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Porsche at Le Mans - narrated by Patrick Dempsey

Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] The Drive Thru is GTM’s monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like HPTEjunkie. com, Hooked on Driving, AmericanMuscle. com, CollectorCarGuide. net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine, and many others. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive Thru, look no further than www.

gtmotorsports. org. Click about, and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast, Brake Fix, and all the other services we provide.

Crew Chief Brad: Recording in progress.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, we’re back in the studio. Can you believe it? It feels like it’s been forever.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like I never left the studio.

Crew Chief Eric: It was a good vacation. I think our fans are happy to see us back.

Crew Chief Brad: For our fans that have been living under a rock and may not know, did you know that Eric went to France?

Crew Chief Eric: Benvenue, right? Is that what they say in French? Benvenue.

Crew Chief Brad: Welcome to drive thru episode number 35. This is our monthly recap where we’ve put [00:01:00] together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random car adjacent news.

Now, let’s pull up to window number one for some automotive news. Cause back the streets, back, alright! Well,

Crew Chief Eric: we are going to talk about a little bit of world travel. Not only did I go to France, I went to a couple other places as well. And Tanya joined me on part of this epic adventure. I

Executive Producer Tania: think you joined me on the epic adventure.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. But we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about The Great Race, the 100th anniversary of…

Crew Chief Brad: I thought you were going to say the great race, the Canadian, you know, F1 race.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re going to get to that in a little bit. So did you guys watch Le Mans?

Crew Chief Brad: What’s what’s that? I watched Le Mans. A

Executive Producer Tania: significant portion of it.

I did not stay up all night.

Crew Chief Brad: I watched about two or three hours. Of the 24 hour race, but I have a toddler and I was very busy going to swim lessons and being a good father. He’s not old enough to understand the races yet. So [00:02:00] I had to do other things.

Crew Chief Eric: Lamar is my annual father’s day gift from my family. I asked for two things.

Be able to watch the race and to be able to watch the race in peace.

Crew Chief Brad: My father’s day gift was to go to Baltimore for a concert. So I chose music over cars, which music is my number one cars are my number two. So

Crew Chief Eric: you did some traveling, like you went to Baltimore. That’s like a foreign country from where you live now.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s going to a third world country, not France. It’s like going to Somalia.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Driven in Paris. That’s all I got to say. Holy smokes.

Crew Chief Brad: Can’t be as bad as driving through Baltimore.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s worse. Actually picture it. Paris 2023. I’m doing my best to still get here. It is like Dante’s Inferno. Paris itself is like nine inception rings of hell.

And it’s like one beltway after the other, I guess their districts or rings or whatever they call them. And I’d heard rumor about what it was like to drive in France. And you guys have heard me DMV before, but nothing. Is like driving in [00:03:00] Paris. Nothing is like driving in Paris in a Fiat that you weren’t supposed to have in the first place.

So it all sort of goes wrong from the very beginning when I showed up at the enterprise counter and they said, well, sir, your car is not here.

Crew Chief Brad: What was your original car? Was it a Chevy Impala?

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no. I was supposed to get a Twingo and I was super excited about that.

Crew Chief Brad: Even smaller. Wait, that’s the electric car, isn’t it?

Crew Chief Eric: No, the Twingo is like this classic Renault that kind of replaced the R4 and some of the other people movers that have been around forever. It’s sort of like the new beetle, right? The

Crew Chief Brad: size of your shoe, Brad. Yeah. I thought I’ve sold them on Top Gear a lot.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re small. They’re like a PF 500 size.

Crew Chief Brad: You say Twingo, all I think is Oingo Boingo.

Crew Chief Eric: My car wasn’t there when I was waiting to pick it up. So I had to wait like 45 minutes and then it finally showed up. I don’t know where they drudged this car up, but it was a Fiat 500 E hybrid, not electric. So it was a E H

Crew Chief Brad: it was a

Crew Chief Eric: 500. Yeah. And that’s sort of [00:04:00] how it drove too. It was a manual, but it was a three cylinder non turbo hybrid.

I will say that 70 mile an hour happens. Eventually. And when you add two other full size adults in said vehicle plus luggage, yeah, it got a little suspect.

Crew Chief Brad: So was it any different driving a manual hybrid versus a manual dice car?

Crew Chief Eric: It was exactly the same. Basically what it did was it had RPMs.

It still had like the engine shutoff capabilities and all this kind of stuff, and so it was really designed for short stop and go, especially in the French traffic where it took us over an hour and a half just to get outta Paris onto the main highway to go to Lama. So at that point it was consuming electricity instead of gas, stuff like that.

What I learned though was with the manual transmission ev, unlike the [00:05:00] Honda CRZ hybrid and some, and this new super that we talked about last time, we got together, the fiat. If you didn’t disengage the auto shutoff, the car would like freak out and stall, especially if you tried to do like a rolling second gear takeoff.

So I’ve actually figured out how to disable the system partially. And so then it was a lot more drivable because otherwise it would sort of like Buck, it was really annoying. And I kept telling David from MIE racing, who was my travel companion over this trip. I was like, it’s not me. And he goes, no, I can tell it’s a car.

It’s doing something weird. And, you know, it’s like, I drive a manual every day. It’s it’s a Fiat. It’s easy. Once we got out of Paris, then it’s just country roads. It’s like any other highway, that sort of thing. And Lamar is in the middle of nowhere, but I will say this to sort of wrap up the thought about Paris and your comment about Baltimore, at least in Baltimore, when it rains.

The water doesn’t create a waterfall from 1 overpass to the other overpass and the 3rd overpass underneath it and then slam on the roof of your car [00:06:00] where it’s nearly impossible to see. And then when you get out from underneath the waterfall, your windshield is covered in cigarette butts and trash.

Because Paris is filthy.

Crew Chief Brad: So you’re saying you’ve never been under, in the tunnel, you know, going into or out of Baltimore?

Crew Chief Eric: The tunnel doesn’t leak, at least as far as I know.

Crew Chief Brad: No, no, but I’ve been in situations where just that, you know, happens. There was some sort of clog in the drainage system and you basically drove through a shower to get into the tunnel and out.

Crew Chief Eric: I am not one for driving in the city anymore anyway, although I don’t mind the European driving etiquette. They still have one, at least, you know, passing is very easy. Everybody’s moving at very good speeds. They’re situationally aware. You’re not looking over seeing somebody eating a bag of Doritos on their cell phone and not paying attention to driving.

Hardly any Teslas I saw when I was there, you know, the typical BMWs, Renaults, Volkswagens, all that kind of stuff you come to expect. The aggressiveness in Paris is unparalleled. They change lanes, whether you’re there [00:07:00] or not, they push against you. I mean, you could reach out and basically smack somebody in the face.

That’s how close they are. They will just cut in wherever they feel like it, whether you’re going fast or going slow, turn signals, might as well not even have them. Absolutely insane in the city when you get back out on the highway, not a big deal. It is what it is. It’s just typical European driving at that point.

But in Paris proper, it’s nuts.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. It sounds like driving in New York, basically a hundred percent. If they’re an inch ahead of you, they have right away. A hundred percent.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. A hundred percent. It’s not

Crew Chief Brad: how many Peugeots were driving.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, there were a lot. I got to tell you, I got to spot the new 208.

Like all over the place, the new 208 GTI specifically is a really good looking car. Like if I lived over there, I’d be considering buying one of those right now. It is really nice, very well equipped, very well appointed. I got to see one up close in the interior and stuff. I also got to see some Sciroccos, including a Scirocco R.

So that is still at the top of my [00:08:00] list of things to buy while I was playing car spotting over there. But there’s a lot of neat stuff. You get super jealous really quick driving around over there. Because you realize there’s so many cars that we’re just never going to get.

Crew Chief Brad: Speaking of the Scirocco, not to go off on a tangent.

When did that first come out? The newest model, the one you Mark

Crew Chief Eric: five timeframe.

Crew Chief Brad: So 2008, 2000s.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. So 25 year rule sometime in the 2030s, you can, that’s right. You should be able to import one. I just got to wait a little bit longer.

Crew Chief Eric: Just

Crew Chief Brad: a little bit.

Crew Chief Eric: That 208 is pretty hot though. That is, that is a hot car.

You get to Lamont, Le Mans, and the way we came in, because we came in from Paris, we’re going east to west and we drop in right behind Tetrerue. It’s like the famous restaurant that’s right there at turn, I guess it’s like turn five. You don’t know, really know what to expect because you’re skirting the outside of the track and the track is comprised mainly of country roads.

And so it’s chaos. There’s no [00:09:00] organization. The other thing I learned about France is they pretty much expect you to be an adult, and they’ll give you pointers to a certain point. And then after that, they’re like, well, you’re on your own. We got tired. We’re not putting up any more signs. And we must have run out of money because there aren’t any more signs to put up.

Anyway, you get lost really quickly because the level of caring kind of seems to stop. And Le Mans is huge. I never understood how grandiose it was. Until I got there, like we look at tracks like V. I. R. and the Glen and Laguna Seca and the ones in Texas and even some of the biggest NASCAR tracks at Talladega or even Indianapolis, you’re like, these are coliseums of greatness and you get to Le Mans, you’re like, these are turns three and four and five and that’s basically it.

I mean, it’s just, it’s so big, just massive. And I was tracking all of our walking that we were doing. And regrettably my decision not to get a scooter or whatever, some other alternate form of transportation, because moving around by car was near impossible, [00:10:00] we ended up clocking. Could you not almost. 80, that’s eight zero miles of walking in five days.

I mean, my calves look like your calves now, Brad. That’s what I’m saying.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, they’d probably come down now.

Crew Chief Eric: The track is just massive, right? Eight and a half miles and change Bugatti. The inner circuit, the one we play on forces sometimes is actually a lot smaller. And we walked most of that too. And you’re like, Oh, this is really cool.

Motorcycle track, HPD track, go karting. You can do a lot of stuff with it, but it seems bigger. Until you see it in context of everything else at Lamar, it’s just, it’s huge. The other thing you don’t realize is the amount of elevation change there is at Lamar, like in all the video games, just like any other video game or simulator.

It seems really flat and it’s not, not at all. Pretty interesting. You know, it’s in the rolling countryside and all that kind of stuff. Before I went, you know, we talked about different vantage points around the track. Where would you guys think would be probably the best place to watch?

Executive Producer Tania: On your TV in the tent.[00:11:00]

Crew Chief Brad: I like the way Tanya thinks.

Executive Producer Tania: Because then you get to see everything.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll put it this way. I had high hopes. Tetra Rouge was a disappointment. It’s really tight back there. There’s not a lot of room for people to stand. But what you do get. Especially at night is this overwhelming sense of how fast those cars are because they’re coming down the hill already at full tilt and getting on the Mulsanne, prepare for launch speed at 200 miles an hour kind of deal.

And it’s just absolutely bonkers. And some people come through there flat out. Some will set up the brakes just to nose the car in a little bit. And away they go, like, just absolute warp drive. That was kind of cool, but to stand there all day with no grandstands, shoulder to shoulder with other people that don’t know the boundaries of personal space.

Yeah, I was like, we need to move on from that. Another one that was super disappointing was actually the Porsche curves. And you see it on TV and it looks super cool with the Porsche thing written out and all this [00:12:00] kind of stuff. You’re sitting on a hill and you can only sit on the inside of the turn.

And you got to hike through two campgrounds to get there. It’s not close, you know, like anything is around there, but the vantage point kind of sucked and the cars are just buzzing by and it’s sort of the same effect you get at road Atlanta and turn six and seven, where they just sort of come into the corner out of nowhere.

And then they disappear because they’re off at a million miles an hour. Although I will say it was one of the. Best places to hear the cars other than the front straight. If you really wanted to be up close to them. And we’ll talk more about the garage 56 car as we go along, but I mean, talk about a car beyond the level of any Corvette of the past, that the sound just ripples right through you as it’s going through Porsche curves, we went down to Ford chicane, which is where the Ferris wheel is and at three o’clock in the morning, when you’re extremely tired after many days, it is.

Absolutely gorgeous up there. I highly recommend it. You do have to pay to go on the Ferris wheel. It’s a whole separate thing. It’s not too expensive. Some of the [00:13:00] video and the pictures we took were just absolutely unbelievable. And you can see really far out, especially onto the backside of the track, coming from the direction of like Arnage when you’re up in the Ferris wheel.

So that was totally worth it. The front straight is pretty awesome during non race time, because otherwise you can’t get there. It is so jam packed with people and security guards and like all this stuff. It’s really not a fun place to be. But what I learned through the process is. Lemans is a week long thing.

It’s a week of sleepless nights. There’s a lot of stuff going on and being at the front straight, especially during night practice, which I don’t think many of us knew was a thing because they don’t televise it. So ACO 18, the Porsche boxes. That was a great place to watch off the main street, your high upgrade pictures, all this kind of stuff.

We went there at night during one of the practice sessions because it was open. It’s called a tribune, is what they call their grandstands. And you have to have special passes to get up there and you have to be part of the Porsche box and all this kind of stuff. But [00:14:00] because it wasn’t race day yet, we could get up there.

So we went up there like late at nights, David and I were chatting, we’re taking pictures down into Glickenhaus and Toyota, and we’re kind of, you know, using the binoculars and seeing what they’re doing. And by the way, we found out there’s a curfew in the pit boxes. They’re only allowed to work to a certain point.

They got to shut it down. So we’re just sitting there chatting, you know, taking it in, talking about the experience at that point. And there were security guards like looming up there. Right. We had asked him, is it okay if we come up here? Yeah, yeah, sure. We’re going to take some pictures. We’re going to hang out.

Yeah, yeah, no problem. We’re we’re open all night. Okay, cool. It got really quiet. It’s like two in the morning, I guess, at this point. And David’s like, man, I gotta pee. And so he disappears and he comes like right back. And I’m like, what happened? He goes, they’re locking us in. What? He goes, they’re leaving.

They weren’t going to say a damn thing. I pack up all, you know, my stuff, my camera, whatever. And we run out and they’re like, Oh yes, we were, we were going. And I’m like, we were still out there. It’s okay. Not our problem. Like, you’ve got to be kidding me.

Crew Chief Brad: How would you have gotten out? Like, is there a way to have gotten out?

I

Crew Chief Eric: think we would have [00:15:00] set off a bunch of alarms and stuff. They were locking us in. And I’m like, well, we’re going to go over the front of the balcony and like, rappel down? Like, spelunking? That’s the other thing. The track is live all week. For almost all day, every day, there’s only a few hours where it gets quiet and it gets disturbing because you’re like, there’s all that ambient white noise of the cars, constantly something going on.

And so that’s a little strange Dunlop’s pretty awesome. Not going to deny it. It’s probably 1 of the most fun places to watch. There are grandstands there, but it gets packed very, very quickly. It’s hard to get in and out. The bridge is really narrow. There is an advantage. If you’re an ACO member, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, where you can be on the backside of Dunlop, where I took a lot of pictures from, and so did some of our other guys, and that’s a great place to be the downhill S’s are also awesome, hard to get to.

You have to climb these really tall banks to get up there, to be able to see, and it’s jam packed. And people are getting these spots during the race on [00:16:00] average, three to five hours before the race even started. So if you didn’t pick where you wanted to be. It was already packed, so absolutely insane. The only part of the track where we didn’t get to go was Arnage and Indie, which are the two slowest corners.

You know, after you come off the Mulsanne, it’s the hard left and then the hard right, and then they make their way back. The French guys from Bosch that we were hanging out with Thibaut and that whole team, Max and all those guys, Hey, if you’re listening. They made the trek to Arnaz and Indy, and would you guys like to guess how long it took to walk there?

Crew Chief Brad: A year.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, this is like our what should I buy guess.

Crew Chief Brad: Like two hours.

Crew Chief Eric: Three and a half hours one way. Because it is the furthest point away from everything, and you have to walk through, like, the town of Arnaz to get there. It’s super far, and… I regret not going, but I’ll do that next time because that takes a lot of planning and I would love to have a scooter or something to be able to do that.

Cause it’s just too much

Executive Producer Tania: for you to be scootering or yes, [00:17:00] or something else.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Bikes and scooters were all over the place. And every time I saw one buzz by me, I’m like, I’m super jealous right now. I’m a feet hurt and yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought you were going to buy a scooter and do the whole I

Crew Chief Eric: was! And so you know what I Buy a boat ship there and My inner cheapness as a racer came out, and you know what I did?

I ended up buying a really nice pair Did you

Crew Chief Brad: get Heelys? You got a pair of Heelys. No, I

Crew Chief Eric: got Hokas. These European, like, three sizes too big for your feet running shoes. And I will say that saved me because of all this walking I did. But yeah, it would have been nice to be mobile and be able to get around a lot faster.

You

Executive Producer Tania: should

Crew Chief Brad: have just taken rollerblades.

Executive Producer Tania: They sell Hokas here.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, I

Crew Chief Brad: bought them here.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, okay.

Crew Chief Brad: You know what I like to talk about. I know. Everywhere I go. We hungry. We hungry. We always hungry. I wasn’t

Executive Producer Tania: gonna bring up food. I wasn’t gonna bring up baguettes.

Crew Chief Brad: So let’s talk about the food situation. Brad’s a

Crew Chief Eric: foodie.

Crew Chief Brad: As in I like food. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: about it. Hanging out with a gentleman named Ty White. Hey, Ty, if you’re listening, by the way, fun [00:18:00] fact, he is the White House. You see in every video game at the Nürburgring, that’s where he lives. He lives at the track there. So that’s actually super cool. So he’s been to Le Mans many, many times, and he was very much our yogi on this trip because he’s like, go here, go here, do these things, whatever.

And he told me years ago in the not too recent past. Lamont was like a food desert. There was nothing you had to fend for yourself. Can you imagine being there camping

Crew Chief Brad: for a week?

Crew Chief Eric: Right. And you didn’t plan ahead. Well, you starved. So now they have these, especially for the hundredth, they built a lot more facilities.

There’s a lot more like food trucks. There’s this really cool brasserie that we ate at twice because it was actually a really good deal. And there weren’t a lot of lines. Cause people were like, I don’t want to sit down dinner. I just want a hot dog or, you know, whatever they could find. But since we were, as the French guys liked to make fun of us repeatedly, we were glamping.

Food was provided in the morning, at least breakfast, and they had a lounge and stuff like that near where our campsite was. Which by the way, if you’re gonna do Lama, [00:19:00] do the glamping, it is totally worth it. Considering how close we were to the track and all that kind of stuff, you get to breakfast, especially the first day and I’m starving.

I don’t even know what time zone I’m in. I’m like, I just want to eat something. And I’m thinking crepes and I’m thinking fresh fruit and brie and all this stuff is running through my head. And I walk in and You left

Crew Chief Brad: all that stuff in Paris.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently. Cause when I walked in, I looked at the table. I looked at Ty.

I’ll look back at the table and he said, Oh, I guess there’s bread for breakfast. There was literally piles of baguettes, couple croissants, more piles of baguettes. And I kid you not a three gallon bucket of Nutella, which I was like, I’m not really sure what to do with all this.

Executive Producer Tania: You put the Nutella on the bread.

It puts the Nutella on the bread,

Crew Chief Eric: but

Crew Chief Brad: you don’t double

Crew Chief Eric: dip. You don’t double dip. You don’t double dip your chip. This would have been easy to accomplish had the baguette not been a weapon of mass destruction.

Executive Producer Tania: It was a guillotine.

Crew Chief Eric: It was made out of concrete. I could have beat it on the table and it still wouldn’t [00:20:00] have broke.

It was so hard. You know, afterwards I was like, Oh, maybe the, you know, that’s the stale baguettes. You can make a cafe au lait or something like that. But no, if you ordered coffee, what did you get? A little teeny. You know, with your three fingers out, not even your pinky espresso. And I’m like, give me a freaking cup of coffee.

Executive Producer Tania: You American.

Crew Chief Eric: I know.

Crew Chief Brad: America, you glamper,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, such a, such a, just a, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: So what’s better that food or the lunch at Watkins Glen for a hook on driving event, man, you know, don’t

Crew Chief Eric: make me make that decision.

Crew Chief Brad: Cause

Crew Chief Eric: it’s

Crew Chief Brad: a tough one. Shout out to HOD.

Crew Chief Eric: And then the second day I watched the guy. Make eggs for people that were there waiting, hungry, again, staring at bread in a walk and burn them because there’s nothing like waking up in the morning to the smell of burnt eggs.

Crew Chief Brad: Burnt eggs, stale baguette, and Nutella.

Crew Chief Eric: In a country where they invented the crepe and the omelets and all this stuff, you’d think they would know how to do this. [00:21:00] You know, somebody told me afterwards, it’s because they don’t know how to cook en masse like we do here in America, like for armies and stuff.

You know, they cook in small quantities. I’m like, okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Because they use our army.

Executive Producer Tania: Even here, they cook a crepe one crepe at a time.

Crew Chief Brad: Could you imagine cooking crepes for a crowd of people at a race? It would take longer than the race to cook the crepes.

Crew Chief Eric: And there were crepe places, and you could get crepes, and they looked super good.

But I was like, you know what? I’m lip lumping. I would like my breakfast, right? Now, I will say, The ice cream was super good as it always is in Europe because it’s gelato based and, you know, all that kind of thing. They had fast food pasta, which was actually really good and I saw how they made it and that was pretty cool.

But what got me is one of the evenings, and I don’t remember which one it was because it all blurs together, we were joking about how Mexican food would be this atrocity. You’ll like never find it in France. It’s like complete sacrilege and whatever. And we’re walking down by the go kart track to head towards where David’s camp was, which by the way, was a [00:22:00] 45 minute walk from my campsite.

Okay. So we’re walking down there. And we see these two young guys sitting on a scaffolding and they got these burritos in their hand. And we literally stopped dead and turn first words were German at a David’s mouth. Wondering if they spoke German, don’t ask me why he did that quite a bit. And they’re like, no, no, no.

And we’re like English. Like, yes. Where did you get the burrito? They’re like, not burrito. And by the time the word kebab got out of his mouth, David was in a full sprint. Like I was like, I’m looking around going, what the hell just happened? And there’s this food truck and it’s a kebab truck. And then I meet up with him and he’s like, dude, you don’t understand.

European kebabs. This is like legit that I’m buying like six of them or whatever. I’m like, uh, okay. They were unbelievably good. It was probably the best meal I had at the track. I mean, I can still taste them in my mouth right now. I thought of you, Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: So better than New York street meat.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, it was so good.

So good.

Crew Chief Brad: But thinking about the food [00:23:00] situation, Le Mans, it’s a, it’s a small French town. Do they have markets and grocery stores and stuff where you can leave where they’re running the race to, can you, as a camper or a glamper, can you take a cooler, fill it with some ice or something and get your own provisions and do it yourself?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes and no. So we met these very nice Canadians that were team Corvette all the way. I’m sorry for team Corvette. And we’ll talk about that more in a minute. They were going into like Arnage or going into Le Mans and then there’s these tiny little grocery stores. You have to imagine though that these grocery stores are selling out quickly.

They’re only really designed to sustain the people that live there during the off season, during the non race season because Le Mans is built around the French countryside. There’s not a lot out there. There’s a lot of farms. There are like two little markets, you know, none of the, the little farmettes or the farmer’s markets are open.

There’s like a couple of restaurants. The Tetra Rouge was closed as far as we could tell. That’s

Executive Producer Tania: poor planning of all those businesses.

Crew Chief Eric: They [00:24:00] can’t support it. Right. And so that’s why Le Mans proper had to do something on campus. Cause otherwise, how do you feed all these people?

Crew Chief Brad: How long did it take you to get from Paris to Le Mans?

Crew Chief Eric: Three hours.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. So you could technically get your provisions. In a surrounding city,

Executive Producer Tania: there was a grocery store between Paris and Lamont. Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. You can get your provisions.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot of nothing between Paris and Lamont when you get on that highway. And I don’t remember the highway number right now.

It looks like those wonderful Fellini films where it’s just someone on a train looking at farmland and there’s one little house. It’s like Chateau Picard and then you pass Chateau Picard and then there’s nothing for another. 30 minutes. And then there’s another vineyard, right? It’s like zero. And when we came back from Lamont, we went off the highway.

We took these back roads zipping through. And the Fiat was great, right? Narrow little farm roads. And you’re just blasting through there. And I’m watching Mark, like grabbing the door handle. And [00:25:00] David’s in the back, laughing. The wheat was as tall as the Fiat was. There was nothing. You’re just like, okay.

And typical of European highways too, if you miss your exit, you’re going to go another 20 minutes before you can turn around. So it’s one of those situations too. Things are really spread apart. There’s not that like road Atlanta where you’re like, well, we’re going to drive to, you know, Buford or whatever and come back.

And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Crew Chief Brad: So basically what you’re saying is. The reason the French people are so thin is because all they do is drink wine and smoke cigarettes and eat stale baguettes. Yes. When I go on a diet, I’m going to go to France. French diet. Yeah. French diet.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, on the other side of the race, you know, things you don’t get to see on TV.

Checkpoints everywhere. It was the 100th of Le Mans. They were on full alert, constantly scanning your badge and your wristbands. And you had to have different color things, you know, depending on what you had access to and all this kind of stuff, because apparently the eco friendly protesters wanted to stop the race.

And they [00:26:00] had attempted to actually during Practice before we even got there. So they were all on high alert and all this kind of stuff. And apparently they’ve done this at other races too, because they’re protesting motorsport and all this kind of thing, luckily, none of that happened. As you guys know, the race went off without a hitch, no, no issues, no protesters or anything like that, but they were definitely concerned.

Something was going to happen. Didn’t really affect us considering we’re like, well, if we go to this quarter of the track, we’re, you know, three hours from. Whatever’s happening at the start, finish line. So it doesn’t really matter. The big debate was who was going to win. I asked you guys before you saw the race, you know how it ended.

Who did you think was going to win?

Crew Chief Brad: The number 56 car, the Toyota garage, 56,

Crew Chief Eric: 56.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. It could have been anyone. I went in with low expectations.

Crew Chief Brad: Lowered expectations. The Ferrari looked like it was going to be the fastest. Although I always root for Jackie Chan, but I don’t think the Jackie Chan cars were in there.

No

Crew Chief Eric: Jackie Chan. No Jackie

Crew Chief Brad: Chan.

Executive Producer Tania: I was hoping that Peugeot would win.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, secretly, they were my dark [00:27:00] horse. They were my underdog because the car is Legit hot. It is a sexy car. It has no arrow like the rest of them. It’s designed specifically for that track.

Executive Producer Tania: Like I wanted Ferrari to win, but I also wasn’t going to be upset if Peugeot won.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there’s a lot of politics. People want to see Toyota dethrone, Porsche’s back, Ferrari hadn’t won in 50 years. What looks better on the cover of the magazine, right? And in some respects, we all know the last few years with Toyota, it’s been a joke. They’ll sacrifice a lamb from LMP2, like Rebellion or somebody else, even the Glickenhaus cars, you know, whatever.

And they’ll put them up against Toyota and they don’t stand a chance. This year, Toyota had. Real competition. I mean, I literally had this debate for an entire week with people about who was going to win, listening to them. And I, and my final word was always basically the same. I think it’s going to be Ferrari and you guys can’t count out Cadillac.

And they’re like, Oh, what does Cadillac know? And I’m like, Cadillac’s been to Le Mans before, but the car they’re running has been proven. [00:28:00] Time and time again at Rolex and other races, it’s an older car, but it doesn’t matter. It can do it. And in the same way, they were laughing at the garage, 56 Camaro, like, Oh, it’s never going to make it.

It’s going to run out of tires, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we got really close to that reality. It was really close there for a moment. It was Ferrari first Cadillac second. Toyota and the squirrel and all that’s whatever, you know, but I think at the end, the bigger disappointment was. Porsche. There were a lot of Porsche people there.

I’m a Porsche fan myself. But I was also playing devil’s advocate during this whole debate to say, well, it’s not really a Porsche. And that would get under people’s skin. Sorry, Ty. I’m still telling you it’s not a Porsche. Why? It’s a Dallara chassis. It’s an Audi engine. It’s all this other stuff. It’s sort of like the Formula One car.

They’re going to slap their badge on it and we’ll call it a Porsche. I was telling people, I think the 963 is short lived, especially with that debut of the 9X that came out during Le Mans, which looks a lot like the Lambo, looks a lot [00:29:00] like the Bugatti that has been previewed. They’re moving in that direction of car.

This 963 isn’t going to make it to the next Le Mans. They’re going to have something else. The only reason it would be on the roster next year is if the new car isn’t ready. Which is a pure Porsche.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe this was just to get their foot in the door. I

Crew Chief Eric: think so. I just

Crew Chief Brad: to get that because they had to be at the hundredth.

Yep. They did not want to miss the party. So they brought whatever they could slap together, knowing they’re still working on something better.

Crew Chief Eric: My sentiments. Exactly. So again, I am proud for Ferrari. That 499 is an amazing car. It sounds good. It looks good. It’s hella fast. It’s qualifying times for the hyper pole.

We’re just. Unbelievably good. And, you know, people, you should have heard that. Oh, it’s going to burn up like the formula one car. And they’re going to, and then at the end, all the memes suddenly changed. What’s too bad. The formula one cars can’t be like the four nine nine. Why can’t the formula one get their shit together?

I’m like, come on guys [00:30:00] talking out of both sides of your mouth. But that’s, that’s racing, right? I mean, we get it. We have our loyalties. We have our fans. I was really happy to see Ferrari win. And Toyota finally get beaten by a legitimate manufacturer. But I do have some rich people thing. If you are a true hardcore Ferrari fan, you could still get VIP access to the Ferrari boxes.

I mean, Porsche was like giving them away after two hours. They’re like, y’all can just come on in here. Have a good time. It’s all good. Would you like to guess? How much? Too

Executive Producer Tania: much.

Crew Chief Brad: More than 50. More than you can

Crew Chief Eric: afford, pal. 8,

Crew Chief Brad: 000. What do I get for my 8, 000 stale baguettes? I don’t

Executive Producer Tania: know. A baguette?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I stopped when they said 8, 000.

I was like, nope, don’t need to know anything more.

Crew Chief Brad: Too rich for my blood.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent.

Crew Chief Brad: Do I get a baby Bugatti? Yeah. Baby Enzo. Yeah, do I get a baby Enzo?

Crew Chief Eric: For a whopping 50 euros, you could have become a member of the Automobile Club of the West. [00:31:00] The ACO has started their own U. S. region. Pretty awesome.

They have lounges all over the track, especially behind Dunlop. There’s one at ACO 18, which are the Porsche grandstands are and a couple other places in the track. You get a 40 percent discount on swag and other things. And food was discounted. If you’re an ACO member spent 50 euros, 60 bucks or whatever came out to us.

Actually worked to our advantage. Now I will say the schwag at LeMans was kind of want, want, I was getting all the emails from the ACO before the race. And a lot of the stuff I wanted either wasn’t available, it was cheaper originally online, or. What I wanted didn’t look the same when I saw it in person.

So what I ended up doing was ordering the stuff either while I was there where I really wanted, or I ordered it when I got back and they’re still actually running clearance sales on selected sizes and stuff that’s left over from Lamont. You can actually save a boatload, especially if you’re an ACO member on any of the schwag.

So that being said, I got an opportunity to spoiler alert, [00:32:00] meet with the new president ambassador of the ACO USA, David Lowe. And he’s coming on the show in a little while to talk about the new club, why you should become a member, what the benefits are going to be to the American audience, things like that, including access to the race commercial free.

For those of us here in the U S instead of having to wonder how the heck we can watch it. I did have breakfast with one of the Lamont’s legends, Margie Smith Haas. She was the first American woman to run at Lamont’s about four years prior to Lynn St. James. And she did that in a Porsche on 935. So we hope to have her on the show as well.

I got some lowered expectations as well. So I posted two memes on social media. You can find it at Grand Tournament of Sports on Instagram and everywhere else that we have social media. And people were saying, well, where’d you get that picture of the guy in the hat? And I’m like, I took that picture. I have the original.

I zoomed in on him. He didn’t see me taking his picture, but I could not. Pass up the opportunity to have a Burt [00:33:00] Reynolds SNL Jeopardy moment.

Executive Producer Tania: But it looks like, what’s his name from Top Gear?

Crew Chief Brad: James May.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: It does look like James May. But that hat was Burt Reynolds big hat. Like, it was so funny. And he had an all red Ferrari suit.

He’s a British guy. We actually talked to him. Very nice. But I could not pass up the opportunity. to post that meme. And the second one came by way of Mark Schenck, who caught this guy while he was taking photographs. Apparently on your checklist of things for Lamont, you need to remember your hat, your radio headset, and your radar gun.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s got like a hundred tattoos and they’re all Lamont. They’re all

Crew Chief Brad: Christopher Walken.

Executive Producer Tania: No, he’s got like the Dunlop tire arch across his back.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like Jackie Ickx and Tom Christensen on there. He’s got a

Executive Producer Tania: Porsche and the Porsche symbol. He’s got so many men’s heads.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought it was Christopher Walken, the one on the right shoulder.

It looks like Christopher Walken.

Crew Chief Eric: So when Mark showed me this picture, we had this whole [00:34:00] discussion about, apparently he was down by pit out and he’s radar gunning the cars on pit exit. And we’re like, Is he going to radio the officials? Is he like the clandestine undercover pit marshal? Like, what’s the point of bringing a radar gun to Lamont?

And how did he get it through security? I mean, there’s so many questions. This is like a French Florida man.

Executive Producer Tania: He hit it in his butt crack. Was there actually security? Were they checking stuff? Yes. They were looking through your bags. Maybe he’s an authorized radar gun.

Crew Chief Brad: He definitely didn’t hide it in his wife, Peter.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey, it’s tie dye though, okay? That makes it classy.

Crew Chief Brad: Is that tie dye, or he’s just, he had a Bic that blew up? Or he

Crew Chief Eric: murdered a Smurf, I’m not sure. Now,

Executive Producer Tania: I, I’d say this guy was from America, but unfortunately I don’t think that’s the case.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I think he’s German.

Executive Producer Tania: I was going to say the same thing.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s definitely German.

He spreckens the Deutsch. He spreckens the radar gun.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re going to do [00:35:00] a little lit hug here, because one of my biggest pet peeves about being at Le Mans.

Crew Chief Brad: Tell us

Crew Chief Eric: what really grinds your gears. Oh boy, oh boy. Oh, you mean the baguettes? No, it’s just never going to let me live that down. The baguettes were terrible.

Crew Chief Brad: What really hardens your baguette?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man. Well, you know, it’s a, it’s a cultural thing, right? So it was like, I don’t know, a red nose on a clown. You could tell the Kiwis, the Canadians, the Aussies, the Americans, Germans from everybody else. Because you know why? We know how to queue up in the line when we want to wait for something. I mean, we might not be the most pleasant people.

We might not be the most patient people, but we know how to get in the line to wait for something. The French and some of the others. I mean, no offense. We love them all. There are brothers in arms, especially in motorsport, but this first come first serve, I’m at a bar trying to get the bartenders [00:36:00] attention while I’m smoking a cigarette three inches from your ear and shouting in French.

As obnoxiously as you possibly can just got on my nerves, like you wouldn’t believe. And I couldn’t believe that smoking was still as openly public and rampant as it was over there. It’s just, we’re so used to now, you know, people change the vaping, which is, you know, neither. You haven’t been to

Executive Producer Tania: Europe in a while.

Jesus Christ. I

Crew Chief Eric: guess I don’t know, but it was evident from the cigarette butts and everything everywhere. But it was just like, I never realized maybe even it’s a post COVID thing where it’s like. I need my elbows worth of space. Please back off. Get in a line. I was here before you. It was super irritating and it’s cultural.

Right. And you’re like, Oh, okay. Uh, all right. The other thing I learned, thanks, David, was you don’t tip in France. And if you do, it’s like super low. It’s like a dollar or two, because apparently everybody over there is salary and tipping is very taboo and all this kind of thing. And tipping is like an American

Executive Producer Tania: don’t really tip in Europe in general.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it was, it was weird. [00:37:00] I don’t know. It was a culture shock that I was pleasant to learn and I will remember that, but the whole, the way you fight to the front to get the attention of somebody. And it’s just like, Oh, whatever. And don’t lie to me. Y’all know how to speak English.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like I would have gotten into a lot of fights.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, I needed a body guard. That’s for sure. Freedom fries. That’s all I’m going to say. So after I left France, I went to Denmark and I joined my family because we decided we were going to take the kids to of all places. The home of Lego, which is Denmark. I won’t go into all the details of Denmark, but I will say this.

It’s sort of like Hawaii. It’s a chain of islands. You know, they get bigger, all this kind of thing. Copenhagen, the capital is on the smallest and it’s within an hour of Oslo, Norway. end of Stockholm, Sweden. It’s beautiful. It’s super clean. It’s very modern. I kept joking that that’s where all the German hippies were exiled to, you know, stuff like that.

It’s amazing. It was very different. It was a stark contrast to being in France and really enjoyed it. Had a great time. [00:38:00] And one of the things I learned while I was over there is by 2025. Mass transit vehicles, especially taxis and buses and things like that, will be all EVs in Denmark. It’s the law. We didn’t rent a car while we were there, so no more Fiat 500 stories.

But we did take the trains, which were amazing. And then we took some cabs, which in our case were mostly Mercedes. And so I got to ride in some of these new Mercedes EVs that we talk about on the show. Fit and finish. Was nothing less than exquisite, even though we’ve always joked that Mercedes are just European taxi cabs.

They are, in fact. But the interior was plush. It was luxurious. It was German. It was what you expected from a Mercedes. But if you had blindfolded me and threw me in the trunk, other than having no noise, would I have known that it wasn’t an ICE powered car? Probably not. It was very nice. It was just interesting to even talk to the cabbies.

Everybody in Denmark is very friendly. It’s known as one of the happiest places in the world to live and work and things like that. And so [00:39:00] people are very friendly and they all do speak English in Denmark. Admittedly, they do. It was great. It was good to learn from all those folks. We actually went and visited some car dealerships while we were there.

And we got a guided tour of the new ID7 and the ID3 at Citi Volkswagen in Copenhagen, which is just outside of Tivoli. And I know Tanya got to see these cars while she was at the CES show. We reported about that on an earlier drive thru. But I actually spotted XPeng dealership across the street from the Volkswagen dealership.

So I thought that was interesting because we joked about like, Who’s this? But where are these guys? These Chinese EV manufacturers? Where’d they come from? They got a dealership. In Copenhagen.

Executive Producer Tania: Of all places.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? Now, I do want to quickly talk about the Legoland experience, and I don’t want to talk about amusement parks and things like that, but I want to mention that Legos are not just for kids.

All right? Our generation is in charge at Lego. There is a lot of car stuff going on, as evidenced by the Speed Champions, the Technic stuff, all things you can buy on the shelf here in the U. S. There’s some [00:40:00] really cool stuff overseas that we won’t get, but I will say the Ferrari Experience Center at Legoland.

All petrol heads were all just, just doing the church nod right now. It was like a holy church of Ferrari. You just walked in there. It was amazing. Bunch of stuff on display. All these activities. My girls were into it. We did it for a while. Took some pictures by a life size 599 that they built completely out of Legos.

Other than the wheels. Absolutely gorgeous. You know, stuff like that. But I will say there’s a video you guys got to check out. If you haven’t seen it, we captured the infamous. Legendary long running Lego land traffic school. And it is the cutest and most hilarious thing you have ever seen. So cannot recommend that enough.

I got deeper into the world of Lego upon returning home and I learned some new things, some new techniques while I was there. Lots of really interesting stuff while we were in Denmark and I learned about a website. Maybe in more detail than I knew before. And that’s rebrickable. com. And that allows you to take some Lego sets and turn them into some other really cool things without having to buy new parts.

And I mentioned [00:41:00] before that, you know, under some rich people things, there was some kits that you could get from like the block zone to build, you know, different kinds of automotive models that are out. I found the best of the best. At least in my opinion, you take Dom Toretto’s charger from fast and furious.

And did you know, you can turn it into the 1989 Batmobile, the Michael Keaton Batmobile. It is the hotness. And so I went ahead and did it. I have some pictures on doing the conversion. Just a lot of fun. And so that kind of reignited some stuff for me, where it’s just like a good way to spend time with the kids.

They’re interested in, you know, building their little towns, but also in the engineering side with the cars and stuff. So that’s been a lot of fun. So if you’re out there looking for maybe a different hobby, something new, don’t discount Lego. That’s for sure. And then to round out our showcase here of world travel, Tanya and I, I guess she was right, I went with her to the great French colony of Quebec in Canada, to the city of Montreal.

So I couldn’t get away from the French this summer [00:42:00] if I tried.

Executive Producer Tania: But we had a better baguette. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: we did. And we had poutine, and we had some brisket, and we had all sorts of fun food, Brad. The food in Quebec. It’s better than the food in France.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, it’s better than the food in Le Mans.

Crew Chief Eric: My dinner in Paris wasn’t that great either.

But I did sit down for a moment with Jensen Button and Jordan Taylor. It was a great conversation, especially after them completing the race with the Garage 56 car. So that was pretty cool. Wait,

Executive Producer Tania: how did, wait, how did you end up

Crew Chief Eric: having dinner with

Executive Producer Tania: them?

Crew Chief Eric: We were at the hotel and I’m sitting there chatting with David from MIE Racing and I wasn’t even paying attention.

And then he kind of looks over his shoulder and he goes, you know who those two are, right? And I said, yeah. He goes, let’s go over and talk to him. Okay. That’s literally how it went down.

Executive Producer Tania: But then you had a whole meal with them or? No,

Crew Chief Eric: we, we chatted with them for like five or seven minutes. They were just kind of hanging out.

They were done eating. They were just kind of sitting and drinking. And then we went back to our table. So we sort of abandoned our meal, went and talked to them before they disappeared. So yeah, it was great. I mean, got to meet him. We didn’t do the whole, can [00:43:00] I take a selfie with you? Can I that type of guy.

Neither is David. It was really great to have that memory to be able to talk to them.

Crew Chief Brad: So you didn’t invite them on the show? Cause I’ve been trying to get Jordan Taylor on the show.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I think Jensen button would be pretty cool too. So anyway, I, we, we’ve gone off the rails somehow. Did you know I went to France?

Oh, wait, Canada. We’re talking about Canada. That’s right. You went

Crew Chief Brad: to France and then little France, little France, exactly. Quebec.

Crew Chief Eric: Petit la

Crew Chief Brad: France. Petit la France.

Crew Chief Eric: In preparation for this trip, I decided, you know what, I should probably do a service on my Jeep. And I looked at my records and I realized I hadn’t changed oil in a year, but I also hadn’t done 10, 000 miles yet.

I was very close though. So I was like, Oh crud. So I went through, did all the service. And at this point I decided, you know what, now is the time we’re going to go on in this long journey to Montreal from the DC area and back. I’m going to put it evolve in the diesel and see how it does. Does it match the hype?

Does it match everything we talked about on the episode? Granted, I had already put it in the Pacifica [00:44:00] and we already noticed the change. It runs cooler, you know, this kind of stuff. But the hybrid’s different because the engine doesn’t run all the time, right? It wants to be an EV more than it wants to be ice powered.

So the one thing I noticed right away, and I think Tanya probably noticed it too, the engine is noticeably quieter. Immediately, like as soon as I put the oil in and fired it up, it was definitely quieter. I was like, huh. I mean, and diesels are loud, right? So you’re just like, oh, okay. The telltale sign here is, and this is where the numbers are sort of interesting, right?

They talk about MPGs being higher. They talk about horsepower being greater, all this kind of stuff. And it has to do with the composition of the oil and all these things you can learn about on the Evolve Lubricants episode. What I boiled it down to is. The oil itself runs significantly cooler than what I had in it before.

And on average, it was six to 12 degrees cooler, depending on load, than the oil I was running previously. So if your engine is running cooler, it’s going to be more efficient. You’re going to waste less fuel, you know, all these kinds of things, blah, blah, blah. So it all sort of adds up in that way. What I didn’t [00:45:00] see Was the four to five more miles per gallon or anything like that, but dot dot dot what I got out of this was overall higher cumulative average.

So with mixed city driving my maximum of 33 miles per gallon, which we already proved at the Green Grand Prix using my near year old oil. I was getting 32 point whatever miles to the gallon during that event. And so I didn’t get better than 33, but I was able to hold it there longer. I was able to keep my average higher.

So maybe my MPG is higher, but I don’t see a huge spike. When I do the math at the end of the day, right? It’s like, okay, well, I’m getting 32, but I’m getting 32. Much longer than I was getting it before. What I guess what I’m trying to say is the numbers sort of add up. Now the bigger question comes in return on investment.

Is it worth the cost? Because it is significantly more expensive. I’ve sent my oil off to Blackstone to have it tested. I’m going to go maybe a service interval and a half. [00:46:00] So I’m going to try to put 15, 000 miles on the oil. That’ll take me like two years, obviously. Test it again and see where we’re at.

Did the turbo torch it? Did it break down? How did it hold up? If it comes out as clean as it went in. To use that phrasing, then it’s probably worth it. If you can go to X, the oil change with these higher results, the engines running cooler, you’re seeing a higher cumulative average, all that kind of stuff.

So for me going to Montreal was this really awesome experiment, real life testing with this new technology, this new oil by evolve. So I think I’m satisfied so far and we’ll check back in. as we go along. So other cool things we saw in Montreal, right, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh my gosh. We saw a VinFast dealer in the mall.

Crew Chief Eric: Another oddball, what, Vietnamese EV company or something like that?

Executive Producer Tania: We also saw they were building a VinFast dealer and service, well, I guess maybe more service center, uh, somewhere out kind of in the middle of nowhere off the [00:47:00] highway.

Crew Chief Eric: So it looks like VinFast is making a move to be in Montreal of all places.

So that was kind of cool. Like, again, we read about these and sometimes maybe we chuckle like, or who is this brand, but Xpeng, VinFast and others showing up in some of these other countries, if, and when they’ll ever come to the U S we don’t know. Right.

Executive Producer Tania: They were at CES. They had a huge display there. So

Crew Chief Eric: there were some annoying things about being in Montreal, like the traffic laws.

Executive Producer Tania: Admittedly, some of their traffic signals made no sense, like the stoplights didn’t make sense. As weird as that is to say, there would be like double colors sometimes. Which you could interpret to be like no turn on red kind of thing, but then there’d be like double green. I think at one point, like, what does that mean?

And then there was a delay, like, part one of the greens would come, but then the other wouldn’t.

Crew Chief Eric: It was a green arrow pointing forward. Yeah. I’ve never seen that before.

Executive Producer Tania: And then so people wouldn’t [00:48:00] move, and you’re like, the light’s green, and then the other light would turn green, and then they would go.

It’s like, I don’t understand. I’ve never seen we only have three choices

Crew Chief Eric: and you couldn’t tell when you were in the city limits or out of the city limits because apparently there’s no right turn on red anywhere in the city limits of Montreal but then one of the times we went out we thought we were still and then I’m sitting at the light Trying to be nice.

I even changed my speedometer over to kilometers, you know, stuff like that. I’m trying to follow their rules. And this lady’s behind me, hawking at me. And I’m like, I didn’t think I was supposed to turn, but it was one of those stupid lights where it had a straight arrow and a right arrow. And I’m like, I don’t know what to do anymore.

Diagonal

Executive Producer Tania: arrow and a back arrow. And it was like 18. Symbols

Crew Chief Eric: so confusing. It was

Executive Producer Tania: weird.

Crew Chief Eric: Unlike Canada, Denmark, the traffic lights, they did something really, really interesting. When it’s about to switch from green to red, they flash the yellow in both directions, so you know that it’s about to change, and so you get [00:49:00] this anticipation like, oh, the light’s gonna change.

That’s pretty cool. I found that to be like delightfully refreshing. It’s like, oh look, the light’s gonna change. Pay attention. Sucker .

Executive Producer Tania: Oh look, the light’s gonna change. Floor it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. What’s your reaction time? Do you go on the yellow? They do drive slower in Canada, although they are situationally aware, like they are in Europe, like passing is easy.

People stay in the right lane, zipper merging, all the things you expect when you’re over there. It’s just some of the stuff is just, I don’t know. It’s just a little bizarre. And you’re like, okay, zero parking in the city too. That was finding a, you know, a white fly, but in France. All the cars are obviously small.

Every once in a while, there’s like an X5 or a Cayenne or something like that. We saw one guy with a pickup truck, American, like Dodge Ram. You’re like, Oh, he’s got to be military. Cause there’s no other reason for that to be here. But when I went to Canada, I was like the Jeep in Montreal. I was like the biggest thing on the road.

It was really weird because I am the largest thing here and parking. It [00:50:00] was fun. This is interesting. But I also found that a lot of their cars were older up there too. Not a ton of new stuff, new, new stuff. Like in the last couple of years on the roads, maybe that has to do with the fact that the Canadian dollar is like in a weaker than ours, it’s like a 25 percent discount

Crew Chief Brad: hashtag chips,

Crew Chief Eric: but we did get to do something really cool.

Tanya’s suggestion. What was that?

Executive Producer Tania: We went to the circuit. The F1 track in Montreal. Because apparently the entire island is basically a public park and the track is just open all the time to anyone. They put cones down, they split the track lane. The right side gets to be public traffic that can just at a slow speed and they got lots of stop signs up so you really can’t do anything crazy.

Do as many laps as you want I guess. I don’t think they’ll ever kick you out. You could go all day. The place is open like literally from sun up to sundown. And then on the left hand side, bicyclists. Joggers, walkers, bladers, anything you can do outside of your vehicle, you get the lane next to it.

Crew Chief Eric: And we measured, it’s about two and a [00:51:00] half miles.

Executive Producer Tania: Just under something like that, which… I will

Crew Chief Eric: say the speed limit was suggested at some points. We were going a little quicker than the speed limit. We did take video of it, it’s available on our club YouTube channel. I’ve always joked that they’re driving around a potato because, you know, it’s on an island.

I can understand why it’s so difficult to get. on and off of that track as a spectator. There’s very little grandstands because there’s just not a lot of… What’s the word, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Talking about space, the track itself, like, I don’t know, I didn’t appreciate it when you watch the races, but that sucker is narrow AF.

There is no space.

Crew Chief Eric: And no runoff.

Executive Producer Tania: You have no room for error.

Crew Chief Eric: If it’s three abreast at its widest, it’s wide. That’s it. But it is super narrow. The turns are really tight. It feels like when you drive it, you’re just doing like what we would call an autocross to one cone turnarounds. It’s like a really narrow oval track.

Almost. It’s just, I [00:52:00] would love to drive a Miata there at full bore or something small, you know, like a little cars, I think would be a lot of fun there. Something high horsepower, like Corvette or 911 and you screw up. It’s going to be a bad day for you. But we did it. We can say where we do like four laps, something like that.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: We just, we’re like, oh, let’s just keep going. Just keep going. Just keep going.

Executive Producer Tania: If I lived there, I would be biking that all the time.

Crew Chief Eric: The problem is it takes forever to get there.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. And I don’t know where you’d park.

Crew Chief Brad: How do you get to it? Like, is there a ferry? Is there a bridge?

Executive Producer Tania: No, there’s a bridge.

Crew Chief Eric: Two bridges. There’s like one on one end corner of the island and one that comes in the middle of the potato. Because

Executive Producer Tania: at the top of the island is Six Flags Montreal.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Oh god, that’s a terrible design. You have to get to the island to go to Six Flags. Can you bike or walk across the bridge? Like, is it safe for that?

Executive Producer Tania: I didn’t pay attention when we were driving across it.

Crew Chief Eric: There were people walking. There’s a sidewalk. I mean, Montreal as a city is generally pretty walkable. The problem is the [00:53:00] area right before you get to the track is like being at the wharf in Baltimore where all the sea containers are and stuff or like Long Beach, you know, where all the boats come in.

So it’s sort of the same thing. And you’re like, I don’t know that I want to be hanging out down there as a pedestrian. I didn’t see too many hotels. There is a casino on the island, which is in sort of the middle of the track. It looks like a giant aviary. So there’s a lot of stuff packed into a small space when you get there.

And again, this is why they have to shuttle you in and out of that place, if you go to spectate. Now that I’ve been there, my want to go to the Canadian Grand Prix in person. I’m sort of like Tanya. I’m like, I’ll watch this from the comfort of my couch.

Executive Producer Tania: It would be hectic to go like that would be.

Frustrating, I think.

Crew Chief Brad: You would probably have to park on the other side.

Executive Producer Tania: Beware, because there’s no parking, like, anywhere.

Crew Chief Brad: Next to the shipping containers.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re a mile away or more at that point, for

Crew Chief Brad: sure. Somehow they figured it out. They don’t want to go out there.

Crew Chief Eric: But that’s also why there’s a limited number of…

Seats and tickets and everything to get [00:54:00] that sells out so fast, because again, you don’t realize how small it is until you see it in person. So it was a neat experience. Summer’s not over yet. And we do have some other travel in store and we’ll talk about that as we go along here, but that sort of wraps up our showcase.

Brad, what did you learn? Do you think you want to go on a European vacation?

Crew Chief Brad: Actually, I’m going to turn your question to me into another question for you.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh boy. It’s inception time.

Crew Chief Brad: You’ve been to several different professional races now. One, would you do it again? And two, is this now your favorite experience in a professional race?

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve heard that the Nürburgring 24 is also a spectacle and it’s pretty awesome to go to, so I got to reserve judgment, but I think this race and the Nürburgring 24 are sort of in a category unto themselves. It’s hard to compare the experience. That you would get it petite or at Salins or any of the other races, even the Indy 500 for that matter.

And those are great races. Don’t get me [00:55:00] wrong. Le Mans is just so over the top. It’s so different. 330, 000 people spread across, you know, it doesn’t seem like it’s that many people, but it’s packed. It’s the history, all the extra things that were going on, even when they pulled all the cars out of the museum, ran them on track, all the stuff that just.

It was unbelievable. Part of it was because it was the 100th. And I don’t know that every Le Mans is like that. It’s all that, you know, pomp and circumstance that was going on for this one. I think the 101st is going to be a big deal because of all the cars that didn’t come for this one are going to be there next year.

So I think next year is going to be really exciting. Would I go back? Yes. I’ve already planned to in nine years. For the second hundredth, which is the hundredth running of Lamont’s not the hundredth anniversary of Lamont. So I’m really curious to see how obviously things evolve over the next decade. I’m going to be a fan for life for sure.

It was an unforgettable experience. It was completely surreal. It’s still even thinking about it, looking back, it’s like, wow, we did all these things. And there’s so many things I even forgot because you’re [00:56:00] operating on very little sleep and only baguettes. I needed. Denmark just to decompress from Lamar and then come home from that.

It was just a whirlwind kind of thing. So in answer to your question, yes. I mean, I have always loved Lamar and I think I will continue to do so until the day they don’t race there anymore. Well, we do have some light fare for our drive through fans out there. So we are going to talk about. Porsche Audi and Volkswagen news really quick.

There’s a video link we want to share with you guys narrated by Patrick McDreamy Dempsey himself about Porsche at Le Mans. It probably ends with him crying. We all know how this story ended. Okay guys, right Ty? We know, we know how it ended. One of the things that happened during Le Mans, people ask me, were there support races?

Was there this? Was there that? And there are some support races. There’s a Ferrari challenge race, which, you know, I took videos of. They wrecked in the first corner, which is fantastic, on the first lap, you know, because cold tires. And there’s a Porsche challenge race, and that’s super cool and all that kind of [00:57:00] stuff.

The things you would expect that you’ve seen at an IMSA race before. As I mentioned, they pulled all the cars out of the museum, driven by a lot of the legends of Le Mans, and that was like 20 30 minutes of just pure awesomeness to see cars from the early 1920s all the way through up to the cars of last year out on track at full song, 917s, Audis, Peugeots, BMWs, Bugattis, Bentleys, you name it, right?

Amazing. But Bugatti, that was the name that was missing from the roster this year. I mean, it’s the great race. It’s the hundredth. Where’s the pinnacle of French automotive engineering? Where’s Bugatti? Peugeot was there. That’s Stellantis. Let’s be serious now. They brought out the new Bolide during one of the lunch breaks, and they had it out on track for like 20 minutes doing hot laps.

And I tell you what, You’re looking at the lineup for 2024 with the new Lambo and the Porsche 9X and everything else. The Bolide is like the Batmobile. Absolutely amazing. Ballistically [00:58:00] quick. And it was quiet too. So you weren’t sure what was going on. You thought the track was cold. And then there’s just this blue and black blur that just, Whoa, rockets by.

Right. And you’re like, Whoa, I can’t wait to see a Bugatti. Back on track, especially at Lamont. So I am super hopeful for this. And I’m hoping that that test session was really to get everybody revved up and tease us for the 2024 entry. As I stated before, Lambo has unveiled their GTP prototype for next year.

And it also looks fantastic. If that car’s coming out, I’m telling you, there’s going to be a Porsche that’s very similar to it. I

Crew Chief Brad: still think the Ferrari looks better.

Crew Chief Eric: 499 is gorgeous. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s awesome. The Lambo

Crew Chief Brad: looks like what you would think a Lambo would look like. The angles and all that stuff.

Yeah, I’m still the Ferrari guy.

Crew Chief Eric: The 499, that paint livery. Throws back all the way to the three 30 P four from the late sixties, which was basically the last time they won at Lamar, especially overall, I got to see that car in the museum is out on track, all that [00:59:00] stuff. I mean, just absolutely amazing. And those old Ferraris are just.

Absolutely fantastic. Since we mentioned the Peugeot and just a little bit of student news, not only did push out, come out with their new car, which we’ve been talking about for basically a year now, the nine X eight, like I said before, it is fire aesthetically. It is a beautiful car at the Peugeot booth.

Which we were at several times for multiple reasons, they had this big Lego box sitting next to one of the cars. And I’m like, what is this all about? David jokingly said, ah, they’re probably going to bring out like a life size one or something like that at some point. Cause there’s like this countdown timer.

And I said, what are they going to build it here while we’re waiting? Like all the parts can’t be in that box. So at one point they shut the whole thing down, you know, put up the curtains, whatever. And then they unveiled a full size replica Lego Technic version of the 9×8, which is an upscale version of the Lego Technic that you can buy today in the Lego store.

And it is absolutely awesome. The stuff that the guys at Lego can do is just brilliant. I got all sorts of pictures of the car from different [01:00:00] angles and stuff like that, but there was something else that came up. So we’re in the booth and we’re actually talking to the founder, CEO of Playseat, like having a good time.

We’re trying out their simulator, all this kind of thing. I see all these people working the booth, got their Peugeot swag on. And on the back, they have this Lego Technic Peugeot t shirt thing. I’m like, I want one of those. So I go into the store and I’m looking at some stuff. I was like, Oh yeah, they got this really nice looking hoodie.

I love me some black hoodies. And they got this lime green and silver accents. I want to get one. I want to get this Lego shirt, right? Cause I think it’s really cool. It’s a good way to kind of bridge the two worlds. So I go up to the counter sort of in French. Do you speak English? And like, yeah, yeah. Okay.

English. I told the guy, I said, I would like this hoodie in American XL. And he never been so off put in my life. He goes, yes, you are XL. And I’m like, Oh, Oh, Oh, okay. All right. Bye. So he comes back, goes, we don’t have it in that color. We only have it in gray. Well, I’m like, I don’t wear gray. So that’s fine.

So I said, what about this Lego technique t shirt that your guys are wearing over on the floor? He goes, we do not sell this year. You must go to [01:01:00] Lego. And there’s a Lego store at Lamont. So I was like, okay, cool. I tell David, after we wrap up, we go over there, the Lego store. And I said, I took a picture of it just because I thought it was cool anyway.

And I show the lady and she goes, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to go to push it out and get it from them. I’m like, all right, I’ve had enough. We’ve been through this already. It’s not happening. So I gave up. I’m still looking for that t shirt. So if anybody sees it, I want it.

Crew Chief Brad: You didn’t take your XL ass back over to Peugeot and say, where’s my fricking t shirt?

Yeah, right. You are XS. Oh, okay. I wonder what he would have said to me.

Crew Chief Eric: Now it’s time for a little bit of domestic news brought AmericanMuscle. com, your source for OEM and performance parts for your Chevy, Ford, or Mopar vehicle. We heard the bad news, right? Brad, I mean, you’ve had a big crying in your Wheaties this whole time.

It’s sad, but I,

Crew Chief Brad: I haven’t been excited about team Corvette since the C7R. So it’s been what, two or three years now that I’ve just been kind of mad on them. It’s sad, but Ford did the same thing with the Ford GT not too long ago. What was that two years ago, they dropped it and opted for [01:02:00] privateers instead.

So

Crew Chief Eric: for those of you trying to figure out what Brad’s talking about, GM’s Team Corvette Racing is no longer a thing. They have announced Corvette’s retirement this year. They announced it at Le Mans and they are moving to a privateer model, which is what Ferrari and Porsche have done for many years now.

So this is not uncommon. So they’re going to supply the teams. With the cars and the parts and everything else, but it’s up to the teams to figure out what they’re going to do with those cars and how they’re going to campaign them, who’s going to drive them and all that kind of stuff. So

Crew Chief Brad: after what didn’t it start with Dale Earnhardt with the C five with the C five.

Yeah. So that was early two thousands late nineties.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So let’s say almost 25 years for sure. It’s sad to see team Corvette go. Yes. We mentioned it before. Garage 56. People were laughing. They were laughing hard. They were making fun of the NASCAR special. Oh, this and that. That car’s never going to make it, as I mentioned.

But against all odds, they kicked ass. Blue passes

Crew Chief Brad: for prototype cars.

Crew Chief Eric: I tell you what, seeing it in person, their [01:03:00] closing speeds and their ability to walk away from other cars was unbelievable. It didn’t click until we were on the Ferris wheel and we could see in the distance as they would get on the straightaways and you would just watch the garage 56 car, not walk, but run away from an LMP two car unbelievably fast.

It’s trap speeds were ridiculous too. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. I got to hand it to the team though. I mean, you look at it and you go, how much of this is really NASCAR? How much of it is modified? It’s really a Camaro GT three, you know, stuff like that, blah, blah, blah. All the elements are there. We don’t really see NASCARs go for that length of time.

Yeah. They do 500 laps at Daytona or Talladega or whatever. And that’s what four hours with 24 hours. Plus imagine. They only ran one car and they had to do all the practice sessions, all the qualifying sessions. They did more than 24 hours. Those cars, that’s the other thing people don’t realize. They don’t run for just 24 hours.

They run for like [01:04:00] nearly two weeks by the time they’re done because of all the different things that they’re doing with them. Unbelievable accomplishment by that team and by the car itself. So I’m excited to see where that goes. If they do anything with it next time,

Crew Chief Brad: I’d love to see it back next year.

Crew Chief Eric: Every time it went by though, I was like, that’s. Dollar bills and eagles and freedom coming out that exhaust pipe. I mean, it was just unreal. That’s

Crew Chief Brad: the sound of America.

Crew Chief Eric: America, right? I mean, it was just like, you wanted to wave a flag every time it went by. It was unreal. It was just like, wow. And I will say this, the crowds at Lamar were different than they are like in an American race.

You go to the Indy 500 people doing the wave and you think you’re in a baseball game and it’s like a whole thing over there. It was like being at a golf match and there was like light clapping and then you would hear people get excited. Like if a car, like let’s say it’s spun and went into the gravel trap or you get this big, like just like a golfing match.

Ooh, like if somebody went off track, it was really bizarre. But I tell you what, when. [01:05:00] The garage 56 car finished the race and cross the checker people exploded. It was just like, ah, you know, it was, that was cool to see the appreciation for that car when it finished. So

Crew Chief Brad: can you explain the garage 56? Isn’t that like a Le Mans thing?

It is.

Crew Chief Eric: It is specific to Le Mans. It is a one car class. It is designed for experimental, like, super prototype cars. It’s garage number 56, because there’s 55 other garages. Some of the other garage 56 cars you might remember, let’s say the front wheel drive Nissan. Jerd. That is the worst Le Mans car ever.

It’ll go down in the history as such. The DeltaWing car, do you remember that one?

Crew Chief Brad: Turd.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So they’ve been all weird stuff like that. And so the garage 56 car, that’s where they stuck it. Right. It’s an unlimited class. I can do whatever they want. As long as they didn’t break, they were going to win their class because they’re the only car in it.

Crew Chief Brad: Is there always a garage 56 car?

Crew Chief Eric: No, it is hit or miss. So this is the [01:06:00] first garage 56 car, I think, since that Nissan, probably

Crew Chief Brad: since the front wheel drive. And then has a garage 56 car ever won outright? No. No. No. No. Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Not in my recollection because they’ve always broken.

Crew Chief Brad: So is this the first one in a long time to actually finish the race?

Because I don’t think the Nissan finished.

Crew Chief Eric: No, the Nissan didn’t make it, but like, I don’t know, the first three hours or something like that.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Fun wheel drive. Not very fun that day. They

Crew Chief Eric: have that car on display at the museum. It’s outside in a glass box next to the EB110 Bugatti for some weird reason.

But yeah, they don’t even want it in the museum. It’s like, I think so terrible. We’ll put it out there and they don’t

Crew Chief Brad: drive it around anymore. Cause it’s got broken axles.

Crew Chief Eric: What a bad design. That was,

Crew Chief Brad: I would say out of everything that you’ve experienced and explained about going to Lamar, the garage 56 car is what I have FOMO about like missing that.

Crew Chief Eric: We got to see it up close in person, all that stuff, really kind of take a look at it and everything. I mean, sort of once in a lifetime, I mean, unless they go back, but I don’t see that happening again. Although I would like to see it [01:07:00] spawn a Camaro GT three. To go against Ford, because that’s the other big reveal at Le Mans was Ford unveiled the GT three Mustang while we were there.

And the only thing I heard from people was it’s huge. The S six 50 is big. It’s bigger than the S five 50 Mustang. But I mean, it just looked aggressive. It looked

Crew Chief Brad: mean wide body to fit the bigger tires and everything. You

Crew Chief Eric: know, it’s going to sound amazing. It’s going to be fast because the Mustang up until this point, the GT four Mustangs, as we learned following around world challenge, they’re pretty limited.

They were pretty neutered compared to a lot of the other cars in GT four. So I think moving up to GT three allows them to really stretch out that Shelby motor and everything else and go for gold there. Again, the hundred and first Lamont’s next year’s Lamont’s is going to be awesome too. We’ll see how it plays out.

A lot of representation from America. America. Yeah. As I mentioned before, Toyota’s [01:08:00] number two car was taken out by a squirrel. It was funny and sad at the same time. And it was really stressful there for a while because there was a big battle back and forth between Ferrari and Toyota. It all came down to pitch strategy.

You know, who is using less. Fuel and all this kind of stuff, tire management, all these kinds of things. I know that Ferrari was like doubling down on their tires to try to stretch out and all this kind of thing. If you looked at race speeds versus qualifying speeds, they were way down. Lap times were significantly down.

You could tell the strategy was totally different during the race, but when that squirrel took out the Toyota, Oh my God. And then that Cadillac. On like the first lap coming into the Molson chicane. Oh, what a disaster. I mean, how do you cause a wreck like 90 seconds into the race? You know, they still had two other cars.

The odds were in their favor. They had one more car than everybody else. You don’t count the Joda 963 for Porsche. And those last couple hours there for Toyota. [01:09:00] Once they had that big screw up where he missed the braking zone. That was it. It was Ferrari’s race to lose. And you could tell they were backing way off.

To conserve the car, Toyota almost a lap behind at that point. There’s no way they were going to make that up in an hour, not without potentially breaking the car. I feel bad for them, but I don’t at the same time. Well, let’s move on to random new EVs and concept cars. A name I never thought I would

Crew Chief Brad: hear associated with an EV.

Crew Chief Eric: Right?

Executive Producer Tania: Caterham.

Crew Chief Eric: Famous for taking over production of the Lotus Super 7 in 1962.

Executive Producer Tania: If someone just showed you a picture of this, you would never associate it with a Caterham. It looks similar to the Alpine.

Crew Chief Eric: Which I’m glad you brought that car up. The A110, those things are all over the place in France. That’s another car I would buy, no questions asked.

And they have that new electric R5 looking thing that Tanya has talked about before, talking about EVs and concepts. That’s going to be the hotness. Two cars we’re never going to get. Womp womp. That is womp

Executive Producer Tania: womp. Enjoy the [01:10:00] single seater backseat with the split headrest that’s built into the back wall of the car.

Crew Chief Eric: Continuing from the last drive through, we mentioned how Toyota leadership has said that they are not interested in building pure EVs, they are sticking to the hybrid model. And you know what? I got confirmation of that while I was at the race. Combustible hydrogen is the new tech of choice. While we were at Ligier Unveiled their new, one of the first combustible hydrogen powered race cars that they developed in house sort of looks like a Ferrari 550 Maranello or 575 LM.

If you look at it in pictures, we recorded the whole session, really interesting information from their vice president about it. That is the way of the future. We’ve been hearing that from some other people and Toyota is. Also moving in that direction, moving away from their fuel cell technology to combustible hydrogen.

And the advantage to combustible hydrogen is, and this is information I understand [01:11:00] from some folks at Bosch that I talked to, is they need to figure out how to store the hydrogen in the vehicle safely. The rest of the motor stays the same. The injection system basically stays the same, except for the nozzles.

The fuel injectors that they’re using and ECU, all that stuff gets reflashed. And they’re basically keeping the ice cars, the way they were always built, making a few modifications and solving the hydrogen delivery problem. And now we can breathe a whole new life. Into our ice power cars and funny that we’re talking about that this week as we’re recording Goodwood is going on and Rowan Atkinson, famous Mr.

Bean, who also happens to be a petrol head was interviewed at Goodwood because he was showcasing the new combustible hydrogen H2 Toyota GR Yaris at the hill climb. And he gives a really long talk about it and the technology and what it’s like to drive and all this kind of thing. And he says right then and there.

It’s direct injection, you know, dah, dah, dah, all this stuff that [01:12:00] even Bosch and Ligier were talking about. So that now is making me excited for the future. That’s going to breathe new life into old cars if we can figure out how to retrofit that stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Sounds no different than people retrofitting their diesels to run off biofuel.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Very similar thought.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a similar concept, and it’s, it actually, it’s a kind of a genius idea to not scrap.

Executive Producer Tania: In concept.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, well, yes, of course.

Executive Producer Tania: Again, the same thing they haven’t solved yet is how you onboard it, and how do you have a hydrogen fuel station.

Crew Chief Eric: With these prototypes, they’re handling that in house.

They’re able to construct their hydrogen containment unit, all that. But the proof of concept. is now been basically satisfied to say it can be done.

Executive Producer Tania: Can you imagine all I see is the early scene in Zoolander where everyone’s flinging the gasoline on each other to whams wake me up before you go go and then somebody goes to light their cigarette and the whole place [01:13:00] blows up.

They need to solve that problem because you can’t have somebody willy nilly hydrogen into the air while they’re fucking smoking their cigarette. At the fuel station.

Crew Chief Eric: Since we’re talking about breathing life into new cars, Brad, it’s time for Lost and Found. What have you got for us?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, the usual. Nobody wants this turd of a Cadillac DeVille at Gray Chevrolet.

Is

Executive Producer Tania: it still for sale?

Crew Chief Brad: It is still for sale. I’m starting to think there’s no actual car. They just want you to call and then come in. And then there’s a couple of Volkswagens. There’s the 2000 Volkswagen Jetta, 2000 Volkswagen Jetta, GLS VR six. Ice not listed. And then that four GT is still out there. 2008 Jetta, blah, blah, blah.

2012 Fiat 500.

Crew Chief Eric: You sure your browser isn’t cached from two months ago? I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: Nope. I literally just. Did a search.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re saying people are holding onto their cars longer. Maybe that’s why there’s nothing good for sale, right?

Crew Chief Brad: The whole point of this segment right here is to find the [01:14:00] turds. There are plenty of turds out there, but the turds are all the same.

no, no new turds. . Although you, you can get a 2016 Dodge Viper ACR for $800,000. Hey, that’s a bargain. Let’s get two. Andrew Bank. This is calling your name.

Crew Chief Eric: He needs a second one though. You know how it works.

Crew Chief Brad: He needs to rob a bank is what he needs to do to do that.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of old cars and things for sale and whatnot.

I went to my first auction. I have interviewed plenty of auctioneers and auction companies on this show. If you haven’t caught those episodes, just go back into our 200 million episodes that we have online. But I’d never attended one before.

Crew Chief Brad: I was going to say, were you on sale? Was this someone was bidding for your, like for a date with Eric or what

Crew Chief Eric: was this?

This was a motorsports legends auction at Le Mans.

Crew Chief Brad: My original question stands.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Actually, if you weren’t paying attention, you would have missed the Sotheby’s building altogether because they had not a ton of signage and they kept. They close most of the time because obviously you don’t want to get [01:15:00] any of these cars dirty, but in the lineup, you had things like Ferrari, Daytona, GTB fours, you had things like XG two twenties, you had a rolling chassis of a Porsche nine one nine.

You had the silk cut, jag, Lancia, LC two, like all sorts of stuff from back in the day that were for sale. We’re not talking 50, 000 car. We’re not talking 500, 000 car. We’re talking 5 million. 50 million dollar car, you know, kind of situation. And so as I’ve referred to it before, it was like quiet chaos. And it was everything you expected it to be like you’ve seen in like the movie, the red violin, you know, the guys with their paddles and the guys on the phone and the brokers and the internet, and it’s getting out of control.

And You know, we stayed for the Ferrari bid because that was the car we wanted to see. And when we unfortunately had to go away because we had somewhere else, we had to be, and we left and it was at 4. 2 million euros, which is substantially more than that car is generally worth. But because [01:16:00] that was a legitimate Le Mans race car and like all this kind of stuff, it ended up closing at 5.

2 million euro. Unbelievable. It was an experience. Like nothing else, because again, I’ve never been to an auction before. So I’m hoping it doesn’t sour me to some of the other events that I might be going to in the near future. If you’ve never been to a car auction, and I’m not talking about like going to Mannheim auction in Pennsylvania, like going to a Mecham or a Sotheby’s or a broad arrow, or, you know, the events that happen at like pebble and things like that, do it, just go in, pay the a hundred bucks or whatever, and just sit and soak it all in.

It is unbelievably stressful. But you also feel like you’re sitting in the dentist’s office. It’s bizarre. And I write about it in an article that’s linked in the show notes, if you can get more of my take on all of that. Other things historical, as I mentioned before, the Lemans Museum is right there on campus.

It’s at the main gate of the track. If you get the opportunity to go and a few people that I had spoken to before going [01:17:00] recommended that I check it out if I had missed it, that would have been my phone though, Brad, because as you probably saw from the pictures, which we have links to the whole vault of pictures, unbelievable vehicles.

In the museum, cars that you’ve only heard about rumored about that are legend are in this museum. Not all of them are there. Some of the Le Mans winners are at Simeone as an example, like the 57G, the 917 hippie car, you know, things like that. So not all of them there. So there were as many as they could muster up for the hundredth and other cars of significance.

From the a hundred years of Lamont’s so super cool. And then, like I said, they pulled them all out of the museum and took them out on track for some parade laps and whatnot, but just absolutely incredible to see those cars in person cars that, you know, I had only seen on television or, you know, dreamed about drooled over, so just absolutely awesome, totally worth it.

And during race weekend entrance to the museum is free. So why not go? And a little bit of vintage motor sports, the [01:18:00] VRG or vintage racers group is pushing really hard on social media to attract Miata drivers to their series. For those that don’t remember the Miata celebrates its 33rd birthday this year and qualifies for the famed vintage racing series.

Crew Chief Brad: I guess they’re getting tired of seeing 16 year olds drive and stanced out NA Miata’s all over the place.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s. Because there’s probably not enough MG or triumph guys anymore. You know what I mean? So they got to open it up because that’s part of their social media thing is they class the Miata’s to be able to run with some of those older British roadsters and stuff.

So I actually think that’d be some exciting racing to see that. So maybe we’ll find ourselves at a VRG event later this year. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Anybody that’s seen a spec Miata race would know that that’d be pretty exciting. Although I don’t know if I want, if I was a, an MG. Driver. I don’t know that I’d want a bunch of wreck pinata cars out there with me on track at the same time.

Crew Chief Eric: If you want to learn more about what you should be doing with your retired spec Miata, and if maybe you want [01:19:00] to do something different than run SCCA with it, check out the vintage racers group at www. vrgonline. org. It’s that time again.

Executive Producer Tania: What time is that?

Crew Chief Eric: We would be remiss.

Executive Producer Tania: Wouldn’t we?

Crew Chief Eric: Because it’s time to talk about Teslagate.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t follow this kind of stuff. I don’t even know. I had to look up what Threads was.

Crew Chief Eric: The war with Elon continues. It’s Zuck versus Musk in Twitter versus Threads. Did they ever fight yet?

Executive Producer Tania: Not yet. Dude, I

Crew Chief Eric: want to see it. It’s on pay per view, I heard. Yeah, I’m not paying for that trash.

Executive Producer Tania: Elon’s mom said no.

So

Crew Chief Eric: Elon’s mom said, no,

Executive Producer Tania: that’s true. It’s true. I’m not making that up.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like it would be less celebrity death match and more pillow fight.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s like when we would make the paper footballs in school. That’s like,

Crew Chief Brad: no, I feel like it would be slap boxing. It would be.

Executive Producer Tania: But Zuckerberg is actually technically legitimate,

Crew Chief Brad: says people.

He’s paid to say that.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, wait a minute. Are you trying to say [01:20:00] that Elon is illegitimate? Like he’s Jon Snow or something? No, she, she,

Crew Chief Brad: she’s saying that Zuckerberg actually trains in like jujitsu and mixed martial art and stuff like that, which I’ve seen pictures and stuff, I’m, I’m joking. I’m sure he’s, he’s good at it.

Executive Producer Tania: He actually competes, I believe. So like, he’s not like Elon. It’s that picture of him on the yacht in flabby, pale, never seen the light of day skin, where he’s just like that blob standing there on the yacht. Have you

Crew Chief Eric: seen that meme where they redid his body as the Cybertruck?

Crew Chief Brad: Is that what I’m getting for my a hundred bucks?

Executive Producer Tania: Isn’t there a meme where he’s like Crank?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s another good one. Oh, there’s so many good ones, but in all seriousness. Talking to so many people, if Twitter isn’t dead yet and just gets absorbed into the Tesla operating system, I would be surprised. Threads is here. If you haven’t converted over, it’s as easy as opening Instagram and clicking a button and it says import your profile and then you’re on Threads.[01:21:00]

Threads looks like Twitter, sort of acts like Twitter. I think it’s everything people wanted Instagram to continue to be, but it’s not anymore because Instagram is sort of turning into TikTok. All this to say, guess what? We’re on threads to at grand Torrey motorsports, follow us. Let’s get more followers on threads than we have on Instagram.

Let’s make that our goal for the remainder of 2023. Shall we

Crew Chief Brad: use?

Crew Chief Eric: And our loyal listeners can help us get there.

Crew Chief Brad: Mark Hewitt. Join us on threads and Patreon.

Crew Chief Eric: I can’t remember his Facebook password.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a nifty little forgot password button.

Crew Chief Eric: Goes to an email that he doesn’t have access to either.

Crew Chief Brad: Stop using AOL.

He’s got a, a hotmail account.

Executive Producer Tania: Hey, those still work.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I know my dad has one. My dad, Mark, my dad has one. He’s almost 70.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: What are we [01:22:00] talking about now? Tesla charger? Everyone is adopting a Tesla charger?

Executive Producer Tania: Basically, that’s, that’s all the news. Is

Crew Chief Brad: this like adopt a highway where you just, you tell them I want to adopt a Tesla charger.

Crew Chief Eric: So wait a minute. I thought there was like the J 1792 protocol that everybody was using except for Tesla because Tesla is the equivalent of Apple, the lightning charger and all that.

stuff. Now all of a sudden, we’re going to go all Tesla chargers?

Executive Producer Tania: So whatever their charging standard connector is, everyone’s jumping on board to basically be able to connect to it.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, okay. So you’re going to be able to buy something to plug into Tesla’s charging station.

Crew Chief Brad: Because they have the network now, the charging network.

So how are we going to pay for that?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, they say they’re expected to adopt the Tesla plug. So I don’t know if it’s more. The plug will be the same or if it’s an adapter.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, what about all the other EVs? It’s got like two different gas pumps. I guess it’s diesel and gasoline, right? Here we go again.

Crew Chief Brad: I would think they would probably start retrofitting or start [01:23:00] using the plug now, but for the older EVs, probably create an adapter that allows you to use both.

I mean, because

Executive Producer Tania: also like ChargePoint is going to now have this Tesla NAX plug, but they say they also have the other types of chargers. So to that end, it’s like having… The two different style pumps.

Crew Chief Eric: I just realized what this is. You guys watch black mirror? No,

Crew Chief Brad: I haven’t seen past the first like four or five episodes.

Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: In the first four or five episodes of season one, do you remember the episode with the meow meow beans? That’s a reference to community by the way, where they’re like rating other people and it’s like five stars. You got to keep your five star rating. It’s all like social media and all this stuff.

There’s a

Crew Chief Eric: scene in there and she drives up and because her rating is so low, she ends up with the piece of crap Evie that there’s only one charger on like This random lot that she can only go there with that car to like, and get another one or whatever it is, that’s, what’s going to happen there. It’s going to be like that episode of black mirror.

Crew Chief Brad: This sounds like the guy in Canada who bought the slow charging or whatever it was. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: [01:24:00] My expectations are once again, lowered.

Lowered expectations. There’s all sorts of new car related shows on television. We’ve listed

Executive Producer Tania: a number under lowered expectations and no one’s watched any of them, so we don’t know that they’re bad.

Crew Chief Eric: I actually spent the time and I watched today the first episode of Tex Mex. And the first episode of Downey’s Dream Machines.

Executive Producer Tania: I didn’t have that kind of time in my day.

Crew Chief Brad: Ditto, ditto. We, we don’t have to go into an office.

Executive Producer Tania: I

Crew Chief Eric: did. You can put it up in the background. What’s up?

Crew Chief Brad: I get my office life. I live vicariously through Tanya and everything she posts in our private water coolers chat. Because she posts some wild shit in there.

I will tell you. Shut

up my shirt. I got some mustard on my shirt and I’ve changed it. In the middle of the room, but there’s a conference

Crew Chief Eric: going on. Doesn’t matter.

Crew Chief Brad: See the hotdog and got busted. Shirt? You can’t see me because I can’t see you. My back is to you, . [01:25:00] I just got pulled on my new Izod. Oh. So, anyway, Netflix, Tex Mex Motors, this show is exactly the same as all the other shows.

It is 100

Crew Chief Eric: percent a rip

Crew Chief Brad: off

Crew Chief Eric: of Car Masters.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is 100 percent a rip off of Fast and Loud, and…

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s to the point where the cast is almost the same. They almost look the same. They rearranged them a little bit.

Executive Producer Tania: I only saw the trailer for it and I had kind of watched it in the episodes, but I was getting strong car master vibe.

Crew Chief Eric: They even use the same animations. Like when they’re building the car, you know how they do those sketches and the parts like fly in and it’s all goofy, cartoony, the same, like the music’s the same, they have guys named Scooter and Rabbit. Like it’s like, whatever. And it’s a 250, 000 payday, right? It’s the same basic principle.

And I’m wondering if it’s because Car Masters got canned. Did it? I haven’t seen it come back. It’s been like a year.

Crew Chief Brad: Car Masters is the [01:26:00] one where they were bartering. Upgrade and trade. Yeah, the upgrade and trade.

Executive Producer Tania: Rust to riches.

Crew Chief Brad: You see they’re all the same. Gotham

Executive Producer Tania: Garage. The Gotham Garage. Correct. Car Masters.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re all the, yeah. Tex Mex Motors, their differentiator. Is that they are trying to exclusively go into Mexico and buy cars for dirt cheap, because apparently the people in Mexico don’t know anything about cars. So they go down there, buy them for dirt cheap, and then bring them to the U. S. to try and flip them for big money.

Surprise, surprise, in the first episode, they have a run in with the Mexican Federales because of the non numbers matching car that was numbers matching after all. That

Crew Chief Eric: seems a little staged, too.

Crew Chief Brad: A little. Just a little. And then the shady transporter who was gonna pick up the Mustang for free. Uh huh. And then stole the parts.

And dropped off the car on blocks. I mean, Jesus Christ. If that stuff was not staged, how [01:27:00] fucking dumb are you at Tex Mex Motors? Yeah. For all that shit like that to happen.

Crew Chief Eric: And the lady that they tried to sell that Opel GT.

Crew Chief Brad: Which, by the way, that was a cool car. I liked what they did with it, though. I like the paint job.

I like the seats.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what I said when they put up the paint job? I was like, I did it first because my GTI has the same paint scheme.

Crew Chief Brad: It does. It does. You don’t have the honeycomb, though.

Crew Chief Eric: Looked awful, actually. They should have left that off the car.

Crew Chief Brad: I liked it. I liked it. Anyway, and then the Baja bug that they turned into, surprise, surprise.

A Baja bug.

Crew Chief Eric: Whatever. The best part of that was when they wrecked that Polaris.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that was fun. That was good.

Crew Chief Eric: Overall, I would probably watch the whole thing just to see how it all turns out, but it feels a little bit more contrived than Car Masters. And Tanya, this is where it really crosses the line.

They have another female engine builder. However, comma, asterisk, parentheses. Her backstory seems a lot more legit than Constance’s. She grew up, they show pictures of her [01:28:00] working with her dad in the shop and whatever, and she seemed to know legitimately what she was doing and doing that Mazda swap on the Opel.

You know, that was no small feat that Ecotech and the Beetle, that was pretty complicated. So I’m like. Okay. I mean, not this, my fingernails look like I’m in a Revlon commercial, but I work on motors, you know, kind of thing that’s going on with the other show. So it’s like, whatever. I mean, again, I’m not trying to discount anybody’s experience, but it’s the exact same formula.

Yeah. It is this carbon copy. Exactly. Now, did you watch Downey’s Dream Machines?

Crew Chief Brad: I did not. I was too enamored by the stupidity of Tex Mex motors. I’ll

Crew Chief Eric: give you Downey’s Dream Machines really quick. Basically, Robert Downey Jr. has more money now than he knows what to do with. He’s paring down part of his collection and he’s taken on…

A conscience, I guess, because of the whole footprint coalition thing that he started about, you know, climate change and all this stuff, making greener world. And what he wants to do is basically turn part of his collection of muscle cars and exotics and whatever he has, and he wants to turn them [01:29:00] into EVs.

And you’re like, okay, cool. The whole thing is sort of shot like kiss, kiss, bang, bang in those scenes where they’re behind the camera and, you know, talking through the fourth wall. And Robert Downey is very. Non scripted and non sequitur throughout the whole thing and he’s a little crazy, but that’s what makes it entertaining.

And it makes him charming as a person to where you’re kind of like, well, what the hell is he going to say next? I mean, it starts out literally with him in a Blackhawk helicopter. Like, where the hell is it? Where’s this going? And he literally turns to the camera and he’s like, This is a show about cars, I assure you.

We’re gonna get there. And then it does like this, and we go backwards and like how we got to that point. You know, whatever. It has its cinematics with it, but the very first episode he takes a k10 pickup truck square body that was Beautiful. He called it the Thanos thumper. It’s dark purple and all those kinds of supercharged LS making ungodly horsepower, all this noise and whatever.

He’s like, I want to turn it into an EV. So he partners with electric garage up in New Hampshire. They [01:30:00] retrofit a Tesla into it. They maintain the all wheel drive, all this kind of stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there’s sort of a. gimmicky challenge at the end where they have to tow something with it, and they want to, you know, see how it all turns out.

Is it going to blow up? Is it going to work? Etc. I’ll leave it up to your guys imagination to check it out. I’m actually really curious to see where the rest of it goes. I’ve had a couple other people tell me that they’ve watched the whole thing. It’s only about eight episodes, and they said it’s fantastic, and…

They’re sort of like, yeah, that’d be really cool to retro and EV. And I know we’ve talked about this and some of the cars on his list, he’s got like a C2 Stingray Corvette. He’s got some other stuff on there where you’re like, would I really swap that car? It’s worth a mint as it is, you know, that kind of thing with what we talked about earlier with the H2E platforms coming out, you know, that combustible hydrogen, I wonder if.

Robert Downey gets to the end of this journey of converting his collection to EVs. And he goes, well, how hard would it have been to convert them to hydrogen? Right. And leave them alone. I’m wondering if people are going to have that regret as the manufacturers may be moving in that [01:31:00] direction here in the near future.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, that’s not going to make him millions of dollars with a TV show. No. Changing some, uh, injectors in a fuel tank? Not

Crew Chief Eric: at all.

Crew Chief Brad: How environmentally friendly is it flying around on a black hawk?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I know, but his truck is saving the world. One ev at a time.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m not gonna get on that

Crew Chief Eric: soapbox. On the complete other side of that.

Rutledge Wood is back. Famous for being on Top Gear USA and doing One Lap of America in a modified Toyota Sienna. He’s got a new reality show, which a couple of our members have watched. That’s the Hot Wheels Build the Dream or whatever the heck it’s called. It’s a reality show, restomod, building life size Hot Wheel cars.

Oddly enough, the show debuted before I went to Le Mans. And a couple of these cars were at Le Mans. I don’t know if they were the ones from the TV show, but they had a booth and they had three or four cars out front and they are life size Hot Wheels. And I got to say, they’re pretty cool. So that gave me at least a little bit of, I should probably watch this show.

And then a couple of people have confirmed that it’s everything you don’t expect it to be, [01:32:00] but it’s a lot of fun because it’s a creator show. It’s reality television, but it’s for car people. So. Unlike British Bake Off or the repair shop or what’s that one with Amy Poehler that she’s got, you know, making it.

This is for us.

Crew Chief Brad: This is for car people. So there you go, Hot Wheels. What’s funny about Hot Wheels, he’s building the Hot Wheels that I never want to buy. I want to buy the Hot Wheels that are like production cars. I don’t buy the ones that look like fucking clown shoes and shit that don’t actually exist.

Crew Chief Eric: They already sell those, Brad. Those are called production cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. You know what? I can’t afford production cars. I can afford 1. 18 Hot Wheels.

Crew Chief Eric: They’ve gotten expensive.

Crew Chief Brad: I will buy all the 1. 18 Porsche 911s I can find. There you go. Well, Tanya’s got one that we should watch.

Executive Producer Tania: I already came out last year, but I’m just reminding you of it.

If you’re now on a kick to watch all the reality car programs that are out there, you have to go back and watch on Netflix, Drive Hard the Maloof Way. I

Crew Chief Eric: think I tried to watch this. I didn’t get past the first episode, much like I didn’t [01:33:00] get past the first episode of FUBAR. And I still need to watch the Schwarzenegger documentary because it’s all shmay.

Executive Producer Tania: The Schwarzenegger documentary is good. If you’re a fan of Schwarzenegger, you should watch his documentary because you get to see so much about his Mr. Universe days, all his training and all that, and all that happened, and how he actually came over here to this country, blah, blah, blah. So it’s very interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: He is one of my most favorite comedians. Ever.

Executive Producer Tania: Did I

Crew Chief Brad: try and watch Drive Hard the Maloof way? I don’t…

Executive Producer Tania: The one about the dude and then his daughters, and his daughters are stunt drivers.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn’t get past the first episode.

Executive Producer Tania: It was hard, a little bit, but…

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll stick to watching reruns of Deep Space Nine.

Quark’s Bar is where I belong.

Crew Chief Brad: I started rewatching Seinfeld from the very beginning.

Crew Chief Eric: Just wait till you get to the Parking Lot episode.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, yeah, I know that one.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, I was watching that on whichever one it was on, and it was like in the middle of the pandemic, and I was like, I’ve never watched Seinfeld.

Like, I’d seen an episode here or two [01:34:00] back in the day, but like, I’m never a fan of it, right? So I was like, I’m gonna sit and I’m gonna watch Seinfeld, because what else is there to do when you can’t do anything?

Crew Chief Brad: How many episodes did you get through?

Executive Producer Tania: Okay, so like, I was powering through, forcing myself through these things, because I am clearly not a Seinfeld…

Crew Chief Eric: No, she’s a Frasier fan.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, Frasier me all day long, but like, Seinfeld, like, this is so effing dry. Like, I don’t, I don’t know. Like, and the characters are all obnoxious. Most of them, I don’t know. Anyway, so I’m like powering through this thing. And then suddenly it’s like, this show is exiting in two days.

I’m like, shit. And I’m like calculating. I’m like, I don’t have enough time to like finish. So I don’t know. I didn’t watch. I fast forwarded basically to the final episode. And then I was like, what the F just happened?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, the Good Samaritan episode. Yeah. The final episode, what happened is exactly what happened throughout the entire show.

Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing happened. They are right back where they started. Pretty much. By the way, it’s on Netflix right now. Yes, it [01:35:00] is back on

Executive Producer Tania: Netflix. I was like, oh, I could go catch up the season or whatever I miss. I’m like, no, I’m good.

Crew Chief Brad: Do you watch Seinfeld for the jokes? But the jokes that other people know like the inside jokes not for the because it’s really funny or anything.

Yeah, sure

Crew Chief Eric: Normally at this part of the episode we would be going down south to talk about alligators

But I think we need to talk about stale baguettes and brie

Executive Producer Tania: well I put this one in just for you,

Crew Chief Eric: oh Did you

Executive Producer Tania: so this guy did started this already like several years ago. He’s a carpenter. He’s a cabinet maker.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh,

Executive Producer Tania: and he built a two CV out of wood.

Crew Chief Eric: No, is this like that other guy that and it runs Ferraris.

It runs because

Executive Producer Tania: he [01:36:00] put the motor from another to CV in it. And he sold it for 224, 000. How slow is it? It’s gotta way more than the real thing. It gets up to 50 miles an hour. Isn’t that what the real one

Crew Chief Eric: does? Off a cliff like those cars in Alaska that they’ve been throwing off the side of the mountain every year.

No way it gets to 50.

Executive Producer Tania: Allegedly.

Crew Chief Brad: Honestly, this is how the original 2CV should have been built. It should have been wood.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it would have been biodegradable that way. The termites would have gotten to it. It would have been amazing.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. It alleges capable of hitting 50. Now you can read into capable.

Lies.

Crew Chief Eric: Lies.

Executive Producer Tania: But he’s a very young looking 74 year old. I will give him that.

Crew Chief Brad: Listen to this. He looks like Charles Manson. What are you talking about? He whittled it from one piece of wood. Yeah, he was in jail. You know, he whittled it out of.

Executive Producer Tania: The main body is made from apple and pear fruit trees. The front and back are walnut.

The [01:37:00] base for the doors and trunk are cherry wood.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow. That is an expensive vehicle. Does it run on moths?

Executive Producer Tania: It took him 5, 000 hours and over five years to build.

Crew Chief Brad: Who’s going to do the math? 5, 000 hours divided by 250, 000? 224, 000.

Executive Producer Tania: 224.

Crew Chief Brad: What does that come out to?

Executive Producer Tania: 44 an hour. 44 an hour.

Crew Chief Brad: Well,

Executive Producer Tania: 224, 000 divided by 5, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. That does not seem hardly worth it.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like that’s not very profitable for the amount of time he put into it.

Crew Chief Eric: He would have spent less time just restoring a 2CV.

Executive Producer Tania: It was a labor of love, I guess, of passion. He was putting his carpentry skills to use.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m not going to begin to try and understand.

So the

Crew Chief Eric: bigger question is, how many times did he piss in the corner of his garage?

Executive Producer Tania: Probably many, cause…

Crew Chief Brad: He used it to soften the wood.

It’s seasoned. Why does my car smell like piss? [01:38:00] Because it’s French.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently, this is a thing in France. And I was warned about this, that guys will just randomly pee while they’re on the street. I didn’t believe it until I saw it myself. And then you sort of like started to ignore it. You became desensitized to it.

Except for this personal French man story that I have to share with you guys. I’m walking down the road with Ty. We’re coming back. from David’s campsite. So imagine we have a 45 minute walk ahead of us. We’re going down, minding our own business, dimly lit sidewalks and whatever. And these two fine French gentlemen decide that they’re going to hide themselves by standing next to the only light pole on the street, facing away from each other because they didn’t want to see each other peeing, but facing the people that were walking on the sidewalk as they urinated in public.

And it’s like, Are you serious? I mean, I understand that there aren’t very many port a johnies and stuff. They were lacking in a lot of things. Trash cans and other things around there, but I’m [01:39:00] just like… This is unreal. And the worst part is there’s the streetlight right there. They’re obviously inebriated, but there was a fence, like, I don’t know, 12 feet to the side of where they were standing.

They could have gone to the fence, but nope, we’re going to hide ourselves because nobody can see us if we stand. By the label.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow. And then in the article here, or in the little snippet, it says public urination is a problem in most big cities. That’s why I will never live in a big city.

Executive Producer Tania: So I didn’t actually post that as a Florida man type subject.

It’s actually like an investigative news reporting on why this is so prevalent in France.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s for real.

Executive Producer Tania: So is she telling you and they show you everywhere where there’s just urine running down a sidewalk and they’re interviewing people. They’re like so disgusting and they’re talking about how they’ve been trying to like fix this situation that’s been going on since like 18 something.

I don’t think it’s gonna change. [01:40:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Nope. We do have a Florida man story though, don’t we?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, this is just a kind of a cute one. This Polk County man called Sheriff’s office to report a crime because he goes out to his black Jeep Cherokee that’s covered in all this white paint. Side of the door is covered in all this white paint.

So Sheriff comes out to investigate. And it was bird poop.

But I will say from the photo that the bird must have like downward dogged at the side of the car because the spray is quite extensive. Was it a pterodactyl? I don’t know, in Florida, maybe it was like some sort of heron. I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Albatross. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, that is a lot of bird poop. Oh, there’s a swarm of them and they all, maybe it was like a goose or a swan.

No,

Crew Chief Eric: goose, they had that little green poop.

Executive Producer Tania: This one had diarrhea.

Crew Chief Brad: It was an emu. [01:41:00]

Crew Chief Eric: And bird poop is terrible for your paint. Can you imagine? Then you have this big stain on the side of your car that won’t come out. Uh, I’m gonna wash my car next time it rains.

Executive Producer Tania: Obviously, wasn’t there one minute, and then it was there the next for him to call the police, right,

Crew Chief Brad: so.

Jellicoe says, the culprit was Avion.

Executive Producer Tania: I’ve been vandalized! By an eagle!

Crew Chief Brad: She enticed me.

Executive Producer Tania: Uh, the substance was what birds tend to do. Or

Crew Chief Eric: do. Ah!

Executive Producer Tania: Ah! Ah! Get it? That’s

Crew Chief Eric: a bad dad joke. But you know what? We’ve had Canadians in our Florida Man stories before. We don’t have any this time, and that’s fine. I looked.

Executive Producer Tania: I tried.

I couldn’t find. I tried to find better content, but actually, it was very disturbing, the content that was coming up. There was a lot of road rage going on and other very negative things, so there wasn’t anything good, unfortunately.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know what we’ve never seen in a Florida Man segment? We never see Danish man.

Executive Producer Tania: It doesn’t happen.

Crew Chief Eric: Denmark.

Executive Producer Tania: Because I [01:42:00] think the search would have to be Danish man bicycling or something.

Crew Chief Eric: So many bicycles. So many bicycles. Unbelievable amount. More than Holland, I think. Whoo! Well, with that, it’s time we go behind the good wall and since we talked a lot about Le Mans, what about the Canadian Grand Prix, which finished right before we went to Montreal?

What’s happening in Formula One land?

Crew Chief Brad: Max Verstappen is winning.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, it’s getting so old. Like, now he’s started this thing, like, I feel like after every race, when they post interview him, Cool Tard down there interviewing him. And it’s like, this was a really tough race, it was like the last race that they just did.

Crew Chief Brad: Where you won by like, how many seconds?

Executive Producer Tania: Silverstone, and it was just like, this was a really tough one for us, you know, it was really hard, we’re gonna have to go back and, and understand what happened. I’m like, you jackass, you didn’t lead for five laps, wow, that was really tough.

Crew Chief Brad: What happened is you Fucked up the start.

That’s what [01:43:00] exactly

Executive Producer Tania: you slipped on the start and he got ahead of you. And then it took you five laps until DRS opened or whatever. And then you got around him and then you weren’t 45 seconds ahead of everybody. Whoa, is you get out of here?

Crew Chief Brad: I think the big news. And Formula One right now is Honey Badger’s back!

Crew Chief Eric: Oh no! Honey Badger’s

Crew Chief Brad: back! The smile, the smilest man on the grid is back in a Formula One car. You’re heartthrob,

Crew Chief Eric: Danny Rick.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, my man crush, Danny Rick. It’s hard to decide between Danny Rick and Toto Wolf. That’s a hard decision to make. It’s a stale baguette decision, but yes, Danny Rick is back in AlphaTauri cause they got rid of Nick DeVries, DeVry, DeSmallFry, DeNotDrivingF1 again.

Denied, Nick, Nick Denied is what it is. Nick Denied. [01:44:00]

Executive Producer Tania: Which is like, I don’t know, I guess, sure. But at the same time, it’s like been like two races, but okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Can I just say that I was seriously thinking it was going to be. Sergio and not Nick DeVry. I thought Danny was going to take Sergio’s seat. Especially the way he’s been performing the last couple weeks, or the last couple races.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s still time, right? Because isn’t his contract up for renewal still? Like, he’s not locked in for future years, I don’t think. I know. Or did they finally do that?

Crew Chief Brad: Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a way to try and kind of snap Sergio out of his funk, too. You know, sitting there with a former race winning driver waiting to take your seat has got to put a lot of pressure on you.

Like, now that Dan Enrich has a seat, I would think it would free up Sergio to kind of, to take some pressure off of him. I mean, he’s still got to go out there and perform. But it’s like having, you know, a starting quarterback or a starting pitcher or something, and you’ve got an all star starting pitcher sitting on [01:45:00] the bench behind you.

It puts a lot of undue pressure on you. I think Sergio comes out and starts driving better for his sake, I hope, but I’m happy to see Danny Rick back. I’m happy for you.

Crew Chief Eric: Unlike Formula One, there’s a bunch of WRC news that we’re not going to cover this month. I’m going to talk about it next time. And there’s some drama with Terry Neuville, so I’m gonna leave you in suspense.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think anybody cares.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, but Tanya has some NASCAR news.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I didn’t watch it, but the street race in Chicago did happen.

Crew Chief Eric: NASCARs do street races now? Yes. Is it like RC cars that just put a body on top of the Indy car and we’re gonna make pretend it’s a NASCAR?

Crew Chief Brad: No, it’s like the garage 56 car.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, then maybe it’s possible. I, I, you know, we got to stop poking fun. These NASCARs have come a long way since the days of the Conestoga wagon suspension that they were based on.

Executive Producer Tania: It was over the 4th of July weekends. Nobody watched it. Was. Did not happen. So, but however it did happen and I don’t know any of the people in nascar.

So the person who won means nothing to me. But I [01:46:00] believe it was like, this guy’s a New Zealander who won Shane Van Bergen.

Crew Chief Brad: That does not sound like a NASCAR name. Wow. He was brought in just for the street race. I was gonna

Crew Chief Eric: say . Anybody who, a non-American sounding name for the street race. Right? Yeah. We’ll get some guys from touring car.

Come over here. We’re going to try to keep it light, but I want to remind people that our Motorsports News is brought to us in partnership with the International Motor Racing Research Center in Watkins Glen. They are running their promotion and their sweepstakes to win a 2024 Corvette E Ray through April of 2024.

You can enter now by going to their website racingarchives. org, click on Corvette sweepstakes, and enter the code E RAYLAUNCH for some bonus tickets there and entries when you sign up to try to win that Corvette. You can also take a cash… option if you don’t want a new car and the IMRRC also has some upcoming events on August 18th.

They are doing the Cameron R. Arkett Singer Award for Outstanding Contributions to Motorsports Dinner. On September the [01:47:00] 16th, they’re doing a center conversation titled Brumos, an American racing icon with author Sean Cridland at 1 p. m. On September 30th, they’re holding the 25th anniversary party for the IMRRC.

More details on that are still to come. November the 2nd. International Real Wheel Film Festival celebrating historical racing documentaries at 5 p. m. which is on the eve of the Argett Singer Symposium on International Motor Racing History on November the 3rd and the 4th. And we will be there. For those November events at the Glen.

So we hope to see you there. If you’re interested in checking out the symposium this year, and we want to thank our friends at the IMRRC for supporting us and working with us on various projects here at GTM and brake fix throughout the year,

Crew Chief Brad: upcoming local news and events brought to us by collector car guide.

net. The ultimate reference for car enthusiasts. Coming up for the end of July and August, July 26th to the 29th. We’ve got the Mecum auctions in Harrisburg. It’s at the Pennsylvania farm show [01:48:00] complex in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, August 5th, we’ve got the 17th annual Pleasant Valley car and truck show and put on by the Roarsville volunteer fire department in Roarsville, Maryland.

On August 5th and 6th, the SCCA WDCR Western Maryland Chapter is hosting the Polish Mountain Hill Climb in Flintstone, Maryland. On August 17th through August 19th, the MECA Monterey Auction, which I believe Eric is going to be out in Monterey, California for Car Week out there. This is held at the Hyatt Regency in Monterey Hotel and Spa.

Crew Chief Eric: I am confirmed to be at this event. So I will see people there if they’re there for car week.

Crew Chief Brad: There you go. Two events that I want to highlight just because I like these types of cars. Both of them are August 19th. The first one is the Rev Up for Rotary event at Adventure Park in Monrovia, Maryland. And then the VW Meet at Mason Dixon Dragway in Boonesboro, Maryland.

August 24th, the Audi Club North America Northeast [01:49:00] region is hosting a summer concert social event at the Train Concert at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. And August 26th, the Maryland Auto Detailing Car, Truck, Jeep, and Motorcycle Show, that looks like it’s an all inclusive show, at the Mount Pleasant Ruritan Club to support St.

Jude’s Children’s Hospital. And August 28th through August 30th, Ferrari Club of America is having their annual meet in Bend, Oregon. And tons more events like these and all their details are available over at collectorcarguide. net.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, Brad. And now it’s time for the HPDE Junkie. com Trackside Report.

So what’s coming up for the rest of the summer? By the time this aired, we did a little bit more travel as we headed to VIR for our annual summer bash track weekend with our friends from Hooked on Driving. If you’re listening to this on the car ride home where you missed it, check out the rest of hooked on driving schedule this summer, and don’t forget as a thank you to all of our loyal supporters, you can sign up for your next hooked on driving event, [01:50:00] using the code break fix 23 and receive a discount on your registration at checkout.

So thank you again, and tune in for more promotions like this throughout the year. I mentioned the VRG, the Vintage Racers group earlier, and if you’re interested in checking out some of their events, here’s what’s left on the late summer fall schedule. September 1st through the 4th, they’re at Lime Rock for the Historic Festival.

September 22nd through the 24th, they’re at Watkins Glen. And November 17th through the 19th, they’re at the infamous Turkey Bowl at Summit Point, our home track in West Virginia. Be sure to check out some of those VRG events if you’re interested in running your Specmia somewhere else. July the 31st through August the 1st, Audi Club, Northeast Region, has their HPDE at Watkins Glen International.

So, if you’re looking to turn some laps at the Glen, you’re still in time to register for that event. And as Brad mentioned, stay tuned next month on our YouTube and Twitch feeds for coverage from Car Week in Monterey, California. We’re going to be at places like The Quail, Pebble Beach, the Garage [01:51:00] Style Magazine, Garage Tours, Mecham’s Auction in Monterey, and two days at the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca.

Just to name a few of the events we’re going to be at. So be sure to keep up with us on social, on our websites and live streaming throughout Car Week in August.

Executive Producer Tania: In case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired during the summer break. We kicked off the summer with Rob Morgan from MPG and learned all about the GT Celebration Racing Series.

We travel back to the golden age of sports car racing with co host Mike Carr when we interviewed Bob Gerritsen and learned about his friendship with Bobby Rayhall and Brian Redman, along with how the infamous Apple 935 came to be. Tony Vallelunga taught us what it’s like to take stainless steel and turn it into a vehicle, and how he’s using everything he’s learned to help build the new gull wing doored DeLorean next generation supercar.

Author Jeff Willis stopped by to tell us about his new book, Human in the Machine, while John Summers talked about the influence of social media on racing. Kevin McDonald from [01:52:00] Positive Talk Radio in Seattle interviewed our very own Crew Chief Eric about some of the lesser told parts of the GTM and BrakeFix origin story.

We revisited with Bob Gillespie and learned more about the Green Grand Prix, while newsman Larry Jorgensen told us about his new book, Shipwrecked and Rescued. We went around the world with Elspeth Beard on her epic adventure as the first British woman to circle the world on a motorcycle. And finally, Danny Pilling from the Danny P on Cars podcast crossed over with Brake Fix to talk about car culture from all parts of the globe.

Thanks again to everyone that came on the show over the summer, and we’ll see you in August.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, Tanya. New Patreons for the month of July? We don’t have any. If you’re interested in supporting us, keeping up all the things we do around here, helping us keep the lights on, be sure to check us out.

Patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. You can sign up for as little as 2. 50 a month, every penny counts, keeping things running smoothly around here.

Crew Chief Brad: We have a couple anniversary [01:53:00] shout outs, Kerwin Webb and Mike Bowser are celebrating seven years with GTM and coming in a close second this month is one of the Latin lads, Steve Wade.

He’s celebrating six years with us. And if you want to know more about the Latin lads, there were an episode with them and what it was our first season, we had them on great story about their cursed mini and just their fantastic lives. So go check it out. And if you’d like to become a member of GTN, be sure to check out the new clubhouse website at club.

gtmotorsports. org to learn more.

Crew Chief Eric: And remember for everything that we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out the follow on article and show notes available at gtmotorsports. org. You can also join us on discord. By clicking the link on our website. And don’t forget new ways to get ahold of us.

You can follow us on threads, the new social media platform from Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. So let’s make it a goal to get more followers on threads than we have on Instagram, and we can do that with your help.

Crew Chief Brad: Also, quick shout out to our co host and [01:54:00] executive producer, Tanya, and coming up in October through probably January, I will be going out on paternity leave because we’ll be having our second child.

We’ll have an opening for guest hosts that want to come on the show. If anybody’s interested, please do not hesitate to reach out and we can find something for you to talk about

Crew Chief Eric: or we’ll conscript you one way or the other.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. One way or the other you will comply.

Crew Chief Eric: Resistance is futile.

Crew Chief Brad: This is yes.

You will be indoctrinated like the Reapers did to Shepard and Mass Effect and all the members who support GTM without you, none of this would be possible.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve had all day thinking about this episode. Like it’s got to be like the Backstreet Boys. Be like, break, fix this back. All right. Nah, nah, nah, nah.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly how that goes.

Crew Chief Brad: That was studio quality right there.

Crew Chief Eric: This is why I could never be on America’s Got Talent. I have to go overseas to really show off my talent.

Crew Chief Brad: You have to have talent to be on America’s Got Talent. [01:55:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Never gonna happen.

Crew Chief Brad: Your talent is the gift of Gab. We’re gonna do this.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: I want it that way.

Crew Chief Eric: Tell me why

Crew Chief Brad: you are my father. My one desire. Tell me why. Tanya’s dying. That

Executive Producer Tania: was very nice

Crew Chief Brad: and oh.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out [01:56:00] on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770. Or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at [01:57:00] www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you.

None of this would be possible.

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

• 00:00 Introduction and Sponsors
• 00:34 Back in the Studio
• 01:10 Eric’s Epic Adventure in France
• 02:28 Driving in Paris: A Nightmare
• 08:32 Le Mans: The Ultimate Racing Experience
• 17:43 Food Adventures at Le Mans
• 25:41 Race Day Highlights and Observations
• 37:20 Exploring Denmark: From Legoland to EV Taxis
• 39:38 Legoland Adventures: More Than Just for Kids
• 41:45 Montreal: A Taste of France in Canada
• 43:26 Jeep Service and Road Trip to Montreal
• 50:19 Driving on the F1 Track in Montreal
• 54:13 Le Mans Highlights: Garage 56 and More
• 56:24 Porsche, Audi, and Volkswagen News
• 01:01:30 American Muscle: Corvette Racing’s End
• 01:09:20 New EVs and Concept Cars
• 01:10:07 Combustible Hydrogen: The Future of Racing?
• 01:13:10 Lost and Found: Car Deals and Auctions
• 01:14:41 Motorsports Legends Auction at Le Mans
• 01:15:28 Experiencing a High-End Car Auction
• 01:16:47 Le Mans Museum and Historical Cars
• 01:17:56 Vintage Motor Sports and Miata Racing
• 01:19:13 Tesla vs. Threads: The Social Media War
• 01:24:06 New Car Shows and Reviews
• 01:42:09 Formula One and NASCAR Updates
• 01:46:17 Upcoming Motorsports Events and Announcements
• 01:52:37 Patreon Shoutouts and Closing Remarks