MIE Racing

David L. Middleton - Founder & CEO for MIE Racing

Middleton Innovative Education (aka MIE pronounced like pie) is looking to revolutionize the way we teach and engage students in science, technology, engineering and math or STEM. Our programs transform the eSports concept of gaming into a true STEM learning model.

Contact: David L. Middleton at david@mie-racing.com | N/A | Visit Online!

          

• Origin Story / Mission – How did you get a love of motorsports & cars / engineering?
• How do you think MIE can help getting youth as fans of motorsports and/or into careers in motorsports? Is there a gateway into Formula SAE?
• What grade levels does this apply to? K-8, High Schoolers
• Females in Motorsports + STEM? How do we recruit/attract more into both? Does MIE help with this?
• It’s often overlooked by most people that use cars every day, there’s a lot that goes into them from engineering to chemistry, physics, aerodynamics, thermal dynamics, even artistry (interior/exterior design) so many different aspects – the list goes on and on. What is the curriculum like?  Which parts is MIE focusing on? How are simulators being used as teaching tools? Driving physics, car setup?
• What types of platforms and tools are being used for the curriculum? (iRacing? F1, ACC, others?) What do you think about the future of sim and sim racing?
• You consult with clients on SIM rigs? We have a lot of SIM racers in the group, what would you recommend to be competitive for someone racing for more than fun? (budget, middle of road, money no object).

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsport podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing to break into something motorsports related.

So tonight we’re going to talk about my, wait. Did you say Pi? Nope. M i e. My. Middleton Innovative Education, a new startup in the world of education, looking to revolutionize the way we teach and engage students in science, technology, engineering and math, also known as stem. And I see that we have David Middleton, c e o, and founder of My On Break Fix with us tonight to explain how it all works.

So welcome to the show, David. You’re welcome. Thank you guys for having me. I’m blessed to be here. We were very grateful to have one of our previous guests who’s been on two episodes now of Break Fix. Phil Engal introduce us virtually and brought to our attention to the idea of my, so first question is always, Let’s talk about the origin story.

Let’s talk about the mission. Tell us what my is all about and how it got started. Sure. So we had other [00:01:00] names and then somebody who was kind of counseling us, he said, how about using your initials and making a company? So it’s Middleton innovative education, my like pie. And the way the mission got started is I am my background automotive engineer.

I had been working abroad many years, not only development, but in motor sports. And I got to a point where I’m looking around the paddocks, I’m looking around. A lot of the meetings I’m in and I’m, I’m wondering where are all the Americans? And it, it started to bother me and, and I talked to my wife, always wanted to give back.

So what I started doing when I was abroad is I, I started actually reaching out to military families and bringing them out to the track that I was at. I used to be a race engineer at the Nu Berg ring. So I would bring out military families out there and tell ’em, Hey, I don’t know how long I’m gonna be doing this, but bring your son, bring your daughter, experience the paddock.

And, and they were having, you know, good times. And then I started talking to my wife more in depth about, well, what’s the future when we either transitioned back to the stage or what’s the next [00:02:00] step? So we talked about it some more and, and then I reached out to a lot of my friends. I’m originally from New York City and I have a lot of friends who were either born in the Dominican Republic or in the Caribbean, and, and they’re all car guys, but I’m the only one who went on to be an engineer.

And I was asking them, what’s the disconnect? They told me, well, you’re fortunate. You had two parents who were in education. They told you you can do whatever you want to do. They were like, our parents told us survive. So, and, and they said, and nobody ever told us we could do this. They said, you were the crazy guy reading magazines telling us you were gonna do these things.

And what really hit me was one of my friend’s brothers, he told me, you know, he said, Dave, you gotta understand, you’re like the hope of the block. He said, every time you’re sending us pictures of the Berg ring and videos and all this, you’re giving hope to us. And, and I thought to myself, well, something has to change.

I said, well, what’s going on in industry right now? And I, I feel that I. There’s a lot of young people who really love cars, but there’s a disconnect of how to turn that love into an actual career. And [00:03:00] America needs great engineers. We need great mechanics, we need great technicians using the knowledge I have, but also the fact that I started doing not only racing, but sim racing.

I said, how can I combine this in a meaningful way? And I think some of the problem with a lot of, a lot of STEM programs is they give these kids good exercises and things like that, but it doesn’t sink in. So I thought long and hard about how do I combine STEM education, motor sports that love into a meaningful program.

All I gotta say right now is, wow. And we got a lot of stuff to unpack. So before we dive a little deeper into mine, I can see it on Brad’s face right now. We gotta talk about this automotive engineer and the berg ring because my, my eyes are as big as my head right now. Automotive engineering, did you start with like, let’s say at Ford Aerospace, which was like where everybody went to in my generation or somewhere else?

Were you fortunate and, and went the way of, you know, McLaren through b a e or something like that? And how did you end up at the Berg ring? So let’s, let’s [00:04:00] unfold that a little bit. I went a totally opposite route than anybody else. Uh, I went, I went to a really good school, studied physics. I told my advisor that, uh, I wanted to do research and development of engines.

I. This came from a love. I’ve had a Porsche since nine years old. I saw a commercial stuck with me. I told my dad, Hey, I want you to teach me how to drive manual because one day I’m gonna own a Porsche. And he kind of stared at me. ’cause you know, my parents are educators and no one really had a Porsche around.

And he said, okay. And he said, this is gonna pass. But I kept bugging him. So he started teaching me how to drive and then I asked how to drive manual. But this love of cars was basically self-inflicted. I’m reading everything. I’m chasing things down. My parents didn’t know what to do Exactly. So they put me in every engineering program, summer program.

I did three years at Cornell during high school. Wow. Yeah. And I did all these programs and it led, led to me going to a very good university and, and studying physics. I. Well, I finished my physics degree and I’m no [00:05:00] closer to the automotive in industry. My wonderful advisor didn’t tell me that, right? He said, oh, you get a degree in physics and trust me, I suffered getting, getting through physics, but I was like, well, what do I do now?

So I call up Audi and B M W and Porsche, and back in those days, you know, you have to fight to get somebody on the phone. And they said, what do you wanna do young man? I said, well, I want to do research and development engines for your company. And they said, in America, I said, well, If that’s not possible, where they said Germany, they said, if you wanted to do that, you gotta go to Germany.

And I said, all right, I will. And I don’t think anybody believed me. You know, like I got a lot of pauses on the phone. Like, okay, well, long story short, I start working for a startup. I’m, I’m no closer to the industry, and I just, from one day to the next, I come out of a meeting and I tell somebody I’m done.

I was like, that’s it. I’m getting up and I’m moving to Germany. Within two months, I sold everything I had. I took the little money I had and I got up and I moved to the Frankfurt Mines area. What I did for the next few months is I went to every single car show. I went to the [00:06:00] International Auto Show, Frankfurt.

I met with people such as AC Schnitzer and Braas, and, and I was very fortunate. I, I hustled really hard, but it got to a point where people were saying, Hey, well you’re very well educated, but uh, you do not know what it takes to work in Germany. That was a shock. Because I paid a lot of money for this great education and here I am, my education doesn’t really mean anything to them because they’ve got their own universities.

They got their own ways of doing stuff. And I remember talking to the AC Schnitzer guys and they said, do you realize how many engineers we have on staff? They said, we’re such a small team man. Like my team is six and you wanna be here? And I said, yes, I do. I want to be there. And, and they were kind of taken aback at this brash American, and not so much that I was brash, but for the point of they didn’t find a lot of Americans who would come over with this attitude of, I’m going to get in, I’m going to be here.

I want to learn from you. Persistence. Right. The persistence. Yeah. So that was refreshing. So they pointed me in, in, in some directions. [00:07:00] It got to a point where I, I had to take on other jobs to make sure I stayed alive of what I knew about Germans and started learning the language. I said, all right, if I’m trying to get in here and study some more, if I don’t have ones and twos, which is a German A and B, then I’m gonna sit down HR department and they’re gonna say to me, ah, yeah, Middleton, I see that you want to work for Porsche.

You did not get ones and tools. You know, like you’re not, why, why? If you really wanna be here, why did you not do well enough? And to an American we’re like, well, look, I’m self-supported. I had to learn the language. There’s a lot of things I had to go through. But to a German, it’s a numbers game. It’s like, well, if you really want it, you will get it.

So I said, lemme be smart here. I found a good program in South Carolina connected to B M W. I got in and I got another degree. Wow. And yeah, my parents were, were like, what? What is this guy thinking about? Well, while I was doing that, I had an internship, uh, or I got a call from a good advisor this time and he told me, Hey, there’s an internship program in Sling and [00:08:00] you should do it.

We think it’d be great for your career. I was actually on the tennis court. They call me off, I go down to the office, I’m sweaty, I’m smelly, and there’s these two Germans sitting there and they start talking to me in German. They were surprised at how good my German was. And the guy answers me and says, Hey look, you’re someone we want for this program ’cause we can’t find Americans who go over and wanna do this program.

Without going into too much detail, I do this program and the things that I did in this program, I got to go on Mercedes test track. I got to go to Audi’s factory where they make the R eight. I got to go to Viza and get on the test track. A lot of students were, were able to do this too, but we had some American guys and we were like overslept some of these events.

And I tried to explain to them, I said, Y you could buy 10 cup cars and you may never, ever get to Viza. Like you don’t understand. Like that’s something special man. You need to appreciate it. But I was totally locked in. I finished my schooling, I made the right connections. I start applying for OEMs, Porsche, Mercedes, B M W, and, and I knew a couple of Germans in [00:09:00] America and they said, well, have you considered Bosch?

And I said, um, yeah, a little bit. So I said, no, not not the sister, not the big sister company. There’s a daughter company, Bosch Engineering. They do E C U development, they do engine develop. That’s where the motor sports department is. And after several interviews and fighting to knock the door in a little bit and some connections, yeah.

I became an engineer there. Wow. So that’s how I got to Germany. Very, I guess, unusual. I didn’t go from Michigan to Germany. I went in directly as a German engineer, had a German contract. I ended up getting a German lab, which is like basically the, the work permit. I had to, of course, make a way, but, but yeah, I, I went straight in because.

My thinking was if I had worked for B M W in North America and got settled in, I would’ve wanted to go over, right? Right. But once I got settled, and if I had kids, or if I got married, you know, it, it’s just like a lot harder to transition. But this way I said, Hey, I’m just going over. Luckily the, the woman I married, she, [00:10:00] she also was interested in going to Germany.

She had lived there previously too, and she already had things set up. So we both went over and yeah, I, I worked for Bosch Engineering and while I’m working there, I had a French intern and the intern was, uh, very nice to me and he started talking and, and he said, Hey, I see you got a big interest in cars because I used to have stacks of magazines, you know, and I used to have actually f one tracks like pasted to my desk, you know, because the group I was in, there weren’t a lot of car guys in my particular group, but the surrounding groups like Aston Martin, it’s funny how that always happens, right?

Yeah. You get into these industries, That are making products for, let’s say a consumer group like us, petrolhead, and they have no love towards what it is that they’re doing. And I, I mean that in a, in a philosophical way, not necessarily, they probably nerd out on what they do and they love it, but it’s like, yeah, I’m not a car guy, but I do car things.

I know a lot of people like that. I’m like, my mind, I’m like, this does not compute. This does not make any sense at all. Do what you love. Right. But I guess we’re not always able to do exactly that. [00:11:00] But it sounds like you are so please continue. Yeah, it kind of blew my mind because the surrounding groups I worked for J L R and the surrounding groups, the Ferrari group, the, the Aston Martin Group, the McLaren Group, the Porsche group.

I mean these guys are like petro hits, right? And I’ll give you an example. Well, we developed the nine 18 with Porsche and they brought out the nine 18, I think about a year before it launched. And it was just sitting out there, man, my eyes are as big as saucers. ’cause we had to walk past the canteen and sitting there and Porsche execs were there.

So I go into my group, I’m like, man, nine 18 is there. Like, let’s go see it. A couple of guys were like, eh, they like shrugged their shoulders less femur blasphemers. Right? That’s not me, man. I, that’s not like I was, I was to anything that came through the group. We had a secret garage that had, I mean, tons of things from manufacturers, secret development.

I mean, we had bugattis that were torn apart. Like it, it was just, it was basically everything I would ever dreamed of at a company. But I have this French engineer and he goes, why aren’t you in the carting group? And I was like, I didn’t even know it existed come out. [00:12:00] So I came out and I was thinking to myself, all right, I’m, I should be okay.

I know how to drive. Well, I learned very quickly. I didn’t know how to drive ’cause these guys have been doing it and girls have been doing it since 10, 11, 12. And through that I stayed and I fought with them. And when I, when I started the carting group, I think I was outside of the top 60. By the time I finished, I was within the top 15.

And from there I made connections. And then people were like, Hey, we do track days. Started doing track days. Hey, we go to the Berg ring, started visiting the Berg Ring, and when I got to the Nu Berg ring, I knew of the Nu Berg ring, but I didn’t really know the Berg ring, as you guys can attest to, I knew of it, but I get there and the atmosphere is just, there’s nothing like that on the planet, especially if you’re a your motorsports person.

So I said, all right, I want some experience. So I started walking up down the garage and saying, Hey, you know, in German, of course, I’m an engineer. I work for Bosch, and I am, I wanna leverage whatever little I know and, and, and, and be a race engineer. A lot of the teams were [00:13:00] shocked that I spoke German because they asked me in Germany, where are you from?

And I’d say, U s A. And they’d be like, what? Like, you’re not from Cameroon. You’re not from Nigeria. Like, no, I’m from the u Ss a, you know, we can actually speak other languages. But I eventually got in with a team and that started my motorsports career. And that was an eye-opener. I did, uh, three years in the V L N series.

I did three years as a, uh, race engineer for the 24 hours. Wow. And that led to other stuff. I mean, I attended 24 hours of spa. I attended Lamont. I got to know a guy. He was the director of composites for Porsche LMP one. We became friends and we met at Lamont. So if you could imagine, I’m going through all this and I’m having the time of my life and to kind of give that up and come back to America, I really had to have a vision of like, man, I really want to give back to America.

’cause I’m gonna be honest with you, man, I was very happy. You know, like a weekend, somebody could call me and say, Hey, come down to Amela, let’s do this. Or Hey, drive this, or Hey, I got, I bought this new Lotus, can you help me shake it down? I mean, I was having the time of my life, but at the end [00:14:00] of the day I said, well, what do I want to do?

Do I just want to gain all this knowledge and just stay out here? And, and, and then nothing changes, but I felt my path. It was a very long bridge from getting A to B. And there are young men and young women out there who love this industry, who don’t know how to get into it. And I wanted to change that from the knowledge I’ve learned, from the contacts I’ve made.

I wanna make sure that their path is not so long and they can say, well, look, I love this. This is what I want to do. How do I do this? I live in Georgia, Lanier Technical is near, and they’ve got a great motor sports program. From what I’ve heard, well, I’ve met so many kids here who don’t even know that exists.

What’s the disconnect? What’s the problem? How can I solve it? Working over there and being over there, that led to the nerve berg ring, which just led to a baptism in motorsports that I cannot explain. And it was tough, and the team spoke 90% German, but, but I made it through and I fought with those guys and I think they, they liked the fact that I, I wouldn’t give up and that I wanted to be there and said, this guy could do whatever he wants, you know?

But here he is on his [00:15:00] weekends. Speaking a foreign language, hanging out with us, learning German culture, drinking their beer, sitting with the mechanics, having them explain stuff to me and the way they did it because it was foreign to me. Me explaining what I’m seeing, learning from other people. And yeah, man, the nerve berg ring is, it’s hard to put it in words hard, but I’ll just say that if you ever have the chance to go, you should.

And that changed my dad’s mind on motorsports. He had no clue about it. He couldn’t understand my passion. When I took him to the Berg Ring, I remember him sitting there and just taking it all in. And he comes to me and he goes, Hey, I’m so sorry that if I knew this existed, I would’ve put you in carting. I would’ve put you in racing.

I would’ve done something. He said, but I had no clue. He said, I, I, he said, I’m at this and this is like, feels like the mecca of motorsports. And he said, everybody’s friendly. Everybody’s talking. People are, people. Don’t care where I’m from. He said, I, I just, I feel at home here. And he said, I wish I knew that this existed before Beauty of Motorsport.

And if I haven’t said it a hundred times already in this episode. And people, I’m sure people are taking shots as they’re listening. I’m gonna say it again. Wow. And I think I’ve just [00:16:00] lived out vicariously all of my childhood fantasies in the last 15 minutes that you’ve told that story. Absolutely amazing.

I mean, absolutely astounding the things you talk about. So I gotta ask some questions. I think Brad’s got a couple as well, so. Let’s rewind a little bit and go back. ’cause you said one day I’m gonna drive a Porsche or I’m gonna own a Porsche. So what was the first car you drove, or first car you had? Was it stateside and what did you get when you went to Germany?

Let’s start there before I continue kind of pulling this thread a little bit. Sure. The first car I had was a 19, I think it was a 1986 or 1985 Volkswagen, g t I Mark two baby. All right. Everybody starts with a Volkswagen. I don’t know how that happens on this show. It just does, you know, if you, you wanna hear kind of a crazy story.

There was some upperclassmen and they had, this car wasn’t getting used. They passed it down to freshmen named, I’ll never forget Dennis. Dennis didn’t use this car. I sat there for a year and I kept saying, Dennis, sell me the car, Dennis. Sell me the car. He finally sells it to me for a dollar, right? I go [00:17:00] to the car and it’s got a club on it and, and I said, Dennis, where’s the key?

He didn’t know. Now, now mind you, we’re college. We’re not wealthy. And like I call a locksmith, the guy tells me he was gonna be, what? 150, 200 to get the club off. We end up stealing liquid nitrogen, freezing it off out of the science lab and freezing it late at night covering the steering wheel with a, you know, with a towel.

’cause someone suggested like sawing the steering wheel. I said, heck no. So we, we stole liquid nitrogen. So if anybody was missing liquid nitrogen back then, I’m sorry, we froze the lock, we broke it and we got it off. But we didn’t think, because, you know, it was like five, six black guys late at night freezing liquid nitrogen.

You know, like, luckily the cops didn’t come because that probably the optics didn’t look so good. But yeah, that was my first car and I, I drove that thing. Drove it and drove it. And then one of the cylinders eventually went two years later. So eight valve or 16 valve? Uh, mine was 16 valve there. Very nice.

And so when you got to Germany, what did you get? Because over there you have a larger, let’s call it smorgasbord of uh, things you can [00:18:00] choose from that we don’t get you all the fun stuff. Yes. I got a, a manual E 90. Oh, nice. That’s what I got. And then I got a E 36 track car that was prepared by a guy who was the chief Audi mechanic for years.

And he actually did the nerve that, that, that, that’s like an oxymoron there. Yeah. Chief Audi mechanic. And he is got a B M W. How does that work? Oh man. This guy used to build minis, BMWs, all these things. And, and he used to keep ’em in his garage and then sell ’em within a month. He’d, he’d sell ’em. So that was my first track car.

The E 36. Did you end up with a Porsche? I did. Was was there a first one or is there only one? There’s only been one. Okay. But the second one’s gonna be coming soon, hopefully. Uh, 9, 9 7 Gen two 2011 white. I actually got P D K, but I left foot brake the whole time and drove it like a Formula One car. So.

Excellent. My last question before we transition and, and continue talking about what you’re doing now and giving back to the Motorsport community is since you were on the ring so often, did you get to meet [00:19:00] or interact with Sabine Schmidt? You just stole my question. We inquiry Mines. Want to know though.

Yeah. Freak Delli was maybe 15, 16 RAs away from us. I did meet her. I used to go in and out of her garage a lot, and then R S R. If you ever heard of R s r Berg ring? Well, they run a lot of drivers, so I got to know their drivers. They know Sabine, so we’d be at stuff and we’d cross paths. So I didn’t have like a deep, deep conversation with her, but she definitely knew who I was.

I was always hanging out in the garage. And there’s actually, uh, an American over there who I think still does the V l N series named John who, who was driving at, at one time and he, Sabine was his driver for a couple of the VMs. So yes. Nice. I did never got her to take me out on the ring. That would’ve been awesome.

I know, right. But she would’ve only done it in a Ford Transit van though, you know. Hey, whatever. It could be a shopping cart, you know, it’s always fun speaking transit vans. You ever take the ring taxi? I have not. I have not. Are they as nuts as they look on the videos? They are, yes. They’re, [00:20:00] they absolutely are.

Alright, so let’s get serious for a moment. So, getting involved, why don’t you tell us about, uh, the, the, the, my program? Yeah, how you developed it. I started sim racing about 10, 11 years ago, introduced by all these crazy French guys. They invited me over to their house and, and every single one of them had a simulator, you know, the foldable play seat with a Logitech, and they asked me if I had one, or they were like, do you sim do you, do you play racing games?

I said, yeah, I play Ranch Arimo. And they’re like, what do you use? I said, my controller. And they kind laughed me, you know, out of the room. They were like, why don’t you have a simulator? And I was like, I don’t even really know what one of those are. I sat down and I was amazed. I was like, this is real Driving.

Like, this is, this is unbelievable. Well, it didn’t take long before I told my wife like, Hey, I would like to buy a simulator. I actually stepped up. I didn’t get Logitech. I actually went to Thrust Master and back then Thrust Master was quite expensive, but I started simm and I, I want, ’cause I wanted to be better than them or I wanted to be comparable.

And a lot of these guys were like, like really super quick, you know, for [00:21:00] being engineers. They’re, they’re, they’re quite quick. And some of them even did amateur racing. So I got the simulator, and the more I’m driving it, the more I saw that there’s applications to it, I would get people who say, I don’t know how to set up a car.

How do I do that? I’m, I’m in, in sim or I don’t know what the, this guy’s pointing at himself. Yeah. Or what, what effect does ride height have? How do I find the rear, you know, rear wing angle and how does that affect the, the tire temperatures? And, and there was a lot of information on forums, but I realized like, man, there is some principles that can be applied to learning.

And if young kids are already racing or, or they’re doing video games, this is a great way to get them into the industry and see that the math and science that they’re learning in school can actually be applied in the real world. And in sim when we made the decision that I wasn’t gonna go back into industry, and I just started full-time and I started writing out a curriculum, I’ve written the whole STEM curriculum.

I’ve, I’ve used my experience in motorsports. My experience in sim racing. Then also my [00:22:00] experience in industry to make a, just a curriculum that gels together. So I have it very tailored, but I also with the, with the mindset that you’re gonna get some kids who don’t know anything about racing. Anything about driving.

So it’s video based. You’re also getting tested, but everything you do is applied to your, your sim exercises. And just to give it in more in depth, if you don’t mind. Of course. So what we were pitching and, and, and, and we were, first of all starting off with schools and, and what we were trying to get schools to do were to bring in a minimum of four simulators and per simulator, there’d be three to five kids.

But every kid has a specific role. So Brad, I don’t know if you like Arrow, you’re saying that, I don’t know about this. You mean theoretical grip? Theoretical grip. Alright. But may, maybe you don’t, maybe you like arrow, maybe you don’t. Right. But you would have a job, whether it’s aerodynamics, whether it’s the suspension engineer, whether it’s the race engineer.

We also added management because I want the kids to understand that [00:23:00] racing doesn’t just happen in a vacuum, right? You need somebody to pay the bills. You need sponsorship. So there is one person who, by the end of these 18 weeks, has to write a fictional paper on funding and say, this is what we did. Good.

This is where we need help at. And pick companies and write, whether it’s a work of fiction, but it has to sound professional. And that’s her role. And the person who’s responsible for that, that’s his or her job throughout the season. But they also do the sim exercises. They also do some of the tuning and everything.

So you function together as a race team. You’ll compete against your other fellow classmates. As teams and in between these 18 weeks I have like a practice race one, practice race, two practice race three, and then at the end of the 18th is the final race, which you’d hopefully, in theory, we, you know, race for scholarships.

That’s what we’re trying to do. So not only do you have your job and your role of what you have to tune when you do your sim exercises together as a group, you’ve gotta function as a team. And I think that’s a way to build [00:24:00] communication. That’s a way to build collaboration, but also it’s a way for students to understand responsibility.

Absolutely. And you know, there’s a lot to what you’re talking about there that I think is often overlooked. You’ve got chemistry, you’ve got physics, you’ve got engineering, you’ve got aerodynamics, thermal dynamics. You even got artistry when it comes to design, interior, exterior. And to your point, when you bring motor sport into the equation, it gets astronomically more complicated, right?

Because you have the competition factory, you have the management factor, the budget, the financing, the sponsorship, all of that. So I think what you’re doing, you know, even on a, on a smaller scale to represent the real world is, is great. And it gives these kids what I think is lacking in school sometimes, which is the real world aspect to all of it.

Let’s say Brad went through it in his background in finance. You know, you go through these accounting classes and you’re like, these use cases are nothing like they are when I and are gonna end up in the real world, right? Mm-hmm. It’s like, what does this have to do with anything? Right? So to, to your point, you’re bringing it all together and really grasping that.

I guess what we [00:25:00] used to call that Athenian mentality to education, which is to broader reaching and fuller encompassing of all the different aspects of something, an object, whatever it is that you’re learning or, or that discipline to make you more well-rounded as a student. Right? So I really applaud you for that.

So how are you relating all of this or making it make sense? Or are you keeping it at a, at a foundational level so that at least the principles are absorbed? So first of all, I guess the program right now is tailored towards high school students. I’m keeping him at a introductory level, but I’m applying things from the real world and then showing them how it works in sim.

So I, I, I’ll give you an example. Thermodynamics. I had a carding kid tell me that he sucks at math. And I said, I said, yeah, James, why would you say that? Well, because you know, it’s just hard and I don’t like it. And I said, James, you do carding, right? What do you do when the temperature’s hot to your tires?

Well, I let some of the air out. I said, why? Well, because they overheat and the tires don’t feel, you know, if they overheat and you lose grip. I said, what do [00:26:00] you do when it’s cold out? He said, I put more air in. I said, James, it’s basic thermodynamics, right? I said, pressure, volume, temperature, and the relation.

And how I, I do that in my, with my, is that I teach them that principle, the relationship between pressure, volume, temperature. I teach them the formula. I show, you know, P one over P two equals T one over T two and volume. I show them all that. They actually have to do an example where they have to figure out the values when it comes to the SIM side.

What I do for their sim task is I take ’em to Texas Motor Speedway in July. I give them a certain set of tire pressures and I tell ’em to do five laps Texas July temperatures go through the roof. So here they see it applied. And I say, okay, we’re gonna go back to Texas Motor Speedway in December, do the same thing, give ’em the same exact pressures, do five, eight laps, and they’ll see that the temperature doesn’t come out.

Now you’ve learned the relationship between pressure, volume, and temperature, and you’ve seen it. All right, we’re gonna go back to Texas. I’m gonna give you uneven pressures ’cause it’s an oval and, and slander oval. What do you think the the pressures are gonna be? [00:27:00] And, and so that’s what I do. I do things like that.

So it’s applied physics and applied thermodynamics. That, and that’s good applied thermodynamics. I guess I have to ask the question on the behalf of everybody else, what platform are you on? Are you using iRacing for this or something else? Else? I’m using something else. Eventually we’d like to make a iRacing platform, but as we all know from using iRacing, what I’m trying to do is get this out to, to the general public.

All right? There’s a lot of carding kids. They’re using iRacing. That’s great. I bring this to certain areas and the kids do our program and then I’m like, Hey, you’d like the program so much. Go home and practice. Well, let’s see. Now you’re telling somebody’s parent, please let my son or daughter buy a com gaming computer.

A rig and all this. And I picked a game that is cross platformed on purpose. It’s not exactly, I don’t think it’s the best game dynamically, but it fits the bill for several reasons. So what I’m using is Project Cars two currently. Okay. Okay. And what I like about Project Cars two, well it’s on pc, [00:28:00] Xbox, PlayStation, right now, the price is very cheap.

You’re doing it in school, you’re already at a PlayStation or Xbox at home. I can convince your parents to buy a $100 wheel. You put it on your desk, plug it into your PlayStation, go Practice, and I can’t do that with iRacing. The other thing I like about project cars too is that the graphic user interface, Is easier to understand than iRacing.

No offense, iRacing. But yeah, I wish that would change Another thing, weather in the real world, right? I was, I was at V I R over the weekend, we had a half dry, half wet session. I can’t really do that in iRacing, so I had to find a platform that could do all these things. And what I’m trying to do with the program is not just have one year, I’m trying to have four years consecutively.

And every year you’re going to do a different challenge. Year one, we may do GT four, year two, maybe GT three with a weather change. Year three might be indie or L and P one. But year four I’m saving for Formula one ’cause I want kids to come back and, and what’s great about it is, [00:29:00] If you were the suspension engineer and you don’t like it, hey, it’s not for me.

I, I want to be the, the guy who’s the race engineer. I want to do something different. Well, you have the option to change every year, but if you love suspensions and you say, Hey, I love this. I can’t wait to, to work on a suspension in GT four to GT three, or LMP one to GT three, see what the difference is.

You can say, I opt to stay in my role. So yeah, that’s one of the reasons that I, I decided to use project cars too. But going forward, I am gonna have to develop something for iRacing because I have a ton of cart parents and a ton of cart kids asking me. And then also, as you guys know, a c C is really making a big splash.

It’s also a great game and a set of cor, the two is coming out soon. So hopefully those guys will get it right. That’s the goal. But right now it’s Project Cars two only. And I think it’s just the best balance and I would agree with you. ’cause I, I have used Project Cars two and I do like it. I won a few in our V R L that does, and you know, it was available for free for a while there, so it made it even more palatable.

The one thing I think is interesting that that’s the choice you [00:30:00] made is if you are a gamer, like, you know, Brad and I am, even though he claims he’s not you, if you look at its lineage, there’s like certain families of racing games mm-hmm. That they’ve all kind of stemmed from. So you’ve got Forza, which was built from the ground up.

You’ve got Grand Theresa, that’s always been its own thing. iRacing came out or whatever. But then there was this pocket of games that came out of the sim bin Lineage, right? Where you had like things like gtr, GTR two and um, similar to like Toka and all those all came out of that family tree and. Project cars is in a similar vein now.

Now they’re owned by Codemasters. Right. So it’s all part of that. That bigger God knows what’s gonna happen. Yeah. Well I mean, and that’s the other, that’s the other big family, right, is if you’re part of the Codemasters Ego engine and all those physics engines that they’ve developed and all that kinda stuff.

But what I find interesting about the choice of projects cars too, is yes, it’s a little older, but it does have some redeeming features in it. Like you said, variable weather conditions. It also has a race manager feature and race engineer feature in there where you can interact [00:31:00] with the race engineer and he’ll tell you things about the car as you’re driving it.

You can do all these changes back and forth. So I think that’s kind of cool. I wanna get your feelings on Project Cars three and why not pursue that? Or maybe something like Forza, which has a huge amount of tunability in its physics engine. You’re gonna get me in trouble with the product course Three question.

Uh, I gotta ask. I sunk money into it as well, so, uh, I did too. You did. I, I like it. I’m just gonna say straight up, I wrote an article. You know, singing its praises. I think it has a lot of potential. They continue to update. It has been getting better since launch. Full disclaimer. Yeah. Project Cars three i, the way they were developing it, what, what they promised and what got delivered was kind of a turnoff to me.

The fact that tire wear. Wasn’t an option. I had to pick a game where I, I could feel that there was some longevity and I just didn’t feel that Project three matched up to how my program worked. I, I wanted it to trust me. I really wanted it to, in [00:32:00] fact, we had a contact, uh, that we were trying to, to get project cars to come on board, especially that it didn’t really sell well in America.

And I said, Hey, this is a way to get your product out. And the guy was all for it, but the guy who, who was actually all for it, he ended up leaving the company. Uh, as far as Forza, I think it’s a matter of, I started down the, the Project Cars Two Road and I’m also a PlayStation guy, so, ah, hope that again, I’ll do it.

That’ll do it. I’m a PlayStation guy. I. I’ve had PlayStation 2, 3, 4, and getting five eventually fours, it was, I would have to go out and buy an Xbox and all this. I had my PlayStation hanging around here. I had project cars one on PlayStation. That’s one of the reasons, I mean, for many of us, we started with Grand Smo.

I mean, for the younger, some of us started with like, you know, RC ProAm and Rad Racer Pole position and stuff like that. You know, I, I’m dating myself now, you know, for those of us who started with Grant Smo, it’s the godfather of a lot of these. But on the same token, I can’t wait 10 years for the next version of Grant Smo to come out.

Now with fours at eight Bors of Motorsport being delayed yet [00:33:00] again. I’m like, ah, whatever. You know, I’m not rushing to get a series X either. I think it’s interesting the choices you made. I understand why, especially having played, and I’ve played so many racing video games, it’s not even funny at this point.

But I will say this about Project Cars three and to your point about what they promised and what they delivered. I think because it was in the auspices of the merger between Code Masters and uh, studios. Thank you slightly, Matt Studios. That what we ended up with was Grid with the Madness Engine in it, which is not necessarily a bad compromise.

We got all the awesome UI from Codemasters and the soundtrack and the graphics. It needs some refinement, that’s for sure, but we’ll, we’ll save that for another day. Another thing too is there’s this very few racing games that are on pc, Xbox and play. That’s true. Project Cars is one of them. A set of course is the other.

That’s about it. You know, I mean, I, I, I, I like Grant Arimo, actually, they do some great things. I don’t particularly always love the racing and Grant Arimo, but when you get your licenses, how they show you [00:34:00] like the video of how to do it and all this, I mean, grand tourism could be a great learning tool, but it’s not on the Xbox.

So you got all these young people who like the Xbox and they’re not gonna go out of their way. Yeah, to get grand charisma when they got fours of, so I had to find the balance and that’s really what it came to. It’s like trying to find the, the perfect balance. I knew I couldn’t satisfy everybody, but that’s also why down the road we’re going to have more specialized, you know, it doesn’t take much to change a few things and make it specifically for one game.

It just takes, and in, in your case, this allows you to also do this offline as well, or call it local land party, like in our old days, right. Versus iRacing, you have to be connected to the servers and make it work and all that kind of fun stuff. So going back to that episode we did last year with Jericho from Twitch, who some of you may know as Tucker, you know, he’s into the gaming world.

He is, he’s at the front end of Twitch when it was, you know, not as popular it is today and things like that. He’s also the host of Amazon’s Chasing the Crown, you know, things of that nature. So we had him on and we talked about, you know, simulators and the future and you know, the, the difference between [00:35:00] re the fake and the real right?

That’s what we always get into, especially with the racers. I was like, man, this game is so fake and so I wonder. What you’ve come across in building your curriculum to get around that or things that you just straight up say, you know what, this is a shortcoming. The physics engines can’t do it, and this is how we have to work around it, or how do you teach to that in your plan?

I do tell the kids, this is how it works. In reality and in the sim world, sometimes things work a little bit different. I preface it by saying it’s not exactly one-to-one. I let them know that simulation is a great tool. I think it’s a fantastic tool, but nothing beats being in a seat. I don’t care what kind of level D box sim craft, I don’t care what you got in your house, as great as it is, and I’ve driven most of this stuff, nothing beats the real world in real world physics.

You know, I, I know a lot of companies say We have real world physics, we have this, but at the end of the day, nothing beats seat time. So you have to understand what this is. This is a tool to prepare you for the future. What I’m [00:36:00] doing is I’m trying to give exposure to what’s out there. I want you to go, I want you to get trained properly.

I want you to, whether it’s a degree, whether it’s an apprenticeship, whether whatever. But I want you to remember the math and science and the tools that I taught you, and to put that towards your future. So that’s kind of how I get around it. You mentioned that this is geared towards high schoolers. Yes.

And the world having been kind of turned upside down in the last, let’s call it 18 months, you know, with Covid and everything like that. Were you guys initially doing this in person, you know, out of school and then when virtual, was it always C B T based, you know, something like that? Is it more like a work study?

Is this done in conjunction with their normal schedule or is it part of their everyday schedule at that particular school that you’re partnering with? Well, the path we were going down was after school program in person. We wanted to get it part of a, a curriculum for C T E, your career technical engineering or career technical experience, or, I can’t remember [00:37:00] exactly which one it is.

So we had many talks about that in California, but it was in person. And then, you know, we’re in the midst of raising money and covid hits. So if you can imagine. How tough that was because one of the things on our agenda was a standalone center centers like kids that code and, and things like that, code ninjas, where they have these standalone centers.

And I thought, well, this is a great thing. Instead of your kid coming and doing rock climbing or something else. We were looking at a space in California and we had started the process of raising money and of getting partners and, and I won’t go into who we had on board, but once Covid hit, you know, everybody just pulled back.

So then I said, okay, the goal is still to have it in person, but in the meantime, How can I make it where kids who are homeschooled or kids who cannot go into the classroom can just log on and, and do their exercises? So there’s been a little bit of a shift because one of, one of the big things is communication and, and I know that virtually you can communicate, you know, you can send me emails and we could do this and this is great, but there’s nothing like being in person and [00:38:00] working on a car together.

Right? Absolutely right. Brad can tell me, Hey, I’ve been working on this, and show me the. CV joints show me whatever, and I’m like, oh yeah, you should do that. Brad or Brad can give me advice, but until he hands me a wrench and, and if I’m not torquing it right, he is say, Hey Dave, that’s not how you do it.

You know, there’s a whole different aspect. Hopefully the in-person will return. There’s nothing like watching Brad strip a bolt and then just waiting for all the expletives to come out. Yeah. I’m usually the one handing Eric the wrench. Okay. But so it kind of, it makes me wonder, do you have a plan to set this up in such a way that it’s a transition from what they’ve been working on into maybe something like formula s a e, which is something available to college students.

It’s funny that you mentioned that. I think there is a lot of potential for my program. I’m, I’m very familiar with Formula Ss a e. It would be great to work with them if they want it to work with me, but I also think this can be almost a standalone thing. One of the downsides, if you’ve, any of you guys ever done formula Ss a [00:39:00] e, you, you want to do it, you come into it, you’re six foot three, you are like, I want to drive.

And they look at you and say, Hey buddy, grab a torch over there. Right? Or you’re a freshman and and you wanna do something and you wanna do maybe the engine mapping. And they’re like, yeah, you can do that year three. So having it virtually shortcuts all that and guess what? Everybody has to drive, right?

That’s just part of my program. Everybody has to drive, whether it’s in exercises, whether it’s for te you, everybody has to drive. And then the cause level where I don’t need more than three kids per simulator, you know, I can have it set up like Grant Arimo does their finals where you do a Enduro and everybody has to drive.

I. You know, so you’re not just mastering your special area, you have to get in the car and we’ve gotta make a car that’s gonna work balance between the three of us. So yeah, I do think there’s stuff, it’s just right now I’ve been focusing so much on high school because by the time you get to college, sometimes your mind’s set up, right?

You have the idea of, I know what I want to do, I got college, I’m going here, and then maybe you get your degree and you change your mind. [00:40:00] But I want to reach minds early. And in fact, I want to go younger. Like I’d love to start in the junior high level. So they’re already thinking about it, and that’s why I’m focusing on high school.

Nothing against college students, but to get a liberal arts person, I’m a major in history. And then be like, Hey, hi. Have you considered being an engineer or technician? They’re like, well, not really, you know? And I don’t know. I don’t know if my program would change their mind, but I definitely think, and I would love to work, if anybody’s out there from s a e, please contact me.

I’d love to work with you and see how we can get this into colleges. You’re right, there’s a certain stigma around the word. Engineering. It’s almost scary in a way. Like you just say, well, I’m a chemist. You’re like, oh, cool. You know, beakers and things and whatever, and possible explosions. Then you go, I’m a chemical engineer, and you’re like, whoa, stand back.

Hold on. What’s going on here? Right? You put that word on anything and it suddenly just takes it to the next level. And so I like the fact that by going early where minds are maybe a little bit more impressionable, but less jaded, you drop the stigma. [00:41:00] And to your point, everybody’s now part of a team. And I think the younger students, especially high school students, they still have that team mentality.

When you get to college, you’re like, man, I’m gonna go do this. Plus the word engineering behind it, right? And then you become singularly focused. You almost become myopic. You’re specialized, but you no longer have that team mentality. It’s more survivalist in college where it’s like, well, my parents dumped me off here.

I’m here for the next four years. I gotta figure this out. Like to your point, like going to Germany, Gotta survive, right? I gotta get through this, gotta figure out how I’m gonna excel. I applaud you for that. But I think there’s one more challenge here that spans I think the entire age range. And I don’t want to be any sort of way, but we all know that it’s true.

It’s, first of all, it’s females in motor sport and then it’s the extension of that, which is females in engineering, right? Which have been positions that are tough to fill. And we’re starting to see that change every day, right? Like the full team of women that are running in Indianapolis, right? And you’ve got, you know, more and more women in science and all these kinds of things, but how do we engage them early?

How do [00:42:00] we drop the barrier and make motorsport less of a male dominated sport and bring in more, more ladies into, into this? It’s by putting a program like this right directly in front of them. Unfortunately, one of the casualties of Covid is I was working with a school in California and you go on my Instagram and see, even though I don’t have much there, it was an all girls school.

I brought the simulator out there to demo to the teachers, and the teachers loved it. And then they brought in four girls just to get in, just to have fun. And when I tell you you couldn’t get these four girls off of my simulator, you know, one of ’em said, Hey, I know what to do. She just jumped right in.

She hadn’t really driven before, but she could keep it on the black stuff. And it’s encouraging, you know, women showing them that they can do it and don’t put any barriers on them and, and getting programs like this in front of them. I’m fortunate. I have two daughters and another on the way, and then I have three girls in my household and my four year old.

Every time I’m playing Formula One. She comes in and she goes, can I drive? And sometimes like in the middle of qualifying and I’m like, baby, now’s not the time, but sure. [00:43:00] Sit in my lap because I don’t want to discourage her. My eldest daughter, I’m, I’m starting her in carting already at six, and I, I said, Hey, we’re, we’re practicing on the sim.

And she gets on the sim and she tries her best. But what happens is I have neighbors and I invite my neighbor’s kids over because they know what I do. I’m, I’m the crazy guy with the helmet and going off the tracks and coming. They, they know, they know exactly what I do, and they have kids, and one of my neighbors has son and daughter.

I invited them both over. They did it a couple of times. Then the son only came over and I said, Hey, where, where’s your daughter? Well, we don’t know. I said, did she like it? Yeah, she liked it. I said, so bring her over. Well, you know, we’ll, we’ll see if he likes it first. And yeah, that, that’s a wrong move. And I keep saying, no, bring your daughter over.

My daughters love seeing her here. She’s a little bit o older than my kids. You know? I said, my daughters also like to get on and see another girl. You know, it’s just, it’s recognition. That’s what, that’s what we gravitate to. It’s encouraging them from an early age. It’s having programs, not just my program, but having other programs that’s showing them carding, that’s showing them, whether it’s wrenching, things like that, that to get them [00:44:00] started at an early age and tell them, look, you can do it.

It may be tough. You may be the only one. It, it may not exactly be, uh, what you thought it would be at the beginning, but stay with it. And then when they get older, they will go into careers. So I think it’s on us, and I mean the general public to encourage them. I’ve had girls say, Hey, I can’t be an engineer ’cause I’m bad at math.

I’m like, well, what’d you get in math A’s and B’s? I’m like, what? What do you mean you can’t be an engineer? Well, you know, that’s just not for me. I like, and I don’t know where they get this from. I make sure that in my household and I make sure that when I go and talk that I, I tell people this is absolutely for young girls too.

You know, I want young girls in this program. I want girls schools in this program. I want girls to do the afterschool program with the guys to have mixed teams to fight it, mix it up, you know, I want them to do that, to understand that look. This entry to motorsports, it’s, there’s no barrier. You know, you just have to go do it.

It’s funny you bring that up because, and I know people are gonna cringe ’cause I’m, I try not to bring it up too often, but I’m gonna say it again. [00:45:00] World rally, right? I grew up in the Group B era and for me, women in Motorsport back then, it wasn’t uncommon because there were a lot of women rally drivers and one of the most fa, one of the fastest ladies on the planet, they used to call her Michelle Ong, right?

And her co-driver, FIA Ponds, she went on to do rally later in Dakar and a bunch of other stuff. I mean, they’re, they’re famous. And even at the same time in TransAm you had Lynn St. James running with Willie t ribs and, and Hurley Haywood and all them. So, because I ran in those circles, it was like, you know, there were.

Definitely more men, but it wasn’t uncommon to see women. But I’m like, how did it not catch on? Especially since the eighties when you know, Motorsport was so much more accessible than it is today. Like I don’t, I just don’t get it. And to add on to that point, since you spent so much time in Germany and the us, do you feel it’s a domestic problem to the US or is it a worldwide, like a global problem?

Yeah, that’s tricky because I knew somebody who raced in E T C C, particular female [00:46:00] man. She was good and she was, I learned a lot from her. First of all, she was a great engineer. She could just flat out drive from one year to the next sponsor, just backed out. She should have went from E T C C to W T C C.

There were people who were less talented and I don’t know, because you know, in Europe they don’t frown against female drivers. But at the same time, if you don’t have the right team behind you, if you don’t have the right PR person, sometimes it seems like there are some women who get promoted who shouldn’t be there.

And there are some women who should be there and they don’t get promoted. It’s very hard to say. I think domestically sometimes the mindset is that this isn’t for girls. Like, oh, oh, you’re a girl. Well go play women’s soccer. Go play tennis, go play softball. Like we’ve got, we’ve got women’s sports, like that’s your thing.

And I’m like, no. Like let’s, if they like motor sports, well don’t force ’em. Right? But if they like it, don’t shy away. Still trying to solve the problem myself, to be quite honest with you guys, I talk to a lot of engineers, talk to a lot of drivers. I hear a lot of things, some of it, not all positive, but I, I’m trying to figure this out because I would like to know [00:47:00] what’s the disconnect.

If you ask me about African-Americans, well, I could tell you what’s the disconnect with at least African-American males. Right? I can, I can explain that because that’s the side that I was on, but for females, I’m working with people and trying to listen to what’s the disconnect? Is it because we make it overly complicated when cars are complicated, but maybe the barrier is simplifying it?

That’s what I mean. Even for people that they’re like, I’m not a car person. I don’t get it. Right. Going back to my analogy about them being toasters and dishwashers, maybe that’s part of it is we’ve made it so complicated or seemingly complicated that it turns people away. Maybe I, I, I think also one of the things is you have to have a path, and you have to have a path to get young girls to become, whether it’s drivers or engineers or whatever, like something clear, something sustainable and something not done for pr.

Right. No offense to anybody out there, but there’s a lot of PR stunts. Some women walk away, like, what was that like? That wasn’t even a fair shake. What, what did I just get involved in? This is all pr. Like I’ll, I’ll give [00:48:00] you an example. The the Ws series is great. I like it, right? But personally, I want someone from the W Series to immediately be able to step into Formula three.

And I’ve heard people say, well, you can’t do that because if they get in the formula, they get crushed. Well, so what you keep saying win the W series. You get into Formula Three, or you get into Formula Two or something like that, and then make sure that there’s a clear path to success right now if they’re getting crushed, well then you gotta think about who you’re filling the W series with.

Don’t just fill it with women to fill the grid. Fill it with talent. Right? Exactly. Exactly. When it comes to men and women, there’s no shortage of talent on either sides. Right? But the problem is, Sometimes somebody gets a spot more ’cause PR and less of talent. And there’s that pressure, unfortunately for a woman who, who’s going to be a driver.

And there’s pressure that you’re gonna have to perform, right? Because you do have men who are gonna frown down and say, oh, well she’s just here because, you know, she’s a female. So there is that pressure you’re gonna have to deal with that pressure to perform. But I, I do believe there’s a lot of women.

Who, who [00:49:00] can definitely not only go in the industry, but but be drivers. But you gotta get the right ones. Don’t fill it because it’s a PR stunt. Don’t fill these spots because you’re just trying to fill the grid. Like grow the talent. And if the talent isn’t there, then you gotta go to the grassroots and say, what’s the problem?

How do we get more women at the grassroots? And you know, what excites me about this David the most is your kids. And my kids same age. We’ve both got girls and we’re probably gonna be standing shoulder to shoulder at a paddock, probably a road Atlanta going look at them. Go right. When we’re too old to do it, we’ll be cheering them on.

Right? And that’s the plan. I mean, at least in my, in my fantasy world, that’s how it’s gonna work. My wife, you know, whatever. But I would love to see that happen, right? And, and, and I think it takes us, it takes our generation to make that happen as well. So I think you’re really doing the right thing and moving the ball in the right direction.

So, I mean, I applaud you for that. Well, thank you. I’ve been, I’ve been very clear with my girls. I said, look, this is daddy’s love, right? You know, I go to the track, you know what I do on the weekends, you know, all the carding. I said, if you don’t wanna be here, that’s fine. Dad’s not gonna force you. You know, I’m going to the track and I come home and I have like all the bands and everything, [00:50:00] and every time I come home, my girls are like, oh, you’re at the track again.

You know, like, why aren’t I going? And that’s what I’m trying to, to do, to motivate them to go on their own. You know, I don’t wanna force them, you know, and say, Hey, you know what, baby? There’s so much sponsoring dollars out there for a girl. Go get it. No. It’s like, look, if I want you to love it, if you’re not gonna love it, don’t even bother.

Go do something else. This is dad’s passion. But if you are gonna love it, I’m gonna support you any way you want. My, uh, eldest daughter, she, she likes pink and blue and she already said, I want a helmet. I want pink and blue shoes. I want this. I said, that’s fine. I said, do your first carding class before I buy anything.

Right? Do your carding class say you like it. Dad will start buying equipment, but until then, I don’t want to go buy all this stuff that you’re never gonna use. So that’s, that’s why I had them buy me a pair of pink Pilates for Christmas and I wear them and I’m like, Hey, these, my, if somebody’s got a problem, I have a daughter bought these.

That’s awesome. They’re driving shoes. They’re amazing. I love ’em. But, but getting back into it a little bit. Yeah. To, to change gears a little bit, you’re, we’ll go back to the sim rigs. So [00:51:00] your bio states you consult, uh, with some of your clients on sim rigs. So we have a lot of SI racers in the group. What would you recommend to be competitive for someone racing on like an I racing or in our, our case fours or whatever, you know, just to, to be fun, just to have a lot of fun.

Not necessarily, uh, super competitive or whatever. Okay. So I’m giving you some free consulting here. I think the rig is about, it’s about immersion, so I think you can be fast on anything. Of course, there’s some differences with brake pedals and things like that. There are certain rigs out there. I’m, I’m, I’m big right now on 80 20.

Those are the aluminum profile rigs. I know they’re a little pricey. There’s different ones of, uh, rigidity, a solid rig, and the wheel base. That’s what you want really because it’s the wheel base, the pedals. If that make a difference, I would suggest to anybody who, who’s in the market has the money go with the aluminum profile rigs.

I think they’re some of the best. There’s several companies that do it, and that’s what I would recommend. You know, we talked early on about the setups and the different things [00:52:00] that the students are doing and setting up the car. And you know, a lot of times we look at setup in the video games as a dark art, right?

Mm-hmm. And so I actually did an article recently about that called The Dark Art of Fours of Tuning, and I’ve kind of walked through approaching how to tune a car in the game from different angles and, you know, certain changes have what seemed to be almost a placebo effect versus other ones actually have, you know, the inverse effect that way you think about it in reality and stuff like that.

So, to dovetail into the question that Brad just asked you, what are maybe some basic techniques for folks that are already maybe established virtual racers that want to get into tuning that you could pass on some of that knowledge? Absolutely. Well, I think some of the techniques you can do is when you make changes, whether it’s your, your suspension or your error.

What you want to pay attention to is the effects it has on the inner, outer and middle of the tire. If you’re finding that there’s too big of, uh, temperature differences between them, then you want to go a step back. There’s a lot of good resources out there if you can find it still. There is a a [00:53:00] G T R tuning guide, which, which I read years ago, and I still have it saved to my desktop because he kind of goes through steps and he says, look, if you do this step and that step, and this is the result you’re getting and you’re seeing that your temperatures are rising, then go back.

Every time you do a step, you do six or seven laps and see where your car’s at. And if you like that, well, you go onto the next step. If you tune that and, and again, the temperatures are fine, you tune something else. Now, if you change that and the temperatures are going crazy and the can’t and the bounce of cars feels weird, go back a step.

So I think it starts out with small things. You start. Maybe working on your brake duct openings, tire pressures, of course, that’s like the first thing if, if anyone’s driving a c c, if you nail the tire pressures, man, it helps, it helps a lot. And then just try stuff. It’s a, it’s a lot of of practice and you have to, I would say start tuning three things.

Try a couple of weeks tuning three things, then start expanding four things, five things, six things, and actually always go in with a plan. One of the things I do when [00:54:00] I’m, I’m seriously practicing. I will go into a track that I know, and I spend the first 15 minutes just doing laps, just so I get like a baseline of myself.

And then I say, all right, I’m gonna take the car that I know here, or the car that I gotta drive this week to this spot, start tuning it till I feel good, and then I’m gonna go to the track where I’m competing at. So I think it’s about practice consistency. And I also, okay. I’m nerdy. I write it down, so I write down some of the changes.

I you, you got like spreadsheets and logbook. Spreadsheets. Yeah. Yeah. You know, just like a real engineer. I, I, I do that because I’m, I’m like, wow, that, that worked here, but it didn’t work here. How can I get faster so that, that’s my suggestion. So you don’t recommend my approach, which is to go in and change everything and then ditch the car after two laps.

’cause it’s undrivable. I can’t recommend that. I’m sorry. I mean, I mean there’s the other approach too, which is turn on all the nannies, maximum downforce, you know, all arrow to max and to send it at that point. Well that’s the Andrew Bank. [00:55:00] So lemme, let’s ask about this. As we talked about nannies, right?

Nannies exist in the real world. Those are the driver aids, right? Whether they be simplistic ones like a p s, traction control, stability management, there’s like a million of them now. All sorts of alphabet soup when it comes to that in the real world. E S P and T C s and all that stuff, right? But in the virtual world, how do you tend to set up your rig?

Are you full manual, manual with a clutch? Do you turn on and off stability control? What’s your best blend there? Or do you just turn everything off? I, I’m more the almost turn everything off. If I’m driving a c C, I got a b s set to one. I got traction control, usually set to two or three. If I’m driving Formula One, I got everything off except for the, the hybrid system.

I have it on automatic because it’s not realistic. That’s not the way it works in the real world and it’s too much of a pain in the butt for me to keep switching it on and off and going through the mapping. Nah, that’s not the way it works. When I’m driving, when I’m driving on, um, project cars two, I have it set to [00:56:00] realistic, but then I usually turn down the traction control as, as much as, as I can, doesn’t interfere as much.

Yeah. The minute it starts interfering, it’s like I, I just shut off. Even if I know that there is traction control, let say on, on a, but let’s say the GT four, the minute I feel it on my pedal, I, I just can’t drive like that. I’m sorry. So I, I shut it off. That brings me to another question to kind of circle back to your students and your curriculum a little bit.

How do you feel, or, or what do you think or have you seen. Their driving skill evolve over the course of your program and learning this engineering, I guess, skills, has it affected the way they drive in the sim and has their driving gotten better both in the SIM and if you happen to see them, you know, driving there 1989 g t i on the street?

I mean, how, how has their driving evolved? Well, unfortunately I haven’t seen that in a lot of students again, because of where we were with launching mine. Right. Um, but I, but I will say that I’ve done, uh, short courses, the driving [00:57:00] from when they started Inde Sim, and when they came out weeks later, Has totally improved because I teach them driving techniques.

Some of the kids never know what a marker board is. I have something on looking ahead and I, I show video of in-game footage of, it’s me driving, but I’m going down and I say, look, here’s a marker board, or here’s a gap in the fence. Here’s this and this is how you break. Because for them, they’re like, oh, the curve’s coming time to get on the break.

They, they have no idea. It’s analog. Yeah, right. It’s very analog. So I teach them actual racing and driving techniques. They start applying it because they, they’ve got a lap counter and they’re like, wait a minute. I’m slower, you know, when I don’t pay attention. So now I’m paying attention, uh, just by kids who’ve come and visit the house and done laps and laps and laps.

And I, and I’m always sitting in the room while they’re driving. I’m trying not to talk too much to annoy them, but sometimes I’m like, Hey, you know, Jerry, why, why did you break there? Oh, I don’t know. I said, well, try breaking at the 200. Once he gets it down, like, Hey Jerry, try shifting it to one 50. What, where are you looking?[00:58:00]

Well, I’m looking right at the market board. No, once you start breaking look towards the apex, I’m very hands-on. I want, I want them to learn. And I, I have seen this, the kids who’ve who’ve been in my house improve, I’m hoping it’s gonna transition that when I have high school students and have several programs that their parents need to be like, man, my, my son or daughter is a much better driver now.

And they understand speed. You know, I’m hoping that a lot of these kids will realize this is why you don’t speed on the street because it is so dangerous. And now you understand a little bit of vehicle dynamics. So please don’t speed on the street. I’m envisioning some of your students sitting in the car with their parents.

Mom, you really shouldn’t be driving like that. You, you missed the apex back there at the curb when you drove past the stop sign. But it, I got one other question for you. I know Eric wants to jump in here, but, um, have you ever had any like beat the teach. Competitions or anything. Have you ever been beaten by one of your students?

Not yet. And yes we do. In fact, one of the ways to get the word out is I have a beat. The Pro Challenge where I was going in schools and bringing the simulator did it in California. And luckily, you know, I had one kid who was like, oh, I played Forza. [00:59:00] He was pretty good. And I was like, whew. But I beat him, you know, like he was, he was like, oh, he is like, okay.

He is like, I don’t know this game, but I got Forza and he got on the wheel and I was like, okay, well I’m gonna have to really drive. And then thank goodness the physics and PC two is a little more complicated. Yeah. So it’s all good. Yeah. He didn’t, he didn’t left foot break, so I, you know, had the advantage.

I’m sure eventually it’s gonna happen because kids adapt so quickly, you know, and, and that’s what I want. I want, I want kids to beat me and I want me to, I wanna be upset about it, but, but I’m gonna be like, Hey, tip my hat. Good job, young man, young woman. And that’s what I want. I want them to be excited about.

Taking down a pro or taking down an adult. To Brad’s point, I found myself many times using the simulators as teaching tools, not only both for the real world, H H P D E, but also in our V R L where folks are like, I am just not getting this track. Mm-hmm. And I’ll be like, cool, let’s get on on a multiplayer session.

We’ll do lead follow at [01:00:00] Watkins Glen and I will walk you through the track. I’ve recorded videos with that too, where it’s like, Hey, here’s a lap of v i R of on Forza or whatever. This is how we do it in real life. This is how you should do it in the game. I mean, modify for your driving style if you’d like to drift every corner.

That’s up to you. Do you find yourself doing that as well? Or is that part of the curriculum is kind of just teaching ’em the basics? That’s not part of the, of the current curriculum at all, unfortunately. ’cause I do have a lot of guided. On track stuff, but I do use it a lot with friends, especially friends who, uh, I, I’ll give you an example.

I, I was fortunate enough to drive Emela. A bunch of my friends, they drive PC two. We drove Emela for the first time and the first thing I did, I did a closed session, private room. I did lead follow, I remember, and I was so visual being there. Like, I remember the track, like it was the back of my hand, you know, in the first session they followed me and then we did some practice and I’m still like four seconds faster, so I had to do it again.

But just because, you know, when I went to mla, I just soaked it in. I was there for a couple of days, I just soaked it in and I love that track. But I do use lead follow. I [01:01:00] think it is a powerful tool. I think it’s great if you are an up and coming card kid who does sim get somebody who could do lead follow with you.

You know, I, I think it’s so helpful. So what you’re saying is you need some virtual coaches? I, I got you. I think I’m picking up what you’re putting down. I do. I, I have brandiose plans and I would love to see everything and everyth thought that comes across my mind into the program. But of course, we’re still growing, we’re still young.

I, and, and, and that’s why I come on a show like this is to connect with people because I, I think there’s so many people connected to Motorsports and automotive who say, Hey, look, I’ll give back to some young people if they’re gonna, if it’s gonna benefit them. So you guys can always be a virtual coach.

Well, do you g t m even got its start. We’re, we’re very deep in, in education and wanting to give back to the communities, teaching people, you know, the proper ways to drive and, and various things like that. Um, so yeah, we’re, whenever you get to that certain point, we’d love to, to help in any way we can.

Absolutely. So that actually leads right into probably one of the last [01:02:00] questions, which is, you know, what’s the direction in the future for Mai? You know, uh, is there a way to partner up? Is there a way to volunteer our time as Petrolheads to help you out or make the program better? Yeah, if you’re interested in, in volunteering or learning more about what we do, there’s our website, my racing.com.

Going forward, I am looking for partners. Um, what I, what I hope, and, and I’m, I am working on this is I still would like a standalone center. There’s certain partners I won’t name right now, but there’s certain partners I think would work well. I live a few minutes from Road Atlanta, so if you can imagine there’s opportunity combined with Road Atlanta and it is the Michelin Speedway.

So you got Road Atlanta, you’ve got mechanics, you got technicians, you’ve got imsa. There. You’ve got Lanier drifting track. There’s all these opportunities and I, I go out to the drifting track from time to time just to watch and, and sometimes it’s filled with thousands of young people. We gotta be able to do something there because these kids need careers.

Some of some of them aren’t really doing anything. There’s [01:03:00] that. I, I think there’s a lot of potential, but I would like a standalone center. I would like a place where people can bring their kids, but I am also going fully virtual in case you know, you don’t wanna do in person, that’s fine. The other thing I’m doing is, as it is now, it is kind of a team based thing.

I am writing and finishing up the solo aspect of it. So if you’re a son or daughter says, Hey, I just want to go through the curriculum myself, I want to do the races by myself, and then maybe jump in for the practice races as a group where other kids are doing the program and we say, for example, alright, Friday, June 20th, Will be practice race one, you know, and then they come meet online.

Then that aspect is there. So would they be submitting that, let’s say via Twitch, that way you could go back and see it or jump into their session and watch ’em live? Are you actually broadcasting the races for the curriculum for the different years that you’re doing on a platform like that where we could tune in as an audience to check out route you guys on That would be great.

Currently we’re just using our own platform and, and we have a, um, a standalone app with video [01:04:00] capabilities. But broadcasting would be, again, there’s nothing short of what I want to do, what I wanna accomplish. And that would be great because I want people to tune in and say, Hey, look what these kids are doing.

I want my son or daughter to, to do that. If you need commentators, uh, and uh, play-by-play people, we’re, we’re right there for you. Good. Okay. Oh yeah. We can trash talk with the best of, it’s amazing. You’re not gonna get David Hobbs quality announcing from us. That’s for sure. Hey, that, you know, that’s what we need though.

We need, we need some humor. We need some trash talking. That’s turn one chaos right there coming up. Just be prepared. Every single race, the race is not won. In turn one folks, to your point about, you know, seeing all those people in the paddock at at Lanier, even at ROT Atlanta, it’s right in line with why we started G T M, which is to continue to spread motor sports enthusiasm.

Because one of the things that people forget is the word sports. In motor sport, it is a sport. There is physical activity, exertion, and all that. It’s not the [01:05:00] same as a stick and ball game. Stick and ball games aren’t for everybody either, right? Right. I wasn’t one of those kids. I was attracted to cars, mechanical things, whatever.

And so Motorsport is another avenue to be physically active, to be involved. It is strenuous. It’s definitely cardio, right? What you were saying about people being there is how do we engage them? How do we make them the next generation of motor Motorsport enthusiasts or motorsports participants and not let our corner of car culture, let’s call it that, from dying off?

We understand the EV revolution. We know everything that’s changing. We’re embracing that. We’re seeing it in drag racing. We’re seeing it in road racing where EVs are being brought on board. So it’s not, you know, the end is not, it’s a matter of adapting and overcoming to the changes that we’re seeing, but we don’t just want it to fizzle off and go away because think about how many tracks there are just road racing tracks.

In the US alone, there’s over 80 of them. Right? That’s not counting your circle tracks, your dirt tracks, your rally courses, and then you go worldwide. Motorsport is [01:06:00] huge and. It’s amazing how small it can be sometimes. And I think you’re right on the right track. Exposure, exposure, exposure. Get them early, get them interested and realize that it’s not just bull at Michael Schumacher or Lewis Hamilton or whatever, these superstars, I could be part of this too.

I could be. The guy that, you know, we talked about was the gentleman driver, one of our early episodes where it’s like, I wanna learn about the dude who was the tire manager. Like he had the coolest job and they interviewed him and they were like, can we talk to that guy some more? You know, or whatever.

And, and so there’s so many different pieces to this and I think it’s absolutely amazing that you’re trying to engage kids at an early age and, and continue that forward. Thank you. And, and I do tell you know, a lot of the young men and young women, well, look, we, we want you to carry this forward because this is what we love.

We understand that things are changing, but you’re gonna have to develop it. You know, we want you to go in and develop it. We want you to have a love of motorsports and keep that in mind as you’re transitioning, whether it’s to EV or whatever else is coming down the pipeline. [01:07:00] And I think some politicians forget about just how big the motorsports industry is.

They forget, because if you just ban all these gasoline cars, You know, there’s so many millions, billions of dollars tied into Motorsport, into, into gentlemen raising into all this. There’s, there’s so much money. So we want to develop kids who, who say, Hey, we’re gonna keep this going, but we’re gonna do it in a way where of course we can protect the environment.

So, so for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And what you do in Motorsport often trickles down into your driveway. It takes a couple years to get there. We’ve mentioned that before. The, it’s amazing how that trickles down. And it takes a lot of people, like to your point earlier, it’s not done in a vacuum. It takes a team of people.

And motorsport, you know, you look at basketball, yeah, it’s a team of X amount of guys on the court and the managers and the coaches and all that. But motorsports even bigger. Like there’s so much more involved. And so there’s an opportunity for everybody, male, female, young, old, to be part of that world.

And so that’s really important. And again, I applaud you [01:08:00] guys for doing that. For more information on my, be sure to check out www dot. My racing, and that’s m i e racing.com or follow them on Instagram and Facebook at m ie racing. And you can always reach out to David directly via LinkedIn by searching for David L.

Middleton. He’ll come up as c e o of my racing. So a couple different ways to get in, uh, contact with my and with David, and we will be sure to stay on top of your guys’ progress and be able to help you out as much as we possibly can. So I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. I think this has been excellent and an, and an amazing opportunity to talk about something new and exciting in the world of Motorsport.

And I hope this continues to grow and flourish. But yeah, man, just again, it’s all about the passion and it just kind of led to these things. So, and led to me, you know, meeting Phil and connecting me to you guys. So again, thank you so much. Thank you for the time. Thank you for having me. Pleasure. Have a good [01:09:00] night.

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