Operation Motorsport

• Let’s talk about how Operation Motorsport got started. The who/what/when/where of the program
• What is your footprint of operation? Your website has options to select the United States and Canada. Do you also assist Canadian veterans in their path of rehabilitation as well as American vets?
• Your website states medically retired or retired veterans, are you also open to veterans who were not medically retired or retired after their minimum of 20 years of service which is only approximately 20% of veterans in the US?
• Your website has a page that states the horrible statistics of 22 veterans a day that take their own lives. Do you have any sort of referral program for getting veterans in a bad place mentally to get involved to improve their mindset?
• What type of Motorsports Programs is OM involved in? (SRO, IMSA, FEL, etc)
• Which disciplines of motorsports are you involved with? ie road course, drag, dirt track, off roading, etc
• What types of opportunities are available for OM beneficiaries in these series?
• How does one go about becoming part of the OM team?
• and much, much more!

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.

Crew Chief Eric: Established in 2017, Operation Motorsport promotes the physical, emotional, psychological, and educational life skills necessary for recovery and reintegration of our veterans into civilian life through motorsports. Operation Motorsport has three distinct roles.

To provide motorsport as a recovery activity, to provide training and qualifications to return beneficiaries to work, and as relationship managers to the motorsport industry for vocational opportunities for ill and injured service members and disabled veterans. And with us tonight is COO and treasurer [00:01:00] of Operation Motorsport, Jason Leach, to tell us all about the Rehabilitation and Outreach Program.

And with that, Jason, welcome to BreakFix.

Jason Leach: Thank you, Eric. I’m glad to be here tonight.

Crew Chief Eric: And joining me tonight is returning guest co host Mountain Man Dan, who you might remember from many different episodes of BreakFix podcast. But did you also know that he’s a former enlisted airman? So he’s here to help talk about this today.

Subject tonight. So Dan, welcome back. And as Dan will attest to the GTM clubhouse of our organization has always been lovingly referred to as the car club of the DOD since many former and active duty folks, as well as many support the U S military. So this topic really hits close to home for us. So Jason, let’s talk about Operation Motorsport, how it got started, the who, what, when the program and how you got involved with it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Leach: As you mentioned, we were founded in 2017 out of Brighton, Ontario, and then it’s quickly into Raleigh, North Carolina. So we’re a dual organization engaging medically retired and wounded service members from the Canadian armed forces [00:02:00] and the U S armed forces. And we believe in three things that focus on, which is team identity and purpose.

That’s something that every veteran or military member struggles with as they leave the service. But when you’re being medically released, it’s even harder because your government is telling you you’re no longer fit to meet mission. And depending on where you’re at in your career, that can be a pretty big punch in the gut because you don’t know what’s going to come next.

Where our genesis was born from was from the race of remembrance, which is put on by an organization called Mission Motorsport. In the United Kingdom, they are similar to us, except they are focused really more on the vocational side. And they’ve got a lot of connections with OEMs in the UK. They’re backed by the UK government.

They are a much larger organization and much more focused in that rehabilitation vocational perspective. So in around 2015, 2016, Diesel and his wife, Tiffany, went to the race for remembrance, they were invited there and they just saw really the power of what motorsports can do for the veteran community.

Now, if you pause, I mean, every veteran or military member listening [00:03:00] will recognize this, but for the civilians that might be listening, there are so many parallels between motorsports and military operations. You know, that small team dynamic working towards the common goal, you all have your lane, you all have your job specialty, but.

When it gets down to it, you’ve got to sometimes pick up that person to your left or your right and help out on the day of competition. Murphy’s law is going to step in and throw you a curveball. You probably didn’t plan for it, but you’ve got to overcome that obstacle and continue to move forward as a team that just resonates so well across our military veteran community to where we see the change when guys come in on Wednesday and load in and then on Sunday after the checkered flag.

They are just completely different people. They’ve realized, yeah, there’s still value added, even though their military career kind of came to an end. Now, how I got involved, around 2019, I was looking to retire out of the army, and I was trying to figure out what was next. I was already interested in motorsports, I had a track car, I was doing track days here in the mid Atlantic region, having a lot of fun doing [00:04:00] that, but I had to take a little bit of a pause, because at the time, my military career, my family was taking a lot of priority.

So the car went away, the trailer went away, all of that, so I gave up that crack cabin. And I started listening to podcasts. I started researching online. How do I get involved in the motor sports world? I had some help from an organization called the commit foundation. And really it was another podcast cars.

Yeah. I was listening to Mark Ralph off from YMSA. Talk about the book they put out at that time, about the 50 years of YMSA. And his story really resonated. I got online and went and found him on LinkedIn and reached out to him. I was already planning to go to mid Ohio to the IMSA race. I was going to be a volunteer crew member with Corp Motorsport in the Michelin Pilot Series.

And Mark was like, Hey, come talk to me. Give me his phone number. And we sat down and we talked. I’ve always known from a young age, from my military career, that you make opportunities for yourself. You have to go and seek whatever it is you want to do. And you can’t be afraid to talk to people and tell your story.

While I was at Mid Ohio with CORE Motorsport, in walked this guy in an MZ uniform, red polo and black pants at the time, and he’s talking to the crew. I hear him talking about jumping out of [00:05:00] airplanes, and I was like, ooh, he’s a veteran, because I jump out of airplanes for my military job. So I went to introduce myself and we got to talking.

It turns out it was Diesel Lotter, the co founder and CEO of Operation Motorsport. And as we were talking, he asked me if I’d heard of Operation Motorsport. I said, I just found him online a little bit. I wasn’t medically retiring and releasing. So I said, I’m not really the person you’re looking for. He asked me who I was talking to.

And I mentioned, you know, somebody named Tiffany. So he said, hold on, I walked out of the garage, little area there and came back in and here’s this woman, same thing, in the uniform, and it was Tiffany. We met, it almost seemed fortuitous that after we were done racing on Saturday, I stayed there for Sunday, my dad lives just a few miles from the track, and We just started to build a relationship.

I really believe in the mission and what they were doing. I saw some of the things they were doing. Yeah, I came on board at that point as a volunteer, and five some odd years later, I’m still doing it.

Mountain Man Dan: What is the organization’s footprint of operation? Because I saw on your website that you guys have United States and Canada.

But you mentioned the UK as well.

Jason Leach: Mission Motorsport [00:06:00] is a supporter of us, but it’s more of that big brother type relationship. Again, their mission is slightly different. They don’t financially support us. They don’t support us from a governance perspective or anything like that. They’re there to kind of help advise and assist if we need it.

They were instrumental early on. Tiffany went and spent, I think, a month or two with them, kind of interning with them to kind of understand the business side and how they were using motorsports for the UK veteran and military community. So she learned a lot of good lessons learned and brought those back and they implemented that into what we are today.

I mean, even if you look at our logos, our logos are kind of similar. I mentioned the race for remembrance. We’re going to launch a veterans race for remembrance in November of 2025, a similar type format with a 12 hour endurance race over veterans day weekend. That’s their remembrance day weekend. Our footprint across Canada and the U S.

There’s no geographical limitations. If there’s somebody in Fort Liberty, they’re going to partner with a team and they’re going to go out to Sonoma Raceway, we get them there. We don’t see a lot of back and [00:07:00] forth from the U. S. to Canada or vice versa unless the race schedule calls for that.

Mountain Man Dan: Also on your website, I’d mention medically retired or retired veterans.

Now, I was curious, does it also open to veterans that didn’t retire? Because like myself, I only served a shy of eight years and got out, but I do have service connected disability.

Jason Leach: So we try to identify the service member before they leave the service. That in and of itself can be a bit tough because each branch of service does things a little bit differently.

And a lot of that really depends on what your Rolodex is. We do work with the USO on some occasions and try to identify people through some of their tracks. But if you’re a veteran, we try to find people who are less than 10 years released. For And they will have had to have gone through the VA process or the equivalent of in Canada.

They just have to have a service connected rating. We don’t target like a 50 percent or 80 percent or a hundred percent. We don’t target just post 9 11, although that’s really the case. Nowadays, you know, for the majority. But we’re pretty open in the veteran or the military member. It doesn’t have to have any particular skill set.

They just have to have an interest in motor [00:08:00] sports or they grow an interest. So I can remember we had one guy show up and he thought he was coming to like a car show and little did he know, put on a team uniform and he was slinging tires that weekend with the race team. Yeah. They just have to have an interest in motor sports.

Mountain Man Dan: It resonated with me when you were talking about everybody had their own individual role. But the reality is there’s that end goal that everybody’s working towards together, even though you have a different role to get there, the objective and the mission is still the same to get to that end point as a civilian.

There’s not many companies and stuff that have that sort of mentality to where you have that team that gets together to do that. And I think my experience in the track and like the paddocks and all the different. No matter what discipline I’ve been to, motorsports in general is a close knit community, much like the military.

Yes. It’s a small world. You might meet somebody one place and then not see them for years and see them halfway around the world and be like, hey, I remember you from this event.

Jason Leach: And it’s one of those things, too, where your reputation precedes yourself across the paddock, right? Your reputation, if you’re a good crew person, that’s going to get promulgated to other teams.

They’ll pick that up really quick that your [00:09:00] value add and then you become a commodity to where other teams might be trying to pick you up. It is so cool to see. I mean, for me, when I’m around the guys or whatever, it’s like being in the team room again, where you get some of that banter back and forth that I never got in the civilian jobs I worked with, even when I was around other veterans.

It’s just the civilian marketplace is just, it’s just different. Rather bland. Sometimes a little more PC.

Mountain Man Dan: Definitely. You guys mentioned veterans. Are there any specific ones you guys are geared towards reaching out to? On your website, it mentioned the horrible statistic about 22 veterans a day taking on.

I’ve had numerous guys I’ve served with or known through military service that unfortunately have taken their lives. So, that hits, you know, real close to home for me. Is there a way that other than the individual themselves reaching out to you, do you guys have any sort of like referral to where like, Hey, I got this person, would you be willing to reach out to them to see if it’s something that they’d be interested in doing?

Jason Leach: A lot of it’s word of mouth. I mean, right now we don’t follow up under the VA. We are working towards trying to get more of a established relationship with the USO. But generally speaking, [00:10:00] people find this either word of mouth or we’ve started to do a little more outreach. We were just at the military influencer conference for the first time this past year.

We’ve been to PRI a couple of different times. We’re a small organization. We don’t have a huge budget. So getting in physically into some of the places where we’d like to go can be a bit challenging. And then sometimes it’s. It’s a matter of people truly understanding what we do because when they look at the website or they first see it, right, they see the race cars and they think, okay, there’s an opportunity here to become a race car driver.

There is and there isn’t. So let me back up and let’s talk about the programs a bit more in depth. The Motorsports Immersion Program is our bread and butter. That’s where we spend a lot of our effort. That’s where a lot of our limited funding goes to support. Motorsports immersion is taking somebody and putting them in to become a crew member with a race car team.

That’s 90 percent of it. They can also go into tech. They could go into marketing, hospitality, photography, videography. If you look at everything from a business perspective that takes place inside of a paddock [00:11:00] during a race weekend. Minus putting somebody in the driver’s seat. We have a partnership where we know people that can make an opportunity for somebody.

So Dan, such as yourself, if you were interested in getting into race control, let’s say we know people in race control and we could potentially find an opportunity where you’d come in almost like as an intern or on the job skills training. And that’s where you would be for up to two race seasons, learning everything there is to know about race control.

And I’m going to talk about one guy. His name is Matt Smotherman. He was a medically retired U. S. Army major, and he came to us. First started off in tech, had, he had some back issues, so it kind of held him back a little bit on doing some of the physical stuff. But. The opportunity came up to go into race control at SRO, and he hit it right off the bat.

I mean, he describes it as feeling like he was back in that tactical operations center for deployed with all the computer screens, all the information coming in, having to make decisions to execute the race at the end of his second race season. SRO offered him a paid position to where he’s now doing that moving forward.

We’ve seen people get offered positions with [00:12:00] actual race car teams at the end of their season, or for some of them, they do their two race seasons and they realize that they’re better human beings or better fathers or better brothers or better sisters, better mothers, whatever it might be. So they take those skills and they apply it back to their normal life.

Back home with the family, you know, because, I mean, let’s be honest, if you look at like an IMSA schedule, that’s a lot of traveling throughout the year. You look at an SRO, not quite as heavy, but still a lot of traveling throughout the year. That can be pretty taxing on a family, especially when they think, Any, your military service came good and end yet you’re still out there.

You’re going all the time. Some of them do that. And then within the motor sports immersion program, and I want to make sure your audience understands what I say, there’s an opportunity to potentially try. In the past, we’ve had partnerships with different race schools and we look at like the race of remembrance.

We’ve been able to put some of our beneficiaries into the race car for that one event. When we look at what 2025 is going to look like with the Veterans Race for Remembrance, that’s still a goal. If the beneficiary has the right race [00:13:00] license, there’s an opportunity for them to actually get into the seat and drive.

Just like every other driver, they’ve got to go through the process of a race school and race licensing and whatever it may be. Then our second program is Diversionary Therapy. Here you can drive all you want, but it’s virtual. We do e motor sports or iRacing. We run an iRacing league. It’s a private league geared primarily towards veterans and military members, whether they’re beneficiaries with us or not.

So Dan, you do good. If you’re in iRacing, you could join us for our next race season. That’s going to kick off, I think, in February. And we run an eight week race schedule, but what we found, it was born out of COVID, when the big racing world shut down, we had to find a way to stay connected. So we came up with this idea, took somebody else’s playbook and said, okay, let’s adapt this to our own, create our own online racing league.

What was surprising about that, not only just creating a place for people to virtually come together, we found a new subset of veterans we would otherwise never have found because they were in the e motor sports or they’re in the e sports world. They’re not the ones necessarily coming to the [00:14:00] event, or they may not be the ones who feel comfortable yet kind of stepping away from the safety and the sanctuary of their homes.

Matt Sumner was one of those guys. I don’t say he wasn’t willing to step away from his home, but I don’t think we would have found a guy like Matt to go from iRacing to now helping out in SRO race control on a paid basis. I mean, that’s a pretty cool story.

Mountain Man Dan: Motorsports Immersion, that seems to be solely focused.

on the beneficiaries being veterans with medical status issues, disability claim, or whatever. But did I understand correctly when you said the iRacing portion of it’s open to any veteran? It is.

Jason Leach: So we run three classes within our iRacing program. So we have our beneficiary class. So those are people who are coming through our program.

Go through the same recruitment process, if you will, you know, the VA rating or. Medically releasing, medically retiring, what have you, or if you’re over that tenure mark, let’s say, yeah, you can come on, you just come on board, join our discord channel, fill out a form that says, you know, basically I won’t be complete idiot out on track.

We pride ourselves in the iRacing community that we police [00:15:00] ourselves. But that we hold ourselves to a pretty high standard that we have clean racing. We have people in our iRacing program that are brand new to the platform, to guys that are running in some of the higher iRacing one off event type things.

We have professional drivers from IMSA or SRO and FEL that come in and join us periodically because they’re friends of the community. We see a huge skill level between that. Every driver’s meeting is completely emphasized. Hey, I got it. You know, somebody might be brand new here, but give them grace, give them space.

And we tell the new guys, like it’s a track day, like be predictable on track. That’s how you communicate with other drivers. Plus we’ve got the discord channel and people are talking back and forth, but yeah, so we’ve got the beneficiary class and then we have our open class. It’s pretty much everybody else.

And then we have our pro class. And that will be dictated upon, are you a rear door race car driver? What is your eye rating? What is your safety rating? Certain levels would dictate that you would move into that class. And then we’ve seen enough of our beneficiaries actually grow in their eye racing skills to where we created a pro beneficiary [00:16:00] class.

They’re running the same cars as the pro class, except they’re just in a different subclass, if you will, kind of like the real racing world, we run a professional livery, we run sponsor decals on all the cars, right? We try to give it the look and the feel as if it’s a real racing event that you might see in an MZR or SRO or FEL pack.

Mountain Man Dan: When I was stationed over in Europe, one of the things, this was back before online gaming and Halo 1, you could set up multiple. So within USAFE, they set up a thing throughout the European bases to where there were competitions at each base, and then they had us go to Germany for finals. Each base said their best.

If you guys have had a chance to reach out to bases to see if there’s something they could, you know, get out there for troops on the bases to participate.

Jason Leach: So we were working with the USO North Carolina. They had a couple of donated sim rigs in one of their centers. They were joining us. Brian Knight was the guy who helped put that together.

And Brian’s still involved with us on the iRacing side and [00:17:00] whatnot. So there’s that piece of it. There’s also, I know it’s some of the military organizations have their own e sports organizations as well. We’ve reached out and talked to them to let them know who we are and give them an open invite. Kind of like sports car racing in the US, where it’s a very niche thing.

I think even in the e sports world, iReducing is a very niche thing. We are looking to expand those, some of that stuff. One of the things we’ve talked about doing is, again, we’re doing primarily sports car racing, but if we were to break that open and, uh, let’s go do a NASCAR league, because there’s a lot more people interested in NASCAR than there are in sports car racing.

You know, maybe we do some things like that. And we also use some of our eMotorsports for charity events as well.

Crew Chief Eric: You’ve mentioned a couple different racing bodies, whether it was SRO or IMSA, et cetera. So it sounds like you lean pretty heavy towards road racing. Are there any other organizations that you’re affiliated with?

Are there other disciplines of motorsport that veterans get involved with? Let’s just say drag racing, dirt, off roading, you know, things like that.

Jason Leach: So our goal is to be the leader in the motorsports world for all veterans. [00:18:00] That’s a long term goal. We’re not quite there yet. We’re primarily only focused on sports car racing.

So the three main series right now are IMSA, SRO, and FEL Motorsports up in Canada. There probably will be some additional stuff coming on board, specifically on the Canadian side. And when it comes to the drag racing, when it comes to off road, we would love to be in those places, but we just don’t have the bandwidth or the capacity to expand too heavily into them.

That doesn’t mean that if somebody comes to us, And he goes, Hey, that’s what I’m interested in. We know some people to help make those connections. In the nonprofit space, I learned early on, sometimes when you start talking to other nonprofits, and how do they do this? How do they do that? Can we partner?

They start to see you as a threat because every nonprofit is fighting for the dollar in order to support their programs. We look at it a little bit differently. We are not your competition from that perspective. How you guys get your financing is how you get your financing. Good luck and Godspeed, but I want to know about your programs.

I want you to know about our programs because at the end of the day, we’re all serving the same community. [00:19:00] If somebody comes into Operation Motorsport that’s a vet and wants to get into off road stuff, that’s not what we do. But here’s some resources. Let me help you make that connection to those people who are doing that.

Cause we know some of those people.

Crew Chief Eric: So when you make those connections with those organizations and you get folks placed, how does it work on the other side? Meaning on the receiving side, you described it as like an internship, learning on the job, those kinds of things. Is there some sort of playbook that you offer the organizers or the teams to say, Hey, look, we’ve got a service disabled veteran coming in, you know, maybe with these types of accommodations that might be necessary, et cetera, that sort of How do you educate the teams on the people that they’re bringing on board?

Jason Leach: It’s a constant piece of communication right now. I’m working to get stuff going for 2025, reaching out to teams, sending them a small deck. This is who we are. This is what we do. This is why we do it most importantly. And here’s the benefits for both sides of the organization. Here’s what you’re responsible for.

Here’s what we’re responsible for. And then every activation we have, and this is one of the things that [00:20:00] limit us from really expanding into other forms of motorsport right now, is We have an event coordinator on site at each event. If we just have one beneficiary in with a race team, let’s say at an SRO race, somebody like me, somebody like Tiffany is going to be on the ground there for a couple of reasons.

One, we’re there to kind of be that safety net. If something happens, we’re there to help defuse it. Unless you served or unless you’re like a first responder, some of the challenges that some of these guys or girls have, it’s hard to understand because you haven’t walked in their shoes. The paddock could be in a place where things get triggered, you know, whether it’s the smells of fuel or taking you back to a motor pool while you were deployed, right?

Or, you know, the loud noises or the sudden noises. That could trigger something that brings up a bad memory or a bad experience. We’ve seen it. Sometimes the crew members just don’t quite understand what the individual’s going through. So that’s why we have a staff member or volunteer on site to kind of put your arms around the individual and go, Hey, it’s going to be okay.

We got you. You know, we’re here for you also to help defuse anything [00:21:00] with the teams. You know, the other side of it with the team, specifically getting into motorsports can be a pretty daunting task. You know, there’s a lot of people that want to go do that kind of stuff, but they don’t know how to do it.

Sometimes our beneficiaries are almost looked at as a threat. To some of the crew members because they don’t understand why the team is partnering with us. So we’re there to help educate them on that. This is a good news story. This is a good branding story for your team, right? They’re not here to take your job.

They’re here just to learn how to do this stuff because it helps them feel a part of something again, right? So here’s your opportunity, Mr. crew member or Mrs. crew member to show them what you do. Give back to the community. Be a part of the solution. Be a part of helping the movement. forward. We’re there as the event coordinators to keep an eye on them.

But then we’re also there marketing and branding of the organization, talking to teams. Hey, how can we work together? Maybe later on the season or if it’s, you know, already kind of midway through the season, how do we do something next season? How do we create opportunities? Sometimes we’ll get up in front of drivers meetings and give a quick Five minute [00:22:00] elevator pitch about who we are and what we do.

Again, generate knowledge because when these guys or girls go in with their teams, they’re wearing the same uniform that the team members are. There’s nothing on them to identify them as a veteran. There’s nothing on them to identify them as an Operation Motorsport program participant, because that’s part of that identity.

That’s part of being in that team is looking like everybody else. So they blend in to everybody. So we don’t really stand out. So it’s one of those things where that’s so important to us that we’re not going to change that. At the same time, sometimes from a branding perspective, nobody knows who you are because they don’t recognize the organization.

Crew Chief Eric: And you mentioned earlier placing some people that had no idea, like what racing was about, what motorsport entails and things like that. Yeah. Take somebody like Dan, who his MOS was. Working on helicopters and airplanes. And he was on the flight line and he’s mechanically inclined and all that kind of thing.

So to drop him or anybody, like you said, in the motor pool, into a racing scenario, they’re going to get it. It’s all going to click. We’re turning wrenches, changing tires, we’re filling fuel. But in those instances with the teams, how do you help [00:23:00] them get over the, Oh man, we just brought on somebody that has no clue what they’re doing.

Is there a continuing education for the beneficiaries? Like, how do you get them up to speed in the world of motor sport?

Jason Leach: We start off with our Academy program. That’s just an online puncher through PowerPoint slides. Right. And we first start off with just trying to get them accustomed to the lingo, you know, the language, right.

Anytime any of us have ever stepped into a new organization or a new. One of the biggest barriers is communication, and that’s usually because each industry has its own way of talking. And unless you’ve been around it, you know, you don’t know what Castor is, you don’t know what Canberra is, you don’t know what tow in or anything like that, right?

So it takes a while to learn some of that. And sometimes that frustration comes from not understanding what somebody is saying, which creates its own challenges. So we’ve taken it upon ourselves to try to help just from that perspective. And then we try to give them an overview of what the weekend’s going to be like, right?

We’re trying to get them comfortable. I mean, if you go into, let’s say your first time you’re getting thrown into an Amazon WeatherTech team at the Rolex, you’re getting tossed in the deep end [00:24:00] really quick. But because of the relationships we have with the teams, we assess what are the team’s needs. Are they looking for somebody, maybe like a Dan who has some mechanical background that’s going to help make that transition a little bit easier?

Or do they want somebody to just, they don’t care, they want a green horn. They might not know what a, the difference between a Phillips and a flathead or metric and standard. Some teams are willing to take that, because what they’ll do, what every, what we ask every team to do is give them a battle buddy.

Give them somebody that’s going to shadow them and watch them and kind of hold their hand a little bit. through the process. And we also temper the expectations, though, with the beneficiaries. So again, I’m going to pick on Dan here a little bit. It comes from the aviation community, comes from that mechanically inclined background.

He understands complex systems and setup and all that stuff. Well, you know what, Dan, your first time into the team, you might be handed a rag and a cleaning bottle and go, Hey, just go wipe the car down. Everybody has to take a step back on the beneficiary’s side and understand that. Whatever you did in the military is great, or if you come from the motorsports world, or maybe you’re doing track days, maybe you got your own garage and [00:25:00] doing stuff like that.

Anytime you get into a new team in the military, it was like this, at least for me, you’ve got to take a step back and you’ve got to earn your way to be there again. It doesn’t matter where you came from, that team is going to do things a little bit different. So core motorsport and Michelin Pilot Series.

Might do things a little bit different than an archangel. That’s also a mission and pilot series, but different cars, different crews, different things, right? So you can’t always take what one team does or what one experience is and expect it to be a direct one for one translation to another team. So you got to eat a little bit of humble pie and check yourself, but that’s part of earning your way onto the team.

And then once you start to earn that trust. Then you start to see more opportunities come about within the team, where they’ll start to give you more tasks, they’ll start to give you more responsibility. I know I’ve mentioned Matt a couple times now, but his first day, or his first week, I think, in SRO Race Control was like, Hey, you just sit here and watch, and just listen, and absorb.

And now, He’s gotten to the point where he’s actually running certain parts of it. He’s got that level of responsibility.

Crew Chief Eric: So is your goal also to flush out if any [00:26:00] other vets exist on the teams now and use that as your part of your battle buddy system?

Jason Leach: Yeah, we have. I mean, I can think of a guy by the name of Adam Roberts.

When we met him, he was with Skip Barber Racing. He was an Air Force veteran and he got it. I mean, he understood already, but then also to hear him tell his own story when he was like, you know, nothing like this exists. I wish it did because it would have helped him in some of his own journey. There are a lot of veterans in the paddock.

So yeah, we, we lean on them as well to kind of help the individual, because again, they understand they get it in nine times out of 10, they really appreciate what we’re trying to do.

Mountain Man Dan: Even us, whether in seasoned wrench turners and stuff at one point started out as a gopher. So yeah, so you got to start somewhere.

So it’s one of those things, as long as people are willing to learn and Take the initiative, jump in there and do it. It’s like, for me, I love motor sports. And Eric knows I talk people’s ears off all the time when it comes to anything vehicle related.

Crew Chief Eric: And you know, what’s funny about motorsport compared to other sports.

And a lot of people sometimes don’t qualify motorsport as a sport. It’s literally in the name. There is physical exertion. You [00:27:00] know, we don’t need to get onto that soapbox, but it is one of the few team sports. In the sense that the team must work together to get to that common goal. Now you could say that about football, you could say that about basketball, but at the end of the day, you’ve got superstars and you’ve got second strings and you got this and that in racing, yes, you’ve got the pilot or the driver, it’s the whole team behind him or her that makes that driver and that car successful.

So it’s a completely different echelon of teamwork. And that’s where I feel that what you guys are talking about really resonates with the veteran community, dropping these folks in. There’s a moment of change, but I think it comes rather quickly. I think you can adjust a motorsport much faster than you could.

I’m going to make you a defensive coordinator for the Ravens. And you’re like, wait, what?

Jason Leach: Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. And in the motorsports levels we’re into, again, I know I mentioned like games and weather tech. I mean, that’s the cream of the crop when it comes to sports car racing. But if you look at some of the other teams, like SRO with even some of the mission pilot, they’re a bit more grassroot type teams.

[00:28:00] So there’s a bit more willingness. to let somebody new come in, right? Well, for a couple reasons. One, our beneficiaries cannot accept any compensation for their time. It’s strictly their volunteer OJT type stuff, internship. If I’m a new team owner, I’m fighting for money race to race, and you’re going to give me somebody who wants just to help and be productive and is a good fit?

Yeah, I’m going to take that because it helps me out from that perspective. But also, some of those guys are just learning as they go, so they can learn together. Now, we get asked sometimes, let’s say like NASCAR. Are you guys in NASCAR? Well, I can tell you here, NASCAR in the US, those crew members, a lot of them are like their top tier athletes coming out of college, D1 schools, whatever it might be, right?

That’s a hard place to come in and bring a newbie, somebody who’s never done it before. It’d be like F1 or IndyCar, right? I mean, that’s a much higher level. It’s not to say the guys or the girls can do the job, but I think it comes down to more, there’s so much more money in those sports from a brand perspective or marketing perspective that drives a lot of decisions.

Because [00:29:00] the

Crew Chief Eric: nice thing about NASCAR is that as the sixth and seventh generation NASCARs are coming out, you know, the car of the future, and now the next gen based on the garage 56 car we saw last year, what you begin to realize is it’s starting to converge with the sports car world. And so the skills that they’ll pick up.

Through SRO and IMSA and things like that will translate to the new generation NASCAR. So it’s actually a great place to cut your teeth while NASCAR is trying to figure out how they’re going to evolve. These lines are going to get really, really blurry here in the next five years or so. But it brings up a really interesting question.

If you talked about Matt a couple of times and how he’s become more involved in race control and he stayed behind past his two seasons and now he’s got a paying gig. Is there anybody else that’s gone beyond maybe to SRO in Europe or gone off to WEC or some other disciplines of racing once they kind of graduated from the program?

Jason Leach: No, this is the best of my knowledge. We haven’t seen anybody that’s gone really beyond the series they were introduced to. We might see somebody go from IMSA or SRO [00:30:00] or SRO to IMSA type stuff, but we haven’t seen anybody really branch out beyond

Crew Chief Eric: that. Well, you know, what we haven’t talked about yet, Jason is how do you become part of the operation motor sports team?

How does that whole process work? The vetting what’s involved?

Jason Leach: It’s pretty simple. It starts off first by completing an interest form on our website. And when you get to our website, you’ll see two landing pages. You’ll see a U S page and a Canadian page for the most part, they’re mirrors of each other.

There’s just some nuanced stuff towards each specific country. If you go on our webpage, you’ll see the big red button that says apply. Now that brings up an interest form that you’ll fill out. It just says some basic content. Which then, once you send, hits our inbox, and then that goes to our beneficiary trustee.

Currently, it’s Darren. And Darren will review your stuff, and he’ll reach out to you to have a conversation. Why are you reaching out? What are your goals? What are you struggling with? What is your time commitment? When we talk about IMSA or SRO or even FDL, right, we’re looking, ideally, for a 75 percent time commitment.

What’s your life like right now? Can you support that? Can your family [00:31:00] support that? Because the team is making an investment into the individual. And that’s why we ask for at least a 75 percent time because you’re going to be a part of that team. Ideally, you’ll become a lot of value added to that team.

And they want you to,

Mountain Man Dan: could you elaborate on 75%? Does that mean like make it to three out of four races of

Jason Leach: the race season? If we’re starting off with, let’s say Rolex with IMSA in January and 75 percent of the season, taking you to Petit Le Mans. And then once we kind of have a good feel for who you are, what’s going on, you copy your DD 214, have you gone through the VA process, if you are not still serving, then we’ll go into a longer application.

And at that point, then we’re starting to look to see where we can fit you in, what teams might be available or what interests you. If you want to do photography and videography, finding an opportunity is going to be a little bit different than if you just want to get out to a, if you want to get into marketing.

Again, that’s going to be a different conversation with somebody. So some of that can ebb and flow as far as timing. Timing is everything. We typically don’t activate after about the halfway point of the season, [00:32:00] depending on what the individual is looking for, because the race teams themselves are already very well solidified and they’re ideally working very well together.

It starts to become a bit of a disruption by introducing a new person halfway through the season. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It just depends. There’s an exception for the most part of everything I say. That’s pretty much the process. We’ve activated somebody as quickly as. A couple of days to where we’ve had some folks that have had to wait, trying to find them an opportunity where they may have had to wait a couple of months.

We’re talking about SRO right now, looking at 2025. Well, their racing season doesn’t start until March. I might have somebody that comes to us in the fall of 2024 and I can’t give you an opportunity until March of 2025. Some of it just comes down to

Crew Chief Eric: timing. So you mentioned it’s like an unpaid internship.

Is there any sort of way to help offset the cost of travel? Cause you mentioned to yourself, the schedule is all over the place. We’ll use SRO, you know, used to start in St. Petersburg and then they’re off in California and then they’re in Texas, then they’re in New York and all over the place. And so with the [00:33:00] cost of flights and hotels and all that, I mean, that’s a lot to bear when you’re not making any money.

So how do you help to offset that?

Jason Leach: So it’s zero cost to the beneficiary. They don’t pay for anything unless they want to buy a t shirt or souvenir at the track. Any costs they incur as part of their travel, they’re reimbursed for. Fuel to and from the airport. Parking at the airport. Like the government or the DOD, right?

You’ve got to have your receipts for everything, but you basically file a travel voucher. Once they’re with the team, the team picks up the care and feeding. The team provides their credential, whether it’s an annual or a single event, depending on where they’re at. The team picks up their lodging. They live with the team.

It is part of being a Merson doll. So the team is responsible for a lot of that. Operation Motorsport, we cover the flights. To and from, again, no geographical limitations. If there’s somebody in New York that’s got to go down to Sebring, we get them there. Kota, or wherever, right? We get them there. Right now, we’re partnered with Fisher House.

They’ve been a huge supporter for us on the flights. We would have a hard time executing our program with the amount of people [00:34:00] we have active right now if it wasn’t for organizations like Fisher House stepping in to help support.

Crew Chief Eric: And there’s always the opportunity for you. for a beneficiary to, let’s say, ride along in the truck, right?

If they’re in that type of situation, you don’t have to fly. You could be riding with the team as they’re transporting the cars.

Jason Leach: You could, you’d probably only tend to see that if just by happenstance, the beneficiary is co located in proximity to where the team is at. SRO, AMSA guys, they tend to be kind of scattered.

A lot of the crews are flying crews, so there’s very few people that actually have a shop that live and work on them. But yeah, that’s always a possibility.

Mountain Man Dan: I saw a post. And it’s stated that 98 percent of donations directly support the veteran recovery program. Yes. As a veteran, I want to give some huge kudos on that fact because so many other organizations out there have disappointingly gotten to where they have minimal percentages of donations actually going to support us as veterans.

On behalf of the veterans, I’d love to just say thank you on that because you’re not using the veteran community as a grip for you guys to fatten your pockets.

Jason Leach: We are not and I can tell you that is something that we hold true and we will continue to hold true to as an [00:35:00] organization regardless of financially how we grow.

We are run primarily by volunteers, even as the COO and as the treasurer for the organization. I am a volunteer. I am not compensated for the time I give. My compensation comes from helping solve problems. My compensation comes from helping give other people opportunities. The veteran is my way of giving back after serving for so many years.

So yeah, one, thank you. I appreciate that. That won’t change. Our overhead, those who do draw a salary with the organization, the pot of money that they’re paid from is from a grant. It does not come from the private donations that come in.

Crew Chief Eric: What about corporate sponsorship? They’re an opportunity for companies to get involved or even for companies to volunteer their folks to come help out.

Absolutely.

Jason Leach: We are always looking for ways to create more corporate partnerships. We have some already with like a Michelin or mobile one. We have good partnerships with them. What we have found in the motorsports world, when you walk through that paddock, there’s an illusion of money. There’s a lot of money in the paddock, but the money is going to [00:36:00] the racecars.

It’s generally not going to the people who are running everything. But that sometimes gives a false illusion that because we’re in that world, We’ve got all the money in the world to do what we do, and frankly, we don’t. We could help so much more if we could create more financial programmatic support from different corporations.

So yeah, we welcome those conversations, those who want to get back. If there’s a veteran ERGs, employee resource groups that want to get involved, we absolutely welcome that. We can have volunteers come out and support some of our events. I’m sure we’ll talk about the Veterans Race for Remembrance here in a little bit, but that’s going to be a big event where we’re going to be keen on needing volunteers.

A corporate donating or corporate matching programs, you know, sometimes those who want to come on board and volunteer as well. I know I used to work for Microsoft and for every hour I donated to Operation Motorsport of my time, Microsoft would give them X number of dollars per hour to this unreachable cap at the end of the year, which is awesome.

So I think the same programs out there. You know, we’re in fidelity charity. If people want [00:37:00] to donate that way, if people want to donate stock, we can take stock and help support our program. So there’s a lot of different ways that people can get involved and help financially support the organization.

Mountain Man Dan: So other than corporate sponsorship, like individuals, cause there’s a lot of people that support veterans.

Is there a spot on your website or people to reach out for, say, someone that only can donate five bucks or something like that to help you guys out to help a veteran in need?

Jason Leach: Absolutely. You can go right onto our website. At the top of the page, there’s a big red donate button that will take you to that portion of our website where you can donate as little or as much as you’d like.

On the U. S. side, it is a tax deductible per whatever you and your accountant have agreed. You will receive a tax donation for all U. S. side. And then as of January 1st, we will have. The equivalency of 501C3 status in Canada through CRA. So that’s going to be a huge potential game changer for us, especially North of the border, because that’s been a hold back.

There’s a lot of corporations or there’s a lot of individuals that want to give back or they want to donate, but sometimes we’re looking for that tax letter. [00:38:00] So come early 2025, we’ll no longer have that restriction on us inside Canada.

Crew Chief Eric: I sometimes feel like money’s the easy way out. It’s like, all right, I’m going to go hit that big red button and I’m going to donate 20 bucks.

It’s going to make me feel good. You mentioned a couple of times Operation Motorsport volunteers, and that’s where the rubber hits the road is volunteering your time, getting up off the couch, getting to the track, you know, whatever it is. So let’s talk a little bit more about the volunteer opportunities.

How can we help Operation Motorsport? Where do you need help? Program managers,

Jason Leach: event coordinators, people who want to go and support the veteran at the event, you know, help do that, website administration, marketing, writing, helping tell the story, branding. When you look at our organization on our, basically who’s who in the zoo side of it, you’re going to see quite a few folks, but like every small organization, there’s really just a handful of folks who are executing the day to day stuff.

So if there’s anybody listening and wants to reach out info at operation motorsport. org or just hit the volunteer button, it’s a blue button on our website. We’ll have that conversation.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:39:00] And I think it’s also important to remember when you think about the volunteer opportunities that the audience that we’re talking to, that’s listening to this.

Isn’t necessarily in our demographic. There might be a lot, and there are a lot younger folks. So if you’re in a position where you need to clock service hours for your high school or for your college or whatever it is, you want an opportunity to volunteer, and especially if one of your relatives or your parents are in the service or retired and serve, this is a great opportunity to be involved in that community.

As a kid. So that’s where I was sort of thinking about this is what are those jobs? There’s plenty of opportunities. I think there’s plenty of people out there with talents and they could plug into this, become part of it. Yeah. If I could get somebody to come on board and help me

Jason Leach: how to take advantage of tech talk, definitely welcome that one.

Mountain Man Dan: For the beneficiaries, you mentioned like a time commitment. Is it the same with your volunteers? Yeah. Let me use myself as an example. Like if I can only be present at one track to be like a liaison firm and everything.

Jason Leach: We would probably have [00:40:00] somebody else there with you, because part of being the event coordinator at the track is you start to build a bond with the beneficiaries.

To have somebody come in for just one time out of the year, maybe not, we would most likely have somebody with you. The other thing we are looking to do, kind of how you guys found us at Waukesha Squad, I think it was, for we were doing, A little bit of marketing and branding outreach. We had our pop up and I think Diesel’s car was there and stuff like that.

So that’s an opportunity to volunteer. There’d be a lead up. How do you tell the story? That’d be an opportunity to volunteers to come and help man our booth and help people understand who we are and what we do. Plenty

Mountain Man Dan: of

Jason Leach: options for people to help volunteer. That’s a great thing. Yeah, there’s plenty and there could be things that I’m not even thinking about that.

Again, let’s use a cars and coffee. For example, maybe you’re in a region of the country where that’s a thing and you want to give back. Well, let’s talk about how you could maybe host a cars and coffee with proceeds that benefit operation motor sport, lead that in your own community to benefit the organization.

That’s another opportunity that could potentially be there from a volunteer perspective.

Mountain Man Dan: When you’re [00:41:00] saying the fact. It, you know, there’s even things you haven’t thought of. Do you guys, by chance on your website, have like a suggestion box for people drop suggestions and things that could help? No,

Jason Leach: it’s a good idea.

I’ll bring that up with our webmaster. And sometimes crowdsourcing ideas can lead to stuff you haven’t thought of.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll switch gears into our final segment. Let’s talk about. Let’s talk about the future of Operation Motorsports. Since you’re the COO and treasurer, what’s the two, five, maybe 10 year outlook?

New programs for 2025 and beyond, new initiatives. You talked about the race of remembrance. What’s going on?

Jason Leach: Ideally, if I was to look at what two to three years down the road looks like for Operation Motorsports specifically in the US, I’d like to build regional communities or centers. That’s one thing that it’s kind of sucks, frankly, with being geographically dispersed that we don’t have a brick and mortar anymore.

What if we were to create regions where beneficiaries in the Midwest can come together for special events or that peer to peer support type things, or host a cars and coffee, or host something that gets people more involved. But we’re going to need a volunteer base to [00:42:00] really help build something like that.

Long term, again, it’s creating more opportunities for more veterans, more potential beneficiaries. Our goal, minimum, is to have 10 beneficiaries in every race across each series throughout the season. If we can get there, that’s a huge win. And if we can grow that, we’ll happily grow that. We’d love to have somebody in with every race team.

But for 2025, I’d say the big thing we have coming up, it’s called a Veterans Race for Remembrance. Now we just got back from Anglesea this past November, where we campaigned two GT86 cars, a US and Canadian. It was Mission Motorsports 10th year of running that event. I think it was our 7th. It was also our final year.

So for 2025, we are bringing in the concept and the idea of the race for remembrance to Virginia International Raceway over Veterans Day weekend. So that will be November 7th through the 9th. It’s going to be a 12 hour endurance race for over two days, much like it is at Anglesey, but we’re going to blur it a little bit in the sense that for the UK, for Canada, it’s their Remembrance Day, which is the equivalent of our Memorial Day.

For the [00:43:00] U. S. side, it’s Veterans Day. It’s a celebration of veterans. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to put together an event that kind of merges those two things a celebration of veterans We want to create an opportunity to have like a veterans resource fair or a military resource fair there to track Give some of these companies an opportunity to maybe engage with a different product Part of the veteran community at a racetrack, which is something that might be kind of foreign to them, but could be kind of cool.

At the same time, we’re gonna have a couple different support race series. Mustang Cup has committed. We’re in final discussions right now with the second support race series.

Mountain Man Dan: Is that would be like an SRO event or an SSA event? Yeah, so it is a one off.

Jason Leach: USAC is gonna be the governing body. We are still finalizing what the class structure is gonna look like for the 12 hour race.

I would anticipate it’s going to be a mix of some of the stuff you might see in like a WRL level and some of the stuff you see in an MSA SRO.

Mountain Man Dan: Because I’m also an officer within the VFW, do you guys welcome out like VFW and American Legion people come out to try to bring their members out to see this?

Jason Leach: Yeah, we can definitely talk about [00:44:00] that. You know, it’s a matter of time. Just timing and what’s going on, depending on the event. I mean, we could potentially work with a partner to kind of give a little bit more of a hospitality or VIP type engagement, depending on the number of people. We did work with Michelin a couple of years ago at VIR and the boss program out of Fort Liberty.

Michelin carried a lot of that weight, but we stepped in to help them execute a little bit of that event where they had single soldiers come out and we helped host them a little bit. All that stuff’s possible. The nice thing is. With people like Tiffany and Diesel and their contacts and our reputation within the series and whatnot is most of the series are willing to help.

They want to engage the veteran community. They don’t always know how and that’s where we can help bridge that gap.

Mountain Man Dan: So for any of our listeners that might be interested in participating in that event, Is that something that you look forward to seeing on your website for being able to register for? Yeah, well,

Jason Leach: once we get everything finalized with USAC on the class structure and the timings and whatnot, then yeah, registration will open and we’ll start accepting teams.

You know, the other things we’re going to try to do there too is encourage teams to host a beneficiary for that event. We want to [00:45:00] connect with the military veteran community that might be interested in seeing what it’s like to be on a race car team for a weekend. You know, we haven’t quite figured out how we’re going to do that yet, but again, you might have listeners out there that want to go, Hey, I might be interested in something like that.

And one race weekend, you might just be wiping a car down and be a bit more of a spectator in the pits, or you could actually be setting up tires. I don’t know. It depends what the team needs. But yeah, we want to engage and give the veteran or military community something to do that weekend, other than just be a spectator.

Mountain Man Dan: Well, I’ll definitely say from the many times I’ve been down to VIR, any of our listeners that haven’t ever been there before, they want to come out just to support the veteran community. It’s an awesome track. It’s beautiful scenery. It really is a nice location.

Jason Leach: Yeah. And we’re going to have some other things down there too.

You know, we’re going to do some go karting down there. We’ll do some hot laps, most likely. I mean, I think we’re going to partner with a couple organizations for like a 5k track walk or run type thing. It’s going to be more than just racing. We’re talking about maybe a comedy show. We’re talking about maybe a concert of some sort.

So it’s going to be really a three, four day event where we want to engage the [00:46:00] military veteran community across Virginia, North Carolina, up to Washington, D. C. I mean, we’ve got people from the U. K. that are talking about coming over because they know about this, but, you know, from anywhere across the country, come and spend your weekend with us.

Learn more about what we do and take part in a really cool first ever veteran focused motorsports event on Veterans Day weekend. VIR has been a great friend of ours for a number of years. That’s where we had our first activation in 2017 for Operation Motorsport on the US side. It was at Virginia International Raceway.

So it makes a lot of sense. That was our first activation in the US. Well, now let’s do our first veterans race for a member. It’s at VIR. Plus VIR is just such a cool track anyways to be at in the fall of VIR is absolutely beautiful. That’s the big thing. We were going to be focused on this year. In addition to everything we’ve got going on inside of IMSA, SRO

Crew Chief Eric: and FEL.

You mentioned before the GR86 cup cars. And I was wondering, is there any ambition for Operation Motorsport to build their own team using the veterans that they’ve [00:47:00] trained on all the other race teams after all these years?

Jason Leach: That conversation comes up at least a couple of times out of the year, right? The closest we’ve seen right now is a couple of folks that have come through our programs, or there were drivers with us at the Race for Remembrance, gentlemen drivers, they’ve put together a team where they’re trying to do some stuff like in WRML level to put something together without more branding on it.

And again, they have the support. Operation Motorsport, you know, where we could not so much from a financial support, more from a thank you type support. And then the other thing we’ve looked at though, to do those work again with other teams or other organizations that might have teams out there that are doing more of the racing stuff and trying to connect those coming out of the motor sports immersion program into those arenas.

Because again, if I’m running a WRL team or even a champ car, chunk car type, right, and if you tell me, Hey, here’s a guy or girl, they just came out of spending two years at a IMSA team. Or SRO team, there’s a lot of knowledge potentially coming in with that individual that could help a grassroots race team take it to the next level that much faster.

Crew Chief Eric: And since we’re talking about [00:48:00] being forward looking, you guys also do an annual online auction and you do some things around Giving Tuesday. You want to elaborate on how people can get involved and what the auction’s all about?

Jason Leach: For us, it’s one of our bigger fundraising events out of the year. In conjunction with GivingTuesday, we run an online auction.

It kicks off on Wednesday before GivingTuesday. It runs until the Tuesday. But a lot of cool motorsport types events are items. Some of them are one off. Unique things you’re not going to get anywhere else unless you maybe you’re already a part of the motor sports world. We have what’s called the mobile one oil drop award.

If you’re not familiar with that, it’s an acrylic piece that mobile one puts together in conjunction with Corvette and Corvette racing, where they have drops of the actual oil used in the Corvettes throughout the race season. And then they got the little acrylic Corvettes on there. Really cool thing.

Unless you’re part of that racing world. That’s not going to show up magically under the shelf. We’ve got some driving experiences. If you want to go run a dark course in Charlotte with Ford Performance Racing School, we’ve got some NASCAR experiences this year. We’ve got tickets to Indy 500. We’ve got tickets to the Superbowl.

So it’s really some kind of cool, unique [00:49:00] things. We’re trying to expand it. We’ve got a bunch of gift baskets, things that may be of interest to others, other than just motor sports, right? We’re trying to expand as we go to our auction here to reach a larger audience.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Jason, we’ve reached that part of the episode where we like to invite our guests.

to share any shout outs, promotions, or anything else that we didn’t cover this far.

Jason Leach: Follow us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, follow us on LinkedIn, you know, website, Operation Motorsport. org. Get involved. And at the end of the day, if it’s not going to be with us, get back to the military and veteran community in some shape or fashion.

There are a lot of these guys or girls that could really use your help. We all have our own individual stories, but there’s one common bond that ties everybody together, and it’s that service. And once that service ends, It can be a difficult road depending on where you’re at, so if you see somebody struggling, just reach out and lend a helping hand.

Mountain Man Dan: By competing and racing and working together in motorsports hospitality, Operation Motorsport engenders a real team ethos. As previously mentioned, every day 22 veterans tragically take their lives. A donation of just 22 to Operation [00:50:00] Motorsport can provide a beneficiary with a recovery opportunity. To learn more and to donate today, be sure to log on to www.

OperationMotorsport. org or follow them on social at Ops Motorsport on Facebook and Twitter at Operation Motorsport on Instagram and Operation Motorsport on LinkedIn. If you’d like to personally reach out to Jason, please feel free to email him at info at operation motorsports. org.

Crew Chief Eric: And with that, Jason, I can’t thank you enough for coming on break fix and sharing your story and helping to educate us on operation motor sport and the absolutely incredible things that you guys are doing to give back not only to the motor sports community, but to the veteran community as well.

And like I said at the beginning, this is something that is near and dear to our hearts here at grand turning motorsports headquarters. So again, a big. Huge thank you to what you’re doing and keep up the good work and we hope to see you in the 2025 season.

Jason Leach: Yeah. Thanks again for having me. Sorry. Took so long for us to finally make this happen.

Crew Chief Eric: No worries.[00:51:00]

We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcasts brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at gtmotorsports.

org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gumby Bears, and Monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports. And remember, without you, there would be no [00:52:00] None of this would be possible.

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
• 00:27 Operation Motorsport: Mission and Roles
• 00:57 Meet Jason Leach: COO and Treasurer
• 01:40 The Genesis of Operation Motorsport
• 03:46 Jason’s Journey into Motorsports
• 05:53 Operation Motorsport’s Footprint and Partnerships
• 10:34 Motorsports Immersion Program
• 13:08 Diversionary Therapy: eMotorsports and iRacing
• 19:12 Challenges and Support for Veterans in Motorsports
• 26:50 The Importance of Teamwork in Motorsport
• 28:26 Challenges and Opportunities in NASCAR
• 30:03 Joining Operation Motorsport
• 33:06 Supporting Veterans Through Motorsport
• 35:36 Volunteer Opportunities and Corporate Sponsorship
• 41:15 Future Plans and Events
• 47:58 Fundraising and Community Engagement
• 49:09 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Bonus content available as a #PITSTOP mini-sode.

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