track a million times. I have. Tons of laps on that track, so I was like, I couldn’t believe how much this was all just kind of falling into place.

Did the tryout, of course, since I knew the track and I was quick and made it into the series, and so that’s how it all started. [00:16:00] Tell me, what’s it like to drive one of these mark five based, 1.9 liter diesels on track that only turns to like 4,000 rpm. It was actually really cool. The racing was very intense.

I mean, it was like spec Miata, that level of competition and just super tight, always bumping each other. The cars were really quick. Actually, that first 5,000 feet out of the corner, all that diesel torque, the thing would launch off of every turn and then flat line, of course, and then it just took forever to get to the next corner, and the car was so quiet, you would hear the wind.

Going over the body work of the car more so than the engine. So if you weren’t really paying close attention to the shift lights, you’d miss a shift cuz you couldn’t hear the motor at all. So it was really unique. The other thing that was really cool about that car is it had Audi RA brakes on it and these massive slicks.

Nice. So, which definitely didn’t need, I mean, the thing was never going that fast. I mean, you could break so ungodly late into every corner, it was ridiculous. And the car had, you know, such a wide slick on it, way too much tire instead of sliding, oftentimes [00:17:00] it would just stand up on two wheels, go into a corner too fast and the thing would try to flip over.

And so you’d go up on two wheels and try to set the thing back down. And so it was such a unique thing to, to drive around. I loved the series. It was great. Not too much lift throttle over steer there then. No, no, not at all. But that being said, you know that was an interesting series though because like from the east coast we had names like Tristan Herbert in the VW T I Cup series.

So I’m wondering, did you start to develop friendships during that time? You know, names of folks that we now see in the paddocks almost every weekend. You know, there’s a few kids. I would say kids, uh, we were young back. But probably about a handful of us that I still see about everywhere I go. Josh Hurley’s one kind of competes fairly regularly in like M S A and sro.

The Pombo brothers, mark Pobo and his brother didn’t compete in it, but Mark competed in it, you know, got used to seeing those guys around the paddock. I’m trying to think of anybody else that really rose to the top. There’s definitely a few others. I’m just blanking on some names right now. But it’s a tight little circle of people and I guess the people that were most influential [00:18:00] to me were the ones that were running it at the time.

It was, uh, Mark Miller was a really successful off-road racer, raced the Volkswagen Tourig. You with Red Bull and did like Decar rallies and Baja and his partner Ryan rci, which was another very successful off-road racer. And then they hired Jan Halen, who was like our driver coach for the whole series.

So I’d see those guys still from time to time and they really changed the course of my professional racing life. They taught me what it was to be a pro, how you handle yourself, not only, you know, when you were out on the track, but how to look at your data and how to prep for an event and you know how to treat people around the paddock.

And it was just such a cool series for a lot of. That way. Well, that’s a great segue to talk about your transition into pro racing. So for those that are unfamiliar, we were talking about the TDI Cup that ran from 2008 and 2009, but you didn’t hit the pro stage until about 2012. What did you do for those couple years there?

Was it all prepped to go to the big stage? Were you already working on that? Was somebody mentoring you and bringing you up? How did that transition happen? Finished second in the [00:19:00] championship in the T D I cup in 2009, and then it ran actually one more season in 2010. But I was too old to compete. You know, I didn’t start racing go-karts till I was 20, the age range for the T D I cup, but I think it was 16 to 26.

So after I finished second in 2009, I, I turned 27 and I couldn’t compete anymore. But Mark Miller and Ryan asked me to be like a coach for the series. So like, uh, peer out to some of these other guys and help ’em through the series. And so I did that in 2010, but I don’t know, it was kind of a dark period because I thought, you know, I did really well.

I, I almost won the championship and now I don’t have a ride. You know, I didn’t have a ride for, you know, several years and I, I thought maybe that was it. I thought I got a taste of it. It was great, but I thought, you know, now real life sets in and better start paying the bills. I just worked, I worked at the school and I coached and I still worked on cars from time to time and, and then, you know, right around 2011, Towards the end of 2011, the school took in a, a shipment of Camaros.

And so there’s a good story here. So I, at the time I was coaching and we would do these hot lap deals [00:20:00] for like big groups of people, like big corporate groups, come like a hundred people. We would just do hot after hot lap after hot life, just cycling people out of the passenger seat and giving ’em just a thrill ride around the track.

Basically, one of the days when the, the new Camaros were delivery, we’re like, all right, let’s use the new cars, let’s get the new Camaros out there. Going into the very first turn with my very first passenger was like a 10 year old kid. I hit one of the apex curbs and all the side curtain airbags went off in the car, like didn’t hit anything, you know, but just scared the crap out of both of us.

And come to find out, this became an issue with that first generation of Camaros. If you go on. You can find guys that are out drifting in parking lots and all of a sudden all the airbags go off in the car. Some sort of sensor in that safety mechanism in the car was really sensitive. And they sent out engineers.

I was the first one it happened to at the school, so they thought I had done something wrong. So they’re trying to, to blame me like, well, you must have done something. You must have done something. These things just don’t go off. A couple weeks later, another one went off on one of the other coaches, and then a couple weeks later, another one goes off and it started to become a thing.

So these cars just sat in the back lot of the school while they were waiting on Chevrolet [00:21:00] to decide what they wanted to do with them. And then after a while, Chevy’s like, yeah, you guys are gonna have to pay to fix ’em. You’re gonna have to fix ’em on your own. And so to replace all the airbags and replace all the interior, I mean, it was like, I don’t remember the exact cost.

You know, it wasn’t worth it really. They were gonna sell ’em. I was like, Hmm. I had met a, a gentleman that owned this IT company that you mentioned in the intro. His name was Harry and he was interested in going racing. I just didn’t kind of know at what level. He had bought a Baja buggy and we went and did Baja 1000 together and he’s like, I wanna get into sports car racing.

I was like, well, there’s these cars. They’re sitting out back. I think the school wants to part ways with him for pretty cheap. We could turn those into race cars. We could run ’em in World Challenge. And there was a couple other Camaros competing in the series already, so he’s like, yeah, let’s do it. That was it.

Myself and a couple other volunteer guys from the shop, we stripped them down, we built ’em ourselves, and, and then entered the series the next year. When you got there, when you got to World Challenge, what did you realize was different? People think, you know, they, maybe they’re working through S E C A, they’re doing NASA whatever, I want to go pro and when you go pro, what are the things you’re [00:22:00] faced with right away that are maybe those culture shocks or those things you have to adjust to?

Almost from day one, I don’t know if I was shocked as much as I was just so happy, I was so stoked, could not wait to get out on track with all these guys. Cuz I guess I was just blindly confident and I thought if I can get out there, I think I can compete. You know, and, and a lot of that confidence I think came from the TDI Cup.

Been around a lot of guys in that series and, and I’d watched what they had done in the years after. So I was like, I think I can do this. And I’d say the hardest part though, the part that you don’t think about is all the stuff that happens off the track. The amount of time that goes into prepping and, and getting the car ready and, and all the setup stuff and having the right people around.

Cuz once you start operating a team, it’s like operating a small company and it’s trying to find the right fit for everybody to get the most out. Car once it finally hits the track. That was probably the hardest part for sure, and really kind of not understanding how expensive it really was. You know, like I, I had a kind of an idea and I, I tried to tell Perry and a couple of the other sponsors that we had at the time, you know what I thought it was gonna cost, but it’s [00:23:00] always a lot more than that.

Trying to raise money was, I’d say the biggest challenge of it all. You’ve been with what’s now called s r o. Many of us still refer to it more intimately as just World Challenge. It’s gone through many name changes over the years. But you’ve been with s r O for, let’s say over a decade now. What’s it been like as it’s transitioned from Pelli World Challenge and, and Speed and all these different kinds of things?

How has it changed? How do you see it continuing evolve? In the early years when I competed, it’s still, even though it was considered pro racing, it, it kind of had a club feel to, it felt very modest. You go into the World Challenge paddock and sure, you’d have real time, you’d have Cadillac, you’d. You know, some real players in the paddock, but you had a lot of teams like us that were just very low budget, single card trailer, you know, with everything stuffed in there and couple easy ups, you know, and stuff.

So back then it felt more of a relaxed sort of place, I guess, and that it’s become a lot more serious and probably becoming more equivalent with kind of the way an Imso pad feels as. The years go along. It’s getting more professional, if [00:24:00] you will, but also a lot more expensive too. The budget that we were working on back then was a fraction of what it cost to do today, so it was accessible back then.

For somebody like me, I could go out, you know, as a bonderant coach, like I’d meet a lot of people on a weekly basis that were into motor sports. You know, a lot of the people I would end up coaching at the school, I’d say, Hey, you know, you pitch in 10 grand, you know, we’ll give you the side of the car for the weekend and you can come in and hang out with us.

And, and I had so many great sponsors that they just wanted to go hang out for the weekend, drink beer, smoke a cigar in the paddock, and watch their car go around in circles. And it was very affordable for those kind of guys to get in. But now it’s quite a bit more, it’s just different. The competitions, I’d say is risen a level I’d say now for sure.

There’s a lot of. And girls too, that are just extremely fast. It’s getting harder. Yeah, for sure. And there’s an interesting blend too, because a lot of the, let’s say bronze drivers that are in SRO are former gold platinum drivers from other disciplines, right? So now you’ve got this interesting mix of people in the paddock and, and I think it was kind of funny about, this is probably on both ends of the pendulum.

In your [00:25:00] early days, Andy Pilgrim was there at the Cadillac and now he’s back with other cars 10 years later, but he’s still roaming around the paddock, hanging out with everybody, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it is. You know, it’s different. Back then there wasn’t any driver ranking system, the metallic ranking.

It was. Everybody just races against everybody, amateurs, bros. We were all in the same bag out there. We all racing against each other and it was cool. And I, I do miss that to a degree, even though now it’s kind of more separated. It was, it was a lot of fun. It was a great place to be. So you did some time with M s A as well as Trans Am.

So how do those compare and contrast to World Challenge Done a little bit in M s A, it’s weird. For whatever reason, I’ve always gotten funneled more towards s R O World Challenge and I, I’ve always wanted to do like 24 hours or 12 hours of seabra and stuff and I’ve, I’ve come so, so close, but just for whatever reason it just never worked out.

Those series, you know, are still on my. Bucket list, if you will. Like, I’d, I’d like to compete there more. I dabbled in Trans Am just for a short period, and, and those cars are a lot of [00:26:00] fun too. Tested ’em more than I’ve raced them, but those are like hustling a big F-150 around on slicks. They’re blast. But I love those cars too.

They’re, they’re a lot of fun to drive and I love them just for the nostalgic, like, again, it just takes me back to my childhood and, and you know, watching Kindle and those guys, you know, run around. So it was fun for that reason. What are your thoughts on balance of performance as a driver? You know, I’ve heard different arguments from different people, but I always like to get people’s opinion on b o P.

Yeah. You know, I don’t know. It’s gotten a lot better in recent years, I’d say in the early days when they first started, back when we, we first entered the series in the Camaro, it seemed like, A work in progress and every weekend it seemed like it, the scales would move drastically. So you’d be super competitive and then all of a sudden you can’t even break the top 15 and then all of a sudden you’re back at the top again and you really just didn’t know what to expect.

I guess the unpredictability of it at in the beginning was a frustration, but it seems a lot better now. I don’t know how you would ever make all these cars perfectly matched. There’s always gonna be [00:27:00] some car that’s gonna be a little stronger somewhere. I think that’s kind of unavoidable, but at least in this year and maybe past couple of seasons, it, it’s not too bad.

It’s not too bad. Now it’s allowed some of the other manufacturers that maybe would’ve struggled with certain cars enter the series and still be competitive. It’s leveled the playing field a bit. Yeah, it’s a frustrating thing no matter what the racer inside of you. Especially the mechanic inside of me just wants it to be no rule.

Build the fastest car you can build and let’s go line ’em up. And let’s see, not only who can drive them the best, but which team can build it the best. But like it was in the old days, here’s your power to weight ratio that you need to hit, you know, maximum amount of fuel and minimum weight and go build whatever you want.

Yeah. You know, I missed that era of motorsports. I wished I had gotten a chance to taste that. Yeah, and you know what’s funny about that? We grew up in the same era, so those are the old days of Canam and IMSA and TransAm, and you’re just seeing all the crazy stuff. The Mustangs, the Audis, the Buicks, I mean you name it, they were all out there and everybody was building a different mouse trap.

Yeah. Some of the people that were competing in [00:28:00] those series. The names alone are just in the halls of legend, right? I mean, you’ve got stuck and Haywood and ribs and St. James and Pilgrim and down the line and I mean, there’s a bunch of ’em. And it’s just talk about an amazing time in racing, especially the, the car that comes to mind of like that era is like the Audis, right?

They were just such an alien car compared to everything else that was out there back then. And yeah, man, that must have been a pretty cool thing to be a part of back then. And maybe, you know, yeah, everything’s cyclical. Maybe somewhere down the road, maybe some of that’ll come back, I hope. And maybe during my lifespan and career and racing.

But that would be the ultimate. If I had my druthers, I would just say, Here you go. Here’s your budget. I’d say maybe you have a cap on the budget. You can take any car you want. We’ll see you on Sunday. Let’s go and talking about having been to so many tracks. I mean, if anybody follows you on social media, you’re somewhere and anywhere on every given Sunday.

When you look at all the places you’ve been to, all the cars you’ve driven, what’s your favorite, what’s your least favorite track? Favorite least favorite car so far? I don’t know [00:29:00] if I have a least favorite. I, I guess maybe when I, I first started, I had. That I didn’t care to go to, but it wasn’t as much about the track.

It was mostly the town they were in. Oh man, we gotta go to that place again. But when it comes to the track, I, I find almost every track entertaining to some degree. They all have some little crux, you know, some little challenge that you try to figure out. And mentally, for me too, like anytime I go to a track, I try never to think of a corner of like, oh man, I don’t wanna go through this corner again.

I always wanna try to be as excited as I can about every corner. Like, what is it about this corner that I can figure out and, and make it better and, and more fun to drive. But, uh, I, I think sentimental wise, there’s tracks that rise to the top for me. Like Sonoma was a track that I did really well at early on, and, and so Sonoma’s one that, that’s always been a sentimental favorite of mine.

I like Watkins Glen a lot. It’s a great track. I always love street tracks. I always did well at street events, so like Detroit, like Bell Isle was a fun one. Long Beach, you know, streets of St. Petersburg. I, I love those venues too. Those are, Those are great. And Nashville is the newest one, right? Yeah. But they don’t let the [00:30:00] pros go there.

They don’t get to go there. It’s an AMS only. I know. I’m like, come on, just let the GT four America go there. Please. I’d love to race there, but not at the moment. During this last 10 years, obviously you’ve continued to come up through the ranks and now you find yourself racing for the famed flying Lizard motorsports.

Yeah. So people might recognize flying lizard going back many, many years with their winning nine elevens and Audi. And they’ve got some other cool cars in the stable for sure. And we’ll talk about them, but how did you end up at Flying Lizard? This goes back to Bondra. They’re, there’re just kind of like this brotherhood of people that have been instructors at Bond Rock we’re everywhere and every time you meet one somewhere it’s just nothing but great stories and camaraderie.

And Darren Law, one of the owners of Flying Lizard was, you know, he worked at Bonder Ron as an instructor and, and he actually, while I was still there as an instructor, he came back and became the general manager of the school for a short time. Him and Johnny O’Connell both. I’ve always wanted to drive for flying lizard when I worked at the school and Darren was still racing full-time [00:31:00] for that team.

I just thought that was just the coolest thing. It made it seem realistic. My dreams of becoming a race car driver. Well, Darren Law did it and, you know, he worked here and, and he didn’t have much money and, and he was able to figure it out. And he got to the high levels of pro racing, got to run at Lama and won 24 hours of Daytona.

So for me, it was always a dream to race for flying Lizard. Back then, I just thought that was one of the coolest places you could ever land. My co-driver, a lot of sebo and I, we were just looking for a team, uh, this off season through my connection with the school and knowing Darren from way back in the day, I was just like, Darren, do you have any room for us?

And he’s like, yeah, I think I could make that work. And, and that’s how we got pulled over there. So how long have you been driving from Flying Lizard now? Just this season. Yeah. Oh, wow. This year. Congratulations. Yeah. The first year with this, with the team. Yeah. And it’s been great. There’s stellar operation.

You get to pilot a bunch of their cars. Two in particular we’re gonna hone in on. One is the beige, I guess is the right color. Aston Martin. And the other is a hot pink, let’s call it [00:32:00] Magenta, Lamborghini Huon, which has a very cool nickname. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll talk about the Lamborghini, right?

We’ll come back to the astin. So we, we like to call the astin color like a tactical tan, right? Because it’s five 11 tactical. So it sounds a little sexier than beige. But the other driver, I don’t get to race that car, but I’m, I’m coaching him named Slade Stewart. He’s had that livery on a few other cars he’s owned.

I’ve coached him, you know, in those cars prior to joining Lamborghini tro, and it’s just kind of coincidental that he ended up with flying Lizard also, but I, I don’t know where the name came. So one day he’s just comes up to me, he is like, we’re gonna call the car Sparkle Farts. And I was like, okay, sure.

Like I was in the room I think when he told Darren La this and Darren like kind of like, was like, I don’t know if that’s the right look for Flying Lizard. You know, like cuz we’re this very classy, you know, well known team in the paddock there and let ’em go for it. Become a big fan favorite. Very much is, and my daughter became an immediate fan of Flying Lizard cause of Princess Sparkle [00:33:00] fart, she likes to call it.

So, I mean, and and it was a hit too, watching her walk around the paddock with the pink tee on everybody’s, oh my God, you know, she’s so cute. She loved it and been showing her other races online and stuff, and she’s hooked. And just like we were talking about with you sitting on the edge of Pike’s Peak watching the cars go by, it’s the same for her now.

She’s a fan and she’s into motorsports and sometimes it’s just that getting out over your skis that makes all the difference for the next generation. And once you have a rooting interest in any sport, once you’re attached to something, a driver, a player, whatever it is, I mean, it just changes the whole dynamic.

A hundred percent. And I, I mean, for your listeners that don’t know what the car looks like, it’s bright pink and it’s got unicorns on the side of it. I mean, it stands out. The livery was designed by his daughter. So Slade’s daughter came up with the look the way the story goes. Like he was gonna let each one of his kids.

Design the wrap. You know, they would alternate every year. His daughter would design it one year, then one of his sons would get to design the next season. But pretty sure that design’s not going anywhere. I think that is gonna stay. He’s gonna let the kids design [00:34:00] a wrap on something else later on. It’s a pretty popular car.

The kids, I mean, they love it. And so at the last event he did this really cool deal where he went, he bought like 40, 50 stuffed unicorns and some tiaras with unicorn, you know, horns on ’em and started handing those out to the kids too. And they come over to look at the car. And he’s definitely doing his part in converting young kids to racing fans.

I mean, which is what the sport needs desperately, needs young fans to be attached to it. Let’s talk about your tactical khaki beige, Aston Martin. So what’s it like to drive that thing? Tell us about the Aston. I love the car. Uh, I don’t know recent. And this kind of goes back to our previous conversation where we were like, things have become very uniform.

Like all race cars are mid engine now. They’re all mid engine Porsche’s rear engine, but everything’s got that same sort of setup. And there’s a Mercedes, I guess there’s a few outliers. I’ve always been a huge fan of front engine cars. I just, I love the way they drive, the way they handle, we switched from driving the Audi R eight GT four last year, or last several.

To the Aston [00:35:00] and I was excited about that switch. But I, I love the car. It’s, it’s probably one of the best GT four cars I’ve ever driven and I’ve, I’ve driven a pretty good number of ’em, but it’s, it’s a great car for an amateur driver also to really get comfortable the speeds that a lot of these tracks demand.

It’s cool, man. You feel like James Bond for sharing that thing. It’s just cool looking like, I just love the way it looks too and it sounds good and it does all the things that it’s supposed to uhhuh, but going back to our conversation about balance of power, let’s talk about the Aston versus the Mercedes, cuz there seems to be a pretty good rivalry there in World Challenge between the two marks and mm-hmm.

I always feel like the Mercedes is just as massive torque monster, like it’s got you on that low end grunt. Is that how you feel about it or are they pretty close? You know, they have the same motor, right? Both cars have the exact same motor, but the Mercedes has a different gearbox, different gear ratios I believe too.

So it creates. Power kind of differently. It feels like, it almost feels like it doesn’t have the same engine. I’d say at least the way the world challenge b o P is set up at the moment, it almost feels like the aston’s a little [00:36:00] stronger, and that just might be my perception. It feels like it’s a little torque here, but that may have more to do with gear ratio difference in the cars than anything else.

It is a torque monster, which I love. And you know, last year in the Audi. That thing had to be revved. The limiter, every gear just had to strangle that thing to get a lap time out of it. Um, but this card, it’s a lot more fun. You know, that first 50 feet off the apex thing just lunges forward. It’s a great feeling.

Yeah. Do you think there’s an Achilles heel or a shortcoming to the Asner? You don’t wanna let your rivals know like what it is? I don’t know. You know, there’s cars in the series right now, like I, I for sure feel like, you know, if you were to have like a category for horsepower or like straight line speed and a category for braking, a category for ha like corner speed, apex speed, and you were to put everything on that chart, I feel like the astons like an A minus at almost everything.

There’s a few other cars that are like an A plus in a few categories where it’s a little bit stronger than us in places. Like I feel like the Porsche is a little better than us in a few spots. And lately the Supra has been [00:37:00] really strong and really fast. In a few places it feels like we just can’t quite measure up.

But over the course of the whole. Season. It just feels like we’re pretty strong everywhere though, so it doesn’t actually have much of a weak spot. At least none. Nothing that’s like glaring, you know, I don’t see you turning wrenches in the flying lizard paddock, or although you may, maybe you do in the evenings, you know, behind closed doors or something.

But I do wanna ask about setup. No secrets here. But yeah, you know, nowadays you talk to a lot of drivers and everybody says, oh, we’re driving off the front wheels of the car. Nobody likes to run ’em loose anymore. Like in the old days, you know, kind of slot, rotate ’em through the corners. What’s your driving style?

Do you run off the front? Do you like it a little loose? Do you want to keep the car totally neutral. How do you tell your engineers how you want the car to run? When I was moving up into racing full-size cars, I know all of my seat time came at Bonder. Primarily driving Mustangs and Corvets and later on Vipers, so all front engine stuff and so I really got comfortable with a car that under steers and pushes.

I wouldn’t say that necessarily that it’s what I [00:38:00] love, it’s just that I’ve adapted to it. I like a car that’s just slightly on that under steer side of the curve, but what that also allows you to do is really manipulate it a lot. If I want the car to free up, if I want to rotate the car, I know what would I have to do to do that?

I can hold the brake a little longer. I can slow down the trail brake, I can grab the gear shift a little closer to turn in. I can get the car to rotate when it’s necessary, but I think over the span of a whole race, 60 minute race for us, just limiting mistakes is key and especially when I hand it over to Elias.

And so I think a Carlos just slightly on the pushy side, can help you kinda limit making big, nasty oversteer mistakes and cause you a lot of time practically. It works well for me, but, you know, I I, I also like going out and smoldering the tires off something too, and it’s just for fun. I’m just out there screwing around.

Yeah, of course. Like I would love to just toss the car into a corner and just throw the wheel to the lock and, and just destroy tires. That’s fun too, but not as much when I’m ready. But to your point there, it’s also a game of managing fuel and tires because you guys don’t have pit [00:39:00] stops in world challenge, so you gotta make that car survive on all of its consumables.

And sometimes I think the fans forget that, right? Well, why, why didn’t he take that pass or challenge that guy? And it’s like, it’s, it’s all a game, right? It’s a game of chess. It is. Yeah. And, and especially when you’re dealing with a co-driving situation, road America. I had a bad start. I, I lost a few spots and I made up a couple and I got to like fifth, you know, and I’m, I’m just kind of stuck there.

Guys in front of me are all pretty equal, you know, nobody’s making any mistakes. We’re all just kind of turning laps. But the cool thing now is Elias has risen to a level where I know which AMS he compares to. And so I can look at the cars ahead of me. I can say, well, I know Elias is faster than that am.

I know Elias is faster than that. Co-driver as well, so I don’t have to take as many risks sometimes. So like you’re saying, like when somebody’s sitting there on the sideline, why isn’t he trying to go for a move or something? It’s like, well, I think the best bet for me is just to let Elias go out and beat some of these guys.

Cause I know he is better and not take the risk, you know? So it’s cool to play the strategy sometimes too. Now that you’ve been with Flying Lizard for [00:40:00] an entire season, why don’t we look back over the 2022 S R O World Challenge season? What are your thoughts going into next year? It was nice at the final weekend to get a win, to finally get to the top, not only in our class, but to get an overall win.

You know, even against some of the pro, pro pairings. Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. No, that was, it was fantastic. Unfortunately, I followed it. On Sunday with one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my career and turn one on the race start. It’s something I’ll learn from, of course, and move forward. But I, I think the season as a whole, we came away with nine podiums out of 14 races, and it seemed like every weekend we became more cohesive and just everybody just started to click on all cylinders.

I mean, the car just got better and better and better and better. And a lot of that’s because of our extremely talented engineer, Owen. Unbelievable guy, and I tell him what I need and he just always figures out a way to give it to me. So that makes a big difference. It probably took us about half a season to really develop the car and catch up to the other teams that had had the astons for numerous seasons.

It’ll be awesome to start the [00:41:00] season with a car that we feel is pretty well developed, set up wise. That doesn’t mean it’s gonna be easy. Of course, who knows who’s gonna be on the starting grid next year? So certainly not expecting anything to get handed to us, but it’ll be nice to start fighting with a, a great car.

So when you take a broader brush approach as a retrospective to your career in pro racing, and you look back over the decade plus, especially with World Challenge, what have you seen? What has changed? What would you like to see change? I guess that’s one of the questions I wanted to ask you. I, I suppose so.

You know, I have my own opinions. Sometimes I feel like maybe I’m too close to it. People ask me that all the time and I, I can never really give ’em a solid answer, but maybe that’s, cuz I’ve been a part of it through the evolution of where it was when I started and where it is now. But I’m curious if you were handed the keys to SRO tomorrow.

Stephan Rael is like Eric. It’s yours, what would you change? That’s a great question, Andy, and I gotta tell you, the one thing I like about SRO is that it’s so accessible. Yeah. There’s a lot of motorsports organizations you go to that everything’s at arms reach. And even [00:42:00] further, and I’ll give you a prime example.

When we went to Nashville, you could go to the TransAm Paddock, you could go to the SRO Paddock, but you couldn’t go to in IndyCar. When you go to f1, there’s the whole village that keeps you there, dizzy and all that kind of stuff. NASCAR’s the same way, right? They keep you in the beer line long enough to, you don’t have enough time to go to the paddock.

SROs, very inviting. You can walk into anybody’s paddock, talk to an engineer, talk to a driver. It’s awesome to watch. It’s awesome to be there. I think what it lacks, you know, if I had to change something, it doesn’t have the same bit of circus that, let’s say the other organization also known as imsa, the sister organization or the cousin organization has.

IMSA has just a lot more fanfare to it. It has sort of that Olympic village feel like F1 has. Yeah, but it’s still inviting. You can still be there in the paddock walking up and down at Petite or at Daytona 24, you know, things like that. Sports, car racing as a whole is one of the best places to be. The multi-class racing is awesome.

There’s just so many things going on in the day. What would I change? I don’t know. Maybe I’d [00:43:00] like to see more booths, more things for my kids to do while I’m there, you know, to keep ’em distracted or something. But also to just kind of break up the day other than just racist, breaking up the day. I think that would be the biggest thing.

I appreciate that. And I’m curious also, like, you know, that’s kind of like the interaction part of it. Would you change anything on track as far as watching the. Yeah. I’m not a big fan of the restarts. Yeah. Having sat in several of the driver’s meetings this season, I was confused and watching it go on, I was even more confused.

I’m like, why do we have to re grid? Why do we have to have this separation? You look at a W E C race, or you look at an IMSA race or something else. You restart wherever you were when the flag dropped and you continue on with life. That whole restaging of cars to me feels like you’re stealing time from the session, but you’re also taking away at least two laps from the fans as they’re watching.

You guys kind of basically grid up while you’re rolling. It’s just really weird. I’d agree with that too. There’s another rule and I, I know that the race directors during our meetings have talked about wanting to change it over the [00:44:00] off-season. I hope they do. The other problem with the restarts and SROs that you’re not allowed to overtake until you cross start finish.

Yeah, that’s true too. It’s a little strange and I hope they change it. I’m in the mindset. They just look, the green flag’s out. It’s go time like it’s racing. The flag’s waving. You can pass, right? Yeah. Matter. Exactly. We all learned that Go-kart race, Amy. Yeah. Doesn’t matter how far back you drop it, you can see that flag drop.

It’s, it’s good to go. Yeah, man. I think the other thing I missed too, and I don’t know if you remember it or watched a lot of racing back then, but I, I missed the standing starts. You know, I’m used to those with S E C A and NASA where it’s just like, let ’em rip. Watch 43 Miatas go for it right off the bat.

You know, that kind of thing. It goes either way. I mean it depends on, I guess, where you are, where a rolling start would be a lot of fun versus a standing start. I think it depends on the, on the track. Like the standing start at Nashville would be really cool versus a rolling start coming around. Turn 11 at Watkins Glen is pretty impressive, you know?

So I think it really depends on where you are. I’d agree with that. Yeah. You know, the other thing I was curious of, you know, ways to like spice [00:45:00] it up and I guess that kind of ties into the question I already asked you, but you know, I remember when Indy Carr, when Pikes Peak co climb was a part of the championship, where there was these different kind of challenges that you had to deal with throughout the course of a season.

Dirt track or pavement or whatever it is, and I’m wondering if there’s some way sports, car racing can have a little bit of flavor like that where just a different dynamic in some events. The term world challenge has this interesting connotation to it. It’s kind of preloaded and you think yourself, well, what exactly does world challenge mean For me, I immediately go back to the late seventies, early eighties international races of champions, right, that were put on with the IROC Camaros.

That’s where the IROC Z came from. You know that you’re more than familiar with. So I missed those days seeing Ook run with Danny Sullivan and all these people in just basically the same car. And then they would do Oval Track and road course and they would just mix it up. And to me that was the real world challenge cuz you were pulling guys from f1, from nascar, from [00:46:00] Indy, from rally, and you brought ’em to the big stages.

Say, let’s see what y’all can do with this Chevy Camaro. Let’s go. I love that format too. They kind of still do it, but it’s not the same. I miss those times too. Man. That was really, No, I think it’d be cool to have some sort of like time trial competition or points, you know, for something that’s just different, like maybe night races or, yeah, that’d be fun.

Something to mix it up a little bit, but, or maybe a longer format, not the full 12 hour enduros, but maybe like a four hour or two hour or something like that. Granted you now you have to bring in pit stops and pit strategy and all that kind of thing, but still it’d be, it’d be pretty cool. Now, I will say, there’s one thing I think the World Challenge team doesn’t get enough credit for, and having worked with them behind the scenes, the season, the Press Corps, people like Dean Case and Public relations, the social media team, and the folks that are doing the televised races, the quality of the TV coverage.

Is really, really good. The media team at World Challenge is amazing, and again, [00:47:00] I think they just don’t get enough credit and I can’t say enough that people should really tune in to the races and check ’em out even after the fact. They’re really, really good to watch. They’re on par with, you know, the big league television stations.

I agree with that too, man. It’s gotten a lot better for sure. I like the fact that you can just go on and watch the races whenever you want. The accessibility of just having ’em up on YouTube is just awesome to be able to share ’em with people and you don’t have to watch ’em live. I still watch every second of them though, so it’s all good.

You know. On the weekend, what are you most primed up to watch as like a fan? Like for me it been MotoGP. I go, I go back and forth. I grew up in the Group B era and the TransAm era because they were at the same time. And so I would flip back and forth and I followed group B, and then you saw a lot of group B drivers move to TransAm, like SRO and Walter Rural, and then suddenly they’re there running with Willie and Lynn and Hurley Haywood and all them.

And so it just became one thing to the. And I go back and forth and I often say on this show, I’m one of the few people in our [00:48:00] organization that is interested in World Rally, and I’m like, it’s one of the hottest, probably most dangerous motor sport that there is out there. It’s amazing. And the drivers are extremely talented.

Granted, the cars are not the cars of 30, 40 years ago. They’re not even close to, you know, the Group A cars that replaced the killer B cars and stuff like the Subarus and the Evos and stuff like that. They’re just, they’re very different. I flip flopped back and forth because then suddenly you want to talk about Petite or Rolex or Lamonds, you know, any of that stuff.

And I’m all about it. All right. Sports cars or rally car. That’s where I’m at. I love world rally, man. I mean, I got a tiny, tiny, tiny taste of what it’s like, you know, doing the Baja 1000 years ago. Yeah. And just the level of commitment, just ever changing terrain and just people standing around on the sides of the track in the line of fire.

And it’s just a crazy, crazy way to. Yeah, there’s nothing quite like World rally watching those guys, especially in the snow. So Cool. You know, you bring up Baja. I was very fortunate last year I was invited by one of our guests, Matt Martelli, to join them at the [00:49:00] Mint 400. And so I got to see trophy trucks and all this stuff it, the Mint 400 s, one of the oldest and longest running off-road races, even older than Baja out there in the deserts of Nevada.

And I tell you what, I was really impressed. That’s another motor sports venue event where you can get really up close to the drivers and the cars. And I had told Matt, he’s like, what do you think? What do you thinking? I said, I gotta be honest with you, this reminds me a lot of being at an SRO event or being at an SSA event.

And he goes, Yeah, there’s a reason for that. And he just kinda laughed cause he took the best of what he knew from other organizations. He’s like, I wanna bring this to the off-road world. And they did a masterful job and that’s a great event to go to. Yeah, I’ve been to that once. Uh, as a crew guy, I was just a fuel guy for one of the teams.

But the beginning of the events cool. You know, downtown, you know Las Vegas. Yep. And old, old town Las Vegas and all the cars coming through. It was really quite a experience. It’s cool. And spectator wise, it’s tough. You see about a hundred feet of the race, but outside of that it is such a cool [00:50:00] deal. I love it.

We’re gonna switch gears here. So Yeah, I don’t think people realize how busy drivers are. I mean, there’s so much stuff going on during the weekend, especially you were the co-driver. I mean, you could stand there in your guys paddock and you guys are buzzing around, practicing driver changes, looking at data, all this kind of stuff.

But when you’re not at the racetrack, you got other things going on. You’re volunteering your time, you’re still coaching, things like that. And we did an episode. Prior to this one with your friends over at Open Track and you were working with them as their pro coach, talking to folks like, you know, many of our listeners that are in the H P D E and track day world.

So I wanted to get an idea of what you do when you’re working with people in the grassroots motor sports world, and maybe what are some of your top tips for those folks? It was a cool experience getting to work with those guys. Uh, that kind of came a around during Covid. A lot of the tracks were closed and, and so sitting around my house a lot and they were like, Hey, we’d like you to coach our, our members virtually.

So I was like, yeah, that sounds fun. I started to work with a lot of people that were, you know, just getting into [00:51:00] H P D or track the events, most of which had only maybe done one event or two events, like most of ’em are very, very new. What was surprising to me, These people are driving 5, 6, 7, 800 horsepower cars with no training.

Nothing. A lot of ’em had never been to a racing school. A lot of ’em had never had a coach other than like the one that’s provided at attractive event. That’s kind of like somebody that’s had a few more attractive days than you have and they’re trying to help guide you around like the basics, you know?

That was shocking. I was like, wow, okay. It was pretty cool to get a chance to give them some of the, the really important information, the things that can really keep them safe, prevent a big accident. And a lot of that stuff is pretty simple things. But until somebody tells you, just don’t know. Yeah. I think the biggest piece of advice when I’m talking to somebody that’s new to the sport, it’s not a profound.

Thing to say, but how much this all comes down to just your vision, how good you are with your vision. I know that that’s so easy to say and a lot of times I get eye rolls when I tell people that. When I’m coaching ’em, I’m like, well, we’re gonna focus on your vision. But you know, a lot of times it’s the [00:52:00] determining factor between getting through that corner safe, getting through that corner fast or versus not making it at all and making really poor decisions.

You really always start there. That’s the tip of the spear, if you will, and then you kind of work your way from there. So what about top tips for those of us been doing this forever and we just want to go fast? Uh, gimme a scenario. There’s always little tricks and things you’ve learned, you know? Yeah.

Being a pro racer that you could pass on to those of us that are, you know, still struggling through the lower ranks. Yeah. Brand new tires. Always a cheap, well, not a cheap way, but easy way to go fast. But you need those $25 leftover Hoosier scrubs is not a good idea. No, not ne. Not necessarily gonna improve your your time.

Every time. But lemme put it this way, what is one of the things that you find that advanced drivers have been doing this for a while, maybe still need to work on, or something that they’ve taken for granted that was fundamental from the early days and you go in and if you just did this and it’s not vision, right, it’s something else that they could probably work on, which would tidy up their lap.

Well, there’s a couple [00:53:00] things. There’s one that’s off the track and one that’s on the track. Okay. So I’ll do the one that’s off the track first. So as a mechanic, kind of know my way around a car, for the most part, the prep jobs that I see at tractor events on some of these cars, I’m like, my God, I’m shocked that you get around the track, you know, let alone trying to go fast in this thing.

I think a lot of drivers just don’t spend nearly enough time like in the garage, you know, and I, and obviously like, you know, when you’re doing this for fun as a hobby, you got kids, you got work, you got, there’s, it’s hard to carve out a big chunk of time to go through your car properly. But I’d say a lot of drivers that I’ve worked with, I’ve gotten in their cars, I’ve driven them and I’d said, man, okay, we’re gonna have to adjust that shock.

Okay, we’re gonna have to adjust that sway bar. Like that’s way off. Where’s the break by us noob? Like that’s way off. There’s all these little things that are just not set right and they just got used to driving the car that way. I’ll go through and try to mix it up and change things and they get in the car, they’re like, oh my God.

Like I had no idea that this car was, could be this good. I’d say that’s one trick. Have somebody that’s got a lot of [00:54:00] experience, like a really good, it doesn’t have to be a pro driver, but just, you know, there’s a lot of. Guys around the paddock, they’re savvy. Unset up. Have one of those guys drive your car, man, you know, hand the keys to one of those guys, let ’em go out.

Play in the car for a bit. You learn a lot. And obviously we do too. Like when we’re racing at our level, when we have teammates, you know, we’re always learning from each other. And so if you’re just going out there trying to do it all on your own, sometimes you’re gonna miss some things. You wanna have somebody to bounce your ideas off of and see what they think.

The thing on the track that I run into, even with really experienced guys, guys that have been going to H HPD Racing Club for years is breaking. Most of the drivers I work with struggle with breaking proper, like breaking technique. I spend a big bulk of my time when I’m working with somebody for the first time, really just trying to break habits.

Around how to break, how to break properly in addition to all the things you’re doing and your extremely busy schedule. We did some digging and we also came to find out that you’re behind the group track record and for those that are unfamiliar with that, what’s it all about? Yeah. Track record was started by a friend of mine, Kai [00:55:00] Goddard and I, we came up with the idea based on input from people that were going to h HPD track day events that were looking for a, a high level of coaching, but just didn’t really understand where to find.

Kind of driver, driver, coach, you know, whatever you want to call us. Somebody that has maybe experience in GT four cars, high level GT three cars, you know, race cars, if you will. We thought it would be cool to come up with a place where people could go and they could source, you know, a coach. They could vet ’em.

They’d see their profile, their experience, everything they need to know about somebody, and they could hire ’em off the website rather than through a friend of a friend. Of a friend of a friend to get to somebody. When it comes to driver coaching, it can be expensive to hire somebody like. We wanted to have coaches all over the country just so that we could minimize the travel expense to have somebody come out to an event and work with you.

So yeah, I was, I was a part of starting it with Kai. I’m not as involved with it as I was at the beginning. Kai’s, you know, running that company now. But it was exciting to start it with them and I help out whenever I can. It’s not an H HPD organization, it’s more ProCoach for [00:56:00] hire. Is that what I understand?

Yeah, it’s just basically a, uh, place to find, you know, pro level coach and I think the industry needed it for quite a while. They needed somewhere to go to find it. So yeah, it’s been doing really well. If somebody asked you to convince them to come into racing, starting at the H HP D level, what would you say, you know, what’s your 32nd elevator pitch?

How would you motivate them to get up off the couch, get their car, and cover the track and drive it the way it was intended to be? One of the things for me that’s important when I talk to, especially younger kids, people that have an interest in getting into the sport think there’s this misconception that you have to be rich, have to come for money.

You have to have all this stuff. And I didn’t come from any of that. And I know a lot of drivers that didn’t come from any of that. I like representing for that group. If you wanna get into this, there is a way to do it and it, it may be a little harder pathway, but if you want to get into to the sport, like the sport wants you, we need drivers from a, a diverse bunch of different backgrounds.

And, and so I, I think when kids come up to me, they. Yeah. You know, I raise cards now, but you know, I just [00:57:00] think my family can afford it. We can afford to go to the next level. It’s always a bummer for me to hear. I always like to tell, you know, you’ll find a way if you’re persistent enough, if you dig around this paddock enough, you stay involved.

Like there’s opportunities out there. And so just even beyond like the H HPD driver or somebody that’s looking maybe to go to the next level and race, that’s something I always like to say. If you’re in the h HPD level, you’re at maybe that tipping point where you’re like, well, should I go compete or should I just continue to do this?

I would say, go race. I mean, life is short, man. The thrill you’re gonna get from racing exceeds H P D driving like tenfold, and you know, like you line up and you compete. It’s a whole nother ball game. It’s addicting, but it’s also like, it just, you feel truly alive. You know, when you’re out there like that, I’d say, you gotta do it.

You just gotta do it any level. Just do it. It’s. Just send it. Yeah. So the big question, what’s next for Andy Lee? I, I thought about a few different angles on it. There’s always like the, what’s next after, you know, cuz you can’t race forever. Like, there’s always gonna come a time when you have to hang the helmet up.

I don’t, I don’t know how long that’s [00:58:00] gonna be. But you know, I, I think my passion ever, even since I was a little kid, has always been motorcycles. I have three of them in the garage downstairs. Much to my wife’s dismay, I would love to do something in the motorcycle realm, would be like my next move. I don’t know quite what that’s gonna be, but I’ve always loved it.

I still watch Motor gp. I, it’s just my favorite thing to pay attention to on the track. I’d say I would love to go to, to do the big events like 24 hours Daytona, 12 hours of Seabring, like the petite Lama, you know, get the chance to maybe one of these days go do 24 hours at Lama. I mean, those items are on every driver’s bucket list, uh, certainly on mine.

And from a more sentimental side, Pikes Peak Hill Climb is also on that list, so getting a chance to do that event would be great. And I know I bring him up a lot. Buthuh, if you get a chance to go back and listen to Andy Pilgrims story, you know, he got his pro seat at 40, so you’re still in time. Still got a chance, man.

Yeah, and it’s funny because Andy Pilgrim and I, so when I was racing the Camaros. And we were doing really well. Like we were, we were [00:59:00] winning a lot of races in those cars and, and we got the attention of Chevrolet and GM and they invited me to test the Cadillacs alongside a few other drivers. We were all there to replace Andy, and Andy was at those tests, even though we were all there to take his seat.

He was probably one of the most generous pro drivers I’ve ever been around. He was there, he answered any question I had. He, he was there helping me every step of the way. Just like the best, one of the best people I’ve ever met in the paddock. So great guy. And a motorcycle guy too. I think Motorcycle.

Just tend to be good guys, you know? I don’t know. I’m in the water. He’s a big motorcycle enthusiast too, so when him and I get around each other, that’s usually what we talk about. Great guy. That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s such an interesting fraternity and sorority there in any of the paddocks you go to, whether it’s at the grassroots level, you know, at World Challenge or IMSA and beyond.

I mean, the world of Motorsport is just so different than a lot of other sports, right. Your competitors when you’re behind the wheel, but when the helmets come off, it’s like a big family atmosphere. So it’s always a lot of fun. So it’s one of the things I cherish the most about [01:00:00] being in the motorsports world.

Yeah, absolutely. Mm-hmm. So that said, Andy. Mm-hmm. Any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover thus far? It’s difficult for me to list off everybody that’s helped me through the years. I mean, it’s a long, long list and I just don’t wanna leave anybody out. There’s probably a hundred people that have helped me get to where I am now.

I’m just unbelievable, thankful and grateful for all those people. Every time I see these people, I try to tell ’em how much that they mean to me, but I just don’t wanna risk missing anybody, so I’ll leave it at that. You’re getting into the sport. That’s the way it goes. If you. Get into racing, you do need like an army of people that are kind of helping to push you up.

I’ve been very fortunate to have that. So very gracious for all these opportunities and, and the latest one this year, just getting the chance to run for Flying Lizard, which for me was a, a dream come true when I was working at Bonderant as a mechanic. Darren Law was racing for flying lizard and doing 24 hour laman.

You know, I just thought, wow, that dude is such a badass, you know, I’d love to, you know, to, to race for that team someday. And, and I, I can’t believe I’ve actually gotten the [01:01:00] opportunity. Yeah, it’s been fun and I’m looking forward to more of it. Thank you. Well, we’re gonna close out this episode with a quote from Bob Bonderant and he said, Andy came up through the demanding ranks at Bonderant to become a top instructor for the school.

He was one of those rare talents that I felt had exactly what I look for when I pick a champion, a real passion for racing. I can teach anyone to be a better, faster, smoother racer, but I cannot give them the heart. And with that, Andy will be one of those racers that will still be on the podium 25 years from.

So to learn more about Andy Lee and to keep up with his progress on and off the racetrack, be sure to log on to www.andyleeracing.com or follow him on social at Andy Lee Racing. And if you have some extra time, be sure to check out his YouTube channel as well. So, Andy, I cannot thank you enough for coming on Break Fix and sharing your journey with all of our listeners.

And I gotta say, you know, coming up from that kid on the side, [01:02:00] There in Colorado Springs at Pikes Peak, picking yourself up from your boots traps, working through as a mechanic, and now being in the pro racing scene for 10 years plus. I mean, I can’t wait to see where this goes. And if you land yourself a spot in Motog, that would be amazing as well.

So all of us here are definitely rooting for you. That would be incredible. Well, all of us here are definitely rooting for you, and again, I can’t thank you enough for coming on and, and sharing your story. Yeah, thanks man. I appreciate Eric. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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