Revisiting “The Gentleman Driver”

Toni Calderon - Executive Producer for Speed Group US

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Contact: Toni Calderon at Visit Online!

          

• Before we jump into discussing the film, let’s talk about how you got into Motorsports, and how this led to being involved in the film.
• Immigrating from Mexico – what was Motorsport like growing up there as a Kid? Formula is probably at the forefront, no? Why Endurance racing?
• Tell us a little bit about “making the film” – this project took about 3 years? What was its genesis? What was your goal for the film? How did you choose the 4 people you were going to follow? 
• You guys got a chance to review our original review of the documentary, as race fans, were we fair, too harsh? Would love to get your reactions.
• What was your goal with the Film?
• What do you feel was left on the table? If you could go back and “do it over again” – what would you change?
• What’s next for Toni? (& Santiago). Is there another film project in the works?

and much, much more!

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

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story. The gentleman driver gives an inside look into the lives of four extraordinary businessmen who moonlight as race car drivers at the highest levels of sports car racing. But you might be asking yourself right now, am I having déjà vu?

Didn’t Break Fix already cover the Gentleman Driver documentary? Well, you’d be partially right. Tonight, we’re actually rewinding the clock all the way back to episode four of season one. But this time, instead of a panel of critics, we’re joined by brothers Tony and Santiago Calderon, who were involved in the making of Gentleman Driver, to get a behind the scenes [00:01:00] view on the who, what, and why, and the importance of this film.

And with that, Tony and Santiago, welcome to Break Fix. Thank you. Great to be here. Yeah. Nice to be here. Before we jump into the film, like all good break fix stories, there’s a superhero origin. So let’s talk about how you guys got into motorsports and how this led to being involved in the film later.

When I was a kid, my uncle and my dad would take me to Formula One races in Mexico, back in the, not the new remodeled track, but the old version of the track. And we are both from Mexico. We grew up there and. Got to watch Ayrton Senna drive around many years. And I was a huge fan of Ayrton. So Santiago, were you a Senna fan as well?

Or were you an Alan Prost fan? Were you on the other side of the rivalry? I think I was too young to like, even know who I was, uh, following up. You know, I’ve been an athlete and love sports and with Tony’s passion for racing, bringing it home every weekend and watching them, our family just loved watching sports together and.

Racing was one of them. Fast forward many years, we moved to the U. S. and I became friends [00:02:00] with Rodolfo Labine, who was Indy Lights driver. I would start saving up money, going to races with him. And I was just a big IndyCar fan or a champ car back then. Got lucky, got to be involved with some meetings that he had, got to translate certain things.

He was sponsored by Corona beers. So there were, there’s a lot going on. And. Long story short, he got moved up to Chamkar back then and I basically told him like, you know, you don’t have to pay me, just bring me to this races. I want to be your assistant or your helmet bitch, what we lovingly call it. That worked out and got into that world and eventually, you know, moved up from there, started.

A few different companies been following Tony around whenever I can to all the races. I got to go to a bunch of champ car races back in the day when, uh, they race are in Houston and we went to the Texas motor speedway when it got canceled because they were too fast. So too many forces I’ve met with Tony at different parts in the world to go to races and I’ve gotten to work in the motor sports industry with him, helping him out with a bunch of different things from setting up Sims.

To helping drivers out to helping teams out. And that [00:03:00] led to many, many years later, after being at the 24 hours of Lamar for a few years and winning it over a bottle of wine in Paris with some friends and say, Hey, wouldn’t it be a crazy idea to try to do a documentary? And. Five years later, it came out on Netflix.

So quite a bit of work, but, uh, that’s how we got here. And then for the Gentleman Driver, I got to be in behind the scenes, but just at Le Mans in New Mexico. And I love being in the background. And that’s, that’s kind of been my, my ride there. And it continues. And then obviously watching the movie and watching all that happen.

It was asked Tony every couple of weeks, how’s it coming? How’s it coming? And he was like, Oh, you’ll see, you’ll see, you’ll see. And then we got to be in Austin for the premiere. And it was. So the once in a lifetime parent grew up in formula, one transition to champ car, Indy car, IRL cart, whatever you want to call it at the time.

It had like six different names, but still in the open wheel world. So you made this transition from open wheel racing to endurance racing. What was that like for you? You know, going to your first Lamar, going to your first IMSA race, did you suddenly get hooked or did it take you time to say, you know what?[00:04:00]

These aren’t as cool as the formula cars are maybe more impressive. Then You know, once you get in the business behind the scenes, they’re not quite as separate, you know, you see a lot of the same people, the same mechanics, engineers, drivers, PR people. So for me, it was set their champ car and IndyCar joined or merge, right?

The team I was working for, which is Foresight Racing disappeared. So then I was looking for a new job and everything. And one of the drivers I was managing, David Martinez, who was one of the up and coming Mexican drivers, he was out of a ride. So an opportunity came up for him to race at the 24th of Daytona with a young team.

So I helped him put that together. And that was my first experience at Daytona. That was in 2009. I was kind of hooked and I realized, wow, there’s a huge amount of opportunity here on the business side to do a lot of work. You know, I don’t really consider it like, well, you’re one or the other. It’s just like for many, many, many years, including now, you just kind of do it all.

At least SportCars and OpenWheel, once you get into the NASCAR world or rally or MotoGP or something like that, that is a little bit different [00:05:00] world. But when you’re talking about IndyCar, sports cars, whether it’s MSI, SRO, yellow mass, WEC, and even some Formula 1 stuff, it’s a little more of the same world.

It’s different, you know, you, you learn to love them in different ways. And some things are cooler on one side, some things are cooler on the other side. And it depends on what eye you’re looking at it with. Well, then I’m going to turn it over to Santiago. Looking at it through your eyes as a fan, what did you like better?

Open wheel or sports car and endurance racing? I really enjoyed sports cars, endurance racing. My first race. Was 2014 or so seeing all the classes racing against each other. And, you know, Tony was explaining to me at the time, it was like, you know, the prototype is X amount of faster than the, the GT cars and they’ll pass them so many times.

And it was like, wow, that is, and there’s so many more cars, a lot more action. As much as I, I’ve enjoyed open wheel racing and I’ve had, you know, a lot more experience watching that just from everything Tony and I have watched in the past. I do enjoy the endurance racing and that kind of racing a lot more.

There’s so much more that goes into it. And I think something that got me the most impressed was I’ve been to the [00:06:00] Daytona, I think three times, Daytona 24. And the fact that all three races I’ve been to come down to the last lap, it was just so crazy to be there to witness that and be like, they’ve gone for 24 hours and it comes down to the last minute and a half.

I’ve been turning some of my friends to look more into the WEC or IMSA, because it is a lot, it just, there’s so much more happening. Tony, you alluded to the genesis of the Gentleman Driver film, which goes back to that 2014, 2015, 2016 season, as you were putting together all the clips and working with the different drivers that are involved in the film.

As we look back, we’re celebrating almost 10 years of the beginning of that project, which is really interesting to do this retrospective. Walk us through the project. What was your goal with the film and how did you choose the four people that you were going to follow? It all kind of started with one of the jobs that I was doing within racing was as a manager for race car drivers or like a sports agent.

And I was managing Ricardo Gonzalez, who’s one of the characters in the film, a Mexican gentleman driver. We had won Le Mans in 2013 by winning Le Mans in the LMP2 class. He had [00:07:00] become only the second ever Mexican driver to win it. And when we went back in 2015. We were with a very good team and we had a very good chance.

So definitely winning again. So I told him like, Hey, why don’t we bring a film crew just in case it does happen? Because if it does happen, you won’t get the coverage that the professional drivers do. Cause usually gentlemen drivers, you know, they’re, they’re not as followed by ESPN or NBC sports or whatever, you know, sky or whatever it might be.

I said, but it will be historic. So we did that. And then as we were filming there at Le Mans, he ended up not winning it, but the crew that I brought, they were fascinated by the fact that, you know, they didn’t understand this concept, like he’s a businessman, but also he’s racing, you know, against some of the best drivers in the world.

And that’s kind of how this, this whole thing started. I was like, well, while we’re there, why don’t we film a little more about this just in case. And so I, you know, I knew a bunch of team owners and gentlemen drivers and professional drivers. So we interviewed everybody and came back to, um, Austin, Texas.

And we kind of had this itch like, Oh, this could be interesting. So we came up with a little pseudo trailer of what the movie could be, but that’s about as much footage that we had as it was like a two minute trailer. And it actually was quite interesting kind of telling this [00:08:00] story that it’s never really been told in this format.

We were like, well, somebody should make a documentary about this. This is quite interesting. And. We kind of looked at each other. We’re like, do you know anybody that can do it? We’re like, we don’t. And like the people are with video production company here in Austin, but they were doing TV commercials and music videos and stuff like that.

Nothing really long form like this. We’re like, Hey, let’s research this a little bit. I’ve personally always been a documentary nerd. I started thinking of, you know, what, I’ve seen hundreds of documentaries, but you know, there’s somebody made this one. This is, I kind of had an idea in my mind of what it would look like and what the story would be.

And these guys kind of went and did some research about what it takes to make a film like this. So long story short, they came up with some ideas and some budgets. And I went around and try to go say like, well, Hey, we don’t know anybody else will do it. Let me see if I can figure out how to raise some money and how to get the right people involved, like the right characters and all that stuff.

Thinking that it was just a long shot and then within a week or so, I ended up finding some investors that wanted to pick a gamble on it and see what would happen. And then obviously I was working with Ricardo, but then we started understanding like, [00:09:00] what are the right personalities to put on this? And one of the things that we’ll discuss after you guys review is like, I think One of the things that wasn’t very clear in the movie is like the guys that we picked were the best gentlemen drivers in the world.

I mean, we’re talking guys that are not seven seconds off. They were one second off from the professional teammate while still being CEOs of this massive companies. Right. It doesn’t matter how much money you got, you can’t just do that. You know, it takes a lot of talent as well. So anyway, yeah, we ended up with a great group.

We filmed for a year following the four of them. So towards the end of the 15th season into the, almost the end of the 16th season, Without really knowing exactly what the storylines were going to be. And you know, we were kind of making it up as we went as far as we have no experience filming a documentary.

But like I said, we just went along with it and started figuring out that one very important thing is we knew that if we made a documentary truly about racing, there was a lot of competition, you know, like Senna is one of my favorites. Top three favorite documentary of all time. Not just racing. I think it’s, it’s an incredible story, right?

Or truth in 24, like you guys mentioned in your podcast. [00:10:00] That’s fantastic. So we didn’t want to compete against that. We were realistic about it. And on the other hand, doing a business documentary about like very successful entrepreneurs. That’s been done in very, very impressive ways. So we didn’t want to compete against that, but that little sliver in the middle of the combination of the two, we knew that was our niche.

So everything we did was around that, you know, it’s not really about racing. It’s not really about business. It’s about like the combination of the two and that’s what we stuck with. And yeah, film for a year, it was about another year and a half to edit around many times. And then eventually somehow Netflix, which we always joked about that.

That would be a pipe dream. And, you know, that was, we always. said, hopefully we’ll put it on YouTube and it won’t suck. And, you know, we’ll be proud ish of it. It kind of started coming together and yeah, uh, the other day we started filming September of 2015 and it came out on Netflix January of 2019. So it was quite a bit of time.

A lot of us became familiar with it during COVID because we were catching up on shows and there’d be suggested to us. And you also mentioned, you know, Truth in 24, which we mentioned in our review. But you [00:11:00] also sort of just missed the curve of drive to survives popularity. So you have that opportunity to get it in front of people while they weren’t so buried in drive to survive.

They were still kind of worried about tiger King, but not so much other racing documentaries at the time. I will never be able to have this answer officially from Netflix. I know from the grapevine that one of the reasons that Netflix wanted this, this came out, actually, if you look at the dates came out exactly a month Season one of Drive to Survive came out.

One of the reasons Netflix wanted something like this, they wanted something that would be good that they could put on to have shoulder content for Drive to Survive, which is a massive production, obviously, right? So it ended up working out great for us because obviously we had minimal marketing budget and no experience in how to market these things.

However, Drive to Survive, by being huge, you know, like, I think, like, what happened to you guys? If you watch this, then you might like this. It drove a ton of people to watch our movies, so that worked out pretty well. The four people that you followed during the course of the documentary are former [00:12:00] CEO and president of Patron, which is now owned by Bacardi, which is Ed Brown.

Then you had Ricardo Gonzalez, who you were close to as his manager, and he was the chairman of the board at Arkansas State University in Mexico. Then you had Mike Gauche, who’s the CEO of Molecule Labs. And then finally, Paul Dalalana, who’s the CEO of Northwest Value Partners. Two questions here. As you’re behind the scenes, who was your favorite of the gentlemen drivers that you saw Tony interacting with, or maybe you got to meet, and then secondly, let’s follow this up with, where are they now?

I got to hang out with Ricardo a lot cause I was actually in Sweden for a lot of those seasons. When they were doing the WEC in Europe, I got to go to Silverstone Spa and to Le Mans. So I got to see a lot of behind the scenes of just Riccardo and hanging out with him and going to dinner with him and, and he’s a Mexican, so I kind of had just like this quite biased view on it.

I think I met the other guys maybe once just walking around. Yeah, Ricardo was my boy. Obviously, the race in Mexico, I was there for [00:13:00] that. Funny enough, I was there for our cousin’s wedding, which Tony couldn’t go because he was at the race. But during the wedding, I was following and they ended up winning that race.

So I was in the middle of like the dinner party. I was like, Oh yeah, they won, they won. And I was like looking at me and you know, I had an investment in knowing him and knowing his co drivers. Ricardo is my favorite. Team Ricardo. So Tony, you had to work with all four of these guys. So it’s been a bunch of years.

Where are they now? What are they up to? Are they still racing? You know what? The only one that is still racing as far as I know is Mike Gouache, but he’s racing go karts. He kept racing. Then unfortunately had quite a bad accident in an LMP3 car in, um, Silverstone broke his back. It was in the, in ELMS that kind of stopped his racing, but that guy’s a beast.

He’s now back. He lives in California and I know, um, like he races go karts pretty often. And then Ed Brown sold Patron. Obviously he’s involved with a lot of different organizations and doing many different things. All the Atlanta was the one that stayed the longest and he’s been very [00:14:00] successful. And I believe he just announced that last year was his last, at least full season in racing.

And he was doing a lot. He was doing for many years, he would do WEC and then do a bunch of IMSA races as well. I met Ricardo after we finished the movie and you know there was a lot going on if you’ve seen it You know, we started a team we promoted a race in Mexico that it was quite a bit of work But then at the same time he was starting this humongous project in Mexico is starting a new university So he retired after the year that we that we filmed that was his last year But now his sons are starting to race go karts and in usf junior.

So next generation is coming up It’s hard to stay away. That’s for sure So now we’re going to dig a little bit deeper into the film. Sometimes gentlemen drivers are looked down upon in racing, right? We talked a lot about this in our review. It’s all pay to play. And if you have enough money, they just let you in door because you’re keeping the team afloat.

But then you do have some even current gentlemen drivers like Ben Keating, who has done Le Mans nine times. He just won two in a row with Aston and then Corvette, and he’s hoping to win again this year. The Gentleman Driver sort of spans the gambit. But what’s interesting [00:15:00] is, and you alluded to this earlier, and I think it goes back to that concept, one of our critics sort of hit on was the aristocracy that was brought up in the beginning.

What was left on the table was their actual talent. As you said, these were four of the best Gentleman Drivers in the world, and that really wasn’t portrayed in the film. I want to start off, before we really deep dive into all those topics, what was your guys reaction to our review of the documentary now, years later?

What did you think? Were we too harsh as race fans? Were we fair? Did you appreciate our reaction? I was 50 50. Some fascinating discussions and that’s what you want, right? Like when you have a film about whatever topic, you don’t want it to be too biased. One way or the other. And if people interpret things in different ways, that’s what you want, right?

Especially what was it with the documentary. So I really appreciated that. And it was very interesting to hear on the topics. And then I thought you guys had some very astute comments about, you know, we should have covered more of this and more of that. And if we get into it, you know, like there’s a lot of reasons why certain things get covered.

None of the [00:16:00] things are covered in that situation. I thought it was great. I was a bit disappointed that you guys were taking your personal biases about what gentlemen drivers mean to the sport and taking it out on the film, which was just a journalistic way of, it’s a mirror of what happens in real life.

It’s like, if you watch a war documentary and you’re anti war, you shouldn’t say people shouldn’t watch that documentary because it covers something I don’t like. So that part, cause I think at the end of the year, recommendation for most of them was like, I wouldn’t recommend it because it doesn’t really represent.

Racing in a, in a good light. And I disagree. I think it represents, it just shows parts of racing and whether you like it or not, that’s on you. Right. But you guys reviewed it as insiders in the racing world, of course, and as race fans, and one of the things that we really try to do, and it was a very tough balance was to not just make it for race fans while still staying true.

To the racing world. So like one of the things that I was very, very strict about, whether you like it or not, at least let’s not fluff it, the racing part of it, and even the racing scenes and the edits, like, you know, you see a lot of stuff where like, it’s kind [00:17:00] of, you know, it’s not realistic, but we try to keep very true to that.

But also let’s not go too deep because your target market is tiny, right? If you go deep to Joseph sports car fans, you know, it’s just a handful of people. We, we really wanted to make it more mainstream. So that was always that balance. So yeah, I appreciated the discussion and I wish you guys would have not taken out your personal biases on the movie.

And I appreciate that feedback as well and going back and re listening to that episode four years later and re looking at the material with different eyes, you know, wiser eyes. I think I would probably pull back some of the things That were said myself personally, so I apologize, you know, if they came off a little too cross or a little too harsh.

No man, it’s, it’s been my favorite review of the movie because it was a lot more in depth, but this is perfect, right? This is, you know, you’ve done something interesting when people have very varied opinions about it. When it becomes polarizing. Yeah. There are still things that, we’ll get to this as we go along.

What was left on the table? What could have been done differently? What could have helped us even as the enthusiasts, but help the newbie, right? Cause I’m always thinking about the newbie and the education part. [00:18:00] And I think you just mentioning at the beginning of this conversation, these were four of the best gentlemen drivers in the world that was not conveyed.

That was not clear. Even to me as a racing fan, I’m sitting here going. Well, Bruno Senna was his teammate and this and that, and I’m thinking about his stats and I don’t know much about these guys, right? We could dive more into that, but that would have really changed the tone for all of us going, they’re not just gentlemen drivers.

They’re exceptional at their job, right? And that realigned some of the, I think the complaints and the critiques that you guys got, but. In all fairness, let’s turn it to a sort of unbiased third party. Santiago, what did you think of our review and what was your review of the film once you saw it the first time?

As far as your review, I was laughing. I think I kind of like Tony said, I had like both sides because obviously it’s my brother’s movie. And I was like, you guys don’t know what you’re talking about. Well, you do know, you know too much of what you’re talking about, I guess. I was kind of that target audience.

I actually, I probably am the target audience that movie was for because I knew about racing and I’ve been at [00:19:00] races, but not all the little details and everything that goes on. So yeah, I think the review was polarizing on both. I’m like, yeah, I agree with that. But no, what is it? You’re not supposed to know about that.

Cause that’s, they’re trying to explain this and they’re trying to, Get the beginner to go in there and get a better idea. And if they want to get, know more about it, then go watch the races and figure it out yourself, right? Read into it. Luckily, I have an expert as a brother, so I could ask all the questions that I needed to at the races and then while filming and even, you know, throughout the editing process.

I got to see a lot of rough cuts. Well, that leads to the next question, right? It was cool seeing the trailer that Tony mentioned, the two minute one. And then he would be like, Oh, check this out. We have like a rough draft of it. So then I would watch parts of it. He’s like, but you got to remember, there’s going to be better sound.

There’s music and a narrator. So seeing it happen. And then the first time I got to watch it on the big screen, they had a pre show at the really cool place in Austin, but it was outside. And the sound wasn’t fully there, but I got to see all the scenes happening, which was great. And then of course watching it at the Alma Draft House in [00:20:00] Austin at the premiere with the red carpet and panel and like Tony’s name on the screen.

I think I have a picture of it somewhere there. It says, you know, executive producer and. Don’t know if I’ve told you before, but I was very proud of you, Tony, for that. And especially, again, having been in the background and kind of seeing everything happen and first time I could do that for any kind of movie, just being like, Oh, I was there.

I was that scene. I was behind the camera guy, but same time it’s up in the screen. It was accelerating in a good way. One of the bigger comments that was made throughout the film, and I think I asked my critics probably a half a dozen times throughout the course of that podcast episode, the show portrays.

Racing as a rich man’s playboy sport. Does this turn off the grassroots enthusiasts or inspire them? I felt like I was badgering the witness a little bit as I went back and read I was like man How many times did I ask him this and nobody really answered that question? So i’m going to ask you guys But the way it was all put together as a, let’s say, up and coming racer or somebody that’s like an SCCA or SRO working their way up, they see the [00:21:00] gentleman driver.

Did you design it to try to draw them in or inspire them? What are your thoughts? One of the things that you guys were totally right. I don’t think we Looking back expressed enough, like how like these guys were the 1 percent of the 1%, which is the 1 percent of the gentlemen drivers, right? And there’s gentlemen drivers in all levels like you guys, you can take your Porsche out on a track day and do that.

But what driving an LMP2 car and winning Le Mans, that’s a whole different thing, right? So they’re at the top of the sphere. And I don’t think we expressed that properly for sure. We did try to find the balance between not just making like, well, look how cool these guys are. They’re so rich and they drive the fastest, coolest cars.

And they got a bunch of money and they fly in private jets. Like we have to show that because that’s the reality. But also on the other hand, we wanted to show like, Yeah, there’s a bunch of people like that, but there’s only four of them that are at this level that are racing, you know, so it’s not just like having a hundred million dollars or having a hundred billion dollars doesn’t make you a faster driver.

And to be at the level that you have to be here, you really got to try. Right. And that’s that concept of meristocracy where it doesn’t matter [00:22:00] how silver the spoon is. How deep your bank account is. If you don’t have the talent, you can’t buy your way to the crown at Lamar. And one of the things we’re trying to also to show, but, you know, like, and like you guys mentioned as well, like, you know, to become a successful, these guys are, you know, you’re, you’re a special personality and you’re probably polarizing in many ways, you know, in, uh, in, in social ways.

However, one of the things we try to show and it goes to the, I know you guys talk about imposter syndrome and stuff like that. It’s like. Look, this guy might run Patron and might have however many thousand employees and you know, everybody basically sucks up to him and probably never says no, but when he steps in the race car, his 23 year old teammate might tell him who makes 50, 000 a year at best probably might tell him You suck and you got to get your stuff together.

So we were trying to find like that balance of like changing, completely being from the CEO to being the guy that gets told that you’ve got to do better because you’re the worst one there, we thought that was a very interesting balance to try to show. And I like to find different angles, right. To, to show that once again, like, yeah, you can be rich and Famous and successful, but it’s [00:23:00] still okay.

So I’m glad you brought that up because I know I made the comments about how Bruno Senna is in the background and this and that. And I’m like, if he said two words, the entire film, that was it. And I wonder if that problem that you’ve kind of presented there for the audience. Could have been solved by showing maybe an over the shoulder shot of Bruno and Ricardo talking, going over data, like this is where you can prove this is where you’re breaking it.

You know, I know it’s very technical in the weeds racing, but when we compare that to Dr. Art Markman. A lot of us were lost and that was another focal point that we brought up and we sort of like teased it because it was like, who is this psychologist? I’m sure he’s well known and all this kind of stuff, but it took away from the racing experience.

So let’s dive into that part of it a little bit more. There’s two ways to dive into it. the fun thing about doing a behind the scenes stuff. You can dive into it, like the storylines and you know, and how we thought about it and expressing them. And then you can also dive into the logistics of like what we filmed and what we did and, and [00:24:00] the budgets and, you know, how many days you could actually film and how many races you could go to.

And at the end of the day, you know, as, as rookie filmmakers making the best of it. Right. So obviously going back, if I ever do something like this again, you know, I have about. A list of a hundred things that would do differently. Right. And a lot of that goes along how to capture these stories and how to keep the stories going, which similar to racing, you know, every day of filming costs X, so you only have so many days and you’re going to be very strategic about it, man.

Like Bruno is a perfect example, right? Like Bruno, he’s probably the biggest name we had in the film. I mean, you barely see him. And honestly, that has a lot to do with the logistics of when he came on board of the team. It was, that was the second year of the second season that we were filming. And technically we only film, it looks like we film the whole season.

We actually only filmed two races that year. We filmed the Silverstone race, which the team won. Great. It was great to capture. And then the Mexico race, which it also won. Like, so that alone, like the documentary gods aligned the storylines for us in that sense. But we just ran out of footage to have any from Bruna.

And we had this tiny little camera crew that was [00:25:00] filming, not just. Ricardo and Bruno and Philippe Albuquerque and that’s it. But then we were also filming Ed and Paul and Mike. There were a lot of things that happened that we just didn’t capture. We were like, well, damn, that would have been great to capture.

We had another film crew or we had another race to film. So that was on that side. Art, Markman’s side and all that stuff. In many ways, it was a bit forced and we knew it. But we also knew that we had to. Dig a little deeper into these themes. And a lot of them were just because you’re super successful and famous in one part of your life, doesn’t mean that that just carries over to everything else, you know?

And the fact that, you know, like these guys will go risk their life and be humbled. Yeah. By spending a lot of money and being really cool and wasn’t good, but also doing something that they’re not good at. They’re probably not used to that. And we were trying to like coach that entrepreneurial spirit more than if you’re not good at something, you can still try something else.

But now we get into this. Weird situation where again, there’s a bit of a contradiction because if we understand that they’re the top 1 percent of the 1 percent of gentlemen drivers, and let’s say they’re only a second behind the pros, [00:26:00] the whole imposter syndrome and the risk mitigation sort of goes out the window again, because they have nothing to be anxious about.

They should be proud of the fact if you’re within a second of a pro driver, I mean, holy smokes, that’s amazing. If you were seven seconds behind and then going home with the Lamont’s trophy. And I think we explored that a little bit in our review. That’s where you could say, okay, you’ve got the imposter syndrome because did you really win?

Did you really earn that trophy at the end of the day when the other guys are doing triple your stint and they’re spending all the time in the pit and with the engineers, and you’re just told to show up and this is when you drive and you go home. So there’s a fine line that has to be walked here to make it believable for the audience.

Imposter syndrome happens. to the top everyone, everyone has imposter syndrome saying, Oh, just because he’s one second off, he shouldn’t have imposter syndrome. Even Bruno Senna has imposter syndrome. Even Ben Keating has imposter syndrome. You know, that happens to the top athletes. Tom Brady had imposter syndrome for a while, you know, in every sport that I remember in the review, when you guys said that, I was like, no, everyone has that in like the sports [00:27:00] performance, probably the biggest, the most common thing.

They may just not show it. They may be, they have the confidence and the swagger behind it. But a lot of them are thinking, what the hell am I doing here? How am I still top of the game? I like said, this is something we didn’t show the right way in the movie, but it’s yeah, you can be a second off, but you could also be ninth and stuff, you know, on these guys that are like high performance at this level of both business and sport, they’re never happy.

Like they’re like, yeah, I’m a gentleman driver. Everybody knows I’m the slowest one. Even if like you’re the best one, you know, it’s like being the best of the worst. They don’t want to be that. Plus don’t forget, like, and you know, that scene we show it at the beginning where Paul Atlanta crashes. Leading Lamar, right?

We said also, there’s only so much we could follow up on that, but yeah, he was paying for it, but he caused a Lamar win to a team of 50 people or somewhere, but his own mistake. And he could have not made that mistake. We were trying to explore that a little bit. Like these guys are competitive to the core, regardless of their limitations by age or experience of the game.

Do you think it would have helped the audience to maybe add more of a office or Parks and Rec style confessional where [00:28:00] you got that vulnerability directly from Ricardo or from Ed because it’s sort of lacking is you miss that opportunity to hear it from them. And there were certain things that even Ricardo said that we highlighted that it’s like, wow, this doesn’t jive with the message that you’re trying to put out.

It was just contradictory. A hundred percent. And I wish we could have had more of that. And like I said, you know, honestly, it comes down to one inexperience in filmmaking. It, you know, like as producers, you know, like you, you got the guys that make this amazing documentary, they’ve interviewed with a hundred people and they know how to get this out of them.

Right. Also, these guys were pretty guarded at first, which I know you guys mentioned in your, um, review actually, you know, like a fun behind the scenes story, the scene of all of us interviewed. Having dinner, which ended up being a scene that goes throughout the movie. And we used it to tell different things.

I love that. By the way, that got used again later. I think you guys influence motorsport TV. They did it with Michelle Mouton and David Coulthard, the heroes documentary. Yeah, that was actually, and I know the, you know, the guy that made that as a guy that made Santa, who I got to know a little bit, he helped me a little bit unofficially with some advice to this.

So [00:29:00] that was pretty cool to see. But that was the very last thing we ever filmed. And it wasn’t in the plan. It wasn’t in the budget. I had to come up with a bit of magic at the end of the filming, because we knew we were missing a lot. Not only something that would connect some storylines, but also I like, you know, I will tell my producers, I was like, I know these guys are way more open and way more laid back and way more just honest than what we’ve gotten on TV.

But they’re not used to being filmed with all that camera. And how do I know that? Because I’ve been out to dinner with them drinking wine and, you know, talking about whatever. So then we’re thinking, well, why don’t we just go out to dinner and drink wine and talk about it? And that’s how it came about.

And we got a little more of that. So looking back, I would have done many more of those scenes or figured out a way to like, kind of get behind the skin a little bit more. I really enjoyed that. I think that’s one of my favorite parts is going back to that dinner scene. And as mentioned, they did seem uncomfortable even together there at the table, so it didn’t feel forced, but it was just sort of like, man, these guys need to relax a little bit, a couple more bottles of wine, you know?

We had a [00:30:00] director of photography and sound people. They’re like, well, you can’t be drinking cutting steak and drinking wine, or what about continuity? It’s going to look one scene that you have a full glass of wine and the next scene less, and the steak’s going to be on table. And I was like, I don’t care.

Don’t worry about it. This is an indie documentary. Nobody’s going to judge us on continuity. They’re going to judge us on the story we tell. So like, I don’t care. And if it’s loud and there’s like. Okay, let’s just try to get the most out of it. It’s my favorite scene also. And I love the way our editor used it as the spine of the story to tell it.

I don’t know what we would have done without it. I don’t know what, there’s so many things that came together that sometimes I have a little panic and excited, like, what if we hadn’t had that, like, what the hell would we have done with it? You know, like winning the race in Mexico, it all kind of just, you know, it looked like it was made to be, and they closed a lot of storylines and stuff.

So we got lucky in many ways. Did Netflix kind of box you into the 88 minute magic length, or was that your guy’s choice? Actually, Netflix, we didn’t even begin discussions with Netflix until the movie was completely finished and done. So we took a different approach also, you know, learning about the [00:31:00] business and distribution and the entertainment world, which I’m still learning about, but obviously much more experienced now, but.

We had no idea what we were going to do with this movie. We knew we wanted to make the best possible movie with the resources and the experience that we had. And then after it was 99 percent finished, that’s when Netflix said, okay, we’re interested. And then after that, honestly, they just asked us for like subtitles and a few little things here and there, but nothing else.

So no, the 88 minutes, 83 minutes, actually, now we’re 23, whatever that is. It just kind of worked out. We try to make it as concise as possible. You know, the, you know, if you saw the first call, there was four hours, obviously impossible. Right. And it was, it was terrible. But then after that, we went to one hour 40, then one hour 30 and one hour 29 and then one hour 27.

And we’re just trying to keep it as, as much puzzle. And looking back now that I’ve watched it, you know, a few years later, I would probably would have made it a little bit shorter, but it is what it is. Sure. I would have advocated for making it longer at 20 minutes. Back into it. If we had it, we didn’t know what else to put in it.

There’s one other big critique that the panel made about [00:32:00] the gentleman driver. And it it’s right on the nose. It’s right in the title, the gentle man driving. And one of the questions we bring up on this show quite a bit is diversification of the paddock. And you can take that however you like. So in this case, Where is the gentle lady driver?

And more importantly, how do we entice more people, especially women, to come into racing? So this is a perfect example of what I said at the beginning of the show. Like, I 100 percent agree that that is the case. However, that is not necessarily a reflection, in my opinion. Like, we were just showing what the reality is.

It wasn’t like we were like, let’s just have a bunch of guys and no females in this movie. Like, they were just within the world that we were in. And, you know, and like I said, getting into logistics and budgets and all that, there were absolutely zero women that we could follow that were general women drivers or general lady drivers, whatever you want to call it.

However, I a hundred percent agree on some projects that I’ve been working on nowadays address that much more. And I think, and [00:33:00] it’s crazy also, you know, what has changed the world from 2015, from when we started filming this to now. So I a hundred percent agree with the critique of that as a sport. I think it’s a little unfair to critique the movie on that because, you know, it’s like, I said, it’s putting your bias in front of the review, but that’s fair.

You know, I get it. And where is it? I mean, we all know racing is not the most diverse sport. I think it’s gotten much better. And a lot of the organizations, like you see IMSA and IndyCar and pushing scholarships and diversity scholarships, stuff like that. And then you see now in a WEC, you know, there’s a lot more female drivers.

But still far behind, right? So I do think the sport needs to continue pushing that. There’s a lot of fantastic drivers out there. I’ve gotten to be personally involved with some really cool projects lately, much after the movie came out many years later to create opportunities for female drivers. And I love it.

And I think I a hundred percent agree with you guys. That’s Highly lacking in the sport and hopefully we’ll see some changes. I don’t think it’s fair either to say like, well, who’s fault is it? Like, you know, I don’t, I don’t think there’s anybody. I don’t think most people out there are necessarily trying to hold anybody back and all that.

It’s a [00:34:00] universal thing, right? It comes from the beginning. There’s not enough girl carters. So then at that point, there’s less opportunities to move up just like you’ve seen in other sports. And then I think there could be a lot more sponsorship that could help, that would help a lot, you know, that would help bring women along in.

But then, you know, one of my dear friends, Beth Paretta, she has her IndyCar team, you know, what she’s done is incredible. And she’s proven that you can have a, not just a female driver, but mostly female lead crew, both working on the cars, doing the pit stops and engineering marketing. And they just take somebody like her to really help push it along.

And I hope that, you know, that we can keep pushing that way. And, And like I said, with some of my new projects, we’re trying to figure out a little grain of sand that on our side and how we can help with that. So santiago you were nodding your head while your brother was talking. What are your thoughts on diversifying the paddock?

I was nodding because I i’ve seen since 2015 14 when I first started going to the races and being behind the scenes with tony and being in the pits and all that to even I got to go to daytona’s last year and just The amount of women that are represented both as drivers and [00:35:00] as just part of it. And not just as lane girls as they used to be in the jam car and all that, but they’re actually kicking ass out there and getting stuff done, I think it’s been growing and I, I’m very proud of just, that is a change kind of like Tony was saying, it’s such a unique sport where in all sports right now, it’s a male dominated system, but we’re starting to see a change.

And that reminded me that even the NCAA women’s. More people have been watching the woman’s side than the men’s side or something like that, which is crazy. I’m really glad you went there because one of the things that I always put a big pin in is the fact that motorsport is one of the only sports where it can be completely co ed.

It doesn’t have to have this delineation between men’s basketball and women’s basketball. And I never understood the concept of Formula W. Why can’t these women drive formula cars? I mean, Lynn St. James broke records 40 years ago in IndyCar being rookie of the year. And there’s been plenty of other women like Michelle Mouton and others that have set records around the world.

They’ve proven that they can do this. It’s, I [00:36:00] hate to say, somebody else has referred to drivers as the meat behind the steering wheel. It doesn’t matter what gender, color, race, ethnicity, creed you are. It’s the machine and the person together that are out there competing. So I want to get your guys thoughts on maybe the unification of some of these series.

Do you see that happening in the future? I hope so. I mean, like I said, it’s W series and now F1 Academy, right? Whatever it is that I read, like, you know, she, she has strong opinions on that and they’re what you think, right? It might be going backwards a little bit, but look at the day, I think. At least it’s doing something as and it’s giving women some opportunities.

However, like you said, a meritocracy, right? Like the stopwatch doesn’t know who’s driving, how old they are, what gender they are, what their socioeconomic status is, what their race is. It doesn’t matter. And it is one of the very few sports where you can have that. You will hear probably at the very high level, maybe like an F1 or IndyCar, there’s probably a bit of a physical like strength component with a super high G forces.

I say that and then you see like Simona Silvestro, who’s an incredibly [00:37:00] competitive and whatever you put her in, IndyCar, Formula E, anything like that, right? So I think it’s really more about the grassroots part of it, because like anything else, like any sport with gender, race, nationality, like if you don’t have a strong grassroots, then the pyramid just gets much smaller as you get to the top.

I hope that we see more of that and I think we will. I’m very optimistic about it. I think is it like 40 years of title nine? So like it’s bringing up women are behind just because of the gender systematic roles and being more exposure. And I know some of the Tony’s projects and other projects going on.

I think those are creating opportunities and exposure for women to be top level and not just be a gender role. And that’s why organizations like Women in Motorsports North America also exists. So partnering with them, which I know Beth is a part of as well, is fantastic. And they’re doing, you help women achieve in all different disciplines of motorsport.

Really looking forward to seeing where that takes itself in the next couple of years, because it’s only a couple of years old now. So it’s still in its infancy and continuing to grow very, very quickly. We talked a lot about different [00:38:00] things could have done, should have done throughout this talk. Tony, what do you think was left on the table?

If you could go back and do it over again, what’s the thing that you would change? I would have been a lot more aggressive with capturing those awkward moments, right? On those difficult moments. I assume, you know, from some friends I’ve met in the entertainment industry now, like that’s a hard part, right?

But you know, when, when you see the, the really, really in depth. Docuseries and documentaries and you know, these directors and, and these showrunners that have this incredible way of like putting the camera right here with somebody while they’re going through something incredibly difficult, whatever that might be.

So I would’ve loved to do that. I actually hold my ground, which is a little bit of like against what you guys were saying about going more into detail on a lot of the race. I mean, maybe a couple of things here and there, explaining more in detail what the racing was. We made a very painful one for me, but I knew we had to do it, that we were not gonna get into.

LMP2 and GTD ELMS versus WEC and a lot of those details because once again that makes your target audience much smaller and we were really trying to go [00:39:00] for a wider one. I do wish we would explain a little more kind of like the concept of like why these guys they were a little different right and why why they were very successful as gentlemen drivers.

I wish we would have had more experience when we made it, you know, like I made a lot of mistakes, our first edit was terrible. So we had to kind of start from scratch after a year or so. And that was discerning, but then we had this incredible editor, Justin Barclay that joined us and, uh, he kind of really revived the story.

So that, and then honestly, I wish we would have had more experience. On the marketing side of things. Cause I think this could have gone bigger. Obviously having a Netflix is already kind of built in marketing, but I think we could have done much better. And, uh, but no, if I did it again, I would do it much differently, but also it’s probably one of the, if not one of the most proud projects of my life.

And I still, it’s kind of weird because I’m a racing guy, right? I’m not, but then, you know, you get into this thing. It’s like, Oh, you made a movie, a Netflix movie, which is crazy. So definitely something I’ll be proud to tell my grandkids about one of these days. Santiago real talk. You want to tell your brother the one [00:40:00] thing he should change about his movie?

I don’t know. Put me more in it. You’re the guy stacking the tires in the background, right? Yeah, something. Yeah, yeah, no, or put me in every scene, kind of like a ward of Aldo, but it was fun to kind of just go through and see everything, like it being developed and the dream of Netflix and then the realization of Netflix, it was really cool to see, you know, I’m just a fan.

I’m an outsider. I’m a behind the scenes guy. And I really enjoyed just. Being part of what I could be part of, especially more on the personal level with Tony and say, yeah, I don’t know what he could have changed. I’ll tell you what, speaking of imposter syndrome, I wish I would have had less imposter syndrome because when you have that, as you’re doing something, you know, like I said, you push harder, right?

Like you’re not like, ah, well, can you, we film this or talking to the organizations, can we get permits to, or the, the, the rights to do this or that, or, or even honestly, uh, You know, my negotiations with our agency and Netflix and all that stuff. At the time I was like, whatever, just give me a thing and I’ll sign it.

Which has then bit me in the ass quite a bit down the road in no major ways. But, you know, if you want to [00:41:00] look at it, like I wish I would have been a lot more aggressive on the business side on how to like, be able to take this even further. That begs the question. So what’s next, Tony, any other projects?

Is there a Gentleman Driver 2 in the works? Anything else coming up? There’s no Gentleman Driver 2 because I think. Even the title itself is no longer applicable, as we talked about. And that’s something we realized. I have been on and off working on what I call a sequel. I want to call a spinoff. I’m on my third or fourth try of this project, which is a docu series.

Not necessarily about Gentleman Drivers anymore. It’s more about the behind the scenes world of Pro Am racing, because there’s a lot of cool stories in the Pro Am world, not just the drivers, but the crews. You know, the mom and pop operations. And, um, that again, that might be like an MC, a Michelin pilot, you know, there’s, there might be a team.

There’s literally a team of a family of dentists that just do their own thing. And then they’re racing against the Hyundai Herda factory team, right? Like, so there’s a lot of cool stories there. You see a lot of that in SRO. Exactly. Yeah. So there’s a lot of cool stuff there. So that’s something that we’ve [00:42:00] been trying for quite a while.

And in fact, I partnered with Brad Payton, who’s a big time Hollywood director, who has a huge movie about to come out on Netflix. So we’ve been working on that. But it’s, it’s tough, man. And that’s a docu series. So it’s 10 times the budget because it’s 10 episodes instead of one, whatever, you know, and then more recently, um, I’ve gotten involved with a very, very cool group called the Rafa racing club who are working on some really, really cool projects and both in racing and in entertainment.

So I had. You know, the experience that we all start working together and very excited about that, where we filmed pilot for something we call the shootout, which is a competition show that we had nine female drivers from around the world come into Texas and do a competition like top chef style for a whole week.

And we filmed the whole thing. And then the winner now is, her name is Caroline Candace, a very talented and impressive young French driver. And she’s now racing full time in Porsche Sprint Challenge sponsored by us. And then we’re following that. We had another super cool story that we’re following as well, which is Ian Porter, better known as Crim6 [00:43:00] to, uh, any gamers out there.

He’s one of the most successful Call of Duty player. Ever turned sim racer and now turned real life racer. And, uh, we’re working with him both on his racing career and following his story, also racing in sports sprint challenge. And he showed up at Sebring about a month ago for the first sprint challenge race.

I’ve never taken a non virtual green flag in his life. And he led every session, qualified on pole position, led every lap, won both races. So that’s quite an impressive story and that we’re capturing as well. And then there’s a bunch of other projects that I can’t talk about yet, but you’ll probably hear a lot from the Rapha Racing Club and Driven Studios and just happy to have a bit of involvement in it.

So Santiago, do you see yourself teaming up with Tony again, or working in the shadows behind the scenes? What’s your involvement in the motorsport world in the future? Well, I think as long as I’ve known him, I’ve been chasing him or been helped by him, so I tell him, let me know what’s next and I’ll try to show up for it.

I’m sure you’re going to see me at a bunch of races with him. And whatever he’s [00:44:00] doing, whether I’m his personal assistant or helping his drivers or something, you know, I’ve definitely fallen in love with being at the racetrack and I can’t wait to get back out there. Well, and I think Santi is being humble.

He’s a professional mental strength coach. He’s worked with many drivers in the both open wheel and sports cars. And now, you know, looking at putting together packages that help not just young, any driver, whether it’s young driver, pro driver, gentleman driver, and I work on that kind of mental strength side of things, which is racing.

It’s about as mental as it can, as a sport that you can have, right? Uh, racing and golf, I would say are those two ones. So. Yeah, I’m sure you’ll see him around. Well, guys, we’ve reached that part of the episode where I invite my guests to share any shout outs, promotions, or anything else that we haven’t covered thus far.

You can follow me on X or, uh, Instagram, uh, you can find me there at TonyColor on one more importantly, you know, follow, um, Rapha Racing Club. We’re doing some really, really cool stuff there and that you’ll see soon. And then Speed Group, that’s a company that we’ve always had. If you’re a young driver that needs help.

Camel [00:45:00] wave performance. That’s my mental strength coaching, and I’m also partnered with speed group. So yeah, just follow me on Instagram on X. I’m just going to be around Baltimore trying to survive. The gentleman driver follows four men through both their business and racing lives, learning about what makes them unique, how they got where they are and how they deal with their two lives.

The men featured in this film are at the top in both business and in the racing worlds, they are true outliers. In case you missed it the first time around, you can learn more about the documentary by visiting www. thegentlemandrivermovie. com or stream it on Peacock, Tubi, Vudu, Plex, Velo, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV.

And you can also revisit the social media handles at Gentleman Driver Movie on Instagram and Facebook and at TGD underscore movie on Twitter. And X. And with that, gentlemen, I can’t thank you enough for coming on BreakFix and sharing your story and this retrospective on The Gentleman Driver with all of us.

And I have to say, I think [00:46:00] looking back, we’ve all grown and we’ve all learned, not only from our movies, but as a podcaster, I always apologize for my first season of the show. So thank you for being part of the Thank you for sitting down and going back over this, having this reunion. This has been absolutely fantastic.

And I can’t thank you guys enough for sharing this corner of the motor sports world with new petrol heads and enthusiasts out there, but also continuing to spread motor sports enthusiasm. So keep up the good work and we’ll stay in touch. No, I appreciate what you guys do. Thanks for having us on and we’ll keep you posted and, uh, whatever new project comes up.

Let’s see what the review is. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcast 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 [00:47:00] out the follow on article at gtmotorsports.

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