What happens when a Corvette Club petrolhead loses a bet and ends up transforming the Northeast’s performance driving scene? You get Mike Arrigo, Director of Hooked on Driving (HOD) Northeast – a man whose journey from autocross weekends to orchestrating high-performance driving experiences across the East Coast is as entertaining as it is inspiring.
Mike’s motorsports story began with the National Council of Corvette Clubs, autocrossing and attending the annual “Spooktacular” high-speed event at Summit Point. But it wasn’t until a friend nudged him toward a new group – Hooked on Driving – that things really shifted gears. “It was different,” Mike recalls. “No car brand affiliation, no competition—just people treated like guests, not numbers.”
Back in the early days... Mike was part of the CCA going to HOD track events with his 'vette
That ethos stuck. After years of coaching with various organizations, Mike joined HOD Northeast under the leadership of Dr. Fred Edelman, a foot surgeon with a passion for track days. With help from motorsports legends like Jay Tepper and Chris Lou, Mike helped grow the region into one of the largest in the country, stretching from New Hampshire to Virginia.
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Hooked on Driving isn’t just another HPDE (High Performance Driver Education) group. It’s a community. “We treat people like adults,” Mike says. “They’re guests, not students. They’re professionals – CEOs, doctors, lawyers – who want to enjoy their cars safely.”
That philosophy extends to every aspect of the event. Coaches aren’t instructors barking orders – they’re mentors guiding guests toward their personal goals, whether that’s learning the limits of a new sports car or preparing for a future in racing. And the vibe? Think “driving with friends,” not “track day boot camp.”
Spotlight
Notes
- The history and evolution of Hooked On Driving (Northeast Region). How has the program changed.
- What is your DE program like? What expectations should a new student have coming into the classroom for the first time? What’s your student Progression model?
- If someone wanted to come and coach for HOD how does that process work?
- How do you find, and where do you register for HOD events? What is the average session length? What is the average weekend/day cost?
- Thoughts on Track Insurance; is this included as part of registration?
- Track Day prep – Tech – Does HOD tech if so, how?
- What other services does HOD offer that people might not be aware of? What are some changes for the next few upcoming seasons you’d like to share.
Transcript
Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?
The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
Crew Chief Eric: You and your car on America’s best racetracks, that’s the hooked on driving motto. GTM has been very fortunate to have partnered and worked with HOD for many years, as well as watching their program evolve and expand. For those that know hooked on driving, not much of an introduction is probably needed, but for those that might be new to the brand, with us tonight is Mike Ar Rigo, director of Hooked On Driving Northeast to explain why HOD is America’s number one [00:01:00] non-competitive performance driving program.
So welcome to Break Fix, Mike. Thanks for having me on. I’m glad I finally got on here. It’s a long wait sometimes and I apologize. Yeah, you guys should have been on here a lot sooner. With that being said, let’s talk about how you, Corvette Club Petrolhead got involved with Hooked on Driving and how you’ve grown the Northeast Program over the years and how you’ve made changes.
Mike Arrigo: You know, you, my usual joke when people ask me that, Mona told me not to say it, but I’m gonna say it anyway, is uh, I lost a bet. Now I’ve run hooked on driving. Truth is, you know, I started with a Corvette and I was, uh, with NCC National Council of Corvette Clubs. You know, most of their stuff was autocross and one high speed event we do at Jefferson every year.
At the Spooktacular it was called, I mean, I was doing stuff with NASA mostly because PDA and NASA just become merged back then into one unit. Audi, Ferrari, the Corvette Club, you know, the usual track junkie stuff where you jump wherever there’s a track day, you know, you’re kind of running up to, I’m good friends with the regional [00:02:00] competition director for Corvette.
And Brian’s like, you gotta try this. HOD it was brand new. It had just come here and it was actually considered the Pennsylvania region when it first started, believe it or not. Interesting. I think David started it 2004, so this was like maybe 2007 ish. We went out there. It, it was pretty awesome. I’d say the first time I did an HOD event, it was really.
Different from what I was used to. Most of the stuff was, it’s that very club mentality, you know? Or you went to like someplace that raced. So this was like kinda the first time there was something that was completely non-competitive and had no car brand affiliation. I saw the way Joe Mills ran his operation at the time.
He was the original franchisor here. And, uh, Joe Mills is a great guy and he still comes to all our events. It’s like, I can never not have him around. We just saw him
Crew Chief Eric: at Watkins Glen here at the finale of 2021. Yeah, we, yeah,
Mike Arrigo: all the time. I just saw the way he looked at people and treated people. It was different.
Like, you know, people, they, they were drivers. They were. Customers, they were [00:03:00] guests, you know, they were real people. They weren’t just like numbers on a balance sheet, so to say. And you know, that’s what really stuck out in my head at the time. ’cause I drove to the track, you know, this was pre trailering, so I had a hundred mile radius, but that was it.
AAA was gonna tell me home, I was good. And then, then it went to the 200 mile range. So unless I was going with somebody who was, had a trailer and a car that they could drive in the street, like that was my little bubble. I mean, it was so great when I got the 200 mile trip because you know, that opened the door for Watkins Glen and Summit and all the other place I always wanted to go to.
But yeah, that was it, that that really started me there. So after that, you know, I was still coaching for everywhere else. Five years down the road, Dr. Edelman basically took over. I love Fred, he’s great, but he’s a foot surgeon with multiple practices. Think about the time it takes. I mean, how much time does it take just to get yourself ready?
To go to an HPDE or any kind of driving event, think about trying to run the operation. So it, it was a lot for him. I’m not really sure what Fred was thinking of buying, hooked on driving as a surgeon. You think about it like, you know, here you are, you know, in an [00:04:00] operating room and then the next day you’re gonna be out there.
Just, you know, kind of handing out schedules and, you know, putting on a track event. Definitely, uh, a different vibe for somebody and it, it’s a lot of work. His, his wife Bridget was really involved and I think the first year the legendary Jay Tepper pretty much took the reins and, and ran it for him. Year two with Fred, I think it was Jay was kind of out the picture and then Chris Lou took over and I had met Chris Lou at HOD.
I think the first time I met Chris was up at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. We used to do the BMW event for, um, south Shore BMW. Chris took over about half the season in, brought me on, and then the two of us kind of ran it for Fred for another year and a half or so.
Crew Chief Eric: And that’s when a lot of us here at GTM started to come on board, which is when you and Chris were running the show.
Mike Arrigo: We had a lot of good momentum because being a national brand makes things a little bit different. You know, we, we try to keep it somewhat standard even though every region has their own little flavor to it. My region, which, you know, think about the area I have to encompass. I go from New Hampshire down to Virginia, think I’m probably the largest region, TrackWise probably in the [00:05:00] country.
If I look at them, I’m not the busiest. ’cause I mean, you look at California, they, they’re season’s 11 months outta the year and you know, if I can get six good months. Two, cross my fingers. I hope nothing goes bad months with weather, you know, I’m lucky. So we uh, we got approached by, uh, Corvette, by Chevrolet for the what, the launch of the Stingray ’cause they were bringing back the Stingray.
They were worried. So that put us out there a lot more. We had two stingrays for people just to play with at every event. And I think we did six national meets where we had Pratt Miller there. I dunno, 90 some odd Corvettes come in there and they, you know, brought people in. You specialized. So if you owned a Porsche or you owned a GTR or you owned any of these kind of competitor cars, they brought you in to try and, and do this.
And it definitely worked fantastic. So fantastic that, you know, our year two option, we weren’t even needed. So we kind of just put ourselves up, which kind of sucked for me. ’cause you know, my Z oh six never appeared after that. But, um, it, it’s a funny story. We were at New Jersey Motorsports Park. A guy comes out there and he’s got his Porsche, his nine 11.
He takes the [00:06:00] Stingray for a ride. He loves it. Saturday, he goes right over to Kerbeck, puts his nine 11 on his trailer, takes a Z 51 car right off there, and that’s what he drove on Sunday. Nice
Crew Chief Brad: like that,
Mike Arrigo: like so I know that type of stuff works. Wish we could get back to doing that stuff and actually have live cars there for people to play with.
I mean, not every company wants to do that type of stuff anymore. It seems uh, companies have gone their way to let me pay a marketing agency to do everything.
Crew Chief Eric: Let’s unpack a couple things here. So HOD as a brand hooked on driving started in California by David Ray and that’s where the parent company comes from.
And you mentioned briefly there’s been franchises of HOD over the years now. When we came on the scene 2012 ish through people like the Crutchfields and others, there were more regions to HOD. There’s HOD Southeast, there was HOD Great Lakes. You know, nowadays it’s. It’s changed a couple times. There’s HOD, Texas, there’s like HOD Southeast again in Florida and things like that.
So it kind of ebbs and flows, and as you mentioned, it changes ownership, but you’ve been around a long time now. [00:07:00] You came on the scene, you know, in the early days and then took over in the 2012 ish timeframe if I got my calendars right. Yeah. You’ve been growing steadily ever since. What has changed over your tenure at HOD?
What have you really tried to improve from the early days? We tried to make
Mike Arrigo: things. I don’t wanna say the same, but we really try to make sure we cater to every track and every demographic because how you operate in real south is very different than how you operate, say, up in Boston and Massachusetts.
Just completely different genre of people. In the beginning there was the Pennsylvania region, which now became the northeast. Southeast, there was a Florida region, there was the California region, and there was the Great Lakes region. What had happened when, uh, the southeast region, we, I kind of absorbed Virginia ’cause that was, I really wanted Virginia.
I think the two, two of the best tracks on the eastern half of the United States gotta be Watkins Leonard, VIR. There’s a reason that magazines use them to do their tests and stuff. Absolutely. So I got [00:08:00] Virginia and then Florida actually took over from basically the Carolinas down. So instead of having three regions on the east coast, kind of muddled down to two because there’s a big gap of where tracks were.
But in the meantime, we’ve been moving more and more west. So we’ve been doing stuff at NCM the last two years with COVID. It happened, it didn’t happen, but, uh, we run Camaro Fest every year. The David would fly it in, run Camaro Fest for them. And it was so, uh, you know, we started doing pit race. I’m trying to put together a Mid-Ohio type of back-to-back event with.
Pit race, but track scheduling is just, it’s an unbelievable juggling act. 2022 is definitely increased for us as far as track days. We added a ton of track days, but I know I, I kind of went off there, but at California had its region. There was a Pacific Northwest and then California was two regions, Northern and southern Twain Dobson.
The race car driver took over the southern region, but I know his racing career kind of took off more. So David RA put California back into one region. Now we have Texas, Arizona, so David [00:09:00] added a couple regions. The person that actually. Came out there and took him over. Real interesting guy. His name is David Zubik.
If you look him up, he’s got some history. Olympic skier, I mean, does a lot of, uh, exotic car experience. He’s been around a long time and I think everyone that’s in hooked on driving family nationally all started somewhere, you know, in some kind of car enthusiast type of guy. I don’t think anyone actually came into this because they just saw, uh, they’re gonna be the next Warren Buffet by running an HPD organization.
I think it’s all a labor of love for everybody,
Crew Chief Eric: and if I remember correctly. One of our members who was stationed down in Texas happened to go to A HOD Texas event and I believe, uh, Zubik you mentioned he actually owns the track, the home track that HOD Texas is based out of, which is Grand Sport Speedway grounded in Motorsport there.
So that’s really pretty cool. So would you say that’s maybe one of the key differentiators between Hooked on Driving and other providers that are out there, be it Chin or SCCA or just track it and other folks that have been on break Fix over the last, you know, year and a half [00:10:00] or so, what would you say really stands out and makes HOD different?
Mike Arrigo: I think how we look at people. How we treat people. We try to treat everyone as their, as an adult. I don’t want anyone spoken down to, I don’t want anyone feeling like inferior. I mean, the people that come to our events are, are pretty far along in life. You know, they’re, they’re CEOs, they’re doctors, dentists, lawyers.
I mean, they’re professional people. They’re usually top in their field. They’re kind of decision maker type of guys, mostly wanna treat them the right way. There’s a balance to keeping people in order and, and kind of bringing them along and to treating them right. So, uh, I don’t consider them, you know, just.
Some random driver, you know, uh, I don’t tell our coaches are instructing you and you’re just some student out there. No, no. You’re our guest. You’ve chosen to come to us and we’re gonna treat you as such the same way if you had a guest at your house, you know you are gonna treat ’em a certain way and they’re gonna treat you a certain way also because, you know they’re a guest of yours.
So we wanna make sure everyone’s an adult. We treat ’em as such. We expect them to act like adults. And I think it’s been balanced out really, really well the way, um, things have become, uh, kind [00:11:00] of people that don’t fit that HOD family mentality. I think they kind of uninvite themselves. They realize it’s not for them.
We look at it, we, we treat people as friends, driving with friends, you know, they’re gentlemen drivers out there. I mean, granted, I mean, we have TransAm and IMSA teams and pro racers that come and practice with us on their pseudo name a lot of times that you don’t see. But, but they’re still, they’re drivers driving with drivers, you know, that’s, uh, there.
One day he came to us and he said to us, he goes, you know, he comes up to, and he grabs moan and he says, I gotta tell you something about what goes on here. He goes, this is the first organization where the helmets come off. I know who drives that car now. It’s not just that car and that car and that car.
It’s Joe and John and Larry and people become friendly and they talk. You know, at lunchtime, you know you’re sitting at the table and you know the guy that’s driving that $6,000, you know, Miata is having lunch. Yap. And, and they’re all having a great time with the guy who just showed up in a center, GTR.
It’s people, you know, we like to bring people together. We consider this the HOD family and everyone that comes to an event, we try to treat [00:12:00] ’em that way. Uh, I think that’s a big part of it. Well, I’ll never
Crew Chief Eric: forget one of the first instructor meetings that I went to where Chris Lou was, and he always had a certain way of presenting things, especially the hierarchy, I guess you could say.
And the way, as coaches, you know, we don’t call ourselves instructors in nature. Do we call ourselves coaches the way we would treat the guests? And I always thought it was hilarious. You know, you’d tell us right up front, you know, you’re adults, be professional, do your job, but also remember that they’re here to have fun, be safe, and if they learn something as a, as a result.
So be it. Yeah, so he always put the impetus on customer service, and I will say that is something that definitely has always stood out about HOD versus anywhere else that I’ve been, no slight against anybody else. You know, there’s a ton of fantastic groups out there, but you guys really make it a point to be forward about it, to be very upfront.
Like you said, Joe Mills set that precedent by making customer service the number one priority. It’s really important, and I, and I do feel that is a key differentiator, but let’s move on a little bit and talk a little bit more about [00:13:00] HOD. So as the Pennsylvania region originally, and now Northeast, does HOD Northeast have a quote unquote home track or home base?
That’s
Mike Arrigo: kind of hard to say. When you have an area. That stems from New Hampshire down to Virginia. It’s hard to say. What’s gonna be your home base? You know, I live 11 miles from Pocono, give or take. Can I say that’s my home base? No, not really. You know, we do a lot of events in New Jersey. I think we’re doing seven different dates in New Jersey.
We have eight days at Watkins Glen in 2022 now. So it, it’s kind of hard to pick a track that say that’s my home base, you know? ’cause we’re national, you know, want any, anyone who comes, you know, becomes part of that team. HOD you know, it’s like, what’s your home track? Well, anyone you want to be at, so to say.
So I, I, I don’t want to just pick, I couldn’t really say home track.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s fair.
Mike Arrigo: That’s fair. Guacs Gun’s probably one of my favorite ’cause of the area. ’cause you know, we have some good friends up there also, you know, overall a good time up there, you know, it just, it’s just such a fantastic [00:14:00] facility. If I live closer to VIR, I might say VIR.
It’s tough to pick one track just in case any of the track operation guys are out there listening. You’re all, we love you all.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, right. Let’s give us better
Mike Arrigo: dates.
Crew Chief Eric: So let’s switch gears a little bit because obviously we’re talking about HPDE, high performance driver’s education, there’s always an emphasis on the e part of this, which is education.
So let’s talk about H HODs DE program. What is it like, what are expectations for somebody that’s new and never been to an HOD program? Or maybe there’s some things that veterans have forgotten that you would like to remind them of. What’s it like at an HOD event? You know, for the first time,
Mike Arrigo: there’s basically two things I I look at, uh, that are major for me.
You know, one is safety. Safety’s already paramount for me. You, you gotta have a safe day. People are get comfortable and they realize that this is actually gonna be safe for them. Their anxiety level goes, drops down a little bit. You know, I try to explain to people, you know, say, Hey, you know, you’re doing 70, 80 miles on a highway.
You have no idea. The girl next to you is crying, texting her boyfriend who just broke up the truck driver’s been in out there [00:15:00] for 17 hours, you know, in, you know, about to fall asleep and you’re three inches away from them. You’re gonna come here, you have a closed racetrack, no cross traffic, no this, no that, no one’s gonna pass you without you knowing about it.
You’re gonna be in complete control of everything that goes on around you. It’s a lot safer. So we try to explain that to them and bring their anxiety down as, as far as someone new goes. It’s very structured as, as you see, but it’s also very fluid at the same time. So we, we have to make sure to balance that structure with the fluidity of what people want.
So after that, I look at, I said, Doug, the next part of it, like you mentioned before, is my motto. You have safe. Have a good time. ’cause if we make this enjoyable for you, like anything else, you know, you can’t help but learn something about you, about your car, about the person next to you, whatever it is.
But you’re gonna come away with some bit of knowledge. This is for me, I love this, I can do this. This is not, whatever the case may be. Then the other part of it is like, what does that individual want out of this? There’s some people out there that they want to be the next Emerson fitter Aldi, or you know, Mario Andretti or, you know, they might want have real aspirations.
They want to, you know, go to [00:16:00] Formula one one day. Who, who knows out there? We gotta figure out what that one person is looking for. What’s their goal? We have people out there, their only goal, like, listen, I got this great car. You know, I do 50 miles an hour on the highway ’cause I don’t wanna get a ticket or get hit by a deer or something like that.
I wanna see what it can do, but I wanna make sure I’m safe doing it. So that coach’s job for that day is to help that guy achieve that goal. He wants to just see what this car’s like, he wants to learn, he wants to get more comfortable with it. The next weekend that coach might be with someone and he’s like, listen, I think I wanna race one day.
I love it. I, you know, I, I don’t wanna street race anymore. I want to, I wanna do this. And, and so we really customize it for what that person wants. But under that complete structure of like, these are the guidelines that you have to follow right before every event, you know, kind of three, four days before the event you get them.
I, you know, I send out like a two page email, which make sure you, you know, follow up, check your car, give that that flag, talk the ancient flag video from, uh, you know, David, do. I want people to really understand so when they come out there, they’re already prepared. And I think if you give people a little bit more information about that and [00:17:00] what to expect and what to do, they’ll have a better time and it’ll flow easier.
Crew Chief Eric: So to your point, I think one of the things that’s often overlooked or maybe misunderstood about. HPDE. It is a discipline within Motorsport, right? It’s educationally focused, but a lot of people that I’ve talked to that I’m like, Hey, you should really come to the track. You should check it out. They’re apprehensive.
I’ve discovered there’s this fear that they’re going out there alone. Yeah, they’re gonna take their car and they’re out on a track by themselves with 50 other people. Like you said. In reality, it’s not like that. You have somebody in the right seat. You have a classroom scenario that you’re going through.
You’re being educated on how to improve your driving and grow yourself as a driver and learn your machine, et cetera. That’s the focus behind the de part of HBDE. So let’s talk a little bit more about how HOD does it differently. What does, Jay, as we all know, Jay, is classroom instructor emeritus. What does he do?
What does he talk about? What type of knowledge does he try to transfer to these newbies?
Mike Arrigo: Well, usually our [00:18:00] structure kind of is based on, you know, we get ’em in the classroom. So the new guys are gonna go out there, they’re gonna be with their coaches, you know, we have a small drivers meeting. They meet their coaches if they haven’t already communicated.
’cause we send out an email and I gotta say, we get about a 90% response that the coaches and our guests have actually contacted each other. They gotten the talk, they got a little bit of that out of the way. So when they meet each other for the first time, they, you know, they’ve already had some sort of conversation or dialogue.
Then they’ll go out on track. There’s a, an orientation and inspection lab. So you’re gonna drive under highway speeds, helmet’s not required. There’s a PACE card out there and there’s no passing. So you’re just gonna go out there, single file and you’ve been part of it, you’ve seen it. And that’s just kind of to alleviate so people can get a little bit of vision of what’s going on out there.
Where things are for like 15 minutes or so before they get into that classroom, that angst that go out out there. We got, we’re gonna be out on track, we’re gonna be on track. Probably builds up for, you know, that two hours while they’re in that classroom before they really get out there. So I think by doing that orientation inspection lap out there that goes out there, they get to see the track and it’s [00:19:00] multifold, you know, and you can inspect the track, you can see what’s going on and you kind of get that little bit outta your system.
You’ve been out there even though it’s slow and you realize the residual effect is like all those flaggers are holding out a yellow flag. So now you understand what a flag is. You’ve seen the video if, if you hopefully read the email that we send out and watch and that guy’s standing out there with that flag out there and he’s like, oh, okay, so flags.
So now when he gets in that classroom, they talk about flags. They’ve already seen it out there. There’s a guy holding that flag. There’s a guy waving that checkered, so they get a little bit out of their system right then and there. The head of the classroom where Jay takes over and starts to go over the basics, what high performance driving really is, what’s involved in it, a little bit of the physics behind it, and a lot of the communication that you require to use.
So that way when you get in the car with that coach, you have already kind of somewhat built up that skillset so that communication’s much, much easier and fluid. We try to make sure that there’s a relationship built. Ken does this, you know, and I’ll, I’ll talk about Ken after tour too. ’cause he’s just a fabulous part of the organization.
He goes out there and he really looks, he says, you know, part of being [00:20:00] personal with everyone, I said, okay, I know that he’s six foot four. I’m not putting him in that Miata. I know that he’s, you know, tiny, but you know, he’s, he just drives all front wheel drive cars. So if I put him with that cobalt, those guys are gonna meld well.
You know, so there’s a lot of background work to really try and make sure that people are paired up personality wise, also along with the cars that they’re used to. Just be realistic out there. You know, a guy who drives a Cobra probably is like, oh my God, I got a Corvette guy in the car with me now, you know, and a guy in a vet.
He goes, so I don’t want that Mustang guy teaching me anything. You know? So we try to really break that apart like that because, you know, the Corvette and the Viper guy and the Mustang guy, they’re all having lunch together later on. So we, we really. Break the clicks. There’s really no hierarchy of this group of coaches and that group of coaches and, and these guys over here, you know, we, uh, we try to make, really make everyone feel like they’re at home.
Like there’s no one’s inferior. Mm-hmm. Or better than anyone else. At the end of the day, same blood runs through all of our veins. And no matter how good or bad we are, you know, no matter how [00:21:00] good we become, you know, one point in our lives, we got in that car for the first time. Like, what the hell? What’s that third pedal for?
My mom never told me that third pedal. What the hell’s that? You know, we all started somewhere and really had no clue and someone brought us along and no one was born being a Louis Hamilton or, uh, you know, or an Antron set up. I try to kind of remember, remind people that. You were there one day, remember what it was like that, so that way you can better help this person that’s there.
Now. I think we do a decent job. We’re always, we, we always try to do a little bit better. We send out surveys and uh, we really listen to what people try to have to say about things that go on there. For 2022, we’re definitely making some changes based on the surveys we’ve got from people on how they like runs, how the run groups are structured, how the timeframes are structured, you know, they’re adaptive.
I don’t run 20 minute sessions at every track, like some other places will do that. He goes, Nope, it’s 20 minutes on the twenties, on the forties, and on the zeros and that’s it. And I’m like, well, I can’t do that, you know? 20 minutes at a, at a three and a half mile track is like, okay, I [00:22:00] just did seven laps.
I’m back in there. You know, take your three laps to warm up. You don’t wanna do a half hour session at a one and a half mile track either. You know? Yeah. Sometimes that might be too much. So it’s hard to find a balance with the hours that go on there. And I think that’s one of our strengths that we really try to focus and customize every track experience based on that track and based on the people we have coming, the run group sessions that were, the way we run them, we’re A, B, C, D, you know, A is our novice group and wristbands are colored and everything else that goes on there.
So you always know what run group you’re in. You do it a couple times, fourth, fifth, sixth times, you know, depending, whatever it is, you know. But now that classroom kind of gets stale at the same time. Right. You don’t need to hear Jay’s classroom for a fourth time. I mean, it gets repetitive after a while and each track is kind of customized a little bit to it, but maybe you’ve been to Thunderbolt three times already.
Guess what? You don’t need to seat that same classroom for the fourth time for 2022. One of the things we’re planning is once you’ve been to a track, yeah, you’ve done this a couple times, you’ve, you’ve know the classroom stuff you have that. Basics and the bad habits have already been broken. [00:23:00] You’re going out there, you know, maybe you’re not ready to go out there on your own yet, but we’re gonna start to say, okay, once you get that first class, remember where we’re gonna remind you because you know, you can never say it enough.
The flag talk, the safety talk and the safety speech, they’re gonna start going out with some of the more, the advanced tutoring that’s going on there and instructing that’s going on. You know, with our classrooms, we’re gonna teach something more dynamic, say from each corner. So now you’re gonna go out there and we’re gonna be doing stuff from the track side, so maybe we’ll be picking a corner at that corner.
There might be really good examples of. How the apex is taken, how the track out is used. And the way we formatted our schedule is right after the A group C-D-B-A-C goes out, which are more we our more advanced drivers, you know, those are our solo advanced drivers passing us out anywhere and they could say, see what that car’s done, you know, and then start to explain, say he’s a little off and the next car.
So that coach that’s going out there with them, one of our group leaders is really gonna focus with them and people could ask questions and do things and make it a little bit more interactive on there. Eventually you get good enough, you don’t [00:24:00] need a coach in the car anymore, or you don’t need it every time anymore.
Prior you’d go from A to B. I start to look at this, I’m like, so. Group B, intermediate drivers, you know the biggest variety of talent? My favorites. My favorites are the bees that continue B and and the cars, right? Because you got low horsepower cars and then you got ZR ones and everything in between. You have guys that just became solo and guys that should have been advanced long time ago, but eh, I don’t wanna play with the big boys.
Most of my friends are in B still. So I’m gonna register there. So you got this extreme vast talent separation and car separation and it become overwhelming ’cause the pace is much faster. When you get into B, I mean I, you know, depending where you go and which B drivers are there, I’m like, holy shit, these guys are just like killing it when half the team is, you know, running 2 0 6 to two tens at Watkins Glen in the B group.
You’re like, wow, you know, so what are we doing? So when you’re done with a, you’re actually gonna run in with a solo. Now you’re gonna be out there on your own, but at the pace you’re already used to the [00:25:00] size limitations have changed also. So, Watkins done is 3.4 miles long. I think we’re only gonna take 12, a 17, a solos, 35 Bs.
If you look at it there, you know, that’s. Not even 10 cars per mile, basically on, on most of the, like that if you are looking at the A group, it’s pretty small. We’re really gonna try and stick to that now, and it, it gives me a little bit of a buffer for the people that might exaggerate their talent for the first time.
Or, you know, they might be a C level driver at a track like. Pocono, but you know, they get to walk and spend where it’s very different. They’re like, okay, I’m not ready for that. Right. So we’re very adaptive, very fluid. After the first session, we’ve kind of know the newer people that have never been with us, if they’re in the right group, so they might need to be moved up or moved down.
Um, I know a lot of places they’re first time running with them. Like, you gotta start at the beginning. Do I need a guy who’s here for the first time is won? WRL, California and Lucky Dog? Does he really belong in the novice group? Because he’s never run with us. No. We [00:26:00] treat him like adults. We let ’em register where they want, but we also do our homework.
We look at their experience and if something looks outta whack, they’re getting a phone call. Our group leaders have notes on every driver that comes in there This year, for the most part, we’ve had the same group leaders almost at every event. Or they’re there doing something so they get to know the drivers.
You know, you get to see the drivers. Drivers start to become, you know, used to each others. But I think that’s one of the bigger changes we’re doing for next year, limiting the run group sizes tremendously.
Crew Chief Eric: So listeners, as you can probably ascertain by this point, you think, I talk a lot on this show. If I.
Mike go. He takes all of the runway. And I mean that in the most loving way. By the way, I mean you, you are definitely a talker. But we have to unpack a little bit of all this stuff you said in here ’cause you covered a lot of ground. So I wanna refresh our listeners minds here for a minute. Especially if they’re learning about hooked they driving for the first time.
So what did we just cover in your talk here? We talked about expectations, we talked about what to expect in the classroom, what J covers. We talked about progression models, we talked about number of [00:27:00] cars on track, the run groups, right? I do think we need to expand a little bit more on the progression model, but I also wanna remind folks that when you come to HOD, when you’re signing up in the A group, the beginner and novice group, you are assigned a coach.
It’s a one-to-one student to instructor ratio, which is awesome as a coach. Myself, a veteran coach of HOD. I, you know, I love the fact that I can come in and work with you, the student for the entire weekend, right? Be it a two day event, three day event at Walk-Ins, Glen, things like that. I can really focus my attention on your car, your needs, what needs to get done, and my job is to augment everything that’s going on in the classroom.
The Jay and also the ci. Kenny are covering, so they don’t cover all of it in the textbook sessions. We have the rest of the work to do out in the field, but we’re working together. We’re working in concert with a material that’s there. It’s a really great thing and it, I hate this term, but it’s a symbiotic relationship between the coaches in the field and what’s going on in the classroom.
Just want everybody to understand that you’re covered [00:28:00] on all ends. You’re not alone. And if you do feel as though you’re off by yourself, raise your hand. Come say something to somebody because that’s not the HOD way, that’s for sure. But let’s unpack the progression model a little bit more. Mike A is our beginner, novice B is our intermediates, and then we have C and D group.
So you kind of hinted that C group is advanced, and then there’s this mysterious, also quite alluring D group, which we’ll talk about. But how does one get from A to B2C to D? How does that exactly work?
Mike Arrigo: A group is our, our novice group, like you’ve never done this before. You wanna try it? Sign up. We try to get you acclimated.
What you’re gonna do is you’re going to have a dedicated one-to-one coach, right? You’re gonna sit there when you’re, whenever you’re on track, that coach is gonna be there. Helmet to helmet communicators are absolutely mandated by us, so you’re never gonna be screaming over someone or figuring like that, and he’s gonna be with you and he’s gonna guide you through that.
Everything that has to go on there, you know, you could say, I don’t want to say. Concierge, but you know, he’s there for you. You know, we’ve weeded [00:29:00] out people that have just come kind of just, oh, I just want some free track time and I’m outta here. I gotta say, everyone I see come to our events almost entirely are doing that just because they just, they just love to give back to the sport.
It’s amazing how many people just show up. So, yeah, you know what, my car broke last weekend, but they’re still there. Coaching. You know, they’re not just saying, oh, well my car broke, I’m not coming anymore. You know, it’s few and far between when that happened, and it’s very understandable. I don’t expect someone who lives in upstate New York to drive down to VIR just, you know, to coach with us.
It’s like they’re there for them. They’ll hold that person’s hand as much as needed. You’re gonna have classroom time that’s really gonna go over and get you ready for what goes on on track. You know, it’s a racetrack. Oh my God. But, you know, you start to realize that you’re probably doing faster speed sometimes on that off ramp than you are in some of these situations till you really get used to it.
So you do this, you’re out there, you’ve got your track time in, you’re at the point where coach is like, you’re, you’re hitting, you’re doing everything right. You know, you’re, everything you do is very consistent. If you’re consistent. You’re good, because even if you’re doing the wrong thing, consistently means [00:30:00] you have the ability to learn something at that point.
You’re not just random and that’s what it is. You, you know, you’re, you’ve become predictable at some point. You’re doing yourself a disservice if someone’s always pushing yourself, because part of what we try to do is we want to teach people how to self-learn. Can you know I can give you a fish or I can teach you how to fish, right?
If I could teach you the habits of the basics that are out there, because listen, there’s a million different ways to do something, right? There’s always things that are absolutely wrong, and there are things that are absolutely right. We try to make sure that you have those proper habits. You know, don’t drive with one hand, don’t lean your seed back.
Don’t put your arm over the, you know, over the steering wheel like you’re, you know, you’re cruising on a net round. You know, get those, break those bad habits of making sure that you have the proper tools in your toolbox now to learn. Comes a time where now you become soloed off. Right? You know, they go through progression, they check you out.
We have a sheet that every coach, when they want to check someone off, right, they go through it, make sure this student does this, this, this, this, this, and this. I’m not gonna go through the two pages of what they’re looking at and say, you know what? I think this person’s ready. You know? I [00:31:00] think your time to really be out there in your own.
At that point, the group leader will go out there and he’ll, he’ll get someone and they’ll do a checkout ride. Before that checkout ride though, that coaches and one of the other coaches or group leaders has probably been watching you on track now because he knows that you’re gonna go solo soon and to see what’s going on from the outside.
You go through all that, you find that boom, you’re now a solo driver out there, but that’s not the end. You know, you’re still gonna be with someone. So, uh, once you get soloed, that coach is staying with you. So whether, you know, you decide that we’re gonna do some lead follow exercises, driving my tracks, pretend there was snow out there, type of scenarios.
And you know, we have a lot of tools in our toolbox. You know, all of you guys are just. Fantastic. We couldn’t do this without all of you coaches out there. You know, I haven’t coached in quite a few years and believe me, I, I will never forget how difficult it is sometimes out there. You know, you’re never alone.
Like, so once you’re soloed, you know that group leader now when you move to the next group is always gonna be, there is kind of that person to go to, you know, he’s gonna be there for you, you know, whether you have a problem with a turn or you know you’re [00:32:00] having an issue or you know you wanna work on something, they’re always gonna be there with you as, as well as the coaches.
And I mean, you could attest how many times you say, listen, you wanna jump in this car with this guy? ’cause he really has, he’s having issues at turn seven over there and you know, just, you know, he might be a C driver, but you know, he’s just trying to get a little bit better at this, you know, so always there for you.
So guys get soloed, they’ll go out and the passing rules in A and B are pretty much straightaways and in B, they’re a little more looser. Maybe an extra area here or there where the wheels are perceived straight. Generally, you know, there’s no passing in the corners in that B Bravo group because we’re, you know, we’re still getting you used to that higher pace now.
Once you get to that, you know, you have group leader meetings afterwards and some classroom time in our group B, you come to the point where it’s like, you know what? I want to go to group C. And uh, a couple times a year we do, uh, a passing exercise very similar to what is done in race school, where we do drills where people are three wide at a very reduced speed.
Kind of gets you very used to and comfortable being right next to a mirror to mirror with a car, you know, and we’re doing this at 25, [00:33:00] 30 miles an hour for a session, just so you can get used to, you force people to be in the corners next to each other. We also, you know, kind of set the pace where people get used to.
Flowing around each other, almost like a dance, and, and you’ve done the exercise. So it’s kind of hard to describe on a, on a podcast, but you know, if you have three cars wide, you know the car all the way to your right. So to say if you were going in that direction, sets the time when people are gonna move around by dropping back, going over and getting on the outside.
You know, the car in the middle sets, the speed you’re going at and the guy on the outside kind of just blips along. So you’ll be in one of those spots at every time. So whether you have the car all the way on the inside of an apex, taking your turn, but not being able to track out all the way because someone’s next to you at a very reduced speed.
That feeling of what it feels like to be next to each other in a corner, or get past multiple times. Most guys love the exercise. You know, if we get a group where every B driver in there says, yeah, we, we’ve all done this like three times already like that. So, you know, we might. Bypass that, but, ’cause you know, we want guys, people to be happy.
They realize the [00:34:00] value in that. And, and there’s a reason that that’s even taught in race school because, you know, no matter what, you’re not used to being, I mean, unless you’re, you know, a little out there, nobody wants to be mirror to mirror with anyone on the highway all the time. You kinda wanna be staggered.
You want some space, you want some comfort zone, some emergency. Where am I getting out of this situation if something happens? So we want people to get used to that. So once they’ve at least done a more a b group exercise with us, or, or we know that driver, we’ve, you know, taken steps to promote him. That point, he’s out there, he’s consistent, he’s at the top of the group.
And it’s not about being fast, right? Because no matter what I mean, I mean, you look at the cars that are out there today, a mediocre driver in a Z oh six or a ZR one or a GTR is gonna look a lot better with all those trunks there in there to help you than say. Someone with a maybe, maybe an older slower, E 36, E 30 Miata, that has none of those things to kind of help ’em out there.
So you really can’t just judge on speed, you know? So that’s what we do. We want, we really look at consistency, the flow, the courteousness and the situation and dimensional awareness of what you have [00:35:00] around you. You have all those things. You know how to pass and the turns out, ’cause you got it, you’re provisionally moved up into sea at that point.
Does it take three days on track? Does it take two years on track? Everyone’s different, you know? Right. I don’t tell people you have to do 10 days at this. Once you do this, then you can go to there. No, everyone’s a little bit different. We have kids that have come out carting champions. I’m like, does that kid need an exercise?
And you know, dimensional awareness. No, he just needs to get used to how we do our things. You know, he’s already got that skill set. Passing is allowed anywhere, still with a point by which I didn’t really get into for people that don’t do this. Basically, when you are, uh, when you’re in these run groups, in order for someone to pass you or for you to pass ’em, there has to be a point by.
So if, if, if you want to let someone around you, you’re gonna point them in the direction that you want them to go around you either by sticking your arm straight out, very courteously, and I know I’m, I’m sticking my arm out on a podcast right there. Or you’re gonna kind of point up and like just kind of give a big swing over the, so people, when, when you watch the extras, you’ll see me acting like a monkey, like now, like from scratching my head [00:36:00] here.
So you’re very much in control and that’s why I say it’s a very safe. Environment where it’s not like what, you know, you see on TV where people are just trying to get around each other. It’s nothing like, it’s not Days of
Crew Chief Eric: Thunder. No. No, not
Mike Arrigo: absolutely not as much as I, I know I put that movie on where Watkins Glen all the time in, in the background up there is no, it’s a, it’s very controlled.
So the passing is always done controlled and someone is always telling you Yes. So if you’re behind somebody and you know, you just can’t just pass them. There’s corner workers that are out there that are watching everything along with coaches and group leaders that are out there and kind of in the background.
And when something goes on like that, you know, you’re gonna get black flagged and come in. You know, flags are flags, but for people that, no, no, if you get a black flag rolled up and pointed at you, it means you gotta come and you’re gonna be spoken to about something. So nobody wants to lose track time.
So there, uh, we don’t get a lot of rule offenders. People realize that. Your safety is involved here and everyone out there, and that’s why he said we’re adults. So that’s passing us anywhere. You guys want to go three wide at turn one to high banking at Pocono. Go at it. You’ve got the skillset, you wanna do it.
Go. I gotta say, you know, we have a very safe [00:37:00] operation. Couple years ago, the uh, Lockton Affinity does our insurance for us and they came to us and they told us, I said, you know, you did a million and a half miles on track last year. You have no incidents, you know, to report, you know, listen, people get mechanical failures.
Things happen. But uh, you know, when they came to us a couple years ago, they said, you know, you think about it, a million and a half miles. I guess that’s what bean counters do for a living, right? They figure out how many cars are on there, how big the cars are, how much time you’ve had on there, how long does it take?
And they figured out that we did about a million and a half miles on track in the Northeast and we’ve never had a claim, ever. We are. Considered by the insurance agencies out there, the, the safest HPD organization in the country. So, uh, congratulations. Luck on wood. Thank God our, our rates reflect that helps me out a lot.
So our drivers are doing the right thing.
Crew Chief Eric: We missed a run group. We keep avoiding D group, Delta group. How, how do, how does the, somebody qualify for this mysterious Delta group, which doesn’t exist at every event? No,
Mike Arrigo: it doesn’t. The D group is basically, I’m not gonna say it’s one step up from C, it’s different from C.
The driving [00:38:00] skillset and speed and pace is, you know, is on par with C most of the times. It’s not like any cards are that much faster, but the difference is pointwise are not required out there. So it’s an invitational group. It’s the group that we have the least amount of incidences. Ever at any run group out there, because we’re really careful who goes on out there.
And that’s where you’ll see a lot of these IMSA teams come into practice. Or, you know, the TransAm teams and these, you know, pro drivers. They’ll be out there in that Delta group. It’s invitational. So basically, if you want to get into D, you have to be a C-level driver. Our D group leader’s going to really go through everything with you and vet you to make sure you’re there.
It’s dimensional awareness, situational awareness, predictability. There’s no point buys required. But even though people do give point bys and D sometimes, you know, just to open the door. If I’m in an E 36 doing 120 and I see that 0 1 1 turned behind me, I’m just gonna be like, yeah, just go right there. Uh, the door’s open for you.
I’m not gonna do it, but have a nice
Crew Chief Eric: day. Yeah,
Mike Arrigo: yeah. It’s, you know, it’s uh, and there’s two rules in D. You know, there’s two major, major rules. I know I have one. The only rule I have in D [00:39:00] is there’s no contesting corners. Two friends are going at it back and forth. That’s fine. But you in that car don’t have some arrangements, some radio, some whatever, some history.
You don’t contest a corner. That is it. There’s zero tolerance for contesting a corner. You either give it or you don’t give it. It’s not a race. It’s not race practice on how to block somebody. It’s friends, driving with friends and having a good time out there. Yep. I know this was the Chris Lu rule, and Ken says it too.
Rule number two. Go out there, drive, don’t be a dick. That’s it. I’ve heard that so
Crew Chief Eric: many
Mike Arrigo: times. It’s true. And that’s all. And that’s it. You know, so I have, you know, my one rule is don’t contest a corner. And the group leader has his own rules. We don’t really allow driver switching of a car out there in D because now you’re out there, right?
And you and Mark and the Mustang, you see ’em, you know. How he drives the predictability. You’ve learned it right away. Well, you get another driver in that car, suddenly he drives very differently. Now the predictability is gone. So that’s one of the, the limits we set. We don’t really want people, drivers switching cars that aren’t there, which leads us into our group leader meetings [00:40:00] after.
The run group about 10 minutes after you come off track. In the lower groups, there’s more of them, the upper groups, you know, there’s usually now one or two after the first session of every event. That way, you know, we can actually talk about what goes on and they’re really important because that’s where we’re gonna go out and we’re let, that’s a forum for the drivers.
We’re all gonna talk to each other about what’s going on out there, you know, what we’ve seen, what we’re experiencing. Um, you’re gonna find out there’s a guy with hand controls. You know what, he’s not gonna be able to give you a a point by somewhere. You know, we’re gonna find out that there’s a person, you know, who’s in, you know, a radical that’s gonna be out there that morning with you.
’cause you don’t know all the drivers. So at that meeting, and when you have a, or your first morning group leader meeting, and then your meetings afterwards, you’re gonna find out what’s going on in your group. It’s gonna make you safer for the day, and you’re gonna find out what’s happening out there.
Even though you may not have experienced, other drivers could say something, you know, you could have pitted and then something happened out there. Say, you know what, Hey, we’re seeing this at turn seven. You know, who’s driving that blue Corvette out there? Man? Great job out there. You know, it’s like, listen.
I saw how you took that turn and tracked out and it creates a dialogue of [00:41:00] drivers getting to know each other. I think when people get to know each other, they’re also more courteous and respectful around each other too than not just some random car. It’s a person. I think they’re really valuable. It’s hard to balance that of like, you know, being overbearing and trying to give people too much, you know, and guidelines on how to do this and how to do that.
And being off in the wild, wild west. Absolutely. It’s, it’s a balancing act. It definitely is. But I, I feel that those group leader meetings really help people that come out to it. And, uh, and it’s a place to, uh, to share their grievances. Uh, you know, you’ve seen my morning meeting is about five to 10 minutes long in the morning.
I tell you where the bathrooms are, where lunch is gonna be happening. I tell you the, you know, the couple safety options. And one of the things I always tell people is, uh, you know, don’t suffer in silent. Shooting me an email next week and telling me what happened and how we could do better is fantastic.
And I want that. If I could fix something for you today, right here at the track to make it better, that’s my goal. Come see me. Mona, any of the coaches that are out there, your group leaders, you know anyone, our grid staff is out there. You see something that goes on track that’s weird. Pull through the [00:42:00] pits.
Car 37. Listen, I, I, I don’t think he’s got a gas cap on there. You know, we’re gonna take care of that right then and there. Yeah. Throughout the day. You know, we, you know, we try to make sure there’s bottled water, you know, hopefully next year COVID restrictions are lifted. We can get back to having, you know, snacks and our drinks and our coffee and our, you know, all the stuff that I shouldn’t be eating every morning at.
But you never know what’s going through someone. You know, they didn’t drink enough. You know, you see a driver you’ve been driving with all day out there, it’s a little bit different. You go out there and you pull through the pits and say, Hey, you know, that car is really erratic out there. Pull him in. He might just need a wake up call ’cause he’s dehydrated.
You know, we’re always looking out for each other. I don’t want people to suffer. I want to know whatever I can do to fix your day right then and there. I want to do. Yeah. And that’s, uh, and I think that’s one of the things we try really hard. You know, we don’t always succeed, you know,
Crew Chief Eric: but we’re always looking to get better.
We definitely appreciate it. And I gotta say, I take this as a joke, one of the biggest changes I’ve seen over the years is your morning meeting has gotten shorter, and I thank you for it every time. Yeah. But let’s kind of switch up the conversation a little bit and talk a little bit more about coaching, because that’s, you [00:43:00] know, the other side of the audience, right?
You have the people that are really interested in trying HPD for the first time. You’ve got folks that are from other organizations that want to check out HOD for the first time. But there’s also a glut of coaches out there that wanna know what the HOD Coaching program is like. Do you accept certifications from other groups?
How do you become a coach with HOD? How do you get promoted to a coach within HOD? Do you recognize certifications from S-C-C-A-P-C-A-M-S-F? Is there reciprocity there? Let’s talk about that a little bit and try to invite some other coaches from other organizations to come and check out HOD as well.
Mike Arrigo: We don’t necessarily say like if you’re a coach at any of the other organizations, you, it means you’re automatically okay to coach or, Hey, I did my MSF level one and two, I want come coach with you.
It really doesn’t work that way. You know it. You need to have a certain skillset. If someone wants to come in there and they’ve been coaching and they’re coaching with X, Y, Z organization, I don’t wanna single anyone out like that. They would come up and say, Hey, I coach here and this is what I do and I’d like to, you know, come coach you here.
You know? [00:44:00] So they come to me, you know, or moan or anyone else. We’re gonna put him right in touch with Ken, you know, who’s our lead coach? He’s our head of coaches. I let him handle everything. I try to stay his hands off so I don’t get in his way. My mentality has always been to manage from the bottom up, not the top down.
I build a structure. This is the, uh, the structure we have to keep, you know, refining there. These are some basic guidelines of what is yes and what’s no. And from there, I feel, as you know, uh, in a tiered, managerial type of position, my job is to give the people who, for lack of better term, below me, the tools they need to do what they need to do.
If I’ve instilled you as a group leader or a head coach or classroom or whatever, that job that you have there is because I trust you enough. At that job. If I had to, uh, babysit you and just watch you at every moment, then you know, I’m not, I don’t need to have you there. So you’re an adult. I vetted you through a process and you belong there.
So my job now is to make sure that you have what you need. So with that said, I put them onto Ken and, and Ken will go through their resume and, you know, it’s a small, tight [00:45:00] circle, the HPD world, so we all know each other. I have no problems when someone say from, uh, you know, when the guys are on Summit or.
Frat called me and say, Hey, you know who this person is. He wants to drive in this run group. This person says he coached with, he wants to come here. And I’ll give ’em their resume and their history and you know, some customer evaluations and different things like that. And, uh, other organizations will do the same.
They go through that whole process, you know, they give us their resume. They say this, we check out their head. Coach loves ’em. The, you know, uh, person who owns the organization says, yep, they’re fantastic. They do great. Usually Ken will give you, you know, it’s a couple page document. It tells you the HOD philosophy, you know, like what we explain, you know, these people are our guests, you know, we are co we’re not coaching them a certain way.
If a person’s there, I’m not gonna try to beat their head that you need to know how to take this apex. Perfect. That person’s goal is what that person’s goal is. All you have to do is get him safely through the day, make sure he has a good time, and just break any bad habits as it goes on there. So the coach has to understand that philosophy.
So depending where they came from, that’s a hard thing to break sometimes, you know, because [00:46:00] certain organizations are very geared towards, we’re teaching race car drivers, we’re teaching a certain way, and they have to learn something. So once they’ve realized that, they’ll figure out, is this for me or not?
We’ll take ’em in provisionally and then Ken. Or some of the other guys that have been around the group leaders, we’ll work with that person to make sure that they understand what their expectations are set at and how to handle that. If all works well, you know, they do it a couple times. You’re an HOD coach, forget right, that we started this past year and so far we’re doing it yearly and we’re gonna try and start to do it, you know, and coming soon, at least twice a year, we have a coach workshop.
So every year at Pocono right now, and we’re gonna try and do it more than once a year. It’s just very hard to get track time in tandem with an event. The Saturday before our big mega course where we, you know, do the entire facility. We rent a small part of the track, so we have season coaches that are coming out to refreshers.
We have coaches that are just going out there to be mentors, and we have people that want to come in there. And basically do this, you, I mean, there’s some qualifications, you know, that, you know, they basically, they have a chat with Ken [00:47:00] first, and we only take, you know, about 10 people through this. And most of the people just wanna do it as refresher.
But we’re doing, we’re starting that program now to kind of get people, we want our coaches to continuously improve. And like, if you stop learning, then you, you, you kind of, you, you probably shouldn’t be doing something. ’cause you know, the moment you start looking at things, I have nothing else to learn.
You probably have more to learn you than you can imagine. And the first thing you need to learn is that I’ll always learn something. So we really try to make sure that our coaches are up to date with different programs that are going out there, different technologies that are going out there. And whatever we can do, we try to share that information.
We don’t try to keep it all to ourselves and worry that, oh, other places might, it might take this somewhere else. You know, anything we could do to make this sport safer across the board is better for everybody. You know? So if I teach a coach how to do something, he becomes better at it and takes it to another organization.
Well, you know, I know that. Someone’s safer out there because of it. And those places, you know, hopefully they, you know, the reciprocity is there on how they do things. So, but we are trying because there, there are a lot of places that have that and they, they definitely teach a certain way and get some skill sets in there.
But we are, uh, we’ve tried this now and every [00:48:00] year we’re gonna have at least one and we’re gonna try and mo make more of them where it’s that coach clinic, we’re not teaching you to be an instructor. We’re teaching you how to do this, how to do this better, is this for you? And we’re only gonna take like a handful of new people and promote them.
But most of our teaching has been one-on-one throughout the year where we take you under our wing and really give you a personalized experience on how to coach. And it qualifies as an MSF certification too for people that want that, which I think is a very good starting point. It’s a really good starting point to learn is this for me, type of stuff.
It’s definitely not a program where it’s say, I’ve done MSF, now I’m a, now I’m a certified coach. No way. You know, there’s a lot more to it than that. At least. At least for us it is and we wanna make sure, like I said, that customer’s getting what they deserve. You brought up
Crew Chief Eric: a really good point, and it’s something that I learned early on when I was becoming a coach.
I actually, I got this from John Meyer who’s also a veteran HOD coach from the Northeast and because in his real world job, he was a ski instructor, he says. Coaching, high performance driving is very [00:49:00] much like coaching, skiing because you’re taking children and adults that, you know, you’re trying to work on the basics, the balance, and you know, standing up on their skis and working the poles and all this.
And it’s a different type of mechanism than making large assumptions that everybody knows everything. And so, you know, that really resonated when he explained that, you know, how, what his philosophy was and his approach to coaching. And I see a lot of that. Actually amongst the HOD coaches, and you see it amongst the good coaches do approach it that way.
It’s like you’re kind of clay and we’re gonna mold you or work from zero. And if you do have some natural talent, we can build upon that. You know, we can go from there. But yeah, it’s not very, you must take this apex at 80 miles an hour, da da da, da. You know, all like a race school would be. It’s, it’s very much more low key.
So I wanna make sure that people understand that it’s not a stressful situation. We’re there to work within your limits. We understand some people can be more timid, some people can be more aggressive. We work with that and the coaches are super adaptable to all these different personalities and cars and all that kind of thing.
So the idea is to ingratiate [00:50:00] you into this world of high performance driving, you know, work with what we’ve got for that weekend in a very quick manner. But make very good forward progress for you, the driver. But also we learn something every weekend, every student. I’m well into the triple digits of students now that I’ve had.
I learn something from each one of them and I learn something from other coaches. I mean, it’s just one of these very wealth of knowledge sharing type of environment. So I, I just wanna remind people that that is what it’s really about. Again, that stress on that e part of HBDE. But I do wanna move on to some of the more, you know, kind of bits and bytes part of this that somebody might be listening for the first time or is already comfortable with HBD wants to know more about, you know, HOD, which is, what are those average session lengths?
What is the weekend cost on average? Let’s talk about, you know, dollars per mile dollars per session. What does that boil down to for somebody that’s looking to come to HOD for the first time?
Mike Arrigo: That’s a tough question to how we do that. My goal has always been to provide. Quality track time over quantity, track [00:51:00] time, so to say.
So, uh, we were at Watkins Glen last two weeks ago. I, I felt like we were so overcrowded with 40 some odd cars in the run group, but I break it down to what goes on. I’m like, okay, that’s probably not that much. The guy that was running Grid out there, he goes, oh man, you, he goes, I don’t wanna say the name of the club, but they had 80 some odd cars in every run group.
And he told me, I said, are you for real? He goes, I wouldn’t lie to you. And I’m like, how can you have quality track time by putting 70 or 80 cars on there? Like, you get what you pay for. And I’m hoping that we’re providing value and quality track time from the responses we get and we ask people. And I, and I hope people are honest about it, but they say they get more quality track time.
And that’s what they’re really looking for over quantity. So yeah, you know, I could run three run groups charge XY and you had, you know, more track time, but if you get two good laps every session as opposed to two or three bad laps every day for the whole day, I mean, I think, you know, we, we try to not price people out, but at the [00:52:00] same time, I want to try and get less cars on track.
And that’s something we’re gonna stick to next year because as a softie, I’m not taking these calls anymore for people, but he goes, oh, you know, I didn’t register. I want to try and get in. And I’m like, okay. You know, our car counts are always a little bit lower to begin with. So, um, starting for 2022, we’re gonna really strict car count numbers.
And that is it. It’s sold out. It’s sold out. And like I said, I leave myself like a 10 to 15% buffer. Like I said, if you register for B and you don’t belong there, we’re gonna move you into C. And if you register for C and I find out when you get there that you’re. Experiences Forza, you’re going into a, you know, right.
I, I’ll tell you about later, but I’ve had that twice in my life already. Yes, grand Tomo the name of choice. But so we are trying to do that. So when you get a track like Limerock, that’s one and a half miles long. It’s in there. There’s the most expensive track you could probably rent per mile. The couple tracks that are more expensive to rent out there, you know, you look at Coda is pretty long track there, you know, such a huge facility.
You get Watkins Glen, you know, huge [00:53:00] facility, three and a half miles, and then you get. Limerock, which is actually more expensive to rent because we’re one of the few people that our weekend in June, the second week in June is, uh, is become like a, a thing for us and we don’t have sound restrictions. So if you have a loud car or you need to practice with your race car, I mean there’s, there’s very limited opportunities to do that on a weekend there.
So we have that and we’re usually, I think the week before the SCCA regionals, which kind of helps a lot of those guys that really need that last minute test and tune or to bring a driver in and stuff like that. So, I guess aimless pitch right there where there, right before the SCCA races. How do you price that out By giving people and you have a, you know, a decently short day.
It, this is an expensive hobby. And if you think of it in the long run, like the cheapest part of that weekend might actually be the, the entry fee. Once you consider fuel getting there, the cost of tires, the cost of breaks and everything else you do. That might be the cheapest part of it sometimes, besides maybe the hotel room at Limerock, maybe not the hotel room, but well look, we’re there in June at the perfect springtime, it’s prime season at a hotel up there and, and there’s some nice [00:54:00] resorts there.
It’s kind of hard to, uh, balance that. ’cause at the end of the day, you know, this is, it’s a business and we have to keep things flowing. But I do this more because I just, I just love the sport. I love doing it. I love giving back and I like to see the people that are having a good time. But like I said, you know, we gotta keep the lights on at the same time.
There’s no McLaren center in, in my future because of HOD right now. Both McLaren wants to send me one, but I try to make it fair. Now we look at it. We come up with a number and I figure out how many cars I can put per mile, what it costs to operate per minute there, the prices went up substantially, but I think this is what I’m going through all now to make it next year’s price schedule.
It was running me $58 a minute to run it line rock. Wow. So that’s my cost per minute. I’m paying the track. So, you know, do the math there, how many cars do you need at X amount of dollars is to do that. I found that that most drivers would rather spend, you know, 25 or $50 more to know that they’re on a track with a couple less cars, with a different quality of [00:55:00] drivers that they’re used to.
And I think that’s what we’re really catering to. We’re not the budget track day where you know, you’re coming in there maximum time go on and off all day. You know, that’s definitely not us. I’ve done a couple events where we did less run groups, midweek events, guys were getting like three, three and a half hours of track time.
Midweek I, I got complaints that there was too much track time. Like, I literally got survey complaints that we did. It goes too much track time in there and there wasn’t enough time between sessions. And I’m looking at myself and I’m like, I thought that people just wanted more and more. So I started to realize that, you know what, most guys want a little bit of downtime in there.
They wanna be able to do things. There are a lot of drives that are coming out there just because, you know, this is their relaxation time. There’re there with their friends, you know, they’re not out there to get maximum track time. So, uh, we try to balance that. So you could say on an average two hours of track time, give or take, you know, depending on the track, say at Watkins Glen is a very, very short day.
They’re very strict. From eight 30 to four 30, that’s your entire day with an hour lunch on there. We’re Pocono, we’re on there for, you know, a 10 or [00:56:00] 11 hour day. We can have, depending on what it is, we try to do that accordingly. So, but you can figure on the two hour mark, give or take at Limerock. Like, we’ll run 20 minute sessions because, you know, when.
Pace car probably running, you know, a minute and 10 a minute and 20 seconds fast. Guys are running under a minute. You know, you’re gonna get, you know, 15, 20 laps depending on what you’re doing out there, depending where you’re putting out there. You know, if I gave you a 20 minute session of Watkins Glen by the time you got your first lap done and you warmed up, you know, you’d, you’d get almost no time.
So we’re billing the schedules ahead of time. We’re gonna put them up on all the event pages and uh, and really try to adjust them to maximize the efficient time of you having a good time having a break. Depending where things are, I don’t want you to have a three hour break because lunch fell in the middle of it all there.
So it’s a juggling act to try and make everyone happy. We’re definitely not the cheapest game in town. We’re not the most expensive. We’re just trying to make sure we’re the most fun, where you get the most quality track time. That’s the goal here for me.
Crew Chief Eric: For people that are excited to come learn more about HOD and, and sign up for an event, where do they find out where HOD events are and how [00:57:00] do they register for them?
Mike Arrigo: That’s the easiest part. You, they just go to hooked on driving.com and then you’ll see all the regions listed right across the board there. There’s a membership fee that goes to our parent company, PDP, out in California. And what that does get you, there’s, you know, there’s quite a few discounts that come up with that, depending on what you’re doing.
You know, wine countries, one of our national sponsors that come out there, so you’ll get discounts, you’ll get free shipping at certain times. Bell is, is one of our major sponsors out there for the coaches out there. I dunno if they, you know, a lot of people may not realize that every era, like the 2020 helmets came out there.
So once every error you’re gonna get a any bell helmet other than their. I think 88, 60 line, you know, those 4,000 helmets, you know, any one of those helmets are gonna be 25% off for you. So, you know, all the catches there. There’s a lot of others like that. We, we have break partners, we have regional partners like that will be announcing, uh, certain deals for 2022.
I don’t wanna shock anyone out there, but, uh, you know, we have a, Rachel and David Eaton from Eaton Motorsport are out there. They’re at all our events. You know, if you need something delivered to the track, they’re bringing it with you out there. They’re giving the HOD [00:58:00] coaches a very nice discount. On brake pads and a lot of the consumables that we, uh, we go through, you know, those are the big ones.
You know, the consumables, people don’t realize how that adds up. As you know, John, he’s got PMX Motorsports coming out there. You know, he’s got some nice deals for communicators, for all the coaches that wanna upgrade from the old chatter boxes and stuff that would basically, you know, point to point helmet stuff for motorcycle guys in tandem, you know, but we’ve adapted.
And so they give a lot of benefits out there that go through things. You know, uh, apex Wheels buy Apex Wheels. You, you know, they double the warranty if you’re team HOD members. There’s a lot of programs and what I, I try to remind people, I see this all the time and I, uh, we actually go on our way to make sure people get refunded.
Sometimes it’s like, wait, you and your wife and your son are coming? Why’d you buy three memberships? It’s one family membership and you can register any driver you want on there. Yeah. But that’s something that helps keep that going on there for our sponsors and everything else. So there, there’s a good amount of discounts that come out there that I, uh.
I hope people take advantage of out there because it adds up. You know, you once, you know, you get the money off on one set of brake pads, right? There is more than that. Uh, that yearly [00:59:00] fee,
Crew Chief Eric: your events are listed on, hooked on driving.com. Every once in a while they pop up on places like Motorsport Reg and things like that.
Yep. Depending on where you are in the country. But you register through HODs proprietary system on hooked on driving.com and then obviously it walks you through, you pick your event, you know, there’s a whole shopping cart mechanism, all that kind of thing. And in the recent years, there’s been something that’s been added to the shopping cart.
There’s some options that you can get. And so normally I’ll ask people like, you know, do you recommend that a student get track insurance before coming to an event? But HOD actually recommends it right there at checkout and you can sign up for track insurance through one of ho’s national partners. So I didn’t know if you wanted to expand on that a little bit and get people to understand what that’s all about.
Mike Arrigo: You’re flowing right in the direction I was gonna go right into. So, uh, so yeah, so when you’re, you’re on there and you, you order your stuff, one of the options out there, like after you fill out all your information and your, your driver information, your emergency contact, and you ordered what you want, you know, there’s that box there said, do you wanna purchase track insurance?
And, uh, we don’t provide track insurance. It’s done through open track. Just [01:00:00] try to do is provide a, an easier pathway so you don’t have to go outside. You can get everything done at once. So basically you go through that, you decide whether you want to buy track insurance, and one of the questions you asked was like, do you suggest it?
And I’m like, it’s kinda like a personal type of thing. Like as more insurance companies are looking at this, you know, check your policy. Like there’s certain. Companies out there that because we are strictly non-competitive as an education department, you know, you would be covered. And there are a lot of insurance companies now that have changed and said anything that goes on at a race facility is not covered.
So the best thing to do is to check your policy. But after that, you know, you say you want to get track insurance, so you know, track insurance, you know, with liability might be 350 bucks for the weekend. Right. Think about what in, in reference to what is value to you. You know, this is your my daily driver.
This is a dedicated track car. It’s really depends on the person. And when you look at it and you say, okay, I’m spending a thousand dollars this weekend on a hotel room and [01:01:00] an entry fee and this and that, and then, you know, plus my fuel costs, plus my travel. 350 bucks make a difference. To some people, it might to that person that that’s their daily driver, they come up with a value and you know, and that’s what it’s geared towards.
So it’s not like, okay, we’re gonna go find you another, you know, 2006 this, you’re gonna have an agreed upon value. When you do track insurance, which is very different from what most people are used to, you’re gonna know exactly what your deductible is. You’d know exactly what the value of your car is. So you’re gonna, you know, you may have a car that’s, I value this car at $47,000.
You know what you’ve put into that car. That’s gonna be the value of that car on that track. Regardless if they can find you 16 other cars for $4,000, they don’t realize that you have $15,000 shocks in that car and you have, you know, $10,000 worth of motor work in their car. These motorsports, HPD insurance companies, they’re familiar with what we do, which is very different from like, you try to explain HPD guy to your local insurance agent and he’s gonna be like.
What are you talking about? Yeah, exactly. And it’s, it is relatively, you know, cheap [01:02:00] insurance, right? Against what can happen out there. We don’t see a lot of instances, and I know a lot of people do get the track insurance out there, so I’d never wanna discourage anyone from getting it because it’s peace of mind.
Insurance is peace of mind is what it is for everybody. I suggest it. Yeah. It’s out there, you know, it’s not in everyone’s budget all the time, but at the same time, you know, you, you gotta look, it’s. Things, you know, what’s, uh, what’s the cost of a windshield on your, on your pizza.
Crew Chief Brad: Exactly. It’s
Mike Arrigo: $5,000 windshield, you know?
So, you know, it all depends on what goes on out there, you know, as opposed to a car that does that. So, I like it, but, you know, we don’t actually make any money off of that. That is just a separate pass through that goes right to them. And in fact, you know, even though you, you’re putting your card and your information out there, you’ll see it come out as two separate bills.
One goes right to, you know, what we did, what we hear, team, HOD fee goes where it has to go. And then that open track insurance goes where it has to go. So you’ll see that separately out there. So we don’t actually make any money on that. We are just trying to provide a service to our customers. One stop shopping.
So there, it makes it easier. You know, I’ve heard stories of people, [01:03:00] he goes, I want to get track insurance. And I called and I didn’t do this. I do that and I wish I would’ve gotten it. Well, now we put it right there on our website. So you can do it very, very easily. I will say, you know, the guys at Open Track are fantastically easy to deal with.
They’re responsive. The emails, the phone calls, or I mean like you’re talking, if you need to, you can talk to a human being, you know, right away. They work with us, so anytime people have had to make a claim or anything else, it’s been very seamless. I just tell ’em like, yep, this car was here at this event.
I certified, it was there. There’s an incident report, and that’s it, and they’re done. You know, it’s 1, 2, 3. They’ve made it very, very simple and easy because the turnaround rate is so small. Chances of something happened to you. At a racetrack during a, an education program like ours, you’re more likely to have something happen to you on the way to the track and home than either track.
I mean, really it’s, and I know that because, you know, we’ve been told that from, you know, the insurance agencies and the bean counters have told us that. I’m very proud of that. And I, and I trust that because of, uh, of you guys that are out there that coach for us, you are our eyes and ears out [01:04:00] there in the other run groups.
So I gotta give all you guys out there that, that, and anyone who’s a coach with us or coaches anywhere, I mean, you’re the eyes and ears of everything in these operations. So, you know, my hat’s off to you right there out there. Great spot up there. Well, thank you. You know, because, uh, you’re, you’re the guys that make this, uh, this sport what it is.
And safe, you know, we couldn’t do this. We’ve got new drivers.
Crew Chief Eric: Now you did mention something that is truth that we all understand, but often ignore, which is a mechanical failure. Right. We are stressing. Machines to their utmost limit when they’re at the track, especially when you’re in the higher run groups.
’cause you’re, you know, we’re not timing, but we’re all reaching for this golden lap in our head, right? Let’s call it what it is. A lot of organizations, they have a pre-inspection, they’ll call it, or they’ll have a tech inspection or something you have to fill out, and that’s part of the registration process as well.
So does HOD have that? If they do, how does it work? If they don’t, how does that work? You know, explain that to the audience.
Mike Arrigo: When you register for an HOD event, you come on there, you’re on our [01:05:00] website, you’ve gone to hooked on driving.com, you’re gonna get what’s called an E waiver. So we’ve gone to an electronic waiver system and electronic tech system.
So basically you’re signing the same waiver that you would sign at the racetrack. Instead of signing at every single event, you’re signing a yearly waiver, then you’re also gonna sign a tech inspection form. That says that, and like I said, it goes back to treating you like an adult. You’re getting out there, you’re getting on a racetrack, you’re getting into a car that you’re gonna push to, you know, a, a limit higher than what you would normally be driving.
And it says that, you’re saying that say, I’m gonna make sure that all of these things at the most basic level have been checked out. You’re gonna do that before. Every event. So I don’t need you to bring me a tech form. You’ve already told me you’ve signed a document and said, Hey, I’m gonna be responsible enough to do all these things out there.
Come the day of the event. I’m not gonna go over your car and look at it and make your weight in a, in a 20 minute line to so we, someone could check your wheel nuts and take a peek under your hood or anything like that. One. No one at any of these events [01:06:00] is, is really gonna catch any of these major mechanical problems that usually happen.
Two, it’s time consuming. I, I’m asking you to fill out a waiver and sign that you did this and then I’m gonna check up on you as if you are lying to me. That’s the case. Do I won’t even want you on track with me. With all that said, you know, our group leaders go over this and our coaches are out there and, and you do this also, you know, when you, when you meet that student and you go over it, you’re kind of going to the conversation about the car.
I mean, we’re all car people ’cause we’re out there at the racetrack and you know, we’re gonna look at it. Hey, check your torque system and check your tire pressures this morning. You know, like, just give their memory because they, they got a lot of things going on in their mind. They’re there for the first time that coach nine at a 10 times is gonna give ’em a hand with that and say, oh, no, no, no.
Say no you, you don’t wanna be at 38 pounds right now. I said, you know, that’s, we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna build up. And, you know, they’re gonna give them, because, you know, they’re a, a wealth of knowledge out there. They’re gonna notice if that car is, you know, looking out there and say, well. That tire doesn’t look, it belongs on track.
You know, we are walking the paddock, we are looking at things, we are making announcements. We are telling [01:07:00] people in our group leader meetings, these are all the things, you know, Hey guys, make sure you know, you went over your checklist on there and you know you got it here, but before you go out and you know, make sure your wheels are torqued, you know, take a peek that nothing happened from the last track day.
You know, Hey guys, I know you were here Thursday and Friday, but you know, it doesn’t mean that you know you’re good today, Saturday and Sunday. You know, because a lot of times events go back to back and if it’s a destination track, you know, we do get a lot of people that will come say, you know what, it’s a 12 hour ride.
I’m not going there for one day or two days, but if I can do a four day weekend there, I’m gonna do it. I will say mechanical videos that we’ve had, usually. Nothing that we would’ve caught ahead of time. You know, no one’s pulling up their, a very small percentage and we usually catch ’em at the grid line, you know, that’s leaking.
Something like that. If something happens, it’s usually something that’s been just catastrophic right out there, out in the open. And like you saw at Watkins, you know, a motor blows, you know,
Crew Chief Eric: I broke a wheel hub going into turn one. I was like, all right, whatever. It happens, right? It is what it is.
Mike Arrigo: I heard about a guy who broke an axle [01:08:00] on a skid pad at Watkins Glen.
Hey, hey, you know, that’s, that’s a story for another day. A rainstorm and then some maniac. Went out there and did the skid pad in the pickup truck. Uh, I still have that video. It’s so funny. We’re all, we would knee deep, we would pretty much knee deep in water pushing that car outta there, weren’t we? But, uh, we had good time.
So, I mean, that’s the, the process with the tech inspection, you know, and it, in all seriousness, it’s. Really, really important. I mean, you’re putting your life on the line out there. I mean, would you, would you go out and drive with ball tires and a snowstorm out, you know, in, on the road, you know, with your family and your kids in the car?
Probably not think of, you know, what goes on, you know? And if you’re not capable of doing it, we’re asking you and you’re asserting that you are gonna have someone take this. And I gotta say, a huge amount of people are out there and they’re going out there and they’re getting their stuff checked out.
And uh, you know, we have certain, you know, partners that are out there and being such a big region, it’s hard to say, okay, go to this one spot or that one spot there, you know, we just wanna make sure you’re safe out there. And that’s what it boils down to. And Yep. In the [01:09:00] lower run groups, when you’re first starting out there, if your car’s roadworthy and in good shape.
You can probably do this in there. You know, you, you can’t take your minivan, you can’t take your big SUV or your pickup truck out there. Most road cars are out there. And like I said, you know, it’s funny when you see out there and you see, you know, a brand new perfor out there and there’s a, a Honda Accord bucket list, I’ve stuff, and they’re out there together.
It’s crazy, right? If your car’s capable of being out there, we ask you still. I, I don’t care if it just came off the lot three weeks ago. Go over it, make sure things break. And being in the service industry, like a lot of people are there. We know we do a lot of service stuff, you know, if things didn’t break people, a lot of people wouldn’t have jobs out there, so, yep.
I stopped questioning why things break, but we do what we can to pick. Beforehand, find the wear and tear items. Don’t come to the track when you only have a quarter of your brake pads left, you know, don’t come to the track. That never happens. That never
Crew Chief Eric: ever happens.
Mike Arrigo: I, I won’t mention any names, but he, he answer Now
Crew Chief Eric: it all is pretty much par for the course, right?
I mean, these are things that people [01:10:00] oftentimes forget to consider, and, and I think you’ve done a good job. Explaining all that, but you know, as we’re kind of wrapping up here and, and kind of bringing everything to a head, you know, HRD has a lot of great things to offer. It’s a great program. It’s been around for a long time.
It’s progressive, right? It’s been changing, it’s been a, it’s adopting. You guys have been at the front end of a lot of programs, you know, like MSF and its early days and things like that. So I wanted to take a moment to talk about if there were any other services that HOD offers that people might not be aware of, even if they’ve been around for a long time.
You mentioned some changes that are coming in the 22 and 23 season. Things that you guys have had to change because of COVID, you know, anything else that you wanted to address? The services we offer a
Mike Arrigo: lot, what a lot of people realize is we do a lot of event management services and private event caterings.
There are people that, you know, want to go out there and do. A private event. They want to, instead of doing an a hundred thousand dollars Atlantic City bachelor party crazy weekend, you know, let’s get a bunch of guys, let’s go to the racetrack and rent a racetrack and stuff. You know, [01:11:00] I just threw a fictitious number out there.
You know, it’s like, you know, I, if anyone’s having a bachelor party where they’re throwing a hundred grand out there, please invite me. I’m, yeah, yeah. I wanna
Crew Chief Eric: be on that list
Mike Arrigo: too, right? Me and Eric will be there right away. In fact, I’ll put a cap on and drive. We’re both professional drivers here. No, but we do a lot of event management and private event services.
Whether you are, you know, a small club of enthusiasts, you know, you got your local exotic car club or anything, or you know, the Shelby guys or the vintage lotuses or anything like that. It’s very hard to rent a racetrack. One date availability is so hard to get out there. And two, it’s ridiculous, expensive.
If you can have someone else put together a turnkey operation for you where you just have to arrive there. You’re done. We do that for you. One of our partners right now is Track Car Solutions, you know, and Mike is fantastic. You know, if you saw some of the, his setup over there, you know, with the, uh, couple brand new C eights, you know, the one elite, the Z 20 eights, the SS Camaros, and you know, and it’s quite a few cars are out there.
So for guys that want to do [01:12:00] something and maybe do like, you know, a team building exercise or do something together, I mean, there’s solutions there where we can actually provide cars. Now, it’s not like it was years ago where if you wanted rent, you were renting kind of like a semi prepped race car and who doesn’t know how to drive stick and oh my God, I’m getting into this.
You know, what am I getting into over here and I can’t fit into these spells? Might get track. Our solutions is in a lot of places and he has an arrive and drive program, whether, you know, one of our members wants to said, know I always wanted to drive Coda, but I don’t wanna ship my car out there. And I don’t do that.
Guess what? Simple phone call. You fly in there, you’re picked up, you’re there at the track, everything is taken care of, and you fly home and, and you’ve driven the shit outta someone else’s car basically. Um, so we do that for people where, you know, I say, Hey, you know what? I want to do a little corporate outing on a Wednesday, you know?
Upstate New York, or whether it’s in New Jersey or Pocono, you know, we deal with the track operations, we get everything set together and we do that for you. Um, some car clubs, they want to do, they, you know, 15, 20 guys, you know, they just want to be together and that’s it. And they wanna do all these, [01:13:00] you know, famous race tracks and do stuff like that.
So, you know, they’ll. Pool their money together and kick in there and they have 15, 20 dates in California. We’re doing that between Laguna and a couple other tracks that are out there and it’s just them and that’s it. So we do that and we, we do that, you know, pretty much everywhere. And you consider the caliber of racetracks we have out there, you know, it’s a lot of opportunity.
I don’t think a lot of people realize that we do that for them. Hopefully we can get some more guys out there to do some of these nice private days, because I can tell they’re easygoing. People have a great time, you know, they’ve. It’s a, it’s a white glove service type of operation. We really, we really try to treat them nice and have, uh, have some fun out there.
The other part of, uh, you know, what we’re planning to change, like I said, is we’re really gonna try and look over and just get away from what everyone else is doing. You know, everyone else does this, this, and this. And taking some of the data we’ve have, I’ve collected over the last two years of what works.
Some of the surveys, what people like, what people don’t like, and obviously you can’t make everybody happy all the time. And I’m gonna start to put together, like I said, I mentioned some of the numbers for Watkins Glen, and I’m like, you, you know how big [01:14:00] that facility is. You know how big that track is? 27 cars out there.
I mean, you should never see a train of cars out there. And it is like that. You do 35 cars, you know, or in the higher run groups, it kinda gets boring when you don’t have someone to play with, so to say. So, you know, if you take 15 cars per mile and multiply that by 3.4, when I put 45 cars out there, I’m well under that.
My goal has always been between 12 and 15 cars per mile. Next year we’re actually gonna kind of work on that, where it’s. A lot less in our lower groups. I think people with less cars, you know, even though it might be a little bit more money kind of hurts the profit line a little bit later on. But I want them to have a good time and I want them when they get somewhere else to be like, you know what, I’m going back.
I really want them to be hooked on driving with us. I think that’s one of the major changes we’re gonna be doing next year, along with keeping a very adaptable schedule. It’s one of the things we do differently. Um, mishaps happen. You know, someone blows a motor and spins oil on the, at the end of his run group who suffers.
They had two lefts left. Next group lost 10 minutes. I [01:15:00] don’t tell people like, you know, well sorry, you know, you lost that run session ’cause someone blew oil before you. What happens if that happens three times in a row? You know, I don’t want someone leaving there getting 15 minutes of track time for the day.
Have you seen like, uh, you know, I will go up there and I, you know, I’ll work with the, uh, race control. People and really figure out, how do I maneuver this? At the end of the day, you’ve had cars break down. You have guys that are tired, you know, you lose some drivers through attrition. They’re just like, nah, I’m not going out.
The last session, you know, kind of the end of the day, we’ll try to manufacture where people fit in with each other. Like the c and d group drivers, for the most part, are on the same level and most of the, that’s where most of the coaches drive. Also, we have a lightly attended event and we’re already running those lower numbers to begin with.
It becomes a lot easier to kind of combine maybe one group to get back a half hour. Makes sense. Yeah. And then, you know, give the C group an extra 15 minutes here and give the B group the 20 minutes they lost here. So I try to adapt to that. I know you guys, uh, provide a great online tool, c scheduling and stuff.
So we’re gonna try and work forward to have something electronic displayed at all [01:16:00] our sites for, for next year. And, uh, we’re working on that. Hopefully I’ll get it done by March where people will see any schedule changes. I know people tell me, you know, I get on that microphone, you know, at all advance and I try to make announcements and, you know, like I said, our our run group leader meetings, you know, when we’re gonna make changes and we try to adapt.
As a driver, you know, if I lost track time, it’s upsetting. You know, it happens when it happens this time and this time and this time, you know, we go through events where we have four or five events where like not one thing has ever gone wrong. And then you’ll have an event where there’s like literally five breakdowns who blew a radiator hose, an oil line broke, you know, or just like, just mishaps or control arm just snapped.
You know, things that just happen, you know, it’s, it’s nature. It’s, we’re stressing cars out tremendously. You know, you have, it doesn’t have to be driver error all the time, right. You know, even though there is, I wanna make sure that I try to make it right for those people as, as best I can. Something happens, you know, near lunchtime, okay, you know what, guess what, we’re gonna start lunch now and move the whole schedule by half hour.
We try to work with the tracks to adapt that. Um, people say share the wealth, I guess. Uh, share the pain of losing a little [01:17:00] track time so you haven’t lost 30 minutes of track time. Maybe every group is lost. Four or five minutes. Yeah. It all just
Crew Chief Eric: blurs into gray at that point. Yeah, exactly.
Mike Arrigo: So, you know, we try our best to really do that, and we’re gonna really work harder at that for next year to keep that number lower so we can adapt a little bit better.
So hopefully, you know, knock on wood, you know, we won’t need it, but it’ll, it’ll be another tool in our toolbox. Right
Crew Chief Eric: now, the one looming thing out there, COVID is still a very real thing. And obviously we’re gonna. Foremost follow state locality and then track guidelines, right? Every track has different things, and even at Watkins Glen, there was posts all over the place.
You know, still social distancing and all this kind of stuff, and this and that. I mean, there’s a lot of open space at the Glen, which is nice. Like a lot of tracks like you’re not indoors at really at any point. I’m not trying to make any exceptions there, but any special COVID related rules that HOD has instituted, whether between students and coaches or amongst the, the guests, whatever it might be that you [01:18:00] wanna share with folks so that they know coming into next season what to expect?
Mike Arrigo: We’re following old guidelines given to us by every track. Being that we cover so many states, it’s a lot to follow. But behind the scenes, basically I get there the day before, you know, we do an inspection, we make sure things have actually been cleaned and sanitized, and if they’re not, we get on the phone with someone, whoever’s gotta do that.
There’s masks at our classroom. There’s masks at the gate. There’s masks at our registration table, and we tell people, listen, they’re here. Anyone wants one. You don’t feel comfortable with something, say something. We’re gonna do what we can. Like at Watkins Gun, we no longer use that little room for any kind of meetings.
As far as the group leader meetings, we went and we use the media center now, which is, if you’ve been in those two rooms, is huge. People can be really spaced out, you know, a little bit better between whether it’s the press room or the other room. The other thing that goes on, like say for our coaches and all our novice guests or anyone who’s gonna be coached at an event, we also provide professional coaching for much higher level with data acquisition.
It’s in-car and out of [01:19:00] car. That’s another thing that we do. We have a lot of pro coaches that will actually come to us, whether it’s, you know, they’re flying in from California or you know, wherever they are. You know, we had some fun with Billy Johnson, uh, last week. That’s a whole nother story. That could be a whole podcast on its own.
Yeah, so we, we, right, so we send out over an email and we said, listen. Do you want to be with someone, you know, whether they, you will not work with someone who’s vaccinated. What, what’s your preference as far as what you want? Do you want to be in a lead follow situation, which for, you know, people that don’t know what this is, it’s like we’re gonna teach you from outside the car, you know, we’re gonna do our best and depending on the cars, and we try to pair people up because technology’s here, there’s a lot of great technology out there.
We can Bluetooth car to car pretty much, right? There’s a lot of options to use technology to help us. So we can guide someone behind them, walk them through as if they were in the car. That is a great tool to use. I feel in-car coaching still has a very important place because someone who’s never done this probably has bad [01:20:00] habits.
Whether it’s they keep taking their hand off the wheel to hold the stick or whether it’s, you know, their, their hand position Being in the car as a coach and I, I said there are certain risks and I’ll, I’ll get into that too. You can see certain things, you know, you can see his body language, you can see how tightly he’s gripping, whether he’s holding in the right spot.
So a lot of habits. Break that, go on like that. So that part is a really important aspect of being in there. But we have COVID now. So how do you social distance in there? Well, we tell people if you’re gonna be in a car together, listen, you have two wide open windows with a hundred mile an hour wind coming through you and you’re wearing a face mask.
So we, we insist if you’re gonna be in a car together, obviously, you know, a father’s coaching, his son lives at home with them and stuff like that. You know, am I gonna enforce that? It’s like, no, you live together, you drove in the same car there and you’re sleeping in the same hotel room together. Let’s use some common sense in here like that.
But we send out an email, we survey and we match people over what they’re looking for. But if people are on the car together, we’re asking, and certain states, it’s mandated that you wear a mask at all times and the windows [01:21:00] have to be down. We usually don’t have a window rule. We’re okay. Our insurance company’s fine with it.
Windows have to be either all the way up or all the way down. But like I said, you know how you gonna give a point by with a closed window? So
Crew Chief Eric: yeah, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Right? Yeah. But, but
Mike Arrigo: for the coach, when it’s raining, it’s a great thing. Windows are open and you have to wear a face covering in there.
Most of the people will wear a face mask, and then we will give them an HOD bva, you know, a head sock to put over there. So you have kind of an extra layer out there. Yep. The communicators that we give out are sanitized. We have new phone pieces at every event. Basically, your students, you’re gonna get a headset of communicators that you’re gonna slide into your helmet.
I know we’re on a podcast. I’m making hand motions here. Okay. And you’re gonna put it in there. So that’s been sanitized, it’s been cleaned, bring bottles of alcohol and stuff to every event with cleaning wipes and sanitizing wipes. After that, mic’s been sanitized, A new foam mic cover goes on that, and you keep that with you.
So that’s yours. You’re using it. And then when you give it back to the coach, when you’re done with it. He’s gonna clean and sanitize it, and then we provide, you know, new, uh, foam pieces for ’em. And at the coaches’ [01:22:00] meeting when Ken goes, I have foam mic feeds if you need new ones. You know, you know, a lot of guys I’ve noticed have been going to Amazon just buying them for themselves, you know, because they just wanna make sure they always have ’em.
But, and there are people that never go out and follow the strictest guidelines and they suddenly get it outta nowhere. So we do the best we can to protect ourselves, but we treat you like an adult. You’re outside, how much time are you really spending alone in a closed quarters with someone? It’s really minimal.
Yeah. But we still insist that you have there and we ask, you know, you to choose your vaccination requests. If you do not want to be with someone who’s unvaccinated, we are not gonna pair you with someone who’s unvaccinated. You know it. It’s your choice. We’re all adults and we are never gonna try and force anyone to a situation that they’re not happy with.
Crew Chief Eric: And on the flip side of that, now’s a great opportunity to start thinking about maybe refreshing your helmet and getting one with comms already built into it. I will say I made the switch last season ’cause I was due for a new helmet and I will never buy another helmet that doesn’t have integrated comms ever again.
’cause it is a godsend, that’s for sure. But at any rate. [01:23:00] So, Mike, as we’re closing out here, any shout outs you want to give to sponsors, friends, people, while you still have the microphone at your disposal? Some you, you know, anything you wanna say to, to fans out there of HOD, uh, as a thank you or otherwise?
Mike Arrigo: I gotta thank all the coaches that are out there. I mean, they do a fantastic job of really showing the people that are out there, what we’re about the staff people that I work with. You know, I gotta say we have the most amazing group leaders and out there, you know, um, our group C leader, Steve Ferman.
You know, it’s funny, you hear me at the driver’s meeting, the jeweler of the drivers, you know, he’s, uh, have you seen like, I, you know, you guys have those HOD watches. Steve made them for everybody, you know, added. He just created that stuff. So he’s, uh, he’s great. He’s fantastic out there and, and he really, really is passionate about what he does.
He cares about those people. Like, they’re like his kids, even if they’re older than him, you know, that’s the way he looks at it. He goes, uh, Ken has been Indisposable. I mean, he’s just fantastic. He’s been the Group D leader, which kind of just fit great for him for a while [01:24:00] because it’s, uh, you know, he’s got a lot of coaches who are running in there.
He really has his hands on right on there of what we actually do and what we mean, and, and the amount of. Time and effort he puts into things. It shows, it shows completely on, on how operations run. He’s been fantastic. Ken out there and we have Dave Du Bois has come on and people know Dave has been around for a very long time doing this.
You know, chief instructor for Ferrari comes out there and they know, and then he helps us with our intermediate drivers. The hardest run group I think there is out there. And then, you know, you have Jay who’s been around and you know, sorry Jay, but you’ve, I mean, I think, uh, you’ve been around before, dirt, you know, doing this, you know, I mean, there are tracks that have opened, closed, opened and closed and no longer exist that you’ve been to that I’ll never get to see now.
And uh, and all these guys bring all these years of experience and. Their only goal is to really pass on this information so this can continue and, and be out there. And it’s, uh, so I gotta thank all those guys out there that really make this happen. I, I gotta thank the coaches that are always out there, just looking out for people and just, [01:25:00] you know, just really on top of everything to make sure we have a great event.
And then we have the people that come out there and, and make our drivers and our, our people that are out here. Fantastic. Like I mentioned, you know, Dave and Rachel from Eat Motorsport, they do an absolutely fantastic job of out there. And if, and if it’s funny too because we go to their website. You’d think they were only a, a Subaru type of guy, but they, uh, they do everything.
Um, I had a problem with some shock shocks on my rv. They actually got me NY shocks from my rv. I mean, so they’re a one-stop operation out there. Uh, a lot of guys know Greg Bristow from his, uh, Camaro days and uh, you know, even though we haven’t seen ’em in a while, but he provides all those numbers, those awesome stickers that everyone looks forward to.
You know, we have fast automotive, you know, Adrian and his Trans Am team, you know, they come out with us. They do so much track site support for everyone. It’s just, it’s great. This year, uh, we’ve had Bright come on. And if people don’t know what Bright is, they’re uh, an internet solution security company.
What she said re really hit home is like, you’re out here, you know, enjoying your time with the track. You don’t have to worry about what’s going on with your [01:26:00] website and especially with internet commerce. And, you know, so much is based on the websites out there. And that’s what they do. And they’ve come on there and they’ve had a great time.
And like I said, I mentioned Mike already from Track Car Solutions. I mean, he, there’s lots of times when guys just, they don’t want to bring their four, five, $600,000 car out to a racetrack. You know, one windshield is more expensive on their car than, uh, than renting a track car for the day. So Track Car Solutions provides a, a great chance for people to drive some really nice cars without having to take their cars out.
Or the flip side is that they can actually go to tracks around the country without, without have to ship their car. So these are guys that are making our drivers days a lot easier. And these are our local regional guys and, uh, and we try to, you know, have a part. For everywhere. Uh, next year, um, one of our drivers, Chris Coronado, I mean, he’s got a, a tremendous realty group out of Jersey and he does a tremendous amount of rental properties.
You could say almost like an Airbnb up at Watkins Glen area. You don’t wanna stay in a hotel room. And, uh, we try, like I said, you’ve seen our operation. We’re very family friendly. We ask people. [01:27:00] Bring your wives, bring your girlfriends, bring your kids out there. And there’s things to do, especially at a place like Watkins Glen.
Uh, it’s uh, it’s how I first got Mo to come out to the track. You know, I got them to come out to go camping and they would go to Corning Glass Museum and see the waterfalls and we’d go camping and stuff like that. So it’s a really awesome, like, family type of weekend out there where, you know, you get to go out and play and they can do a couple things and then, you know, our day ends at four 30, so you are plenty of time to go out and do stuff with the family and have dinner and everything else.
Chris is a, is a, is a great guy. He’s super fast out there and you know, he is got a bunch of properties out there, up at, up in Watkins Gun that he does rentals for, you know, for guys that, you know, wanna do a, a bed and breakfast near the track side. And as a track guy, it’s great to have someone like that on board.
Try to figure out what helps people and like I, and, and I say this in my meetings and stuff like that, so we’re the core of America, you know, all these small business out there, and we should always really be trying to help each other out, out there. Jeff Bezos does not need another jet. I don’t think he does.
I mean, maybe he does. You know, can you [01:28:00] get those same brake pads on Amazon? Maybe a little cheaper. Maybe, probably not, not with the service that these people are gonna provide. And you know, when you get some, say, say from Dave and Rachel Eaton out there, you know, it’s gonna be a real part and you don’t have to worry about it, whether it’s been fake or anything else like that.
Yeah, yeah. Uh, you know, so when you’re dealing with these people, they’re, they’re really topnotch guys. They’re track people. They come to the track and that’s what they’re all about. So they understand what people need, what they want, and what they expect. I love our continued relationship with them, you know, locally and then on national tires, you know, we, we have Toyo, which is, uh, another, you know, thing like.
Which is unheard of in the HPD industry. You know, all our coaches I know, you know, and you’ve, you get them right. You, you see them when they come in there. So when you coach every event you coach for us, you’re gonna get Toyo bucks sent to you, which you redeem. And then, you know, at event you’re out there, you know, you do a couple events, next thing you know, you have four or $500 towards, you know, getting a Toyo tire, you know?
Well, if you’re in a mi, that’s, that’s more than half a cent right there, you know, if you’re in a. New Camaro, that’s almost one back tire. Yeah. Right. So, [01:29:00] uh, those little perks that we try to really are hardest to provide for our coaches. ’cause those are the guys out there and, and our members that are coming out there.
You know, everyone works hard for what they have out there. And I, and I, uh, and I appreciate that they choose hooked on driving and I’m gonna do my best to give ’em the, uh, the, the best day that they can. And that’s, uh, that’s what we do out there. So, you know, thank you to all those people out there. Thanks Bell.
Thanks Lockton Affinity. Thanks. You know, open track and wine country and, uh, the corner workers. People don’t realize they’re the unsung heroes, those corner workers and ambulance workers and our track first responders. I mean, you have no idea what’s happening in that next turn. And when you’re doing 160 in the back street at Watkins Glen, that flagger is the only person that’s gonna tell you what’s up there ahead of you.
And those people, I think, don’t get the recognition they deserve. So every time I chance, I get, I thank them out there. Those, the people that are keeping us safe, they’re the guys that are giving us communication of what’s gonna happen in front of us. If any of those guys ever listen to any of this like that, listen, thank you so much for what you do.
And, uh, you know, it’s a labor of love for those guys. I know that, you know, [01:30:00] they’re out there and whether it’s raining, whether it’s hot, whether no matter what it is, keeping us safe. So I want to thank them out there too.
Crew Chief Eric: I think there’s two people we forgot and I’m gonna shout out to them. First and foremost, Jay’s better half Ginny for always being at every event, you know, putting up with all the shenanigans and the chaos that goes on.
But there’s one other person, and I know she’s in the room with you, and she deserves a massive amount of applause for keeping everything running so smoothly. And that’s a big, can you need my word? No. No. It’s a big thank you to Mona. Thank you, sweetheart. She abandoned me for this call, for this podcast. I don’t think, I don’t think this ship would stay afloat without Mona.
No. And, and, and she doesn’t ask for a lot of praise, but she deserves every ounce of it. Yeah. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ll say I
Mike Arrigo: am, I’m very blessed to have Mona in my life with this, you know, she is the voice of hooked on driving when you call. She’s the one who, uh, who picks up the phone. She tells me everything I’m doing wrong.
Um, and once in a while, you know, very rare tells what I do right [01:31:00] now. You’re out there.
Mona Arrigo: Thank you, Billy. Thank you.
Mike Arrigo: Thank you. And I can’t tell you how many people have met at the track or now, like family friends, go on vacations together. It’s a really great feeling to see that, you know, we can provide that field and that environment where people are so comfortable that, you know what?
You gotta come over, bring your wife over to my house for dinner and stuff like that. You know, where, you know, I, I never really saw that before. HOD you know, I didn’t see a lot of that. And I, I think we kind of moved in that direction. There’s a lot of organizations out there and you know, I think we’ve scratched the surface on like, you know, a single digit percentage of what’s out there car-wise.
I mean, this is the golden age of performance in cars. It really is right now. So, I mean, you think about the amount of cars that are out there that can do this and the amount of cars that are doing this. You know, there’s a, there’s a lot of people out there. So there’s, uh, I think there’s something for everyone.
You know, like I said, not everyone wants to be a race car driver and you know, we treat people as that friends, driving with friends, drivers driving with drivers, you know,
Crew Chief Eric: so with that, Mike, you know, I have to say it [01:32:00] has been an honor and a privilege to grow with. And be able to work with HOD all these years, obviously, you know, we’ve had a strong relationship, you know, many of us from GTM come from HOD and vice versa, and it’s been a, a mutually beneficial family relationship as, as you call it.
So it, it’s been an honor to be able to be part of this and see this story expand and be able to, you know, stand here and. What does the next five, 10 years look like with HOD? And so we’re really excited to see what happens and what comes of all this. And so for those of you that don’t know the story, you’re hearing this for the first time and you wanna learn more about hod, now is your opportunity to jump on www.hookondriving.com and then click on Northeast and check out all the things that Mike was talking about.
Or maybe you live in a different part of the country. Check out the other events that hooked on driving has nationally that are available to you. Also check for UpToDate schedules on h HP D Junkie, another, you know, HOD partner, [01:33:00] but also remember to follow HOD on Instagram at. Hooked on driving and at hooked on driving NE for Northeast or join the HOD Northeast Facebook group.
So if you’re into that and you wanna chat with some people, reconnect with folks that you met at the track, that’s a great opportunity to do that. So Mike and Mona, who I know is in the background, I can’t thank you both enough for all the many years of us working together, but also for coming on break fix.
Getting this opportunity to get your story out there and tell people and get them closer to HOD and hopefully we’ll see them out there next season.
Mike Arrigo: No, listen, thank you for having us on here and thanks for all, you know, over the years you guys have definitely have put a tremendous amount of support in us.
And you know, me, me and Mona, we, we appreciate that. We, we love that. You know, you’d have your yearly bash at the events. You know, we’ve had a, a couple anniversaries out there, which are always fun. Shenandoah is back on the schedule for this year.
Crew Chief Eric: Alright.
Mike Arrigo: Yes. So, uh, I did not put it up. It’ll be putting up tonight.
Silly fact, I, [01:34:00] uh, we wrote the dates down, scribbled ’em down when I was with the track on the bill and we couldn’t find them. And we will be the, um, third weekend of June at Shenandoah. So that’s a
Crew Chief Eric: great weekend. So looking forward to that.
Mike Arrigo: Let us know if we are, uh, plan around
Crew Chief Eric: that. Yeah, that’ll work.
Mike Arrigo: And then we, uh, we have the summit main back later on, but I think June is more fun, especially with the skid pad like that.
So, we’ll, uh, I’ll bring extra
Crew Chief Eric: axles. How about that? Is that a deal? And we,
Mike Arrigo: we definitely plan on bringing back our Saturday night barbecues if COVID allows it. That’s one of the things we’ve missed the most, that family type of everyone getting together and just, you know, everything just has such a good time.
I mi that’s what I think I miss the most about this past season. Mm-hmm. With COVID taking over. Barbecues are legendary.
Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely.
Mike Arrigo: Absolutely. Yeah. Just get a couple of us, mix a little Pat Sullivan in there and woo,
Crew Chief Eric: it’s all a good time.
That’s right, listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for a [01:35:00] follow on pit stop mini. So check that out on www.patreon.com/gt motorsports and get access to all sorts of behind the scenes content from this episode and more.
Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org.
You can also find us on Instagram at grantor 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 crew chief@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 [01:36:00] scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag. For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and Monster.
Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.
Highlights
Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.
- 00:00:00 Meet Mike Arrigo from Hooked On Driving
- 00:01:12 Mike’s Journey with Hooked On Driving
- 00:03:35 Growth and Evolution of HOD
- 00:06:23 HOD’s Unique Approach to Customer Service
- 00:07:19 HOD’s Regional Structure and Expansion
- 00:14:10 Safety and Education at HOD Events
- 00:27:02 Progression and Coaching at HOD
- 00:33:47 The Importance of Group Exercises
- 00:34:30 Consistency Over Speed; The Role of Point By in Passing
- 00:37:44 Introduction to the D-Group; Rules and Etiquette
- 00:40:00 Group Leader Meetings and Their Importance
- 00:42:55 HOD Coaching Program and Certifications
- 00:50:53 Balancing Track Time and Quality
- 00:59:23 Track Insurance and Its Benefits
- 01:04:56 HOD’s Electronic Waiver and Tech System
- 01:10:40 Event Management and Private Services
- 01:17:24 Adapting to COVID-19 Guidelines
- 01:22:59 Shoutouts and Acknowledgements
- 01:31:48 Closing Remarks and Future Plans
Bonus Content
There's more to this story!
Be sure to check out the behind the scenes for this episode, filled with extras, bloopers, and other great moments not found in the final version. Become a Break/Fix VIP today by joining our Patreon.
All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.
One of HOD Northeast’s standout moments came during the launch of the C7 Stingray. Chevrolet partnered with HOD to offer demo rides at national meets, including one unforgettable weekend at New Jersey Motorsports Park. A Porsche 911 owner took a Stingray for a spin, loved it, and showed up the next day with a brand-new Z51 Corvette. “That kind of experience works,” Mike says. “It’s real. It’s visceral.”
The Classroom, Reimagined
Education is central to HOD’s mission, but it’s not one-size-fits-all. Jay Tepper’s classroom sessions cover the physics of driving, communication between coach and guest, and the fundamentals of track safety. But for 2022 and beyond, Mike’s team is evolving the format. Repeat guests will get dynamic, corner-by-corner instruction from trackside leaders, while new drivers still benefit from structured classroom time and orientation laps.
HOD Northeast doesn’t just run events – it curates them. From pairing coaches based on personality and car type to tailoring run group lengths to each track’s layout, Mike’s team ensures every detail enhances the guest experience. “We’re not rigid,” he explains. “We adapt to the track, the people, the cars.”
And while there’s no official “home track,” Watkins Glen holds a special place in Mike’s heart. “It’s just a fantastic facility,” he says. “If I lived closer to VIR, maybe I’d say that. But really, any track can be your home when you’re part of the HOD family.”
With expanded track days, new classroom formats, and a growing national footprint, Hooked on Driving continues to evolve. But at its core, it remains a labor of love. “Nobody gets into this thinking they’ll be the next Warren Buffett,” Mike laughs. “We’re all car guys. We’re all enthusiasts. And we’re all here to drive – with friends.”
Special thanks to Mike & Mona Arrigo for always being there and supporting GTM over the years. They are Break/Fix super fans too!
