GTM’s Podcast: Break/Fix

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

• 00:00 Introduction to Break/Fix Podcast
• 00:36 Who is GTM?
• 01:48 The Origins of GTM
• 02:30 High School Days and Early Car Enthusiasm
• 06:53 College Years and First Cars
• 10:46 The Birth of Grand Touring Audi
• 15:09 Transition to Road Racing and Engine Swaps
• 23:00 Reconnecting and Starting GTM
• 27:56 Reviving the Family Aspect of Car Clubs
• 28:21 Founding Grand Touring Motorsports
• 29:07 Early Growth and Expansion
• 30:32 Creating a Community Beyond the Track
• 31:17 Current Status and Future Plans
• 34:54 Regional Growth and Special Events
• 39:49 Philanthropy and Education Initiatives
• 44:41 Unique Events and Awards
• 46:20 Virtual Racing League and Fun Activities
• 48:14 Looking Ahead: Future Goals and Listener Input
• 53:36 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

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

I’m Brad with me as always is my cohost, Eric. And oftentimes we say it’s not about the destination. It’s all about the journey. So in this episode, our inaugural episode, we’re going to answer the questions, who is GTM, which a GTM is short for grand touring motorsports. Where did we come from and where are we going?

Crew Chief Eric: And Eric, take it away. All right. So let’s start with, let’s start with our mission statement, right? Just kind of summarize who we are right off the bat. Grand Touring Motorsports is a non traditional motorsports club started in [00:01:00] 2014 as a social group of car enthusiasts. We’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsport and want to share our experiences with you.

Our membership consists of a bunch of petrolheads who like to get together and have a great time. But years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings us brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories, and information. As a whole, we serve several areas, what we call the DMV, the Northeast, our Southern States, and our Mountain Region.

Our areas of interest revolve around high performance driver’s education, HPDE, autocross, club racing, cart racing, drag racing, off roading, car shows, or just about anything car related. So I’ll thank, uh, one of our region chiefs, Brett, for carefully repinning our mission statement two years ago. Sounds really good.

But what does all that really mean at the end of the day? So this story goes Back well before 2014. This is one of those golden girls moments, you know, picture it. Sicily 1943 [00:02:00] But in reality it actually kind of goes that far back I come from a long line of car enthusiasts grassroots Uh, mechanics, et cetera.

My dad wanted to be a race car driver when he was a kid, told stories about standing at the fences outside of Maranello, watching Nicky Lauda go around the test track. Right. So it’s been in the blood being Italian racing and soccer and formula one. It’s all, it’s all a passion, right? So it’s, it’s, it’s passed down through the genes, but our story, right.

You and I, Brad, our story starts in 1995.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. Yes. That is correct

Crew Chief Eric: for the listeners out there, right? The, the, the history of GTM starts. It’s that far back, right? 25 years ago, and we just celebrated our 25th or no, whatever it was. Yeah. 20th, uh, high school reunion or something like that. As it turns out the way they did things way back then, you know, the, besides the nuns were still wrapping us on the knuckles and everything else is they would place us in alphabetical order in class, depending on what classes you were in and what classes you were taking together.

So I forget it was like English [00:03:00] class or something. Brad happens to be the last name directly behind mine and sat behind me in class. And I met him basically my, you know, First day of school. He was, you were the jock, right? You’re the baseball player and all that, and I was the car nerd.

Crew Chief Brad: But, but correction, I wasn’t just the jock, and I actually never made it on any of the teams, the organized teams at school.

I apparently wasn’t good enough for various other reasons that I care not to get into at this time. But, I was a music geek too, so I Four years of a band at DeMatha and all that good stuff, but anyway, yeah, so Simple little correction there. I, I was a little bit of a jock, but not in height, not at the high school level, apparently wasn’t good enough.

Crew Chief Eric: My bad. Hey, there were three big clicks in our school. You were either an academic in the band or in sports, and I was in none of those. So, you know, I was, I was the kid sitting in front of you holding magazines. I’m reading it. Most of them in Italian too, that my grandfather would bring me. I remember we kind of started talking about cars and I think, Oh, I don’t remember if it [00:04:00] was my freshman year or sophomore year and my dad dropped me off.

In our 70 911 wide body and then you were like, so tell me about this car

Crew Chief Brad: That actually it wasn’t just one time either it happened all the time I don’t know if you forgot your homework at home if your your dog ate It was the excuse you were giving the teachers at the time. I I don’t know but 911 that sounded like, you know, a 7.

0 earthquake was hitting the earth and Yes, it was a beautiful car, and I was like, who the heck is that guy? Dropping off his kid’s homework.

Crew Chief Eric: But you could hear that car from two miles away, because it was straight piped. It was like going to Le Mans or something. It’s bonkers, right? But yeah, so it got a lot of attention.

So you and I got to talking about cars, and I was already a gearhead, right? I had been going to pro solos, been going to track events since I was a little, little kid. I mean, there’s pictures of my [00:05:00] mom. with me in a, in a stroller at a pro solo in Harrisburg. I mean, it’s like, you know, it goes that far back.

And like I said, it comes from a racing family, right? My dad was a pro solo, uh, autocrosser. He was an instructor, various clubs, you know, SCCA, the sports car club of America, PCA, the Porsche club of America, Audi club, et cetera. But even my mom was into it, right? She used to autocross my dad’s cars, the Chiracos, 914, stuff like that.

Back when there was ladies class, right? Way back in the 80s and stuff like that. So, like I said, it’s just in the family.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, and to touch on the ladies class real quick, just a little tangent, a little joke that we’ve got going on throughout the club. Uh, there’s a W series now also, so there’s still a ladies series, you know, this isn’t a new idea, you know, just a little shout out to some of our club members inside joke there.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. Welcome back to 1982. Right. But, but with that being said, right, you know, we were primarily a Volkswagen Audi. Porsche family and very [00:06:00] heavily in the VW side of things. We’ve had a VW in the family consistently since the 1960s. And that goes early sixties. And that goes back to my grandparents. I grew up in the back of Mark one and Mark two Chiracos, and we never had anything stock in our house.

It was kind of funny. My mom had, I posted pictures of it on, on Instagram not long ago. She had a. Full zender kit, uh, pewter gray Chiraco, beautiful car. I mean, we had always the late, I want to say kind of the latest and greatest thing. My dad pre ordered a 16 valve. We had a Corrado. I mean, all these other cars, we’ve always been at that sort of thing.

So that again, it trickled down to me, trickled down to my sister as time progressed. We got out of actually, I started, I started autocrossing in high school, but you started just shortly after. And, or I guess we were doing it about then, but you were also into the, the land pirate stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, that didn’t start until 2000, 2001.

Uh, when I, after high school graduation, I started going to Montgomery college and met a couple of kids [00:07:00] and That’s when I started. I was always in the cars. I don’t know how because nobody else in my family is or was. I think my dad might have been back when he was 16 and he had an old AMC that he took to some guy’s house.

Oh boy. And they completely destroyed it. You know, you know, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree in that respect. But anyway, yeah, he, he was in the cars back then, but he grew out of it, got into pickup trucks and fishing. Uh, and all his money went into boats instead of. Instead of cars and everything.

I don’t know where I retained the desire to have cars and become a car enthusiast and all that stuff. But, yeah, in high school I was into cars. I never had any money, so I couldn’t afford anything cool. We never had anything cool when I was growing up except for an 80s box Chevy Caprice. Uh, with the 350 motor, that car was pretty, pretty legit.

And then, I don’t know, I started hanging out with these guys from college, uh, freshman year. They had cool cars. One had a 924S Porsche. Another guy had [00:08:00] a Thunderbird Super Coupe and he’s still in the car club. He’s got a couple other cool cars now, but I, in 2001, I bought my first brand new car. It was a 2001 GTI Volkswagen.

We do like Volkswagens here. That’s not the only cars that are part of the club. I want to make sure that I specify that, but we do like the Volkswagen, the VAG products. So I bought that. I. Don’t know why or how I ended up connecting with you again. Um, but I was looking for something to do with the car and we started hanging out again, started going to the Porsche club, autocrosses up at Fort Meade.

What was the Tifton airfield? Tifton airfield. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: that was a great lot, man. It was, oh, good.

Crew Chief Brad: It lasted a couple months until. 9 11 happened. Yeah, that was really, they shut everything down. Yeah. Um, yeah. And so 2001, just after high school was when I started getting into the, the autocross stuff and then we kind of reconnected, kept going from there.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So by that point, if you remember, I also had a, so it’s kind of [00:09:00] backtracking a couple of years, my first car, man, I wanted a 16 valve GTI, some fierce, and to, and to. Credit where credit’s due. We had a lot of two door coupes, you know, throughout our lifetime. My dad was like, no boxes on wheels, right? He just, he hated the golf for some reason.

Like he just despised it. And I was always like, Oh, it must be the rebel in me. It’s like, he’s in love with the Scirocco. I got to have a GTI, right? I got to have the opposite of what he has, regardless of the fact that the same car underneath. But so I ended up after all that, there’s some stories there we can tell, but regardless, I ended up with that five cylinder Audi make a noise from here to God’s creation, like a, like a dragon with a dynamite up its butt.

If you remember, I was going to say, so the noise

Crew Chief Brad: definitely runs in the family. Apparently

Crew Chief Eric: there are no stock cars here. They’re all

Crew Chief Brad: except for your, except for the new Chrysler. That’s the

Crew Chief Eric: only stock the spaceship. Yeah. But, uh, so at any rate, I had that GT coupe and so I don’t know, [00:10:00] I always dive into everything like a thousand and 1%.

And so I got really attached to those cars because as we used to joke in the house, it’s just a fat Scirocco at the end of the day. Right. Uh, and it was penned by the same guy that designed the Scirocco, all that kind of stuff, bigger motor. It was a lot of, and they were a lot of fun. Great. Best handling car of 1986, according to some.

Pull out there. But, but at the time, if you think about it, that car was, you know, only 10 years old. And so it was like, ah, it’s pretty cheap, you know, whatever it can get it reliable five cylinder run forever. So I was on the, on the, on the quest, you know, to make it into something. And as you remember, you had your GTI, I was Otter crossing an Audi, but at the same token, kind of in the, you know, I was in the comp size side of things while you were playing.

saxophone or whatever. And I had gotten into web development, right? And early on, I mean, you’re talking the mid to late nineties. Nah, there weren’t a ton of people doing web development. It was still like a, a blossoming thing. So I had gotten involved in the [00:11:00] local clubs. I was, you know, doing a bunch of, uh, timing and scoring software for autocrosses, you know, for SCCA and PCA and stuff like that.

But I also got into the website. things. And so I started to learn kind of from the inside what it was like to run a car club, at least from the digital side of the house in the early days. So that got me thinking I’m overly obsessed with the, you know, with the GT coupe. And I bought my very first domain, which is grand touring.

org. It was off of some random guy that was cyber squatting with the domain. And I stood up a website called grand touring Audi. The deal with Grand Touring Audi was it was an online community for owners and enthusiasts worldwide. Yeah. It was mostly dudes from the UK on a bulletin board with a web, you know, kind of a wiki like thrown on top of it because I was trying to collect as much information about those cars as possible because they were so unique from year to year to year.

They just kept changing them for whatever reason I’d ran that. At the same time as I was running the Audi club, uh, the local Audi club website for the DC region. And then I was also picking up more, more [00:12:00] work and more work and more work like that along with everything I was doing. Ultimately, I ran that for about five years and then it merged, I merged it into a Potomac Chesapeake region of Audi club.

And some of the content actually still exists on that website today, because it’s just migrated so many times and change hands and, and things like that. And so at that point. I had focused my attention elsewhere. I was now working for Porsche national and doing their website. I dug that for a bunch of years.

And my dad at the same time was getting out of, uh, basically a very long career in it, he was a mainframe programmer and he wanted to go pursue his passion. And he ended up going to work for electromotive and a bunch of other stuff, and he’s, he decided that there was a space in the market to resell bad parts, right?

Volkswagen Audi group parts back then. During that time period ECS really wasn’t what it is today, right? It wasn’t as available. The internet was still doing its thing and e commerce still wasn’t there He wanted to stand up this company to be [00:13:00] able to do this kind of thing He came to me. He’s like I I need a name because I can’t just go out there and say hey, it’s It’s blah, blah, blah.

His company. And it’s like, okay, well, how about we just, you know, despite Rocco versus golf conversations, we had a common, uh, common focus on the Audi coupes, first and second generation cars. And so I said, well, GT grand touring, right? I’ve already, I just gave that up. Why don’t we take that and just put motor sports on the end of it?

So then that way it’s all encompassing, right? Because you are catering to. Pro solo guys, you know, local auto crossers, track rats, you know, the guys that just need parts for their cars.

Crew Chief Brad: And I believe at one point I even ended up buying some brake pads and stuff for this Audi S8 that I had. Yeah. So it’s just, yeah, you, he had the grand touring Audi.

He was able to hook a lot of people up with parts and everything. I don’t know how he was able to get, I guess, distributor rights or whatever he had. I don’t know

Crew Chief Eric: exactly. I don’t remember either, but I, but you know, times are different than, I mean, we’re talking [00:14:00] like 15 plus years ago at this point. So doing the resale side of the business, very different than it is today.

I mean, you know, trying to get, trying to get hooked up with ECS and Euro tuning and those guys today is a little bit more difficult and a little bit more challenging, at least for small guys like us, right. So fast forward a bunch of, a bunch of years and basically what we ended up doing and kind of spawned some of the early kind of the roots of GTM in a way is we used to do these like cart leagues and my dad would like try to organize them with me and we would have like 10, 15 plus guys come out and we would rent out like a facility or we’d go there and get all day passes and just basically take over the place.

Right. And then we would, you know, because I had a timing and scoring background, I’d keep track of all that kind of stuff. And we’d points and this and that, and then the top guys, we’d fly all over the country and go race and do that kind of thing. So we did that for a number of years and it was a lot of fun.

It’s a lot of wear and tear on my back though. As I started to do that, you know, autocross was fading in the DC area because parking [00:15:00] lots got harder and harder to rent. Now everybody kind of does their pilgrimage to FedEx field because it’s the only lot that doesn’t have telephone poles every six feet and islands and curbs and stuff.

And so My dad started to phase away from autocross and get into deeper and deeper into road racing and teaching and all that kind of stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: And I think it’s around that same time when you all stopped doing the autocrosses and things. I started transitioning. I had sold the GTI. I had it for a couple of years and ended up selling it, trading it in for a 99 Z28 Camaro that was to this day, it’s the fastest car I’ve ever owned, which isn’t really saying that much, but it was, it was really quick.

But I did maybe one or two autocrosses with it. And by that time, autocrossing was just hard to get into if you weren’t trying to do it with the SCCA sports car club of America. I was still trying to do it with Porsche club because your dad was still somewhat involved with it. And, but then I just transitioned over to drag racing and got out of autocross like you’re, like you’re [00:16:00] saying, cause it started winding down.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. So at the same time, my dad started getting really hyper focused. On crazy engine swaps, right? I mean, we’ve done some weird stuff. Probably one of the first people to do a twin spark three, six in a night 14. We did the Audi UR quattro with a three, six V8. We did an Audi coupe quattro second gen with a four, two S eight motor in it.

Like, and, and I’m in the process of doing, I’ve done some swaps myself, but it was, he always had this focus of building like the ultimate. Track weapon or the ultimate autocross weapon, right? And it was in and he had certain go to’s I mean the 914 was bonkers I mean the the last times I drove that thing With the 36 it was like you looked where you needed to be and you were past that point Ridiculous herculean effort to drive that car, you know, he he got away from that car a little bit I think it’s scared him.

He had a couple sideways moments in it that were very difficult to control. And so he hooked into the whole Audi thing, went deep, went back to his roots, right? That whole [00:17:00] bag thing. Unfortunately, in, oh, my sister would know better than me, but in 06, 07 timeframe. He was diagnosed with, uh, stage four brain cancer.

So during all that, we kind of tried to finish out a lot of the projects we had going. The last one being my UR Quattro, which I actually finished after he had passed away in 2010. Credible built. I don’t, I don’t want to do it again. A really cool car, big bummer, right? Because my dad was the type of guy over the years.

He, he amassed so many connections, so many relationships. I mean, His funeral is incredible. You would, all these guys from different car clubs came out and it’ll look like cars and coffee out in the parking lot. And it was, it was crazy. I mean, you, you would have thought a Senator had passed away or something.

There’s like, you know, 300 plus people. There’s, it was just bonkers. Right. And, uh, so at any rate that, you know, that takes a toll on you. You have to figure out how to grieve, how to go through all that kind of stuff. About a year passed and. I just was like, in a [00:18:00] funk, right? And I’m just like, I don’t know what to do.

It’s like racing doesn’t have the same appeal anymore. You know, autocross is gone. Karting, yeah, whatever. And finally my wife, uh, was like, you know what? You need to go do something. Yeah, because I didn’t have any projects, right? The project was the house or whatever. And basically she kind of kicked me in the butt and said, you know, get out, go do something.

And I’m like, are you really sure about this? In my infinite wisdom, I decided it was a genius idea. To take my highly modified Jetta diesel

To turn it into a to a diesel cup car. Yeah, it didn’t didn’t really go very well But

Crew Chief Brad: but I was gonna say they they do really well when they’ve got, you know factory backed mechanics and support and sponsorship and funds which you had none of those things. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, yeah. And really bad ideas for what the good part should be.

Uh, I did have verified dino sheets, 320 foot [00:19:00] pounds at the front wheels. It was a hell of a motor. Uh, I will say though, it didn’t last, but half a season. Cause I blew it up at VIR at just shy of 140 miles an hour at red line. It wasn’t that good. The devil’s fuel does.

Crew Chief Brad: And the devil’s fuel still powers that car too.

It belongs to a GTM member to this day. I think it’s, it’s on what it’s third, fourth motor, something like that. I

Crew Chief Eric: can only, I can only claim the first one. Matthew will get on my case. One of the members of the group will get on my case from time to time about, uh, a diesel in the family since the mid nineties.

It’s just another weird obsession. I don’t think I can. I can never not have one. That being said, uh, Jess was like, get out of the house, go figure something out. I’m like, all right, all right, if you say so. So we went to the track, blew the car up, came home and I was like, man, this cannot get any worse.

Right? I’m like, well, this, this was a complete failure. Luckily, Matthew, who I mentioned, uh, just a couple of minutes ago, he calls me and he goes, uh, I got a car for you [00:20:00] with a weird pregnant pause. I’m like, Hmm, what exactly are we talking about here? He goes, well, you’re not going to like it. I’m like it.

Well, it’s a TT, and I’m like, ugh. And the reason he said that is because he knows how much my father despised those cars, right? And he had all sorts of terrible names for them, which is also why we call it the Terrible Toad, which is the cleanest of the nicknames he would give those cars. I was like, you know what?

The rebel is back! Dad hated him. I’m getting it. And I ended up picking it up for the mechanics lane. So it had a blown motor and had been sitting in the corner of a shop, single owner. It had been there for like three or four years, not running. Uh, Matthew was gracious enough to tow it all the way up from VIR to my house.

And then I started tearing it apart. We had that car. Track ready and I’ll put air quotes around that in 65 days from when it got towed up here to putting it on its first track day. And I borrowed a lot of the parts in the Jetta [00:21:00] and stuff like that. So that leads us to my first couple events. This was my now foray.

I’ve got a dedicated card stripped down. It’s, it’s this, it’s that. I’m ready to go. And so I’m, I’m starting to meet people. And this is circa. 2011.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, before we get into what happens next, I’ve got to rewind a little bit and talk about my, my progression a little bit too. From when we, we kind of split, I went the drag racing way.

You were still doing things and things that were happening with your father. So I was still in the drag racing, did a little bit of, uh, illegal street racing as well, which I’m not proud of. I do not recommend it to anybody, but it is a part of my past. So it is a part of when you kind of, makes me who I am.

Fast forward from 2000. Three, I think is when I bought the Camaro about two years, 2005 ish. I totaled the car. I was driving on some back roads and a truck pulling a horse trailer made a left turn over a blind hill in front of me. And I [00:22:00] rammed right into the back of the trailer. So if anybody wonders what my screen name that I use across all these different social platforms is, Mr.

Ed killed my Z, Mr. Ed, the horse, cause there was a horse trailer killed my Z 28. It’s very sad. It was one of

Crew Chief Eric: my favorite cars. The origin story within the origin story. You like that?

Crew Chief Brad: There you go. It’s the origin inception story.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, well, which level of hell are

Crew Chief Brad: we on now? I think we’re level three now.

But from that point I, I’ve had a 96 Cobra. I’ve bought a 2004 GTI BR6, which I wish I still had. It would have been a great track car. And various other cars and motorcycles. I think I’ve owned like 26 different vehicles in my life. And we’ll talk about that in another episode. That will be another episode.

That, that almost needs its own like series. But anyway, from that point on, I, I did some drag racing. I got into off roading with Jeeps and everything like that. Fast forward to about [00:23:00] 2000. 12 ish, I was working, I was going on a work trip to Omaha, Nebraska, and I didn’t know anything about Omaha, Nebraska, because who the hell goes in Nebraska.

So I put it on Facebook, you know, because everybody posts everything they do in their world on Facebook. Now, now it’s just boomers, which we we act like boomers now. So

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, that’s why we

Crew Chief Brad: still use Facebook. But anyway, so I didn’t know what to do. I was going for an entire week in Omaha, Nebraska, but I needed to find something to do other than go to this training class.

So I put on Facebook, I’m going to Omaha. What is there to do? And then my good buddy, Eric posted, well, I’m going to be there too. So we, um, we met up, uh, I think we were, yeah, it was Omaha. So it’s not too far from council bluff. I think you were staying in council. Correct. That is correct. He said steak, so he had my attention.

Of course, of course. Sidebar, Omaha steaks, if you get them in Omaha, overrated. The steak place wasn’t all that good.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:24:00] That’s very true. We can do better and we’ve done better.

Crew Chief Brad: But anyway, it was then that he was telling me about the car stuff that he was into and all this, you know, all the fun things. I had been really missing a car.

I mean, I had my Jeep, I was doing off roading and stuff, which was fun. But I missed doing something was a manual people. It was a manual. I’ll give you that both of the Wranglers that I had. I had a TJ and a JK and both have more manuals. So they’re fun in their own right. Yeah. I could get it to chirp tires and first and second gear, but I was looking to get back in the cars, like doing something fast, like autocross or whatever.

And so we started talking and we, we ended the dinner. We ended, you know, the trips or whatever. And we kept in touch. We. Ended up setting up a, what car should I buy email thread with a couple other people that Eric knew, which started, if you’re a member of the club or you, you know, anything about us, you know, the, what car should I buy?

Topic. is probably the most popular topic in GTM ever. Everybody’s [00:25:00] asking, what car should I buy? What should I do? Should I get this? Should I do that? The answer is never HHR, by the way. Just gonna say. There is no

Crew Chief Eric: blipshift t shirt that says the answer is

Crew Chief Brad: HHR. I don’t care how fast your little milkman grocery getter…

Can be made. It’s still an HHR, but I digress. So yeah, we set up this email thread and then that was going for about a year or so. Fast forward to 2003. I finally bought it by a car. No, 2013,

excuse me. Back to the future. We’re going back to the future. Yeah, absolutely. Next up he’s buying a DeLorean. 88 miles an hour. I bought this, uh, this Volkswagen and I started building it for track stuff. Thanks to my mechanic is fantastic. You know, Mr. Monasterio over there. And I ended up doing my first event with a bunch of other people that Eric knew from the tracking world.

Uh, it was may 2013. I think it was, it was with Porsche [00:26:00] club on Shenandoah circuit. And Tanya was there. I know she was, she had just bought her beetle, her first dedicated track car as well. Um, so a bunch of newbies coming out and it was just an awesome time. And, you know, I’ll let you take it from there, but that’s kind of, that brings us both up to this timeframe where we’re both tracking.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I was still in that weird, uh, I was still in that weird phase of, is it a track car? Is it a street car? And, you know, Matthew continues to remind me, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. So the big straw that broke the camel’s back was the first pilgrimage to mid Ohio. And Jess, we were, we were, you know, packed the car loaded, couldn’t see out the back, like all this stuff.

And, you know, Bucket fixed back seats on coilover suspension. And we’re trying to drive home, you know, eight hours from mid Ohio. And Jess is like, I don’t know that my tailbone exists anymore. You know what I mean? And at that point I knew it was over. I was, I was dedicated and you know, we were going to go off [00:27:00] the deep end, but that being said, I was still in this mode, right?

Post my dad passing where it’s like, I want to bring back that feeling of going to the track and being with my friends and all that kind of stuff that I grew up with and the clubs back in the day were very different than they are now. Now they’re, they’re very coin operated. You’re very much about, you know, the bottom dollar.

Don’t get me wrong. They provide a very professional and very legitimate service and everybody loves it. And that’s great. good. We’re, we’re very different, right? Our idea is family. Our idea is getting together. It’s prolonging the communication. It’s not about just keeping up the Joneses. You know, we’ll, we’ll talk a lot more about fellowship, uh, in the, in a future episode, but there’s a lot of that.

It’s more fraternal as one of our region chiefs in the Northeast. Harry likes to say all the time. It’s more like a fraternity, fraternity and sorority. We’re co ed here. Uh, I just want to point that out. Uh, and many of our ladies, by the way, they are very fast. They’re very talented. Uh, it pleasure to meet all of them.

If, if any of our listeners get to come out and do so, I [00:28:00] wanted to relive the past because I saw that there was something missing, right? I saw that the family aspect was gone. The get togethers, the communication, those monthly meetings, those board meetings, all those things I was involved in me, even as a kid, just they weren’t available anymore.

And so you and I got to talking about it. And I said, you know, we had the listserv going on, on good, good old Google groups. It was like, why don’t we just. Make a club. I already knew how to run a car club at least from a digital perspective And again, we’re sitting there Oddly enough and we’re fretting over what to call it and you and you just turn to me and go

Crew Chief Brad: Why

Crew Chief Eric: not grand touring motorsports boom done, right?

We’ve already got a name And we had a logo and we had a lot of other stuff stuff that we could leverage from my dad’s company, which had been shut down. There was actually already brand recognition there, at least in the, in the local area. So that was good. And people are like, Oh, that’s, that’s still a thing.

Can I still order oil filters for my, for my Gabrielle or what? Uh, but you know, that being said, that took us to really late, like you [00:29:00] said, it took us to late 2013. So like kind of the OG members, you know, me, you, Matt, Tanya and so on. We’re really all 2013 people, but we really, we say the first date is, you know, January of 2014.

Our first actual member non core group was like February of 14 is the first like application we ever got submitted in our first year. We grew pretty big. I mean, we had what, 15, 17 people, something like that within the first calendar year. And then we just kept growing. We’ll talk about where, where we’re going.

Uh, and where we are here in a minute

Crew Chief Brad: in addition to, you know, starting the club. Yeah, we were, I remember we were sitting in your living room. Uh interior at your house and Jess was there as well And we weren’t just kicking around the idea of a car club. We were kicking around the ideas of you know Maybe we should open a shop You know We talked about getting like an l shaped building Where part of the shop was like a museum to the cars and everything like that part of it is [00:30:00] You know people can come and work on their stuff somehow that morphed into let’s start a car club because as you were As it’ll probably, uh, mention later on here, people don’t like going to the track by themselves.

That was one of the big deterrents to me after my first time going in May, the previous year is I went to, yeah, it was a lot of fun when I went with everybody else. But then I started thinking about. Well, if I’m going to go to these other events, how am I going to coordinate and make sure other people are there that I like?

I don’t want to go and sit there by myself. I did a couple autocrosses by myself. That’s not really fun. That’s when we started talking about really, yes, let’s make this, let’s make this a big group. We can coordinate when everybody’s going to the tracks, what everybody’s doing, what everybody’s doing outside of the track.

Cause as you all, who are members of GTM know. You know, it’s not just, you know, track events. That’s not, that’s not what we’re all about. It’s we go to car shows, we go to swap meets, we go to movies. I mean, we do all kinds of stuff. It’s not just about the track and keeping in touch with these people. Yeah, they’re your track [00:31:00] friends, but they’re also Just friends.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. So now that we’ve kind of completed the birth of GTM, I’m gonna insert here for those of you that have fast forwarded the last, I don’t know, half hour or so you’re listening to GTMs podcast break fix with Brad and Eric. So now that we’ve kind of summarized the past, we’re going to talk about where we are and where we’re going.

Um, we’re going to do this maybe in a little bit of a question answer format and then talk again, talk about where we’re going to go from there.

Crew Chief Brad: So where are we going right now? As Eric said before, when we first started, we were probably three or four members. We’ve jumped in that first year to 15 to 20 over the last Five years from there, because we’re up, we’re up to year six.

Now we’ve got 70 members, 70 members strong. We’ve got a social media presence, um, that has been constantly growing. Thanks to our, uh, our marketing genius over there in the, uh, the other camera and, and we’re, we’re slowly bringing on more and more people. And [00:32:00] that’s 70 members net. I mean, we’ve had more members than that.

We’ve had some people leave on their own volition. We’ve had to. To boot a couple members for various things, um, which we’re not going to get into don’t ever ask us and it’s just yeah We’re we’re trying to grow but we don’t want to get too big. We don’t want to be uh a corner cravers or whatever some of those other clark clubs were that got too big for their britches and Ended up dissolving for for various reasons We we want to very much still keep the same kind of family feel that the friends one of my favorite quotes is Friends are the family you choose Uh, we still want to keep that kind of atmosphere, but we do want to grow.

Um, we want to get a bigger presence, even larger than ours, than we are now, uh, on Instagram and social medias. I mean, that’s why we’re doing the podcast here to, to kind of give everybody some insight, give some, give people a way to connect with us, not just at the track. I mean, this is another. Uh, another way that other [00:33:00] people can, can talk to us and find out more about us.

Uh, and so that’s kind of where I see us going.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So, I mean, I think we’ve done a really good job of over the years. Like we’re, we’re unlike a lot of other organizations that just kind of do the same thing because that’s what they’ve always done. I think we’re always experimenting. We’re always. Trying something new and we either, we either win it or we kill it.

And that’s how it’s kind of, that’s how it goes. Right. But we’re always looking forward. Uh, and as the Italians say, right, sempre avanti, which means always forward. We’re always looking in that direction to try to improve. And sometimes, you know, we stumble, but we gotta, we always walk before we run. And so I think in this case, you know, you’re talking about growth.

We look at the numbers, we look at the trends, we’ve had people move away. That’s another big thing we have. Some members that tried to hang on and they were living as far out as Hawaii, right? And, and that’s tough to do, but they want to stay plugged in. They want to know what’s going on in the community.

And the difference is, you know, for us, it’s, it’s more grassroots, [00:34:00] right? There is, there are certain things like grassroots motor sports out there, but it’s still very publicized. It’s very marketing heavy. We, you know, we try to be advertisement free. We try to do a lot of other things. To keep it, you know, home grown, like the clubs used to be in the old days.

Crew Chief Brad: And by advertisement free, we don’t mean that we’re not like marketing and advertising ourselves. We mean that we’re, we’re not out there trying to get other clubs or businesses or stuff to advertise and kind of flood our membership because we have an asset. Our members are our biggest asset. Not me, not Eric, not the cars.

And it’s, it’s our membership. They’re, they’re the ones that make us who we are. And I mean, many people joke that we have the coaches union. We’ve got the North, the Northeastern, uh, coaches union or instructor union, uh, for the track days. We, we do market ourselves, but we don’t sell advertising space within the club.

That’s

Crew Chief Eric: true. And that being said, so talking about growth, we’re set up for the future. We’re broken into different regions. I mentioned that at the beginning, uh, you and I started in the DMV. The [00:35:00] DMV is home. We have a very large northeast contingent, which is our, you know, Pennsylvania, you know, Philly northwards, all the way up to Boston.

And then we have our mountain region, which actually follows the Appalachian. Trail there. And then we have our Southern states, which is everything from, you know, Richmond to Texas, basically. Um, there is a fifth kind of hidden region in there, which, because we do have members, you know, as far out as Colorado and Michigan and family members, you know, stuff like that.

And so, you know, but everybody’s connected. I never feel like when I’m talking to somebody that’s out in the middle of nowhere, it’s not like I didn’t just With that being said, we’re, we’re positioned to grow. We’re positioned to have the same size in every region, if not larger in some respects, and we, we accredit that to our region chiefs and they’re fantastic people.

They devote a lot of their time to organizing the events that we put on, you know, being the sounding board for some of the crazy ideas that you and I have. But, you know, a lot of them have taken over some of the special events that we have, be it, [00:36:00] you know, mountain region doing summer bash, which is our big annual, uh, family reunion, uh, that we’ve been doing for six years.

Now we’ve got things like the animal house of the Northeast region does as our season finale up at Watkins Glen and other events, just like that. Now, when we talk about events. for GTM. Like what kind of events do we put on? We don’t really put on competitive events, right? That’s the big misnomer. We’re not here to put on a track day or an autocross or whatever, but we are here to support.

If you’re, if you’re one of those organizers out there listening, we are here to support you. And that’s why Brad made that joke about the coaches union. It’s very common for, for me or Brad to get a phone call to say, Hey, I need like 10 guys. Cause we’re short on coaches. Uh, how many do you think you can drum up?

All right, let me make three phone calls and a couple mass messages over slack and we’re good to go. But outside of that, we’ll come and help out. We’ll promote the events. We’ll, we’ll do cross pollination. We’ve done that with, with HOD or hooked on driving. Well, we’ve done that with the Corvette club, various other organizations where we try to [00:37:00] go in.

And support them, be their staff, you know, help them as much as we can bring things, support, sponsor them, dinners, barbecues, you know, whatever it might be, because again, there’s that void. There’s that piece that’s missing where it’s like, we’re putting on, we’re not putting on a big show, but we’re making it super inviting that people want to come party with us.

I mean, that’s why our pit race event is, is a fun one, right? Paddock party at pit race. I got to say it’s really hard to say Um, so say that three times fast, but uh, but that’s a fun one, right? Like this year we did we were going to do the volleyball tournament, you know stuff like that It keeps people around but instead what we ended up doing was a intramural Hod versus uh gtm karting event.

This would be our second one Now our third one actually got postponed. We got to schedule it again, but we do fun Stuff like that. You know, those are our types of events, right? Going to pro races together, like Salins or flying out to go to the Formula One race at Coda or the cannonball runs that the Southern States region organizes for us, right?

We’ve done things like going to road Atlanta together. [00:38:00] We’ve gone to NCM where we were planning on going to Indianapolis, places like that. We’ve done mid Ohio and pit race back to back, you know, that was a long haul. Went to Barber last year. That was really big. I was, that was a bucket list for a lot of us, but, uh, you know, stuff like that.

So it’s all about that group. It’s all about inclusion. It’s all about, you know, uh, doing that. And to that effect, one of our, our mountain region chief, he and I were talking about this yesterday. So this is Dan mountain man, Dan, which many of you have either know, or we’ll get to know very well in upcoming episodes, but he was telling me, you know, as a former vet and we do, it’s kind of funny, we have an interesting demographic in the club.

There are a lot of it guys. And there are a lot of DoD, you know, former military folks or the combination of the two. But one of the things that Dan said is the fellowship within GTM is huge. We’re always looking out for each other. It’s none of this like, you know, pissing contest, keeping up with the Joneses.

You got that part. I got to have that part too. My car’s got to be better. It’s none of that kind of thing. It’s very much more social. It’s very much more family oriented. Like you said, he’s [00:39:00] one of the things he wanted me to. point out, which is very important and, and he’ll talk about it more in a following a follow up episode.

It’s very, for him, it feels very much like the military and don’t get me wrong. It’s not the discipline and the order, and we’re making you do pushups in the parking lot. What it is, is it’s that sense of brotherhood and that sense of fraternity and that sense of family. And so, you know, transitioning out of the military, we have picked up a lot of folks and for them, they’ve said the same thing to us.

You know, this is now kind of my new. My new platoon, my new, you know, my new group. And so that’s, that’s been really important for, for them. And I appreciate that. And we give back every year, we try to do some sort of charity event. We we’ve done helmets off to heroes year after year, you know, that’s, that’s for wounded warriors and those types of things, and those are fantastic events.

And we love doing stuff like that.

Crew Chief Brad: And in talking about the events that we do, some of the services, the philanthropic events that we hold, we’ve done a car care clinic for high schoolers. Um, we have [00:40:00] many of our club members volunteered and came and taught, you know, some high schoolers just general maintenance of their vehicle.

What to look for. I mean, these kids are 16 years old starting to drive for the first time. I’m sure Eric has probably been there. I’ve been there stuck on the side of the road at some point not knowing what to do. Well, Eric probably knew what to do because he’s been, he came, he came out with a, with a 10 millimeter wrench in his hand.

Crew Chief Eric: I lost it though. It’s in the woods at dance house.

Crew Chief Brad: Probably. But yeah, so I, I didn’t know how to do any of that stuff when I was in that age. So the, the idea was to teach these kids. You know how to change their oil where where the oil goes into the motor something as basic as that There are so many people out there in the world driving around in these Machines that they have no idea how to keep them running That was one of the things that we did.

We had a golf tournament. We donated all the funds from that Um, to a charity that’s very special to, uh, to people within our organization. Um, we’re, we’re building a, a driver’s university kind of thing for standardizing, uh, coaching [00:41:00] materials to bring up coaches from within our organization, growing our coaches union.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. We’ve been complimented many times. You know, we, we, you know, it’s kind of funny, like I said, took the same approach that my dad did when I started to learn how to drive. He’s like, just because you got your license doesn’t mean you’ve passed my test, you know what I mean? And so we’ve been working on the whole education aspect of GTM since the very beginning.

I mean, we’ll, we’ll probably talk about this on another episode, but some of the guys that we’ve brought through. I mean, we’ve gotten compliments on how awesome they are and they’ll go through a certification school like SCCA and they’ll just blow through it with falling colors because it’s like we’ve thrown so many things at them, you know, over, over the period of a season that they’re like, I’m ready for whatever you can, whatever you can give me.

But you know, that’s just part of it. Right. So education is big for me. It’s a soft spot. spot for me. I’m a student of history. I like doing the research and all that and dive in deep into things. But I also like sharing that knowledge with other people, not just our members. But if you look at the numbers on our website, we have recurring people coming back to read our articles [00:42:00] and we’re reviewing stuff.

That’s not just about, Oh yeah, the latest IndyCar race, this happened and you know, Lando ran into so and so and I racing and it was a big kerfuffle. Somebody is already covering that. Right. So we’re trying to cover other stuff that may not be as in plain sight. I got to give a big shout out to our writing team.

We got eight of our members that write for us consistently and just the stuff they’re putting out. It’s really, really good. And it’s, it’s tough sometimes to come up with new and creative things.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And I was just going to add on to that. Some of the articles that we’ve written, I mean, we’ve got articles about, uh, what to expect at your first track, your first track day.

And, you know, what didn’t I know that I wish I knew then, uh, we’ve got articles about track insurance, you know, a review on some of the track insurance companies out there. We’ve got some, some. Guys that are really heavy into nutrition and they wrote articles. It was a two part series on nutrition at the track and how to keep from getting that tracking over that we’ve all suffered from more times than we’d like to admit.

So yeah, we’ve got different, different experience. From within the club that [00:43:00] lends itself to, to giving the club a different perspective and a different voice.

Crew Chief Eric: And so I want to, you know, and the listeners have been kind of putting up with us now for probably 40 minutes or so. But I got to say this, we use the word track a lot.

Please don’t take it the wrong way. Track is one of these like general words because so is motorsport, right? At least in our community. For us, when we say the track, we’re talking an autocross track, a go kart track, a drag race, uh, track, right? Whatever it might be, motorsport is all encompassing. It has different disciplines in it, be it rally, be it autocross, or you know, road racing, whatever it is, boating, airplanes, anything with a motor and a way to To steer it is motorsport, right?

As far as, as far as we’re concerned. So when we use the word track, full disclaimer, that’s a generalization. So that could apply to you as a drag racer. It could apply to you as a cart racer, autocross or whatever. So just, you know, we set that up in the beginning, but I want to remind everybody again, that that’s important to us, that we are inclusive of all disciplines.

It’s not just, you know, going [00:44:00] around, making a left turn.

Crew Chief Brad: And it doesn’t just mean four wheels either. It could be two wheels. It could be one wheel. Uh, it could be no wheels if you’re in the boats and things like that. Three wheelers. You could have a trike or a three wheeler. Yeah. If it’s got a motor, as he said, it doesn’t matter how many wheels you’ve got.

We all want to hear about it. I mean, we’ve got people in the club that are even into RC racing. That’s got people that race or used to race motorcycles out on the West coast. I mean, it’s endless. You know, the, the things that we are into in this club.

Crew Chief Eric: On the road, off the road, on the water, it doesn’t matter.

It’s all the same. So with that being said, a couple other special things just to talk about just before we get into the future and where we’re going, special things about GTM. We do our annual awards night. Uh, it actually started as a, as a joke because of your birthday, we would do it at BIR in November.

I hate to say while Audi club was doing their awards banquet, we were doing ours. But, and then it’s, it’s become a long standing tradition. Go

Crew Chief Brad: ahead. Yeah, and a little bit of history on Awards Night. It [00:45:00] started out as a joke, as Eric said, like the Dundies from The Office. A hundred percent. If you’ve ever seen the show.

And actually, the very first award ever given is the, uh, the DE Champion of the Year Award, which went to our very own Eric Montgomery Stanley right there. Yours truly, yeah. Yeah, and then the next year It was rigged, people. The voting was rigged. Yes, the voting was rigged. There was one person voting, and he happened to be the one who bought the trophy.

But the next year was just as ridiculous. It was at Hooters and they got, they had me stand up and do the cluck cluck dance with the Hooters girls that I will never forget or live down in the club.

Crew Chief Eric: We picked up a new member that night who happens to be one of our region chiefs. So everything happens for a reason.

But now awards night, like everything we do, it’s full send and it gets more ridiculous every year. I mean, last, if you guys. Uh, go back into the vault, uh, or if you’re, we’ll talk about this at the end of the segment. Uh, if you’re part of Patreon, you can get access to our, uh, behind the scenes award night recordings and stuff [00:46:00] like that.

Last year was just absolutely bonkers. It was a lot of fun. Uh, we did, we did tease some of the things that are coming. for the next couple of years, uh, in that. So, uh, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But, uh, awards night is a big deal. The other thing, you know, we, we started out doing fantasy football stuff early on.

Family events like picnics and, you know, car shows and whatnot. But one of the other big ones for us was, uh, Virtual Racing League, the VRL. Which we’ll probably talk about in, in another episode. But VRL was really big for us. It was actually a very good recruit. Granted, we’re not doing iRacing. Nobody’s buying 20, 000 rigs.

Don’t get excited. We’re just playing Forza, but we do have a fully automated computerized timing and scoring system. So, you know, whatever it is legit. I’m in it for the points. I don’t know about you. There’s some really good stories there, but we’ve picked up some members over the years through that system and we’ve kept them and they come back.

Uh, we have the Forza survivor or For people getting punished, but you know, it’s it that’s, that’s what it is in a [00:47:00] nutshell, right? It’s a lot of fun. It’s bringing people in showing the other side of what a car code can be It’s not getting together on a saturday night behind the dairy queen and showing off all your chrome

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, and that’s why we do this at the end of the day.

It’s for fun. All of this is for fun. I mean, all the yes, there’s going to be some some gentle ribbing and you know, talking trash and things like that. But at the end of the day, it’s all about fun. If you’re not having fun, then what’s the point of doing it? And we all in GTM have fun and we all love it.

Love going to the events and doing the, the, the different things that we do in the club. And even just us being the ones that put it on us and the crew chiefs and the different committees and stuff that we have, we do it because it’s fun.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Or it’s the constant source of caffeine and fuel provided by monster, uh, hurry, Haribo, gummy bears, and a fig Newton’s just, just like, no, that’s.

Typical gtm diet

Crew Chief Brad: the and the official drink of gtm used to be the white russian, but now it’s graduated To jaeger and monster. [00:48:00]

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. The jaeger monster is pretty nice. Thank you. Sam. We I curse you

But no, I mean again all all in good fun all in good spirits and what we’re gonna do You know allow us to talk about the future. So the podcast right we’ve been we have been talking about this for probably two years and we’ve We finally are now talking to you instead of talking to ourselves about it.

We have a lot of good material out there. We have a lot of stuff that really gets left on the cutting room floor when it comes to our articles, where we could really expand, go dive deeper. We’ve got some really passionate members that want to share their stories with you, just like we said in our, our mission statement.

I’ve got some stuff I want to go deep in with, we’ve got some really cool debates like what should I buy and things like that, where we can, it’s going to be chaotic, but it’s going to be a lot of fun. fun and we hope that you’re going to enjoy that too. So that’s the podcast side of things. Obviously we’ve been, we’ve been blowing out Instagram.

We’ve been trying to, you know, trend our own hashtags like GTM spicy Italians and GTM francais and a bunch of other ones that we [00:49:00] have, and those have been really good for us and we’re trying to bring something unique, right? It’s not the same picture of the orange Lamborghini that they had on Jalopnik that was on car and driver that was wherever.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, you can only see so many pictures of a silver GTI with 666 all over it or a black TT before you unsubscribe.

Crew Chief Eric: But I can post stuff from like 1957 that nobody’s seen before, like a Renault Dauphine and it’s people, what is that? And we get like You know, 93, 000 likes, but, uh, but that’s the whole idea.

Something new, something different, something interesting, a breath of fresh air. The, when we plan out our years, we usually start in the winter time and we meet quarterly and go through all that kind of stuff. Not to give you all the dirty details there, but some events are very variable. And so summer bash is always bigger and badder and more chaotic, and it keeps getting bigger and more people keep coming out.

We tend to take over the track and it’s, it’s a lot of fun. And we do, we’ve only done one summer bash outside of maybe this year, thanks to COVID that wasn’t at a [00:50:00] track. And the reason we do it at a track is we don’t have a problem with parking. There’s plenty of spectator, you know, space, no admission fees.

You can have a lot of fun. You can ride along with a lot of us that are coaches and go for a thrill ride. They do parade labs, all sorts of, you know, we try to get you excited about motorsport and that’s an easy way for us. do it. And that event is a lot of fun and it is a very family friendly event. The cannonball run, like I said, this year, that the top three were Indianapolis, GP circuit, uh, club motor sport.

And we were going to try to go back to NCM. So we hadn’t really decided yet. And thanks to COVID, we still haven’t made a decision. So the cannonball run is still up for grabs. Uh, the way we figured that out, just so you guys know, uh, we’re, we’re super scientific about it. We, we basically draw a line from the Washington monument, 12 hours out.

And then take a protractor and just kind of go around in a circle and whatever track fits in that radius. We try to go as far as we can. There’s been some talk about going to Road America. There’s been some talk to really starting to stretch our legs because once you’ve done 700 miles, what’s another [00:51:00] 150 at that point?

It really doesn’t matter. And that would really get us more connected, especially with our members of the Michigan and stuff like that, that are really big fans of that track. And it’s a bucket list for me, too. I want to do it. Now, granted, there’s the crazy, we’re going to… Put all the cars on a car trailer and go to Laguna Seca, but, you know, My, my personal dream

Crew Chief Brad: right there.

Laguna Seca and to put all the cars on a boat and drive Rans Hatch.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, a hundred

Crew Chief Brad: percent.

Crew Chief Eric: Koda is still being talked about. Uh, it’s doable, but

Crew Chief Brad: I need about 500 more horsepower to do Koda.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. That’s, that’s the big problem, but it would be a lot of fun to say, Hey, I drove that track. There are some bucket list motorsports races to go to that we haven’t seen that we’d want to do.

A bunch of us used to do F1 when it was in Indy, been to Global Rallycross. I’m a big Group B fan. We can talk about that for a whole nother episode. Probably one of the few people to WRC in this club. Obviously going to Salins last year was a blast. You got behind the. scenes. We can talk about that another [00:52:00] time.

But one of the big ones, one of the big things that’s coming, the big cannonball 2023. Right. I’m not trying to put this too far out into the universe. We’re going to Le Mans. No, we’re not campaigning our own car. The plan is to go as a group. What

Crew Chief Brad: class would we even be in if we campaigned our own car? It would be Le Mans, LGT turd.

Crew Chief Eric: With a 1. 6 Viotta going around. We’d have the slowest lap on record at Le Mans.

Crew Chief Brad: Lots of bum drafting. A

Crew Chief Eric: hundred percent. I was right on his tail. I can hear him. I was right on his tail. But, uh, that being said, uh, the plan is to go to 23. The reason 23 is special is it’s the hundredth anniversary of Le Mans.

Not necessarily the hundredth running of Le Mans, but the hundredth anniversary. So for that, for, for a bunch of us, that’s special. We’ve always wanted to do it. Every time we ask, where should we go? Somebody stands up and goes, [00:53:00] LeBron’s! I mean, they’ve been saying it for six years, right? So we’re gonna do it.

I don’t know. The future is still unwritten. That’s the best part, right? And we do it all just, it’s like, send it. Let’s go. Let’s just, let’s just go do it. So

Crew Chief Brad: I’m going to throw this out then. What do our listeners want to do? What do they want to see in the future? You know, at the end of this, you’re going to get our contact information.

If you don’t already have it. Um, some of you, if you’re members, you’re in Slack and stuff. Let us know what you want. What do you want? Where do you want the club to go? Give us suggestions. What don’t you like that we’re doing? What do you like that we’re doing? You know, what do you want to see from Grand Touring Motorsports?

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think we covered quite a bit in our first episode. This is pretty good. Hopefully we didn’t put anybody to sleep. If we did, you know, market that, it’s good stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So Brad, any final, any final thoughts

Crew Chief Brad: before we really wrap it up? Uh, no, I, I’m, I’m happy to be doing this. I’m glad I’ve been talking about doing a podcast for a couple years now.

I’m glad I finally, we finally got off our butts and started [00:54:00] doing it. I know it’s, I know it’s all been my fault, but, you know, I’ve had some things going on that… Precluded me from being able to do it, but now here we are. Uh, so like I’m excited and curious to see where it leads.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. All right, my friends.

Well, I think that about wraps up episode number one. So with that, peace, peace.

So there you have it. He broke it. I fixed it until next time. Always remember if you can take it apart without breaking it, you can surely fix it. For all of us at GTM, Merry Motoring.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out at 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 [00:55:00] gtmotorsports. org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from GTM? Great, so do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it.

But please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization. But we still need help to keep the momentum going. So that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content. So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can help.